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I need to analyze a java application (a .jar file) for a war game. I know java can be decompiled, but the coder apparently did a lot of obfuscation to prevent the reverse engineers from understanding how his/her application works. So I thought it would be better if I used a debugger. Would you guys recommend me a debugger like ollydbg but for debugging java applets?

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jdb/jdebugtool seem to fit your requirements.

Though a decompile (http://java.decompiler.free.fr/), pulling into your favourite IDE and then stepping through may be a neater approach? That way you can isolate methods and play with them individually. If you have a behaviour you want performed, that you can identify, such as incrementing a specific counter, you can cut through a lot of obfuscation by stepping through from something else (such as click button 'A') that you know should have that ultimate effect.

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well, in this article it is said why decompiling and recompilinng java apps is not a good idea. But anyway, I tried that and looks like the coder had thought of this and the app didn't work as expected. – Wise Feb 10 at 11:16
It's definitely not a good idea for production code, but for research purposes it can provide significant insight. – Bob Watson Feb 10 at 11:17

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