1) Scouting is all well and good (and is the reason that I stopped trying to play anything other than a rogue), but if you scout into a group of mobs and they spot you (remember the RNG thing?) you're dead before you have a chance to assess the situation.
I mean if you are in stealth mode and you cross a red vision cone area then you roll to see if you have been spotted. I mean I am legitimately curious how you are handling scouting. Are you unlinking the rest of your party from your stealthy party member? Are you wearing padded armor? Are you stealthing right up to the mobs and standing in multiple red vision cones?
2) Barrelmancy is a thing, and some people may actually find it entertaining. I don't. If barrelmancy is the only "right" strategy for playing the game, then I'm not interested in playing.
Barrelmancy is never needed. The people who think so are just not expending the effort to try to handle the combats without it. If barrelmancy ever gets removed those people will find themselves in the same place you are.
3) Having to reload 40 times a week because most encounters start with the party outnumbered, surprised and having already lost the high ground doesn't make a game "tactical", it makes it poorly designed. Similarly, a game in which the best tactic is ALWAYS "climb the highest structure and play King of the Hill while yeeting oil barrels down onto the enemy" is also not "tactical", it's one-dimensional.
Like I said, if you want to get better maybe consider checking out multiplayer. I personally would be interested to see how you are handling combat and pre-combat encounters. You had mentioned previously that the Duegar fight was "unavoidable" which it isn't at all. That tells me you are missing a lot of things in your environment.
And hey, maybe this is you playing at your peak and you feel that you cannot possibly improve. Which if that is what you believe then it is of course true.
anyway, the Larian discord is below:
https://discord.com/invite/larianstudios Since the I was foolish enough to drop $60 on a game in the mistaken belief that it would be a D&D game, rather than DOS 3, I'm forced to do what I can to make the game playable FOR ME. I don't care if the game is playable for you. It'd be nice if we all could enjoy it, but if I have to choose, I choose me. People who love barrelmancy already have multiple DOS games to slake their love of oil barrels. I just want another Neverwinter Nights, or something vaguely similar.
Well the good news is when the game is fully released they will likely have various modes of difficulty, such as Story mode. So you can simply have a combat experience that meets with your level of expertise and not get stressed about encounters.
