Act 3 combat thread

[fabulaparva]

Lol, don't rush on my account.

[Troyen]

Yeah, I was going to take Archwizard next. I got messed up because I figured I needed an earth nuke on my Druid since who would've thought it'd be a fire environment two acts in a row? Then I needed a res, and so on. Restless is tremendously helpful on the million-fights-in-a-row scenes (like saving Marrow's men, the slaves, the four families, and most of the early game), a little bit less so now but I intentionally picked skills based on what was useful at the time (this is my first play-through).

I didn't pick Kick because Althea, Shea, Jariel, or Riley can all inflict slow. Usually Krimm's wide slash does Weakened, but not as reliably on this fight.

So basically the build that worked for the rest of the game fails here. (I have a similar problem on Jul too, she just reheals too fast, but I haven't spent a lot of time on her yet.)

[Troyen]

Actually, have you retried with Althea? She was my quick and heavy hitter and slow debuffer; maybe you can get some staggering blows in for a fair amount. If you stagger Deceit (which I believe is doable), Vaelis/Althea/Krimm can do a combo of 300+ damage, but I don't know if that's enough. Does Cleanse always heal him back to full?

If it doesn't work and if Jack is up for it, I'd like to try an experiment with Deceit's Cleanse having 8-10 delay instead of whatever it is now. Seems like he can Cleanse and do something nasty in back-to-back moves (I think it's currently delay 1-2, but not 0 because I once managed to get a single turn in-between). It would be a nerf, but it might be small enough to still preserve most of the difficulty and make it more feasible for non-Hunter parties?

[jack1974]

Cleanse has delay of 2 Yes I can copy that one and delay it (is used by other enemies too so I need to copy it before changing).

[fabulaparva]

I retried with Althea and with the corrected Confusion-file Jack sent me, and no.. can't beat him with this party. I think that in addition to not having enough hitting power in the party's melee-department, his Cleanse is probably too fast (no, it's not 100% heal) for the mage party, whereas two Thieves and massive melee dmg dealers can still beat him.

Might... be possible to still beat him with this fast Cleanse if Althea's heavy hit didn't require Stagger (yes, you can stagger him with the help of a heavy bombs in addition to melee hits, but it still isn't quite often enough).. though I think that Vaelis would still need those boosting-skills I mentioned earlier and Shea/Riley a bit more power behind their nukes.

Another option would be to lower the HP-limit when he starts hitting Cleanse, but when I was originally testing this guy, he generally was too lazy with his Cleanse and hard hitting Hunter and Vaelis made demon sandwiches out of him pretty quickly with almost no effort needed to get those hits in concert. (So I suggested to Jack to maybe make him to be more active with his healing... instead of waiting until he has 6 debuffs on him and still at 300 HP choosing to do a weak bite instead of Cleanse...)

[jack1974]

I think the simple truth is that the hunter class is overpowered compared to the others sure takes time to build up, but then you do a lot of damage. I can try lower the cleanse to see if you can beat him though (as you can imagine I'm not doing big game changes NOW )

[Troyen]

Jack, can you clarify if paralyze potions are supposed to work on bosses? Right now they don't seem to, but the item description doesn't mention that.

Also, why are stances dispellable but Dirty Tricks is not? Seems it should be consistent (probably undispellable stances).

[jack1974]

Yes paralyze in general won't work on bosses because otherwise are too powerful (will update the paralysis description now).
And yes probably all stances should be consistent, will look into that

[jack1974]

OK I've played a bit with Troyen's save too. I think the problem is not much by the Druid class, that does its job (heal, purify, etc). The nukes don't do much damage but because for this specific fight, you fight against a high-magic boss. I've buffed up a bit the Ranger Cripple, since it was almost useless by now (3 slow is not a big deal, and "critically hits" wasn't doing much damage). So now does 150% base damage and costs 15 SP / 8 delay.
I am looking at two skills that I believe nobody uses: Ranger's Hawk Eye, and Druid's Nature's touch. Correct?
I don't want to make two "super skills" since obviously it could unbalance the whole game now. But maybe I was thinking:
- Hawk Eye = buffs up attack too, so ranger could possibly do more damage like the other tanks (increasing critical has not much overall impact)
- Nature's Touch = make it a magic buff for self only (so only the Druid). this way for him could be possible to hit for more damage? I think it shouldn't unbalance the game too much, since in early stages nukes are powerful anyway, is only in act3/4 when enemies starts to have high magic resistance that things gets problematic.

What do you think? Maybe the druid's one is more risky (for game balancing I mean), but the Ranger's one I think should be fair so it has more attack power?

[jack1974]

I've made some tests, I think I'm going to keep both changes. I still wasn't able to beat Deceit despite using a cheat to raise Shea/Althea level to 21 to get those two new skills
Though to be honest I wasn't able to win with a Hunter either anyway even if this battle is optional, it should still be possible to win with Druid/Ranger, so if it's too hard I'm going to make it easier. I can't make an optional battle that can be won only with a specific class (Hunter) and with a specific skillset (Hide in Shadows+Critical Hit)