First of all, screw you all that say rogue isn't viable. That school has so many broken skills it can trivialize most fights and downright make some bosses feel like a non-issue.
Second, Hydro might be the best magic school just because of the sheer amount of flexibility it gives you. It has targeted damage, AoE, healing, CC and synergizes well with all the elemental affinity talents.
Finally rangers need to get the nerf bat. Hard.
Some of the things I'd like to see tweaked/patched:
- Item scaling needs to be addressed asap. It's ridiculous how gear-gated the end-game is.
- The endless re-specing possibility has to go. Make it so each character can only use the mirror once, otherwise it trivializes the choice-oriented gameplay too much.
- Act 4 doesn't feel right. I can't put my finger on exactly what it is but I'm inclined to say it's tied to the sense of no-guidance regarding what you main objective is. I felt tossed out into the world and left to figure out what my end goal was, which is something I never felt in any other chapter in this game or the original.
- Mandatory: Fix the goddamn quests!
- GIVE US THE BARD CLASS. It makes so much more sense if Lohse's default class was bard instead of a magic yielder.
Despite all of this, this game is perhaps the strongest contender for GOTY.
I'll replay the game in Honour some time in the future, after some patches and fixes. I'm thinking about going 2H Undead Inquisitor, Pyro+Geo Red Prince, Summoner+Hydro Fane and (maybe) ranger Sebbile.
edit: and just as I type this the game gets a 4.3Gb update...
LMAO, that's not me. I know full well how broken they can be. I think in most situations a Ranger has an edge (sometimes small, sometimes larger), but Rogues are
very strong in this game. Plus, they're fun as hell, which matters the most. Depending on how things look patch wise once I get around to it, I want to eventually do a four Rogue party. Biggest issue is going to be grabbing 8x somewhat near equivalent daggers though. Mabye I'll just use a shield on all of them too and Shield Toss groups to death.
I don't really know about Hydro other than to agree that it might be the most flexible, but it's also the weakest for stripping armor until Hail Storm. It ends up with the better CC options once armor is gone, but you have to get to that point. If we're ranking schools I guess it's easy to see Hydro at least in the top two, with Pyromancy being first. I guess it just depends on how often you need heals and Armor of Frost.
On Classic at least (I can see how this would be a problem on Tactician) encounters aren't gear gated as much as the game is gear lopsided in favor of physical classes by a gross margin. You can go through most of Classic with your weapons being 1-3 levels behind your character level, despite claims to the contrary that you need same level
legendary gear to get through the game. If, however you keep your group up to date, the physical classes will steamroll encounters.
The rumors are true, Act 4 is the weakest part of the game for many reasons. The first two Acts seemed almost perfect (despite some early game issues), Act 3 was a blip on the radar, then the game comes to a screeching halt in both quality and pacing. Anyway, I agree that this is a GOTY contender, despite a bunch of issues I have with it. I don't usually dump so many hours into something I don't find overall enjoyable.
Edit:
Reduced survivability and base damage of Bone Widow
Good thing I stopped giving a shit about that summons a day after getting it. It didn't really need changed either since it didn't have much survivability in the first place other than against all physical classes. It was charm, freeze and stun bait. The best thing about it was that it had a low investment so that you could have it as a cheap, long range distraction for those who invested two into Necromancy. Its damage isn't even that good without having a large investment into Summoning (and if you have a lot in Summoning, you have three better options in general). GG Larian forum whining.
Seems like the patch fixed a lot of bugs, which is great, but it didn't seem to address pretty much any of the balance or QoL issues. I guess crafting is going to still suck too until the console release.
