Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks Tactician - is grouping up the key?

Hey guys,
I'm still near the beginning of the game (lvl 7), playing with a 4-man full physical team and I noticed something strange.
Two fights so far had given me real trouble - Orivand (at lvl 4) and the Deep-dweller(at lvl 6). I started them both completely unprepared, not knowing what was going to happen. I lost them both on my first try and won both on the second try.

Now the strange part - I won both of them by STAYING TOGETHER - my ranger and my summoner included. I know people talk a lot about right positioning and placing your team around the battlefield before the fight starts, but for me, the best tactic seems to be forming this bastion (preferably in an elevated spot, obviously) - so that anybody can heal anyone else, and when I use soothing cold or mend armor, it affects everyone. The obvious disadvantage of such a tactic - AoE's - don't seem to hurt that much. Is anyone else using this strategy instead of precise positioning? It's doing wonders for me.

I've found that can help for certain fights. It's how I handled the level 6 Deep Dweller encounter. One subtle thing this game does a lot is to set up the battlefields so that players typically start on the low ground while enemies have several height advantages.

Don't just accept that at face value. Look around and see if there's a way to get the high ground advantage. It's of tremendous importance not just for your ranged attackers, but it also benefits your melee ones as well, because enemies will have to approach in fewer numbers from fewer angles, allowing them to be individually defeated.

I agree that proper team placement pre-fight (amongst other preparations) is key to victory!

It also helps to steal the entire inventories of all your foes before you fight them to prevent them from using grenades, arrows, scrolls, etc.

Well, if you are playing a custom origin character, you will start with a source skill called Dome of Protection that basically incentivizes you to group up. It was my key to success against tough encounters such as Alexander...

Totally depends if you have knowledge about the encounters or going blind.
If you know the deep dweller fight because you've done it before you can do a lot of cheese to make it a breeze.
I accidentally stumbled upon that fight on my solo tactician blind pt and it looked kinda scary to me right after Fort Joy (level 6 I think) so I used flight and sneak to get out of it.
I further explored the map but very shortly after I was up on the bridge exploring, when all of a sudden the deep dweller fight started again because I previously triggered the encounter but instead of reloading to avoid it I sneaked out.
Now because i was on the bridge I not only had the height advantage but all enemies except 1 archer could not attack me but had to waste several turns to get to me.
On top of that each time it was the deep dwellers turn it didn't even try to get to me (even tho it can fly) but just said his line each turn (which got kinda annoying towards the middle of the fight :P) so at the end it was me 1v1 the deep dweller.

But if you have no previous knowledge about a fights mechanics and don't try to cheese with terrain too much staying grouped up is really smart splitting up only really helps if you know a certain placement gives you an advantage.
Late game it doesn't matter at all since you will oneshot all enemies anyway and have giant AoE abilities.