Lost Ark Class Guide: What Class to Play in 2022?

hey folks this is riker with a class overview video for lost ark to help you pick what class to play in this video we'll go over what each class does and make some recommendations to help steer you to the right class for you for this video i consulted with lost ark expert percy from max roll and you can find even more details on this topic in the written class guide which was a collaborative effort from the max role team of lost ark experts link in the description below now upon its western release lost ark will have five classes or archetypes as they're known the assassin the martial artist the gunner the warrior and the mage each archetype looks different and has different abilities and play styles so when you create a character you start by picking an archetype but then each of those archetypes has advanced classes or subclasses which are unlocked at level 10. and among lost ark players it's really those subclasses or advanced classes that people refer to when they're talking about classes in the game so that means in total when you're picking what class to play you're picking from one among 15 different classes and more will release over time so in this video we're going to go over those 15 different choices give an overview of each to help you understand the play style and offer some recommendations based on strengths and weaknesses of the classes so if you're already familiar with the classes and how they play and just want to go straight to the recommendations you can follow the timestamp in the description below now before we dive in we're just going to quickly mention that these classes are gender locked that is while you do have the ability to customize the appearance of your character you cannot change the gender and some classes technically seem like gender swaps of others but they actually have different mechanics they really are their own class we're also going to quickly explain identity skills and engravings these are two important concepts to understand when we talk about classes every class has something called an identity skill that helps shape its identity in most cases the way this works is that you use normal attacks to build up your identity gauge that fills up and then you can use your identity skill these play a huge role in how a class feels to play then there are engravings engravings are special effects that can be found on certain items and some engravings are class specific each class has two class specific engravings and these engravings can completely change the play style of that class in fact it's not even really fair to say that you don't enjoy a class's playstyle until you've tried its two engravings that's how significant they are so again from an initial selection of five archetypes we get 15 subclasses each with two engravings so 30 choices you're really going into this with 30 different builds to pick from so let's start now with the assassin archetype the assassins classes are the deathblade and the shadowhunter and both have high mobility and high damage the deathblade has a lot of big area of effect skills and her identity skill has you filling up your identity gauge by using any of your skills to stack up to three levels of death orbs you can then activate a death orb to enter a form known as death trans this gives you access to a new skill called burst that lets you consume your remaining death orbs to burst out of death trance while blasting enemies and knocking them down the deathblade's two class engravings are burst which makes you use your burst at max power regardless of how many death orbs you have left and remaining energy which gives you a power buff after using burst based on how many death orbs you have remaining and both of these engravings are viable then the other assassin class is the shadowhunter which has small area of effect skills compared to the death blade but it has low cooldowns to compensate shadowhunters fill their identity gauge by using skills while in human form and then when full they can transform into a demon which gives them access to an entirely new set of demon skills to use so this is a transformation class then one of the class engravings demonic impulse allows you to enter demon form more often and the other engraving perfect suppression will actually disable your demon form altogether and instead buff all your normal skills and both engravings are viable so that covers the assassin we'll move on to the gunner now this has four classes within it the gunslinger the deadeye the artillerist and the sharpshooter the gunslinger has good mobility single target damage and area damage and instead of an identity gauge the gunslinger has the ability to swap between rifle shotgun and pistols and each of these has their own set of skills the sniper rifle is used for long range damage the shotgun is used for up close damage and the pistol skills tend to revolve around mobility and positioning the gunslinger's class engravings are peacemaker which buffs all three weapons but is mainly used for rifle skills for maximum damage and then the time to hunt engraving removes the shotgun from the gunslinger's arsenal altogether and instead adds more crit chance to the remaining skills of these two time to hunt is easier to play because you have fewer skills that you have to rotate through so better for beginner players then the deadeye class this is the male version of the gunslinger he also wields those three weapons but the difference between the dead eye and the gunslinger is that the gunslinger is better with the sniper rifle and the dead eye is better with the shotgun positioning is especially important for the deadeye because you want to be up close and behind your target to deal maximum damage the dead eye's first class engraving is enhanced weapon which makes him deal more damage via a higher crit rate and the other is pistolier which restricts the dead eye to only pistol skills and we'll only recommend the enhanced weapon engraving here as pistolier deals less damage again the shotgun is a specialty and you're taking away a shotgun the next class the artillerist sacrifices mobility for heavy guns and heavy armor his identity gauge is split into three stages that fill up by dealing damage with each additional stage you deal more damage and the final stage lets you activate barrage mode which basically turns you into a stationary turret with access to 4 incredible damage skills to bombard your enemies while protecting you with a shield this class is easy to learn but difficult to master its class engravings are firepower enhancement which gives you more damage and more survivability and barrage which resets the cooldowns on your barrage mode skills when you kill an enemy however since mobility is a big part of lost ark you seldomly want to be just sitting around for a long period of time so barrage isn't something you'll typically go with then lastly the sharpshooter class uses a bow instead of guns it has skills with low cooldowns and quick animations and he's highly mobile when his identity gauge is full he can summon a hawk that comes with his own attack skills both class engravings death strike and loyal companion present the same play style here build up your hawk meter and unleash the hawk that takes us to the mage archetype which has two classes the sorceress and the bard and they're quite different the sorceress deals good damage with lots of area of effect spells but can be quite squishy she fills her identity gauge in order to empower her damage or to activate a special mobility skill her class engravings are heightened senses which revolves around dealing a huge amount of burst damage in a small window with this engraving the sorceress has little mobility and needs to be very careful with her positioning the other class engraving is conscious dissonance which is based on dealing consistent damage instead of burst damage with little down time and without having to rely on the identity gauge this version has higher mobility because she can focus on using her identity gauge for that special mobility skill instead then the bard is one of two support classes in lost arc she lacks high single target damage skills but her big area of effect skills are on par with other classes when a bard fills her identity gauge she can play one of two songs serenade of courage to give her party a nice attack buff or serenade of salvation to provide heels and when it comes to engravings bards are more flexible than other classes and they should change up their engravings based on the specific content that they're doing so a lot more variety here that takes us to the martial artist archetype this is an agile archetype with incredible attack speed its classes include the scrapper the solfist the striker and the war dancer now the scrapper is a pure melee class with no range skills at all just fists of fury she also has high mobility and her identity gauge consists of two different energy types stamina and shock spending stamina restores shock and vice versa so you'll always have some resource available to you to spend and it's about balancing the use of these resources her two class engravings each focus on the skills of one of these two energy types and both are viable then the solfist is a well-rounded class good mobility good single target damage and good area of effect damage however it is difficult to learn and difficult to master her identity skill has three levels that have to be manually increased a higher level results in higher damage greater attack speed and shorter cooldowns at the cost of shortened durations of these identity buffs however the robust spirit class engraving lets you skip levels 1 and two and go straight to level three and you get even more buffs the other engraving energy overflow is considered weaker resulting in more consistent sustained damage but less overall damage then the striker is a high mobility class with small area of effect skills for his identity he generates elemental orbs by dealing damage and he can then use special skills to consume those orbs to deal high burst damage his engravings include esoteric flurry which has you rotate through three different skills that spend elemental orbs which results in a less burst heavy playstyle and then you have death blow which leans into the burst damage and amps it up then lastly the war dancer also generates elemental orbs like the striker but consumes them with a different set of skills though she is still a burst damage focused class her esoteric skill enhancement engraving makes her special esoteric skills deal more damage while the first intention engraving gives a flat buff to all skills instead at the cost of being unable to use any of those special esoteric skills the word answer is a high mobility class with some of the lowest cooldowns and fastest animations in the game and while she lacks area of effect skills she makes up for it with high damage against single targets then lastly we have the warrior archetype which has three classes the berserker the gun lancer and the paladin the berserker is a high burst damage class lots of big arrow effect skills though he has long cooldowns and long skill animations his identity gauge fills up while hitting enemies and once full it allows him to enter burst mode in which he has increased attack and movement speed the berserkers 2 class engravings change how this burst mode works berserker's technique removes the exhaustion debuff that you would typically get at the end of burst mode and gives you extra crit rate and crit damage when in burst mode the mayhem engraving on the other hand allows berserkers to stay in burst mode for however long they want and you can enter it whenever you want without having to worry about the identity gauge and it also gains a huge damage reduction buff then the paladin is the other support class in lost ark he does have a decent amount of area of effect damage skills and he can use one of his two identity gauge skills to buff his own damage the paladin really shines when serving as a tanky support by using his second identity skill holy aura to heal and give a damage buff to allies particularly when combined with the blessed aura class engraving then lastly there's the gun lancer he has strong area of effect skills though low mobility his identity gauge fills up while dealing damage and he consumes the gauge by activating shields that protect himself or his team the combat readiness engraving makes his normal skills deal more damage and results in the build with the greatest survivability in lost ark then the solo knight engraving focuses on buffing his special gun lancer skills making this a high burst damage variant alright now that we're done with the overview of all the classes let's get more specific about recommendations so first off if you're looking for something beginner friendly we got five classes to recommend the first pick is the gun lancer he is very forgiving to play since he's so tanky lots of shields if you make a mistake in combat you're not gonna get punished that heavily for it it's really rare to die from one shots when you're playing a gun lancer it's also inexpensive to build a gun lancer because he can make use of engravings that other classes can't or at least shouldn't meaning they'll be less expensive for him to buy on the auction house since there'll be less demand for them however if that playstyle doesn't interest you then the artillerist is easy to learn and forgiving to play with high survivability though we do put this in a distinct second place to the gun lancer then there's the berserkers mayhem build very simple to play it's a two button build now we'll talk a bit more about that mayhem engraving it gives you a debuff to your health your health can never rise above 25 of its max while that sounds scary you get a 65 damage reduction buff and this also means that potions are now super effective for you if a potion heals you 25 of your max health and you can't go above 25 of your max health then a potion is always healing you for all of your health so that means you're gonna save a lot of gold with this build on buying potions then there's also a combat engraving that's a non-class specific engraving that you can use that makes you deal more damage based on how much health you are missing this is a natural synergy with this build and it's another engraving you'll be able to pick up for cheap because no one else wants to run this so the demand for the engraving is going to be low so you can get it for cheap on the auction house then our final two beginner recommendations will be the two support classes bard and paladin these two use defensive engravings no other class would use defensive engravings because you're sacrificing damage it's just not it's not viable towards putting together an optimized build so again these will be cheaper to buy so the build is cheaper to put together and they'll make you stay alive more easily so it also helps with beginners the supports also have lots of shields and defensive capabilities meant to help your party but you benefit as well supports are also always needed in a party so even if you're not fully mid-maxed with your build and your gear as long as you're hitting your skill timings on the buffs that the party wants you're good so that's the beginner recommendations now what are our recommendations if you're coming from another mmo you're asking what's the best tank what's the best support what's the best dps well lost arc has no trinity any combination of classes can be viable as long as you have one support in the party and one single support is what you want to aim for more than one and you're being less efficient so in a party you want one support and then any other combination that said let's say you're a tank player and you really want to play a tank in lost ark well there's no class that can just hold aggro while the rest of your party stands behind and rains damage effortlessly it's just not a thing in lost ark but the thing that comes the closest to that is the gun lancer he has the most reliable taunt power that said it has a long cooldown and it only lasts a few seconds and in practice it's really used more as an interrupt when you see an enemy doing we're about to do something dangerous still the gun lance is probably going to be the closest to a traditional mmo tank experience if you want to play support because you're a support player the best support depends on the composition but in general bard tends to be preferred in groups because she adds more survivability lots of skills with shields damage reduction and a high amount of uptime on all of these the paladin is certainly viable he's just the more aggressive option so he's best in compositions that are really looking for more damage buffs then what if you're a pvp player what's the best pvp class well giant disclaimer lost ark gets balance changes very often and these changes can change the meta the current meta in pvp revolves around crowd control and your ability to resist it as an influx of new players are going to enter the pvp scene you're going to see a big difference between new players and experienced players some classes will be absolute noob stompers they'll just completely destroy new players who don't understand how to counter these tactics but then these same builds and classes will be ineffective against experienced players so for instance the artillerist is very forgiving in early pvp it will stomp noobs but it will be easily outplayed by the deathblade for instance and becomes one of the weaker pvp options at high levels of play so at those high levels of play the deathblade the shadowhunter the gunslinger these all have high mobility and they're gonna shine in pvp the soulfist is also very strong but it relies on waiting for the right moment to strike you crowd control an enemy pop in deal a lot of damage and then pop out as soon as possible then the gun lancer is also strong in pvp because he's so tanky he can interrupt enemies and your teammates will be happy to have you on the team provided you play well however enemies will tend to ignore you in favor of chasing the squishier targets so it could be a frustrating play experience to go with gun lancer you're basically a tank that has no ability to pull aggro then of course the support classes bard and paladin invaluable in pvp sure everyone wants to play the dps but the supports are really the stars the the core that holds the pvp team together and that's going to wrap up this video so hopefully now you got a better idea of what class to go with and i encourage you to sound off in the comments with what class you'll be starting with in lost ark also do stay tuned for more lost ark videos including a leveling guide to get you from 1 to 50 as soon as possible that video will go up tomorrow and be sure to check out maxwell.gigi for all the lost ark resources and written guides you could possibly need thanks for watching special thanks to my twitch patreon and youtube supporters for making these videos possible if you like what you see on this channel and want to support the creation of more content you can consider pledging on youtube or patreon and unlocking behind the scenes content monthly virtual hangouts and more if you enjoyed this video please share it check out these other videos and subscribe to join rikers raiders for more lost our content you

Channel: Rhykker

Views: 300,334

Keywords: lost ark, lost ark guide, lost ark gameplay, lost ark classes, lost ark how to pick your class, lost ark 2022, lost ark new player guide, lost ark tips, lost ark beginners guide, lost ark new player, Rhykker, mmorpg, lost ark beginner guide, advanced class selections, lost ark how to choose your class, lost ark all classes, lost ark pvp

Id: XOEUZr2EThw

Length: 19min 40sec (1180 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 07 2022