Shattered Kingdoms

Looking for fresh input from the player base!
Utility here can mean both breadth of ability and/or usefulness in PvE fighting.

• Please rank all the classes from strongest to weakest in terms of PvE.
• For your top choice, please explain why it is so good.
• For your bottom choice, please explain why it is lacking.

This thread will run all week or until a day goes by without any responses.

If you have issues with class balance, this could be your golden opportunity!

This thread is not about PvP. You can find that thread here.

mercenary --- best offense/defense of warrior class and has rescue
priest
shaman
barbarian
warlock
paladin
bard
rogue
scout
hellion
sorcerer
swashbuckler
necromancer --- no utility beyond rift, all meaningful content is no-magic, spells are worthless against "boss" NPCs

mercenary
priest


paladin
barbarian
swashbuckler
hellion
bard
scout
rogue
warlock

sorcerer
shaman
necromancer


I divided it into 3 tiers. Mercenary and priest are the best classes to play for PvE right now. Mostly due to the fact that spellcasting has been radically destroyed by the changes to "powerful NPCs" aka the bosses that are found in end game areas. Success rates of spells are around the 10-15% mark. The best spells for PvE right now are ones like armor and sanctuary and outside of that the heal spell. I put shaman way down at the bottom because priest has way better utility in spells like gate, consecrate and resurrection. Most of the abilities of shaman are in debuffs like curse and weaken, which don't work most of the time. By the time you do succeed at the spell the melee dps in the group will nearly have the NPC dead from hp damage so the bottom three classes all suffer from the same problem: not bringing anything useful to the group dynamic.

The middle tier is topped by paladin because they have a lot of defensive buffs and curative spells which are the most valuable things right now. The fact that they have some melee dps is also a huge point in their favor as HP damage is all that matters in PvE at this point.

The bottom tier doesn't bring anything useful to a group, especially since there's a lot of rooms that are flagged to be anti-magic, and their spells have a very low success rate. At least sorcerer gets gate and enchant though.

In regards to necromancers and their inability to take their hoard into pve areas, I think that undead/all controllable NPCs should be able to wield and rub the magic lamp.

Also, in this thread, are we talking about solo pve? Because a priest wouldn't do very well on their own in pve. But with a merc, that's a great duo and they'd rank pretty highly.

Feel free to qualify your rankings. You can say that X class is great in a group but sucks solo. The opposite is probably not true, but if it is let me know.

The God Tier

Mercenary
Priest

Outside of gimmicks, like a locked door that has no key, there are three things (the classic trinity) you need for a successful PvE trip: a tank, damage dealers, and healers. Mercenaries are not only the best tanks, but also the most damaging class in the game. They are currently (and have been been for a long, long time) the most grossly overpowered class on SK.

Priests bring healing, sanctuary, gate, armor, bless, a religion spell (i.e. luck, energizer, etc.), consecrate item/armor/weapon (for the gear you acquire on the trip), and most importantly refresh - to keep all the melee classes that your formation should have pumping out damage non-stop.

The 'Meh' Tier

Barbarian
Scout
Paladin
Warlock
Shaman
Bard
Rogue
Hellion

These classes aren't terrible, but they also aren't priests or mercenaries. They don't have the utility or healing output of a priest and they don't measure up to the tanking ability or damage output of a mercenary. A paladin or barbarian is the poor man's mercenary for tanking, with the shaman and warlock being the poor man's priest.

Hellion, scout, and rogue can do moderate to good melee damage - they are truly 'meh'. A bard can increase the melee damage output of the other classes with songs of war or provide a bit of regeneration with songs of healing - they aren't bad, but they also aren't needed.

The Dumpster Tier (i.e. You make PvE trips take longer and add virtually nothing to group)

Sorcerer
Necromancer
Swashbuckler

Swashbuckler melee damage is good to superb, but it comes at a price: they are extremely squishy and will be an unnecessary drain on the mana of your healers.

Finally, we have sorcerers and necromancers, which are essentially pet-based classes. But most high end PvE zones have a gimmick (air sectors, anti-magic, etc.) that makes using a pet either impossible or extremely dangerous to the caster and/or his formation.

Due to the saving throw bonus of "powerful" races, it's not even worthwhile to bring a sorcerer or necromancer for blind, sleep, curse, or petrify. They are just taking up a slot that could be filled by a useful class, like a mercenary (funny how this class can fill any slot in the formation - front row as tank or melee DPS, second row as melee DPS with a polearm or spear, and even third row as an archer with a bow/crossbow) or a priest.

I think when it comes to PvE you should snoop the groups that are going to the frozen wastes/outer plains and those really high end level areas. You will find a distinct hadfull of classes doing it and their roles are pretty specific.

There's a bunch of things that matter to me when I'm asking the question "What is my ideal PvE group?"
One of them is the question of who I need to win fights through an area, the more efficient the better. Let's call this combat effectiveness.
Another is who I need to get me there and to enchant or gather EQ, let's call this PvE utility.

Ranked in order of combat effectiveness from trash to boss NPCs:

1. Mercenary
2. Warlock
3. Barbarian
4. Priest
5. Shaman
6. Bard
7. Paladin
8. Hellion
9. Scout
10. Swashbuckler.
11. Sorcerer
12. Necromancer
13. Rogue

Ranked in order of PvE travel utility.

1. Priest (gates/consecrate
2. Sorcerer (gates/enchant/etherealform)
3. Scout (skinning)
4. Bard/Rogue (lockpicking)
5. Paladin (Enchant armor).
6-7. Hellion/Necromancer (Enchant/Consecrate weapon and rift)
8-13. No utility.

To sum these up: Priests are definitely the best to have from the caster classes, because they can gate, heal, and consecrate. Sorcerers are second best, and usually in higher demand in PvE trips because they're not useful in-combat unlike priests. Scouts are the only class able to provide skins. Paladins are the best of the recent additions because enchanting armor takes forever, but necromancers and paladins still aren't that great: While rift is nice, it's not going to get you access to the majority of the desirable areas without gate on top of it.

With that in mind, here's my thoughts as to who's strongest and weakest.

1. Mercenaries/Barbarians. These are amongst the highest in the list for combat, but primarily because they fulfill the role of tank and dps evenly, and can rescue. I do not believe these two need much in the way of nerfs in the PvE department: Rather, if anything I think other classes could stance to get a bit in the way of buffs. The reason these are so high is that so few classes fit well on the front lines: The only other class that is -good- to have as a tank is paladin, because they're the only other front-line class with rescue. If hellions got rescue that'd be a nice change, but otherwise I think the tank classes are fine.
2. Warlocks. Warlocks are way too good in PvE. Their ability to conjure elementals that are good tanks in all circumstances and immune-to-damage tanks in some circumstances, and the fact that healing rays heavily outshines the only other group healing spell in the game in both casting time, healing per second and mana efficiency is absurd. If you have a solid tank line and even a single warlock, you don't even need single-target healers like priests and shaman, and are better off just having more damage in your group to get through areas quicker.

Playing a swashbuckler in PvE is kinda depressing unless you're Fist. They're weak in PvE, but not "needs a buff" weak.

Necros are pretty terrible in high-end PvE because they have no spell damage, maledictions are fruitless except in extremely rare circumstances, you can't use animates without spending way too much time working on it, and even if you do get some lousy animates you aren't going to have weapons for them. In areas where you can bring pets they're alright, but for the same reasons aren't really all that big of a deal.
Sorcerers fall prey to the same problems: The only legitimately useful things a sorc or necro can bring are crowd control in sleep and fear, which while useful if it works, doesn't otherwise directly do damage or provide healing like every other class.

The weakest class in PvE is definitely rogue, hands-down. All they add is damage, and the damage they add isn't that great despite needing to be manually targeted. They're also a liability in the second rank. I'd always rather have a bard than a rogue.

I know they are new, but don't forget necro, paladin and hellion all have one of the item enhancing spells now. Plus necro can rift to the stones. Those must help differentiate them a bit?

Good point. I'll add that in, although given that none of them got enchant/consecrate item (generally the most lacking) I don't think it's a huge difference.