Best bashing class

Kibeth

I'd like to see peoples opinions the the class that is BEST for bashing. Include information on with and without artifacts if you would. Don't limit it to one side consider light dark and neutral all together and then just rank them. I'd like to find whatever will help me level and gather gold at a fast rate. So far I'm level 87.

Areka

I haven't played with many classes, though I do quite love Templar bashing. DSW with a warhammer or bastard with a +bal enhancement is quite nice. Our Righteousness skillset has an aura that gives +2 con and increases healing, or you can go with a Redemption aura which fully heals up your health after kills, or Purity which gives +2 con - lots of useful combinations depending upon what you need. Add on top latency aura for quick alleyoops out of the area and it's pretty peachy. +con helps with any class, artifact wise, and for templar, having an enhancement rune for split-grade 2handers just improves upon it more, as it grants more use than adding it to a max speed or max dam weap where you're paying for minimal results.

Irruel

Classes with mob-fear skills (lumie/shaman - I don't know of others) are quite fun in certain areas.

Ilyon

Teradrim, Praenomen, or Carnifex for shadow.

Moirean

I personally think Carnifex is a great bashing class. Here are some of the reasons I love it:

- SOUL EMBED: Shift your resistance based on what you are fighting: extra physical protection or extra elemental or, if you're feeling tanky, extra damage done by putting it in your weapon.
- SOUL FORTIFY: Extra con point. Always nice.
- SOUL SUBSTITUTE: Unlike the starburst tattoo, all of your defences are retained when you die with this and you don't lose XP. I sometimes actually just use this as an extra free crystal tattoo when I'm taking on a tough room/area/mob.
- HAMMERS: Great for crit-immune mobs like eld or honors mobs or Giovelli's - does a nice big chunk of damage, and you can forge for specific speeds/damages to customize stuff even more.
- POLEARMS: Spinslash is awesome. If you kill a mob on the first hit, it'll then attempt to hit another mob with the same name in the room. With decent crits (high level, a wheel bonus, grimstim, eggnog and/or bracers) you just tear through stuff amazingly fast. You can hit (and kill) 2 mobs in one swing! If there's not a second mob there, it'll only take the balance of the first strike (like 1.25 seconds).
- BARRAGE: You can use SOUL BARRAGE and wield a shield (arti-shield + resist arti = awesome) for super tankiness against really rough mobs.
- TINY ENDURANCE COST: You can bash basically forever.
- MASTIFF: Intercepts attacks delivered to you. This is really big - it's basically like having permanent nimbleness.
- HOUND SNIFF: Lets you see what mobs are alive in a 5-room radius. It's like a free, mini version of the compendium or a torch. REALLY useful for speed bashing, as you can easily see if an area is cleared out without running around.
- SHIELD: We have a class shield skill. Extra tattoo slot! For a basher, this is great, it means you can get something less vital (but still very useful) like crystal.
- SOUL CONSUME: Whaaat, we get a self-heal on command, too?! Carnifex, you're so great. Don't listen to Toz. Also, you can even use soul consume to boost your current health (not max health) above max (up to ~15k, but getting THAT high is very costly in souls) so you can pre-buff yourself before running in to smash a mob.

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With all that said, here are the cons:

- Not over-the-top tanky. For that you want prae or cabalist. Soul embed helps out a bit with tankiness, but we aren't insanely tanky.
- Only pushes out top damage with artifacts. Carni can put out some crazy dps for bashing, but because our attacks are weapons-based, you need a weapon rune to get that truly max DPS. HOWEVER, it also means we can double-dip into STR artis AND weapon artis. These will both work together to up our damage. For unartied damage, Teradrim does more.
- Our self heal costs eq, so you have to choose to do that OR attack. It's not a passive heal or a chainable heal like other classes have. It's still pretty useful, tho, imo.
- Souls can be a headache to manage. If you self-heal, shield or use substitute a lot, you'll have to be taking time out to refill your stone.

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Regarding artifacts: +crit bracers, a hunting boon and a weapon rune all synergize together to make spinslash even more powerful, and the holy trinity of sip/con/enhance will help cover basic tankiness. I actually don't invest any enhancement points into survivability now, when I am Carni bashing, and I do just fine, as long as I have orbs, amulets and blessing. I starchart into treyes for the extra strength. +con is my only stat arti. Here's my statpack build for Carni bashing:

Typical statpack:

Stats
- Strength
- Constitution
Speed
- Balance
Stamina
- Experience (2x)
Augmetic
- Faster Movement
- 3% Increased Critical Rate
- 3% Increased Critical Strength

Strength : 18(+4) Dexterity : 14(+2) Intelligence : 14(+1) Constitution : 19(+6)

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Overall, I think Carnifex is a very solid bashing class. It's my absolute favorite to bash in. I kill stuff super quick and I feel really buff and awesome and it makes bashing pretty fun. It's fast and strong and I feel like a badass. Without any special buffs, I clear Xaanhal in around 12-15 minutes. The skill messages are also just wonderful.

Irruel

Addendum to Moi's carni essay:
The damage is pretty underwhelming at lower levels, though I don't find it squishy at all.
That's as a character with no artifacts and minimal investment into minis, though it is as stalwart statpack (level 75-80). To be honest, at those levels, hunting the recommended areas, the mastiff isn't necessary. With it, it'd be tough to die. You can bash an area higher, but stuff takes forever to die.

That's true for a lot of classes though, it's true (75-95 is the worst you're probably better off pausing your bashing and trying to lesser-pvp your way through that flat bit until your crits kick in.)

Stathan

From 85 ish to 100 you can do it in about 8 elemental globes.

And I'm partial to monk bashing. Little endurance heavy but numbness and transmute keep me alive quite a few times when I should die.

Jensen

Not sure how Sentinel is with the class skill changes, but I used to love it as a bashing class. Praenomen is my new favored class for bashing

Angwe

We hit harder now and we have a passive self-heal.

Edit: Two, actually. That blood thing and Nightingale, which randomly heals either health or mana.

Jensen

Still not as nice as sip boon was. Hinder takes away any bonus to your vampire blood health thingy, not nice for tiyen.

Nalor

Are you guys really arguing on which is better bashing class?

Its Teradrim by far.. no arties, just enhance bal and muscular statpack its 1300+ at 2.5 and with momentum (5 hits for a 4 min cooldown) it goes to 2.04 ..
You have Golem to hit with you and takes damage away from you while bahsing.. did I mention its tanky?? Over 50 on all audit (but have minis trans) .. and 0 arties Just get a high damage flail ...

Mephistoles

If you're heavily artifacted, the best bashing class hands down is going to be Templar. The damage per second is ridiculous is you play it right, and there isn't another class that comes close to being as fast. For damage per second, artifacted shaman is coming in second.

For survivability, Cabalist, Daru, Praenomen, and Teradrim are going to be in the top tier. All are really tanky and if played right you shouldn't be dying often. Below them on the tank tier I might put Shaman and Luminary.

Toz

@Moirean‌ show us your avg bashing hit so people quit thinking they're good >_>

Moirean

"HROAGH!" you roar, splitting a merciless Xorani warrior open with a vicious overhead swing of a somber silver-edged halberd.
Damage done: 1133, cutting.
Balance Used: 1.33 seconds
Spinning a somber silver-edged halberd deftly in your hands, you bring it about for another strike.
As you focus, a somber silver-edged halberd grows jagged and frosty, deathly spikes of ice streaming from it as you swing it hard into a merciless Xorani warrior.
Damage done: 1133, cutting.
Balance Used: 1.33 seconds
Time to recover: 2.66 seconds.


I only have 18 str though.


In my opinion, straight damage is really really not as important as overkill uptime and attack chances. Look at what happens when I walk in with an overkill:

H:7278/7278 M:5572/5572 E:100% W:100% S:100% XP:71.65% [sdb eb lr]
Wide hallway through a dusty tunnel. (Xaanhal.)
There are 2 merciless Xorani warriors here. A small, dusty fragment of stone lies here, heedlessly kicked aside.
You see exits leading northeast, southeast, and west.
H:7278/7278 M:5572/5572 E:99% W:100% S:100% XP:71.65% [sdb eb lr]
You pick up a fragment of a mosaic.
H:7278/7278 M:5572/5572 E:99% W:100% S:100% XP:71.65% [sdb eb lr]Trigger {autobasher_core} removed.
"HROAGH!" you roar, splitting a merciless Xorani warrior open with a vicious overhead swing of a somber silver-edged halberd.
You have scored an ANNIHILATING CRITICAL hit!!!
Damage done: 0 (24890 overkill), cutting.
Grief and terror rise unbroken in a merciless Xorani warrior's eyes. "I have...failed..." he gasps raggedly, before his eyes glaze over and death claims him.
The final blow proves too much for a merciless Xorani warrior, who expires, pitifully.
Experience Gained: 7871 (Bashing) [total: 32966400]
You use Deathlore Harvest.
Raising your soulstone above , you snarl a guttural chant that causes a smoke-grey glyph to appear within the stone. Moments later, an ethereal stream of silver-white motes flows up from the corpse of a merciless Xorani warrior and into the soulstone.
You collect 80 gold from the corpse.
Having slain a merciless Xorani warrior, you retrieve the corpse.
A rush of energy fills you as you feel ready to deliver a devastating blow upon your next target.
Spinning a somber silver-edged halberd deftly in your hands, you bring it about for another strike.
You aim a mighty swing into a merciless Xorani warrior, the blade of a somber silver-edged halberd hacking into his gut. With a snarl, you wrench your blade free, spilling his entrails in a gory display.
You have scored a CRUSHING CRITICAL hit!
Damage done: 0 (37353 overkill), cutting.
Grief and terror rise unbroken in a merciless Xorani warrior's eyes. "I have...failed..." he gasps raggedly, before his eyes glaze over and death claims him.
The final blow proves too much for a merciless Xorani warrior, who expires, pitifully.
Experience Gained: 7871 (Bashing) [total: 32974271]
You use Deathlore Harvest.
Raising your soulstone above , you snarl a guttural chant that causes a smoke-grey glyph to appear within the stone. Moments later, an ethereal stream of silver-white motes flows up from the corpse of a merciless Xorani warrior and into the soulstone.
You collect 97 gold from the corpse.
Having slain a merciless Xorani warrior, you retrieve the corpse.
A rush of energy fills you as you feel ready to deliver a devastating blow upon your next target.
H:7278/7278 M:5572/5572 E:99% W:100% S:100% XP:71.68% [sdb e- lr]


That's 2 mobs dead in one swing because of crit carryover. Yes, you need a basic level of damage output to have decent-sized crits, but after a point extra damage is just wasted, whereas being quicker is always going to be useful. Once you reach a baseline tankiness, always go for speed, is my theory. Hitting harder for longer is just slowing you down after a point. Everyone raves about Teradrim - I have Teradrim. I am twice as fast at bashing when I am in Carnifex. Teradrim can put out some great damage, but it's slower and has heavy costs. You can't do it indefinitely.

Jensen

runes or hunting artis?

Moirean

Yes, I have runes, hunting artis and crit bracers, as well as orbs, amulets, etc. Been debating getting +str. Sometimes Toz lends me his and it's like O.o wowza.

Jensen

I have lvl 2 knuckles, lvl 1 hunting arti, statpack typical (cant think what the str of that is off the top of my head) and I'm dishing out about 1500 as prae

Moirean

Oh derp, I just realized I have chocolates up, haaaa. So, without, it's like uhh 760 a swing. Still decent damage, but I think the crit uptime and attack carrythrough to a second target (and lack of bal cost if you kill in first swing) is more important. Rowena puts out more raw damage than I do, I know that. Maybe Zsadist as well, but during the Great Hunt, they were bashing globes and I was running around killing mobs in hunting areas and I was outpacing them.

For life-side classes, Templar is pretty great for that reason. I haven't bashed as one with artis, but they are definitely a really solid bashing class, with nice speed, versatility and tankiness. Shaman might be a bit tankier (I did Xaanhal fine as a sub-100 Shaman with no artis), but it's slower and really really draining on willpower. Sentinel's passive heal is eh, but the loss of resist made them take a bit of a nose-dive in tankiness. Refresh body is nice (extra con/str) but it's only for a short time, on an hour CD. Lumi is basically the life-side Teradrim or Prae, tanky as a truck, but not very fast. Really good for really punching above your weight, though, with certain areas (I was bashing fire elementals in volcano as an unartid level 80).

Areka

If you +con for Templar, it's reaaallly nice if you bash with Sacrifice on every swing. 2 hits for weapon + 2 hits of sacrifice = 4 chances for a crit, just have to be careful and not kill yourself with sacrifice if you're taking major hits or are low on health (NOT THAT I'VE EVER DONE THAT BEFORE REALLY).

Moirean

Yeah I really loved the versatility of Templar. You could swap in a shield for extra tankiness, switch up your weapon for different speeds/attack options, etc. I would like to see Carni get some more weapon choices and swing options to bring us up on par with Templars. Templar can really customize their attacks based on what they are fighting, and I really liked that.

Rashar

I just wanna wield a spear. Off topic but not worth it's own thread.. I wish skills weren't based off of specific weapons. Why can't I be a spear wielding luminary, or whatever.

Moirean

Rashar said:

I just wanna wield a spear. Off topic but not worth it's own thread.. I wish skills weren't based off of specific weapons. Why can't I be a spear wielding luminary, or whatever.

Just be careful mountain climbing.

Rashar

Walking stick, too! +1 movement speed in mountains. Boom.

Irruel

Mephistoles said:

For damage per second, artifacted shaman is coming in second.

For survivability, Cabalist, Daru, Praenomen, and Teradrim are going to be in the top tier. All are really tanky and if played right you shouldn't be dying often. Below them on the tank tier I might put Shaman and Luminary.

I get a higher unartifacted DPS as shapeshifter, than I do as artifacted shaman (though I've only got +eq so it's only a tiny bit of dps augmentation).

The survivability as shaman is definitely better, particularly as there is harrowing (mob fear) there to handle roving mobs that pop in and would otherwise overwhelm me.

But if you can get the lycan tankiness up there with artifacts, the dps is much nicer. You need to remember to use the healing howls on yourself for added defense, and to go with athletic statpack - the dex+strength really brings avoidance into it's own - it's tankier as athletic than it is as stalwart because it's diverting 30+%35% of the time, and still has a decent dodge rate.

Having said that, Moirean's carni hits are WAY better. She went over 1000 dps during the great hunt, while I topped out just under 700 as lycan. More artifacts and whatever would help, sure - but even if shapeshifter could get dps that high it still isn't as tanky. Also, you won't have enhancement points to spare on +exp.

Zsadist

Moirean said:

Oh derp, I just realized I have chocolates up, haaaa. So, without, it's like uhh 760 a swing. Still decent damage, but I think the crit uptime and attack carrythrough to a second target (and lack of bal cost if you kill in first swing) is more important. Rowena puts out more raw damage than I do, I know that. Maybe Zsadist as well, but during the Great Hunt, they were bashing globes and I was running around killing mobs in hunting areas and I was outpacing them.

Moirean is right. As a Bloodborn basher (go ahead and laugh all you other bashers), I do decent damage. I can outdamage Moirean every day of the week, even with her chocolates I rank on par with her damage. However, like Moirean said, once you reach a certain point, its about speed and not damage.

I know this thread is about which classes are best, but I'll point out that BB is not a viable bashing class UNLESS you're willing to dish out the credits for every lvl 3 artifact and tri trans every mini skill there is. I have to say either bash as Prae, Tera, or Carni (if you're shadow side).

Also, @Moirean, I hate that you can outpace me so much!!! I was so close!!!! You made me so sad for awhile.

Moirean

Prae and Tera are probably pretty great for Giovelli. I went Indo for the healing and audit, but I'm probably going to be playing around there in a variety of classes.

Samp

Here's how it breaks down for a non-arti Carnifex: it's not the best, but it is a really happy medium for me! I'm only level 85, so I would definitely be getting more crits if I were a monk/zealot, but I get enough that overkill plays a HUGE role in my hunting. Usually I kill things before my so-so tankiness becomes a problem, and fortunately overkill doesn't require you hit both targets on the same spinslash, so I have a second to get one more round of tattoos/serums/kidney slices in. My usual spinslash is 277/277ish which is only 554, but at least half of my spinslashes (not the same as half of my attacks) have critical hits. Getting the +1 con is nice to a non-arti person, but I think auras would probably help more. Soul embed is nice, but it's not huge boon on my audit.

And about the hounds, that's random. There's no guarantee it'll help when you really need it! I always use one, but mostly it just means I get one more tick of analeptic/tattoos on my side. Sometimes that's crucial, but it's not something I'd ever gamble on. A real big help is that we get soul substitute (so we really have two tattoo slots open up!) which also keeps all your defenses but gets rid of all your ailments, so if you had broken legs or stupidity or whatever you get an instant chance to run the fuck away. IMO, Carni class is best for keeping your head above water. Not impressive at anything without artis, but you'll never get overwhelmed and there isn't a reason you should lose experience bashing.

JSYK, again non-arti but I also say this having trans survival, avoidance, warhounds, savagery,and deathlore. I've never played the class without that, so I don't know what it's like if you can't afford credits. Probably not super great!

I don't mind losing souls because the tedium of gaining more isn't too bad- it's definitely better than inking tarot cards! Just be sure you don't run out mid-fight :P

Moirean

If you're only hitting for 277, you probably have a pretty bad weapon or super low str. Also, don't neglect orbs and amulets (that goes for any class, really).

Samp

It's one forged for speed not strength, and I haven't bothered to make a new one, but it does highlight what a super average thing my bashing is. Even if you tacked on 200 more damage, it's not super zomg overwhelming awesome bashing class. It's good, but I've had easier is all.

And yeah, my strength is low, but so is the strength of everyone without artis I'm stalwart because I wanted a better audit/health. I won't be the only non-arti person that goes that route.

Edit: Muscular statpack wasn't doing much more for my damage output either.

Moirean

I don't have str arti. Amulet, blessing, statpack, that's where 17 of my 18 str comes from. Starchart (a very cheap arti) accounts for the last point.

Irruel

@Samp‌
I'm also stalwart; warhammer does better damage than spinslash. Once crits start to kick in I'm sure spinslash will be better but until then hammer for the pure damage. I'm thinking I'll respec to athletic though.

All this talk about carni is making me want to play him again but realistically I just don't have the time