1st character - fighter or inquisitor or knight?

[nobleprophet]

Just got the game and looking to create my first character to play with friends. I want to go melee dwarf and be in the thick of the fighting.

What are the different melee play styles for fighter, inquisitor and knight?

Are any builds more survivable than others?

Any melee AoE builds?

Thanks for your help!

[braincell #2]

I'm far from knowing what I'm talking about, but that part of the creation doesn't seem to matter, it's just presets, as you can change the 3 starting skills and stats however you like, also a "Knightt" is just a point away into geo to be a "fighter" when you hit level 2, so don't worry about it, if you want a melee bruiser anything with warfare is a good start.

[Chaoslink]

(There is a lot to read here, but it should give you a great pile of options to consider, just don't try to incorporate them all into one build))

You can pick fighter, then manually change every starting point into a wizard's stats then start the game. The actual class means nothing as you put into points however you like.

For tips, tanking isn't really a thing, enemies often ignore the beefy tank and focus the squishy mage so if you want to tank, you're almost better off as a sort of healer that constantly just heals and buffs away the damage they take while looking easy to kill.

Warfare increases ALL physical damage, so even an archer or dagger rogue will want more warfare than anything else.

As for you, knight and inquisitor are basically the same thing. Put points only into STR, a few memory on occasion for skills but mostly just STR (no CON unless you want to go 1H and shield and even then its just for the requirement to equip the shield). Then its up to you. Inquisitor would take necromancy to use those skills and get lifesteal (works great with living armor talent as you'll restore magic armor at 35% of the life you steal but requires more points in necro to be effective). Otherwise you'd just be a two hander wielding warrior in everyone's face hitting like a truck. A Min/max style of play would say be an elf for their racial as it lets you use elemental affinity to cast necro spells cheap, and boosts damage. But dwarfs have natural tankiness and the 1AP petrify can be useful on occasion.

If you want melee AoE, you might want a battlemage, and not the default one with dual weapons, you go full INT with staff as staves are melee. Though this is a magic damage class which uses spells like the AoE blind from Aero and a lot of touch spells. Being a dwarf, this would synergize with your petrify touch better and can be pretty fun.

If physical damage is your goal though I have one other idea for you. You don't go a STR build and instead go FIN. Use spears. Basically a Finesse based Knight with longer range, the spear has one nifty quality that helps with AoE. Spears have long range for a melee. This makes the whirlwind Warfare skill have a longer range than usual and if you can find a spear with 50% cleave damage, regular attacks hit in an arc that is basically a half whirlwind. Your magic and physical armor will be more even meaning if you took necromancy too, that living armor strat I mentioned is more effective due to the higher magic armor count and Bone Cage later on makes up for physical making you really tanky. Still stack warfare primarily though.

One other option is using spider legs from polymorph. It gives you a 2 AP fireball sized AoE root that ignores armor. If you're in melee range and cast it on the ground near you, you'll get a free haste for standing in your web AND the range of your spear means melee enemies without a spear can't hit you in return since they can't move. Geo has a similar spell, worm tremor, but that one requires the torturer talent to ignore armor, and you don't get the haste while also being able to root yourself or allies. Lasts longer though and with geo, (and torturer) contamination can poison everything around you for 1 AP while bull horns from poly can set bleeding through armor (again with torturer talent only).

So those are some combo ideas that might help you get started. Spear builds can be really fun variants of your traditional knight, and balance physical and magic armor instead of being high physical and low magic. Otherwise they play very similar while spears can make use of more "shennanigans" type combos. Opportunist is also good on them as their range for the free attack is much larger meaning enemies have a harder time avoiding it.