[Neus]

This is one in what will be a long line of player surveys regarding various aspects of the game. Since I am always looking to improve the experience for as many people as possible, this requires gathering feedback, hence these polls. Tell your wife, tell your kids, tell your friends (if they play the game, anyway) to vote. Based on the feedback I gather, I may make adjustments to the game balance/etc. However, nothing is guaranteed, so please keep that in mind.

If you'd like to post an opinion with your vote, you can do so (although it is not necessary), but please follow these guidelines;

1) Do not response to other users' opinions in this thread. I'm not looking for debates, just data.
2) Please include the way you voted for clarity.
3) Please provide your opinion on what would be a more ideal result.
4) Don't go crazy. I'm not going to delete any classes or completely retool them, for example. I'm not going to flip the rug on the entire battle system, either. Don't even suggest it.
5) Keep your opinion relevant to the topic. Don't go on a rant, like 'whaddafrick battle too fast because kenvoker too strong, nerf please'. You can express a similar opinion, but it should be worded more appropriately, like 'Players do too much damage, resulting in battles that feel too quick, and lengthening the battles would make them more enjoyable.' I don't want to hear what you hate, I want to hear what would make things better for you.

Thank you for your participation.

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The Topic: Least Fun Class

This time, we'll be discussing the class you find the least fun. They can be the least fun for a few reasons, such as not suiting your play style, their play patterns being rather dull or having few variations, and so on. Pick your poll option and expand on your reason why in a post (if you so choose). I also recommend posting what you think they could have added that would make you interested in the class. (I'm not including base classes in this poll for obvious reasons.)

[Ryu-Kazuki]

Lantern Bearer, hands down.

As interesting all the class can be in concept, and it's many variety of spells in elements to use, it's very, very lack luster, and very, very poor in combat on its own. Right now, it's not much different than Hexer except for the fact it does get light damage and doesn't get lightning, and some obvious mechanical differences. It's very heavily reliant on distance, which can make its already pitiful damage even worse, which makes it even more pitiful when people can resist the elements you cast with your spells.

The healing, and blind cure are nice, I will say that, and focus beam can get pretty powerful at times, but easily resisted.

Between Evokers, Hexers, and Lantern Bearers in terms of spell damage, Evokers are obviously the best, they're supposed to be. Hexers come second, despite the ranges of certain spells and how the damages can be halved, but they also provide harder hitting status effects, and can lock them in with skills that make them incurable.

The downside of Lantern Bearers is they only get elemental resistances, making melee destroy them if they got close (even Fenrir can't keep them away). Their damage gets weaker farther away, and applies elemental resistances as well, dropping the damage to awful outputs, especially against tanks. And on top of that, the class is very straightforward.

Equip in main slot at lv 60 -> Gain Permanent Eternal Flame (that you can't turn off which can be very bad if you don't have any other spells and they can absorb your element and raging flame is equipped).

Cast Spell -> Eternal Flame Activates -> (May or may not buff allies, depends on if you have any, if you don't, you gain a very small stat bonus.) -> Either switch spells, or cast focus beam, raging flame kicks in. - > Rinse and Repeat.

That's it. There's no skill involved, no tactical planning, it's simply, "use this element while they're up close to do decent damage", or "keep them away so I can survive and hope my subclass can help me out (depending on that subclass)". It's very boring, and very easy to get yourself killed in combat for what is called a promotion class.

It has a lot of support utility, that's great. Supporting is good, especially in tight spots. But supporting is only good when it benefits other people, and doesn't make it very fun or interesting to play when all you can really do is lend aid to other people, but not defend yourself when you don't have allies to back you up.

Lantern Bearers, in my opinion, either need some kind of better damage output, whether it be bypassing resistances in some way (much like Verglas get is one way to do it), or better defenses, other than a strict elemental resistance that only works against mages or people who use nothing but elemental attacks.

To me, this is a Lantern Bearer in a nutshell right now. (Warning, this is parody satire.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI6b7T6ucQw

[Rendar]

Tactician is hands-down the least fun class to play as. You're forced to party with other people, or play as a Grand Summoner Tactician, which in-and-of-itself is already a terrible gimmick that you're just making more overpowered. Tactician offers almost no synergy with its base class, and offers next-to-no 'support' for yourself unless you use formations. Which people can easily shove/flip you off of.

Adding support with guns, or tomes, or anything would be nice. Giving Soldier more synergy with it would also be nice, like Soldier having weapon powers that could be used by any weapon, or, for instance, got special benefits depending on what weapon you used it with.

[MegaBlues]

Evokers.

I know they're supposed to be a nuke class, but their damage isn't spectacular compared to other setups (Akimbo Gunner/Hexer Poison/Fleur Critskrieg), and can be easily negated with the proper setup.

A bit more variety in their spell effects/ranges/etc would make them less susceptible to the power/intrigue creep that naturally happens.

[Rockabye]

As much as I wanted to click Evoker just for the sheer straight-forwardness of it... no, Engineer. You're probably relying on your bots to do most of the work for you, you can't really control them in any special way, and unlike Summoner you're not gaining any skills from them to use yourself, so you're looking at a really passive playstyle of using up your momentum trying to maintain them (which isn't very fun). Of course, this opinion is entirely based on how Engineer functions alone, and not necessarily any potential multi-classes you could make with it.

[Nytingale]

Probably Grand Summoner for me. I REALLY wanted to choose Tactician, Engineer, or Lantern Bearer, but I went with Grand Summoner in the end. Why? Because it doesn't bring any "thrill" to it. Not in terms of its concepts, like how Hexer, Lantern-Bearer, Void-Assassin, and Verglas does -- Nor do the Skills for that matter. Actually, most of the Skills for the Class aren't even used. I can't see or rather, haven't heard of anyone using anything really outside of Summon Storm, Reihou, and the Passives (with the possible exception of Evoke Mastery every now and then, because if you're going to be summoning them... You don't really need to Evoke then, you know?). The Offensive Skills are interesting, but feel like they carry more "risk" than "gain". Especially when you could use Summon Storm, Impact Call, and Impact Dismiss which comes with less risks. I wonder if anyone even gets Soul Chains, and Judgement Blade~

Then again... There was the update where you now have to constantly pay some escalated amount of FP while a Youkai is summoned or something like that.... Though, I don't necessarily see that as enough to add anything exciting; thrilling - anything - to the Class. It just feels..... Dull~

[iDarkCara]

Kensei.

It's a lot of fun in the way it works, but it just lacks the ooomf. You're really shonen, but it doesn't feel like it. it's more of a combat thing for me. *hops into the air, delivering a downward slash* *5 damage* *miss* It's just eh. It's lacking. It's a neat class on paper, but to me seems very lacking.

[Ranylyn]

*big rant about Evokers was removed since I felt I might have been coming across as too hostile. To summarize, I play them creatively and love it, but my issue came from the "image" of how some think all they can do is CM/Invoke. My view of them as boring came from the community's use.*

I will also give honorable mention to Void Assassin for RP reasons. I almost never touch the class because the threat of Void Poisoning keeps most of my characters away from ever exploring that particular skillset, and those that do use it are often OOCly just using it for growths. It has the potential to be incredibly interesting, but it's certainly not readily accessible from an IC standpoint a lot of the time.

[RoboCat]

Welp I messed up my single vote by clicking Arbalet thinking it was the favorite class thread. My intended pick was

Kensei

[Chaos]

Evoker, or more specifically, Charge Mind. While the Evoker's straightforward style isn't a bad thing, this one skill makes the class so brain-dead that it's not only boring, but painful to play against. Charge Mind is completely safe; 6M isn't even close to enough time to take someone down, you cannot wait it out nor run it off, and there is no way to disrupt it beyond trying to gamble with a very specific skill.

High-Speed Divine Words, while it's even less of a commitment on its own, isn't even as bad as Charge Mind; going into an invocation is still a commitment, but it gives enough general flexibility to not only allow the user a chance to sneak an Invocation in, but allow the enemy a chance to avoid the incoming pain. Charge Mind doesn't allow this.

I feel like Evoker would be less of a bore/pain/etc. if Charge Mind was changed up; say, having the user cast spells* to charge it up before letting it loose.

*Certain spells excluded: I'm looking at you, Wretched Oil.


On a lesser note, while I wouldn't call Tactician 'not fun', there seems to be little reason to use a good chunk of their skills outside of non-solo PvP. Their tricks also don't stand out that much in Boss fights; then again, most Bosses need more than just peerless HP if they want to ever threaten a party enough to warrant a Tactician.