Below you can find a basic breakdown of class roles and several recommended classes/builds which fit the role: Tanking, Healing, Damage Dealing, Support, Leveling. If you need more details about each skillset be sure to read our classes guide first!

TANKING BUILDS

Though not the most popular role, we’ll start off with tanks. Tanks are focused on holding aggro and absorbing damage from monsters and players, primarily to give damage dealers some breathing room to melt their enemies. Almost all tanking builds have the Defense skillset included. Most popular and viable skillset combinations are:

• Abolisher (Defense, Auramancy, Battlerage) – good tanking and support of allies, with debuffs and melee damage options
• Paladin (Battlerage, Defense, Vitalism) – good survivability and sustain, and decent damage dealing tools
• Templar (Defense, Auramancy, Vitalism) – supportive tank with buffs and heals
• Skullknight (Defense, Occultism, Auramancy) – strong tank with powerful damage-dealing and crowd control options

HEALING BUILDS

Behind every good tank is a good healer. Healer’s goal is to keep their tanks and damage dealers alive in fights through heals and other supportive abilities. In ArcheAge healers are typically capable of doing decent damage along with supporting their allies, and most popular classes for this are:

• Templar (Auramancy, Vitalism, Defense) – heavily armored healer build with good survivability and supporting tools
• Edgewalker (Auramancy, Occultism, Vitalism) – two strong supportive skill trees with strong ranged spell-casting potential for damage and some CC (crowd control)
• Heirophant (Auramancy, Vitalism, Witchcraft) – another supportive build with strong CC
• Cultist (Vitalism, Occultism, Sorcery) – clutch heals while dealing tons of damage

Be sure to also take a look at support builds below.

DAMAGE DEALING BUILDS

Damage dealing classes have the most variety and plenty of combinations you can go for, so we’ll break down DPS builds into a few categories: Archery, Mage, and Melee DPS.

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ARCHERY

With a dedicated skillset called “Archery” building one isn’t overly difficult, but there are plenty of synergies with other skillsets you can combine to make your character more effective. Some of these are:

• Ranger (Archery, Shadowplay, Vitalism) – very strong DPS potential with decent sustain/healing
• Stone Arrow (Archery, Shadowplay, Defense) – also focused on high damage, but with more direct survivability
• Trickster (Archery, Shadowplay, Witchcraft) – ranged assassin build with strong single target and AoE crowd control
• Primeval (Auramancy, Archery, Shadowplay) – one of the most popular builds in the game with excellent damage and assassination potential

MAGE

Mages are some of the most popular archetypes in MMORPGs, and it’s not much different in ArcheAge. You can combine many different skillsets and focus your damage dealing efforts to ranged spell casting, and most players choose some of the following:

• Arcanist (Sorcery, Auramancy, Witchcraft) – excellent combo of single and area-of-effect (AoE) spells with supporting potential
• Spellsinger (Sorcery, Songcraft, Shadowplay) – high damage output class based on burst damage, with a lot of flexibility
• Spellsong (Sorcery, Auramancy, Songcraft) – build focused more on supporting allies but also capable of DPS
• Daggerspell (Sorcery, Shadowplay, Witchcraft) – very popular build with high amount of burst damage and crowd control
• Demonologist (Witchcraft, Sorcery, Occultism) – powerful CC and burst damage, great build for PvP or PvE

MELEE DPS

Melee builds are often different than mages or archers: since you’re on the front lines you need to consider taking more survivability, sustain, or other defensive abilities. Most builds here are focused on either Battlerage or Shadowplay skill trees, combined with some other tree with strong defense, sustain or crowd control. Some popular melee damage-dealing builds include:

• Inquisitor (Battlerage, Shadowplay, Vitalism) – crit-focused PvP build with devastating melee damage and self-healing
• Executioner (Shadowplay, Battlerage, Occultism) – melee DPS with damage and CC spells
• Blackguard (Battlerage, Vitalism, Occultism) – crowd control and healing mixed with melee damage
• Dreadnought (Shadowplay, Occultism, Defense) – burst-based build with increased survivability
• Darkrunner (Battlerage, Shadowplay, Auramancy) – very strong and popular melee damaging build with group utility
• Blighter (Defense, Battlerage, Shadowplay) – PvP-focused build with improved defense and extremely powerful melee attacks

SUPPORT BUILDS

For the most part support builds are based on Songcraft skill tree, often mixed with Vitalism for healing allies, and strong crowd control from several other skillsets.

• Cleric (Auramancy, Songcraft, Vitalism) – full support build with healing and buffs
• Caretaker (Defense, Songcraft, Vitalism) – healer and support build with higher survivability
• Dreambreaker (Witchcraft, Defense, Auramancy) – some damage potential but mostly based on supportive spells and crowd control
• Blade Dancer (Battlerage, Shadowplay, Songcraft) – strong melee DPS with supportive abilities from Songcraft

LEVELING BUILDS

In essence most leveling builds have at least one damage-dealing and one supportive skill set. Vitalism is very frequently found on leveling builds for most players as the self-sustain can help immensely in clutch situations. Though very often any DPS build can work well — if you can take out your enemies quickly enough there’s no need for sustain. Flexibility is also the key with leveling builds, as you will want to have both single and multi target spells, some sort of crowd control, and escapes or heals if things get rough. Some builds you can start with if you lack inspiration are:

• Necromancer (Occultism, Witchcraft, Vitalism) – good mixture of single target and AoE spells, crowd control and healing
• Paladin (Battlerage, Defense, Vitalism) – melee build with decent sustained damage with strong survivability and sustain
• Naturalist (Sorcery, Vitalism, Archery) – ranged damage dealing with flexible mix of spells and abilities good for various leveling situations

This is by no means an exhaustive list of class builds in ArcheAge, and their popularity or viability can easily change between frequent patches. We do still hope this list provided you with some insight into the most frequently used classes and what makes them strong. It’s a good place to start if you’re a beginner and unsure about which skillsets to pick, and you should always experiment and try things out for yourself. Everyone has a different playstyle and simply because a build isn’t popular doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t work for you!

Be sure to help your fellow players and share your own thoughts, builds and experiences in the comments section below.

ArcheAge features a very extensive class system, where building a character exactly as you want is a very real possibility. The game has 10 available skillsets, 6 of which are primary and 4 secondary ones. Each skill set offers a range of different abilities, and over time you can of course master all spells in a particular skill set. Your first skillset is chosen at character creation.

Upon reaching level 10 players can combine any three skillsets to make a unique class, giving you the option to make 120 different classes (builds)! Combining multiple skillsets becomes available once your character reaches level 10, and skillsets can be changed as you like giving you unlimited room to experiment and find exactly the kind of gameplay you prefer. Of course respeccing (replacing one skillset with another) does come at a price, and it doesn’t automatically unlock all the available skills: you will have to level each skill tree separately, though progress made with skillsets remains permanently even if you re-spec.

PRIMARY SKILLSETS

As mentioned there are 6 primary skillsets available in ArcheAge, and they are:

1. Battlerage – this skillset consists of powerful melee attacks capable of inflicting devastating damage, as well as some buffs and debuffs for your friends or enemies
2. Sorcery – this specialization of course includes powerful elemental spells causing damage to enemies
3. Archery – if playing a ranger is your preference, then this tree is for you
4. Vitalism – Vitalism is the main skill tree for players focused on healing others
5. Occultism – this skill set is for magic-oriented characters, and focused on debuffs, snares and summoned monsters
6. Shadowplay – Shadowplay is perfect for rogue-like builds, and the abilities consist of quick attacks, leaps and snares

SUPPORT SKILLSETS

There are also four secondary or support skillsets you can choose from:

1. Songcraft – focused on playing various “songs” to buff allies and debuff enemies
2. Witchcraft – Witchcraft has a number of magical spells aimed at dealing damage and crowd-control
3. Auramancy – as expected Auramancy is aimed at players who prefer to support others with various buffs and decrease the combat potency of their enemies
4. Defense – the primary skill tree for tanks, many of the abilities in Defense include taunts and shield-based attacks

PASSIVES

Each of the primary and support skillsets mentioned above have over 10 active spells, and 6 or more passives which increase their effectiveness further. To unlock more stronger passive skills you will have to learn a set number of active skills first.

To unlock the first passive you will need to spend 2 skill points on active skills, and later on the best passives may require up to 10 skill points spent in total (in either passive or active skills) to be unlocked.

SYNERGIES

Active skills from your chosen skill sets can also produce different results based on which buffs or debuffs are on your enemies: they are called Synergies. Though most skills simply deal more damage or apply effects like Deep Freeze on Chilled targets for example, some are more specific.

As an example if you use “Drop Back” ability from Shadowplay skillset, your next “Flame Bolt” and several other spells from Sorcery skill set will have no cast time. Synergies make sure you need to put even more thought into picking skill sets for your character.

COMBOS

Combos or combo effects on the other hand are additional effects on your active skills which inflict additional damage, apply status effects, or reduce cast time of other abilities. Most skills have 2-3 combos, with some even having 4 different combos. Essentially skills you use and spells you cast can produce different effects, and using other spells afterwards can result in additional effects, such as increased damage or crowd control.

This system makes combat in ArcheAge quite dynamic and ensures players with superior knowledge and spell rotations can be dominant over others.

SKILLSETS AND LEVELING

Maximum player level in ArcheAge is 50, but you can unlock multiple skillsets way before you reach that mark. Once you create your character you will have to pick one skillset, with a second one unlocking at level 5. At level 10 you will unlock your third skillset. You can also change your chosen skillsets any time at a certain NPC for a modest fee.

As mentioned above every skillset has its own level, which progresses at the same rate your character does. Most spells have certain skill set level requirements (not character level requirements), so you will have to progress from the bottom once you choose a new skill tree. You can eventually level up all skill trees, however you will still only be able to use three at any given time. If you unlearn a particular skillset your experience with it and all the unlocked abilities will remain if you choose to re-learn it.

So as mentioned each skillset levels up independently, but your character level does play a part in the progression since it determines how many skill points you have to spend on active and passive abilities.

RESPECCING

Respeccing or changing your skillsets is done by visiting a “Skill Manager” NPC, or finding one of Nui’s followers at a resurrection site. While changing your skillsets does cost a bit of money, it’s not a significant amount and you should play around with various trees and spells often. If you choose to unlearn a skillset the levels and progress made in it will be saved so you don’t have to re-level any of the abilities if you pick it up again later on!

Additionally, you can reset your spent skill points within a given skill tree by opening the “Skills” menu.

We hope this guide helps you understand the basic of ArcheAge’s class system a bit better. If you have any questions or suggestions for other beginner guides be sure to ask below!