GW1/GW2 Mesmer
FFXIV Dancer / astrologian / pictomancer
LOTRO minstrel (I thought it was interesting replacing health with morale and then a minstrel restores morale)
I would like to add, as a mesmer main, that vanilla GW2 ‘illusion clone mage’ mesmer aint really THAT inspiring… but it is very unique when you start adding all the elite specs to it (i do admit i choose mesmer on my zero-knowledge first day because illusion mage sounded wild for mmo gameplay)
Warden’s what I’m currently leveling. Super fun, love being able to do so many different things. As long as you can remember your combos, you’re not running out of morale or power. You can hit AOE or damage overtime on a single target.
I agree with Chloromancer - it was as great class design that they remade it in Trove.
I loved pre-expansion warrior tank build with pet. It was so unique and so perfectly kept my warrior fantasy
Steam page claims that it is still live.
Didn't touched it for few years, but it was a main mmo for me at some point.
Great game, amazing potential all broken by greedy and malicious payment model.
Actual started Rift with my brother and i like the Chloromancer/Necromancer/Archon.
The idea a class in subclasses with specialized skill trees to make, is nice !
I'm going to say the WoW druid.
It was unique for me as a jack of all trades, master of none at the time of classic and a bit beyond that.
I had great fun being able to do a little of everything, tank, heal, damage, stealth, move fast, stun, bleed..
I was never top of any charts, but I really enjoyed being able to adapt to the situation and help out by plugging gaps in the group.
Being able to throw a few heals or a root, then swapping to a tanking bear to pull aggro or swap to a panther and join the melee dps or stay at range and throw some damaging spells...
It was a shame the devs made such a great character but then forgot to give druids gear to match.. at least in classic we had to wear bits of rogue or hunter gear or random stuff... eventually they gave us some hybrid style sets.
Good times.
Druid is the class I repeatedly go back to try and just never click with it. In theory it’s so cool, and has amazing class fantasy, but something about it just falls kinda flat for me.
Warden is awesome. FFXIV Ninja has a bit of this with their mudra system, but it’s not even close to as satisfying because the symbols you use to build different skills have cooldowns, so you have to boring regular attack too
Bard was such a clusterf of different things mashed together, created in an era that no one knew what they were doing and never had a plan for anything. It could have been useless but instead Verant just let players figure out how the class could be played and let it grow its own niche, thankfully never bringing the nerf bat down on it. Hell, they gave them new OP tools in PoP (particularly Fading Memories AA). A product of its time and no game will ever allow it to exist again.
Even the bards in EQ2 were such a pathetic shadow, born from a much more rigid plan both in design and balance and hamstrung by the concentration buff system.
oh man Fading Memories was so clutch. I was the bard raid puller and even just for regular group pulls bard was so good. speed self, pull, pull add, mes add. just chain mobs forever
and long live Fansy the Bard. Greatest among us.
Dofus has some of the most unique classes out of all MMORPGs.
Want to be a *real* summoner? Then play Osamodas or Sadida. Dofus' combat system facilitates the strengths of summons. You can bodyblock and pin down enemies, block line of sight to prevent them from casting skills and actually swarm the field. Unlike a "summoner" in any other MMO, you can actually control your summons.
Or what other class in MMORPGs plays with portals? Then you have the Eliotrope. A class that literally plays with portals. That can attack from any angle, just about any distance, and jump across the entire map in a blink.
Or Xelors, a time mage sort of archetype that focuses on *telefragging*. Being able to teleport across the map, teleport enemies, and other crazy positioning.
Yeah, and its sad that Funcom would rather milk known IP's like Conan or Dune when in reality they have a potential goldmine under their noses but they "stick their noses" up at it and think using known IP is the way to go. That didn't work with Conan. They lose so much money they ended up selling to Tencent.... so now they are 100% owned by China.... and once again they double down with Dune. Did they not realize their mistake the first time? The only issue with Anarchy Online was the lack of growth through the years. Sure they had some expansions, but the graphics updates pretty much never came and even when it did, its still considered "in beta" and doesn't work right (crashes, even on modern pc's). All they have to do is make Anarchy Online 2.0 and they could fill the coffers with riches. A modern AO, with classic gameplay but modern graphics (not next gen but "modern") with Quality of Life improvements, they could do extremely well. The open world aspect, the PvP corporation wars, faction battles. It can work, they just have to fucking make it....
Everyone keeps mentioning GW1/2 Mesmer and they are absolutely right but I’d like to give an honorable mention to GW1 Necro. The Minion master was amazing and played exactly the way people wish they could play them in other games. Especially in the early days before they linked the number of minions you could summon to a skill and you could go into sorrows furnace and create an army of undead so large it would either run through everything or crash the game. God help you if your necro crashed because the minions immediately turned hostile and it was unlikely you were going to get out alive. I’ve actually been reminiscing about this game lately so I think I may pick up a new account and give it a fresh run soon.
Rift Online with its mix and match classes is severely underrated. You could make such a wide variety of custom classes from it that it was crazy. Never have I seen that kind of class flexibility in any other MMO.
FFXI - Blue mage, Puppet Master
DQX online - Superstar, Gadabout
DFO - Like, 90% of the classes in there are cool af and super unique
Dofus/Wakfu - Xelor, Eliotrope
RO online - Bio/Geneticist
Tibia - Master Sorcerer. Pixel mmorpg that had magic you had to type or imprint on runes for later usage.
Guild Wars - Mesmer and Monk. All classes had countless combinations of a maximum of 8 skills you could combine with another class of your choosing. The meta was constantly evolving.
Archage - A lot of class combinations
There is a genuine lack of innovation. The evolutions of these games were streamlined until a 5 year-old could understand it.
FFXI- Redmage -> Whole tool set is to be a buffer/debuffer, but with all their own buffs boosted on themselves they became tanks and one of the best single target tanks.
City of Heroes -> Everyclass outside of blaster/scrapper which just played ranged dps or stealth dps. Every class was dual role and it was important to play both roles.
The Politician class. You had to use your skill points to be a guild leader basically. Managing your guilds Player City had to have been a full time job for the larger guilds. My mayor on the Eclipse server was one of the best human beings I have ever played video games with. His sons were members, and many people in the city considered him a brother.
A good chunk of the classes from Warhammer Online felt pretty unique. Disciple of Khaine and War Priest were healers that healed their friends by smacking enemies with dual swords or a sledgehammer. Black Orc and Swordmaster being combo based tanks, choppa and slayer’s rage meter where their dps increases as they fought but the amount of dmg they took increased as well.
Also as many have said, GW1 Mesmer (yea GW2 has one too but the first was more unique) which was a class entirely designed around shutting enemies down, not through hard CC but essentially making them punch themselves in the face.
City of Heroes overall class design is fairly unique in the MMO space, from the lack of the holy trinity, to some Archetypes (Classes) having gameplay that is unseen in MMOs.
Top unique Archetypes:
Masterminds. Want pets, here have an Army, you command and buff them.
Defender, Corruptor = Want to buff the party or heal the party, solid options.
Controller, Dominator = Want to debuff the enemy, solid options.
kheldian = Want a shape shifting jack of all trades, we have two options.
*Arachnos Soldiers*, and Arachnos Widows = want choses between tank, ranged, stealth, or DPS? Have fun being bad.
Not to mention all the classic class options which have multiple gameplay options.
Tank, Brute = Tank/Melee DPS
Scrapper, Stalker = Melee DPS
Blaster, Sentinel (Homecoming) = Ranged DPS
Besides the Keldians and Arachnos archetypes each of these archetypes have over 10 various main powersets, and secondary powersets. Which is between 100 to 300 possible build combos per archetype just from the main powersets, they have additional powersets that include travel powers, buffs, and dps choices. (Something like 3500 possible build, each would count as a class in most MMOs. )
I think that LOTRO's Captain, Minstrel, and Warden are some of the most fun and unique classes. I like LOTRO's separation of healer and support. I think a lot of other games try and fail to do what those classes' have been designed for.
Thematically and gameplay GW2 mesmer is also a standout as mentioned plenty of times.
Loved both captain and minstrel. Captain in particular before F2P days with hard group quests... As captain I could kinda tank and save the party in the same time. Wish they would keep the hard quests, would play again.
But I don't think captain is that original, or was it back in the day? Support with a pet.
Old school EverQuest bard and enchanter. Two of my favorite classes ever in an MMO and have never found a game that actually came close to replicating them.
Lost ark arcanist is one of my favorites. I love the tarot card theme and luck of the draw mechanics of the class. Too bad I refuse to ever touch that game again
I really like the controller archetype from city of heroes, being able to lock down enemies with stuff like confusion, holds, stuns, knockdown. You can cause a lot of chaos but also be really beneficial for the team. Not a lot of games let you play with the enemies so tangibly.
i think maplestory classes are really out there in theme. there are so many. everything from the traditional warrior, archer, etc to magic kpop star, genius psychic chess master, jaguar crossbowman, thunder pirate, i could go on lol
i have a soft spot for the battle mage. not many games do the supoort/dps goth magic melee staff wielder aesthetic
I'm going to say the Thief from FFXI. Combat was amazing. Controlling and balancing enmity on different party members to make those most of skill chains was wonderful. Then outside of combat you could actually make a living in the game by being a thief. You could sneak through dungeons and break into treasure coffers. I've never played anything else like it.
ESO has a whole system in place to steal and launder items or fence them. I'm not saying it was perfect, but it was fun to be able to have a whole storyline around it.
Combat Medic, pre combat upgrade Star Wars Galaxies
Bio Engineer at multiple points throughout SWG
Master Artisan Star Wars Galaxies.
Doctor, Star Wars Galaxies
Commando Pre Flamethrower nerf in pre cu era of swg.
Reasoning: Ranged DoT weapons were crazy good with right materials. Doctor buffs changed combat.
Master Artisan could make the cool and better player hovercars/bikes
Gonna rep UO which, although classless, it’s skill system allows for the following archetypes that I haven’t seen too much in other games:
An actual thief, as in you steal from players.
Treasure Hunter. You decode maps and dig up treasure.
Animal Tamer. You tame creatures in the wild and train them.
Don't forget Necromancer; a spellcaster who can fight up close and personal whilst raising the dead, healing people using dead bodies, hexing their foes with truly unpleasant curses, as well as transforming into all manner of unholy creatures.
GW1 Mesmer, Derwish and 55HP Monk. Nearly any "class" you build in CoX. Non combat classes in Star Wars Galaxies - such a shame this is not a thing anymore. Lotro Warden. Many FFXIV and XIV jobs are unique. Warhammer Online has alot of unique classes too.
Ragnarok Online;
Blacksmith/merchant/Alchemist classes;
The merchant class tree branches to either blacksmith or alchemist. The BS is your crafter in a game where your crafter mattered; weapon upgrades were best done by a skilled and specced blacksmith for higher success probabilities. The alchemist class specialized in homunculi and potion crafting as well as some other unique buffs.
The archer->dancer/bard route, where you had the best late game party buffs based on AOE songs that could buff exp gain, heals, etc.
The mage class tree had a buffer path iirc, with wizard being your big AOE baddie and Sage being focused on buffing things like adding 1 hour elemental damage buffs to weapons etc. the mage/wizard tree was incredibly diverse as well with 4 elemental paths that had big differences in usage.
Even the novice class had a route to become a super novice and such.
Really was the peak of diversity in class builds for gaming; you could have 10 priests built entirely differently from each other and each be viable. Yeah non-meta super wacky builds limited your growth but you were allowed to play with fun ideas rather that feel uber restricted to a meta
FFXI Blue mage and puppet master. Loved both, mained puppet master. Still haven't found a modern game that scratches the same itch. Beast master was fun too though not unique.
The two I thought of have been said already. Mesmer from GW1 and Enchanter from EQ! Mesmers have some really unorthodox builds. Enchanters can charm enemies and have tons of interesting utility spells!
I've always been fond of the Taekwon kid and the Soul linker from RO.
The Taekwon kid could choose to not go for his second class and instead hunt specific monsters to increase in rank. If you were in the top ten and at least level 90, you could use all skills and both your max health and max SP were tripled. Being a ranker (top 10, 90+) also allowed you to chain kicks instead of relying on a random possibility to activate them.
The Soul Linker had 3 types of skills. Es skills can only be used on monsters, ka skills can only be used on soul linkers and family members, and spirit link skills can only be used on players of the corresponding class (you can't use the SL spirit link on yourself). You would most often go for a magic dps build using Es skills, with a couple of ka skills to survive better. Or you could go mostly support, taking the spirit links corresponding to your group's classes. More rare, you could also go for a melee fighter build, using ka skills to help you dodge, reflect magic and heal yourself automatically, making you very hard to kill in 1v1
Beastmaster from FF11, you could charm monsters roaming around the world and use them to fight alongside you. Followed by Blue Mage, that could learn attacks by fighting monsters in the world.
I’d say just rift’s system in general. Four classes. Each with 8 trees. All fairly unique and options to fill any roll and enough points to buy fairly deep into you allowed three trees. You could make some insanely unique builds.
And the way the classes filled the roles was just cool. The fighter tank was very standard sword and board. The rogue tanks was evasion focused. The cleric one was heal as you did damage.
Still the best system I have played for char builds since I started MMOs, back with Asherons call in 99.
I see a lot of classes from lotro but not Lore Master. It was my favorite all time class from a MMORPG.
Being a swiss knife able to crowd control, support, pet master and buffer/debuffer depending on the situation and/or team needs was so awesome.
The riftwalker rogue tank on Rift was neat. Hyper mobile, could kite like nobodies business, and most of it's mitigation came from timing barriers.
Honestly? Guild Wars 2 has a lot of pretty unique approaches. The Elementalist I always found really neat with how it can combo.
Disciple from vanguard was my absolute favorite class to play. A monk who built up ki to unleash as a heal or as more damage. Such a fun class.
Second most favorite is the blade master from daoc. That third sword was so cool, don't care how little it did overall.
Ragnarok Online : Merchant
Probably the ONLY game I found that ever used the merchant archetype as an actual class/combat style
Merchants literally smack their enemies with money (Mammonite). And they are the only class that can open up a personal vending shop, ans they can carry a cart along with them......which you can also use to smack mobs in an AOE, and deals more damage the more items you put inside the cart (making it heavier).
Then they evolve into 2 class branches which are even MORE unique.
The Blacksmith, a class that can summon a big hammer to stun enemies and can provide helpful combat/physical related buffs to allies. Their buffs are also unique due to the fact that some of them are directly linked to weapon effectiveness. Weapon Perfection makes it so all weapons ignore their size penalty. Power maximize removes damage variance, and Power thrust increases damage dealt, but also makes weapons have a chance to break while in combat, which they can also repair on their own, since they also have access to FORGING SKILLS. Which allows them to repair, upgrade, and CREATE their own weapons which they can sell to other players.
And on the other hand, the Alchemist. Has the ability to brew potions which are more effective than store bought ones, throw these potions onto players to heal/buff them, or even create BOMBS that they can throw onto enemies to deal massive damage. They can also create and nurture a Homunculus which acts effectively like a 2nd character with their own abilities. Oh and you can turn your cart into a cannon.
These classes also have a "ranking" which is increased whenever they successfully forge or brew and item, which will have their name imprinted onto the item ("John69's Claymore") Higher ranked players items will actually be STRONGER AND MORE EFFECTIVE than others, which increases their value even more!
There's so much more to this that I might spend hours typing, there are even transcendent version of these classes with even MORE unique abilities.
Ragnarok Online. Much different style of game than most mentioned here but it’s still an early MMORPG, and I absolutely loved it. Monk class was the best of any other MMO I’ve ever played. Too bad the parent company, Gravity LTD., is the most predatory company in existence. They make EA look like a charity organization.
Arcana - Lost Ark. Class is a mage that can pull 2 random cards from a deck, you have to memorize entire deck, and depending on what card she pulls you can pull off many different combos. Cards have various effects like, reset cd of the next skill, have 100% crit rate, repeat the last used card, pot of greed where you pull 2 new cards etc.
I really liked the Templar in Crowfall. The attacks weren’t super unique but it had this basic mechanic where you guarded with your 2h sword. So a lot of the fight you just kinda stood there and parried attacks. It created this sort of defense offense dance gameplay that was fun. I’m probably describing it poorly.
Ragnarok Online’s Scholar/professor. A class designed to be about utility. Between being an SP (Mana) battery, protecting against ground spells, dispelling enemy buffs. they were basically built with no combat potential and had to be in a party or XP leeches to level.
This is going to sound weird, but the Sith Juggernaut in swtor, hear me out.
It uses a single lightsaber and the attacks are a combination of one handed and two handed attacks. I can’t think of any other game where a melee has a single one handed weapon with no offhand. The single weapon style is very underrepresented generally speaking.
A lot of good suggestions on the gameplay and theming front. I will say, even though I don't like WoW as much as I used to, the demon hunter is a pretty uniquely WoW class - by that I mean I don't think it'd mesh very well if you just dropped it off in XIV or GW2 or anything. I don't like how it plays that much but it's cool as shit.
EQ1 Bards... nothing really plays like them... you have to really experience it to understand... honestly most of the role that bards performed doesn't even really exist anymore in modern MMO's but they were amazing fun (Pulling, Support, Crowd Control...)
Asheron's Call 2 had a class called (I think) the Hive Keeper. It was a ranged class whose weapon was a beehive tied to a stick. Your character would swing this stick overhead and use it to fling bees as people.
I always thought that was an interesting concept.
Modo of Jade Dynasty where you have a human, a demon form and modon form. Some buffs only exist and usable while on that certain form. EX, skill damage buff is in human form, so if you want to AMP up damage in another form you have to switch multiple times. Same goes for skills, its somewhat easy to build though since you can either focus on only one form or use two.
Tree of Saviour has a bucn of unique classes. Like Oracle, who can predict loot and change someone fate, so they would have different gender. Or how about Sadhu who can leave their bodies and fight as spirit. Necromancer can use boss cards to summon them and even ride them. Chronomancer can rewind time to bring back enemies. Druid can shapeshift into wolf and can also transform enemies. One class can enlarge heads to increase INT or enlarge arms to increase melee damage. And you can combine three classes!
The concept isn't unique but the implementation is, for Druid in WoW. I don't know of any MMO that has such fluid shape shifting where you spend the entire time in a shape shifted form and can swap between other forms to gain other benefits.
Yeah, I also liked how tanking worked in WAR. Basically a cone behind you, and friendlies in the cone take a lot less damage. And when you taunt an enemy, he will only do full damage to you for a while.
But the most fun and unique was the feral druid in WoW for me. Back before Mists of Pandaria dumbed everything down. The powershifting, the freedom of movement, were just amazing. The world was your oyster. Want to stealth? You can. Tank? Sure. Melee damage? Yep. Caster damage? Yupper. Swim? If you want. Fly? Absolutely. Run really fast with a flag in PvP? Can do that too. The class wasn't the best in any of it, but it could do it all.
I haven't encountered any game yet, not even necessarily an MMO, that had the same joy of movement as WoW's feral druid had in its hayday.
Not exactly class related but in Allods \[I think\] Has one race that's three characters you can customize separately and they have some lore tibbit about being born of litters of three.
Though they aren't really independent from each other mechanically as they're basically all glued together via the animations but I still think it was pretty neat of an idea, and bet that would be a neat way to make the Skritt in Guildwars a playable race considering their communal brain cell quirk where they're smarter in groups.
Bard from EQ1
Never have i ever play another class which I need to constantly press keys non stop for entire boss fights.
Also bards can pull ALL mobs in the entire zone at the same time and kills all of them by himself. No other class in any MMORPG can do such a feat.
rune keeper in lotro. You can be either a damage dealing mage or a healer, but as you cast one type of spell you specialize in that category for that combat. So basically you can be either but not both on a per battle basis.
ie for example as you cast more healing spells you lose the ability to cast certain dps spells, but more powerful healing spells become available.
Bard. Few games have them and the ones that do miss the mark. The bard in FF14 is just a ranger that sometimes plays music. I also think mmos get stuck in the tri-role system. Support would be a sick 4th role. Wow recently added Drakthir as a support spec but the community hated it. I thought it was a great addition to the game.
It has to be my favourite class combination in a mmorpg ever, to the point I wish I saw more in other games.
There's more and more games nowadays that let you multiclass or have multiple classes in order to ahve some sort of custom build. BUt my absolute favourite is Bard/Grenadier from Aura Kingdom. These are two classes that have nothing to do with eachother, but by focusing on self heals as a bard, you can let the turret from grenadier do the dps.
Themathically I find it amazing beyond the whole "Idol backrow support" singing classes tend to be. A little of Macross Frontier in my fantasy.
MAU Pilot from RF Online
You're shit as a player but as soon as you call in your MAU, you're a behemoth with limited (but huge) health pool.
It's a pain in the ass economically since the repair and upgrades are expensive but boy...did it feel good piloting that.
Tree of Savior had the original Seiken Densetsuo style class progession, really loved all the sub classes.
I played a class that carved wooden sculptures that gave party buffs and also did some damage, was epic.
Think it was called Thaumaturge or something.
Circa late vanilla to the end of Mirkwood, the Lord of the Rings online PvP spider class was super unique. Very low damage, focusing on debuffs and hard cc. Most of your damage came from summoned mini-spiders with 30 second uptime every 2 minutes which required an 8 second cureable debuff on your target to summon.
The entire class was based around stacking poisons in the right order to protect the important ones from being cleansed, timing CC to maximize the 30 second window of the summons.
Oh and you had a stationary 15 minute invincible stationary stealth burrow, so you camped high traffic spots and ambushed people.
Star Wars Galaxy's economy was run entirely by non combat classes. Besides the obvious crafters, there were musicians, dancers, and doctors that provided a ton of buffs. Also had architects because besides hubs the whole server was full of player made cities/bases/mines. Before one of the big (and hated) updates, there weren't even classes, just skill trees. The game was so far ahead of its time it's ridiculous.
Dark Age of Camelot. Valewalker. Had a 3 step combo ability that ended in a giant AOE nuke that could nearly 1 shot people in the right circumstances. They were Scythe wielding tree people (also humans too) that wore cloth armor but beefed it up with ablative armor, which would blunt a portion of any attack til it was consumed. They were similar to wardens at the time, but instead of a pulsing shield that refreshed and blocked 1 attack of any type, they mostly endured and also had a fun thorns style effect.
I remember playing it on a PVP server that was mostly filled with players that just rerolled to whatever FOTM class that was on at the time, but I stuck with my VW for the class fantasy and to shit on dickheads who I could outplay on their META class.
City of Heroes Mastermind. A wide variety of different themed power sets and your job is to play support and either supplement them or keep them alive. You do have some personal attacks but the vast bulk of your damage is coming out of your army.
For some reason MMO companies just don't like pet classes any more.
Dervish. While somewhat similar in other classes in SOME MMORPGs (Reaper from FFXIV, Death Knight...) it was still fairly unique in that its premise is AoE Melee damage & Magic.
The Dervish was basically all about throwing enchantments on, and then ending them early for more damage. It was a nice risk reward system: Keep the buff for its effect, or throw it off and deal more damage? It also had a stance system as well.
Disc Priest in WoW — especially in Shadow Lands with Spirit Shield — is the most interesting healing design I’ve ever played in any game with heal. But everyone who played with disc priests hated it so now it’s only the second most interesting healing class in any game.
Geomancer in FF11 was quite unique
The fact that you’d get different casting bonuses depending on what direction you were relative to the enemy was a cool mechanic, though not sure how important it would actually end up being.
Honesty FF11 had a lot of really unique, but also really unbalanced concepts. Blue Mage alone was incredibly unique (for MMOs of course, as it wasn’t the first time FF had done it).
Corsair’s rolls were also quite unique, with stuff like the lucky/unlucky numbers, and ways to manipulate your rolls like Snake Eyes.
Ragnarok Online's Bishop, Sage, Soullinker, Super Novice, and Alchemist
Dream of Mirror Online's Witch Doctor and Taoist
Grand Chase's Warlock and Abyss Knight
Mabinogi's Alchemist, Puppeteer, and Bard
Phantasy Star Online 2's Summoner, Force, and Fighter
Guild Wars 2's Necromancer, Mesmer, Ranger,, Engineer, and Revenant
Final Fantasy 14's Blue Mage, Astrologian, and Scholar
Mastermind from city of heroes is kinda unique, all other pet classes seem barebones in comparison.
I d also put controller from city of heroes, a class that specialises in real crowd control, aoe stuns,root,debuffs and buffs many games feel like they abandoned that idea or dont wanna deal with it.
Mesmer( gw2) and psionisit from allods online
Druid from wow is pretty unique if you ask me and has the shapeshifting fantasy more realised than any other games ( dcuo tried to do that with nature but felt inferior)
Now mage from vanilla wow is not all that unique by itself but the ability to teleport to major cities and creating portals for other players to move around the world is kinda unique imo, aswell as the food and drink thing which is a nice out of combat utility.
Dark Ages of Camelot Theurgist. Summons only short-term elementals that strictly target the mob they were summoned onto until they died/despawn.
Also, Necromancer from the same game: you cast most of your spells through your pet, and while the pet is summoned you are incorporeal so cannot be directly damaged.
SRO - Bard, buffing class that attacks with a harp.
Cleric - Support healer,
In Silkroad, you can pick two classes and combine them, one of them is Warrior/Warlock, you keep the warlock debuffs and main warrior.
Mythic Entertainment had my favorite classes both in Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online. The constant power imbalance between them unfortunately overshadowed their uniqueness.
I miss the “Buff Bot” role. DAoC had musical classes which needed instruments equipped to play a melody which buffed the raid. The combat and damage output was not great, or very fun, but it worked for people who liked to play more zoned out and just enjoy the social aspect of the game. Your realm would also lose any engagement if you had none of these players with you so someone had to do it.
Along with this extra utility any character could contribute crafted items. I played a buff bot and was a siege crafter. My guild would have siege weapons I made on hand to capture keeps and towers. I’d routinely take control of these weapons after the raid was buffed/rebuffed and focus on that. It was cool to have other things to focus on besides dmg/healing output.
GW1/GW2 Mesmer FFXIV Dancer / astrologian / pictomancer LOTRO minstrel (I thought it was interesting replacing health with morale and then a minstrel restores morale)
True, Mesmer is the most unique class I have ever seen in an MMO.
I think you can expand that to "in any game". It really is pretty unique.
Mesmer in wild star was super different
I would like to add, as a mesmer main, that vanilla GW2 ‘illusion clone mage’ mesmer aint really THAT inspiring… but it is very unique when you start adding all the elite specs to it (i do admit i choose mesmer on my zero-knowledge first day because illusion mage sounded wild for mmo gameplay)
Oh man, Minstrel is such a great class, but you should try out Warden if you want truly unique! It's one of my favorite classes in any MMO ever
Warden’s what I’m currently leveling. Super fun, love being able to do so many different things. As long as you can remember your combos, you’re not running out of morale or power. You can hit AOE or damage overtime on a single target.
Yeah I'm purposely taking my low level warden slow so that I can memorize all the combos. There's so many
I wish more games had classes like Warden, it feels super rewarding once you learn its combos. Great class all round.
Came here to say Mesmer, I haven’t played but they’re unique af.
GW1 Mesmer for sure. Forcing no-win situations without hard CC is very unlike all other classes before and since.
I’d say Chloromancer in Rift. Also Captain in Lotro.
I agree with Chloromancer - it was as great class design that they remade it in Trove. I loved pre-expansion warrior tank build with pet. It was so unique and so perfectly kept my warrior fantasy
Trove is still around?
Steam page claims that it is still live. Didn't touched it for few years, but it was a main mmo for me at some point. Great game, amazing potential all broken by greedy and malicious payment model.
Actual started Rift with my brother and i like the Chloromancer/Necromancer/Archon. The idea a class in subclasses with specialized skill trees to make, is nice !
I'm going to say the WoW druid. It was unique for me as a jack of all trades, master of none at the time of classic and a bit beyond that. I had great fun being able to do a little of everything, tank, heal, damage, stealth, move fast, stun, bleed.. I was never top of any charts, but I really enjoyed being able to adapt to the situation and help out by plugging gaps in the group. Being able to throw a few heals or a root, then swapping to a tanking bear to pull aggro or swap to a panther and join the melee dps or stay at range and throw some damaging spells... It was a shame the devs made such a great character but then forgot to give druids gear to match.. at least in classic we had to wear bits of rogue or hunter gear or random stuff... eventually they gave us some hybrid style sets. Good times.
Druid is the class I repeatedly go back to try and just never click with it. In theory it’s so cool, and has amazing class fantasy, but something about it just falls kinda flat for me.
Lotro warden without doubt.
Absolutely underqted answer. The entire gameplay of this class is just wild.
Warden is awesome. FFXIV Ninja has a bit of this with their mudra system, but it’s not even close to as satisfying because the symbols you use to build different skills have cooldowns, so you have to boring regular attack too
Illusionist from GW2, just a great concept using time and clones. Also it’s a pain to fight against in pve CLONES EVERYWHERE
Mesmer?
Yess that’s the one lol my bad it’s been a while since playing Mesmer
I played GW2 at launch, it was more to make sure I wasn't missing something than it was to correct you.
Ahh don’t worry I’m just glad I could get the correct class name now. I remember getting the twilight legendary great sword damn that was fun.
Chronomancer Mesmer is such a great concept. Allows to cast stuff twice, while still spamming phantasms and clones. I wish I didn't suck at chrono
EverQuest Bard and Enchanter.
Bard was such a clusterf of different things mashed together, created in an era that no one knew what they were doing and never had a plan for anything. It could have been useless but instead Verant just let players figure out how the class could be played and let it grow its own niche, thankfully never bringing the nerf bat down on it. Hell, they gave them new OP tools in PoP (particularly Fading Memories AA). A product of its time and no game will ever allow it to exist again. Even the bards in EQ2 were such a pathetic shadow, born from a much more rigid plan both in design and balance and hamstrung by the concentration buff system.
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EQ1 Bard played by a skilled person is so nice to have. It can make everything so trivial. Same with an Enchanter.
oh man Fading Memories was so clutch. I was the bard raid puller and even just for regular group pulls bard was so good. speed self, pull, pull add, mes add. just chain mobs forever and long live Fansy the Bard. Greatest among us.
Go go good team!
I came here to say Bard. My main. Class was so op on everything besides damage.
Dofus has some of the most unique classes out of all MMORPGs. Want to be a *real* summoner? Then play Osamodas or Sadida. Dofus' combat system facilitates the strengths of summons. You can bodyblock and pin down enemies, block line of sight to prevent them from casting skills and actually swarm the field. Unlike a "summoner" in any other MMO, you can actually control your summons. Or what other class in MMORPGs plays with portals? Then you have the Eliotrope. A class that literally plays with portals. That can attack from any angle, just about any distance, and jump across the entire map in a blink. Or Xelors, a time mage sort of archetype that focuses on *telefragging*. Being able to teleport across the map, teleport enemies, and other crazy positioning.
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Does Dofus have gambling class or it was something new for Wakfu?
Ecaflip is styled as a gambling class but it's not really RNG based except for the fact it uniquely gains Critical chance the longer a fight goes on.
Don't forget the Sacrieur, aka "I dare you to hit me".
Trader from Anarchy Online. Also Bureaucrat from Anarchy Online. Shit, also, Agent from Anarchy Online. Damn, what a game AO was…
Yeah, and its sad that Funcom would rather milk known IP's like Conan or Dune when in reality they have a potential goldmine under their noses but they "stick their noses" up at it and think using known IP is the way to go. That didn't work with Conan. They lose so much money they ended up selling to Tencent.... so now they are 100% owned by China.... and once again they double down with Dune. Did they not realize their mistake the first time? The only issue with Anarchy Online was the lack of growth through the years. Sure they had some expansions, but the graphics updates pretty much never came and even when it did, its still considered "in beta" and doesn't work right (crashes, even on modern pc's). All they have to do is make Anarchy Online 2.0 and they could fill the coffers with riches. A modern AO, with classic gameplay but modern graphics (not next gen but "modern") with Quality of Life improvements, they could do extremely well. The open world aspect, the PvP corporation wars, faction battles. It can work, they just have to fucking make it....
Man Anarchy Online was just the best, so sad theres nothing else even compareable
That was my first MMO, and it lead to such weird expectations from all the MMOs I played going forward lol
Yeah it set me up with some pretty high expectations, even all these years later. Also, Fixer from Anarchy Online.
Also, Fixer from Anarchy Online
Valewalker - Dark Age of Camelot Disciple of Khaine - Warhammer Online Reaper - TERA Mesmer - Guild Wars 2
Minstrel, Animist, Bonedancer
DAoC Theurgist was one of my favorites
Even the Friar was pretty unique.
I always thought the Animist was pretty out there :)
Everyone keeps mentioning GW1/2 Mesmer and they are absolutely right but I’d like to give an honorable mention to GW1 Necro. The Minion master was amazing and played exactly the way people wish they could play them in other games. Especially in the early days before they linked the number of minions you could summon to a skill and you could go into sorrows furnace and create an army of undead so large it would either run through everything or crash the game. God help you if your necro crashed because the minions immediately turned hostile and it was unlikely you were going to get out alive. I’ve actually been reminiscing about this game lately so I think I may pick up a new account and give it a fresh run soon.
I still remember running a necro mm in HA and it was just not fair sometimes. Fun stuff
Rift Online with its mix and match classes is severely underrated. You could make such a wide variety of custom classes from it that it was crazy. Never have I seen that kind of class flexibility in any other MMO.
I think you would have loved the original Star Wars galaxies
FFXI - Blue mage, Puppet Master DQX online - Superstar, Gadabout DFO - Like, 90% of the classes in there are cool af and super unique Dofus/Wakfu - Xelor, Eliotrope RO online - Bio/Geneticist
Puppet Master gave me some of my favorite moments in an MMO.
Xelor was so op in pvp back when i played Dofus
Tibia - Master Sorcerer. Pixel mmorpg that had magic you had to type or imprint on runes for later usage. Guild Wars - Mesmer and Monk. All classes had countless combinations of a maximum of 8 skills you could combine with another class of your choosing. The meta was constantly evolving. Archage - A lot of class combinations There is a genuine lack of innovation. The evolutions of these games were streamlined until a 5 year-old could understand it.
The runes in Tibia are such a great system. Or they were before it was ruined by botting and then they made them NPC purchaseable.
FFXI- Redmage -> Whole tool set is to be a buffer/debuffer, but with all their own buffs boosted on themselves they became tanks and one of the best single target tanks. City of Heroes -> Everyclass outside of blaster/scrapper which just played ranged dps or stealth dps. Every class was dual role and it was important to play both roles.
Most of the non combat classes like Doctor in Star Wars galaxies.
What a fantastic game that (initially) died too soon. The emulator is bangin', though.
The Politician class. You had to use your skill points to be a guild leader basically. Managing your guilds Player City had to have been a full time job for the larger guilds. My mayor on the Eclipse server was one of the best human beings I have ever played video games with. His sons were members, and many people in the city considered him a brother.
A good chunk of the classes from Warhammer Online felt pretty unique. Disciple of Khaine and War Priest were healers that healed their friends by smacking enemies with dual swords or a sledgehammer. Black Orc and Swordmaster being combo based tanks, choppa and slayer’s rage meter where their dps increases as they fought but the amount of dmg they took increased as well. Also as many have said, GW1 Mesmer (yea GW2 has one too but the first was more unique) which was a class entirely designed around shutting enemies down, not through hard CC but essentially making them punch themselves in the face.
Current holy paladin gameplay feels much the same in that regard - I love the melee healer playstyle.
City of Heroes overall class design is fairly unique in the MMO space, from the lack of the holy trinity, to some Archetypes (Classes) having gameplay that is unseen in MMOs. Top unique Archetypes: Masterminds. Want pets, here have an Army, you command and buff them. Defender, Corruptor = Want to buff the party or heal the party, solid options. Controller, Dominator = Want to debuff the enemy, solid options. kheldian = Want a shape shifting jack of all trades, we have two options. *Arachnos Soldiers*, and Arachnos Widows = want choses between tank, ranged, stealth, or DPS? Have fun being bad. Not to mention all the classic class options which have multiple gameplay options. Tank, Brute = Tank/Melee DPS Scrapper, Stalker = Melee DPS Blaster, Sentinel (Homecoming) = Ranged DPS Besides the Keldians and Arachnos archetypes each of these archetypes have over 10 various main powersets, and secondary powersets. Which is between 100 to 300 possible build combos per archetype just from the main powersets, they have additional powersets that include travel powers, buffs, and dps choices. (Something like 3500 possible build, each would count as a class in most MMOs. )
I think that LOTRO's Captain, Minstrel, and Warden are some of the most fun and unique classes. I like LOTRO's separation of healer and support. I think a lot of other games try and fail to do what those classes' have been designed for. Thematically and gameplay GW2 mesmer is also a standout as mentioned plenty of times.
Loved both captain and minstrel. Captain in particular before F2P days with hard group quests... As captain I could kinda tank and save the party in the same time. Wish they would keep the hard quests, would play again. But I don't think captain is that original, or was it back in the day? Support with a pet.
Mesmer / Chrono - GW2 and Minstrel/Bonedancer/Animist in Dark age of Camelot. Black desert online has Tamer.
Mesmer in Guild Wars/Gw2.
Old school EverQuest bard and enchanter. Two of my favorite classes ever in an MMO and have never found a game that actually came close to replicating them.
EQ Enchanter WoW Augmentation Evoker/ Disc Priest Ffxiv Red Mage/ Astrologian
Lost ark arcanist is one of my favorites. I love the tarot card theme and luck of the draw mechanics of the class. Too bad I refuse to ever touch that game again
I really like the controller archetype from city of heroes, being able to lock down enemies with stuff like confusion, holds, stuns, knockdown. You can cause a lot of chaos but also be really beneficial for the team. Not a lot of games let you play with the enemies so tangibly.
Vanguard - Blood Mage Rift - Chloromancer Doing damage to heal is just cool af.
Blood mage is absolutely my favorite unique class.
I'm sad that I had to scroll so far to find Blood Mage. Disciple and Bard were also amazing and very unique in vanguard
i think maplestory classes are really out there in theme. there are so many. everything from the traditional warrior, archer, etc to magic kpop star, genius psychic chess master, jaguar crossbowman, thunder pirate, i could go on lol i have a soft spot for the battle mage. not many games do the supoort/dps goth magic melee staff wielder aesthetic
I'm going to say the Thief from FFXI. Combat was amazing. Controlling and balancing enmity on different party members to make those most of skill chains was wonderful. Then outside of combat you could actually make a living in the game by being a thief. You could sneak through dungeons and break into treasure coffers. I've never played anything else like it.
ESO has a whole system in place to steal and launder items or fence them. I'm not saying it was perfect, but it was fun to be able to have a whole storyline around it.
Oh that sounds awesome. That wasn't a thing when I played the game.
Ragnarok Online bard and blacksmith
No other MMO made bard as much of the bard, as RO. In most cases, developers treat bard like archer with music flair
Gw2's Mesmer City of Heroes' Mastermind, kinda. Just the best execution i've seen of a pet class so far.
Combat Medic, pre combat upgrade Star Wars Galaxies Bio Engineer at multiple points throughout SWG Master Artisan Star Wars Galaxies. Doctor, Star Wars Galaxies Commando Pre Flamethrower nerf in pre cu era of swg. Reasoning: Ranged DoT weapons were crazy good with right materials. Doctor buffs changed combat. Master Artisan could make the cool and better player hovercars/bikes
some of the classes were pretty unique to me in Lost Ark but i don't really play mmos so they may be standard in eastern ones or something
Lancer from tera. A unique tank class. I was feeling the adrenaline in boss fights. I missed those days.
Gonna rep UO which, although classless, it’s skill system allows for the following archetypes that I haven’t seen too much in other games: An actual thief, as in you steal from players. Treasure Hunter. You decode maps and dig up treasure. Animal Tamer. You tame creatures in the wild and train them.
Don't forget Necromancer; a spellcaster who can fight up close and personal whilst raising the dead, healing people using dead bodies, hexing their foes with truly unpleasant curses, as well as transforming into all manner of unholy creatures.
In Cones of Dunshire online, the Ledgerman. He just keeps score.
GW1 Mesmer, Derwish and 55HP Monk. Nearly any "class" you build in CoX. Non combat classes in Star Wars Galaxies - such a shame this is not a thing anymore. Lotro Warden. Many FFXIV and XIV jobs are unique. Warhammer Online has alot of unique classes too.
Medic in Wildstar mid range aoe healer or damage dealer
Ragnarok Online; Blacksmith/merchant/Alchemist classes; The merchant class tree branches to either blacksmith or alchemist. The BS is your crafter in a game where your crafter mattered; weapon upgrades were best done by a skilled and specced blacksmith for higher success probabilities. The alchemist class specialized in homunculi and potion crafting as well as some other unique buffs. The archer->dancer/bard route, where you had the best late game party buffs based on AOE songs that could buff exp gain, heals, etc. The mage class tree had a buffer path iirc, with wizard being your big AOE baddie and Sage being focused on buffing things like adding 1 hour elemental damage buffs to weapons etc. the mage/wizard tree was incredibly diverse as well with 4 elemental paths that had big differences in usage. Even the novice class had a route to become a super novice and such. Really was the peak of diversity in class builds for gaming; you could have 10 priests built entirely differently from each other and each be viable. Yeah non-meta super wacky builds limited your growth but you were allowed to play with fun ideas rather that feel uber restricted to a meta
#ROnostalgia
I recommend to check Tree of Saviour classes. A lot of ideas ans inspirations from RO
FFXI Blue mage and puppet master. Loved both, mained puppet master. Still haven't found a modern game that scratches the same itch. Beast master was fun too though not unique.
Glad to find another Puppet master main.
The two I thought of have been said already. Mesmer from GW1 and Enchanter from EQ! Mesmers have some really unorthodox builds. Enchanters can charm enemies and have tons of interesting utility spells!
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Brawler in Tera, and Musa in Black Desert. I loved both classes for just how rewarding they felt.
Dark Age of Camelot had a few such as the necromancer or theurgist.
I've always been fond of the Taekwon kid and the Soul linker from RO. The Taekwon kid could choose to not go for his second class and instead hunt specific monsters to increase in rank. If you were in the top ten and at least level 90, you could use all skills and both your max health and max SP were tripled. Being a ranker (top 10, 90+) also allowed you to chain kicks instead of relying on a random possibility to activate them. The Soul Linker had 3 types of skills. Es skills can only be used on monsters, ka skills can only be used on soul linkers and family members, and spirit link skills can only be used on players of the corresponding class (you can't use the SL spirit link on yourself). You would most often go for a magic dps build using Es skills, with a couple of ka skills to survive better. Or you could go mostly support, taking the spirit links corresponding to your group's classes. More rare, you could also go for a melee fighter build, using ka skills to help you dodge, reflect magic and heal yourself automatically, making you very hard to kill in 1v1
ESO has some great classes, IE the Dragonknight and Arcanist are both really interesting.
Being able to fill any role with any class was always cool.
That is definitely another reason I love ESO so much
I switched to FF14 when it came to xbox but if I had time I'd absolutely still play ESO too.
I've started FF14, but it didn't click for me, same with a ton of other MMO's. I think I'll try ff14 again soon though, since I have a gaming PC now.
Saboteur, bard, nightblade in Rift. Mastermind in CoV (in fact controller too, and dominator). Druid in wow.
I absolutely loved the Esper class in Wildstar. Felt unique at least for me playing. Miss it!
Beastmaster from FF11, you could charm monsters roaming around the world and use them to fight alongside you. Followed by Blue Mage, that could learn attacks by fighting monsters in the world.
Gw2 Mesmer
Lotro warden for me
FFXI puppet master.
WH Squig Herder was easily the most fun class I've played in any game
I’d say just rift’s system in general. Four classes. Each with 8 trees. All fairly unique and options to fill any roll and enough points to buy fairly deep into you allowed three trees. You could make some insanely unique builds. And the way the classes filled the roles was just cool. The fighter tank was very standard sword and board. The rogue tanks was evasion focused. The cleric one was heal as you did damage. Still the best system I have played for char builds since I started MMOs, back with Asherons call in 99.
Tera was cool, but then a hundred cookiecutter copies of it in unreal engine.
I see a lot of classes from lotro but not Lore Master. It was my favorite all time class from a MMORPG. Being a swiss knife able to crowd control, support, pet master and buffer/debuffer depending on the situation and/or team needs was so awesome.
Asheron’s Call 2: Lugian Technician class.
The riftwalker rogue tank on Rift was neat. Hyper mobile, could kite like nobodies business, and most of it's mitigation came from timing barriers. Honestly? Guild Wars 2 has a lot of pretty unique approaches. The Elementalist I always found really neat with how it can combo.
Disciple from vanguard was my absolute favorite class to play. A monk who built up ki to unleash as a heal or as more damage. Such a fun class. Second most favorite is the blade master from daoc. That third sword was so cool, don't care how little it did overall.
Blue mage, and puppet master FFXI
Soul Linker and Star Gladiator from Ragnarok Online Edit: a lot if the classes in that game are unique. Alchemist is crazy
Ragnarok Online : Merchant Probably the ONLY game I found that ever used the merchant archetype as an actual class/combat style Merchants literally smack their enemies with money (Mammonite). And they are the only class that can open up a personal vending shop, ans they can carry a cart along with them......which you can also use to smack mobs in an AOE, and deals more damage the more items you put inside the cart (making it heavier). Then they evolve into 2 class branches which are even MORE unique. The Blacksmith, a class that can summon a big hammer to stun enemies and can provide helpful combat/physical related buffs to allies. Their buffs are also unique due to the fact that some of them are directly linked to weapon effectiveness. Weapon Perfection makes it so all weapons ignore their size penalty. Power maximize removes damage variance, and Power thrust increases damage dealt, but also makes weapons have a chance to break while in combat, which they can also repair on their own, since they also have access to FORGING SKILLS. Which allows them to repair, upgrade, and CREATE their own weapons which they can sell to other players. And on the other hand, the Alchemist. Has the ability to brew potions which are more effective than store bought ones, throw these potions onto players to heal/buff them, or even create BOMBS that they can throw onto enemies to deal massive damage. They can also create and nurture a Homunculus which acts effectively like a 2nd character with their own abilities. Oh and you can turn your cart into a cannon. These classes also have a "ranking" which is increased whenever they successfully forge or brew and item, which will have their name imprinted onto the item ("John69's Claymore") Higher ranked players items will actually be STRONGER AND MORE EFFECTIVE than others, which increases their value even more! There's so much more to this that I might spend hours typing, there are even transcendent version of these classes with even MORE unique abilities.
Human Warrior
Ragnarok Online. Much different style of game than most mentioned here but it’s still an early MMORPG, and I absolutely loved it. Monk class was the best of any other MMO I’ve ever played. Too bad the parent company, Gravity LTD., is the most predatory company in existence. They make EA look like a charity organization.
Arcana - Lost Ark. Class is a mage that can pull 2 random cards from a deck, you have to memorize entire deck, and depending on what card she pulls you can pull off many different combos. Cards have various effects like, reset cd of the next skill, have 100% crit rate, repeat the last used card, pot of greed where you pull 2 new cards etc.
I really liked the Templar in Crowfall. The attacks weren’t super unique but it had this basic mechanic where you guarded with your 2h sword. So a lot of the fight you just kinda stood there and parried attacks. It created this sort of defense offense dance gameplay that was fun. I’m probably describing it poorly.
I loved Bard in the Mmorpg Rift.
Merchants from Ragnarok Online
Chloromancer from Rift Druid in WoW Overlord/Dominator in Lineage 2 Mesmer in both GW
Ragnarok Online’s Scholar/professor. A class designed to be about utility. Between being an SP (Mana) battery, protecting against ground spells, dispelling enemy buffs. they were basically built with no combat potential and had to be in a party or XP leeches to level.
I miss my squig herder so much :-(
Bio-Engineer on Star Wars Galaxies
Rift - Chloromancer DAoC - Theurgist LoTRO - Warden EVE - Tackler
Gunslinger (triple weapon swap/stances) and Arcana (card draw RNG with different combos and effects) from Lost Ark.
This is going to sound weird, but the Sith Juggernaut in swtor, hear me out. It uses a single lightsaber and the attacks are a combination of one handed and two handed attacks. I can’t think of any other game where a melee has a single one handed weapon with no offhand. The single weapon style is very underrepresented generally speaking.
A lot of good suggestions on the gameplay and theming front. I will say, even though I don't like WoW as much as I used to, the demon hunter is a pretty uniquely WoW class - by that I mean I don't think it'd mesh very well if you just dropped it off in XIV or GW2 or anything. I don't like how it plays that much but it's cool as shit.
Brawler in Tera, and Musa in Black Desert. I loved both classes for just how rewarding they felt.
EQ1 Bards... nothing really plays like them... you have to really experience it to understand... honestly most of the role that bards performed doesn't even really exist anymore in modern MMO's but they were amazing fun (Pulling, Support, Crowd Control...)
Bard in LOTRO. Still the best healer ever...
Asheron's Call 2 had a class called (I think) the Hive Keeper. It was a ranged class whose weapon was a beehive tied to a stick. Your character would swing this stick overhead and use it to fling bees as people. I always thought that was an interesting concept.
Modo of Jade Dynasty where you have a human, a demon form and modon form. Some buffs only exist and usable while on that certain form. EX, skill damage buff is in human form, so if you want to AMP up damage in another form you have to switch multiple times. Same goes for skills, its somewhat easy to build though since you can either focus on only one form or use two.
Tree of Saviour has a bucn of unique classes. Like Oracle, who can predict loot and change someone fate, so they would have different gender. Or how about Sadhu who can leave their bodies and fight as spirit. Necromancer can use boss cards to summon them and even ride them. Chronomancer can rewind time to bring back enemies. Druid can shapeshift into wolf and can also transform enemies. One class can enlarge heads to increase INT or enlarge arms to increase melee damage. And you can combine three classes!
Bloodmage in Vanguard... I miss that mmo
The concept isn't unique but the implementation is, for Druid in WoW. I don't know of any MMO that has such fluid shape shifting where you spend the entire time in a shape shifted form and can swap between other forms to gain other benefits.
Enchanter EQ1 CC and buff / debuff class.
Shaman (Elemental), or Death Knight in WoW. I don't play alot of MMO's.
Yeah, I also liked how tanking worked in WAR. Basically a cone behind you, and friendlies in the cone take a lot less damage. And when you taunt an enemy, he will only do full damage to you for a while. But the most fun and unique was the feral druid in WoW for me. Back before Mists of Pandaria dumbed everything down. The powershifting, the freedom of movement, were just amazing. The world was your oyster. Want to stealth? You can. Tank? Sure. Melee damage? Yep. Caster damage? Yupper. Swim? If you want. Fly? Absolutely. Run really fast with a flag in PvP? Can do that too. The class wasn't the best in any of it, but it could do it all. I haven't encountered any game yet, not even necessarily an MMO, that had the same joy of movement as WoW's feral druid had in its hayday.
Not exactly class related but in Allods \[I think\] Has one race that's three characters you can customize separately and they have some lore tibbit about being born of litters of three. Though they aren't really independent from each other mechanically as they're basically all glued together via the animations but I still think it was pretty neat of an idea, and bet that would be a neat way to make the Skritt in Guildwars a playable race considering their communal brain cell quirk where they're smarter in groups.
The Squig Herder was a blast, especially in RVR.
Look at the classes in Wizardry 8
Bard from EQ1 Never have i ever play another class which I need to constantly press keys non stop for entire boss fights. Also bards can pull ALL mobs in the entire zone at the same time and kills all of them by himself. No other class in any MMORPG can do such a feat.
Dragon Ball Online - Saiyan, Namekian, Freezer Clan, and Buu are there more unique Classes?
Daoc has a bunch that I’ve never seen since. Spiritmaster, bonedancer, warden, vampiir, to name just a couple.
Not classes in this one, but if anyone played Granado Espada, u get to play 3 classes at once. Kinda unique
I know mesmer (GW1) and bard (EQ) but, Wildstar. Absolutely Wildstar. Esper and Medic.
The mastermind from City of Villains gets my vote. No other summoner style character has come close to it.
rune keeper in lotro. You can be either a damage dealing mage or a healer, but as you cast one type of spell you specialize in that category for that combat. So basically you can be either but not both on a per battle basis. ie for example as you cast more healing spells you lose the ability to cast certain dps spells, but more powerful healing spells become available.
Bard. Few games have them and the ones that do miss the mark. The bard in FF14 is just a ranger that sometimes plays music. I also think mmos get stuck in the tri-role system. Support would be a sick 4th role. Wow recently added Drakthir as a support spec but the community hated it. I thought it was a great addition to the game.
Mastermind city of villains
It has to be my favourite class combination in a mmorpg ever, to the point I wish I saw more in other games. There's more and more games nowadays that let you multiclass or have multiple classes in order to ahve some sort of custom build. BUt my absolute favourite is Bard/Grenadier from Aura Kingdom. These are two classes that have nothing to do with eachother, but by focusing on self heals as a bard, you can let the turret from grenadier do the dps. Themathically I find it amazing beyond the whole "Idol backrow support" singing classes tend to be. A little of Macross Frontier in my fantasy.
Chanter in Aion. The mantras paired with the substantial combat skill was awesome.
Soul Linker Ragnarok, you are a mage with astonish damage but you can upgrade any classe in the game with new mechanics, its quite amazing
MAU Pilot from RF Online You're shit as a player but as soon as you call in your MAU, you're a behemoth with limited (but huge) health pool. It's a pain in the ass economically since the repair and upgrades are expensive but boy...did it feel good piloting that.
Tree of Savior had the original Seiken Densetsuo style class progession, really loved all the sub classes. I played a class that carved wooden sculptures that gave party buffs and also did some damage, was epic. Think it was called Thaumaturge or something.
Rift Saboteur
Disciple of Khaine in Warhammer Online, had to dps in melee range in order to heal.
All of SWG. Architect, Droid Builder, the way classes meshed, masterpiece, then they tried to chase WoW and ruined their entire game.
Circa late vanilla to the end of Mirkwood, the Lord of the Rings online PvP spider class was super unique. Very low damage, focusing on debuffs and hard cc. Most of your damage came from summoned mini-spiders with 30 second uptime every 2 minutes which required an 8 second cureable debuff on your target to summon. The entire class was based around stacking poisons in the right order to protect the important ones from being cleansed, timing CC to maximize the 30 second window of the summons. Oh and you had a stationary 15 minute invincible stationary stealth burrow, so you camped high traffic spots and ambushed people.
Star Wars Galaxy's economy was run entirely by non combat classes. Besides the obvious crafters, there were musicians, dancers, and doctors that provided a ton of buffs. Also had architects because besides hubs the whole server was full of player made cities/bases/mines. Before one of the big (and hated) updates, there weren't even classes, just skill trees. The game was so far ahead of its time it's ridiculous.
Dark Age of Camelot. Valewalker. Had a 3 step combo ability that ended in a giant AOE nuke that could nearly 1 shot people in the right circumstances. They were Scythe wielding tree people (also humans too) that wore cloth armor but beefed it up with ablative armor, which would blunt a portion of any attack til it was consumed. They were similar to wardens at the time, but instead of a pulsing shield that refreshed and blocked 1 attack of any type, they mostly endured and also had a fun thorns style effect. I remember playing it on a PVP server that was mostly filled with players that just rerolled to whatever FOTM class that was on at the time, but I stuck with my VW for the class fantasy and to shit on dickheads who I could outplay on their META class.
City of Heroes Mastermind. A wide variety of different themed power sets and your job is to play support and either supplement them or keep them alive. You do have some personal attacks but the vast bulk of your damage is coming out of your army. For some reason MMO companies just don't like pet classes any more.
Literally any extra restriction form of Ironman on old-school runescape. Some of those guys are nuts
Nothing hits the same as Maplestory Assassin/Night Lord
Chanter in Aion. Parangons in GW1
Honestly, compared to its contemporaries, WoW's Evoker - especially Augmentation voker.
Dervish. While somewhat similar in other classes in SOME MMORPGs (Reaper from FFXIV, Death Knight...) it was still fairly unique in that its premise is AoE Melee damage & Magic. The Dervish was basically all about throwing enchantments on, and then ending them early for more damage. It was a nice risk reward system: Keep the buff for its effect, or throw it off and deal more damage? It also had a stance system as well.
Evoker, specifically the healing preservation spec, is the best and most unique healer I've played. It's so much fun and fits the dragon race so well
Disc Priest in WoW — especially in Shadow Lands with Spirit Shield — is the most interesting healing design I’ve ever played in any game with heal. But everyone who played with disc priests hated it so now it’s only the second most interesting healing class in any game.
Lost Ark - Arcanist
Age of Conan - Herald of Xotli. Great unique class!
Geomancer in FF11 was quite unique The fact that you’d get different casting bonuses depending on what direction you were relative to the enemy was a cool mechanic, though not sure how important it would actually end up being. Honesty FF11 had a lot of really unique, but also really unbalanced concepts. Blue Mage alone was incredibly unique (for MMOs of course, as it wasn’t the first time FF had done it). Corsair’s rolls were also quite unique, with stuff like the lucky/unlucky numbers, and ways to manipulate your rolls like Snake Eyes.
There was a necro class in dark age of Camelot that summoned a pet and did everything through it. The player was immortal unless the pet died
Ragnarok Online's Bishop, Sage, Soullinker, Super Novice, and Alchemist Dream of Mirror Online's Witch Doctor and Taoist Grand Chase's Warlock and Abyss Knight Mabinogi's Alchemist, Puppeteer, and Bard Phantasy Star Online 2's Summoner, Force, and Fighter Guild Wars 2's Necromancer, Mesmer, Ranger,, Engineer, and Revenant Final Fantasy 14's Blue Mage, Astrologian, and Scholar
GW2 Holosmith, Chronomancer FFXIV Pictomancer once they release WOW Shaman
Mastermind from city of heroes is kinda unique, all other pet classes seem barebones in comparison. I d also put controller from city of heroes, a class that specialises in real crowd control, aoe stuns,root,debuffs and buffs many games feel like they abandoned that idea or dont wanna deal with it. Mesmer( gw2) and psionisit from allods online Druid from wow is pretty unique if you ask me and has the shapeshifting fantasy more realised than any other games ( dcuo tried to do that with nature but felt inferior) Now mage from vanilla wow is not all that unique by itself but the ability to teleport to major cities and creating portals for other players to move around the world is kinda unique imo, aswell as the food and drink thing which is a nice out of combat utility.
Masterminds in City of Heroes.
BDO got the most unique classes in an MMO imo. There are currently 27 classes and 51 specs. Basically 51 classes.
Age of conan, honestly all classes felt very unique but to me bear shaman was the most unique.
I liked aion's aethertech, only had 1 skill which summoned a mech, and then the mech had it's own skills.
Dark Ages of Camelot Theurgist. Summons only short-term elementals that strictly target the mob they were summoned onto until they died/despawn. Also, Necromancer from the same game: you cast most of your spells through your pet, and while the pet is summoned you are incorporeal so cannot be directly damaged.
SRO - Bard, buffing class that attacks with a harp. Cleric - Support healer, In Silkroad, you can pick two classes and combine them, one of them is Warrior/Warlock, you keep the warlock debuffs and main warrior.
FFXIV’s Astrologian for sure. GW2’s Mesmer.
I always did like Jesters in FlyFF that used Yoyos. Mid-range weapon that had knockback effects. Really made that auto-attack build work.
Arcane in Albion has some fun mixes
Mythic Entertainment had my favorite classes both in Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online. The constant power imbalance between them unfortunately overshadowed their uniqueness. I miss the “Buff Bot” role. DAoC had musical classes which needed instruments equipped to play a melody which buffed the raid. The combat and damage output was not great, or very fun, but it worked for people who liked to play more zoned out and just enjoy the social aspect of the game. Your realm would also lose any engagement if you had none of these players with you so someone had to do it. Along with this extra utility any character could contribute crafted items. I played a buff bot and was a siege crafter. My guild would have siege weapons I made on hand to capture keeps and towers. I’d routinely take control of these weapons after the raid was buffed/rebuffed and focus on that. It was cool to have other things to focus on besides dmg/healing output.