In my first playthrough I went with a Ranger with some priestly skills like Hide in Shadows, which is an excellent skill to have in tough battles with lots of enemies. While invisible you can heal, summon your creature, etc., so I always try to get a few points in that. I have to thank Joram for telling me what a good skill that is.
I'm on my second playthrough now on Hard, at level 42 now in FoV.I started out trying to be a straight mage with a few priestly skills, but you don't really have a lot of good offensive spells there and they take a while to develop. So I found as the game progressed I was once again picking up more Ranger skills like splitting and exploding arrows.
But you frequently get into close quarters fights where it's good to have some melee ability so I put a few points in dual-wielding and thousand strikes, which is one of the best offensive skills in the warrior tree, particularly in boss fights.
So overall I found that, for me, it was best to go with a mixed character build because none of the skill trees like warrior, mage, etc., really give you enough if you just pursue one exclusively. Even a level 10 fireball with max destruction and way of the battle mage won't do that much to enemies at higher levels. And while some of the warrior skills are good I found that all too often I would start out fighting one or two opponents only to get quickly overwhelmed when four or five more join in.
So most of the time in crowded fights I thin the numbers out and weaken the remainder with ranged skills, fireballs, exploding arrows, etc, then finish them off with melee weapons and thousand strikes. And, to buy time, I use hide in shadows and summon demon. I found that my creature and my demon together can tie up a lot of bad guys while I hang back and rain down fireballs and exploding arrows, but if I get rush attacked I can always quickly switch to melee mode.
In DKS I found that, particularly at higher difficulty levels, versatility is better than specialization. You need a few options to deal with different kinds of battles, and since a lot of the skills don't do much I found that carefully picking and choosing saved a lot of time and frustration. It's a very different game than a game like DA:O where you have so many options available within particular skill trees, not just a fireball, but an inferno, not just winter's grasp but a blizzard or even storm of the century. What I wouldn't give for just one good area effect skill in DKS, like electrocuting four or five bad guys in one go, but that lack of skills makes DKS a lot more challenging, your'e on your own, with less options, and you have to put more thought into a lot of things, and that's one of the things that really hooked me on DKS.
Last edited by DocSmith59; 14/10/12 11:52 PM.
