Tactical, and really it's not that difficult. Since you can instant quaff a potion I don't thinks it so 'tactical'...I'm hardly conquering Persia. To be honest I think these difficulties are a bit dumb. Firstly why give them misleading names. It appears it just toughens your enemies, it doesn't make them smarter or anything. The combat is primarily 'hit them more then they hit you', there are no fancy tactics to use.
Only the Ghosts and Skeleton Mages on the starting levels of the prison gave me a real problem. The only other times I die is by not paying attention to each characters health. Since I first messed around on Hardcore to get a feel for the game I'll probably restart on Hardcore....provinding Larian get their act together and make a new patch for 1.4 by the weekend.
