The difficulty level will greatly affect your survival experience from high level die often Elite or high level safety Veteran.

Kensei: is one of the most difficult classes due to it's low defense (it has access to boosted dodge chance to help!) unless you can make the difference by getting enough damage reduction Eyes of Grell or Skulls of Limony inserted into your armor.

Also it has the least power between the 3 classes with a short range to affect few foes.

Yet... it has my favorite combat style... run in and heal by striking with a big sword quickly.

Archer: has many traps and ranged options to help survivability but again benefits from what was stated above.

I do like the archer's skill to fire many arrows as it's a much safer style with-in Torchlight_2 combat wise.

It does have the ability to hit many targets so it's more powerful than Kensei.

Monster Hunter: One of the best offensive far-reaching power classes to help survivability but could still use the extra defense from what was stated above.

Probably my second favorite style: it's everything a cannoner or gunner should be... absolute battlefield damage dealer since nothing on screen can escape the reach of many skills.

In fact Monster Hunter damage is comparable to other powerful modded ranged classes outside the Far East mods.

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I know Kensei has it's own orange quality end-gear... I believe Hunter and Archer share orange gear with the original torchlight_2 classes.