El Gaucho Rojo said:I don't understand why you believe the Amazon is a fighter/archer. What is an archer? It's someone who uses ranged, physical damage, right? Three of the four weapons the Amazon can spec are just that (bows, crossbows, and javelins) with the only melee weapon being the spear. Because she can spec a spear and melee her way through the game, does that make her a fighter hybrid? I don't think so.
I called the class a hybrid because if you don't specialize in a particular skill tree, the class is a mixture of melee and ranged skills. And you could use a javelin in melee...
El Gaucho Rojo said:My reasons for that are A) what archer in the history of fantasy games can't use at least some melee weapons?
Well, the Amazon had bonuses and skill techs related to the use of those melee weapons, unlike many other "archers." And before the expansion, anything could be equipped by anyone, provided you had the requisite stats. It was just completely useless unless you got some bonus for doing so.
El Gaucho Rojo said:and B) to me, a hybrid sacrifices great damage in one type of damage dealing area to branch out into another area.
And without specializing in melee -OR- ranged, but taking a mixture of both trees, you wind up with a character just like you described. Also, I think a Spear-azon, with a good rare/unique Lance, using a maxed Impale, dealt more physical damage in a single hit than any other setup... I could be wrong...
In all honesty, perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that Diablo II had classes that could serve mutiple purposes... The best example is probably the Druid. If you wanted to go melee, you loaded up on the shapeshifting tree, to go caster you loaded up on the elemental tree, likewise for summoning... But the Druid didn't deal as much melee damage as a Barbarian or Spear-azon, couldn't outcast a Sorceress, and his summons paled to the Necromancer's.