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#487951 07/04/14 12:05 PM
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Xendran Offline OP
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Seriously, you can go pure int with Raistlin + Lone Wolf + Wildfire for essentially infinite AP. Keep the mage in the back spamming a full 3 bars of spells with a tank in the front with a few points in elements for buffs, debuffs and teleport, and some Way of the Warrior and +Strength gear.

You also can combine it with zombie for free poison immunity since you never need to heal your tank. You just give it comeback kid, wait for critical HP and use your mages near-infinite AP to kill and ressurect to full HP with comeback kid.

Last edited by Xendran; 07/04/14 12:07 PM.
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Maybe you should not be allowed to take both Raistlin AND Lone Wolf.

EDIT: But of course, there is a bug where the health buff of Lone Wolf overrides the health debuff of Raistlin if you take Lone Wolf after Raistlin - you get 180% health instead of 90%.

Last edited by Stabbey; 07/04/14 12:53 PM. Reason: bug
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I understand the complaint, but I'm actually having a lot of fun with that combo on my second playthrough. It sounds like Xendran has a good deal of experience with it, but I could see how you'd still need to strategize pretty heavily for battles against large numbers of tough-ish opponents, especially as you'll only have two targets in the party (not counting summons) for all that enemy aggro instead of four.

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I think Raistlin being mutually exclusive with lone wolf could be a good solution, but I also think that there is still the problem of mages being too safe. I don't recall the last time anything bolted past any melee characters to go after the mage, which means raistlin doesn't really have a downside at all at the moment.

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But archers can sometimes be pretty lethal, especially if that squishy mage has half normal max HP.

Originally Posted by YoungFreshNewbie
I think Raistlin being mutually exclusive with lone wolf could be a good solution, but I also think that there is still the problem of mages being too safe. I don't recall the last time anything bolted past any melee characters to go after the mage, which means raistlin doesn't really have a downside at all at the moment.

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It's not about what -could- be killing the mage. It's about what -is-. The archers all seem to prioritize the nearest target, which one can relatively easily make sure is the tank-type. In general if you've got your mage like 12 meters out from the fight and the tank in the thick of it, nobody wants the mage. I've played the game for quite a while and see it's not a fluke either.

The archers -should- try to attack the mage. They just don't.

Last edited by YoungFreshNewbie; 07/04/14 04:47 PM.
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That's true (at least in the beta). But I'm still finding the Raistlin/Lone Wolf combo a lot of fun - it's almost as if Larian is saying "sure, you'll miss out on the dialogue and other advantages of having a companion, but we'll give you a whole new spin on gameplay with a viable 2-member party to make up for it." Again, I can see how some may find it overpowered, but I personally don't see it as game-breaking.

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Originally Posted by Mikus
That's true (at least in the beta). But I'm still finding the Raistlin/Lone Wolf combo a lot of fun - it's almost as if Larian is saying "sure, you'll miss out on the dialogue and other advantages of having a companion, but we'll give you a whole new spin on gameplay with a viable 2-member party to make up for it." Again, I can see how some may find it overpowered, but I personally don't see it as game-breaking.


And being single player it harms no one else.

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Being single player doesn't suddenly make a lack of balance perfectly fine. It's not unreasonable to say that people would enjoy some level of balanced challenge when purchasing a game. Difficulty levels (which should get introduced here) designate which amount you want.

Including a balance-destroying set of feats that is simply better in all ways due to AI mechanics is not just okay in the same way it's not just okay (if you recall) to keep Winterbreath the way it was.

If you really want to break the balance, modding will allow you to do that. Balance should be king in the vanilla game though if the difficulty levels are going to have any real meaning.

In other words, difficulty should be derived from a choice of difficulty, not from having to choose the far-best or sub-optimal routes specifically to get certain amounts of challenge. The feats should be for flavor of fun in the challenge. Not a re-write of the challenge rating.

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True. Is there a consensus that this is wildly out of balance? Or less then a 1/2 dozen mentioning the possibilities?

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It made me faceroll the entire game, literally nothing stood a chance.

Try it yourself, makes a wizard with 10 int and a cleric with 10 con.
Cleric just sits there and eats hits while using its first skill until you have some points in way of warrior and +1 warrior gear. Inspiration and Nullify Resistances are amazing.
Lone Wolf + Zombie as first two traits. Next is Morning Person, then All skilled up, bigger and better, scientist, my precious, what a rush, and bully,

Mage spams as many offensive spells are you can get. Fire is the best for dealing damage, ice is helpful for fire areas. You can have both titans and a wolf up all at the sime with lone wolf.

Get enough fire elementalist for the first couple of fire levels, and Wildfire. After that, just keep stacking INT until maxed then put points into speed/perception. Look for gear with +int and +Elemental abilities, and level your elemental abilities in the way that lets you get the most offensive skills the fastest.

One note is that you can use gear / inspiration to learn skills and you keep them when you take the gear off. You will still be OP without doing this though. Don't worry about attacking with with the cleric until you have some +Strength gear and a bit of base strength, as well as some levels in Way of the Warrior.

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Sounds more an issue of archer AI than raistlin being OP.
Once NPC mages and archers start working properly, less HP will become a lot more risky.

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Sure. That's one route of many options. That one is difficult in some cases also, notice, because if everything death-trains the ranged units, the game begins to play more like keep-away than anything else.

This may not be in the best interest of interesting combat, so there will have to be some cleverness. I'm sure Larian can figure something out if they want to keep the feats the same, but I'm skeptical on its eventual balanced success unless the AI is very clever.

Edit: I should clarify. I still think Raistlin will need a nerf even with AI improvements, but we shall see.

___

As a side note, I think we definitely need some AI tweaking for target choice. They should have more criteria than distance. I think we can all agree on at least that much, raistlin nerfing aside.

Last edited by YoungFreshNewbie; 08/04/14 12:15 AM.
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For the Lighthouse Horror Boss Battle, I thought I'd be clever and cast Fortify on Madora, giving her +63 armour, and sebnding her in first to attract all the wolves.

They just ran past her and went straight for the mages.

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MOBs will go after ranged heroes, but it seems to depend on what those heroes did (and continue to do).

For example, in the early orc beach fight (prior to entering the town of Cyseal for the first time), the larger orc grunts get very angry at anyone who damages the orc shaman. You can see them react when one of your characters attacks the shaman - they'll make some irritated comment or turn to face the attacker (even though it isn't their turn yet). I've had them chasing my Ranger around the battlefield before (with my Warrior in tow trying to chase after them) because of this.

That seems to happen with the undead as well. Certain MOBs seem protective of other particular MOBs in their group. Generally, they all seem to be concerned with/fond of the caster in *their* party.

Understanding that, you can often make sure the ranged heroes are not being focused on if your melee heroes are going after the right targets.

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I'm glad to hear such things happen. I suppose my targeting priorities and tactics have minimized the cases you two speak of. Also with the lighthouse boss they didn't do that for me. They went to my Knight. And I typically had the Witch buffing the knight on turn one for more dps. So that's weird.

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Yeah, me may need to wait to see how AI changes are implemented before deciding this combo really is OP.

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Why should archers go for the mage... the mage will be standing around 12m behind the tank/center of attention... so if the archers run up to hit the mage... heck my 2H warrior would LOVE that, free kills.

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Wizard preset with Flare and Oil teaming up with Ranger preset with Arrow Spray is REAl OP.

It gets even more OP if you make Mandora into a shield-tank and get the Wizard learn Firefly spell.

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It's honestly more OP without companions because of Lone Wolf. You get a 4+ ability points per level at high levels, so you can become an all poweurful wizard that can cast every single offensive spell in the game, and can cast most of them all on the same turn.
When you have 17 INT, your skills all have miniscule AP costs, and you gain essentially infinite AP from Raistlin + Wildfire + Lone Wolf.

I don't even have a staff that is usable for using Magus Staff. If i was able to actually be doing damage with the extra AP i always have left over it would be even more OP. (Most things don't actually survive the first 3 turns though)

And this isn't even counting stacking all that damage on top of creating burning ground with oil, or summoning multiple titans in the same turn.

Last edited by Xendran; 08/04/14 06:21 PM.
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