How do you guys pick an army composition?

[Consuela]

Ok, so basically, I enjoyed Disgaea back in the day but I did not understand the viability of monsters. I thought that they were limited in their move sets? Is that true?

When do you use monsters, and can they be as good or better than human people?

[Pickleton]

Monsters were kinda beyond worthless in the first couple of Disgaea games. They didn't really get "okay" until 4, and even 5 they lack a few things to make them as good as humans.

The main issue with monsters is that their lack of weapon skills make their attack options a bit limited.
A couple of the overlord monsters are useful during the story, but once you can bring Izuna's over to other characters, that's kinda useless.

[Moridin]

generally i start with a pair of close combat fighters, a mage and archer for longer range and a healer. unlocking classes as i go. other then some gimmicks monster classes are not that useful. that said some of their gimmicks are useful until you can transfer them onto your main forces. the best magic caster in the game is the Sage, since at 150 or above she can nuke the entire map, but only 50% accuracy.

Monsters can be turned into weapons for 3 turns, transfering some of their stats and their unique "Evality" to the character using them as a weapon. Twin Dragon lets them perform 2 actions per turn, up to 3 (iirc) with the Maid's afternoon tea. and Nether Noble has one that increases stats based on how much money you have. the game has these "overload" powers that are basically limit breaks (like from final fantasy 7) and one of the non-human overlords has one called "comet disaster" which you can give to a sage and combines well with the sage's map nuke.

But like Pickleton said, monster classes are not as good, needing more work to get up to similar power stats wise and are a lot more niche use.

[DaBa]

Army composition isn't really something that matters until you get to the very, very, very, VERY late game. I mean grinding carnage item world or gearing up for fighting Carnage Baal kind of end game. Until you get there, the most effective and efficient strategy is to funnel everything you have into creating one overpowered character, the usual choice being the main character of the particular Disgaea game although it doesn't have to be that. I recommend doing that with whatever character or monster you like the most, although it's usually better to do it with the more powerful characters obviously.

Apart from that other members of the team will be there purely for support. Supporting evilities, magic buffs and debuffs, throwing you across the map, Research Squad fodder, sacrificial bodies, and so on. It will be a very long time until you will actually have to worry about putting significant amount of time into crafting a good team capable of overcoming the hardest challenges in the game.

[Pickleton]

In my case, I try to keep the weapon types covered with no overlap. Ive played through the first 8 or so chapters several times to find the "optimal" roster if doing a run with no repeat maps, no item world, no DLC. The speedrun strat is mostly just solo Killia, but requires you to grind at a few points. W

What I've settled on is this:
Killia sword, Seraphina bow, Christo staff, Magnus axe, Maid (the one you start with) guns eventually turn her into a pirate, Valkyrie (from first character creation) spears eventually turn to armor knight, Zeroken fists, Usalia physical monster weapon, Izuna INT monster weapon.