Hero Class and Talents Analysis
Edit: Updated to reflect Kageburado’s change to Barbarian class.
Barbarian - Gravemaker is your best choice here with an outside possibility that Kageburado may take his crown when we start seeing him more broadly within the game. Wounding is a fairly weak DoT effect that can be triggered whenever a Barbarian hits an enemy with a normal attack. The Wound will total 60% of a normal hit or about equal to 2 tiles worth of damage. But at least wounding effects stack with each other and other DoT effects.
Ranger - Alasie, Lianna, Athena & Evelyn are your best choices here and in roughly that order. Pierce is an ability where Rangers have an X% chance of bypassing all defensive buffs on their target, including riposte. An 80+20 Lianna one shotted my 80+20 Aegir with both his Spirit Link and Green elemental defensive buff on. The strongest snipers will benefit the most from Pierce to get the most out of thier SS.
Paladin - Ares, Richard, Aegir will be your best choices here. The Protect talent has an X% chance of adding a buff after the Paladin takes any damage. This is an example of closing the barn doors after the horse escapes. Add a buff after the damage has been done. And the buff only lasts 2 turns, but hey if it costs no mana you can’t complain right?
Monk - There are a lot of popular heroes here and this is one of the most conflicted classes. Choose your favorite from among Joon, Drake, Tarlak, and Aeron. Also, while our priority is building up war defense, it is worth noting that Wu Kong and Wilbur are also Monks making it difficult to give them emblems to beef them up for titan hits. Monks have an X% chance of Resisting status ailments. Note that this includes DoT effects as well as the garden variety debuffs like blindness.
Wizard - The most conflicted class in the game. If you have Guin, you are likely going to improve Guin so you can skip the rest of this. If you don’t have Guin, choose from among Sartana, Isarnia, Hel, Victor, Zeline and Onatel. Wizards have an X% chance of doing extra damage to enemies for each buff effect they have. The ideal hero to improve here is Zeline because she dispels buffs but would also get that improved chance of dealing extra damage. It would make her like a Gobbler for buffs but one who doesn’t suck. Arguably the best hitters in the game are in this class so many of these heroes stand to gain a lot from the talent. The worst choice of hero to improve is Guinevere as her SS does no damage at all. Even though the damage bonus is wasted, the improved stats still justify improving Guin.
Sorcerer - If you have already maxed Quintus go ahead and give him emblems, don’t max Quintus just to have a 5-star sorcerer. The most natural fits for this class are Natalya and Mitsuko. Sorcerers have an X% chance of applying a 50% mana generation debuff on enemies they hit with normal damage. Natalya’s SS does the mana debuff already and Mitsuko steals mana directly.
Cleric - Any 5-star cleric at this point is a great choice, even Elka-ha-ha-ha-ha sorry I just couldn’t say that with a straight face. There will be more 5-star clerics coming out in the soon-ish future. Clerics’ Manashield gives an X% chance of resistig any negative mana effect or effects that prevent the use of SS (i.e. Cabin Boy Peters). These are predominantly healers and cleansers. Vivica and Rigard make the best use of this talent because if their Manashield triggers and allows them to get their cleanse effect off, generally all of your immediate problems go away.
Rogue - All of the fast hitters (Marjana and maybe Musashi) are the most popular heroes in this class so if you have them you will probably want to improve them. But really, all Rogues benefit equally from the Dodge talent as it is a versatile defense effect. It gives them an X% chance to avoid the direct damage from an SS effect. I guess it is possible to be just a little bit pregnant. Otherwise how could Gravemaker’s DoT burn me when I dodged his direct damage?
Fighter - There’s a video game cliche that it’s not enough to kill the final boss only once. Now we turn the cliche to the side of the good guys (meaning us). Fighters have an X% chance of reviving at the end of the turn they die in. They only revive with 1 HP so don’t get your hopes up. And if there is a DoT effect on the Fighter when they died, they will revive and die again in the same turn. The best choices here is Delilah and Yunan. But really, anyone tank in a defense would benefit the most from instant revival. And yes it is possible to revive more than once on back-to-back turns (and back again a third time in one of my raids during beta). There’s another hero coming in Atlantis where the annoyance of the reviving tank is perfectly illustrated. It is especially annoying when Delilah dies with a fully charged mana pool, revives, then heals the party and throws on a layer of minion armor. The fighter class is the second most conflicted class and you may have to choose among Magni, Panther, Delilah and Misandra.
Druid - a.k.a. the Green ghetto. It’s like they put all of the unwanted green 5-stars (except Elk) and put them in the same class as the useful 3-star and 4-star greens. Druids have an X% chance at spawning minions whenever they take damage. The best heroes to improve in this class are the tanks like Boss Wolf and Guardian Owl. But seeing as how few people are likely to have, much less max a beefy tank like one of them, you’re more likely to have Zimkitha, Alberich or one of the Green ghetto dwellers. But if you did get and max Master Lepus, he could use a minion to offset his defensive debuff from his SS.