@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?
@Mig40: views differ, but many (including myself) believe that your party should focus either on physical or magical damage and not both because of enemies having both physical and magical armour and there is no real advantage in breaking through both as you are simply diluting your damage output. Furthermore, physical damage skills tend to scale with strength and finesse and magical damage spells tend to scale with intelligence. Therefore, an optimal party composition has arguably little room for more than one "jack of all trades".
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?
