Mixed party with a rogue setup

[balisticwaffl3]

I really want to run a rogue as my main character, but I'm having trouble setting up a party comp. I'd like to have 2 characters of each damage type with both ranged and melee characters. My issue is that as a rogue I can't bring much physical CC. I want to try and get a balnanced party with both magic and physical CC abilities. Any reccomendations?

[Stabbey]

Rogues can use Warfare skills just like standard warriors if you want, and since Warfare is the best skill for physical damage, you should usually be taking it anyway.

My first playthrough on Classic difficulty, I went with a Rogue/Knight/Enchanter/Wizard setup and it worked fine.

[Chaoslink]

I’d recommend an elemental “warrior” rogue. Take the scoundrel/Geo book venom coating alongside daggers with innate elemental damage, combined with poison(or eternal artifact), elemental rune, the later Pyro skill firebrand and sparking swings to give your rogue magic damage nearly equal to your physical. Then you can make fantastic use of the hard and soft CCs scoundrel naturally gets. Then take an archer with a similar mindset, alongside the talent that adds elemental damage if enemies are standing in stuff while using the elemental arrowheads ability. I think venom coating might even affect bows, can’t remember. This also gains the benefit of consumable arrows that can have other elemental effects like making things wet... for the Aero/Hydro mage(s) you run with them. You’ll have physical damage that can also deal respectable magic damage. These two being able to focus whatever they want while always supporting whatever team you roll with. I did that with two Aero/Hydro mages and was near unstoppable. However you could run a mage alongside a STR character and have the two finesse characters jump between physical and magic focused targets as you need them to.

Due to gear limitations, this build isn’t too functional early on as you simply won’t have runes, runeslots or innate elemental damage in most weapons, but as the game progresses, you get more and more ways to increase your magic damage on your physical weapons until eventually you’ll be stripping both types of armor off the same enemy at once.

[ColorsFade]

This is easy to accomplish. This is basically the party I run. But you need to make a couple sacrifices (namely, you won't have an archer, which is no big deal IMO. Your rogue can pull out a bow or crossbow during certain fights where it's more advantageous than running around stabbing people. But for the most part, this is a mostly melee party).

Main: Rogue
Scoundrel: 10
Warfare: 3
Polymorph: 2 (For Medusa Head, your CC against low magic armor characters, and Chicken Claw, which becomes a 3rd CC against physical armors)
Necro: 3 (self healing, since you'll be doing a lot of melee damage, and for the Bone Spider)
Poke a point into Huntsman or Hydro for healing, if you care. It's good to have First Aid for removing statuses, IMO.

Dual Wield. Warfare will give you access to two CC spells with Battering Ram and Battle stomp.

Second Character:Warrior
Warfare 10
Polymorph 3 (again, Medusa Head, Wings for mobility, and Skin Graft late in the game for refreshes)
Scoundrel 1 (for Adrenaline)
Necro 3 (summons and some self-healing, since you'll be doing lots of melee damage)
A point or two in Geo/Hydro (Geo for Fortify). This character uses a 2-hander (but early on, sword and board with Sheilds Up). Nothing but STR and Memory. Warfare will have them doing massive damage.

Both of these characters are your "physical damage" characters. They each have access to the same Physical CC spells (three) and one magical CC (Medusa Head).

Third Character: A summoner/elementalist

Summon 10
Hydro 5 (or Aero)
1 point in just about everything else
Sebille makes a great Summoner because of her Flesh Sacrifice ability which, when used in conjunction with Adrenaline, gives her 8 AP at on the first turn, which gives you a summons, totem, and several buffs.

The only thing you don't have to take in this build is Pyro if your 4th character is a Pyro Mage (which I recommend). If your 4th character is going to be an Air mage, then take Pyro and let the Air mage handle everything Air.

Fourth Character Pyro Battlemage

Uses a staff. Put all points into INT and some into Memory as needed for spells
Pyro 10
Polymorpth 3
Warfare 3
Geo 1
Extra points into Hydro/Hunts early for the heals, but later on you can respect to just poke more points into Polymorph, which gives you more INT, which increases your damage even further. All spells in this built are INT based, so the more INT you have the better. Early on the healing is nice and being able to remove some statuses with First Aid can be really helpful. But later in the game it becomes unnecessary and you'll just want to nuke harder.

This character also has the four good CC abilities: Chicken Claw, Battle Stomp, Battering Ram and Medusa Head, just like your Scoundrel and Warrior. With Elemental Affinity and Torturer they're going to light up the battlefield. Their melee damage won't be as huge as your Warrior or Scoundrel when you're using something like Whirlwind or Cripple, but that's okay - they're going to do the vast majority of their damage with fire spells. This is the character in your party that you want to use to target the weak magic armor enemies. Light them up to lower their magic armor to zero, then fly in with Wings or Phoenix Dive and hit Medusa Head.

On Classic Mode, with this party, CC has been pretty well covered, and you'll do more than enough damage to kill everything. Late game the Pyro Mage is just a nuclear bomb of destruction.

Everyone in the party can also summon (two Bone Spiders, an Incarnate, and a Fire Slug). So you will have 8 party members during big fights, and your summons will do a lot to draw fire. The incarnate, with Power Infusion, becomes another CC for you. And you should be able to put a Totem down every turn as well, for extra firepower to take down armor types.

Good luck.

[Draconiya]

In my playthrough, my rogue had some of the best instant CC in the party. Warfare skills scale with the attribute of the weapon you have equipped, so you can use things like Battle Stomp with daggers and while focusing on Finesse just fine. Get Battering Ram, Whirlwind, Crippling Blow etc. on your rogue for some great CC. Polymorph is also a perfect fit, with Chameleon Cloak for invisibility and CC abilities such as Atrophy from Tentacle Lash, Chicken Claw, Medusa Head... really, I don't see how a properly built rogue could NOT be a CC beast.

You can pair this with an archer, a melee mage (int-focused, using a staff, the "battlemage" preset the game gives you is crap due to splitting attributes between str and int and gimping damage because of it) and a ranged mage, and voilá, you have your party of 2/2 split damage types with a ranged character and a melee character of each type.

[balisticwaffl3]

Originally posted by Draconiya:

In my playthrough, my rogue had some of the best instant CC in the party. Warfare skills scale with the attribute of the weapon you have equipped, so you can use things like Battle Stomp with daggers and while focusing on Finesse just fine. Get Battering Ram, Whirlwind, Crippling Blow etc. on your rogue for some great CC. Polymorph is also a perfect fit, with Chameleon Cloak for invisibility and CC abilities such as Atrophy from Tentacle Lash, Chicken Claw, Medusa Head... really, I don't see how a properly built rogue could NOT be a CC beast.

You can pair this with an archer, a melee mage (int-focused, using a staff, the "battlemage" preset the game gives you is crap due to splitting attributes between str and int and gimping damage because of it) and a ranged mage, and voilá, you have your party of 2/2 split damage types with a ranged character and a melee character of each type.

What would be a good school to focus on for a melee magic character? I know that fire isn't great, because Burst damage beats DoT, And aero does a lot of damage to self and party members (not good for a squishy rouge). Maybe geo?

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by balisticwaffl3:

What would be a good school to focus on for a melee magic character? I know that fire isn't great, because Burst damage beats DoT, And aero does a lot of damage to self and party members (not good for a squishy rouge). Maybe geo?

I mean, Fire is generally the best for raw damage, Aero is probably the best for CC, while Hydro is better for support and using ice surfaces for CC. But Geo is probably the best for melee mage(especially if you go undead). Slows are good for lowering enemy dodge to guarantee hits, throw dust is great for clearing a surface as you approach to avoid taking damage and the physical armor buffs help for keeping yourself up when fighting in melee range.