I've been thinking about party composition lately, and abilities that certain classes get that are difficult to replicate without that class. For my PotD run, I had a party of Fighter, Paladin, Paladin, Cipher, Ranger, Druid using respecced companions for the banter and interjections. For the most part, this group did fine, but there were certain fights where I really wanted a Wizard or Priest around, prompting this thread idea. My thoughts so far:

 

Priest - Status Effect suppression. You can replicate the lower level spells with scrolls, but you can't make scrolls of Prayer Against Imprisonment or Prayer Against Treachery, and nothing else comes close to provide the strong protection against those effects. For fights against groups of Cean Gwyla, Vithracks, and Fampyrs, those are spells you really want to have around.

 

Wizard - AoE hard CC. There are some fights where you really want a whole group of enemies to not be able to do anything right now. I'm thinking in particular of the fights against swarms of Druid-casting enemies like Pwgras, Feral Druids, and the Nalrend the Wise fight. If you give them even a few seconds, they'll blanket your party. Other classes can provide effective single target CC, but even a Cipher struggles to lock down multiple enemies for any length of time. Thankfully, you can replicate this to an extent with Scrolls of Paralysis and Confusion, but you need a Wizard if you want to be able to spam freely.

 

What other examples have people come across? Are there other vital abilities that are hard to come by unless you take a certain class along?

Edited April 23, 201510 yr by Kaigen42

More of a convenience thing but endurance heals that are reactionary or passive.  Moon Godlike or fighter constant recovery.  Boiling down to the priest has other things to do same for druids.