Class discussion

Canaan

I have only played a syssin and have wondered about bashing as another class. What class do you think is the tankiest and why?

Valingar

There's several candidates for the tankiest class, depending on the situation.

Teradrim has quite good defensive stats, high phys resists and an ability that transfers part of their damage taken to their golem. Their golem can also eat entire hits away from mobs, since the mobs target the golem, if it's the last thing to hit them, which can be crazy good. They also have nice bashing damage, iirc, but someone would have to confirm that.

Cabalist defines tankiness when used by someone with some artifacts. The ability to combine both health and mana pools into one huge pool with Link is great. I'm unsure how Decay is for bashing these days, though. Probably not that good, despite buffs. Single hit abilities rarely are as good as classes that can chain, despite overkill.

Situationally, I'd argue Zealot is strongest against certain specific damage types (mainly elemental ones and unblockable damage). Their phys audit is low, but they have good elemental audits, especially fire audit. But what makes the powerhouses defensively is discharge, which procs every 1000 damage to heal a Zealot 25% of all the damage taken since the last discharge proc (unless it's a hit that'd kill the Zealot, those don't have time to proc the heal).

Luminary's angel Empathy passive health heal is nice and their audit very well rounded, except for a weakness to blunt damage, which they have nothing but basic armor bonuses to. But seriously, don't take it for bashing. Their bashing damage is the most awful thing in the game. You might be tanky, but you're not bashing even at the speed of a turtle, not even an armored snail, you're closer to the speed of an immobile rock.

They're not as tanky as the previous stuff, but I think you might want to consider Monk and Carnifex too. For Carnifex, the failsafe of a rebirth-type ability every 10 minutes is nice, combined with good bashing damage and audits, making for a very reliably strong bashing experience. Or so I've been told in the past.

Monk is good with artifacts, since they can transmute mana to health and use numbness (which makes you immune to damage for 10 seconds, but you take 40% of the damage taken during it in a single spike after numbness ends). Their tankiness relies largely on proper active skill use, though, so I don't like as much as the previous ones. Also I feel it needs arties to compensate for the naturally low audit.

Toz

Monk damage is terrible, only bash in monk if you have a scepter.

Canaan

What about a lycanthrope or a vampire? I thought vampires were super tanky. Not anymore?

Zsadist

Vampires are not tanky in the slightest. We burn in the sun (expected), we take afflictions from the sun, and we are pretty much instantly killed at noon for 5 minutes straight if we're outside (yay balance!)

Not only that, but we've had our affinity removed from us (unless you're with another player) and we take MORE damage based upon how much blood we've lost. PVE wise, its a shit-for-dick class that can only be rocked if you're artifacted to the teeth and have a decent curing system, PVP wise its actually really reliable.

Kelliara

Canaan said:

What about a lycanthrope or a vampire? I thought vampires were super tanky. Not anymore?

Unless you're a bear, or a croc fighting magick things, most of Shapeshifters defensiveness comes from dodging. Offensively, we do quite a bit of damage. Roughly 600-700 per claw on 2.65s (with the balance bonus from being 100+) with 16 strength (which doesn't count the +1 strength defense they get.)

Shapeshifters also have a few other nifty utilities while not being super amazing, can make a bit of a difference while bashing. These include things like:

Passive healing from howls.
Near immunity to freezing effects.
Resistance to limb breaks.
Reduced damage from cold attacks.

Hope that helps.

Edited for grammar.

Sarita

Canaan said:

What about a lycanthrope or a vampire? I thought vampires were super tanky. Not anymore?

I can't speak for lyncanthropes, but Teradrim >>>>>>>>>>>>Praenomen in terms of bashing with few to no artifacts right now.

Satomi

I'd say Teradrim, Templar, Cabalist are at the top. Luminary is good but does terrible dmg. Carnifex and Monk aren't terrible, Carnifex being better than monk in my opinion.

Short, sweet, but Valingar hits a lot of the points. He just leaves out Templar.