Which class should you play

Ranger and Assassin want short fights. Ranger's opening dodge bonus is its entire defensive budget and it expires on its own, so a Ranger is trying to finish inside a window that closes whether or not it is winning. Assassin trades that for permanent evasion, which is flatter but is a weighted coin rather than a defence. Both are built to end things.

Runic Mage and Mage want long fights, and Runic Mage wants them so badly that it is deliberately mediocre for ten rounds in exchange for being permanently better afterward. Against anything that kills quickly it is the worst class in the game; against anything that does not, it is the best. Mage is the moderate version: a guaranteed comet on a fixed cadence, so you can work out the outcome in advance. Warrior and Brawler sit in the middle and are the two classes that do not care much either way.

This is the part that decides how a class feels. Brawler survives with armor, and uniquely gets it from the same stat as its damage. Ranger and Assassin survive by not being hit, which is excellent on average and occasionally catastrophic over two rounds. Runic Mage and Mage survive by negation and mitigation - Logia refuses physical attacks outright, Arcane Ward blunts the opening - which is reliable but does nothing about the clock.

Warrior is the outlier: Parry shaves damage off the top of every physical exchange, which is neither evasion nor armor but a discount. That is why Warrior has no bad matchup and no dominant one, and why it wins and loses fights by small margins rather than deciding them.

Brawler is the simplest character in the game to gear correctly, because Strength does damage, armor and health, so offense and defense are one number and there is no trade-off to get wrong. Assassin is nearly as simple for the same reason with Agility. Both are good first characters for exactly this reason.

Ranger and Mage are the two where the stat reasoning is genuinely counterintuitive, in opposite directions. Ranger is the only class that turns Luck into crit damage as well as crit chance, so Luck scales harder there than anywhere else. Mage's damage comes from a fixed cadence rather than procs, so Luck is worth measurably less on a Mage than on any other class - and stacking it is the most common way a Mage is built wrong.

For a first character, Brawler. One stat, forgiving gearing, a stun and a multi-hit skill, and its one real weakness - armored enemies eating the whole advantage - teaches you about armor penetration at a point where the lesson is cheap. Warrior is the alternative if you would rather never be hard-countered than ever feel unstoppable.

For a second character, pick against your first. If Brawler taught you the game through armor and Strength, Runic Mage will teach you the other half of it through patience and negation, and the two will want completely different pets, gear and content. That contrast is where this game's depth actually lives, and it is a much better use of a second character than a slightly different damage dealer.