Now a best party is subject to preference for sure, in this topic I'd like to discuss easy to play parties that require minimal effort and micromanagement.
I saw a funny article about a 6 ranger party and it seemed to be pretty OP. So I set out to make said party on hard mode and it mostly crushed everything except for main boss battles where the bears all died and my rangers died shortly after.
So I thought, why not throw a paladin into the mix, they can last a long time, giving my bears and archers more time to DPS. So I tried 5 rangers and a paladin. This worked quite well except in a few cases where the enemies had a high resistance to piercing attacks.
To offset the last problem I tossed in a monk for utility. This worked exceptionally well and I've had no major issues stomping my way through to level 6 of caed ruins.
So to recap:
1 Paladin
2 Monk
3-6 Ranger (same build for each because lazy)
Paladin wild orlan
mig 10
con 10
dex 3
per 20
int 15
res 20
The paladin build is most important here, this build offers a lot of defense except fortitude is lower than I'd like. It's not a big deal since the paladin doesn't do much other than take damage so even if it gets knocked prone, who cares.
I have zealous endurance to reduce hits to grazes on the surrounding rangers. Not sure if it affects the bears but my bears seem to be more survivable since nabbing that skill, probably just my imagination though as I took resilient pet skill shortly after on all my rangers.
The monk makes up for the paladin lack of fortitude, I have maxed mig and con, 15 dex, and the rest of the stats can tweak to preference, I've dumped perception and some resolve and increased intellegence to extend the range of torments reach, which is my main skill for monk. The monk is moon godlike to help soak up the damage and it has worked wonderfully in keeping the pally, bears and even the odd ranger alive, although if my rangers are getting hit they're usually dead before I can do anything about it.
The rangers can build to preference. Spec them for ranged DPS, dump con some but not all the way, it's really only the difference between getting one shotted or two shotted. I prefer to survive two hits so i at least have a shot of keeping the rangers alive. I'm using wood elf for increased ranged performance. As soon as I've found guns I've given them to my rangers for increased damage to high DR opponents. It is better to use quick weapons on low DR enemy though. I like to have 2 rangers with guns and 2 with bows for a mix of DR punch through and speed. The slow rangers use plate mail for second line defense as they always seem to be targetted once the bear defense is broken. The bow rangers are nakey so they can attack faster, they are far enough back I've hardly ever seen them get targetted.
That about sums up my build. I haven't made it too far into the game yet as I've spent many hours testing different classes out and fine tuning stats.
This build offers the easiest gameplay in my experience, I hardly have to think about what I'm doing. I use two formations for this setup, one where the pally and monk lead, and the other where I throw the bears at the enemy first as cannon fodder. I mostly use the first formation as the penalty for losing bears is pretty steep.
The toughest part I've had trouble with so far is the ogres. I had to use the bridge tactic to pull zolly from the druids, otherwise the druid aoe wipes my rangers in an instant.
Oh yeah, and I've built the pally around lay of hands, dont even bother with flames as the paladin is not spec'd for damage and bonus buff doesn't seem to be worth it. Without any other healer, lay of hands is critical for survival.
