Classes in Black Desert

Black Desert has traditional class system. When you create a new character you need to choose your class. Your class determines your role in the game and the skills you are able to use. Each class is unique and has its own unique animation of movements and combat attacks.

There are 9 classes in Black Desert. 4 of them are available, 5 will be added later.

Fighter (more information...)

• This class is not very easy to control; it will take time to master all his abilities, combos and attacks.
• Fighter has great defense because he wears heavy armor and is equipped with shield.
• Fighter has a lot of combos. Animation of all combos is great and you will have a lot of fun.
• The evasion is low. He can’t avoid attacks fast but actually he doesn’t need it.
• The class is not the best damage dealer in the game. He is mostly for tanking.

Ranger (more information...)

• Ranger is not very easy to control; BD is a game with no-target system and ranger will have to aim the target first. It will take time to master all abilities and attacks.
• The defense is very low mostly because Ranger wears light armor and has low health.
• Ranger has rather good set of different combo attacks. Combos are easy to use but the result is great.
• The class has the best evasion compared to other classes. Such evasion compensates low passive defense. Ranger has a lot of different tricks that allow to avoid attacks.
• Damage is rather high.

Sorcerer (more information...)

• Sorcerer is the most difficult class to control. You will have to aim the target and will have to move a lot. It wil take time to master all abilities, combos and movements.
• The defense is very low because of light armor. But anyway she is protected better than Ranger.
• Sorcerer has large number of combo attacks. She has the largest amount of possible combos, most of them are difficult to use.
• Evasion is very good. She can avoid attacks using different skills like teleportation.
• Attack is very good. Sorcerer deals a lot of damage with skills. There are abilities for both melee and ranged attacks.

Giant (more information...)

• Giant is very easy to control. You will be able to master all his abilities and attacks very fast. It’s the easiest class.
• He has the best defense because of heavy armor and large amount of health.
• Giant has combos and most of them are easy to cast and use.
• Evasion is low but he actually doesn’t need it. Big health pool and defense allows him to fight without worrying about evasion.
• Attack is very high. Giant deals a lot of damage with his dual wield axes and different combo abilities.

Developers promised to add not only new classes in future but also add male and female variant for every class. Only Giant and Blader will be male only. Tamer will be only female. They say that devs will continue working with classes after the release and some new will be added after the game goes live.

You may notice that some of the classes have both Male and Female variants. For example Ranger is female and Archer is male bowman. Why not to merge them in one class? The answer is because male and female characters have different skill lines. Actually these classes are different because they have different abilities.

As you see from the list above each race is bounded to a certain class. For example you can’t create an Elven Wizard or Human Ranger.

Black Desert has a strict class system where race and gender of your character is bounded to your class. This system doesn’t allow much flexibility and some players may not like it.

Roles

In most MMO games every class has a special role in a group. For example Rogue in WOW can be damage dealer and can’t be healer or tank. Black Desert doesn’t have roles. All classes are able to deal damage; some have special abilities for making group stronger; some can block better than others but these differences are not so big.

If you look through the list of classes once again you will see that there is no healing specialization there. That’s right. Developers are not planning to add healer. But they may change their opinion in future. There will be support specializations: Valkyrie and Wizard will have skills for supporting allies.

There is no stealthy class and developers are not going to add any shadow warriors or rogues.

Class Skills

Most of the class skills have linear progression until level 40, but some skills have progression trees. Linear progression means that your skill becomes stronger when you level it but you can’t add new powers to it.

After reaching 40th level every class gets access to "Skill Awakening": each new level brings special Skill Awakening Points which can be used for skill modification. Modified skills receive random attributes. It’s possible to reset these attributes after you reach 50th level.

There is no level cap in BD but after you reach 50th level it will become much more difficult to level up further. But there is a reason to continue leveling: your characteristics continue to grow.

In general class system in Black Desert Online is rather complicated. Race, gender, armor and weapon are bounded to class, male and female characters with same weapon have different classes, and there are no healers. Many game fans don’t understand necessity of such gender specialization. Why developers didn’t use traditional system of classes where a player can create a male and female character with same skills? Anyway that’s how the things are going right now.