Need some party advice on a melee heavy team.

[Eliteseraph]

I'm not really a fan of using the NPCs for the party, so I'm using all custom characters.

 

I'm thinking of using a rogue tank for retaliation, a paladin and fighter for auras, a barb for general mayhem, and two chanters as support.

 

I'm at work so I haven't had time to do anything but run the idea through my head. I've never used a rogue as a tank, so that should be interesting. I like the overlapping auras and passive buffs, but I suppose the two chanters could be replaced with just about anything.

 

Figured I'd run it past the forums to see what you guys think, and maybe get some suggestions on specific talents and such.

[KDubya]

Your plan sounds fine. It'd be nice to fit a Monk in there as well.

 

I'd keep the two Chanters if you like them, two regen auras will be sweet as well as two Dragon Chants and the fire lash

 

Retaliation is not as good as it once was, but a sword and board rogue still does a bunch of damage but is much more survivable.

 

If you want the NPC's they do a pretty good job even without min maxing them. Devil of Caroc is pretty tanky, Eder does fine as a Fighter, Kana makes a fine Chanter, Pellagina has some unique abilities that make her very good and unique, Zahua makes a good Monk and even Maneha has pretty good stats for a Barbarian.

[Eliteseraph]

I'm using my main PC as the paladin for the better role-play bonuses from reputation. Otherwise I'd use Pella for her attack speed buff on improved flames of devotion, and I absolutely LOVE her voice.

 

The other problem I have is that some of them are a real pain in the ass to get to early enough.

 

For monks, wouldn't it be better to use them as the main tanky character to draw more wounds? Seems like that might detract from the rogue, although it's a good backup if I don't like how rogue tanking works.

[Esajin]

I have up to 6 melee characters in my current party (one of them is a Ranger, so the bear pet counts as melee). I can tell you about melee heavy party, the better option is generally to tank several enemies at the same time with multiple characters. It has the great benefit of spreading the incoming damage across multiple toons, multiplying the effect of AOE heal effects and preventing enemy flanks. Also since your characters no longer take lethal doses of damage, you can entirely forget about deflection scores and forget about shields.

 

The approach is to have everyone solo their target, then the first one who's done should come and assist their teammates to finish the fight. You generally ignore all the pre-fight stuff such as pulling, chokepoints or splitting enemy groups, you just blindly charge into enemy packs and make it work as you go. Strive on chaos.

[Blunderboss]

Im planing on my next playtrough to play Crusaders party consisting mostly of melee characters using shields ( once again borrowed Boeroer's idea to use few shields with Herald and one guy with Harbringer for OP passive aura ) 

Im surely gonna bring Paladin ( Triumphant , not sure if using shield or no , maybe just at the start of fight ) and Priest ( Eothas Maybe ) , a Rogue ( with Barricade ) , Barbarian ( most likely Retaliation Tank with Supper Plate ) , Chanter ( Fire Lash chant for the crusader feels also makes a good shield user ) and then last character i have no idea Maybe a fighter or wizard or another paladin or a monk .

General idea is to stack as much passive buffs/debuffs as possible : weapons that inflict debuffs on hit , items that gives passive auras etc. , skills like Threatening Presence and so on , meanwhile every character of mine will be decently armored but agile melee ( i mostly will aim for lighter armors to reach 0 recovery variants on few of the builds )

I have mostly focused on playing party's that have front and back line where front lines job is always to protect ranged characters from getting one shot , this should be a nice change of pace 

Edited April 23, 2016 by Blunderboss

[Elric Galad]

I find that priests are rather optimal shield users since their most important abilities don't require accuracy (buffs or healing, and seals have a huge accuracy bonus): you can even go big shield.

Edited April 23, 2016 by Elric Galad

[Eliteseraph]

I'm not really a fan of priest in this game. Every time I've tried to use one it just didn't seem to be very good.  Just not my style, I guess.

[DreamWayfarer]

Yeah, the thing with Priests is that if you don't use their buffs to their full potential, they are not that useful, and if you use they are stupidly OP. I mean, there are many builds that only work with a Priest in the party, much more than any other class.

[Blunderboss]

Use Kind Wayfarer paladin for your healing needs then ! With some planing and micro heals are insane .

[Eliteseraph]

I've actually decided to swap out my fighter for something else after I discovered how tiny the radius on guardian stance is.  Maybe drop in another paladin for more aura. Could use Pella that way, which is an added bonus. 

On a side note, does anyone know if the Rogue ability Dirty Fighting(10% of hits converted to crits) stacks with paladin Zealous Focus(5% of hits converted to crits) and the Hearth Orlan bonus of the same nature(10% of hits converted to crits when targetting the same as an ally)?

Edited April 24, 2016 by Eliteseraph

[KDubya]

I've actually decided to swap out my fighter for something else after I discovered how tiny the radius on guardian stance is.  Maybe drop in another paladin for more aura. Could use Pella that way, which is an added bonus. 

 

On a side note, does anyone know if the Rogue ability Dirty Fighting(10% of hits converted to crits) stacks with paladin Zealous Focus(5% of hits converted to crits) and the Hearth Orlan bonus of the same nature(10% of hits converted to crits when targetting the same as an ally)?

 

All of the hit to crit abilities stack.

[Esajin]

Yeah, the thing with Priests is that if you don't use their buffs to their full potential, they are not that useful, and if you use they are stupidly OP. I mean, there are many builds that only work with a Priest in the party, much more than any other class.

 

Not to mention that you can also build your priest as a super saiyan that shoots large area ~300 damage spirit bombs shining beacons around. This trivializes a lot of fights. I'm surprised this isn't part of the discussion, to be honest. Am I the only one who ever built a tanky damage dealing priest?

[Eliteseraph]

Not to mention that you can also build your priest as a super saiyan that shoots large area ~300 damage spirit bombs shining beacons around. This trivializes a lot of fights. I'm surprised this isn't part of the discussion, to be honest. Am I the only one who ever built a tanky damage dealing priest?

Because it's about making a melee heavy team, not a party of casters?

[Esajin]

 

Not to mention that you can also build your priest as a super saiyan that shoots large area ~300 damage spirit bombs shining beacons around. This trivializes a lot of fights. I'm surprised this isn't part of the discussion, to be honest. Am I the only one who ever built a tanky damage dealing priest?

Because it's about making a melee heavy team, not a party of casters?

 

 

Good point I really meant "in general". Everyone talks about priest buffs and debuffs, no one really talks about their large damage potential.

 

With that said, the "saiyan priest" style requires you to be already in melee range to work, simply due to the really short range on Priest offensive spells. You need to be literally inside enemy lines to maximize your AOE. I play mine as a tank that mostly melees stuff, and can turn into Goku on a whim to solo a fight that's somehow going south. Which makes it kinda sorta relevant?

[DreamWayfarer]

Good point I really meant "in general". Everyone talks about priest buffs and debuffs, no one really talks about their large damage potential.

 

With that said, the "saiyan priest" style requires you to be already in melee range to work, simply due to the really short range on Priest offensive spells. You need to be literally inside enemy lines to maximize your AOE. I play mine as a tank that mostly melees stuff, and can turn into Goku on a whim to solo a fight that's somehow going south. Which makes it kinda sorta relevant?

Actuallt, I'd love to play a "Sayan Priest". It is just that you will probably want to nuke/smash people after droping your buffs, and so the other party members will still outclass you in nuking and smashing more often than not.

 

Plus, immunity on-demand and buffs that render many abilities and even sone attributes redundant just feel OP to me. Would you drop RES to 3 on a frontliner without a Priest or sone unique from stronghold adventures?

 

Maybe I'd be willing to play a Priest, but only if he was the only caster in the party.

[Esajin]

Actuallt, I'd love to play a "Sayan Priest". It is just that you will probably want to nuke/smash people after droping your buffs, and so the other party members will still outclass you in nuking and smashing more often than not.

 

That's completely off-topic at this point, but actually it's not entirely true

 

In short, from level 7 on, Priest damage spells deal the highest base damage spell in the game - for the level - by a large margin (Shining Beacon, 80), that damage gets multiplied by both might bonus, intellect duration bonus and intellect range bonus to hit more targets per cast. And burn DR only gets applied once to the dot. You do the maths, your spell will oneshot entire enemy parties.

 

At this point your companions are only there to gasp in awe, like extras begging your magnificence to get a day in the limelight once they have access to their own party busters, much later on. But unfortunately for them, they can't catch up to the Saiyan Priest. Granted, they have great abilities (Disintegration and whatnot) that can match or even beat the Priest's level 7 damage in various ways, but the Priest also did some training of his own, as he gets Cleansing Flame that triples Shining Beacon's damage, and Minor Avatar, that's like Super Saiyan Level 2, with its unique +8 Intellect bonus that applies only to the caster.

 

You'll be looking for worthy enemies all game long. I solved that conundrum by not picking a priest at all (nor any caster whatsoever, nor even a buffer or summoner) in my melee heavy party.

[Blunderboss]

Minor Avatar + Storm of Holy Fire or whatever that spell is called = game over for enemy , that fire storm spell is simply strongest damage dealing spell in the game without exceptions .

Edited April 24, 2016 by Blunderboss

[Esajin]

Minor Avatar + Storm of Holy Fire or whatever that spell is called = game over for enemy , that fire storm spell is simply strongest damage dealing spell in the game without exceptions .

The "problem" with Storm of Holy Fire is that burn DR gets applied on every tick, unlike Shining Beacon where it gets applied just once at the beginning. So in the end it's not that clear-cut: it's great (and clearly the best) against low DR (10ish), but against high burn DR (20+), Shining Beacon is just far, far stronger.

[Eliteseraph]

If you play a priest like that, however, won't you end up having to rest all the time as your spells run out? I personally dislike the camping system and abilities you can only use per rest.

[Eliteseraph]

Ok, after only 5 levels of all melee, I give up. The AI and pathing are so horrendous that half my party just runs in circles or dances in place instead of attacking something 1 foot away. How did this make it past beta? LOL!

[Blunderboss]

Yeh it is pretty much like this :D

[Esajin]

If you play a priest like that, however, won't you end up having to rest all the time as your spells run out? I personally dislike the camping system and abilities you can only use per rest.

 

Not really; you have plenty of situational level 1,2 and 3 melee-like spells to cast the rest of the time (hold, pillar of faith, holy power, consecrated ground...), and you gear your priest as a melee tank otherwise, so you're never idling around in the back, reloading an arquebus and whatnot, rather in the middle of the pack, taking grazes and dishing small tastes of Eothas' benevolence with your flail.

 

As a side note, just embrace the resting system. The limiting factor in this game should always be your party's health status, not their remaining per rest abilities. You have access to far more per rest abilities than you can use anyway. If all else fails just use a couple of the scrolls and potions that are currently piling up in your stash, and be done with it. That's true with any type of party. If your party is weak, you'll end up with people at low health every fight or every other fight. If your party is adequate, you'll be at low health once per zone. If your party is good, you'll never have anyone at low health, ever, you'll just be autoattacking everything anyway, and you'll be resting just so you can pick up the camping supplies that are left untouched in those blue boxes.

[Esajin]

Ok, after only 5 levels of all melee, I give up. The AI and pathing are so horrendous that half my party just runs in circles or dances in place instead of attacking something 1 foot away. How did this make it past beta? LOL!

 

You pretty much need to disable the AI and micromanage everyone, yes. It's part of the charm, I'd say

[Eliteseraph]

You pretty much need to disable the AI and micromanage everyone, yes. It's part of the charm, I'd say

eh...I don't find it at all interesting having to click each individual step the character takes to keep him from stopping and dancing in a random spot between him and the target. Even when you disable the AI, the pathing is still garbage.

 

I'll just scrap the all melee idea and go with a normal mixed group. It was an experiment, anyway, and a failed one at that. Learn something new every day, I guess.

[KDubya]

Ok, after only 5 levels of all melee, I give up. The AI and pathing are so horrendous that half my party just runs in circles or dances in place instead of attacking something 1 foot away. How did this make it past beta? LOL!

 

 

I run melee only parties with the AI and never really have these types of problems. I have them set to Aggressive auto attacks, no per rest and slow mode in combat. The Monk AI even uses his wounds fairly well on Torment spam.

 

The only micro intensive part is if I start with ranged and then swap to melee after the first volley. Doorways sometimes get jammed up a little but is not bad, you just need to either wait back from the door and let a few enemies onto your side or rush into the room.