@zerd: I have been musing of a physical damage 4-man party composed of a rogue, ranger, warrior (with a two-hander) and as a final character a "battlemage" type of tank - attributes split into Con and Int, using a staff for the Int scaling physical damage and putting points into necro, summoning and 2H (if any). With decent int you could nab points in other spell schools to provide a middle of the battlefield buffer/summoner/healer dishing out physical damage if and when required. Any thoughts on that?
By "using a staff for the Int scaling physical damage", I'm assuming you're using a mod that generates Physical-Damage staves (which is something I was interested in, too. There's also a hammer/mace int-scaling mod). This is basically the only way of making necro viable, otherwise you can't increase your necro damage without worrying where will the rest of your damage come, since the other skilltrees that scale off Int all do magical damage. With that mod, this works out great, I see no reason why this party shouldn't work. Just make sure someone has healing and armor restoring capabilities.
Necro is somewhat of an odd one out, because it deals physical damage but scale with intelligence. Frankly, I think you are better off going Pyro/Geo on Fane, which is the standard combination benefiting from intelligence synergy and the oil/fire interaction. In a 4-man party I would not rely on necromancy for healing - it simply dilutes you too much (I am using necromancy on a melee character right now in a 2-man Lone Wolf run for healing because it works better this way). Furthermore, in my view, in a 4-man party I would say that Fortify/Magic Armor and escape tools (Phoenix Strike/Tactical Retreat etc) are far more useful than healing so maybe think a little more about your pre-battle positioning and "oh shit" buttons?
I agree that necro is in a weird spot. Not only the physical-damage implication, but the fact that it heals only when dealing damage to enemies health, not mentioning that it doesn't restore armor, so if you're healing yourself, most of the cases it means that you already lost one of your armors, which is not ideal.
Basically, the armor rework I'm proposing would solve all of those problems. Quoting myself from another post:
There's a way to solve the synergy between physical damage and magical armor without adding RNG back to the game:
Add both armor values to the health pool. Make the attacks deal damage to both health and the proper armor.
Eg.: Current target has 200 HP, 100 Physical Amor, and 150 Magical Armor.
After the change, same target will have 450 HP, 100 Physical Armor, and 150 Magical Armor.
If someone attacks with a fireball that deals 50 damage, the target will be left with 400 HP, 100 Physical Armor, and 100 Magical Armor, thus, not getting burned because it has Magical Armor left.
This change might increase overall effective health to enemies, since a party composed solely of physical damage or magical damage would be able to ignore the opposing armor, dealing less damage overall to kill a target. However, I believe this is a good change, since it would make hybrid characters or diversed parties more optimal, while also allowing necro to be more useful overall. Not only that, heals would also be more valuable, since hardly someone would be at full health. Maybe some talents would need some rework (like Hot Head).
Another solution for those who actually like RNG is to make the same modifications, but adding the % chance of hitting CC's, based on armor left, like many proposed already.
