What's your favorite party composition?

[Aeralis]

I'm interested to see what kinds of fun parties people have put together. Right now I'm using Knight, Rogue, Bard, Warrior, and Barbarian, and I'm kinda destroying everything in my path with little to no effort. It's almost scary how crazy powerful this team is. (Though the Knight is starting to fall behind in usefulness a little bit. Wondering if going with the Hunter might have been a better idea.)

I'm also interested to see any groups that make good use of the Necromancer. Seems like a neat class, but I'm having trouble seeing what the actual point of it is.

[Red Shift]

If youre having success with 3 tanks I might give it a shot - i havnt gone down that route as I would have thought you would be losing out on damage potential by buffing skills that increase threat or defense on more than one character.
Do you have to make sure their threat is equal to ensure damage is spread equally and your not caught out by the lack of a strong heal?

As for the necro - he does crazy damage, his minion skill is the strongest DOT ive come across - at lv 34, with necro, shaman and druid, I managed to pull of a DOT that ticked for 711 on a boss (forget which one, possibly the one that drops the crowbar).
Minion was leveled to 20, tornado and vine was 15 and feral attack was 10 iirc.

[intok]

I'm on my first play through and so far I've only been using 3 chars I made from the start:
Warrior = Rocker = Lv22 Cleave, Lv1 Hard Skin, Lv7 Strike, Lv6 Taunt

Mage = Special Guest = Lv7 Fireball, Lv4 Deep Freeze, Lv12 Stream, Lv13 Meteor

Druid = Hynx = Lv18 Feral Rage, Lv9 Regeneration, Lv5 Hibernate, Lv4 Gaia's Blessing

So far the going has been pretty good, I usually take on quite difficult groups, but with Rocker tanking 80% of the hits and Hynx having a high level regen, sleep and damage dealing capability most battles are over quite easily. Only a few have ended up over my head and I had to resort to using Phoenix Ups mid battle.

The only thing I'd change about this party is that I'll never waste points on Gaia's Blessing again. Better to just give an MP up item and either keep up regen, sleep or do damage.

[Aeralis]

Originally posted by srs bsns:

If youre having success with 3 tanks I might give it a shot - i havnt gone down that route as I would have thought you would be losing out on damage potential by buffing skills that increase threat or defense on more than one character.
Do you have to make sure their threat is equal to ensure damage is spread equally and your not caught out by the lack of a strong heal?

Well the Barbarian has all of his innate Threat that I can't really do anything about, so he ends up taking a lot of the hits. But he also gets such crazy HP regen/steal that it cancels out almost entirely. But once the Knight gets rolling he and the Barbarian share hits pretty evenly. You just gotta make sure you're advancing Frontlines at the right times. So you're working with a two-tank system, one with crazy self-HP replenishment and the other almost constantly taking half damage with the ability to steal some HP if needed. (The Hourglass table item applies to things like Defensive Strike too, so you can alternate Defensive Strike and Dragon Blood and still keep your shield up.) And I just outright ignore the Warrior's passive, so he generates almost no Threat and serves as another beefy face smasher.

But really, the only reason this group works at all is because of the Bard. I ignore Dissonance so all of his skill points go into his buffs. Octavarium alone is often enough healing to get through any fight, but Harmonic Movement still works for emergency patch jobs. (Remember, the only two people that would really need Harmonic Movement are the two that can replenish their own HP anyway. And Harmonic Movement actually gets pretty potent at higher levels.) And Power Chord is at its maximum efficiency with a full group of people that strictly use physical attacks, so you just pump out CRAZY damage and often end fights before any healing is needed in the first place.

But as I said, I'm a little disappointed in the way the Knight is progressing. He's feeling a little left behind, with damage output matching the Bard's unless he lands a critical hit. (Which he is built to do a lot, but it's still disappointing when compared to the other three who can hit hard consistently, or hit devastatingly hard with their own crits.) If I were to rebuild this team, I'd probably swap out the Knight for the Hunter and develop the Warrior's tanking abilities a little more.

[samuricex]

I can already tell you're going to get completely wrecked by the secret boss. :D

I just stick to a basic well-rounded party. The Paladin for tanking, Cleric for healing, Mage for AoE, Rogue for DPS, and the Druid for support.

[Red Shift]

Id have to say, theres definitely two very different focuses to be considered.
For the story then an aoe focussed party will burn through the game quickly and will be able to grind efficiently.
For the secret boss then dots are the key.

[Aeralis]

For this secret boss, are we talking about the one at the end of the Chromatic Nest? Because if so, me and my burly manly men just beat it. It was kinda rough, but not unmanageable, and it was nice to finally have a challenge with this team.

[76561198141098047]

Lv 130-140 party

Quick review -
Rouge - 98% crit and 22 000 cits maxed, infinite MP
Ranger - 78% crit and 20 000 crits + DoT maxed, infinite MP
Warrior - 78% crit, 10 000 crits maxed, 1200+ HP with 85% phy res, infinite MP
Bard - 68% crit, 1500 crits maxed, maxed power chord for his level
Necro - 71% crit, ~2500 DoT, party healeer, 650MP leech per hit when cit.

From what ive red, most people choose magic casters and AoE classes, but this is my single target physical nuke -party. And i would never pick magic dmg over physical, even my magic user (necro) build is depending on physical attack attributes and for along time he had no magic items on, but now he got 1 elder wand. I cant see myself using any other party, it has massive synergy and even if its all single target dmg most things die in 1hit. Killed mom for 3 reset games, all in 2 or 3 turns.

My party has 1 weakness though, which is stun. All my characters are heavily dependent of dishing out massive dmg every turn so being stunned for more then one turn puts my chars in a leathal situation pretty quick.

PS - Paladin is so overrated :P

[greenknightaus]

Paladin is great for one reason - Holy Shield. One casting usually means you take half damage for the whole combat, which can be very important since your tank is often stunned or sleeping when their turn comes around. That's a natural side effect of being the focus of enemy attacks.

I'm not a fan of physical attackers simply because of the Weakness effect, which can drop the damage you do to near zero. There's no similar power which affects magical attacks, which seems very unbalanced to me.

My prefered party is Paladin (Tank), Bard (Healing, some mass damage), Mage (Mass damage, some single target DOT with Fireball), Shaman (MP boosting/regeneration, DOT with Hurricane), Cleric (Weakness neutralizes most monsters too). The good thing is that this party can deal with groups very effectively, and usually finishes battles with near full health and full MP. Against solo enemies, I'd be tempted to swap out the Cleric for the Necromancer, and put the Warrior in the Paladin's place.

[Sargoreth]

Wow I have so many classes yet to unlock :S

[76561198141098047]

Originally posted by greenknightaus:

Paladin is great for one reason - Holy Shield. One casting usually means you take half damage for the whole combat, which can be very important since your tank is often stunned or sleeping when their turn comes around. That's a natural side effect of being the focus of enemy attacks.

I'm not a fan of physical attackers simply because of the Weakness effect, which can drop the damage you do to near zero. There's no similar power which affects magical attacks, which seems very unbalanced to me.

My prefered party is Paladin (Tank), Bard (Healing, some mass damage), Mage (Mass damage, some single target DOT with Fireball), Shaman (MP boosting/regeneration, DOT with Hurricane), Cleric (Weakness neutralizes most monsters too). The good thing is that this party can deal with groups very effectively, and usually finishes battles with near full health and full MP. Against solo enemies, I'd be tempted to swap out the Cleric for the Necromancer, and put the Warrior in the Paladin's place.

In my opinion, people take threat way to seriously. My warrior uses 12 threat and thats plenty enough, you dont need a skill raising it by +80 like other tanks. Warriors benefit is like you said weakness effect and dmg stack. With warrior healing 4000-8000HP per turn with life steal you dont need holy shield and well if he wanted you can use portable shield.

Weakness is not a problem for a physical team built the right way. My DPS-chars does 20 000+ dmg crit hits, think weakness matters with those numbers? Not even at low levels it bothered my party to fight 7 void elemtals. If you cant handle weakness effect, how do you then handle lv115+ monsters with +100% phy res? Thats not a problem for my party either... My synergy will tankle any of those two problems.

[greenknightaus]

Got to admit, I really like the Warrior, but as a Tank it does fall behind the other classes. And I really do want a decent Tank to draw all those nasty effects like sleep and stun to just one or two characters. As for my party, it handles Weakness and Physical resist exactly the same way - doing damage by heavily boosted magical attacks. The Shaman is key to that - infinite MP and sky high Magic ratings for the entire party means that Magic powered attacks hit hard and often.

[76561198141098047]

Infinite MP does not mean that you have a extremly large mana pool, it means that you can keep using skills without ever losing MP and magic users cant, cause spells doesnt give mana-steal. My necro uses 700mp to cast minion, then need one turn to hit and leech 690MP to cast minion again next turn. However my Rouge/Ranger/Warrior can all use their skills like strike or heart shot and still leech more MP in that attack then they used preforming it - thats infinite in my book.

Most people play paladin as lighting rod, soaking all dmg and not much more. In my book thats a wasted chair if your tank doesnt add anything else to the party then a meat shield. Warrior more then just being a tank, puts in plenty of dmg on the table and has the weakness effect. Pala is good lv20 and under and for soaking magic dmg, anything else a warrior can do better.

Sure run with the magic aoe path, but people who think magic users are OP havent seen physical classes crits at higher levels.

My rouge broke a new dmg record today, dealing a 31 000dmg crit with double strike.

Now started NG++++

[Zure5h]

Well, I only played a team until now, and it's just the typical balanced team with warrior, rogue, wizzard, shaman, cleric.
I'm really curious about how much DOT can you put on a boss so I'm going to start a new game with Necromancer, Wizzard, Saman, Druid and Paladin to tank. Hope it works!

[greenknightaus]

Shaman effectively produces infinite MP through Static Field. Admittedly, magic doesn't leech, but I don't need that with my suggested party because the Shaman ensures they can use their skills every round without worrying about the cost.

I have to disagree with you about the usefulness of a tank. I find if there isn't one character I'm prepared to sacrifice to sleep and stun, then the whole party ends up having to deal with those effects. And that becomes the character's job. That said, the warrior used to be my first choice, until I saw just how useful Holy Shield could be, especially when combined with an above average healer like the Bard.

Zuresh, I'd be curious to see how your party works out. I'm not sure of this, but I don't think the Druid's damage stacks with the Shaman's, so you might want to check that out. If it doesn't, I'd suggest going with the Bard instead of the Druid.

[Zure5h]

Greenknightaus, I'm not sure about the 10% nature bonus, but what I really wanted was to see a lot of DOT icons on my enemy XD