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Sorry, but that's the truth. You can check compositions, builds, etc. I understand that.
But I think experimentation will be the most rewarding for you.
Start a new save with an idea. Go for it.
Then, either create another one later, or recruit different people, sell or keep the old ones out of the group. (There is a mechanic later which you can keep them safely outside the party). Keep trying and that's it.
I have tried many compositions. But the one I am liking the most so far is my save with many swordsmen. 1 Brute / 2 Ranger / 1 Archer / 4 Swordsman. Two of them Two-Handed, Two of them One-Handed. I am finding it pretty effective and satisfactory. Its quite balanced in both offense and defense. Balanced in Single-Target and Aoe damage. I for example, dont like Spearmen except for the Rallyng Cry ability. But I know people which play with many spearmen and archers only. And that works for them.
So... my advice is, while you can check many builds and party composition with people or guides, the most rewarding result would be for you to try things by yourself. ^^
As a matter of personal choice I would always play in adaptive mode so that you're free to explore wherever you choose from the outset - with a little ingenuity or enough cash you don't need border passes. If nothing else it gives you a wider group of inns and prisons from which to recruits new friends and you have a chance of stumbling across all sorts of helpful things even if you just stick to Tiltren, Arthes and Vertruse which were the three original regions
It's a matter of preference. But some roles are filled better by some classes.
Tank-
Use a Swordsman in Heavy armour, eg Fighter or Protector. In mid-late game they can develop immunity to bleed, fire, and poison. You could do an all-Tank run, and be fine.
Animal Control-
Archers get a perk to control animals at level 5. One of these is useful if you want to operate an animal pack or a Boar farm. No other class gets that.
DPS/Mobility-
Rangers get a upgradable perk called Instinctive Throw that resets movement. You can build a CutThroat which resets the Frenzy attack on kill, that can range all over the battlefield. Number of kills limited by your valor point pool only.
Every other class has value, and can serve you well. Build as you see fit.
For an idea of an unconventional build: all the pikemen you can find, plus a couple of rangers for those DEX jobs, is great fun even if not optimal. Spear wall can be used to freeze enemies in place so they can't get close enough to actually hit you with anything. No need to tank or DPS if the enemy never actually gets close enough to hurt you. Rangers do a good enough job of killing the few enemy archers that you can't trap this way.
My properly built swordsman can kill up to 7 enemies in a single turn, my highest dps so far. But my archer is the most usefull one to properly fix or set any situation. Archers are awesome.
Yeah they can just slow down the pace of the fight while killing units too, and probably the best lvl 12 trait for normal fights it's just ridiculous !
You arm him with active skill that forces engagement, like taunt, and then break engagement and he will hit the enemy after taking a hit. You can absolutely repeat this on a single enemy or multiple enemies if you set it up right.
Shield Bash equipped on the offhand, + taunt + Standard attack means you can attack 3 times on a single enemy and engage 3 times, and breaking engagement to do 3 attacks in total. You hit the enemy 6 times. Pair this with something to greatly diminish the enemy's ability to hurt you, like some form of dodging and you will hack the enemy to death, especially if you gain valor points from engaging for those 3 times.
1. All the melee (brutes, swordsmen, warriors, beserkers).
If you got one of them you think I need two. If you get two you think maybe I need three. And so on. Reason is they are tanky and they get "free" VPs by virtue of the fact that performing what they do anyway, i.e. engage with enemies gets them a VP which they can then spend (for one turn at least) on their extra attack. Hence at the beginning of battle the more of this type of merc you have the more enemies are a) half dead at least on turn one and b) locked down ready for your rangers to stab them in the back to finish them off.
The killer is the "free" VP, something spearmen used to get in EA but don't anymore. Probably best to start them off with 1H + shield and move them on to 2H when god tier armour and weapons arrive for the true and righteous carnage experience.
2. Rangers. Massive backstab damage to enemies already locked down in engagement with your tanks. What's not to like. Only second tier 'cos they are dependant on melee locking them down first. Otherwise they are squishy, relentlessly targeted by enemy AI, and do far less damage. I like 'em speced for backstab, you can also go AoE poison but I'm not a fan of that. I like my enemies good and dead immediately and poisoned enemies can still get you before the poison does it's work.
3. Archers. Essential components of any merc group and only below rangers on account of slightly less damage output but arguably equal them on account of ability to delete enemies at distance when none else easily can when necessary. There are two big decisions with archers and this is down to personal playstyle and preferences really (bit like it is between brutes, warriors, swordsmen etc):
a) Barrage vs Recoil Shot (at level L3).
This is a tough one. Barrage gives you three reaction shots per turn plus your regular shot which, if they actually come to pass, makes this option mathematically the best damage output but the downside is i) it costs 2 VP, ii) the ability to trigger the reaction shots is situational and somewhat unpredictable and iii) the barrage archer is unable to reliably delete annoying single hard to get at enemies in one turn, reason being enemy archers don't trigger Barrage reaction shots if they just shoot and don'y move plus Barrage costs 2VP.
Recoil Shot archers conversely can almost always delete enemy archers, bombers and rangers in one turn, especially if speced for high crit chance, and moreover do it for "free" if they take the option to gain a VP on kill, the VP cost of the Recoil Shot being repaid immediately. This ability is incredibly useful and can be thought of as a get out of jail free card in many dicey encounters. The zero VP cost means it can be used at will.
b) Beastmaster vs Not Beastmaster.
If you want to run animals you need a beastmaster or you can't control them in battle, they act under brain dead AI by themselves. If so then one of your archers must take beastmaster, simple as that really.
4. Spearmen.
These have more or less been written out of the game with 1.0. Their big ability is Spearwall, which is fantastic as it stops enemies in their tracks, thereby losing them their turn, as well as damaging them. A spearman can walk up to an enemy, spear them, then put a spear wall on them effectively locking them down and removing them from the equation for the turn. A superb tactic against dangerous enemy two handers.
In EA Spearwall was "free" - if your spearman was speced to get a VP when ending their turn next to an ally the single VP for setting up the Spearwall was fully refunded. In 1.0 Spearwall now costs 2VP. That is too expensive to use as a bread and butter tactic. Spearwall is good but not that good and VPs can be more effectively spent on abilities from the other classes.
In EA you would spend two VP getting two spearmen to lock down two enemy 2H brutes on their own and it was well worth it since it completely neutralised them for a whole turn and gave the spearman three free hits againt them, usually enough to finish them off (which was actually OP). Now it would cost 4VP. That's far too much.
So they are now, except in exceptional circumstances, only really useful for VP farming, First Aid giving and mopping up. Whereas in EA you might have thought of having two melee tanks supported by two spearmen now you'd say sod that, I think I'll have me four good melee tanks instead.
Poor Spearmen. That's unfortunately how much difference a 1VP vs 2VP ability makes in this game. Hero to zero in one update basically. To make Spearwall worth the 2VP it would have to trigger at least twice maybe three times per deployment IMHO.
Upgrading spear wall *does* trigger twice for 2VP. This means that, with a little bit of planning you can lock down 2 enemies per spear. Luckily, because spear attacks also move enemies, you can position them in just the right way once you get good. Furthermore, if you have everyone locked down, you can use one spear men to knock back an enemy already trapped in a spearwall to trigger it, thereby giving you the ability to have a 2-for-1 attack.
Spearmen need to stick together so that they cover each others flanks: so give them valorous support, and split them so that half of them the ability that passively spreads brutality and half that give vulnerable with their attacks. Using Orderly they can therefore generate 2 VP each just by sticking together and because spearman should clump together, it's easy to get Orderly on all of them. Yes, orderly eventually expires, but if the 3rd turn is anything but mopping up, you're doing it wrong.
Two spearmen together can therefore lock 4 enemies so that they can't move or attack, get 6 full strength attacks with brutality (2 normal, 4 AoO) half of which also have vulnerability while being neutral in VP.Have a handful of such teams and the enemy is completely neutralised, unable to do anything, while they soak up damage. Does this ideal scenario play out all the time? No, but close to it often enough that spears are still good.
If you want "proof" I'm in Ludern with a party that's 6 spears, 2 2H, 1 Range, 1 Archer fighting against enemies that are 2 or 3 levels higher than me and outnumber me by up to 50%: I win most of my battles without taking any damage beyond an archer's melee attack, and with more VP than I started (I need about 5 VP that I use up and regenerate, the rest stays untouched - those 5 can be recovered with a rest or by using the captains ability first thing in a battle).
Now the game is so easy even on Hard difficulty that this isn't saying much. But it does mean that spears are good enough to handle anything the game throws at you. They do suck at dealing with archers (and capturing), but that's trivial to deal with in other ways.
I would say that there lies the rub. I'm sure what you say is true, but it clearly requires some advanced not to say expert play to pull off successfully and furthermore doesn't kick in the way you describe until level 8.
Level 8 is a long way to go for a beginner and I personally think beginners will find spearmen very underwhelming compared to the other classes.
Level 8? What do you need level 8 for?
What I said works at level 3 when you unlock spear wall. Level 5 gives brutality, but that's just a nice bonus. Captain and lieutenant also unlock very early - within the first region for sure. Upgrading skills is a bigger problem but, if you're playing a beginner than you're playing region-locked and so have 3 whole regions to figure this out before enemies are tough enough that you need the upgrades. If you're a pro and playing party-scaled, then you know to steal with mastery skill books ASAP.
But yes, making it work does require careful positioning. You need adjacency bonuses, but enough space to rotate spearmen around, you need to spear-wall potential avenues of attack, you have to be wary of enemies occasionally moving slightly even inside a spearwall, etc.. etc... Personally, I consider the skill needed to pull this off well a bonus! A game like this is more fun when you actually have to think tactically
Get 16 Movement on the bears and put everything else into Crit. Stats on Beastmasters are irrelevant.
Lvl 12 Polar Bears have 2200 HP. With the Infused Collar and the 8 Beasmasters, they regenerate 1100 HP per turn. They get infinite stacks of Frenzy, they attack 4 times at 8 Frenzy and gain Berserk at 16. A Bear with 16 stacks of Frenzy deals around 1k damage in a turn. This oneshots anything.
Beastsmasters are only there for ATTACK! and to heal the bears. Equip the Unique Bow that allows your Bears to ATTACK! as well.
Get a Berserker to shout and give +30% Damage to your bears. Also equip the Axe that puts the MARK FOR DEAD debuff on target. Anytime a Bear attacks an enemy with this, he gains another 2 stacks of Frenzy.
Get an Outlaw to give +30% Crit Damage to your team.
Get a Swordsman to give permanent Weakness to any particularly strong unit.
Get a Rogue with Smoke Bomb to force everyone to disengage, causing even more opportunity strike to anything that is still alive. Rogue will also apply Vulnerability and Fever.