A one class party?

[Boeroer]

I tried 6 chanters and quit because it was so easy - even at the beginning and that's usually the hardest part. 6 times the endurance draining chant (stacks) and six times Ancient Memory (stacks) is just too good.

 

Concerning six rogues in PotD: challenge accepted!

 

I have some builds in mind with some of the new items from white march that already work pretty well without optimized characters. I just say "Bittercut plus corrosive lash plus spirit of decay" and "cloak of the master mystic plus backstab". Both work very well, the rogue on which I tested this was one-shotting pretty much every enemy in Act II and two-shotting (?) them in Act III. Backstab and Deathblows stack by the way - you just have to get critted to go invisible (cloak) or remain stealthed until your buddies caused two afflictions on the enemy. You have to use weapons with special disabling enchantments though, like Hours of St. Rumbalt (prone), Tall Grass (prone), Mabec's Morning Star (stun), Borresaine (stun) and so on, because you will have no other possibility to CC with 6 rogues except the "Sap" attack - and that comes at lvl 13. If you want, you can build two of the rogues to be quite sturdy with small shields and thick armor and let them use retaliation, because that also profits from deathblows and deep wounds and so on. I have to try if you can use shield bash to apply blinded or hobbled and so on and then strike with the real weapon - maybe if you put the shield in the right hand and the weapon left. That would mean that when you do a full attack like blinding strike, you cause the affliction with the weak bash first and then comes the sneak attack with the heavy hitting weapon.

 

Also devastating by the way: Lead Spitter (-7 DR), Ryona's Vembrances (-3 DR) and penetrating shot (-5 DR), resulting in -15 DR with a Blunderbuss. I think with sneak attack/deathblows that will be abolutely deadly.

Edited September 22, 2015 by Boeroer

[gkathellar]

I do not think one can beat the game with a party of 6 rogues, on POTD.

 

There are almost always more than 6 enemies, none of which a rogue could duel, let alone 1v2 or 1v3.

I absolutely disagree. Even before 2.0, a speedrunner soloed the game on PotD with a rogue that only got up to level 9 by the Thaos fight. The figurine nerf hurts, sure, but the change to perception is wonderful for rogues.

 

A full party wouldn't be able to skip as much content, but they'd also be able to do more.

[pi2repsion]

It is hard to imagine any full class party currently more powerful than 6 wizards from level 5 and onwards. Deleterious Alacrity of Motion has a lot to answer for. (And sure, it can be crafted as a potion, but nobody has enough crafting materials to allow 6 non-wizards to drink DAoM potions in every encounter).

 

But the micromanagement would be hellacious to deal with.

[Ymarsakar]

The micro would be pretty fun to see in a video though. Like seeing a Starcraft 2 player at his keyboard, hammering his actions per minute away.

[Elric Galad]

It is hard to imagine any full class party currently more powerful than 6 wizards from level 5 and onwards. Deleterious Alacrity of Motion has a lot to answer for. (And sure, it can be crafted as a potion, but nobody has enough crafting materials to allow 6 non-wizards to drink DAoM potions in every encounter).

 

But the micromanagement would be hellacious to deal with.

 

For sure 6 wizards would be hard to challenge but I still believe that 6 druids could be better.

 

Druids get a 20% speed boost at high level, and speed boost like DAoM only affects recovery which is about 60% of action time. So that's net difference of about 18% speed.

 

I tend to consider druid spells as slighly more destructive. Their main advantages is that they combine high damages with small CC effects.

 

What makes more difference are the storm spells. Start encounter, cast storm (level 3 or 5 according to your needs), and once casting is done for 6 druids (who didn't have to aim or get a good position), the encounter could be pretty much over.

 

Wizard CC can end an encounter pretty quickly but it is a bit harder to aim while ennemy is moving.

 

Finally, druids are probably better at low level with spiritshift. They also have healing, which is handy.

 

I'm not sure it is easy to decide which one is better. Both parties would be incredibly powerful, so it would be hard to define the right criteria.

[pi2repsion]

You are right that at level 13 druids get a spell that allows all the party to gain +20% attack speed, though comparing this in practice to getting +50% attack speed at level 5 is a bit... err. strange. One is a strong self-buff the wizard has available for most of the game, the other a great party buff available when mopping up the last areas of the game.

 

In addition, since you are talking about attack speed only affecting recovery times, the point is that - for wizards - that's pretty damned important, because after level 5, where you can get DAOM, the two most commonly used AOE damage spells have fast cast speed, good damage, and medium radius.

 

Not so for druids; they do have some fast cast damage spells as well, but they have drawbacks that makes them less generally useful than the slower casting druid spells (small radius, deals damage over a long time rather than up front, etc.) Most of the time druids will be using average cast speed spells (or even slow, for the first storm spell) rather than fast cast.

 

 

You note that Druids have spells that combine high damage with small CC effects. Let me note that while there are druid damage spells that CC such as Calling the World's Maw that applies prone, most of the side effects to druid damage spells are debuffs that don't prevent the enemy from acting, and thus don't crowd control.

 

As for wizards, while they aren't as good as debuffing with their damage spells as druids are, they do have one spell that combines good damage with a strong CC effect and that is the 4th level spell Ninagauth's Shadowflame, which applies paralysis and significant cold damage in a 2.5m radius. In addition, it has a fast casting speed. (And by paralysis debuffing deflection and reflex by 40 as well as preventing enemies from acting, it makes it very likely that any enemy merely grazed by this spell will be taking hits or crits from the followup fast-cast fireballs and shadowflames.)

 

Let me assure you that hitting moving enemies with Shadowflames and paralysing them is no problem. Not having to spend a long time on casting average, like is needed with the druid spells you prefer, makes it rather easy.

 

Which of course is the point; While there are individual druid spells like Relentless and Returning Storm that are very powerful in that they are fire-and-forget and consistently apply low damage for a long time, wizards are able to apply a heck of a lot of damage up front coupled with CC. It is silly enough doing it with one wizard. I tried doing it with two wizards in my current POTD game while waiting to pick up the Devil of Caroc, and it was absurd, since most enemies were paralyzed by the 2nd or 3rd Shadowflame, and DAOM+high DEX and 5% recovery armour meant that fireballs and shadowflames could be chained at a very low frame cost. The thought of doing that with 6 wizards instead is grotesque. But it also sounds rather boring.

 

 

ANYHOW - as you say, Elric Galad, whether 6 druids or 6 wizards, the party would be incredibly powerful, and I suspect that the 6 druid party would be more fun, as you might be tempted to try alternative strategies unlike wizards, where "paralyze and burn down all enemies with 6 wizards chaining fast cast speed 3rd and 4th level spells" would be optimal in most encounters due to the sheer amount of fast cast spells.

Edited September 24, 2015 by pi2repsion

[srlapo]

OK, tried the 6 ranger party and it is hilariously OP, at least at low levels. 6+6 characters will overwhelm most of the encounters in the (early) game. And since the animal companions only have endurance the typical frontline health attrition doesn't exist. Piercing immunity was a problem against some enemies so I gave everyone scepters as a backup ranged weapon.

We'll see how it holds out at higher levels...