All the general points you bring up as general pros/cons have already been addressed in the previous thread, that you didn't want to necro.
I do wonder, though, how on earth your particular party of warrior, rogue, ranger, and wizard ends up with your melee doing little.
That setup is pretty much ideal for melee: The wizard to control the terrain so melee isn't hindered, to buff/heal the melee (wildfire, oath of desecration, etc), and to throw in filler attack spells, the melee to carve up enemies, the ranger to kill off those low on health, to apply bullying damage to knocked down targets, and to help control the battlefield with special arrows. (At higher levels also provides luck to everybody and curing of many ailments).
(Take the companion wizard - give him a point in witchcraft and fire magic, and he's good to start his support role. You can also pick up small fireball or other damage spells for him, but much better to concentrate on the water/air spells for direct damage when using melee.)
Not knowing you you have specced your party, I cannot guess how you've ended up with weak melee unless it is because you use your wizard to turn the battlefield into a mess rather than removing the mess. Or perhaps you are investing everything in strength (respective dexterity) for your melee without increasing your speed on the melee characters? I consider 7 the lowest speed value that is fun to play with as melee, and more is better.
Or perhaps you aren't using crafting to increase the damage of your melee and ranged weapons? Do you remember to improve the quality of heavy armour with movement restrictions or do you suffer slowdown and have your men moving like turtles? Did your rogue take one level of marksmanship to get Tactical Retreat? (and did your ranger take one level of scoundrel to get Fast Track?)
As for melee skills, they have two things in common:
1) They are very powerful and martial includes the strongest AOE (both in damage numbers and in having no friendly fire), healing skills, and two of the better party buffs (encourage, inspire) (martial) while rogue singletarget is just amazing.
2) They have very long cooldowns.
As fun as mages are, and they can be very fun due to their sheer versatility and ease of loading up on lots of spells, for hitting things hard it is hard to match up to a buffed warrior or rogue.
Last edited by Peter Ebbesen; 06/07/14 01:37 AM.
