by Dom's Roundtable
There are 8 classes you can choose from, 4 of these were available to us during the playtest:
Wylder
Guardian
Duchess
Recluse.
Multiple players can play as the same class, so unlike other multiplayer co-op games you don't need to worry about someone sniping your favourite character.
Each class has 4 unique differences:
A passive skill
A character skill
An ultimate art
Their movement
All of them require a different playstyle, and each has their own individual strengths and weaknesses, let me break down the 4 classes I've so far had the privilege of becoming very familiar with.
The Guardian
The guardian is very much the tank, a character with high defensive capabilities who can use a shield to withstand even the most ferocious of enemy attacks. He has a pretty lacklustre dodge; he just kind of jerks forward, has very few i-frames, and it is very hard to dodge many enemy attacks with it, but he is a tank. And his passive ability more than makes up for his movement.
His passive ability is High Guard. Whilst guarding with a shield, you can actually move to transition into an even more powerful version of the regular guard stance, which can be maintained until you are poise broken. This allows you to just eat enemies' attacks like they are nothing and gives your allies lots and lots of time to do what they do best.
The Guardian's character skill is Whirlwind. Exactly as it sounds, this will summon a swirling wind around you, dealing light damage to enemies and even knocking smaller enemies up in the air and on their arses.
And the Guardian's ultimate art is the wings of salvation. You jump high into the air and perform a rapid dive attack. You can then even use this again in mid-air by pressing the strong attack button to deploy a defensive barrier around yourself. I had so much fun with this guy. I thought he was freaking awesome.
The Duchess
The Duchess is very skilled in evasion, she's the assassin. She can dart around the battlefield very quickly, and she actually has multiple quick, consecutive dodges, which is really cool and quite akin to Bloodborne, but even faster.
Her character skill is called Restage, and this will control time to repeat the same last amount of damage dealt to nearby enemies. Restage will even replicate your allies' attacks. So if an ally has just done a crazy powerful combo or they've just dropped their ultimate art, dealing 500 damage to everything around them, you then pop your restage skill, and it will do that damage again instantly. It can be so crazy good if you're working together as a team and if you have these kinds of synergies, cooperation and coordination.
Then you've got the Duchess' Ultimate Art, Finale. You and your nearby allies become invisible to enemies for a limited time. Enemies will still mindlessly swing, and I believe they will try and swing at your last known location. So enemies with big AOE attacks, this isn't quite as effective. But against certain bosses, this was crazy powerful. They just couldn't do anything about it, and you would just wail on them until you became visible again.
The Wylder
Most people's favourite at the preview by the looks of it was the Wylder. He's very much the traditional knight of the franchise. He's well balanced and easy to handle. He starts with a sword and a shield, and he has the standard Elden Ring dodge roll. He looks like your typical knight, but he has so many cool bells and whistles.
His passive ability is sixth sense, when you are attacked by an enemy, you will automatically evade their first attack. This obviously has a slight cooldown because otherwise, you would just perpetually evade every single attack.
Next up, his character skill is claw shot, you will throw a grappling hook at your enemy. When hitting a light enemy, you will pull the enemy towards you. And when hitting a heavy enemy or terrain, because you can use this as a movement ability as well, you will pull yourself towards the anchor point.
Finally, the ultimate art of the Wylder is Onslaught Stake. You launch a steel stake with an explosion to deliver a powerful strike. This can even be used in mid-air, and it can be charged to increase its power. This is crazy good at staggering. And if you fully charge it and you're not interrupted, it will nearly one shot stagger even most bosses.
The Recluse
The Recluse was very underutilized during our preview event because she is very tough to use initially, but when you understand her, she is insanely cool.
She was the spellcaster archetype to feature in our exclusive preview. Though I'm sure, a few of the other archetypes will also be magic-focused. Her dodge was more of a glide along the battlefield, it was nearly as useless as the Guardian's, but you would expect that being a mage.
Her passive ability, elemental defence, will allow you to see elemental marks appearing on enemies and allies alike. When an enemy is hit by a magic, fire, lightning, or holy attack, an elemental mark will appear on them. And you can collect this mark with your Character Skill to restore your FP so that you pretty much never ever run out of mana. Once you have collected 3 marks, you can unleash your Character Skill, Magic Cocktail, to use these marks to unleash very powerful spells upon your enemies.
Because you can even collect these marks from your allies you are then consistently replenishing your FP, and you pretty much never run out of mana. And the more different types of attributes combined, the more powerful the Magic Cocktail will be, and there are some crazy cool combinations.
And finally, the Ultimate Art for the recluse is Soulblood Song. This will apply a mark to all nearby enemies, which means whenever you or either of your allies hit the enemy, you will automatically restore HP and FP for a limited time.
I will update this article to include more information about the characters that we will hopefully learn throughout the Network test.
