Age of Conan - Classes Article @ Eurogamer

Oil Welsh discusses choosing a class in AoC.

Age of Conan's twelve classes are divided into four "archetypes" of three classes each: soldiers, priests, rogues and mages. Each archetype follows a different story thread through the first twenty levels of the game.

Soldiers are heavily armoured warriors who can take a lot of punishment, and deal it back with a broad range of melee weapons. Broadly speaking, these are the "tank" classes; their role in a group is to stand at the front and taunt enemies into concentrating their attacks on them, allowing other classes to go about their business unmolested.

Priests are healers. They use magic to keep themselves, and their groups, alive. They wear light to medium armour and have limited weapon selections, and naturally they have offensive abilities too. A key point to note about Age of Conan's priests is that their healing spells are less effective on themselves than they are on group members.

Rogues are sneaks and damage-dealers. They excel at stealth, and doing large amounts of physical damage without attracting enemies' attention. They wear medium armour and use both melee and ranged weapons.

Mages are offensive magic-users. They wear light armour and possess destructive spells, as well as being able to summon creatures as pets to fight with them, or shapeshift into different forms.