Revision 15

AION 2 launched with eight classes and added a ninth, the Brawler, with the July 1, 2026 Chapter 1: Lands of Sand and Snow update on the Korean and Taiwanese build. All are available to both Elyos and Asmodian factions. The roster covers the full Holy Trinity of tank, healer, and damage: a mix of melee, ranged, and magic damage dealers alongside healing and support roles. Official global marketing presents eight classes for the global launch, while the Korean and Taiwanese live build runs nine; NCsoft has not announced when the Brawler reaches the global build.

Class Roster

Naming Note

The magic summoning class is called Elementalist in community databases and most English-language coverage. Korean coverage and some translated patch summaries refer to the same class as Spiritmaster, which carries over from earlier franchise naming. Both names refer to the same kit: a magic DPS who fights alongside summoned spirits tied to elemental affinities. When reading patches translated from Korean, treat the two names as interchangeable.

Choosing a Class

All of the classes are viable for solo play and group content. The most common picks for first-time MMO players are Cleric (always wanted in groups), Templar (forgiving tank kit with strong defenses), or Ranger (safe ranged playstyle that scales well with skill). Players who want the highest skill ceiling often gravitate toward Assassin and Sorcerer.

There is no class change after creation in the current build, though you can level multiple characters and reuse the account-wide progression where the system allows.

Combat Style

Every class uses the same hybrid combat system described under Combat and Skill Chains: tab-target with active dodge, parry, and skill chains. Each class has its own chain pathways, positioning bonuses, and resource mechanics, but the underlying input loop is consistent across the roster.

Party Synergy and Season 3 Balance

The Season 3 dev passes on April 21 and April 28, 2026 reworked party synergy across the roster on the KR and TW build. The first pass removed party-wide synergy effects from the four DPS classes (Assassin, Ranger, Sorcerer, and Elementalist), so skills that used to apply to allies now affect only the user, or were replaced with self-only versions. In return, the tank and support classes (Templar, Gladiator, Chanter, and Cleric) had their team-wide synergy strengthened so they remain attractive party picks.

The follow-up pass on April 28 adjusted six classes (Gladiator, Templar, Chanter, Cleric, Sorcerer, and Ranger) with numerical balancing rather than structural changes, such as Gladiator and Chanter scaling tweaks. The stated intent in the dev streams was to keep the four DPS classes competitive in solo and small-group content while giving tank and support classes a clearer reason to fill their roles in full-size Sanctuary groups.

Later Live-Build Passes

The KR and TW build kept iterating after the April dev streams. A late-April patch reworked a Gladiator rage ability, improved Chanter mobility, reworked a Cleric energy line, and added PvP-side buffs for the Sorcerer; the same patch lifted a PvP progression cap inside the Abyss layer. A mid-May patch followed with a focused Sorcerer rework that retuned a defensive armor cooldown and an offensive frost ability, aiming to sharpen the class's identity at the high end of solo and small-group content without inflating its raid contribution.

These passes are specific to the KR and TW live build. Because that build re-tunes individual abilities with nearly every major patch, treat any single ability name or number as a snapshot of the current live build rather than a fixed value; the global build is expected to mirror the live balance once it launches, and the exact ability set may shift before then.

A subsequent late-May patch followed up with skill corrections across six of the eight classes, refining individual ability behavior rather than reshaping role identity. These corrections continued the pattern of the earlier balance passes: small numerical and interaction-level changes rather than structural rewrites. As with the rest of the section, the exact ability list shifts patch-by-patch on the live build; use the in-game tooltips and the most recent live patch notes for the current rotation.

Balance work continued into mid-June. The June 17, 2026 patch applied a targeted PvE and PvP damage pass, raising several Gladiator strike multipliers, trimming an Assassin critical-damage bonus and reworking its defense-reduction skill, and bumping a set of Ranger shot multipliers. The June 24 patch then began an account-wide combat-power equalization so that weapon and passive-skill power values count the same across all classes, a first step toward closing the gap between strong and weak classes before deeper tuning. NCsoft moved the larger balance patch originally planned for June 24 to July 1 to avoid disrupting the active ranking challenge. As with every entry in this section, treat individual numbers as a live-build snapshot rather than a fixed global value.

The first weekly balance pass after Chapter 1 arrived on July 8, 2026 and was the first to cover the full nine-class roster. It reworked the shared Shock Release skill and applied per-class tuning across all nine classes, alongside a game-wide flat 30% cut to PvP damage. As with the earlier passes, the patch published the shape of the changes rather than a complete per-class number sheet, so treat any single value as a live-build snapshot rather than a fixed global figure.

The August 12, 2026 patch centered on healers and shared survivability. Cleric and Chanter healing skills had their radius widened from 25 meters to 40 meters while base healing amounts were cut by roughly 20 to 50 percent depending on skill level, and both classes' base healing-amplification passives were removed in favor of amplification that scales with attack power (26/30/34 percent for Cleric and 18/21/24 percent for Chanter at the passives' three marked levels), so healing output now grows with the healer's own gear. The same patch upgraded the shared healing-received-reduction debuffs carried by seven class skills and lowered that debuff's strength in the Abyss and arenas from 30 to 20 percent. Gladiator was tuned in the same pass: its charge stance lost its mind-cost reduction, its blade-throw's healing cut rose from 30 to 50 percent, the cancel point on two of its heavy strikes moved from the first hit to the second, one major strike's cooldown went from 30 to 45 seconds, and four core strikes gained 3 percent PvE damage. Ability names in this section are translated from the Korean patch notes; official English names for most of these skills have not been published.

On an August 11, 2026 developer broadcast, NCsoft also announced a phased class-concept enhancement program that aims to make optimal damage output depend on manual timing and decision-making rather than repeating macro-friendly patterns, with the first application targeted for August 26. That is announced direction, not shipped change, and the details may move before it lands.

Progression

All classes share the Daeva System and Daevanion Board for talent investment past the base skill cap, and feed into the Gear and Progression and Transcendence System endgame. Class-specific skill rotations evolve as new content is added; refer to the live patch notes from the KR and TW build for the current balance state.

Ninth Class: Brawler

NCsoft revealed a ninth class at the June 14, 2026 Summer Festa showcase, and it went live on the Korean and Taiwanese build with the Chapter 1: Lands of Sand and Snow update. Its English name is Brawler, published by NCsoft on July 6, 2026 in the English announcement for that update. Earlier English coverage guessed at several renderings, including Vandal, Fistmaster and Soul Fighter, and this wiki previously used the Korean name Kwon-seong (권성) while no official English name existed. Brawler is now the name to use; the others were community translations and none of them was ever official.

The Brawler is a front-line damage class built around combo pressure rather than a conventional weapon line. Its dedicated weapon type is the Gauntlets. Basic attacks and active skills generate Rage, and filling the gauge to a threshold triggers a Rampage state that swaps the class into a more aggressive skill set. NCsoft granted every account one free character slot alongside the class so existing players could try it without deleting a character. The same update raised the maximum character level to 50 and lifted the Stigma enhancement cap to level 25 for the whole roster.

The July 29, 2026 balance pass on the Korean and Taiwanese build was the Brawler's first substantial tuning. Its finisher was reworked to consume the entire remaining Rampage gauge, scaling up as more of the gauge is spent, and its cooldown reset now keys off that finisher landing a kill rather than any kill. A duration bug on its unstoppable effect was corrected, its projectile-style ranged attack was sped up, and its passive now restores Rage on kills. The same pass touched Templar, Ranger, Chanter, Cleric, Elementalist and Sorcerer with PvE and PvP damage adjustments and specialization swaps. A follow-up pass on August 12 continued the Brawler tuning, shortening its Rage ability's cooldown from 120 to 90 seconds and reworking several of its defensive passives.

Related Pages

• AION 2 Overview

• Combat and Skill Chains

• Aerial Combat and Flight

• Daeva System and Daevanion Board

• PvP and the Abyss