AdventureQuest 3D: How to Prioritise Stats for your Class

Hello there!

I have noticed, after quite the rummage online, that the stats in AQ3D are a bit of a mystery. So much in fact that the two best armour sets in the game currently, along with the Braken weapons and those weapons belonging to the two armour sets, are used interchangeably as they all seem to have the same power level of 315…
This has led me to believe that it doesn’t actually matter so much as to what gear you have, as it does to what you can get your hands on.
Or does it? I am going to look into what these stats mean, and how you can utilise each of these with regards to the class that you play right now, or the classes that you want to play.
So lets get into it!

Some of the stats in the game might have more clarity surrounding them compared to others as to what they do, because right now, they don’t actually make an awful lot of difference to your character. At least not yet, anyway.
In the future, and with further updates to the effects these have on your character, the effect of these will become a lot more transparent as they get higher, and it will be easier to see which stats you might prefer over the others for your playstyle.
Take for example Health. It’s a simple enough stat: the higher your Health stat, the higher you character’s health, and as the level cap is increased and more gear is released, then the higher you will be able to increase it. This makes a lot of sense, but is a Health stat priority really what you want to be going for?

Well, to answer this question we need to have a look at what the others do.
When we look at the Armor stat, we see that the higher this one is, the less damage we take on a hit-by-hit basis. This may cause confusion here, because do we really want to have one of these higher than the other? Well, not really. The only way to increase your Armor is actually by equipping armour of a higher power level; there is no stat listed on the armour and weapons that you can equip, so you can’t actually see what difference it’s going to make to the letter (number?). The only way to see this stat, is by looking at the number on your character page.

The next stat to look at is the Attack stat. This one is very simple, and is actually affected by both weapons AND armour, so it’s worth looking at certain armour pieces to see if you can raise this one even more. All this one does is, opposite to Armor, increase the amount of damage you do to enemies. That’s it. Flat out, increases the damage you deal per hit.

It’s worth briefly mentioning here your resource stat, of which the most common is Mana. This is different for every class: Warriors and Berserkers don’t have a resource, so this isn’t listed; Mages, Guardians, Paladins and Moglomancers all use Mana, which has a flat cap of 1000 regardless of your stats; DragonSlayers use Determination, which is a resource that builds with auto-attacks and all skills used under 50, and caps at 100; Rogues and Ninjas both use a similar resource (Spirit for Rogues and Chi for Ninjas), which is a very fast regenerating resource that caps at 100; Pirates use Gold Bullets, which caps at 6 and is filled by the skill Reload, filling it up to 6 every time it is used; and finally, Necromancers use Souls, a resource capping at 100, building with attacks and enemy deaths, and is used to summon skeletons. If you’re struggling to comprehend what these are because you’ve played other RPGs such as World of Warcraft, Mana is “Magical Stamina” and is used to cast spells (which should be self explanatory), Determination is similar to “Rage”, building with attacks, Spirit and Chi are similar to “Energy” or “Stamina”, Gold Bullets and Souls are unique but Souls can be compared to “Rage”, albeit with a twist.

The next three stats are the most ambiguous, it’s very unclear to what effect and by how much these actually affect play in the game, but I’m going to talk about them here briefly, before going into a class-by-class analysis for stat priority.
Evasion is actually the stat your character uses to attempt to dodge an attack. The higher this one is, the more often you will dodge attacks. It’s actually interesting to note that there isn’t a stat listed in the game that directly counters this; one to increase chance to hit. This might be because of the lack of the “miss” mechanic. If an attack hasn’t hit, it’s because your opponent has dodged the attack, so regardless of the level you are or the opponent you’re facing, if your Evasion stat is incredibly high, you will be able to dodge a lot more attacks.

The second to last is the Crit stat, your character’s ability to critically hit an attack. This one determines how often you will be able to land an attack on your opponent that does more damage than normal (the multiplier, I believe, is 2.0x, so double damage). This one doesn’t have a massive impact on your characters ability to fight but has a huge bearing on how much damage output you can essentially dish out, increasing your DPS (damage per second). This one might be more important to increase if you’re completely damage focused, or your class is lacking in damage.

The last stat here is Haste, which probably has the most ambiguity of them all. Most people have the impression that it decreases spell cooldowns – which isn’t true. If this were the case, you would be able to see the cooldown times listed on your spells lower than the rate listed in the class menu. However, they do actually remain the same. What this stat actually does is increase the speed of your spell casts (for those with a spell cast time, such as the Mage spell Fireball), and the speed of your auto-attack. For classes with no spell cast time, such as Warrior, this stat might actually be slightly useless, if the cooldowns on a Warriors skills weren’t so long: giving more time to fit in auto-attacks, increased with haste. This stat is also important for DPS, and is useful for classes whose mechanics rely on a faster auto-attack.

Alright, now that the basics are out of the way, let’s get into the class specific stat priorities, and why!

The Warrior is a very basic class, with some strong melee attacks. Although it seems like it’s a very simple class, Warrior is actually a little bit more complicated with regards to its mechanics and how it plays.
Simple enough is it to just mash the skills as they come available and do as much damage as possible against an opponent, but Warrior is special in that it’s THE aoe (area of effect) specialist, and is useful for getting the attention of, and clearing mobs in dungeons with its Sever and Whirlwind skills. It also has a lot of power available in its other skills, which means its also quite a balanced class.

With regards to this, if you intend to play a warrior, it’s key that you balance a few of its stats effectively to get the most out of its style of play:

ATTACK – this is very useful for a Warrior because of it’s high attack power multiplier on Crushing Blow and Earthbreaker. Crushing blow deals damage based on 180% of your attack power, and Earthbreaker deals 450% of your attack power as damage, which might be good to utilise more fully as Sever and Whirlwind both only use 100% (comparably low to other skills). Increasing Attack will help you get the most damage out of these skills and can help you out in a pinch. The slower cooldowns and higher damage mean that Warriors are good at burst damage, being slower to attack but dealing high damage when it gets there. You want to capitalise on this.

HEALTH – It comes as no surprise that the plate wearing Warrior will want as much health as possible, being on the front lines of most fights and being right in there with the action. With only one tanking class available at the moment, warriors are there as one of the toughest classes, and need to increase their health to be able to survive longer in fights.

ARMOR – going hand in hand with Health, Armor is going to decrease the damage you take, further increasing your low life expectancy as a Hero. Aside from Attack, you want to make sure that your Armor and Health are both pretty even, stats wise. This will make sure you last on the front lines as long as you (or your teammates) need you to.

For the other stats, they’re not so important as long as you prioritise those three above, but if you want to increase your Crit to even further capitalise on that big damage output, you can do. This does increase your “squishiness” though, and will lead to you dying more often.

Ah the Mage. The archetype magic user, specialising in obliterating monsters from a distance, all without taking a hit. Supposedly. The Mage has some good utility designed to prevent the mage from getting hit, giving it some good usage solo or in a group, but the damage can be slightly lacking because of this, and the fact that it’s a range class.
It’s important to note that as a mage, your job is to provide ranged damage and support for other ranged damage dealers. To that avail, damage mitigation should never be your priority, and you can utilise your other stats to get the most out of combat from a distance.

HASTE – this should be your highest stat, as it increases the speed of your low damage auto-attack, and also the cast speed of Fireball and Meteor Strike, allowing you to dish out as much damage as possible in the shortest amount of time. Naturally, your attack will be lower than the melee classes, so you want to use Haste to keep your damage up to scratch, and get those Fireballs out there ASAP.

CRIT – this one is also important, as the higher it is, then the more chance you have of dealing even MORE damage with your already slow cooling spells. With your ultimate, Meteor Strike, also doing a succession of smaller attacks as opposed to one big attack, Crit will also increase the chances of doing more damage than it might with Warrior, who only has one big attack and therefore one chance to land a critical hit.

Your other skills, Ice Spear and Lightning Strike, actually do a very low amount of damage per second as far as spells go, so worrying about how much damage these do is like worrying about the world ending (it’s pointless). Ice Spear has one of the lowest damage attacks in the game, but the damage over time that it produces is going to deal its damage over a long period of time, so it’s not worth worrying about this one either. Best to just cast and forget, and carry on with your other spells to get out the most damage that you can.

As a bonus, you can increase your Attack to maximise on that damage potential, but if you have the choice of Attack or Crit, you really want to take Crit.

The Rogue is the absolute King and Queen of damage over time. Their poisons make sure that the enemy is always taking damage and keeps combat very fast paced. Coupled with their innate resource regeneration speed, Rogues are able to attack very quickly; but still have to mind using too many skills too quickly. The balance of keeping their DoTs active as well as managing their spirit make the Rogue a trickier class to play, but are worth it just for the damage they are able to pull off.
Contrary to other games, Rogues aren’t assassins and don’t feature their incredible burst damage that they are capable of otherwise, but still maintain their ability to keep an opponent on their toes.

HASTE – first and foremost, and above all, Haste is a Rogue’s best friend. With each auto-attack, another stack of poison is applied, and you definitely want to have 8 stacks of poison applied at all times, ready to convert to Heavy Poison. Any time you use Scorpion Sting, you convert the currently existing stack of poison into Heavy Poison, meaning you can instantly start stacking poison back on again. While your skills are good for this, using too much Spirit too quickly means you need to rely on your auto-attacks to get that damage out, which Haste is excellent for.

EVASION – While you aren’t focusing on damage mitigation, because Swift Kick lowers enemy damage for you, you want to help this along by being able to dodge as much as possible. A rogue’s job definitely isn’t to get hit, as your teammates should be doing this for you, so a stray hit from an opponent needs to have the least chance of connecting with you. Duck and dodge, and you’ll be fine.

CRIT – while there is a certain lack of big damage attacks coming from Rogues, your ability to attack very quickly can and should be coupled with the highest chance of being able to critically hit where you can. Your ultimate hits a massive 8 times in a row, applying 1 stack of poison each, so the highest chance to crit means more of those hits are doing big damage. That, and your poison, means Rogues are dealing huge amounts of damage per second compared to other classes.

Because Rogues focus on damage potential as opposed to damage mitigation, you don’t want to be wasting your time with stats like Health, Armor and even Attack, because Haste and Crit take care of your damage, and Evasion takes care of the occasional blow. You can surely swap Crit out for Attack to capitalise on the damage your poisons deal, but in the end this won’t make too much of a difference in the long run.

The Guardian class is available only to Guardians and Dragon Guardians, and is an excellent class for tanking. This means that it’s designed to direct the attention of the enemy towards you and away from your allies, and provides a few skills (as well it’s aggro building cross skill) as a means to this end.
This means that dealing damage is your last priority, but isn’t absent from your repertoire. Your gear should provide the stats that give you the ability to mitigate and take a lot of damage, as well as healing as much as possible.

ARMOR – this should be your main priority as your 3 skill, Dragon’s Breath, taunts the target to attack you. A Guardians focus then should be staying alive as long as possible to give your allies the best chance to get in as much damage as possible without having to worry about getting hit before the attention of the enemy is directed elsewhere. Essentially, you are the meat shield for the squishier classes in the game.

HEALTH – coupled with Armor, this increases your general longevity and allows you to maintain your position on the field for as long as you can. The more health you have, the more hits you can take, and the more chances you have to heal when you need to. This one is self-explanatory.

CRIT – this one may seem a bit weird for a class that relies on taking damage, but hear me out. To be able to keep up with the damage dealers of the game, you need to be able to pull off a few decent hits now and again. Your skills don’t have much attack power in general, so being able to get them to hit a bit harder every now and again really helps. As well as this, it is entirely possible to critically heal, so when you’ve stacked your Guardian Marks up to use Guardian’s Hope, you can critically heal yourself and those around you as well. Also gives your ultimate the chance to hit extremely hard, giving you that extra little nudge in a fight.

Your priority in a fight is definitely to take damage, but if you find that isn’t working for you here, you can take Evasion to help some more, Haste to increase the rate at which you cast your spells and build Guardian Marks, and Attack if you need some general damage. Guardian can be quite flexible, so feel free to experiment!

The DragonSlayer has to be considered the heaviest hitting class in the game, focusing on single target burst damage – even more so than the warrior. It has the highest damage, but slowest, auto-attack in the game so far, and it’s skills rely on it’s resource being half full before being utilised properly. While all of its skills have a decent amount of damage, their potential is increased with 50 Determination (and against dragons of course, giving you an extra 15% damage increase). You want to be able to capitalise on the damage that you do deal as opposed to trying to speed things up, as well as surviving in big boss fights, as that’s what this class seems to be made for.

ATTACK – this is the big one. You’ll need this the most because of the attack power of your skills and to capitalise on your heavy hitting auto attack. Shatterscale deals reasonably fair damage, but is increased and ignores 60% of an enemy’s Armor, so you want to use that attack power there. Fang Breaker, even more so as this flat out does more damage than Shatterscale, but has it’s damage increased massively with spent Determination, so Attack helps with this too. Dragonlance has the same damage as Shatterscale, but applies a bleed DoT that relies on attack power as well, so again, Attack helps here too.

CRIT – again, utilising all of your damage would be impossible without some critical hits now and then. Especially when spending Determination, you want to make those hits count, so increasing this will improve combat potential. Plus, the ultimate, Final Decent, can deal up to double damage against foes with large health pools, so apply a critical hit to that and you have the most damaging skill in the game, no contest. Spending Determination does nothing but cause Final Decent to have an AoE effect, so doesn’t really have an impact there with regards to Crit, but is nice to have anyway.

ARMOR – plain and simple, if you’re fighting a boss with melee, you are less likely to be able to evade its attacks compared to ranged users. This means you’ll be taking more hits, and you want those hits to not be that one hit kill like most of the harder boss fights have. Taking this over health means that when you get hit for what might normally be about 90% of your health, could be reduced to 80%. And that follow up hit from the boss might be one of it’s hard to evade but weak attacks that would wipe you out at 10% health, but at 20%, you have a chance to sort yourself out and heal.

DragonSlayer is an excellent melee class in boss fights, especially seeing as one of three bosses that drop the best gear in the game is a dragon, you’re going to want this class on your team. As a bonus, the dragon Ryujin, drops a helmet that can be crafted into the highest Armor helm in the game with DragonSlayer tokens, so get in there!

All hands to stations, let loose the rigging! The Pirate class is a move away from the typical swashbuckling swordfighter you might be used to on tv and in other games, and instead makes pretty good use of twin pistols. This means that Pirate is our second ranged class so far, and has huge DPS potential, providing luck is on your side. If luck isn’t on your side, well then it’s still not a bad class for damage. You just need to wait for that luck.

ATTACK – with dealing damage being the only thing Pirate is good for, you want to be able to do as much of that as you possibly can. Attack, plain and simply, is going to make all of your skills hit that much harder when you come round to using them. As I said, this class really does rely on luck to be able to use your skills quickly and to use your Flak Shot, so you want to be able to deal damage when you can.

CRIT – arguably even more important than attack here is your ability to take Lady Luck on another date; by critically hitting even more often. When your skills come round to being used, you want that damage to, possibly quite literally, blow your opponents away. This is so important here as if you are in the zone and you can use your skills as fast as possible, there is more chance for you to crit, and therefore more chance for your enemy to be dead after you’ve stopped mashing all the buttons.

EVASION – contrary to Rogue, which would have had Haste in place of Attack, a pirate doesn’t make too much use of Haste: the only thing it would effect is it’s auto-attack (which is nothing special), and it’s ultimate, which really doesn’t have a long cast time at all. So instead, focus on not getting hit when the enemy is close enough to do so.

Pirate is a really fun class, and very effective when it lets you be. You can be the primary damage dealer of your group here, as you normally sit back and use your Bullet Storm and Flak Shot when they become available, making everyone else’s life just that bit easier.

The Paladin! The shining bulwark for your team, although it might seem like this class was made to be a tank, it’s more of a melee damage/support hybrid, and is the closest to a dedicated healer that we have right now. Its skills provide great defence utility to the team, with a couple of heals (if you count the cross skill), the only shield spell, a team strengthen in the form of the ultimate, and as a bonus, the damage skill does extra damage to undead.

ATTACK – to take advantage of your damaging abilities as well as your Ardent Virtue, and your heals, you will need more attack to ensure that you can keep up in a fight and heal more when you do. This should be your bread and butter, making sure that you are providing your team what you are there for – more damage, and less deaths.

HEALTH – as the groups support and healer, you also need to make sure that you alive long enough to keep them alive and give them the buffs that your group needs. This is in contrast to Armor and Evasion, which aren’t necessary both in part to your shield spell, and also to the fact that you shouldn’t really be getting hit in the first place. But when you do, you don’t want it to be your last. Your shield and your heal are your armour in the first place, so don’t worry about damage mitigation too much.

CRIT – another important weapon in your zombie-slaying arsenal is this unlikely gem. As I mentioned in another class recommendation, Crit also increases your chance to critically heal. Couple that with the ability to critically hit, and it turns out that increasing this stat affects all of your abilities in a good way, especially for your team.

Paladin is another fun class, but you really have to know good tact and understand your class. Paladins make good group leaders, and provide all sorts of buffs for your team. If you’ve ever played Lord of the Rings Online, the Captain class bears the closest resemblance, in a sort of sense.

The necromancer is probably the best soloing class here, as it allows you to attack at range whilst your skeletal minions attack the target. It has great damage potential, especially in groups with its DoT and Armor Break skill, and gives you some survivability in the form of Soul Siphon. It makes a great addition to any group challenge as Grand Summon eases the strain on the group with its damage and taunt, and makes it easier for other damage dealers to make full use of their damaging abilities.

HEALTH – you can’t fight if you’re (un)dead. Increase your longevity when the enemy casts your skeleton to the side and comes for you instead, giving you just a little extra time with your Soul Siphon before you can summon another skeleton.

ATTACK – the meat and potatoes how to get this class to do what it needs to do. Increases your damage, giving you the best chance to get in damage while the enemy’s Armor is broken. Coupled with this, the Necromancer should be doling out quite a bit of damage with the couple of skills that it has, and increases the damage that you DoT deals.

HASTE – seeing as your auto-attack deals the majority of the damage you do in between Dark Decay and Soul Siphon, you’ll need that extra speed to get them in where you can. Take this instead of Crit because of the low damage of your skills, meaning that you’ll be getting more hits and therefore more damage instead of relying on the heavier hits to take an opponent down.

Necromancers are great for questing and clearing mobs, as they are good at staying alive and keeping their minions active with the Souls boost every time an enemy dies. Feel free to mix and match this class as you can’t really go wrong when your skeletons are always doing damage and you’re always healing (as fast as you reasonably can).

The Ninja class is the hardest class in the game to play properly, but the simple version is to just mash all of the skills until your opponent is dead – roughly 4/5 times that works. The simple version of the Ninjas skills is that earth skills in the other stances either increase your attack, or lower the enemy’s; wind skills either just hit the target or give you a saving grace (reduce aggro, increase dodge and boost chi); and fire skills apply a DoT or just hit your target (multiple times). It’s important to utilise the stats that a Ninja could definitely use.

HASTE – to make sure you that you get through your skills as quickly as possible, prioritise on Haste to give you the speed you need. Make sure to watch your chi, though, and use the fire jutsu smokestep to regenerate that a bit. This is also important as it gets more auto attacks in, as a lot of your skills don’t actually do any damage, so you can capitalise on your rotation for more buffs (or debuffs, as the case may be).

CRIT – obviously, the ninja needs to be able to hit for big damage, and can do this because the rate of speed of which it attacks. Increasing your crit chance (with the aid of your passive) means that your speed hasn’t gone to waste, and you can pull off the damage that you need to take an opponent down. This is also very true for the ultimate, which is another multi-hit attack, further increasing your chance to hit.

EVASION – as well as the ability to do a lot of damage quickly, the Ninja needs to be able to avoid damage. When you couple this with Smokestep, your dodge chance should be enough that it gets you out of trouble for a bit, but in the meantime, the flat Evasion that you have can give you the edge you need, especially against tougher opponents.

Ninja is a tough one to master, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll know which skills to use and when, and it what order. You can swap Evasion out for Attack just to give your damage that big boost, especially on the one DoT that you have that you’ll probably want to keep active on your foe.

Moglomancer is a very surprisingly underused class. It’s the go-to support class and can actually be pretty good for damage if used properly. It is mostly a support class though so no need to go wild, but it plays excellently in groups, especially with larger ones. The key to Moglomancer is balancing when you need to use Zorbak’s Bane for the damage buff for not just your team, but also for your own abilites as it increases their damage too. For example, if you want to make use of Moglin Punt, make sure that you’ve applied Zorbak’s Bane first to get the most out of the damage.

HEALTH – as with any good support class, it needs to be able to sustain a lot of damage. It gives it a lot of functionality as they are around longer to help the whole group, and makes sure that nobody misses out on the buffs for any longer than they need to. Keeping the support alive is key to a successful group.

CRIT – the key to getting the most damage out of a class that feels underwhelming in that department is to give it the most chance to critically hit, so that it can provide meaningful aid in combat. Critically hitting with Moglin Punt brings its damage up to what might be expected from an ultimate, and also has the ability to crit on every enemy hit in the area of effect. Plus, the healing has a chance to crit too, and with the amount of mini heals going on, this boosts it so it makes all the difference.

HASTE – the other only way to really increase the damage you do, is to increase the rate at which you attack. Seeing as your auto-attack is the biggest damage dealer in your arsenal, you want to be able to hit as much as possible in between casting any of your spells, to get the absolute most use out of the effects they provide. Zorbak’s Bane with faster attack? More damage. Twilly’s Blessing with faster attack? More healing. Twig’s Seal with faster attack? More mana faster. Haste makes everything better.

Moglomancer is my personal favourite class, and not just because of the Moglins. It’s actually a fantastic class if you play it properly and manage your Mana, and is great in large group fights because the damage buff applies to everyone in the radius – the difference is noticeable.

The newest class on the list, and probably the most impressive because of its absolutely insane speed of its attacks. Thrashing enemies becomes no problem at all very quickly, and the survivability of the Berserker is reasonably impressive. Health is your resource, so you have to be extremely careful to manage it and know when to calm down in the more difficult fights to bring your Health back up to a safer level.

HASTE – obviously, with the absolutely mad rate of attack that the Berserker excels at, you are going to want to have more of that. The lower your Health, the higher your Haste becomes, and you can seriously increase this to some kind of superhuman level. Make that speed count, and make sure Haste is definitely your highest stat.

ARMOR – with your Health being low all the time, increasing your Health doesn’t really matter so much as not dying from the hits you’re taking. Increasing Armor makes sure that your damage mitigation keeps you alive while you try to sit your Health rather uncomfortably at 1% for the biggest Haste increase.

ATTACK – as opposed to Crit, which you will be doing a lot of anyway, you may as well increase the general damage your attacks do. The Berserker wouldn’t be complete without the assistance of a high Attack stat to make sure that the flurry of attacks you’re making at your enemy actually counts for something.

Berserker is so much fun to play, but so far I’ve not seen anyone take it seriously and use it in a big boss fight. Play it properly, and you can come close to being the star of the team, doing major damage and being hard to kill.

Well, I’ve had fun making this guide, and I hope you’ve learned a lot reading it. Most of this information comes from my personal experience playing the game, as well as AQW and a lot, and I mean a LOT of MMOs, so I have experience with character building. It took me a few hours to write, but in the end, it’s merely just a guide.
You can only choose to do what you want, and if you find a better way to play a class, well then great! I haven’t played all of them as much as I have each other, and this guide is in no way perfect. But these are just my solid recommendations on how you could be getting the most out of your class as opposed to just equipping the best armour and making it work for everything.
Obviously this takes away from the theme of being able to change classes on the fly, but even if you use this guide for your main class, then I guess I’ve done my job.

Thank you very much for reading, and have fun out there!

My character’s name is Elkerius, and I mostly play on Red Dragon. If you see me, don’t hesitate to ask for anything, I’m always happy to group up or offer advice.