I'm at Level3 on the island and really struggling with this on classic - not finding it fun at all. I had no issues playing games like Baldur's Gate 2 and Neverwinter Nights oddly enough. I was hoping to do Mage DPS + Mage CC/Support, Ranger and Rogue but I'm just getting wiped - even trying to use funnel points isn't working and some enemies have a huge movement range. Seems difficult to aggro a couple of enemies at a time.
Friendly fire also makes it tricky with limited AP so it seems the ideal situation is all physical or all magic group build? Also enemies just run through my status effects like it's nothing knocking out the strategic idea of making them move where I want.
I really didn't want to do what I see as a "cheese" run but I think I'm going to start again with a summoner. I was hoping it'd be possible to be smarter and not need a tank. Maybe I'm just crap but I think I'll go for Summoner/Warrior/Ranger/Healer-CC combo. :/
Thinking Lohse summoner, Red Prince Warrior, Ifan Ranger and Fane Support. Any reason why this'd be a bad idea? I also like the idea of Fane as a warrior given he can get healed by poison.
On another point, I like the idea that there is almost P&P level freedom but this game does a really bad job of explaining the mechanics early on. A tutorial would have been nice because I find myself constantly looking things up on the web or looking through the control options.
Yes, this game has some annoying difficulty spikes at times. One level makes an awful lot of difference, and you also need to constantly make sure you're geared up appropriately for your level - even a legendary weapon is going to be outclassed by a normal weapon one level higher. It's something I wish they'd give more nuance to, really.
Also, it can be quite unforgiving of less-than-optimal party composition. There are again a few niggles here. One, as has been said, is that you don't really want to try to mix physical and magical damage. Armour is key in this game, and you can't use the all-important CC abilities until you've stripped either physical OR magical armour. I recommend focusing on physical since there are a good range of CC skills you can draw on, and you don't have to worry about resistances.
With this in mind, a pure "support" character isn't really ideal. You don't need a heavy skill investment to get your bread-and-butter heals and buffs, so I'd recommend spreading the support skills around a couple of characters without too much investment in them, and making their primary purpose damage-dealing and CC.
Mobility skills are also really useful (I'd say they're necessary, actually), so think about splashing a point or two to get things like teleport, phoenix dive, cloak and dagger, tactical retreat, nether swap, etc. You don't need all of these on all characters, but making sure everyone has at least one good mobility skill makes a lot of difference. One or two characters having teleport is incredibly useful (you can find gloves with skill early on to save you making the skill investment at the beginning).
Summoners are very useful, but you basically need to go all-in on the summoning skill, and level nothing else on that character until it's at 10 base. The incarnate becomes a real juggernaut at this point.
I had to revise my party ideas because I built a sub-optimal party at first by making Red Prince a pure support guy, which meant he didn't have anything to do most of the time. When I respecced him to be primarily a ranger with some healing and buffs as secondary, I found it much easier.
Two-handed warrior types will probably be your main damage output, and they have decent mobility (phoenix dive) and CC (battering ram, battle stomp). I also ran with a backstabbing rogue, summoner with one-hander and shield (bouncing shield is a good skill when not summoning), and a ranger with support skills/buffs/heals. When you can afford the point investment, chicken claw and ruptured tendons is a godly combination, but basically you want to focus on stripping physical armour and using your CC abilities to lock down the battlefield.
