Expeditions Rome Classes: How Does Each Class Work?

There are four Expeditions: Rome classes to choose from when making your character, but it can be a hard choice because of the different roles they all play and skills they offer. In Expeditions: Rome, classes play an important role in the strategic turn-based combat, but their importance doesn't really stretch beyond that. If you need a guide on the Expeditions: Rome classes, including how they differ from each other, and their strengths and weaknesses come into play, read on.

• Make sure you read our guide on the best Expeditions: Rome skills alongside the classes

Expeditions Rome Classes Explained

Before explaining the Expeditions: Rome classes individually, we need to know what a class is in this game. Selecting a class gives you a general outline for how to play, with a further three subclasses to specialise into that are dictated by the skill tree's passive and active abilities.

Furthermore, a class has armour and weapon types that they are proficient in using. The four classes in Expeditions: Rome are Princeps, Veles, Sagittarius, and Triarius.

• Our top Expeditions: Rome tips are essential if you don't want to miss anything

Expeditions Rome Classes: Princeps

The first class to highlight is the battle-hardened Princeps, who adorn heavy armour and shields to act as the tanks of the group, fighting on the frontline and boasting impressive survivability. They specialise in wearing heavier armour, and typically dual wield a shield with either a sword or spear. A shield is particularly important due to how important it is to their abilities and skill trees, so a Princeps with no shield is almost useless.

The three skill trees are Defender, Vanguard, and Veteran, and although they all have a focus on tanking, it changes up between them slightly. Defender gives the character a focus on surviving for a long time and protecting your enemies; Vanguard is the tree for characters who like to charge in and do high shield damage; Veteran has the tools to close down enemies and crowd-control them while blocking their attempts to do the same.

The Princeps class is very strong when doing its primary goal of tanking, and even without further abilities that improve their health and shields, they stand as the toughest class in the game. However, the Princeps generally suffer when it comes to mobility because of their armour, so they can often get lost behind faster characters, which can draw out fights in large areas. They also don't do a lot of damage unless the Vanguard skill tree is maxed out. 

Expeditions Rome Classes: Veles

The next of the Expeditions: Rome classes are the Veles, who are fast and unpredictable light infantry who excel at chipping away at enemies and causing chaos in their ranks. They work best with medium armour because it balances mobility and survivability, and they excel at dual wielding weapons like daggers.

The Veles' three skill trees are named Assassin, Duelist, and Brawler, and their variety in skills and utility makes the Veles one of the most potentially versatile classes in the game. The Assassin subclass turns a Veles into a high mobility and high burst damage machine, who can tear through single enemies with ease. The Duelist is more for getting into the thick of it next to a Princeps, and involves lots of dodging between attacks to keep them in the fight longer. Lastly is the Brawler skill tree, which is great for breaking into the enemy lines and plays similar to Duelists, except with less reliance on allies for help. 

Obviously, the best feature of the Veles is their high damage and mobility, and they are imperative when despatching lots of enemies in bigger fights due to this. Consequently, their health suffers, and they can be killed easily if you're not careful when controlling one, but their mobility counteracts this enough to make them underpowered.

• If you've taken a liking to your companions, here is our Expeditions: Rome romance guide.

Expeditions Rome Classes: Sagittarius

The Sagittarius class in Expeditions: Rome is the humble archer of the group. It's pretty self-explanatory, but they stick behind allies or find high ground so that they can strike from a distance to harass enemies, zone areas, and provide cover to companions. This class uses light armour for high mobility, and ranged weapons, though holding a dagger in the offhand is useful for close-combat engagements. 

Like the rest, the Sagittarius has three skill trees which can be specialised into to turn your archer into a specific subclass. The first is the Marksman skill tree, which turns the Sagittarius into a more of a defensive archer that can deny whole swathes of the combat areas from enemies, and zone them, so they can't easily move forward. The Hunter turns the archer into a more close-range class where they can pick off multiple targets with ease, and lastly, the Sniper is perfect for high single target damage against enemies no matter their range.

As the Sagittarius is the only ranged class in the game, their utility is unmatched in its worth to your team, and they can access enemies that others can't get close too. Their damage can be very useful against most enemies, though shielded enemies can block their attacks. Due to their light armour, they generally have the lowest health of all the classes, and sometimes they can suffer from a lack of verticality in some maps.

Expeditions Rome Classes: Triarius

Finally, we have the Triarius class, who act as supports behind the front line classes and in front of the Sagittarius. They primarily buff their allies with various active and passive skills, along with nerfing the enemies they encounter, which makes them imperative to most fights because of their breadth of utility. They use the strong armour type and their best weapons are pikes and staffs which allow them to attack from two to three hexes away, and sometimes hit multiple enemies.

The Triarius' skills trees are the Medic, which allows them to heal, revive, and remove negative debuffs from their allies, to keep everyone in the fight longer. The Flagbearer tree is incredible at buffing ally damage, and controlling the battlefield by using skills to move enemies away from your team. Lastly, the Destroyer skill tree is a more of a hybrid damage and support subclass, that can deal high, armour-destroying damage, along with imposing negative effects on enemies. 

The Triarius is one of the more well-rounded classes (or maybe even broken classes), as they can take a fair amount of damage, deal high damage from close or medium-range, and utilise a litany of buffs and debuffs on your allies and enemies. They don't have many obvious downsides, but if the rest of the classes are taken out of a fight, they struggle on their own to do much.

That's our breakdown of all the Expeditions: Rome classes, and now you should feel comfortable with how you want to specialise your character and your allies using the skill trees.

Still playing the very start of the game? Our Expeditions: Rome Geminus guide tells you the pros and cons of killing the Triarchus