In SP I've tried Wizard/ Warrior/ Priest and it seems like my Wizard is only useful as a whirlwind panic button or with Firestorm if I happen to draw Resistant Hide to go with it. Missions that are really hard with the balanced party seem much, much easier with Warrior/ Warrior/ Priest. I'm thinking it's because the damage output is higher that way. I'm inclined to run the two warrior setup at launch. What is everyone else going to do?
Interesting. The first time I played through the campaign I did so with Warrior / Wizard / Priest and felt like it was my Priest who wasn't pulling her weight. I would have hated to be without my Wizard, who would generally wander around with as many Hot Spots and Wall Of Fires as she could lay her hands on. This feeling generally went away as I reached higher levels but my Priest would probably still have been the first to go. Maybe I was just unlucky with my divine loot. I'll probably go with Warrior / Wizard / Priest initially, just so that I can use all the items I come across, but I find a Warrior / Wizard / Wizard setup appealing.
10 damage lava is pretty good for campaign mission, and is likely the only dps option for wizard on campaign. Ever since it is nerfed to 8, wizard should be focusing more on control instead.
Control wizards are hard to build at low levels though. I will start with a balanced party and build what my items allow for.
At low levels my mage had Novice_Pyromancy arcane skill and could easily fry hordes of mobs (workd well with ents also). Later he became frost/lava mage freezing ogress/dragons to their place so i could take care of the minions. Could not think playing with out a mage mp/sp wise. edit: At start i had Untrained_Pyromancy later upped to novice.
Losing Fireball really crippled my mage for single player. But as long as the enemy also has mages, especially on a map built to give them an easy time staying away from you.... mage will remain useful to include in single player mode as well. And yes... Firestorm is absolutely priceless in a map with lots of 6hp or lower enemies who run away.
I like the security blanket feeling of having a healer. My priest did fine after I figured out that I needed to load it up with Vicious Thrust. I may name my next elf priest "Kite", since I've had many instances where it was just the priest and another monster left on the board.
Loaded my Elven Priest with lifesteal moves for much the same reason Find a corner, wait, hit, run, repeat.
I started with a balanced party and found many of the fights really challenging. My dwarf warrior never seemed to be able to deploy his damage effectively. I recently switch to an all human priest team and have yet to have an issues aside from slimes which just require a bit of gear remapping.
In SP, my wizard spent most of her time destroying armor and burning stuff; I never learned how to build a decent control wizard.
I also went with a balanced party: Human Warrior / Elf Wizard / Dwarf Priest. My Priest was a brick-house. With Advanced Toughness, decent Armor (I prefer Arrogant Armor even though it doesn't play nice with Altruism), a good Shield, and Life-Drain attacks --- my Priest was almost invulnerable. Definitely felt like my strongest character overall. Wizards seem to be amazingly good at board control and then right at the end of turn, drop all the lava tiles. Elf Wizards kind of have an edge with that tactic since they can reveal the hands of the enemies to see if they have any movement cards left. Warriors seem very bland but their pure DMG output is crazy. Finding a strong Armor and Shield is ESSENTIAL as they are gonna be your front line fighters. I tend to build tanky and try to play the long game over glass-cannon type builds. Also Warriors really benefit from the Cantrip move abilities like Quick Step. Has saved me many games. Just my $0.02
I've found that Elf Wizards are too fragile, and that I much prefer Dwarf or Human. I have found early on to use fire is really powerful, especially with +2 damage in play. However come later the forced movement powers are awesome, especially Winds of War, which I try to get 4+ on my wizard ASAP, since they're so versatile.
I did Dwarf Warrior, Human Priest, Elf Wizard all through the campaign. I found the warrior a bit too slow, wizard always had way more movement than needed, and priest tended to need more movement to help out the warrior and wizard since they tended to get split up. This time around, I think I'll try Human Warrior, Elf Priest, Dwarf Wizard
I tried a lot of different party designs in order to level up various characters for the quests. I quite enjoy SP, so I did this alot to learn the strengths and weaknesses of various teams. Personally, I would only recommend the "balanced" party of 1 warrior, 1 priest and 1 wizard if you're learning the game. It does a good job of showing you what each class can do, and it begins to teach you about the interactions that are possible. However, I tend to think that these parties struggle to take best advantage of the class interactions, so much so that I now prefer more focused parties using multiple warriors, priests or wizards. For example, something like Mass Frenzy is a great card that helps your entire team. But it's normally going to help a warrior more than a priest who in turn often has more melee attacks than a wizard. You gain the most advantage from this type of card if you're willing to build your party around it, which can also help your priest seem stronger. Certain racial cards, like Dwarven Battle Cry , are another good example of cards that will do best in more focused parties. Another thing I found, was that using multiples of a character type can help with consistency. Most players learn that encumber spells pair very strongly with lava spells. Freezing an enemy on top of lava for multiple turns is normally a good thing to do, but it's not easy to consistently achieve with only a single wizard. It's much easier to insure you have both types of cards on any given turn if you use multiple wizards. Similarly 2 priests can insure a steady supply of card drawing and healing, which can allow the remaining party member to do some crazy things. Personally I'll likely start with 2 human wizards and a human cleric. It fits my play style and does well in most all the adventures.
I really enjoyed Wizard the most, but I never had enough items to run two effective ones. My item acquisition allowed me to run two warriors pretty decently, but one was Chop and the other was Step. I couldn't manage to do the same on both. I had also started DWa/HP/EWi, and found the same issue... wizard often moved once, maybe twice, then sat still. Dwarf rarely showed up on time to do anything worthwhile. I think I'll actually go with EWa/DP/DWi, only going with balanced so that I can swap to double up on whatever class I get appropriate gear to actually double effectively. I would LOVE to go with three lifesteal priests, but I know I won't have the gear for that for a LONG time. Near the end of Beta I had done a balanced pure dwarf team. It was very enjoyable, but I realized most of the success was due to already having very nice items to equip.
I've found dwarves infinitely better once you get access to two types of high level items-Dwarven Skills and Boots. The Boots are a necessity, but the Dwarven skills, particularly with a nice charge ability are really nice for dwarves to be self-reliant. Obviously team moves help too, but I've had trouble relying on those to get my dwarves into position. I must say though, I prefer Dwarves and Humans to Elves...
Okay, here goes. Before the middle-of-beta reset, I got forum help figuring out three builds. The builds became: A - Bash and Stab, terrain magic Elf Warrior Human Warrior Dwarf Wizard B - Frenzy, second Priest on life draining Dwarf Priest Human Priest Dwarf Warrior C - Keepaway, Heal Human Wizard Elf Wizard Elf Priest Now I'm going to change for the full game. I don't think I'll keep teams "intact" for too long, but I certainly want to try themes for awhile. So: D - Step cards (and . . . ?) Dwarf Warrior Elf Warrior Dwarf Priest E - Heal and frenzy, short range magic? Or something else? (Heal is mandatory.) Human Priest Elf Priest Elf Wizard F - Enemy discard/shutdown (and . . . ?) Dwarf Wizard Human Wizard Human Warrior What do folks think these new parties should do?
What are the synergies of going with a single-race party? Dwarves get War Cry (card draw) and good durability. Elves get group mobility and Elvish Insight, which is nice. Humans get (?) (card cycling and group movement(?)) Could someone fill in the gaps in my knowledge? As of right now I'm leaning towards an all human, balanced party. Thanks
