Choose My Adventure: Trialing and testing in Trixion before returning to Lost Ark

I’m going to preface my return to Choose My Adventure by noting that I’ve had a very busy few days. It’s been a good busy, mind you, but it’s been busy all the same. And it wasn’t all the fault of Armored Core VI either! At the same time, I have to admit to a bit of apprehension in returning to Lost Ark for this column once more. I’ve written before how I felt as if I were effectively locked out from playing this game when I came back previously, whether it was starting from the beginning or returning to my main character.

However, a return does still feel a bit warranted, since the OARPG has tried to lower the barrier of endgame entry with its latest update. So in lieu of waiting on the jump-start servers, it’s at least a good idea to establish a baseline against my launch experience, my return experience, and now.

But that does mean I have to narrow down on a class first – which meant that I had a bunch of character creation and class testing to get done.

Since the last vote told me to use a Powerpass to jump a new character forward, I figured a few hours’ worth of trial time with various advanced classes in Trixion was a worthy idea. This did require me to wait a bit since character deletion is on a weirdly long timer, but it was nice to get used to how Lost Ark plays – especially on a controller, which feels like it’s probably going to be my go-to device for this trip.

After having some time with a variety of advanced classes, I narrowed down the field to four potential choices. And all of those choices were based on one of the things Lost Ark still gets right: presentation.

One of my first trial classes was the Slayer, a tall angry lady with an even taller and angrier sword. This class immediately felt the best to play with a controller, purely because it was button-pressing goodness without too much concern for aiming well. Basically, all I had to do was aim her face at what I wanted dead, and then it would happen.

I also kind of appreciate how the Slayer doesn’t have a lot of resource management to worry about. What’s here is simply a bar that builds to a point she enters what I’m going to call Spicy Mode that sees her attacks get coated in raging flames. It’s simple, kind of mindless, but damn does it feel stupendously effective.

The Glaivier ended up feeling a little bit similar in terms of playstyle in that managing melee works well with a controller, but this one’s big trick is the ability to switch between what appear to be wide, sweeping cones or more directed thrusting attacks. The former felt the best when facing waves of enemies, while the latter seemed to be particularly effective against the boss monster that could be summoned, and swapping between the two as the situation demands didn’t appear to have any kind of penalty.

I rather enjoyed this class’ versatility, and of course it looked great in action. About the biggest hang-up I have is knowing the effective range of her weapon in her focused poking stance. That’s probably going to come with practice and time. Or just not come at all, who knows.

Next up was the Bard. I already know what I’m getting in to when it comes to the Mage advanced classes since my main character is a Sorceress, but I also wanted to try a little something different and a lot more heal-minded and support focused.

I feel like my hours as a Sorceress served me well here, as I generally kept myself aimed in the right direction. About the only thing that threw me off when I was testing this class was how the ranges of her spells seemed to differ wildly. Obviously my tester toolkit is a bit limited, but it was definitely something to note. I also worry that I’ll press the wrong button in the heat of battle, engaging the damage buff ability when I mean to use the big PBAoE heal.

Finally, we have the new kid on the block, the Aeromancer. I really wish this class weren’t locked to the twee as hell Yoz because goodness gracious this trope needs to die in every single fire possible. As much as I might hate the Yoz, though, I’ve got to admit that this class feels extremely fun.

For one, there’s something to be said about walloping enemies with an umbrella, so that brings a big smile to my face. But even beyond that, this class deals some incredible looking damage and even offers up a little bit of party utility on top of it all. Finally, her big Raindrop ability that saw me open my umbrella to either rain ice on foes or apparently help allies in the PBAOE was a surprise. Misgivings about the racial lock aside – and they are heavy misgivings – this class was a good time.

As I mentioned earlier, all of these choices really did have quite a lot of panache in terms of presentation, visuals, and combat feel. But as you can see, there’s a bit of a conundrum in what class to begin anew with. I’m pretty sure I’ve got only one Powerpass to burn up, and I want to try and do this right. So that means that I leave my fate in your hands as ever. It’s time to narrow down the field from four to one.

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As always, voting will wrap up at 1:00 p.m. EDT on Friday, September 8th. I’m going to try to make sure this doesn’t hit broken record territory, and I’m desperately hoping that whatever changes have happened actually make an impact by the end of the journey. Also I promise I won’t be so deeply distracted as we walk through Arkesia once again. Thank you all in advance for sticking with me here.

Welcome to Choose My Adventure, the column in which you join Chris each week as he journeys through mystical lands on fantastic adventures – and you get to decide his fate. Which is good because he can often be a pretty indecisive person unless he’s ordering a burger.