New to DS2 Party Composition Question!

[Tyrian]

I've played DS I and in that game melee seemed incredibly strong so my parties were always very fighter-centric. This time around I have both me, and Lothar as sword and shield tanky fighters. I'm about level 8 so far. The plan was for these two fighters to be a frontline for a nuker and healer. I'm thinking one combat mage, and one nature mage healer. Is this a good strategy? When can I start finding some mages?

[vorik]

you will get a dryad companion later, that will have strong nature magic. I personally went archer/nature with a dabble of combat. only got to about lv 25ish before i lost my char

[Sir_Therim -TPF-]

Party composition is really wierd, especially if you have the expansion: broken world. The archer perks make you tanky to magic, the mages can hit hard enough to not worry about melee, and swordsmen have a tendency to be tanky against archers. Each difficulty lets you have more companions, the easiest difficulty lets you have a maximum of 4 party members. I'm level 35 and I'm rolling with a combat mage, a nature mage, a tank with enough ranged to get the HP pot perks, and a combat/nature mage hybrid.

The companions you get in order: Archer/Nature, Melee/Combat Mage, Nature Mage, Ranged(throwing), Melee(Two-Handed), Combat Mage(Lightning), Melee(Dual Wield)... After that I'm not sure, I havn't gotten through the third act yet.

Being pure of any class is really bad, archers will get eaten alive by melees, melees will get smited by mages, and mages will get insta-killed by archers...

Also: Combat Mages get ranged pets, and Nature Mages get melee pets.

[plixuntrax]

Mele tank with shield extreme usefull because he can taunt enemy away from mage/ranger dd. He got armor and hp bost + mele/range/magic resistent. My dd got damage bost and magic resistent items not armor. Ranger got 3 higer posible encanted ring with Magic find item bonus.
In this way not need healing magic because improved treat healing magic caster.