What class(es) do you tend to gravitate towards in video game rpgs?

The proletariat

I generally lean towards classes with more mechanical complexity, so generally casters/status effect types. The gameplay loop needs to sate my ADHD, so if all I'm doing is smacking something with a sword by left clicking I'm quickly going to get bored and drop it.

Paladin because fuck you, you fucking dark fantasy edgelords.

Meme classes/builds. I don't know what's wrong with me. Maybe I've just shifted my younger "don't tell me what to do" perspective into spite for video game developers and their limitations.

I always want to do the most unorthodox thing because I usually don't vibe well with the pre-defined classes in a lot of games. I've quit MMOs because I just don't like ANY of their classes as a whole package and wish they were more modular. That's why I loved Ragnarok Online so much and have played those WoW private servers that let you pick abilities from every class.

I'll dual wield shields in Souls games, make a battle priest in games that try to force them into being healers (Ragnarok). I used heavy armor, a pistol, and a shield in Grim Dawn to essentially be the Terminator. I loved Puppetmaster, one of the least played classes, in FFXI. Blue Mage in FFXIV. Whatever the class was in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance that let you flip a coin to 50/50 kill yourself or an enemy. Tonfas (the worst weapon in the game) in Nioh.

As long as the least played class isn't that because it's so unnecessarily complicated (Feral Druid many different times in WoW, etc) I naturally gravitate toward that a lot of the time. But it's really based on vibes. If I get a cool combination of race and starting armor, I might just go with a concept, like an anti-mage or something.

Edit: I know I was supposed to hit you up to play Ragnarok sometime soon from a previous thread, but I started a Chinese class and got super busy

When I was a kid, mages - or whatever hacker type equivalent if it was a scifi or near future ttepg

As an adult, gimme a big club to bonk enemies with.

I usually enjoy tanks, but I am also hopelessly drawn to mechanically unusual stuff

The most fun I've had in a tabletop game was when I played an investigator in Pathfinder

I knocked out a bunch of dudes with my sap, broke down the big bad with a detailed psychological analysis and proved a bunch of goblins didn't burn down a warehouse by noticing the real culprit rode a horse (Pathfinder goblins are terrified of horses)

I've always been the sneaky rogue type, but I haven't played as many TTRPGs as I'd like. And I just can't get into most video game RPGs, but my Skyrim character is always a stealth archer with a side of magic like everybody else's Skyrim character is.

I tend to pick weirdo outsider classes, but also in ttrpg parties tend to slot in around other players.

I find whichever class can smash the ground and make spikes come up. Sometimes it's a caster, sometimes it's a tank.

always a sneaky/rogue type

Wizard, wizard, and wizard. Sometimes I'll be a warrior, then I'll immediately give up and and be a wizard.

I love me some magic. If I'm not doing cool Dragon Ball like energy blasts I'm not interested.

But rn I'm playing oblivion where I find it kind of hard to brute force with mage, so I just use some supplementary spells as a nightblade.

Whichever one lets me run directly at the enemy and punch things the hardest. Fighter, barbarian, whatever

Big strong fat guys, I think I kind of just have a type ngl

I like anything with poison access. Watching the health tick away while I buy for time is satisfying.

teamfighter disabler tank

the action don't stop

or alternatively whatever the worst jankiest loadout is, especially if it's gimmicky and pisses people off

I found the best class for the PC to be a combo of rogue skillbot with a dash of magical ability. You can usually fill in a weak melee front with party members, but oftentimes rpgs will suddenly remove you from your lockpicker/magic shit analyzer so having those skills on the one character all but guaranteed to be in the party is useful.

Something tanky with a bit of support magic usually. Paladin is my first pick if it's an option in a game.

It depends on the game, really.

MMOs, give me healer, all day long. I honestly do enjoy it, but I'm also willing to give out as good as I can take. It gets easier when you learn what you're looking at, like no, DPS standing in fire, I won't heal your constant damage ticks you can avoid over the tank who can't avoid their incoming.

Solo play, if I can, social skills! Lemme talk the enemy into giving up. Lemme turn their entire army against them without firing a shot. If that's not available, some kinda Spellblade or Summoner. Gimme that mix of magic and smack you in the face, be it on my own or while my ferret companion climbs up your shirt.

In mmo's or more traditional crpgs I almost always play a tank or some kind of front line fighter, sometimes a healer. Bethesda rpgs is stealth archer.

I play some kind of wizard usually. The mage/rogue might be the class fantasy i aspire to most, but in most games its just less interesting than full wizard. Youd think that in a magical society more martials would learn at least a bit of magic on the side, but even ones that have the means just don't

I'm a bit of a number freak so I just gravitate toward whatever lets me stack a ton of modifiers and mechanics that multiply each other and cause crazy numbers to appear on the screen. That usually means mage characters that exploit lots of status effects but also can mean warriors that use every buff effect or similar things.

My favorite Path of Exile character was a build that would stack strength and int. Strength gave life, damage multiplier, and energy shield multiplier; life was converted to energy shield; int gave energy shield multiplier; energy shield then was converted to a sword. My spell damage scaled with triple the damage of the sword. Any small tweak I made to improve the build ended up giving huge gains just because of how much it would get compounded across all those things.

Usually love playing healer/support classes

Ranged always ranged no matter the setting. Give me a bow or a sniper or a PPC please.

PvP: healer. Ideally a mix of healing and crowd control abilities. This what I played in Shadowbane and that awful game imprinted itself on my psyche forevermore.

PvE: ranged attacker of some kind like a ranger.

glass cannon, magic user if possible. i want to see how far i can go without dying :::3

Fast melee. Don't have to learn any magic system bullshit, and the game is typically designed around using melee weapons. Lots of games have slow hard-hitting weapons that are just too slow to be viable, but if it's possible I do enjoy me some caveman ungabunga hit with big stick from time to time.

I always go for gishy spellsword types

Sorcerers et al have always spoken to me, so I beeline for those if no one else is playing them in the group. If magic were real I would be a Shantotto or a Matoya, no question. Leave me alone with my frogs and brooms, all of you are losers. In FFXIV specifically I play the dwarf/gnome race, and small wizards are only a little bit cliche, so Iike being a beefy tank. I am small and fat IRL and if I could swing an axe like that with the rage of a thousand beasts you fuckin bet I would

Mostly caster classes because they're more visually interesting than martial classes. Yeah, attack animations can get pretty cool, but I don't care how many flips/spins/tricks a martial character does, they're not going to stack up with most of the stuff a caster can bust out, especially when it comes to late-game spells.

paladin, you're strong enough that you can defend yourself but also you can heal yourself/your team. other healer classes tend to be too weak to defend themselves, and strictly aggressive classes rely too much on healers for me personally to wanna play one

I look for cheese ability, speed, and damage output, and the aesthetics attached to the class aren't terribly important to me.

In typical metalhead fashion I tend to pick whatever has a dark magic aesthetic, like Necromancers and Warlocks

I tend to be anything that has Ice/Frost Magic. If not that, than any healer.

i prefer DPS style classses but i will always choose the class with 2 handed swords in fantasy RPGs. i would play mages more often but i generally don't like the 'big glowing colorful ground markers with area of effect elemental damage attacks' genre of magic aesthetic, it comes across as gimmicky/fictitious/unimmersive, magic should be liminal/surreal/terrifying imo. i basically kind of hate the WoW style fantasy/videogame aesthetic and genre of RPG, the only one i really even slightly enjoyed was Guild Wars 2 (because huge playable cat guys with 4 ears and 4 horns and no paid subscription)

Paladin with a big two handed reach weapon and tries their best but has trouble rigidly following their code.

I've enjoyed playing high damage character of several varieties (I used to play a good amount of black mage, red mage and monk in FFXIV) but I have more fun playing tanks (I also find it more stressful unfortunately).

In single player games I tend toward melee classes, I find that if I'm playing a ranged class with enemies chasing me down I feel stressed.

In a current D&D game I'm playing a support focused cleric/sorcerer. I get very obsessive about stuff and have trouble not optimizing. I thought it would be very annoying if someone played a warrior with mighty thews and my warrior with mighty thews was just twice as good as killing guys with a sword than theirs, but nobody is mad at the mage who just makes them better at everything they were already going to do, plus I tend to play my character pretty cheerleadery anyways.

healer/support or mage

60% chance I pick mage (except in WoW, mage is boring and actual satan if we're talking classic)

40% chance I pick a sword and board fighter or warrior, it ain't much, but its honest work

Tank or Healer. Sometimes stealth

I will do a magic user every now and then but that is rare. Last time I did was Torchlight 2

Always some type of caster. Preferably with tons of CC and weird spell options, but I'll take a nuke wizard if that isn't available.

Thief/rogue and I'll go in hard in speech stuff if that's part of it.

in a single player RPG I'm a basic ass heavy armor tank with as much social skill as the game allows for. in an MMO I'm basically any form of utility, I like the extra thought that goes into being a tank or healer. dps tends to have a clear correct way to hit your buttons in every encounter in the entire game and the better you are at hitting your buttons exactly that way the better a dps you are. but tank and healer can have a slightly more nuanced thought process involving risk and reward and whatnot

You playing anything cool right now pal? i always worry about you man, you and i lived pretty similarly for awhile (fathers picking fights with us and demeaning us)

Warlock

It totally depends on the Genre. In diablo style games I go for the kitey shooty usually bow/crossbow class. In tab targeting games its always a heal over time class. In more TTRPG inspired games I love rogues. In party based games I love whatever class lets me stack the most buffs. Thats just the crunch though.

Overall I love druidic vibes. The class fantasy of nature fighting back is too juicy for me. There is something so wholesome about murdering corrupt priests/kings with pagan power. My go to class in just about every game is a wood elf druid.

The druid class hall in WoW Legion is a perfect representation for why I love them so much. Its just this perfect lil grove and someone wants to corrupt it. Stopping them is the simplest strongest motivation for me.