Act III -major gameplay imbalance? *spoiler*

[Mark T]

It seems to me that there is a major gameplay imbalance in Act III, at least playing it the way I had my party configured (2 combat mages, and 2 pets - a nature magic pet and a melee pet). To avoid a detailed spoiler, I will just say there is a battle with 3 extremely powerful characters in the act - those who have played it through will recognise what I am talking about. Up to that point I had played through massed battles and boss fights with relative ease, and my two players were up to level 42. But this 3-boss battle, with each boss having many many thousands of health points and capable of hitting so quickly and powerfully your characters are dead in 2 or 3 rounds, hardly seems balanced. One of these bosses alone would be an incredibly tough enemy, by far the hardest encountered to that point in the game. Plus the game disables the use of the transporter spell in the battle arena so you cannot quickly take all members out of the area before they are killed. If you do use the one mechansim available to leave the area and get recharged (after getting in the one hit you can manage and still escape with your team alive), when you come back you find that all the bosses have fully healed and you are back to square one! After trying several strategies I finally went to god mode and it still took about 5 minutes to kill all three bosses. This is balanced? Yeah, right.... It was like I had jumped from the novice to the elite game level. You would have to have nearly 100% death magic protection, plus very high protections against all other forms of damage, to get through this. I suppose it might be possible with a powerful full 4 member party with a nature mage who can buff everyone to the right levels (forget the pets, they may be fun but are well-nigh useless at this level of battle). Even so, given the much lower level of challenge up to this point, this fight is WAY out of whack. It's like the designers suddenly realized they had made the game way too easy up to that point and overcorrected.

Anyone else run into the same issue here?

[SiPROGG]

I think that for this boss you need armor, lots of armor. Get yor knight a shield, amulets, rings, everything he can carry that gives many armor points. As you said, my whole party got killed the moment the fight started, but my main char (level 40 knight; armor=600) stood like a tree. They didn't damage him at all. Because the boss has many hp, you need a char with a lot of armor the dmg he can inflict doesn't matter. It may take a long time to kill it but at least it would be an easy one.

[swcarter]

This might be a spoiler, I guess, but...

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... are you talking about the Morden Chief quest? I don't remember this one being all that difficult, and I was using a dual-wielding fighter whose armor probably topped out around 200.

My guess is this is a pet issue, and there are some battles you're going to have a tough time with using a pet as your tank. As long as you haven't added the other companions to your party yet, adding them now should jump them up to your level, and then it's just a matter of doing some shopping for them to get them equipped for the battle.

SWC

[Hegi]

Probably you speak about 3 red dressed guys with serious skills :>
I wanted to scream when fighting them (1 combat mage, 1 ranged, and 1 tank warrior). Only warrior survived, and I had to kill them only by him.

But now, when playing on Veteran I encountered one of them (azunite burrowing grounds or other ****) and I prepaerad myself for battle (I bought a lot of lighting resitances), and my mage passed out only once. BTW, on Veteran this piece of crap has 200k HP...

[Mark T]

SW - I was talking about the fight with the 3 dark magicians where you get the last Azunite shield fragment- unlike the earlier relatively easy Morden chief fight with a single dark magician, these 3 really know how to wallop you. As mentioned erlier I didn't't have anyfighter in myparty, and unfortunately the armour available for a mage is just not very good relative to a melee fighter's. The big trouible with melee pets is their inability to up their armour and hit level.

Now that I think about the fight one tactic I did not try was immediately running to a spot farthest away from the mages where possibly only one mage can hit you with ranged spells, but I doubt even that would be sufficient given that summoned ghost thing with the 45000 hit points. The other problem with this tactic is you can't make a fast escape on the elevator - so you are likely not to make it back to the elevator before dying (with only a 200 armour rating). I found my party members being killed by delayed magic even when riding down the elevator, and sometimes the ghost comes down with you and it's game over.

Next game (if there is one) my team will definitely have a melee tank and a proper nature mage. I suspect with my current team I will not be able to beat the final boss either. I will back up my old pre-battle save game and try SW's advice to see if I can rectify my team for this game but I have read elsewhere that if you add members late in the game they do not level up to your level automatically.

[swcarter]

[QUOTE=Mark T]Next game (if there is one) my team will definitely have a melee tank and a proper nature mage. I suspect with my current team I will not be able to beat the final boss either. I will back up my old pre-battle save game and try SW's advice to see if I can rectify my team for this game but I have read elsewhere that if you add members late in the game they do not level up to your level automatically.[/QUOTE]
The first time you add a companion to your party, it should jump up to your level. So if you've refused the companions you've met, and if you haven't added them to your party just to do their side quests, you should be ok. Otherwise, I'm not sure which is more powerful, a level 20ish companion or a pet. You should definitely ditch one of the pets if you can.

You'll probably be ok if you can get past this battle. The final two bosses aren't all that difficult. I sort of remember the battle you're talking about now, and it seems as though the mages weren't that tough, but that the summoned creature was a pain. I think I did a lot of dancing around with my warrior. You might try going to rampant mode and see if you can get the creature to chase one of your characters while you damage it (or the mages) with the others.

SWC

[md_agis]

[QUOTE=swcarter]The first time you add a companion to your party, it should jump up to your level. So if you've refused the companions you've met, and if you haven't added them to your party just to do their side quests, you should be ok.
SWC[/QUOTE]

I am not sure that I understood what you said but this thing didn't work for me. I resused to Sartan and Vix and after some levels when i tried to get them to my party they had remain at lower levels.

[Gaal Dornik]

I never met something in the game worth troubles, except for first minibosses while on low level and mimics. So i cant exactly recognize which bosses you mean. However Combat Mages look like the weakest class in the game. 2 of them arent make it better.
What are your mages specialized in. I would think that death magic isnt exactly the best choice to fight the undead creatures and they can be even healed by your spells. May be that is what happened here. One of you mages hurted them and the other healed CM got some damage dealing summons also.

[Mark T]

I did try adding a new character that I had not previously talked to to my party and found that he did not level up automatically and so was basically useless. Maybe once you get to Act 3 you can't go back to an Act 2 character and expect him to be useful.

BTW I found the final chief mage battle much easier, no problems there with my party, but I am now trying the final battle and can't yet figure out what will damage Zaramoth...

[Brockaine22]

Your problem is you have no good tank. I cannot stress enough how important a NPC tank with a shield and tons of hit points is. I had NO trouble defeated these three in about 10 minutes. Take down the crystal shields then just pound on em. Your issue is that when your main characters are mages they die quickly. Without a tank that can take dmg and spam provoke your gonna be in trouble. Try lothar eva or sartan and allocate their points into shield skills.

[hiitory]

the dark wizards should be that hard cause they are his top men .
the armor i had on was about 250 but i had 1000 life points that they couldn't knock down. All my guys had auto heal so it was a short battle for me

[md_agis]

It was sure a difficult battle but not the most difficult so far. I remember other battles dying from good morning like the avril quest in Act I for the man who makes you a weapon (maybe this was the most difficult for me), the dragon boss in Act II, and when I encountered the 7th level of arena monsters being at level 30.

[Hegi]

Gosh, I ran into them while ago. On veteran, GRAGRABBRAGRGAARAHAHA! I killed them, but with great pain. hate that moment, on elite theirt would be monstrous.

[Brockaine22]

It's good that the boss fights require thinking and are difficult compared to Diablo 2 where they were so patheticly easy it was laughable. DS2 isn't that ahrd but it at least requires a little thought. For me the only fight that caused much of a problem was Valdis but thats only because it took me a few to figure out how to hit him with the eyes. I have only fought the Archmage on merc so far but i think he was WAY to easy. He was barely even hurting my 2 meleers and didn't really take to long to kill with so many stupid War Pedastols everywhere. My favorite fight is probably the dragon for 2 reasons. A) it is a challenge and can take some time(it was nutty on veteran i can't imagine elite) b) talk about a crapload of loot haha. 6 regular chests + a boss chest + drops from the dragon himself. yummy!

[ouiouiwewe]

The three dark wizards are so pathetically easy to beat in Merc level. My chars were ~lvl 40, 1 combat, 1 nature, 1 melee, 1 range.

I believe it is very helpful to have a dual-wielding melee. Armour for my tank was 200 and lower for other team members. My strategy was to focus on one, take down his shield, and start using powers.

Elemental rage is especially important as a melee can take down a dark wizard with it very quickly. The archer used charged shots or take aim as special moves. Nature mage mostly focus on healing. My combat mage healed a little and did some damage as well with lightning bolt (not a major source of damage though).

There are two things you need to be aware of:
1) Fire/lightning novas: When you see red or blue swirls on the floor, use mirror mode and walk away because they will deal a lot of damage after a few sec. (I'd guess lots of people just sit there and wait for their health to drop).

2) Big summoned crystal: The thing casts a curse on you that takes health away over time. Kill it whenever it appears.

[Dace]

Try buying a Mythrilhorn and feeding it nothing but fighter armor. Also look for ways of increasing you resistances to their attacks. If they use Fire magic the fire elementals powers may help.

[Dreez]

My current party on veterar are as follows:

Xavier: lvl 55 DW-champion.
Skills: This dude is all about dmg, and when he activates his elemental rage
he easely deals about 2000dmg/hit, and since he is built toards DW.
He does not only get a RoH* bonus by this rage, but also additional % by
his alligrity. I´d guess he hits about 4times/sec... do the math .

Sartan: lvl 55 s/s champion.
Skills: Build for taking ALOT of beating, the damage comes in second hand.
At lvl 55 his AC is over 1000 and he still packes quiet a punsh. Also topping
out at almost 1900 HP.

Taar: lvl 55 Nature Archmage.
She´s built towards petdomination and her skill she uses combined with her
pet to make an AE explotion does huge dmg. The pet has about 1700 HP and
the skill she uses does over 300% of the pets HP in AE dmg.

(some archer) lvl 55.
Nothing special about this girl. She runs around with a complete set of
the fallen soldier (i think) and has maximised in 3 nasty powers.
On bosses this lady really prooves her worth by activiating some power
that gives her about 12 seconds of almost 1000 extra (not sure) lighting
to each arrow.

atm im about to enter the besieged castle, and sofar i´ve acually had an
easier time beating bosses in veteran then in novice diff. but if what you
dudes says is true about the 3:rd chapter... i cant wait

*Rate of Hits

[Hegi]

I've marched over wizards at elite difficulty. Well, there were boring Only problem was amount of HP everyone of them had (350k). They were hard only on Merc difficulty for me. Veteran and elite was rather easy.

[Dreez]

I just started playing abit again with my party and reached chapter-III
on veteran mode. I recall somewhere that a player were complaining about
the bosses in the camp where he had his party whiped in a few seconds,
so i looked forward to it. Once there, i spanked them pretty hard. I dont belive
any of my members lost more then 50%hp and the fight was over in a few
seconds.
My strategy ?

I had the entire group standing abit away with all their powers loaded,
including my naturemage with her über AE explotion.
Once the "conversation" was over and they all went aggro on my tank
(1k+AC/2k+hp), i set everyone to (f) for Mirror mode, Activated my primary
characters Elemental Rage and my ranged activated her electrical Arrows and
just focused fire on one at a time.

Once all the mobs where close to my group i had my tank do his WW (whirlwind)
which is maxed combined with my naturemages pet-explotion.

The entire Boss group dropped like a rock.

Do note that its very important that the mobs does not attack the DW warr
since he will do INSANE dmg with Elemental rage active. Keep him alive
and this fight is a walk in the park.

[Dreez]

Update
Just finished of the 4 dark wizards in chapter 3 on Veteran diff. My mage were
the only one in my party that died. Not even those circlespells did any dmg
to my party. I went all dmg on one wizards at a time and killed the large curse-
crystal whenever it appeared, other then that, it was easy.

Looking forwards to the final fight.

/edit: FYI, the wizards were "Orange" to me which indicates a higher lvl, so no,
i was not any über lvl.