Lost Ark - Definitive Class Guide (2023)

Here you can find basic info about all in-game classes.

List of All Classes with Description

Berserker

Hit enemies and build up your Runaway identity gauge, which once activated greatly increases your movement speed, attack speed, and Crit Chance for a long period of time. The class feels strong and hasty with Runaway on and slow and sluggish while it’s off.

Skills have a lot of built-in flinch super armor which allow you to brush off attacks that would otherwise interrupt others.

Requires class engraving Berserker’s Secret Move and high Specialization stat to feel good to play.

Skill kit is very good at ‘pubstomping’ in PVP but struggles against skilled players that are using more competitive classes, especially with later classes that are released.

PVE Difficulty

★☆☆☆☆

• Very easy to pick up, but high cooldowns and long animations can be challenging in faster-paced fights.

Gunlancer

This is not a support or a tank class, but it does have a Taunt which is used to interrupt certain boss patterns and hold enmity for a few seconds before the boss returns to random aggro.

Deals consistent damage while building up the Shield gauge with blue attacks or dealing heavy burst damage with red ones.

Popular ‘blue’ build uses the Combat Posture class engraving to deal good damage with shield-generating skills to maintain high HP overshields.

The ‘red’ Lonely Knight class engraving is also popular and it orients the class more towards burst damage, Weak Point damage, and stagger damage, but less defense.

OK at PVP but struggles against newer classes that have high mobility and hard CC in their kits.

PVE Difficulty

★☆☆☆☆

• Combat Posture Gunlancer is extremely safe and easy to play.

★★☆☆☆

• Lonely Knight Gunlancer is much less tanky but can still take advantage of the shield to attack uninterrupted.

Paladin

Provides very consistent damage buffs while dealing a little more damage than Bard.

He is worse than Bard at keeping a team alive but better at providing damage buffs.

The disparity between these two is not big, so both classes are interchangeable for the support role without any issue.

His support Awakening is the second one which is a little annoying as you need to be able to access Rohendel and complete the 2-4 hour long quest to unlock it.

PVE Difficulty

• ★★☆☆☆

Wardancer

An Agile class that builds up Ki orbs by hitting enemies with skills. Ki orbs are expended to cast ‘Ult:’ skills. An alternative class build using the Beginner’s Mind class engraving ignores ‘Ult:’ skills altogether to only attack using empowered basic skills.

She can maneuver in and out of combat quickly and deals most of her damage inside a 6 second self-buff window, auto-attacking in between and using smaller filler skills.

One of the most oppressive classes in PVP that can pin down an enemy, but lacks super armor, forcing the operator to play and engage very carefully. High skill ceiling.

PVE Difficulty

★★☆☆☆

• Overall simple, you pretty much just hold major skills until your buff skills are off cooldown.

Scrapper

Heavy-hitting mana-less class that balances attacks between the Ki (yellow) and Shock (green) resources. One type of skill expends one resource and generates the other.

Her Taijutsu build is agile, dealing consistent damage while keeping her mobile. Preferred in faster-paced encounters.

The Shock Regeneration build leans towards heavy-hitting shock-consuming skills. It’s less mobile and inflicts satisfying bigger numbers.

Scrapper is the most balanced class in the game, and it often feels like the game is balanced around her. She is low volatility and least likely to be impacted by balance changes.

She is always fairly competitive in PVP as a result. While less oppressive than Wardancer, she’s far tankier with a few super armor options when engaging, and capable of deleting enemies with some of her attacks at the same time.

PVE Difficulty

• I’ve never played this at endgame so I can’t rate this.

Soulfist

Casting skills expend Energy, which is this class’ version of Mana which automatically regenerates at a set pace. Falling to 0 or lower Energy locks you out of your skills until it regenerates back to 1000.

Her identity has 3 stages that empower her, with each stage being more powerful and lower duration than the previous. After the 3rd stage (the strongest one), she is unbuffed for a period of time where she is weakest. Popular build uses the Heaven Defying Body class engraving to always skip straight to the 3rd stage and regenerates it after it expires much quicker.

She’s a close-mid ranged fighter that deals devastating damage when she’s in her empowered state, but is weak when she isn’t. Best known for her hallmark Awakening skill, the strongest single-hit attack in the game.

She has always been very powerful in PVP. One of the most versatile skill sets that have expansive options to poke, engage, and burst down enemies.

PVE Difficulty

★★★★☆

• Abstract playstyle. Close-ranged fighter but lacks super armor, and so is easily interrupted. Skill management is important as is decision-making on when to activate empowerment or use Awakening skill.

Striker

This is the male gender unlock of Wardancer. They share 12 skills that are the same, but 6 that are different, different Awakening skills, different engravings, and different Specialty scaling.

Striker combines Wardancer’s two synergy skills into one skill, giving him one full extra attack slot.

His class engraving is heavily oriented towards consuming Ki orbs to empower his attacks. His unique skills are very powerful combined with this, so this build tends to run meta.

He can feel awkward to play due to the nature of having to land a backattack with a charging dash skill.

He does not do more overall damage than Wardancer, and he tends to be slower due to not running Agility. He is very fun to play though, and he can make big damage numbers.

PVE Difficulty

★★★☆☆

• Slightly harder to play than Wardancer due to lack of agility in the meta build and skills that can be annoying to consistently land on the enemy’s back.

Sorceress

This is the classic mage experience. Sorceress excels at long ranged direct damage dealing with spells.

She has two playstyles, one which focuses around high burst damage and low mobility, and one which focuses on constant sustained damage and high mobility.

Those who play the former need to have good mastery of each individual boss mechanics to know how to position yourself and when to unload your burst. The latter is much more lenient, but is unable to do burst damage.

Sorceress’ role in PVP is a long ranged enabler. While she doesn’t do as much direct damage as her counterpart Summoner, she has access to better skills to poke and peel, as well as very high mobility as long as she holds onto her identity gauge.

PVE Difficulty

★★★☆☆

• For Ignition build, most of the difficulty comes from learning the bosses more so than learning the rotations. There are a few animation cancels to learn, but nothing that’s very difficult.

★☆☆☆☆

• For Reflux build, just cast spells. It’s that easy. You can Blink in a pinch. Not for players suffering from arthritis.

Bard

Playing her as DPS isn’t really an option before T3 Legion Raid gear.

Provides consistent shielding and attack buffs to party members. When hitting enemies, she builds resources which she can expend to cast an additional powerful damage buff or a heal (she must choose which one to use depending on the raid situation).

Requires her class engraving Urgent Rescue for the heal to be any decent.

In PVP, she can burst down enemies with her only major damage skill, Soundholic, but outside of that focuses on keeping allies alive and buffing them, while debilitating enemies and being difficult to kill.

PVE Difficulty

★★☆☆☆

• She’s easy to play. Just don’t overlap buffs that should be staggered. Time your attack buffs with clear damage windows when bosses are vulnerable. Despite being a low HP and defense coefficient, she tends to be very tanky due to not using Grudge engraving and opting for Heavy Armor engraving.

Deadeye

Cycles between pistols, shotguns, and sniper rifle stances. Pistols are for debuffing and mobility, shotgun is for primary damage, and sniper rifle is for secondary damage and long-ranged poking.

Since shotguns are the main damage source, this class is not to be mistaken as a ranged class despite using guns. It spends a lot of time near the boss, and also has to worry about positioning since most skills benefit from Back Attack.

Has a secondary build that only uses pistols. Very fun, but novel and weaker than the build that uses all weapons.

Has a lot of very fast engagement options and can poke from afar in PVP. Catching an enemy, if allowed to go unchecked, can deal huge damage through combos. High skill ceiling.

PVE Difficulty

★★★★★

• It’s a really squishy class that requires you to develop muscle memory to properly stance switch while monitoring cooldowns of 16 skills (all other classes only use around 8 skills). Getting used to proper positioning on bosses can also be highly challenging.

★☆☆☆☆

• The Handgunner pistol-only build is super easy since it doesn’t weapon swap at all and has low cooldowns. Fun to play, simple to pick up.

Artillerist

A tanky artillery-based class that deals high damage through detonations.

Strongest skills have a time-delay on them, where you cast them and a few seconds later the attack lands. This can require some planning to get used to.

Identity skill allows the Artillerist to enter Siege mode transformation, giving it access to an emergency shield and a strong laser.

Has a very strong personal shield that can help it endure through certain mechanics.

Strong zoning-oriented PVP kit with the option to engage from mid-range and Quick Recharge with extremely powerful and elaborate set-ups to deal huge damage to targets before they recover from stun effects.

PVE Difficulty

★★★★☆

• Similar to Destroyer, the playstyle is not for everyone. Depending on the boss, it can require an additional layer of spatial thinking to understand how to effectively place your bombs.

Sharpshooter

One of the only true ranged classes in the game. Most of his damage is concentrated in just a few skills that are high-commit and long-ranged. Deals high damage from these few skills. Skills generate Silverhawk gauge which can be used to summon the bird Silverhawk to fight alongside you, but the popular playstyle of this class uses the class engraving to yeet the bird at the enemy the moment it’s available to gain a buff.

Due to the ranged playstyle and medium-length cooldowns, Sharpshooter is a class that can focus on dodging mechanics while finding opportunities to use their long-ranged skills uninhibited.

Not a highly ranked PVP class, but is arguably one of the most annoying classes in the game to play against. Does a good job of bullying in mid-upper to lower divisions.

PVE Difficulty

★★☆☆☆

• I found the attack rotation to be pretty basic and a little boring at times. It’s a generally safe class.

Gunslinger

Of her 18 skills, 6 of them are different from Deadeye (2 from each stance), as well as both of her Awakening skills, her class engravings, as well as her specialization stat.

They swap the specialization effect for shotgun and sniper rifle for Gunslinger, which is a major reason why her sniper rifle is so powerful compared to Deadeye.

Her tripods are also unique and remove the Back Attack attribute from her shotgun skills in return for gaining the bonuses from Back Attack passively on them. This allows her to attack from any orientation and not have to always reposition to the back like Deadeye.

Whereas Deadeye has an extremely powerful shotgun, Gunslinger has a fairly powerful shotgun and sniper rifle, giving her a lot of long-ranged options if she can’t get close to a boss in a given moment.

This flexibility is a major reason why she’s considered preferable over Deadeye as it makes her far easier to play even if her potential damage is slightly lower.

PVE Difficulty

★★★☆☆

• She’s squishy but has high mobility and does not need to rely on attacking from any specific direction. Also much of her damage is ranged and isn’t exclusively melee like Deadeye.

★★☆☆☆

• The Hunting Time engraving greatly simplifies her kit by removing the shotgun from her skills in exchange for higher Crit Chance on pistol and sniper skills.