Class help for duo groups

[Fyreworks]

Let me start of by saying i am pretty inexperienced with the game but i would like to try and get more from it, my situation is that my son (aged 11) and i play the game and we are about to unlock drow and he has decided he would like to reroll a drow and would like me to start a new character with him.

Due to his age we tend to only play together in a group but is occassionally joined my brother on his bard, my question therefore is which races and classes work well together in a small group to get the most out of the game ideally elite on most quests. One character needs to be a drow but the other can be any free to play race or warforge which i own.

I understand warforge sorcs are good solo champs as are battle clerics but i only have experience upto level 7 so far so would prefer not to make mistakes now which will limit us later.

Any advice would be appreciated.

ps i havent played this game in a few years so am very out of date but i dont mind buying spending a few turbine points if thats what needed

[Mubjon]

I would think that one of you would want to have some disarm skills (some traps are killers on elite and cannot be avoided in some quests) and an abiltiy to heal, as well as dish out dps.

You could make a Clogue (cleric/rogue) that will be able to do a bit of all three, seeing as he is wanting to go drow. Not sure what class he likes to play, my son likes mages. With this character you would be able to help keep him alive as well as ensure that if there is a trap that the two of you have to go through that it can be disarmed easily.

Human might be the best (extra feat, extra skill point each level), but any race can work.

Human will need 14 intelligence to get 5 skill points (1 for concentration, 2 for disarm, 2 for search), the other races will need a 16 intelligence to get the same skill points on a cleric.

That might be hard on a 28 pt build, but not impossible. for 28 pt build it would look something like this

Str - 14 (so that you can swing the weapon some and do some melee to help conserve spell points)
Dex - 8
Con - 14 (difference between 14 and 16 is 20 hp at cap)
Int - 14
Wis - 16 (all level ups here)
Char - 8

Feats you can do a few different ways. I would do the following though.

Level 1 take rogue of course

Toughness
Insightful reflexes (this is to make extra use of the intelligence modifier)

Level 2 through 13 cleric feats would be in my preference taken

Empower healing
Maximize (both of these can power the radiant servant burst and make it more potent for a mass cure)
Empower
Quicken

Level 14 take the second level of Rogue

Level 15 - 20 cleric

Spell pen
Heighten

This will allow you to be a caster cleric mostly using implosion and destruction to help take out mobs quicker.

You should attempt to get the following tomes when you can afford to

+2 str
+2 con
+2 wis
+2 int

If you want more feats you could splash a wizard level for another meta magic like spell focus evo or necro depending on if you want to use blade barrier/implosion more or destruction/slay living.

You could also take feats for melee and use the spell points you have just for healing and divine punishment (bosses) and blade barrier to help with trash. This could let you lower wisdom some (14 is the lowest I would go) and place those points into strength and level ups to strength. If you went more melee focus I would swap out spell pen, heighten, and empower for the two handed weapon, Improved two handed fighting and IC: Slash and go with a falchion.

[morticianjohn]

It is nice but not mandatory to have all roles covered when starting a group. The main roles for each quest are

1.) healing
2.) crowd control (usually needed for high level content)
3.) damage

a further subrole can be doing traps. If you can cover all of these roles with 2 players then you can either duo everything and/or take the first 4 players to join and fill groups quickly without needing to wait for someone to fill one of these roles.

A note about hirelings. IMO they work great if you know how to use them. However, the only role they can reliably fill is the healer role.

If you are ok with playing a healer then I would suggest playing a cleric or favored soul to support your partner in the best way possible. If he plays a rogue or artificer then you won't have to wait for a trapper for those quests you want one. If he plays a wiz/sorc then you won't have to wait for CC at higher levels (provided his build is capable of CC).

Most groups are waiting for healer, CC, or trapper (for those quests that these roles are important). Fill 2 or 3 of these roles and you'll cut down on the wait time between quests.

edit:/// I may have misread the OP. Are you saying you only do quests together without a group or are you saying that you do quests together with a group? If you are planning to duo everything then I suggest

cleric or fvs - one of you. It can be done without these classes but IMO the buffs that a cleric can provide are invaluable if you aren't interested in grinding out DW clicky or using a hire.

artificer, or 18/2 wizard/rogue - the other one. This selection will make a bigger difference at higher levels where the spells will make a much bigger difference in the sucess or failure of a given quest than melee damage will that you would get from a pure rogue. The traps is nice to have but not totally necessary if you're not doing a lot of elite quests. So you could also choose pure sorc instead for this role.

TLDR: the most important part of my post is this summary

One thing to avoid is if your son chooses one of these classes: ranger, barb, bard, fighter, paladin, rogue, monk avoid choosing one of those same classes.

[Fyreworks]

Thank you both for your help,

You both mention cleric so my son has decided he will try that, and i have always fancied a sorcerer but a wizard with a splash of rogue seems to make more sense so i think i will give that a go.