So instead of taking one class to level 100, I decided to do something else; I reached level 50 with all five classes solo to get the feel of leveling experience for each glass before their true builds begins with the paragon board.
The purpose of this was to see which classes are worth doing solo. Now obviously this can easily be achieved by having someone to boost you, but there are players like me who honestly would like to play solo. Plus, I wanted to do this to get a feel for how each class would play on the base level, and if their endgame builds would be worth going for during each new season. Because goddamn, I am not raising lvl 100s five times each season. Maybe pick 2-3, then choose other classes each season.
And if you prefer to stick to either solo-ing everything or be boosted to level 50 ASAP, more power to you. I just wanted to share my experience with all of them.
Again, this experiment strictly reflects the leveling experience from 1 to 50, and not the builds that begans to form afterwards.
All of them were done on WT2, they all had the extra 8 skill points from the start, and I made sure they all focused on doing three things; Completing strongholds, doing tree of whisper activities, and hunting down aspect dungeons. I also skipped the campaign for all of them save for Barb that was used for beating it. This was because I felt playing through once was good enough, and there were many annoying sequences I did not want to repeat despite having cool boss fights. Also, the loots from the campaign were absolute trash.
TL;DR: Only two of them were worth doing solo, and the rest should honestly be boosted.
Necromancer:
I'll start with the class that I enjoyed the most. Corpse Explosion and building my army was really fun, and it probably had the fastest mob clear rate of the five classes. Throwing bone spear was satisfying, and at first I thought the essence cost was a bit too high. Then I found raise skeleton skill gives me some essence, which was even better. While the mob clear rate was great, I also found boss fights to be hard. The skeleton AIs aren't that great, and would continue to fight even with the clear AOE incoming, killing them all off instantly or on the next hit. The corpse generation rate is also much slower during boss fights compared to regular encounters (which makes sense for balancing purposes), and I had to constantly think whether I wanted to use them for CE or raise skeleton. Not to mention the class is really squishy and prone to dying a lot if you aren't careful. The class does have great aoe kits, but I found myself relying on corpses a bit too much, and once I was completely alone it was a struggle
I wish there was a skill to command the skeletons to focus on one enemy. Because sometimes they would scatter all over the place. Also while corpse explosion does a huge amount of damage, I found it to get repetitive real quick. In fact, I think I'm still hearing the sound effect in my head.
Verdict: Worth solo due to having excellent crowd control, just prepare to lose skeletons a lot and the corpse explosion getting repetitive.
Druid:
And now we go from something awesome to something that I hated. This class confused me; It has melee/close-quarter skills, but nowhere near tanky has Barbarian without lots of time and resource investments. It has ranged elemental skills, but the reach is rather lackluster compared to sorc and seems to come up more as a defense/stun tool rather than something to cause damage. Core skills feel they all over the place; Landslide does the best damage but costs the most spirit, tornado scatters all over the place and doesn't really hit anything (not without a specific aspect at least), lightning storm does little damage, and pulvarize/shred forces you to get close, when the build isn't even tanky yet.
Don't get me wrong, skills like poison creeper, wolves, and ravens deal tons of damage and can wipe out an entire mob in an instant, but when they go on a cooldown I began to get nervous, because now I won't have any good source of damage for the next few seconds, which sometimes was enough to kill me.
Turning into a werewolf/bear looks awesome too and their powers are just as amazing, but in that split second of transformation, I feel I am leaving myself open to the attacks. Cyclone armor is nice to have, but the distance it pushes mobs away seems really short and I get surrounded again within seconds. Struggled quite a bit against elites and bosses too; because with all the abilities having short range, despite them dealing lots of damage, they almost got too close to me. Having wolves and ravens as companions were nice, but it has the same problem as the skeleton army for necromance. Terrible AI with no sense of self-preservation.
I agree with most of the opinions that druid builds become versatile and awesome after 50, but I don't think it was worth all the trouble I had to go through playing solo. It's already painful to level up while boosted, why make the effort harder?
Verdict: 100% should be boosted
Barbarian:
One tough SOB to kill. Unlike Druid I feel I had a better time with Barb in terms of close-quarter combat. Great abilities to break cc, lots of high damage melee skills, and using HOTA, Death Blow, Whirlwind or Rend can absolutely devastate any mobs. The arsenal system and the bonus buffs are fun to experiment with.
However, I do think being so melee-focused is also its flaw; The fury is your resource to do these cool attacks, and you get them by hitting them with your base attacks or have buffs specifically designed to gain fury. But these buffs don't seem to generate enough fury to keep the attacks going. Also, as much as breaking cc is great, there are only three skills to give you an unstoppable state (rallying cry, charge, and wrath of the berserker). I often found myself to break cc to resume attacking, only to get immediately cc-ed again afterwards with the skills on cooldown. The gameplay feels counterintuitive; how can I get close and build fury when I’m risking being surrounded or tanking AOE attacks? Thankfully due to the class having such a large health pool I survived most chain of CCs that would've killed other classes faster, but even that doesn't help when the game forces me to stay in the aoe zone to hit the enemy. And we all know how much those elites love to stack and spam aoes and ccs.
Not that I would ever play the campaign agian, but had I known how much AOEs and CCs there would be in the game I would've never played campaign as Barb. I died so many times to Vhenard. FUCKING Vhenard!
When there are little to no AOEs or CCs I am riding the pain train to the next town over. When there are ton of them suddenly I felt powerless. Post-level 50 builds with whirlwind, rend, or HOTA are all great, but the lead-up to it doesn't feel too great (but still not nearly as bad as druid). If you are amazing at kiting, knowing when to back out then you probably would have a fun time.
Verdict: Fun to solo if you are decent at kiting, otherwise be boosted. Prone to getting CCed and take aoe damage a lot even with the skills to break them
Sorc:
I went in with high expectations. This class looked like what Druid wasn't. A complete opposite to Barb; Pure range build, squishy but can use teleport as an escape or cause chaos across battlefield. Also lots of visually cool spells. Due to the class (named her Lohse from DOS2) having such a range, I think this is the second safest class to play next to Necro.
....Is what I'd love to say, but this class has left me scratching my head. I came to D4 straigth from D2, and Sorc do not feel nearly as impactful here. Granted, the damage is nice, but it doesn't seem to have the "spam"-ness of the sorc skills in D2. Everything beyond core skills has cooldown, so you probably won't be able to go crazy with spells like in D2.
The mana management system seems atrocious. Sorc seems to use of the resource meter much faster than other class. Without some significant buff/upgrade to max mana or mana recovery, I found myself constantly running low on mana after casting a few core skills. This wasn't a problem in D2 because of the mana potions were consumable and using runeworks that refunds mana per kill. Here they are so stingy about giving you mana, those moments when you are low are really risky. The class feels really static, and my combat experience basically came down to stop -> cast -> move -> stop -> cast. Like, it does not feel very smooth, and it feels like I'm playing as a robot instead.
The most disappointing skill for me was teleport; I wish it was a core skill instead so I can use it repeatedly. Considering out squishy this class is it would've been great. It's currently only one of the two escape tools I have so far, the other being frost nova, and sometimes I would be mashing the button in hopes of using it again. Or at least give me a chance to use it at least two or three times. Don't really understand why it does damage. I mean it's not a lot so why is it there?
I mean ffs there's a passive skill literally called glass cannon where you take higher amount of damage for increasing your own damage, and this perfectly sums up the class; so fragile yet so powerful. The class has almost little to no resistence, and this was the class I probably died the most as. It certainly is NOT a safe class. At least with necro you have a lot of options to heal yourself and stay alive longer, but with sorc a single mistake can kill you.
One good thing I'll have to say is the leveling was super fast, and I reached 50 in no time. Granted reaching 50 is pretty easy with enough time for all classes, but sorc seems to get there the fastest. Like I said eariler the damage is nice and I didn't have too much difficulty with bosses and elites.
I heard sorc is currently the most lackluster class even beyond 50, and I can already see that pre-50 and also see myself never touching this class again unless there are some serious buffs or reworks. I don't think I hated it as much as leveling druid, just lots of disappointments.
Verdict: Easy enough to solo, but not really worth time and effort even if boosted.
Rogue:
This was an interesting class. In a lot of ways it was a lot like playing druid, doing both ranged and melee attacks. This class however also has traps, extra attack buffs, and can zip around the battlefield really fast. Probably the fastest attacker of the five classes. But I don't think this class is for those who have slow reflexes or forget button combinations a lot. It actually reminds me a lot of LOL champions that require pinpoint click accuracy and great positioning.
Unlike Druid where I was supposed to "tank" everything, Rogue's nimbleness allowed to have its own sense of survivability by simply zipping past everything with dash, escape with smoke bomb or concealment, imbune weapon with shadow or poison.
The downside is when I mess up REALLY BAD, as in situations where I used up all the skills and I don't have any escapes, there seems to be no recovery and I go down faster than I can say "hEaVEns, SavE Me!". Messing up button combination or misclicking something also seem to kill whatever momentum I had been going.
Along with Sorc, it is one of the more faster leveling class. I would love to play more on Rogue, but I do think it is more complex than I can handle. I am absolutely dogshit at having quick reflexes, remembering all the button order, and good positioning.
Verdict: Easy to solo, but too hard for me to play
Conclusion:
I will probably main necro or barb in season 1 and solo them again, and maybe check out other classes in future seasons. If I had to rank them based on taking them beyond 50 each season, from must to wait for later, it would be Necro, Barb, Druid, Rogue, then Sorc.
