Tainted Grail Class and Build Tier List (The Fall of Avalon)

Class and Build Tier List: Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon

The Fall of Avalon has no classes, so this tier list ranks the eight build archetypes the community actually plays. The short version: Pure Mage and Assassin are S, four solid builds fill A, and two execution-heavy builds round out B. For a brand-new player, start with the Pure Mage. It carries the easiest learning curve and the strongest safety net of anything on the list.

This is a single-player game, so a high tier means a build stays strong and forgiving from the early game through the endgame, not a competitive ranking.

Build: e581412ed8df

S Tier

Pure Mage. The highest ceiling in the game and the best defensive layer to back it up. Spell power scales hard: entity:arcane-teachings stacks up to plus 50%, the spell list runs deep, and entity:mana-shield converts the mage's huge mana pool into a second health bar. At 100% Mana Shield every incoming hit drains mana instead of health, which trivializes otherwise lethal damage and even cancels fall and drowning damage. A lightning crit-mage running entity:thunder-lash or entity:stormpiercer reaches near-100% critical chance by the endgame. It scales the best, defends the best, and is well-documented enough to pilot without guesswork.

Assassin / Stealth Crit. The highest burst in the game. Stacking entity:assassins-doctrine (+50% Sneak Damage), entity:predators-fangs, and the crit lines pushes sneak attacks toward roughly 3.5x damage with entity:wolfs-fang daggers. Backstabs that start at 2x rise to 4x through the dagger tree. Encounters end before detection more often than not. The only reason it sits beside the mage rather than above it is that magic brings a defensive package the assassin cannot match. For raw opening damage, nothing competes.

A Tier

Battlemage / Spellsword. entity:spirituality with supporting entity:strength, weaving melee swings between spell casts. entity:casters-focus grants a 10% Mana Shield off a held wand, and the Battlemage starting bonus trades the Block bonus for Magic plus a entity:burning-ember opener. A complete, flexible build. It lands in A rather than S only because juggling a one-hander and an off-hand spell asks more of you than standing back and casting.

Two-Handed Warrior. Strength and entity:endurance, leaning hard on heavy attacks. entity:brutish-fighter, entity:mighty-blows, and entity:enduring-strikes carry the early game on the entity:giants-sword, and entity:bloodsting's innate Bleed shreds high-HP bosses later. It is reliable rather than flashy: a clear gear path, no fragile combos, strong in the right hands. The ceiling just sits below the S picks.

Build: 91e6169c1969

Archer / Ranger. entity:dexterity and entity:perception. entity:deadly-aim adds 50% weakspot damage, entity:marksman scales with distance, and the full hunting kit, the Archer Ring, Marksman Treasure, and Hunter's Amulet stack ranged crit and weakspot bonuses high. You engage at range, pin targets with Leather Boots of Roots, and reposition on three Dashes. Strong, complete, and a touch more gear-dependent than the melee A builds.

Summoner. Spirituality channeled into bodies instead of spells. entity:astral-bonds raises the summon limit to four, so a entity:skeleton-knight, a entity:summon-battlemage, a entity:wolfs-call summon, and a entity:summon-corpse-eater tank and trade while you support from the back. Summon strength scales with Spirituality, sharing the mage's growth curve. It asks for more setup than the pure caster, which keeps it in A.

B Tier

Dual-Wield. Strength and Dexterity, built on attack-speed stacking and an effectively infinite parry loop. entity:adaptive-combat and entity:symmetric-combat reward your weapon pairing, and continuous parrying makes you very hard to hit outside AoE and magic. Genuinely fun and effective, but the entire build rests on parry timing, and that execution dependency is what holds it in B.

Sword and Shield / Tank. Strength and Endurance, built to out-trade rather than out-damage. entity:shieldbearer triples shield damage, entity:deflecting-block reflects arrows and throwables, and Armor matters here in a way it does not for glass cannons: 1 Armor is 1% mitigation, and 100 Armor negates nearly all non-status, non-fall damage. It trades offense for safety, which is exactly why it sits at the bottom. Safe, slow, and never quite threatening.

On the "paladin" question

Players search "paladin build," and there is no paladin class or skill tree behind it. In practice it is a Strength-plus-Spirituality hybrid: sword and shield for the frontline, healing and buff spells from the Spirituality lines. Treat it as a community-named flavor of the Sword-and-Shield archetype with a magic splash, not a separate system. It plays a tier above pure Sword and Shield in feel because the spell splash papers over the damage problem, but it is the same defensive trade at heart.

Best build for a new player

Pick the Pure Mage. Mana Shield forgives the mistakes every new player makes, the early spell list (entity:poison-spray, entity:blood-transfusion) carries Act 1 with little setup, and the gear path is short and cheap. Melee builds reward timing you have not learned yet, and the assassin punishes a single detection. The mage lets you learn the game from behind a wall of mana. The full allocation lives in the Mage Build Guide, and the Best Builds hub collects every archetype in one place.