Welcome to the definitive ranking of Hybrid Damage Dealing Archetypes in Project Ascension’s classless World of Warcraft experience! Whether you’re a veteran WoW player exploring the innovative Archetype system or a complete newcomer looking for the perfect starting build, this comprehensive tier list will help you make an informed decision.
What Are Archetypes?
Archetypes are Project Ascension’s answer to the overwhelming freedom of classless gameplay. Instead of spending hours theory-crafting the perfect combination of abilities, talents, and mystic enchantments, Archetypes provide ready-to-play, community-tested builds that automatically unlock your skills as you level. Think of them as expertly designed class templates that let you jump straight into the action while still experiencing the unique cross-class combinations that make Ascension special.
Archetypes are divided into categories to help players choose their rough playstyle. This tier list covers the Hybrid DPS – the perfect mix of both Magic users and melee archetypes in WoW Ascension, which has a choice from 8 Archetypes: Crusader, White Walker, Firelord, Master of Shadows, Druid of the Fang, Storm Giant, Hellcat, and Divine Sentinel.
Role: Damage -> Category: Hybrid -> The 8 classes can be seen here.
S-TIER: The Best Overall Archetypes
White Walker
S – Tier
Cold as the Frozen Wastes of Northrend, White Walkers are wizards trained to wield cursed Blades. Combining swordplay with the raw might of frigid magic, these frozen wraiths glide across the battlefield, slowing, stunning, and encasing foes in ice. As a White Walker, you'll build up Combo Points to unleash savage Frost Magic, entombing foes in ice and snow.White Walkers are the perfect example of a hybrid class. White Walkers tend to enchant their weapons and use Frost-based Spells to keep enemies close, while hurting them with enchanted weaponry. A Frost Mage / Rogue Hybrid, with its own abilities as well.
This is a great class to play in PvP with a lot of Crowd Control abilities, Area of Effect Spells, and Mobility are all top tier, while assuring that players can deal high single-target damage through Critical Strikes.
Personally, I had a lot of fun playing this class through a playthrough of PvP leveling and can vouch that, as a lesser geared player, the class was still amongst the top few damage dealers on the leaderboard.
Although this class can be seen as moderately complicated at times, with numerous buttons to press, the hotbars can fill up quickly.
A-TIER: Strong Picks
Crusader
A – Tier
Wielding the power of the holy light, Crusaders are the mebodiments of divine justice. Often likened to angelic warriors, Crusaders Consecrate both their weapons and the ground beneathe them, igniting foes in righteous fire. As a Crusader, you Seal Spells boast considerable strength, allowing your weapon to deal bonus damage. Your divine fury is relentless, your justice law. Use your array of Holy Weapons to bathe the wicked in Holy Flames, leaving only the righteous standing.Primarily a melee class, the Crusader still has some access to ranged spells of a Paladin. This class is considered a strong pick, as it deals moderate damage but lacks the hybrid aspect, and is mainly a renamed Paladin. They possess good survivability, boasting high armor and abilities that enable them to go into invulnerability windows.
Crusaders are beginner-friendly, featuring a basic and simple button rotation. This archetype is most suited for beginners due to its simplicity.
Fire Lord
A – Tier
The fury of Azeroth is fueled by molten earth: a power you've harnessed and made your own. As a firelord, you'll unleash waves of earth and fire to damage, ignite and sear enemies, melting foes until their corpses rejoin the great flow. Molten Fury powers your abilities, and each swing shakes the ground beneathe you and causes explosions of elemental fire.Fire Lords are primarily their own class, with unique abilities never seen before. This class is generally considered a fun and engaging class to participate in. This class has strong AoE use and fire-based Damage over Time abilities alongside a heavy crit build.
Essentially a Fire-Warrior with access to Pryoblast, a high damage Fire Mage ability, Firelords are very in theme and built uniquely compared to other classes that may feel like rebranded versions of Classic Classes.
Storm Giant
A – Tier
Unleash the fury of thunder and lightning! As a Storm Giant, you are a hulking avatar of the storm's fury. Blast Enemies with thunder and lightning to electrocute multiple foes at once, and use massive weapons to charge your unrelenting maelstorm. Your hits charge up your legendary Lightning Blade, which instantly strike Foes for massive Nature damage.Storm Giants are another thematic Archetype, where the lore heavily influences the abilities. This helps me love the class as a whole, with simple button rotations depending on the number of enemies. This is a reasonably simple class to play with plenty of room for error, opposed to other Archetypes.
This class is essentially a mixture of Shamans and Warriors, where the Shaman Totems and abilities allow for extra swings and haste to enhance the DPS of the player further. What it lacks is simply that it would do less damage than the archetypes listed above this one, but it remains a solid pick.
B-TIER: Decent Picks
Divine Sentinel
B – Tier
Fueled by their devotion to a higher power, the Divine Sentinel sacrifices physical power to ascend to a higher plane. Their divine strikes instead deal Holy Damage, allowing them to purify foes. Armed with a massive two-handed weapon, these knights focus on heavy swings and devastating explosions of Holy Energy, consecrating foes in the name of justice.Divine Sentinels are a more spell-oriented take on Paladins, blending the characteristics of Paladins with a slight Priest vibe. This archetype falls short due to its high cooldowns for AoE abilities and inferiority to Crusader, a more melee-focused Paladin that deals more damage overall.
These characters have a holy Aura, which can look visually appealing, and players often like playing this class for its easy-to-understand playstyle, with rotations using Holy Fire and Wrath Procs making for situational ‘spamming’.
Druid of the Fang
B – Tier
The eerie halls of the Wailing Caverns hold many secrets, and you have listened. Transformed into a Druid of the Fang, you can shift into a poisonous serpent at will and enchance your skills with poison damage. Build up combo points while whittling foes away with venom, then finish them off with savage attacks.Druids of the Fang is a class where you play as a Poisonous Serpent, the model of which is also seen in World of Warcraft Retail, in later expansions as a trash mob for specific dungeons, but not as a playable race, which makes this such a cool concept.
Unfortunately, this class underdelivers in single-target damage, as it relies on two damage-over-time abilities (AoE Swipe and venom). Utilizing low-damage abilities to build combo points, eventually using a moderately damaging ability called Serpent Venom. The Ramp time to deal damage is too large to make this a competitively viable class, but it still isn’t an awful class, and players should choose Druid of the Fang if they like the appearance of the newly introduced form.
C-TIER– Passable Classes
Master of Shadows
C – Tier
All rogues thrive in the shadows, but you have chosen a darker path. Studying the Warlocks of Azeroth, you've enchanted your martial prowess with sinister magic that shrouds your weapons in gloom. As a Master of Shadows, you combine the art of assassination with Shadow Magic.Master of Shadows is the only class that is oriented around Rogue abilities, mixing it with warlock damage over time abilities, giving a ‘magic’ bleed effect. Master of Shadows relies heavily on DoT and so has a relatively similar vibe to a regular Rogue in World of Warcraft Retail classes.
While conceptually synergetic, in reality, the warlock spells don’t match up perfectly with the rogue aspect, leaving this class underperforming in Single Target Damage (Which is what Rogues usually excel in), as well as lacking AoE (which is typical for Rogues).
D-TIER– Avoid
Hellcat
D – Tier
Druids who channel the magic of the Firelands are known as Druids of the Flame. As one such Druid, you Catform is wreathed in elemental fire, causing your attacks to deal bonus Fire Damage. Build up Combo points and unleash them in a blaze of Searing Flame, tearing through foes with burning claws, and molten teeth.This is such an unfortunate positioning for what could’ve been a cool class. The Hellcat is essentially a Feral Form Druid with Fire abilities instead of Bleed over time abilities. The class falls short as it uses Mana, with no way of regaining Mana.
As the Mana Regeneration remains an issue as of currently, this is a novel idea and is quite easily the least damaging archetype to play, as the duration they are viable for is currently laughable.
Thanks for reading. As a player who frequents the Discord Server and plays PvP semi-competitively, I find my rankings to be somewhat accurate, with confirmation from the community when asked.
The descriptions were taken from in-game, on the character creation screen, for easy lore updates to the reader. I felt it was relevant, as choosing a class may be influenced by the ‘vibe’.
