Quote:So the most successful offensive characters are those which can put all their resources towards offense, neglecting defensive abilities, and who have multi-target skills to kill crowds quick. That describes the bowazon and sorceress quite well.
Note that also describes the barbarian quite well, as well as the werewolf and assassin. Why the last two? Because they both have skills that hit a good amount of enemies and both have skills that leech back a substantial amount of life, thus negating the need for defense: the werewolf's bonus is that he can hit a ton of enemies while leeching a buttload of life back, but his drawback is that it's all physical; the assassin's bonus is that she can leech even more life back, but her physical damage is comparatively weak when placed aside her elemental damage, but hey, Dragon's Tail is awesome defense.
I could apply the same to the necromancer as well, as he has all those nice minions, but until LOD, his offensive possibilities were actually slim (though not anymore). The elemental druid might've become the next v1.03 bowazon, but even he's too weak compared to the bowazon at that time.
And to reprint something I typed up in the AB:
Quote:Oh, and let's talk defense. Defense Rating, to be more precise; has anyone noticed that DR does absolutely nothing at the upper levels? The barbarian, sorceress, paladin, and druid - all have these autoskills that garner massive bonuses to DR, but in the end, what classes really, really need them? Paladin and druid, that's who. Why? Because the barbarian and sorceress subscribe to the "US pre-emptive defense" rule: Kill everything before it can even reach your front door. OK, so the two classes who really need defense also have crap offense...uh-oh. How much damage are characters supposed to do in v1.1 again, and how are the monsters going to scale up to face this new threat? Defense Ratings don't lower the damage your characters are supposed to take - that would make too much sense - they merely make your character a bit harder to hit, but if monsters have higher damage and higher AR to battle the characters, that only means that when your character does get hit, he's only going to take more damage, and if he's a wimp like the paladin who isn't lucky enough to get a massive leech skill or anything that even resembles damage, then he's screwed harder than your dad's retirement plans. Gee, I guess we really need to make that physical resistance equipment mandatory for anybody stupid enough to get in the front lines, huh? (No, I haven't forgotten blocking, but that's another story altogether: block is a supplemental defense, not The Defense, and if you're depending on that more than your armor, then something's wrong.)