Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Class Interview #5

Ten Ton Hammer is offering up a fifth class interview for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, this time highlighting the Barbarian class.

Q: In the class preview for the Barbarian, you pretty much illustrated the fact that Barbarians will be unequaled melee class fighters. How then will they be balanced compared to the more typical (tank) characters the Guardian, Conqueror, and Dark Templar? How are you balancing the character compared to those other classes? Who would win in a straight up fight?

A: Barbarians are very brutal melee fighters, having the highest area-oriented melee damage (as the Assassin specializes mostly on single-target damage) and some of the highest overall damage potential in the game. Compared to the Soldier archetype, Barbarians obviously have the potential to dish out significantly more pain in general while Soldiers are a bit more resilient. Both classes have their strengths and weaknesses, so it would be very difficult to say that one would specifically or always have an advantage over the other. A Soldier would specialize in wearing down their opponent and surviving a bit on the longer side, while a Barbarian would rely on pure aggression in addition to their stuns, knockbacks, and other forms of crowd-control to dispatch their foes.