Hey guys - Party advice

[Zehnpai]

Honestly casters make terrible back row characters. I've found in most of my playthroughs that a battle mage in slot 1 or 2 is insanely good. You can drop all your points into vit/will and enjoy 35 bonus protection due to orb/staff perk and shield spell. In my speed run I'm working on I use 2 battle mages up front since early game fire damage is critical. It's quite some time and point investment before a barbarian can handle a 4 pack of mobs whereas two battle mages throwing fireballs are brutal for a very long time.

The perk is that then your back row physical damage dealers are free to go dex/str to get the bonus early accuracy from dex and the str bonus to damage.

My back row are two alchemists. One going heavy/accuracy/alchemy and the other going light/accuracy/critical. The two alchemists is so I can have enough energy pots to keep bear form going for basically the entire game.

It's going insanely well. I have enough health pots to face tank almost every fight since dancing slows you down considerably.

For what it's worth I went 4x lizardmen since face tanking spell damage is brutal. The baseline 50~60% immunity there is kind of nice. I then take poison immunity on top of it so that from the start I have 0 worry about needing antidotes ever.

[DannyAIC]

Honestly casters make terrible back row characters. I've found in most of my playthroughs that a battle mage in slot 1 or 2 is insanely good. You can drop all your points into vit/will and enjoy 35 bonus protection due to orb/staff perk and shield spell. In my speed run I'm working on I use 2 battle mages up front since early game fire damage is critical. It's quite some time and point investment before a barbarian can handle a 4 pack of mobs whereas two battle mages throwing fireballs are brutal for a very long time.

The perk is that then your back row physical damage dealers are free to go dex/str to get the bonus early accuracy from dex and the str bonus to damage.

My back row are two alchemists. One going heavy/accuracy/alchemy and the other going light/accuracy/critical. The two alchemists is so I can have enough energy pots to keep bear form going for basically the entire game.

It's going insanely well. I have enough health pots to face tank almost every fight since dancing slows you down considerably.

For what it's worth I went 4x lizardmen since face tanking spell damage is brutal. The baseline 50~60% immunity there is kind of nice. I then take poison immunity on top of it so that from the start I have 0 worry about needing antidotes ever.

I Disagree about the battlemage.

You have a great point with putting the big hitters like the barbarian on the backrow for sure, but I can't agree with the battlemage. If on the front line, you want to put at LEAST 4 points into armor for protection. this means less points for the magic spells and concentration. A backrow wizard can cast everything and sing a jaunty tune. Also, If you're not going to put points into strength or weapons for your battle mage, it defeasts the point a bit, and the wizard is a better caster so you might as well take him/her. I do like the idea of a backrow barbarian, esepcially since no need to spend points in armor leaving open points for critical and dodge, but I can put one more point into accuracy to fix the dexterity issue with minotaurs and insectoids.

[Jirodyne]

Honestly casters make terrible back row characters. I've found in most of my playthroughs that a battle mage in slot 1 or 2 is insanely good. You can drop all your points into vit/will and enjoy 35 bonus protection due to orb/staff perk and shield spell. In my speed run I'm working on I use 2 battle mages up front since early game fire damage is critical. It's quite some time and point investment before a barbarian can handle a 4 pack of mobs whereas two battle mages throwing fireballs are brutal for a very long time.

The perk is that then your back row physical damage dealers are free to go dex/str to get the bonus early accuracy from dex and the str bonus to damage.

My back row are two alchemists. One going heavy/accuracy/alchemy and the other going light/accuracy/critical. The two alchemists is so I can have enough energy pots to keep bear form going for basically the entire game.

It's going insanely well. I have enough health pots to face tank almost every fight since dancing slows you down considerably.

For what it's worth I went 4x lizardmen since face tanking spell damage is brutal. The baseline 50~60% immunity there is kind of nice. I then take poison immunity on top of it so that from the start I have 0 worry about needing antidotes ever.

You have it right, and wrong. If your constantly moving your mouse around the rune system to cast fireball, you probably don't have enough time to have someone attack at all times. You waste time forming runes twice and telling them to attack, while your back row is probably already cooled down and waiting for attack orders again and again and again. Especially if you need the Inventory open at all times to keep refilling energy of your front row. Also, since you don't have a single Barbarian going pure strength you are lacking a LOT of dps. Magic has 2 advantages. It does high dmg at the beginning of the game. And 1 attack hits all 4 enemies in the square. That's it. It's good for clearing out the 4 square enemies, but in a fight with 1 single enemy, you will be doing less dmg and weaker, if you had a DPS Barbarian instead.

Your fireballs, how much dmg do they do on average per hit? My Barbarian is hitting 150-200 per hit, 300+ per crit and backstab. And that is with each of his 2 weapons he duel wields.

I Disagree about the battlemage.

You have a great point with putting the big hitters like the barbarian on the backrow for sure, but I can't agree with the battlemage. If on the front line, you want to put at LEAST 4 points into armor for protection. this means less points for the magic spells and concentration. A backrow wizard can cast everything and sing a jaunty tune. Also, If you're not going to put points into strength or weapons for your battle mage, it defeasts the point a bit, and the wizard is a better caster so you might as well take him/her. I do like the idea of a backrow barbarian, esepcially since no need to spend points in armor leaving open points for critical and dodge, but I can put one more point into accuracy to fix the dexterity issue with minotaurs and insectoids.

I agree with you, Battlemages are not made to cast spells. They use heavy armor, a staff/orb, and a weapon. They cast Shield on themselves, Forcefield to control the battle, and attack using the weapon. They focus on Armor, Concentration, Acc, and either Heavy or Light weapons. Battlemages don't focus on offence magic, they focus on defence. If they do go down a magic tree, it's only 3 points to use that tree's Elemental Protection spell.

[DannyAIC]

I ended up Restarting with a similar party except I replaced the knight with an insect barbarian. May regret not having an uber tank, but I feel like the extra damage will more than make up for it in the end. Thanks for all the cool info guys. Who knows if i'll restart again anyway haha.

[Zehnpai]

You really aren't missing out on that much damage for about 80% of the game. Yes the Barbarian can hit 300+ relatively consistently mid-late game but the entire first 5~6 levels you're spending most of your time whiffing or hitting for 30~50 when your battle mage is hitting for 100~ish AND taking only 3~10 damage per hit defensively.

And honestly the alchemist isn't doing that much less damage. By the time the dps gap would be noticeable you have enough materials to go perma bear form for the rest of the game. I rarely square dance with this setup simply because the twin battle mages offer a ton of protection up front, a good deal of early game consistent damage and the two alchemists in the back row are churning out tons of potions and bombs.

To make a Barbarian even worth it you have to go Mino and then you lose complete party poison immunity.