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Owlbear is basically a skill check on knowing how to handle damage you can easily predict will come. Owlbear's attacks are on a consistent rotation, you know exactly what is coming up even if you didn't have the left and right arrows to pull up the information at any point.
Knowing exactly what he is going to do and when means you can counter what he is going to do. Is he going to do his melee AoE? Hit him with one of many attack down debuffs (the easiest being from Fighter, Shaman, or Beatsmith), and buff up your party's defense (which you should honestly be doing anyway, but Valkyrie can do that for the party in one action). Is he going to do his magic damage and debuff attack? Well, Aegis, Shaman, and Beatsmith all have ways of nerfing his magic damage, you have a plethora of ways of increasing your magic defense, and you can use either Warlock or Cleric to remove debuffs. I prefer using Warlock because he can heal while removing debuffs and can Twincast it.
It will turn the thousand damage into maybe a few hundred damage, which is much more easily handled.
Unlike most modern RPGs, this game isn't about spamming your biggest and most powerful spells. It actually requires planning and tactics. And it's only going to require responding to what your opponent is doing even more as you go forward.
If you just want to run ahead and blast everything, may I suggest Brotato?
Huh. Okay, I need to rethink a few strategies. You've given me a lot to think about.
Yessir. "Always evade multi-target physical attacks when you are not the attacker's top Threat." There are a few fights in which it's extremely useful for everybody but one designated tank to have it, and I found Owlbear to be one of them.
Is it OK if I ask which difficulty you're playing on? I know that question sounds patronizing but I really don't mean for it to be. Hard is meant to be unfair, built for people that prefer trying bosses over and over again to play around with builds. Normal isn't too far off, and while it can be brute forced with the right teams, it doesn't feel great when it comes down to luck. I think Easy would actually be the most fun for a lot of people. I feel like I didn't do a great job communicating the difficulty settings in this game.
The fact that you consider the threat system punishing doing decent damage probably means you're under-valuing taunt skills. Fighter has a taunt, Aegis has a skill to defend an ally, and Valkyrie has an AoE taunt skill that are quite useful at maintaining aggro.
There's also a passive in the Aegis tree to give your tank at least some aggro at the start of combat so everyone starts off targeting him. From there, counters can be quite useful to maintain threat. There's one in the Monk's passive tree, and there's a shield which grants a counter. They stack, by the way, meaning for every hit your tank receives, he dishes out two back if you have both on.
Also, you don't need the 'best' gear for every class. Instead, think of your characters more as having a role in the party, the classes are just a way to fill or supplement that role. For example, most people want a healer in their party. There's several classes that can fill that role, but regardless of which class you pick, you're going to want Spirit gear, and you're going to want the staff that heals when you bonk with it. Which actually serves double purpose in the climb to the Owlbear you're having such trouble with as the undead along the path are harmed by the healing it does, and gives you a way of doing a 'free' heal. So really, it boils down to what archetypes you want to fill.
My typical is the concept of 'tank', 'melee/physical DPS', 'healer/support', and 'magic DPS'. To that effect, I can build each character out for that role, but how I do so can vary. Do I want a melee DPS that can mitigate its threat by itself? Ninja/Rogue, equip with knives, equip the Backstabber passive, use the Rogue skills that don't generate threat. He'll do damage, but he won't ever steal aggro from your tank.
I really like the Shaman for magic DPS because the blasting comes with a side-order of debuffing that makes taking hits much more manageable. Having said that, Wizard is never a bad option for blasting. The one you picked up in the pyramid is... niche, but can have its uses if done right.
For a healer, Warlock is a solid starting point, then either Valkyrie or Cleric to supplement. Eventually, you'll want Nomad, but you won't have that unlocked just yet if you're at Owlbear, at least not without a sequence break.
And as for the tank? Well, for mostly physical encounters, I like to go with Reaper/Fighter or Reaper/Valkyrie. Reaper's class ability is to gain temporary hit points when he does damage. The more hit points your tank has, the more likely he is to survive the hits coming his way. Valkyrie has an AoE taunt, while Fighter has the offense and defense stances. From there, I equip him with the blade Contract which you get from the Mercury Shrine for free (well, you have to buy the mercury stone, I suppose), and the Duelist's Shield for the extra counter. The Contract weapon has 100% Lifesteal on it, although it reduces your max HP by 300. Of course, if you're going Reaper, that's not really a problem, now is it? The advantage of Reaper is that all of its attacks cost HP, which you then regain from the Lifesteal on the weapon, so you're actually more offensively minded, you just also happen to be able to tank hits. Reaper also has an AoE physical attack he can spam to keep aggro just fine.
Of course, those aren't the only ways to do things. There's plenty of options and choices in the game. If you want to go into advanced options, you can turn on modifiers like triple LP gains to make grinding classes a lot less grindy and give you an opportunity to explore more options.
Just came to say that I saw this strategy last night and finally beat the damn owlbear! Thank you so much!
Awesome! Glad I could help!
It's not just the difficulty more like game play, late game it transforms from a JRPG to a mix-and-match puzzle game of finding the right team compositions (classes/gear/passives) to beat a particular boss.
Also I felt the game only allows certain strategies to win, for example I tried to beat endgame bosses optimizing for time after unlocking Weaver (-CT, -TT, time magic) but found the results negligible due to built-in limitations. Whereas strategies favored by the game are easy to win with, for example The Contract + Reaper + Counter. So it's kind of "you're only allowed to beat the game in the way I want you to" which isn't a great experience.
Reaper/Contract/Counter combo only works against physical attackers. It's quite strong, I use it regularly, but it is only really useful for generating threat and maintaining threat, and only consistently against physical attackers, not magical attackers. And it only works if he doesn't get one-shot. The damage output of this build is not particularly amazing, but it isn't intended or designed to do damage, merely to hold aggro so other classes can unleash their full fury without needing to worry about retaliation.
Weaver is part of one of the most powerful combos in the entire game, capable of one-round killing anything in the entire game. Properly utilized, it is *FAR* more powerful.
There are many strategies that can win. However, setting them up and executing them properly requires a deeper understanding of the mechanics of the game, and how best to utilize them.
The fact that you consider Reaper + Contract + Counter to be a strategy that is easy to win with only means you fail to comprehend that it is only one character out of a four character group, whose abilities synergize with each other. It's a decent tank, but a tank alone does not a party make, you need the rest of the party also set up properly to take advantage of his aggro management. That combo alone won't win anything without a party to support it.
Also, late game, the Contract blade's damage significantly falls off. There's actually another weapon that is used in the combo once you reach the Castle. Its only real bonus is that it is available early in your playthrough and has 100% lifesteal. If you try to use Contract to beat the game, you're going to find your tank just won't be able to keep up. The basic combo relies upon a number of game mechanics and concepts. It's not a copy and paste ultimate solution, nor should it be treated as such.
The primary limitations you experience are based in your inability or unwillingness to identify the underlying principles of the tactics you parrot. In other words, it's not the game's fault you can only beat it with only one composition you probably looked up somewhere.