Making topics based on what you've seen so far when what you've seen so far is a ridiculous minority of the game is excessively silly, but okay.
As for my experience, I'm playing hard, co-op with a friend, I play 2 melee (both 2H--this is our first run, and I didn't know the other companion would also be built for 2H melee, or else I'd have done something else) and they have 2 mages covering all the elements. We enjoy a loving, symbiotic relationship where he will Bless my main (or blind/stun/knockdown enemies, either/or is enough for 100% hit rate) and toss Oath of Desecration on them, I will throw up Power Stance and Rage, and begin laughing hysterically because you begin doing over 100% bonus damage per swing and cannot miss and half the time that enemies try to walk away from you they just fall over dead from attacks of opportunity.
Flurry is crushingly, ridiculously strong with buffs and will shred bosses to pieces. Even before level 10 (which is when you get flurry/rage), I've had Whirlwinds crit for over 700 damage just with Oath/Power Stance. Once you learn Phoenix Dive, mobility stops being as big an issue, or get more armor specialist or just find loot with +movement, or any combination of the 3. Man-at-Arms 5 with the associated trait for it (weather the storm, I think?) turns a lot of magic damage into a complete joke and my main routinely stands in damage zones now because he does not care.
Meanwhile, my friend chain-CCs enemies and occasionally blows them up with some set-up here and there and summons lots of meatshields that happen to do pretty okay damage themselves. Well, there's more to it than that, but I'm not the one playing the mages so I can't quite romanticize it as much.
I guess the worst thing you could say is "but you need a mage to buff you!" but that's not exactly far-fetched in a game with 4 party members.
The tl;dr version is that we are both rather happy with our roles and are both really useful in combat.
Last edited by Judecca; 06/07/14 01:43 AM.