Build advice and race synergies

[CrazyDymond]

I would like to get some opinions on my builds and party composition . Also, I'm not sure about the which races lend themselves to different builds or classes (e.g. dwarves are good melee DPS, etc.), so please share your thoughts on that as well.

Here is what I have in mind for a Classic mode playthrough. I've put the most thought into the main character. I've wanted to play a rogue/scoundrel for a long time and this game feels like a good choice to do that. But i'm conflicted between playing that as Sebille or Fane. I heard Fane is very interesting to play with.

I'm aiming for a physical damage party composition on three characters with the fourth an elemental mage doing healing, buffs, debuffs and crowd control via elemental trees
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Main character:
Shadowblade with polymorph
Race: Sebille (or custom elf)
Attributes:
2:1 finesse:wits ratio
3-4 pts in Constitution so I'm not too squishy
Combat Abilities :
1:1 scoundrel : warfare ratio
2 pts in poly
Civil Abilities :
Sneaking
Thievery
Persuasion
Talents:
Pet Pal? (Does it have to be on main character?)
Pawn
Opportunist
Hot head
Stench? Less attractive to melee foes
Leech? Works well with elf's Flesh Sacrifice
Anything that protects against physical status effects?

Ranger with summoning:
Race: Ifan Ben Mezd
Attributes :
1:1 Finesse:Wits
Combat Abilities:
2:1:1 Warfare:Summoning:Huntsman
Civil Abilities:
Bartering
Talents: Suggestions?

Melee DPS with necromancer:
Race: Red Prince
Attributes:
Strength
Combat Abilities:
Warfare for the most part
Couple of pts in Necro
Couple of pts in Pyro (maybe?)
Civil Abilities:
Loremaster
Talents:
Picture of Health
Opportunist
Comeback Kid

Elemental Mage with a shield
Race: Fane?
Attributes:
Intelligence
Constitution (to make him less squishy?)
Memory a couple of pts to help with all the elemental trees skills
Combat Abilities:
Hydro first so he can heal rest of party
Add remaining elemental trees
Civil Abilities:
Lucky Charm
Telekinesis
Taalents: Suggestions?

[Chaoslink]

Lucky goes to whoever you control the most. Sneak is mostly unnecessary. Barter I suggest goes to the character with the most strength. Then it really doesn't matter who gets thieving (fane is good here as he doesn't need lockpicks) and so long as someone gets loremaster, you're good. Usually persuading goes to the main character you control as well.

Races don't matter too much as far as builds go, but I personally don't feel that any origin character has the right default spec for what their racial works with.

[IlluminaZero]

Humans are theoretically ideal for two-handers due to maximizing crit chance on a build that boosts crit damage. In contrast Rogues are wasted on humans due to backstabs doing crit damage while ignoring crit chance. Elves probably make the best Rogues.

Undead is begging to spec in Geo to spam poison everywhere.

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Lucky goes to whoever you control the most. Sneak is mostly unnecessary. Barter I suggest goes to the character with the most strength. Then it really doesn't matter who gets thieving (fane is good here as he doesn't need lockpicks) and so long as someone gets loremaster, you're good. Usually persuading goes to the main character you control as well.

Once you unlock respec it is probably optimal and most convenient to have your STR character go back and forth between Lucky Charm <-> Barter. Barter is basically a dead skill until you go shopping and swapping multiple items between characters is terribly annoying.

[Gamebot]

Ideal WIT
Level 10 - 1)Rogue 10 2)Ranger 17(with gears) 3)Knight 10 4)Mage 10
Level 15 - 1)Rogue 10 2)Ranger 22(with gears) 3)Knight 10 4)Mage 10
Level 20 - 1)Rogue 10 2)Ranger 37~40(with gears) 3)Knight 10 4)Mage 10
You can change WIT values between 2) and 3).
Reason for these numbers has been explained many times.

[corisai]

Every damage dealer synerge well with elf.
Sub-optimal choice is human.

All other races are meh and crap.

It's very very nice to have custom main hero - force dome, aka wow "barrier" - it's incredible helpfull spell.

Originally posted by Gamebot:

Ideal WIT
Level 10 - 1)Rogue 10 2)Ranger 17 3)Knight 10 4)Mage 10
Level 15 - 1)Rogue 10 2)Ranger 22 3)Knight 10 4)Mage 10
Level 20 - 1)Rogue 10 2)Ranger 40 3)Knight 10 4)Mage 10
You can change WIT values between 2) and 3).
Reason for these numbers has been explained many times.

What? Mages/fighters don't push up wits after maxed main stat? Just... why? o_O

[IlluminaZero]

Originally posted by corisai:

Every damage dealer synerge well with elf.
Sub-optimal choice is human.

All other races are meh and crap.

+5% crit chance is good for all crit builds except Rogue and flesh sacrifice has increasing CON penalties as you raise in level.

Addendum: I don't understand why you wouldn't raise crit chance for Two-Handers and Crit Mages myself. Seems really silly unless you need more memory.

[Gamebot]

Originally posted by corisai:

Originally posted by Gamebot:

Ideal WIT
Level 10 - 1)Rogue 10 2)Ranger 17 3)Knight 10 4)Mage 10
Level 15 - 1)Rogue 10 2)Ranger 22 3)Knight 10 4)Mage 10
Level 20 - 1)Rogue 10 2)Ranger 40 3)Knight 10 4)Mage 10
You can change WIT values between 2) and 3).
Reason for these numbers has been explained many times.

What? Mages/fighters don't push up wits after maxed main stat? Just... why? o_O

It's just figure of speech. No one said you shouldn't use extra points on WIT after maxing out mian stat.

[corisai]

Originally posted by illuminazero:

+5% crit chance is good for all crit builds except Rogue and flesh sacrifice has increasing CON penalties as you raise in level.

10% damage for 2 turns is >> 5% crit chance for all but rogues (funny, but negated to 0 via backstab) and lone wolves - eveyone with a lot of scoundrel skill.

[IlluminaZero]

Originally posted by corisai:

Originally posted by illuminazero:

+5% crit chance is good for all crit builds except Rogue and flesh sacrifice has increasing CON penalties as you raise in level.

10% damage for 2 turns is >> 5% crit chance for all but rogues (funny, but negated to 0 via backtab) and lone wolves - eveyone with a lot of scoundrel skill.

At minimal crit damage and default crit chance the passive +5% crit equates to roughly +7.5% damage. (150% damage every 1/20 attacks). This is before improving crit damage via Two-Hander and Scoundrel Levels - And further ignoring that humans can boost their party's damage by +5% with encourage for no penalties at all.

It also helps that sub-humans start with 0% crit chance. Praise humanity!

[Senenleigh]

Not sure you need wits with your shadowblade. Initiative is better on support/cc characters, and backstab is an automatic crit. Being squishy on a rogue is fine, you just go invisible at the end of your turn. It's one ap. I think that Shadowblade and rogue basically the same character in the end, just one starts with different specializations. Get Pawn on your rogue, synergizes really well with scoundrel talent.

[corisai]

Originally posted by illuminazero:

Originally posted by corisai:

10% damage for 2 turns is >> 5% crit chance for all but rogues (funny, but negated to 0 via backtab) and lone wolves - eveyone with a lot of scoundrel skill.

At minimal crit damage and default crit chance the passive +5% crit equates to roughly +7.5% damage. (150% damage every 1/20 attacks). This is before improving crit damage via Two-Hander and Scoundrel Levels - And further ignoring that humans can boost their party's damage by +5% with encourage for no penalties at all.

It also helps that sub-humans start with 0% crit chance. Praise humanity!

Encourage don't give 5% as long as your chars have not 10-10-10-10 stats :)

Don't forget that Int work additively.

And you forget to calculate that elven buff increasing critical damage too ;)

[Stabbey]

I'm not sure putting a lot into Wits onto a Shadowblade is a good idea. Those are dagger users, and they do not benefit from +Critical Chance, since backstabbing is a 100% critical chance. Critical chance is the main benefit from Wits since initiative is pretty useless on all but one party member.

Honestly you could probably just go with a dual-wielding Rogue, since a Shadowblade is a little more geared towards inflicting statuses onto enemies. But either are fine.

Don't neglect Memory for additional skill slots. Not a ton of Memory, but don't completely forget it. EVERYONE should get at least some Memory.

Civil Abilities :
Sneaking
Thievery
Persuasion

That's not going to work well. Civil abilities come once every 3 levels and you can only really hope to reach level 22 or so by the end. You need to pick one of those to focus on getting to 5 first. Spreading yourself thin will just leave them all lousy, and there's not a lot of benefit to points into Sneak anyway. Persuasion would probably be the best choice for a lead character, or whoever is taking Pet Pal (that doesn't need to be the lead).

A melee fighter is a questionable choice for Hot Head, especially a dagger user, because, again, they don't benefit from the critical chance.

Only ONE character should put points into Wits, at least until the primary damage-increasing attribute (STR/INT/FIN) is maxed at 40. And it should never be in a 1:1 ratio, that lowers your overall damage output a lot more than simply pumping your main stat.

Hothead is a reasonably good choice on a ranger, as they're best used from far away and high places, making it harder to hit them, and they get full benefit from the critical chance.


Your Red Prince should be a Knight using 2H weapons, not a shield, because 1H + Shield is very poor in this game. That's largely due to the AI bypassing targets with the most armor, and there's no way at present to get the enemy to focus on tanking.


If you want your elemental mage to be a damage dealer, they do not fit well in a team of 3 Physical attackers. They'll never be able to strip away enemy magic armor fast enough to contribute in a battle. The only way I see a mage working on that team would be if the ranger/summoner focused on elemental summoning, but that loses half the build. So I recommend ditching the mage completely for a fourth physical attacker of some kind.

However, if you make your Fane/mage a cleric with a shield and physical weapon, focus on Hydro and Necro with Geo, that could be a good support member. Healing from Necromancer works on Undead the same as it does on regular people, AND it also works through the Decaying status. Just don't try and use elemental damage when you have 3 teammates focusing on physical damage.

Originally posted by Senenleigh:

Not sure you need wits with your shadowblade. Initiative is better on support/cc characters, and backstab is an automatic crit. Being squishy on a rogue is fine, you just go invisible at the end of your turn.

Not sure why people say that when you can only do that once a battle because of the cooldown on Chameleon Cloak.

[Skatters]

Some great advice in the thread already, just want to add:

Dont worry too much about "elfs are best for this class" or "x race is sub-optimal" - because it really doesnt matter THAT much. So pick the one you like. I play Dwarf scoundral/warfare all day and dont miss Flesh Sacrafice from the Elf at all... despite it being great.

You could even use Dwarf's sturdy, Parry Master, Dual Wield, and/or Aero to stack some fun dodging... but even without somehow making clever use of his racial, he kicks ass just by being built well with the right party... On whatever difficulty. So play something you like even if min/maxing. It really doesnt matter that much, and dont be pigeon holed into 'whats optimal'.

Wits is not needed on your backstabber - I mean it can be nice, but it isnt vital. Your backstabs crit anyway... have someone else stack it for the turn order (Your Ranger, see above post by Stabbey). With The Pawn, and movement skills from scoundral/warfare/poly you'll mostly always be able to backstab anyone... or hide, or when rarely failing that; Crowd Control the hell out of people with knockdowns. I'd even use enrage if i HAD to stab someone in the face rather than the back. This lets you just pump finness and memory early levels. A rogue going last just means he gets his choice of backstabs, and if you're smart he shouldnt get overly ganged by the AI. He has so many escapes.

Chamelon is excellent for setting yourself up / staying safe... and theres enough knockdowns/escapes on your hotbar that it doesnt matter much if its stuck on a cooldown. With a little thought in placement you can do without wits for ages.

So for your backstabber:

Finness and Memory at the start, lots of skills is nice. I pump both to 15 asap then continue with Finn. Maybe 1 or 2 in con if ya need it.

Get poly to 1, Then just increase scoundral enough to unlock your books.. and sink everything else into warfare for +damage (yes this effects daggers)

Charge, Battlestomp from warfare, All the attacks, escapes, and teleports from scoundral, and Chameleon, Bull Rush... even wings at rank 2 from poly - make you a battlefield eel of CC and stabbing abuse. :-S

[CrazyDymond]

Awesome suggestions from everyone. That was very helpful. Thank you!