If you’re agonizing over which class to play in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, allow me. The game has a clear best class: the Clawbringer.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, out now for PC, PlayStation, and Xbox, is a fantasy respray of Gearbox’s long-running Borderlands series of loot-shooters. Most Borderlands games present you with the choice of four classes at the start (well, not accounting for any you can download via DLC). Wonderlands, however, presents you with six:
- Stabbomancer: A stealth-focused class (for whatever that means in Borderlands) that allows you to turn invincible and throw a spinny knife thingy.
- Graveborn: A high-risk, high-reward class that has you sacrificing health to power attacks that restore your vitality. You’re accompanied by a miniature lich.
- Clawbringer: You get a baby dragon!!!
- Spore Warden: You get a bow-and-arrow, can summon tornados, and are followed around by a mushroom…humanoid…thing who beats up enemies.
- Brr-zerker: A melee-focused class that focuses on freezing enemies, which is pretty solid, because frozen enemies take thrice as much melee damage.
- Spellshot: The spellshot’s whole deal is that you can swap its class ability out for the option to equip a second spell.
Borderlands classes have historically featured three skill trees, and allotted you enough skill points over the course of a campaign to fill out two of those trees. Wonderlands tidies it up; each class only has one skill tree, rather than three, so you don’t have to fret too much about pouring points into the wrong tree. (You can also reassign points at Brighthoof, Wonderlands’ hub city.)
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The Clawbringer’s tree is largely focused on increasing fire and lightning elemental damage, both of which are used prodigiously from the little baby dragon friend. At later levels, you can unlock the “Indomitable” skill, too, which prevents you from dying and refills your shield. (It’s saddled with a 120-second cooldown.) You can also unlock skills that allow your dragon companion to shoot fireballs and lightning bolts, and you can increase its damage output (the “Friend to Flame” skill).
I’m rocking three characters right now, have tried most of these classes, and have seen the rest in action secondhand through a rotating cast of cooperative partners. I feel pretty confident in saying that Clawbringer is the way to go. It’s fine enough on its own, but it really shines partway through the game when, after you finish the “Emotion of the Ocean” main mission, you get to select a second class. That’s where the clawbringer comes into its own. If you pair it with a Spore Warden—making the Wildfire class—you become practically invincible.
The Spore Warden’s skill tree features the “Kindred Heart” skill, which improves—and it’s key to pay attention to the details here—the health and damage of all companions. It’s intended to make a Spore Warden’s mushroom friend a bit stronger. But those bonuses affect the baby dragon as well, if you match these two classes. Plus, you can unlock a skill that improves damage dealt by companions every time you land a critical hit (“Thrill of the Hunt”) and another one that can prevent you from dying (“Medicinal Mushroom”). At high or even mid levels, what you end up with is a character who can dodge the kiss of death twice, who’s followed by two volatile little monsters, who basically becomes a miniature army trudging through the Wonderlands, demolishing everything in its path.
Honestly, there’s only one drawback to beefing up a Wildfire character: It turns even Wonderlands’ highest difficulty into easy mode.
