MapleStory Classes You Forgot Existed: The Big Bang Roster

In v117, the character-creation screen wasn't overwhelming. You had the five Explorers, the five Cygnus Knights, Aran, and a handful of Heroes who'd just walked out of the Black Mage storyline. That was the whole menu — a dozen or so identities, each with a clear silhouette and a signature move you could describe in one sentence.

That curation is the thing nostalgia actually remembers. Every class had a lane. A Night Lord was a curtain of throwing stars; a Buccaneer was a screen-shaking transformation; a Bishop kept the whole party alive. You didn't need a spreadsheet open to know what a class was.

On a v83 server, a lot of these faces literally haven't been invented yet — Luminous, Phantom, the Cannoneer and friends all arrive with Big Bang. That's no knock on the classic era; it's just why the v117 roster feels like a different photo album entirely.

The Explorers are the founders — Warrior, Magician, Bowman, Thief, and Pirate — but Big Bang gave them a glow-up. Skills got rebuilt, animations got flashier, and the third- and fourth-job kits finally felt like payoffs instead of chores you endured to reach them.

Each first job still forks into distinct endgames, and that's the quiet beauty of starting here: you commit to a vibe around level 10 and slowly grow into a specialist. If you only ever mained one class back in the day, the odds are very good it's on this list.

These are the comfort food of the roster — the faces that were already old friends before the Heroes ever showed up.

• ▸Warrior → Hero (Brandish/Rush), Paladin (elemental charges + Blast), Dark Knight (Beholder, Gungnir's Descent, Sacrifice)
• ▸Magician → Arch Mage F/P (Meteor + damage-over-time), Arch Mage I/L (Blizzard, freeze locks), Bishop (Genesis, Resurrection, party support)
• ▸Bowman → Bowmaster (Hurricane's endless volley) or Marksman (Snipe's one enormous hit)
• ▸Thief → Night Lord (throwing stars + Shadow Partner) or Shadower (daggers, Meso Explosion, Assassinate)
• ▸Pirate → Buccaneer (knuckle brawler with an energy transformation) or Corsair (gun-slinger with a Battleship)

The Cygnus Knights were MapleStory's spin on the Explorers — five young recruits sworn to Empress Cygnus, each echoing an Explorer archetype but with its own flair and story. Dawn Warrior, Blaze Wizard, Wind Archer, Night Walker, Thunder Breaker.

In the Big Bang era they carried a level cap that made them feel like a deliberate 'second character' project: fast to level, thematically tidy, and just different enough from their Explorer cousins to be worth the run. A Thunder Breaker chaining lightning across a full map is peak v117 energy.

They're the classes people forget they adored. Boot one up and the muscle memory comes right back.

• ▸Dawn Warrior — swordsman powered by Sun & Moon soul buffs
• ▸Blaze Wizard — fire mage with a loyal flame summon
• ▸Wind Archer — bow user built around wind-speed mobility
• ▸Night Walker — throwing claws and bat summons, dark element
• ▸Thunder Breaker — knuckle brawler wreathed in lightning

Aran was MapleStory's first true Legend — a hero from the frozen island of Rien who woke up with no memory and a giant polearm named Maha. The whole personality was the Combo Counter: land hits, build the combo, and your damage and skill access escalate the longer you keep it going.

It rewarded aggression in a way nothing else did at the time. Full Swing, Combo Smash, Final Blow — you weren't standing still poking a mob, you were skating through the pack keeping the count alive. The intro questline on Rien is still one of the most fondly remembered tutorials in the game.

If your favorite MapleStory memory involves a rhythm rather than a rotation, this is probably the class that made it.

These four walked straight out of the Black Mage storyline — each a Hero sealed away and reawakened, and each arriving with a mechanic nobody else in the game had. In modern MapleStory any one of them could headline a class launch on its own.

In v117 you had all four at once, which is why this stretch of the roster feels so stacked in hindsight. They were the flashy new kids, and they earned it.

Pick one by the fantasy that speaks to you — light and dark, cards and canes, wings and scythes, or relentless aerial arrows.

• ▸Mercedes — the dual-bowgun elf of Elluel. Relentless aerial attacks, a double jump, and a party buff that trims everyone's cooldowns. The most mobile class of the era.
• ▸Phantom — the gentleman thief with a cane and a deck of cards. His party trick is Steal, which copies an Explorer's skill and makes it his own. Style incarnate.
• ▸Luminous — the mage of light and dark who toggles Sunfire and Eclipse to reach Equilibrium, a burst state where both elements fire at once. A rhythm mage before that was a genre.
• ▸Demon Slayer — powered by Force instead of MP. His gauge fills as he fights, so he never has to sit and sip potions. Wings, scythes, and a hellhound named Cerberus.

If one class defines 'you forgot this existed,' it's the Cannoneer. A castaway pirate who fights with a hand-cannon and a pet monkey named Bao that buffs and body-slams right alongside you.

The identity is big booming AoE, goofy charm, and moves like Rolling Rainbow and Cannon Barrage doing absurd damage from clear across the screen. It's the comic-relief class that also happened to clear maps embarrassingly fast.

Almost nobody talks about the Cannoneer, and that's exactly why rolling one on Zipangu feels like finding a photo you didn't know you'd taken.

The best part: this isn't a museum exhibit. Every class here is live on Zipangu right now, at 2x EXP with a fair 1x meso and 1x drop economy — no NX shortcuts, no pay-to-win, just the v117 game the way it actually played.

Roll an Aran for the combo rush, a Luminous for the light-and-dark dance, a Cannoneer for the monkey — or go back to the Explorer you mained a decade ago and see how Big Bang treats them now. The download is free and the Discord is friendly.