The classes present on the online test of Elden Ring were often too well equipped and therefore too powerful for an early game, at least that was the general opinion. Feedback from various sources indicates that the game has 10 starting classes, some already present in the beta, others new, and still others that were missing. A post on the official Twitter introduced the 2 classes among those available on February 25:
Vagabond : A wandering knight, exiled from his native land. A solid origin, encased in armor.
Hero : An unyielding hero equipped with a battle axe. He is descended from a chief of the wild lands.
the Vagabond is the equivalent of Knight from previous games, and it replaces Blood Wolf from beta. He is a character with relatively balanced stats, but mostly favors melee combat traits like Strength, Stamina, and Vitality. He starts the adventure with a set of good quality armor, a good shield and a longsword at the very least. It’s possible he starts with a greatsword too, but that’s unconfirmed. It is often considered the best default choice for many builds, as well as beginners. It’s also a very good basis for doing a Strength build with a few weapon buff spells, for example.
The Hero is a character in medium armor, mixes Strength and Faith (at least on the beta). His wooden ax and shield allow melee combat to be approached in relatively good conditions from the start, but on the beta, it was his dragon’s breath that would make him absolutely devastating. It is unknown if he will start the adventure with this spell in the full game and if his stat distribution will be the same. If so, that will make it a really powerful starting choice. Otherwise, it’s still an interesting choice for a melee/Faith spell hybrid.