Theorycraft: optimal 6 person party for non-boss fights?

[butter_duck]

After beating the game once on Hard, I've started my first PotD run. I tried to create the "optimal" 6 character party for everyday (non-boss) encounters that doesn't rely heavily on per rest abilities (eg Wizard). There's no right or wrong answers, and it's just for fun. This is what I've come up with so far:

Front row: 2 Coastal Aumaua fighters for high ACC/high deflection striking. Deftank wears plate mail, large shield, and has 20/14/5/18/3/18 stats. Offtank wears leather armor and switches between large shield/weapon and a pike, stats 16/12/18/19/3/10.

Middle row: 2 Moon godlike chanters with rods/wands/scepters, Dangerous Implements, and padded armor. Max Might and healing auras, use implements + summons, boost front and back line with auras while providing lots of offensive capability.

Back row: 2 single target Wood Elf DPS cannons. 1 cipher, 1 rogue. Their abilities compliment each other and the Cipher provides vital control. They wear no armor, stand far back, and use 12m ranged bows or crossbows.

So far I've had no issues with survivability with this party. I'm using custom grouping with 1 space in between each row. With Constant Recovery, Ancient Memories, and Silver Tide, there is plenty of healing. The fighters are durable and I max Deflection with large Shields and accessories. The only time my fighters get knocked out is by accidentally disengaging and incurring the disengagement penalty.

Edited May 7, 2018 by butter_duck

[butter_duck]

Questions:

 

1. My lvl 3 Rogue with hunting bow and wearing no armor has almost the exact same career damage (within 100 points) as my offtank fighter. This is with the 50% damage boost of Sneak Attack plus Knock Down prone/Eyestrike blind. Something seems off, shouldn't my naked Rogue be doing way more damage than an armored fighter? I think the problem is the low base damage hunting bow.

2. How much damage does White Worms invocation do? It seems to do a LOT of damage for a lvl 2 spell which is crazy, but when I check the combat log it just tells me how many enemies are hit, not the amt of damage done.

 

3. When tanking and wearing a large shield, what is the best weapon for my offtank? I'm using Gaun's Share flail ATM, but I wonder is a spear better?

 

4. Is 2 back row ciphers even better than a 1 cipher and 1 rogue? There's more micro managing but the Whispers of Treason power every battle is super useful in certain scenarios. I'm still undecided.

Edited May 7, 2018 by butter_duck

[Boeroer]

1. Knockdown is a Full Attacks which adds quite some damage compared to a hunting bow, especially when executed with dual heavy one handers (sabres?). In the early game hunting bow is pretty weak due to DR issues. A Full Attack complety negates the recovery between two strikes which leads to a much higer dps than with auto-attacks.

 

If you hover over the White Worms roll it shoud tell you how many damage it did. Or you have to search a bit further up or down because sometimes the numbers for hitting and damage are seperated if mutiple enemies got hit.

 

And offtank shouldn't need a (large) shield anyways. In this case a spear is a good pick (+5 ACC makes up a bit for the -8 ACC from the large shield).

 

In my opinion every class is better than a rogue except in the early game where a rogue can be really useful. 2 ciphers are certainly more useful over the course of the whole game than 1 cipher and 1 rogue. Usefulness is not only about dealing damage...

Edited May 7, 2018 by Boeroer

[butter_duck]

1. Knockdown is a Full Attacks which adds quite some damage compared to a hunting bow, especially when executed with dual heavy one handers (sabres?). In the early game hunting bow is pretty weak due to DR issues. A Full Attack complety negates the recovery between two strikes which leads to a much higer dps than with auto-attacks.

 

If you hover over the White Worms roll it shoud tell you how many damage it did. Or you have to search a bit further up or down because sometimes the numbers for hitting and damage are seperated if mutiple enemies got hit.

 

And offtank shouldn't need a (large) shield anyways. In this case a spear is a good pick (+5 ACC makes up a bit for the -8 ACC from the large shield).

 

In my opinion every class is better than a rogue except in the early game where a rogue can be really useful. 2 ciphers are certainly more useful over the course of the whole game than 1 cipher and 1 rogue. Usefulness is not only about dealing damage...

 

My offtank is wielding a shield/flail plus a pike. Doesn't a full attack add damage only a character is wielding two weapons, one in each hand?