Act 3 combat thread

The tale of the siblings Althea and Shea https://www.winterwolves.com/seasonsofthewolf.htm
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fabulaparva
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Re: Act 3 combat thread

Post by fabulaparva »

Delay Mass Paralysis? Soon he'll be too slow no matter what he does...
One only needs to beat him on Hard for the achievement. I still think, as I posted before, that he could have been made to be "impossible" on NM, considering what he's supposed to be. With "impossible" I mean that there could be certain skill choices that you need to be able to beat him with each class. I don't mean that there would be one or two skills specifically for beating the likes of him and if you don't have them, you couldn't beat him. What I'm saying that he can be one of those annoying bastard enemies that will force one to backtrack a few levels and reorganize the build. I had that experience with Yeldin the first time he got buffed up for real. Jack, you're just too kind with us, allowing us to beat him without some awesome, one of a kind item that one could only pick up in the very first Act by choosing the right reward from some silly sidequest that wasn't even compulsory..... (yes, I've had that experience in other games...) :P
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jack1974
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Re: Act 3 combat thread

Post by jack1974 »

Yes true, people should try to beat him in Hard. Then if it's really impossible even in Hard, could consider some changes. But already two member made it. Nightmare is not supposed to be "easily winnable". Is supposed to make you sweat, reload 1000 times, etc. Who finds it fun? well SOME people do. If for you is not fun but still want the achievement try with Hard. Otherwise, I'll get complaints from people that is too easy in NM mode :lol:
Troyen
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Re: Act 3 combat thread

Post by Troyen »

If fabula beats him with ranger/druid on a game where he doesn't cast slumber, then I'll relent. I think you beat him, but got really lucky. I haven't seen a single Slumber in over 300+ boss turns. (In fact, you could make the difficulty more consistent by removing his ability to cast Slumber, since that apparently makes the fight too easy.)
jack1974 wrote:Yes true, people should try to beat him in Hard. Then if it's really impossible even in Hard, could consider some changes. But already two member made it. Nightmare is not supposed to be "easily winnable". Is supposed to make you sweat, reload 1000 times, etc. Who finds it fun? well SOME people do. If for you is not fun but still want the achievement try with Hard. Otherwise, I'll get complaints from people that is too easy in NM mode :lol:
Sure, but if that's your goal, I don't think you're achieved it. Nightmare ranges from being wildly easy on some fights to "requires strategy and time" on some fights to three bosses that are insanely difficult. It's really hard to gauge your party's power level when you can clear most of the act without too many reloads but then you hit Deceit, who is the hardest boss since Yeldin. It doesn't help that the environment bonus is totally arbitrary in this game, so unless you've played before, you most likely will not have the right spells to take advantage of it. A lot of the difficulty comes down to luck or guessing what skills you'll need two levels from now against mobs you can't imagine with penalties you don't know about until the fight is upon you.

To be clear, I'm totally fine with sinking 4000 gold on consumables to get over one boss, if that's the strategy that nightmare requires. I'm less thrilled about needing to know two levels (or eight in some of my cases) ago, I should've made different skill choices just to survive this one specific scenario.
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fabulaparva
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Re: Act 3 combat thread

Post by fabulaparva »

Done without him delaying himself Slumber.
Last moves in spoilers, some phases are missing, but he never hit me with slumber. Took around 15-20minutes and lots of resources until he rolled over.

HP just under 600. He chooses to remove my buffs with Curse Of Khalaman.
Spoiler:
Image
A few hits and buffs and debuffs later:
Spoiler:
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After that hit, he makes a serious mistake, and does Mass PAralysis instead of Cleanse.
Spoiler:
Image
JAriel is out of Bombs, so he just whacks him with a potion of Fear to do 25 dmg and further lower his defenses, after which Althea is ready with Sweep
Spoiler:
Image
Image
It's Deceit's turn with 7HP left after the Sweeping Strike, but obviously Shattered DoT kills him at this point.
Troyen
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Re: Act 3 combat thread

Post by Troyen »

All right, I did it. I just saved every time Deceit's turn was about to come up just in case he did something that would be extremely difficult to recover from. Also saved if Jariel was about to go. Ended up reloading the most for Jariel since 75% of his moves were dodged or blocked. (Actually, I think Jariel's bad accuracy was far more annoying than mass paralysis or anything else.)

Not exactly a clean kill, but apparently reloading is encouraged.

I did get to try out the dispel scrolls though. They were kind of nice, though probably more helpful on fights where I need to cleanse someone other than the other mage.

I am kind of curious - do bosses level with the party, or are they fixed? I ground most characters to 20 before retrying the fight, but not sure if that made a difference - for better or worse.

Now, to figure out what to do with the other 10,000 gold of consumables left over...
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Re: Act 3 combat thread

Post by Troyen »

How are you faring against Jul, by the way? I've gotten her to 800, but I need to play around some more. Succubus Kiss essentially just resets the fight and she has that nasty SP draining move. Weakened and Confused don't seem to affect SK either.
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jack1974
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Re: Act 3 combat thread

Post by jack1974 »

About NM: of course is not possible to tailor every single fight, at least not with this system :) but I meant that there should be several fights that needs strategy, and some that are really nuts, especially if are optional, so not required to win the game. I think that with my small possibilities (one man doing all the balancing lol) I made a decent job. Perfect balancing (which also includes battles difficulty) is a myth :wink: *

All enemies are mostly fixed, they use some base values, then those values gets multiplied, and then take a small % autoleveling + small % of party stats, but in any case they won't level up as powerful as the party. Then lastly, there can be some randomization but in order of 2-5% max of stats. Lol is quite complex to explain but with this mix was able to make those "challenging/very hard" NM battles :lol:

* I also think that the only way is to have much smaller scale stats, and CAREFULLY plan each skill, and reduce the amount of skills considerably. Maybe will make a post about it next Friday :)
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Re: Act 3 combat thread

Post by Troyen »

Not sure super boss health should be so variable, I've seen Deceit's max HP range between 1150 and 1275 now, which is a pretty big difference for non-hunter parties. For multi-mob battles and non-bosses the variance fine. Can you make specific values (per level) for specific mobs, or is that not supported? (And is the % of stats why most bosses I see have 260+ speed?)

I know perfect balancing is difficult. It's just weird to go from a ten minute fight where I beat it in one try but use all my SP, to a number of fights that the Restoration talent is sufficient to heal the damage, to suddenly a boss that requires a whole bunch of consumables and reloads. If there were more "checkpoints" throughout the act and previous acts, then it wouldn't feel so out-there - though that is admittedly hard to do with not-so-linear questing. This game is way too big to fine-tune nightmare with only three NM testers though - I don't think you even have decent Hard coverage.

Act 2 was similar: once I beat the battlemage guards from one of the four families and got past Riley's quest, the rest of the act was a breeze (well, difficulty-wise) until OMG Yeldin. Yeah, some fights required a lot more effort than others (Dark Elves?), but it wasn't on the mass-reload scale. And I still don't know about Yeldin's tuning with D/R because I got lucky and had Manticore Poison to get past the fight.

Indeed, reducing the number of skills a bit and especially the consumables would make balancing easier, but if you reduce it too far, then you ruin some of the fun of the game.
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Re: Act 3 combat thread

Post by Troyen »

If someone wants to give D/R Jul/Deceit some more tries, I've uploaded a game with a whole bunch more consumables (including dispel scrolls!) and a level 20 party. I might come back to Jul, but for now I want to finish Act 4.

I'll take my saves down sometime before the end of the beta.
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jack1974
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Re: Act 3 combat thread

Post by jack1974 »

I can surely remove the "small % randomization" in bosses (for the HP or even all stats). That's not a problem. You meant Deceit/Jul or all bosses in general? I think is fair, since those fights are hard and if someone makes a sort of walkthrough/guide, should work in all cases so the randomization breaks things (is fine for the other non-boss battles to add more variety).
Troyen wrote:Indeed, reducing the number of skills a bit and especially the consumables would make balancing easier, but if you reduce it too far, then you ruin some of the fun of the game.
Yes well it would be a different game indeed :) I've playing a lot of Heartstone recently and I really like the small stats approach. Same approach of the new XCOM too. For sure is also a matter of tastes, but with those system is easier to make the battles last less and be more like a puzzle, where you have to find the right combo to win. Not saying all my next RPG will be like that but I'd like to try with one (I'm doing a prototype for that, but still behind with it).
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