To begin, I love this game and will support any way possible. After playing through 3 full runs, I wanted to share some thoughts. The first two runs, I had balanced parties using different classes (Fighter, Rogue, Wiz, Cleric... Paladin, Ranger, Wiz, Cleric). On the third run, I dumped Role Play fun for Min-Max strategy and the winner is: Wiz, Cleric, Cleric, Cleric. Melee is inferior and any weapon-based character never truly shines compared to the casters. Paladins are a hybrid (melee-caster), which is probably why they fall in the middle for me, but long term, with more powerful spells, they will fall behind as well.
Why are Fighters, Rangers, and Rogues inferior?
1) DEFENSE: A Cleric can tank as well as any Fighter/Ranger. More importantly, with the buffs and reactionary defenses, all caster parties are very safe and offer a ton of utility (more to come on this point). In addition, the HPs on a cleric are more than adequate to cope with any challenge (should they be hit). Let's not forget you have Clerics in Heavy or Medium Armor and Wizards in Heavy or Medium armor (Background or Feat). Sadly, with group buffs (protection from g/e, bless, etc.) and individual buffs (invisibility, blur, etc.), the Wizards and Clerics own this category.
2) OFFENSE: A Cleric or Wizard can happily contribute in weapon combat, due to access to martial weapons (Background or Feat), leveraging Dex-based weapons (finesse), or utilizing weapon-focused hybrids (Greenmage and War/Law Cleric). On the road, random encounters are cleared in one round with a party of casters... nothing is left (due to resting and having full spells the next day). If you want to play conservative, you can melee/bow/cantrip your way all the way to the final boss encounter of EA and unload a fireworks display. I've stated in another thread, simple spells like Magic Missile offer auto-hit, reliable damage (when focused enmasse with 2+ people), range, and immunity to darkness. Higher level spells are even more destructive when you have 4+ people focusing the pain. Add in CC and Debuffs, this makes the Fighters/Rangers/Rogues mediocre afterthoughts. Oh yeah, let's not forget AOE! How many enemies can a Fighter or Rogue kill at once? Yeah...
3) UTILITY: This game has a ton of "vertical challenges" which means your and Fighter, Ranger, Rogue are basically useless, especially at the early levels (unless hybrids, like Spellblade, but still pure-casters always outclass due to earlier access to spells and a higher number of spell slots). Levitate, Misty Step, Jump, Fly, Spider Climb, etc. are "mandatory" spells for this game, if you want to access over 70% of the loot in this game. Wizards and Clerics own this category. Add in Knock spells, Light (although hybrids can receive), and Crafting/Enchanting synergy and you have a clear advantage with Clerics and Wizards.
How can you fix?
1) Nerf? - NO, this is not the answer, I think all classes should feel powerful (relative to the difficulty slider or auto-scaling).
2) Give more classes spells? - NO! Please do not create even more homogeneity by making everyone a hybrid (fighter-caster). Presently, the game already has enabled casters to utilize heavier armor and real weapons (which is fine), but we don't need to finish the job and make everyone a caster.
3) Make melee matter? - YES! Melee suffers from range, mobility (mobs routinely retreat, climb walls, and fly). Ranger/Fighter/Rogue should all be given bonus in damage, AOE-potential, and/or chance to hit. Ranged-damage (bows) should improve to a lesser degree, due to its benefits of hitting enemies sooner, low impact from disengaging creatures, and reaching flying/spider-climbing creatures (fair number even in early game).
Fighters/Rogues/Rangers need:
>> Improve baseline weapon damage output (globally), by giving a basic skill of +2 to all "melee weapon" damage for Fighters/Rangers/Rogues.
>> Offer three basic fighting styles for Fighter/Ranger skills that: a) enable hits to be AOE by hitting all adjacent squares (skill for two-handed heavy weapons), b) hit faster (two weapon gaining another attack), c) and penetrate (one-handed having meaningful increase for base damage increase and to-hit bonus). For Rogues, I would crank sneak-attack damage by just making all hits a sustained (+1 to-hit and +1d6 damage, scaling to +3 to-hit and +3d6) on all attacks done on a target with one (1) adjacent ally (flanking bonus).
>> Make Armor Special on fighting-characters Fighters/Rogues/Rangers, by giving basic skill of +2 AC on effectiveness of any Armor (if you don't makes this change, casters have the same numerical benefit from armor and access to medium/heavy armor).
Even with these changes, a well-played group of casters, with mobility spells, coupled with CC and Debuffs, would still throttle a group of fighters/rogues/rangers. This also doesn't address the incredible utility value of these other classes. However, by employing these upgrades, people will actually be more thankful to have these classes in a party. In short, don't nerf any class, just give melee characters (Fighters/Rangers/Rogues) a much better role.




Steam profile : https://steamcommunity.com/id/baraz/