For those new to Dragon’s Dogma, your class choice will significantly impact your gameplay. While both Striders and Warriors begin their journey identically, your chosen class determines your growth path, skills, and gear, resulting in a journey that can be very different depending on your selection.
Despite the efforts of your comrades-in-arms, Dragon’s Dogma’s metagame revolves heavily around you. Your status as an Arisen affects pawn behavior, unlockable quests, and Legendary Dragon battles, so it’s important to weigh your own preferences against those of your opponents when choosing. While some classes overcome their individual disadvantages with Dragon Dogma skill tree talents and support skills, there are some class choices in Dragon’s Dogma that are significantly stronger than others, offering challenges and rewards to match. We’ve been playing the open-world game for more than a year now, and while we do still love our pyromaniac sorcerer, some classes are definitely worth your time. Here are all nine Dragon’s Dogma classes, along with the positives and negatives associated with each one.
Dragon’s Dogma classes
Every RPG has its stereotypes, and Dragon’s Dogma is no different. Of the nine Dragon’s Dogma classes, Mages are by far the most powerful in their own right, but also possess the shopkeepers featured in these open-world games since DnD was a thing, look at this big tree skills to enhance the use of their swords. Warriors are strong and able to tank, with their strength cancelling out the disadvantages of their limited adaptability.
Here are all the Dragon’s Dogma classes:
Mage
Mages are powerful, especially at a higher level, where they are arguably the only class with access to the megaflares and tough enemies needed when taking on the toughest bosses. However, their abilities are largely limited to a few spells that enable them to levitate and cast basic healing, or buffing pawns akin to the Priest or Paladin classes in most RPGs.
Unless you are skilled at micromanaging all of your pawns, you’re less likely to make sustained use of many mage abilities – but in certain situations, such as when surrounded by a horde of enemies, pawns can do the work for you. This lessens the need for useful fighting skills such as explosive arrows or scythe dives. As with most mages in open-world games, though, your support skills can be incredibly powerful if you spend enough time levelling up in the undead-infested dungeons. Similarly, your magic is often very useful at lower levels, with several fire spells able to clear out small sections of the map with ease – again, more valuable in earlier stages of the game, when your health is lower and your exploration riskier.
Our pick of the Dragon’s Dogma classes, though, is the Strider and their speedy walk, hyper-efficient climbing, and choice of the climbing axes, scaling daggers, or the archers’ bow. Other options are available to the Strider – they can use the wizard’s and sorcerer’s weapons – but no other class makes exploring the open world quite as fun as climbing up Behemoth tails and then dive-bombing onto unsuspecting foes from above. On top of that, Striders have access to the rogue’s bag of tricks, from decoys and throwing knifes, to smokescreens, and even non-lethal choke-outs if you’re playing co-op and want to capture rather than slay your foes. As long as you keep your handgun equipped and your stamina close to max, you’ll be ready to scale just about anything that stands in your way.
The enemy gas- and cloud-spewing Aenbound is a particularly tough challenge to face off against if you are a Strider without a bow or climbing axe equipped, so your options on those fronts could be a little limited until you unlock their use. The Strider’s family of skills also require a lot of stamina, so pot shots from your pistol are all well and good, but don’t expect to run on the spot for more than a few seconds before your foot tires, leaving you vulnerable to any Behemoth attack. When you do finally get a climbing axe – most likely from a slain behemoth – your stamina exhaustion rate drops massively. You can even make the climb up the tail and then hang from the beast until your Pawns decide to attack it, causing their attacks to trigger almost immediately. Finally, the damage caused by Behemoth falls also rarely