How do I build a Party based around Dark Hunter, Hexer, War Magus

[F O E]

Nearing the end of my first EO1 playthrough, with the basic RPG party:
P,L,M
S,T
So I want to try something completely different in EO2.
?,D,W
?,H
Is a party like this viable, don't really care about the 6th stratum.
What skills should I focus on and what could the other 2 classes be?
I definitly want a Beast in the party, so one of the 2 will retire for that.
Would a (Bind)Gunner work in this party? Then I would have all new classes in my party.

I heard that this game is kinda the opposite of EO1, in EO1 Defense is OP and in EO2 defense is nerfed and kinda useless.

[Hentaika]

Just like the 1st game you have very little leeway in the party you can select if you want to beat all content including postgame/optional stuff without much challenge and without grind and if you value your time.

In first one it was Protector, Knecht, Medic, Survivalist + either Alchemist or Troubadour(alchemist being a bit better overall for conditional roles, but that's the only real choice you could make)

In second one it's DH, Hexer, Gunner, War Magus and Ronin
No real leeway here. Unless you use duplicate classes and something like DH + 4 hexers.

Beast is absolute worst class in the game overall as it's still either bugged or working poorly by crap design(choose what you prefer)

You are indeed correct about 1st is you being immortal and fighting HP sponges who could do nothing against you.

You are also correct about the 2nd one where either you die in a few enemy turns or enemy dies in a few of your turns(assuming optimal party)

The idea behind party is:
DH + Gunner = disable enemy for AT LEAST 2 turns(likely 3-4). Works against ALL bosses including final postgame one.
Both are also super important for the conditional drops. Especially gunner for elemental damage.
Hexer - main damage dealer who doesn't really need much in terms of setup and allows you to even solo easier bosses which helps with reclaiming levels of other chars.
War Magus - there is basically 0 reason to take medic since it's main advantage(best AoE heal) is pointless. War magus offers more offense via buff which is main reason for it and in general the healing will be about same for where you need it.
Ronin - by far best phys damager in 2.

You can use beast as a lousy phys damager instead of Ronin I guess. But there is 0 reason to aside of having to carry a way inferior slot.
The entire strategy depends on being able to burst enemy before it bursts you so taking an inferior slot is worse than it sounds.

[F O E]

Thanks, I'll try that party.
I thought Hexer was for binds and ailments so DH can deal massive damage?
So DH and G are bind machines and WM buffs so H and R can dps?

What skills does H use for damage, in EO1 at least they were just for bind and ailments right?
G elemental shots only for conditionals or for damage after binding enemies?
Any special skills for DH after he binds the enemy?
R gets the multiple hit attack like in EO1 I'm assuming
WM focus on buffs and heal.

[Hentaika]

Originally posted by F O E:

Thanks, I'll try that party. :Yuyuko:
I thought Hexer was for binds and ailments so DH can deal massive damage?
So DH and G are bind machines and WM buffs so H and R can dps?

What skills does H use for damage, in EO1 at least they were just for bind and ailments right?
G elemental shots only for conditionals or for damage after binding enemies?
Any special skills for DH after he binds the enemy?
R gets the multiple hit attack like in EO1 I'm assuming
WM focus on buffs and heal.

Quick Summary:
Gunner - main use is 'force', it's a guaranteed stun which only 2 random enemies(not bosses, albeit one is actually pretty hard on par with boss) in the entire game resist. Gunner best gun gives insane force generation so you can easily prepare force for before boss no problem.
Extra uses: good damage for random encounters + elemental shots(keep lvl 1) for conditional drops.
Ricochet on bosses is also great damage.

DH - main use is yet again 'force'. Yet again has a top tier weapon with force generation too.
Force guaranteed inflicts all 3 binds BUT it happens usually at end of turn(bad speed multiplier), hence you need to do both gunner and DH forces at same time turn 1.
Nothing is immune to binds but yet again a few enemies can punish you for using binds. Those are very few however so hardly matters.
This force will usually fully disable boss at least until turn 3... with some luck it can even last until turn 4-5.
Extra uses: climax is a guaranteed kill on anything that is not immune to instant death as long as target has 55% HP or less.
This doesn't work on most bosses BUT it works on most FOE, which is a godsend in being able to kill them earlier in a much easier fashion.

Hexer - main use is 'revenge' skill while equipping all possible HP gear and sitting at ~1 HP. Nothing comes remotely close to dealing same stable damage each turn.
Extra uses:
One of few units who has item drop chance which is a must have in EO2.
Early game poison is a hard carry, it's an absolutely insane random encounter mechanism and allows you to use salve 2 during random exploration.
You will likely be using max level poison on random encoutners all the way until closer to end of postgame when it stops being as efficient.

War Magus - main use is 'atk buff' eventually. This allows you to output even more damage via physical damagers in the few turns when enemy can't do anything and allowing you to finish bosses before they can move no problem.
Extra Uses: obviously healing.
I honestly didn't use much aside of low level 'healing'(for cost efficiency out of combat when only 1 target needs a heal) and salve 2.
Eventually you can max out full heal too but it hardly matters.
The damage is also not too bad with basic attack but it's more of a 'can do something when healing is not required tier'

Ronin - you literally only use 1 skill in the game - midareba, everything else is passive.
Well, you can also buff up with dead law but it's usually waste of time.
Midareba gets a massive power boost at lvl 10, from a 230% total damage multiplier to an insane 420% from simply lvl 9 > 10 jump.
Needless to say ronin is powerhouse of single target damage.
Extra uses: can take 1 level of 'bash damage' skill for some conditional drops.

Also don't neglect HP/TP passives(and STR for damagers)
Those are huge value after you invest into most important skills but unlike first game you want max level for bigger value so you can't just 'throw 1 point and forget'.
HP ends up being +45% and TP ends up being 92%.

[F O E]

Awesome, thanks for the help bro :)
Almost done with EO1, just 3 more floors till true final boss.
Will probably go for town crown too while I'm at it.

[Hentaika]

There is even bonus for finishing 1st one 100%, yeah. It's kinda solid for a decent amount of time.

That being said the drop rates of some bosses are absolutely disastrous in 1st one.
2 has it better with just hexer boosting the drop chances to a minimum of ~50%.

[F O E]

Originally posted by Hentaika:

There is even bonus for finishing 1st one 100%, yeah. It's kinda solid for a decent amount of time.

That being said the drop rates of some bosses are absolutely disastrous in 1st one.
2 has it better with just hexer boosting the drop chances to a minimum of ~50%.

Yeah, I just beat the Fire Dragon in EO1 and then looked online for Conditional drop...
5% chance, not sure if I wanna spend 3 hours grinding for each of the super bosses.
I also spoiled myself by looking at the Ice Dragon's moveset and...
Full Party instakill + Near immunity to all relevant damage sources + massive self HP regen?
Seems like a total RNG fest.

[Hentaika]

Yeah, it's entirely possible you will spend entire day grinding for nothing... especially with how bugged/semi predetermined the RNG is in Etrian.
It took me only slightly less time to get all the drops as one needs for actually beating the entire game without taking drops into account.

As for the etrian 1 dragon bosses - they are not really challenging, just HP sponges as long as you have Protector with exactly lvl 5 anti and a medic.

Etrian games are honestly overhyped IMO since for optimal completion there is honestly hardly any choice in what you can do, you are FORCED to use exact combination of classes/skills you can't know in advance without looking it up. You have some alternatives BUT they inflate the time you need to spend by even more hours so they are usually undesired.
Pair this with MMO tier drop rates and you get a rather frustrating experience if you are completionist.

2nd is the least frustrating as far as drop rates go at least since you can get drop rates to 50-100% easily if you want to.
But it's also the least fun since essentially close to nothing can actually fight back at all.

[Araxxor]

Beast is a much different class in HD than in DS. It's far more usable, it just needs some support or you take Preen to basically mitigate the downsides of Loyalty. A Protector in the party can make Beast ridiculous at survivability, and Rampage is one of the best damage skills in the game.

If Loyalty worked the way people wanted it to, Beast would be genuinely OP since it would be incredibly hard to kill. You can see this for yourself in this version by using Preen to essentially make Loyalty work the way people wanted at the cost of a buff slot and a turn. Or by having a Protector use Provoke to draw the heat towards them, spreading out the damage between 2 very tanky classes.

Originally posted by Hentaika:

Etrian games are honestly overhyped IMO since for optimal completion there is honestly hardly any choice in what you can do, you are FORCED to use exact combination of classes/skills you can't know in advance without looking it up. You have some alternatives BUT they inflate the time you need to spend by even more hours so they are usually undesired.
Pair this with MMO tier drop rates and you get a rather frustrating experience if you are completionist.

Having went through this trilogy with non-meta party comps, the games are more flexible than people take it for, 2 included, and there's alternative party comps that are perfectly viable without sinking your DPS to the bottom. I've beaten this game with a Beast and it was one of my best damage dealers.

Meta party comps were only really a thing in EO1 and 2. Starting from 3 people generally used a more wider variety of party compositions.

Drop rates were only really a huge issue in 1. From 2 Scavenge exists, and 3 got rid of the Gear Registry and there's Formaldehyde and Lucky Hammer can force a drop if you get especially unlucky. And that's on normal enemies.

I heard that this game is kinda the opposite of EO1, in EO1 Defense is OP and in EO2 defense is nerfed and kinda useless.

Offense is more king here, but don't neglect armor. Armor is at its absolute best in this game compared to the rest of the franchise.

Most other classes are a fine choice with that setup to be honest. I would probably advise against a Landsknecht however. Landsknecht in 2 is only good with chaser parties. The rest of its kit is dog doo doo. Survivalist is the worst class in the game and offers little to a party, but nothing's really stopping you from using it, especially since you're not doing post-game.

Bind Gunner can be a great supplement to the party.

I ran a PDB/HG party and did excellently with it. The Beast and Protector did amazing amounts of damage with the Beast rarely dying.

[ant]

Originally posted by Hentaika:

Just like the 1st game you have very little leeway in the party you can select if you want to beat all content including postgame/optional stuff without much challenge and without grind.

In first one it was Protector, Knecht, Medic, Survivalist + either Alchemist or Troubadour(alchemist being a bit better overall for conditional roles, but that's the only real choice you could make)


Ronin - by far best phys damager in 2.

You can use beast as a lousy phys damager instead of Ronin I guess. But there is 0 reason to aside of having to carry a way inferior slot.
The entire strategy depends on being able to burst enemy before it bursts you so taking an inferior slot is worse than it sounds.

Well, the first half of your post is utter nonsense. While the "meta" comps are really op, you have plenty of leeway, especially in 2 with the severe nerfing of enemy elemental damage. In 1 stacking bind users trivializes the game up until the superboss and I 100% EO2 with LMBST and MPWTS and other comps.

Second, Ronin isn't even the best DPS in 2. Beast, Hexer, Dark Hunter, Gunner, and even Landy can outdamage Ronin. Ronin is just super consistent and easy to use. If you're abusing Dominate, Ronin has no role because Rampage dramatically outdamages Ronin and leg bind stops evasion. Ronin is still very good, but in the "meta" it's the most replaceable.

Honestly, your post reads like someone who never played HD or even experimented with other classes. As unbalanced as DS era is, you have way more options than you are admitting. I think MST is the best core of EO1 but basically every class but Ronin has a niche. Even Hexer has great binds, Sapping, Relapse, and a 30% chance to stun everything turn 1 in that game, and it's much better in HD because they made binds easier to land and you can NG+ it.

[Hentaika]

Originally posted by ant:

Well, the first half of your post is utter nonsense. While the "meta" comps are really op, you have plenty of leeway, especially in 2 with the severe nerfing of enemy elemental damage. In 1 stacking bind users trivializes the game up until the superboss and I 100% EO2 with LMBST and MPWTS and other comps.

Second, Ronin isn't even the best DPS in 2. Beast, Hexer, Dark Hunter, Gunner, and even Landy can outdamage Ronin. Ronin is just super consistent and easy to use. If you're abusing Dominate, Ronin has no role because Rampage dramatically outdamages Ronin and leg bind stops evasion. Ronin is still very good, but in the "meta" it's the most replaceable.

Honestly, your post reads like someone who never played HD or even experimented with other classes. As unbalanced as DS era is, you have way more options than you are admitting. I think MST is the best core of EO1 but basically every class but Ronin has a niche. Even Hexer has great binds, Sapping, Relapse, and a 30% chance to stun everything turn 1 in that game, and it's much better in HD because they made binds easier to land and you can NG+ it.

There is leeway for a lame 'complete the game', sure. But 100% completion(getting all items) without ever changing into other classes in 1/2 has only one party with little to no leeway.

But there is none for the full game completion.

HD also changed literally nearly nothing in 1 and 2. Hell, they even kept 99% of the bugs that were glaringly obvious.
Not to mention the preseeded RNG is still there.

In 1:
You can't complete game fully without protector anti, EVER. At least not efficiently if your goal is to grind the 5-10% crap. Aside of that class is so so but one thing and one thing only already makes it mandatory.
You can't complete it while maintaining sanity without a medic, EVER. At least not if your goal is to grind those 5-10% drop rate ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
Survivalist is simply overpowering any other possible back line slot.
Knecht is by far ultimate combination of AoE + single target. If it was possible to get Ronin earlier I would say it would be viable'ish since it IS slightly superior as boss damager.
Alchemist VS Troubadour is the most debatable last slot. Without alchemist you don't cover some conditional drops however so alchemist kinda wins in the full completion department.

In 2:
Not using dark hunter + hexer + gunner trio is pure stupidity and serves 0 purpose as this covers majority of conditional drops + drop rate from hexer is mandatory unless you take medic.
On top of that it's simply by far most optimal complete disable for the bosses. Nothing aside of some quirky duplicate class setups will be more efficient.
Essentially nothing is 'wasted' in this trio compared to taking anything else.

Medic OR War Magus is yet again another 'must'. Healing is just too convenient to skip it.
There is nearly 0 reason to go medic however. The only thing Medic has going for it is drop rate... but hexer already boosts it to 50%+ so who cares.
War Magus is better both during random encounters and bossing, no debate there.

Ronin as I already mentioned IS the most optional slot. And while yeah, beast can in 'ideal' circumstances outdamage it - throughout the game beast is mostly just a pointless inferior slot.
Ronin can cover bash + slash and does the full damage potential all the time with no conditions required.
You do NOT need more damage on bosses than Ronin already provides since nothing gets to move to begin with in optimal setup.
Also only hexer(and in ideal circumstances beast, but it will lose on average by far) can beat Ronin damage, not sure what you are smoking here.
Gunner can't outdamage the Midareba of Ronin... it in fact can't even MATCH the damage of Ronin albeit it's very close. Paired with it's other utility and ability to damage from back row it is a more 'useful' class, sure, but it certainly can't outdamage Ronin.
Dark Hunter also can't outdamage the Ronin. You have one skill which can deal massive damage but it removes the binds with high chance screwing up your entire party for it... so why would you in most cases?


I am never arguing you can't beat anything with absolutely 0 leeway.
I am only telling that it's POINTLESS since it's BY FAR more unoptimal for 100% completion.

Sounds to me like you are counting game completion as something less than full 100% completion.
If you are fine skipping part of the game then obviously the balance changes dramatically.

But both 1 and 2 has at least 'that one encounter' which makes a certain class mandatory by itself. It's often some completely pointless optional ♥♥♥♥ like a conditional drop you won't ever use but it's there and it blocks 100% completion.
This is more offending in 1 where drop rates are garbage to begin with.

[Hentaika]

Originally posted by Araxxor:

Having went through this trilogy with non-meta party comps, the games are more flexible than people take it for, 2 included, and there's alternative party comps that are perfectly viable without sinking your DPS to the bottom. I've beaten this game with a Beast and it was one of my best damage dealers.

Yeah... and having went through your profile I can tell that you used non meta at a glance.

I do NOT count doubling or even tripling the time of 100%ing the game as 'fine alternative'.

Let's compare our playtime to be fair, all my completion times are with absolute 100%(all drops in 1,2... all drops/awards in 3 + full ocean completion/mapping):

Your playtime for 1 is 158 hours. Mine is 63 hours while getting ALL the drops. I did get relatively lucky with RNG seed compared to my DS playthrough however and I did know the game in advance, so add ~20 hours for good measure in case of bad RNG. That's still an insane double time gap.
Did you even get those garbage drops? With 158 hours you probably did, but I wouldn't even guarantee it with alternative setups even with that playtime.

Your play time for 2 is 141 hour. Mine 100% completion is 55 hours. Nuff said, the efficiency gap of meta in 2 is absolutely insane. This requires absolutely 0 knowledge of the game, you just use the setup and go brrrr, RNG is a non factor in 2.

Your play time in 3 is 285 hours, mine full 100% of ocean + all drops is 83 hours.
~6-7 of those hours is farming the sea milk + overlord squid in the ocean.. yeah, my RNG seed was absolutely terrible in HD on those.
I doubt 285 hours is 1 playthrough but that's enough time for x3 100% playthrough times basically even with absolutely disastrous ocean RNG.

This is exactly what I mean when I speak about setups not being 'viable'. Not the fact that you can't beat X without using Y.
It's more of a - it's so much less efficient to use X than using Y.

In more balanced games the alternative is not this far apart.

What I count as alternative:
X is better in early game, Y is better in late game for example.
X is better against W and Y is better against Z for example.

What I do NOT count as alternative:
Straightforward worse options which will always show drastically worse results with the only reason to ever take those being challenging yourself.

[F O E]

Originally posted by Hentaika:

Originally posted by Araxxor:

Having went through this trilogy with non-meta party comps, the games are more flexible than people take it for, 2 included, and there's alternative party comps that are perfectly viable without sinking your DPS to the bottom. I've beaten this game with a Beast and it was one of my best damage dealers.

Yeah... and having went through your profile I can tell that you used non meta at a glance.

I do NOT count doubling or even tripling the time of 100%ing the game as 'fine alternative'.

Let's compare our playtime to be fair, all my completion times are with absolute 100%(all drops in 1,2... all drops/awards in 3 + full ocean completion/mapping):

Your playtime for 1 is 158 hours. Mine is 63 hours while getting ALL the drops. I did get relatively lucky with RNG seed compared to my DS playthrough however and I did know the game in advance, so add ~20 hours for good measure in case of bad RNG. That's still an insane double time gap.
Did you even get those garbage drops? With 158 hours you probably did, but I wouldn't even guarantee it with alternative setups even with that playtime.

Your play time for 2 is 141 hour. Mine 100% completion is 55 hours. Nuff said, the efficiency gap of meta in 2 is absolutely insane. This requires absolutely 0 knowledge of the game, you just use the setup and go brrrr, RNG is a non factor in 2.

Your play time in 3 is 285 hours, mine full 100% of ocean + all drops is 83 hours.
~6-7 of those hours is farming the sea milk + overlord squid in the ocean.. yeah, my RNG seed was absolutely terrible in HD on those.
I doubt 285 hours is 1 playthrough but that's enough time for x3 100% playthrough times basically even with absolutely disastrous ocean RNG.

This is exactly what I mean when I speak about setups not being 'viable'. Not the fact that you can't beat X without using Y.
It's more of a - it's so much less efficient to use X than using Y.

In more balanced games the alternative is not this far apart.

What I count as alternative:
X is better in early game, Y is better in late game for example.
X is better against W and Y is better against Z for example.

What I do NOT count as alternative:
Straightforward worse options which will always show drastically worse results with the only reason to ever take those being challenging yourself.

Araxxor took 9 days to 100% EO1, so 219 Hours
219h from start to finish-158h playtime =58h free time
58 Hours to eat, sleep and work is a but short, about 6 hour a day for non gaming activities.
So either he is ultra rich and games all day because he doesn't need to work or the 158 hours of playtime are from 2 or even 3 playthroughts.
So he isn't much slower then you, or maybe even faster.
As I said in the topic I don't really care about 6th stratum and wether a build is the Meta or not.
In EO1 I did the meta party that everyone recommended and it got kinda boring after a while, random encounter gets one shot by L, Bosses get obliterated by S, P and M make the Party invincible.
So in EO2 I wanted to try a completely different, fun Party. I want all new classes and a focus on binds and ailments.
No need for all of you to get defensive about your playstyles.

[ant]

Originally posted by Hentaika:

There is leeway for a lame 'complete the game', sure. But 100% completion(getting all items) without ever changing into other classes in 1/2 has only one party with little to no leeway.

But there is none for the full game completion.

I beat EO1 in like 27 hours. Pretty much the only thing that stalled my run was grinding awful drops, but that's not really that difficult when you can stack Scavenge users pretty easily or rig rng.

HD also changed literally nearly nothing in 1 and 2. Hell, they even kept 99% of the bugs that were glaringly obvious.

Literally wrong. They changed bind mechanics to make them easier to land because enemy resistances go up by +25% instead of being multiplied by 25% like in DS. They also buffed provoke skills. In EO2 all three of them are guaranteed to redirect splash and single target damage (they didn't work on skills in ds) and the enemy chooses its target when it acts so provokes work on the first turn.

In 1:
You can't complete game fully without protector anti, EVER. At least not efficiently if your goal is to grind the 5-10% crap. Aside of that class is so so but one thing and one thing only already makes it mandatory.

I already did. I fully bound the dragons in three turns because they're way easier to bind now. Troubadour can effectively counter all elemental damage with its resistance skills.

Knecht is by far ultimate combination of AoE + single target. If it was possible to get Ronin earlier I would say it would be viable'ish since it IS slightly superior as boss damager.

Landy is pretty middling what it comes to boss damage, but it can hit very hard with imbues due to how imbues work in the first game. Its the best sweeper that doesn't require any support (survivalist speeding up hexer or alchemist) though. Dark Hunter deals about the same damage on average with some severe spikes due to Bait, plus Fury got buffed in HD and it's way easier to fully bind 99% of the game.

Alchemist VS Troubadour is the most debatable last slot. Without alchemist you don't cover some conditional drops however so alchemist kinda wins in the full completion department.

Wrong. Poison and revenge count for "nonphysical damage", as do instant deaths. You can get Carminite and Cold Scale through composites

Medic OR War Magus is yet again another 'must'. Healing is just too convenient to skip it.
There is nearly 0 reason to go medic however. The only thing Medic has going for it is drop rate... but hexer already boosts it to 50%+ so who cares.

Convenient, but not mandatory. Items are extremely overpowered in EO2. Magus is a wonder class basically entirely because of Warmight and people get healing because the rest of its kit is pretty bad outside of curse cheese and you might as well. The healing spares your wallet but EO2's economy is incredibly broken anyway

You do NOT need more damage on bosses than Ronin already provides since nothing gets to move to begin with in optimal setup.

Beast deals more damage than Ronin on average even with its poor accuracy. If you're willing to abuse Dominate, Rampage is just the vastly superior option past the earlygame since Beast takes longer to get online.

Dark Hunter also can't outdamage the Ronin. You have one skill which can deal massive damage but it removes the binds with high chance screwing up your entire party for it... so why would you in most cases?

If you don't want to spam Bait, which is very easy to abuse in postgame because the AI is predictable, you can spam Ecstasy after turn 1 for 750% damage vs Mideraba's 420%. Ecstasy has literally NEVER removed binds in any of its four appearances. That's just absolute misinformation.

[Araxxor]

I tend to leave games on in the background while I do other stuff and sometimes don't even get back to them until several hours later. I also do a lot of research and data mining into this series, so my play times are very inflated and shouldn't really be taken as an indicator of how long it takes to beat a game since a very small portion of that was actually spent progressing in a "normal" fashion. Some of this involved looking into and researching RNG manips to help others get the dragon drops in 1 or the Overlord Squid in 3 more easily. And I spent time experimenting with even more alternative parties for certain bosses in order to show off unusual kills to other people.

In terms of actually beating the games, I didn't really struggle at all to do so or had to grind to pull it off aside from some very stupid quests in 2 that required specific classes at a certain level to clear.

[Hentaika]

Originally posted by ant:

I beat EO1 in like 30 hours. Pretty much the only thing that stalled my run was grinding awful drops, but that's not really that difficult when you can stack Scavenge users pretty easily or rig rng.

Yeah, that sounds more or less fine for a speedrush with knowledge of the game assuming you skip story segments and figuring out dungeon mechanics. Not sure what's the point of playing more than once though and I doubt any sane person will, but you do you. Especially not in a row for anyone remotely sane.

But not with your setups obviously as they have massive flaws you can't cover in any way in such time... without a speedhack at least.

I doubt you can map all the tiles including holes 100% at the same time though, should add quite a bit extra time.
I count this as part of 100% in any dungeon crawler.

As for farming drops:
Scavenge stacking sadly won't help much either since it's not like you will be using more than ~2 in any real party. You can still have hours of nothing even with 2. Or get lucky. At least with party that will still beat it just fine. It's unlikely you will stack more than 2-3 scavengers on dragons for example without sacrificing farm speed/reliability.

Let's assume average endgame total luck value boosting drop rate from 10% to 11%.. you can't really go any higher there realistically without some insane grind like spending hundreds(thousands?) of hours on lvl 99 farming.
Which can probably boost it to 12% but I didn't really count it as I don't care either.

Let's assume 2 maxed scavenges - that's 130%*130%=1.69 multi.
This ends up into 18% chance.
That's the average value you will get in medic X alchemist setup ignoring the troubadour btw. Yet another convenience of taking alchemist in 1 instead of troubadour.

If you for some reason took a party which can have 5 scavengers - the multi ends up 3.69
A 40% chance which sounds amazing on paper.
But on practice you won't beat the boss with such party and especially you won't be beating the entire game with such party.

Scavenge is literally only on alchemist/medic. Multiple medics is kinda... fine but it won't help much with surviving some bosses.
The absolute least you would need is a protector for a 4 scavenge setup which drops the chance pretty dramatically.
But that's still either sucking early on(medic stacking for cad damage) or sucking later on(alchemists)
Not to mention how much time you are losing on the other stuff for not that much of a chance improve... so yeah, 2 scavenges is the realistic limit.
Still needs loads of precious skill points invested too, but that's kinda less of a problem.

Literally wrong. They changed bind mechanics to make them easier to land because enemy resistances go up by +25% instead of being multiplied by 25% like in DS. They also buffed provoke skills. In EO2 all three of them are guaranteed to redirect splash and single target damage (they didn't work on skills in ds) and the enemy chooses its target when it acts so provokes work on the first turn.

Not sure what's wrong? They changed a few things you can totally ignore and left 999 other bugs they should have fixed. How neat, thanks so much.

I already did. I fully bound the dragons in three turns because they're way easier to bind now. Troubadour can effectively counter all elemental damage with its resistance skills.

Relying on RNG, yeah, that's kinda cool if you are fine with reloading and bothering to rig the fake RNG, I guess.
Troubadour is kinda okay for non ice dragon. The damage from nukes is only half the trouble.
Yet again main problem is the grind time with all this crap.

I wonder what you will do against stuff immune to binds too? Oh right, I guess you never reached primevil either.

Landy is pretty middling what it comes to boss damage, but it can hit very hard with imbues due to how imbues work in the first game. Its the best sweeper that doesn't require any support (survivalist speeding up hexer or alchemist) though. Dark Hunter deals about the same damage on average with some severe spikes due to Bait, plus Fury got buffed in HD and it's way easier to fully bind 99% of the game.

DH is a class that presumes you played the game once to make it work or reading guides. Or trial and error which will waste aeons.
Knecht will work for everyone blindly without any knowledge.
Not sure how is knecht damage middling for boss when it's literally not too far from ronin whom you have to go out of your way to make but sure.

Wrong. Poison and revenge count for "nonphysical damage", as do instant deaths. You can get Carminite and Cold Scale through composites

Yet again what's wrong? You take more inconveniences to somehow make up what is otherwise an easy access via other option.
That's exactly what I meant. That being said as I mentioned already it's the most debatable slot. Convenience vs inconvenience but better bossing.

Convenient, but not mandatory. Items are extremely overpowered in EO2. Magus is a wonder class basically entirely because of Warmight and people get healing because the rest of its kit is pretty bad outside of curse cheese and you might as well. The healing spares your wallet but EO2's economy is incredibly broken anyway

Convenient = mandatory. Pointless to waste time on going out of your way not to include one.
Economy is broken in all EO but it's still pretty annoying grind in all 3. It's not hard but the feel of wasting your life on purely getting cash is just one of the myriad aspects which makes etrian a pretty garbage game.

Beast deals more damage than Ronin on average even with its poor accuracy. If you're willing to abuse Dominate, Rampage is just the vastly superior option past the earlygame since Beast takes longer to get online.

It does not if you account for random battles. And that's where majority of time is spent in 2. Bosses die regardless of there being beast or ronin... heck, you technically don't even need full party to take majority of them down.
Not to mention how terrible it is early on.
Pair this with scavenge being broken and the bosses in the 2 end up essentially 'non factor' which you don't even need to waste time on.

If you don't want to spam Bait, which is very easy to abuse in postgame because the AI is predictable, you can spam Ecstasy after turn 1 for 750% damage vs Mideraba's 420%. Ecstasy has literally NEVER removed binds in any of its four appearances. That's just absolute misinformation.

Yet again there is 0 point in that since no boss gets to move by playing 'normally'.
You can't bait something that is dead or can't move.

Ecstasy increasing chances to remove binds is common knowledge. Heck, you don't even need more than 5 minutes to test it out, the chance change is dramatic.
Surprised you managed to waste so much time on this dumpster fire without figuring out something majority of people know.
If you know you will kill boss even if binds fall off with big chance then it's fine. But other than that it's better to do something else... something else usually means the poison nuke which is pretty weak.
In most cases you can do ecstasy safely but it's nearly guaranteed to drop at least one of the binds so you won't do it more than once either.
Due to RNG seeding it's not even true RNG in this game so you can technically reload and fish for better combination of actions, sure... but what's the point?

Ronin will always deal top damage, no strings attached, no need to take damage, no need to let enemy move, no knowledge required, nothing.
Hexer is even better if you don't limit yourself and take multiple. But yet again no real point.

Either way, I see 0 point to waste the time any further.
Comparing a generic playthrough with a well thought out playthrough based on previous knowledge of the game which won't work for someone who didn't play the game before is entirely pointless discussion to begin with.
All the while it's still being less optimal too ironically.