Help with attaining reliable Interrupt

[Majorman]

I'm stuck at a certain dracolich and I need some help on successfully interrupting her (veteran upscaled RTwP). The first encounter on the iceberg was easy enough,but the second one is giving me gray hairs. As you probably know, she has 3 concentration at the start of the fight and high Will and Fortitude. I have Konstanten as a howler and Pallegina as a herald, Ydwin as a rogue/cipher, a SC priest Vatnir and a SC Wizard. Konstanten uses Willbreaker with the modal on to bring Fort low and keeps chanting Thick Grew Tongues/Long Night's Drink on a loop. He also had Interrupting Blows and the Energized chant. However, this does not seem enough to peel away the dracolich's concentration and I cannot interrupt her. 

To give you a perspective of how the fight goes: Dragon goes down to Hurt, casts Llengrath's Safeguard. I cast Arcane Cleanse, it always hits. The dragon meanwhile casts Corrosive Syphon and it's the most annoying thing ever, as my wizard, Vatnir and Ydwin are all of low base health (due to poor Con). After a while, the dragon is back to 3/4 health and Llengrath is back. I don't have additional casts of Arcane Cleanse. So I need to prevent the Syphon somehow and optionally, the Safeguard as well.

What I've tried so far (to a various success):

* Thick Grew Their Tongues...

* Energized. It should interrupt on a Crit. 

* Wall of Force - but it seems to do nothing.

* Gaze of the Adragan - the dragon is resistant, so it just paralyzes. It still works realiably, albeit for a short time.

* At the sound of his voice... - Downgraded to immobilized, so it does nothing 

* Wall of many colors - it paralyzes the dragon from time to time, but the dragon does not stand in one place.

* Wall of Draining - so, it can shorten the Safeguard by 30 secs or so,but the season has to sit on it, which is hard.

* Scroll of Insects - it never hit. Not even once.

* Trust of Tattered Veils - it either missed, or had no impact.

Ideas I haven't tried yet:

* I discovered that Thick Grew Their Tongues is checked vs Will, so maybe I should use Shattered Vengeance (club) with modal as well and then stack afflictions.

* Drink Potions of Impediment? I've never bothered with them before, are they good?

* Chant Soft Winds of Death in hope of dealing more hits/crits with Konstanten? 

* Warding Staff? It adds pushback.

 

Oh, and it would help if someone can explain whether Thick Grew Their Tongues can cause an interrupt by itself (once the Concentration is peeled away, anyway) or it only peels away concentration and prevents enemies from regaining it? The tooltip is ridiculously unclear about what it does (Immune to Concentration attacks?)

Also, does prone bypass enemy Concentration?

And finally, are there ways to decrease the damage/draining effects of Corrosive Syphon? Arcane Reflection obviously works,but I can't cast it on everyone.

[Jayd]

9 minutes ago, Majorman said:

* Trust of Tattered Veils - it either missed, or had no impact.

The point of this spell is that it never misses and is a guaranteed interrupt so I'm not sure what you're experiencing here. It doesn't strip away a concentration when you use it?

You say Ydwin is a Rogue but don't mention using the Rogue's many cheap interrupts. If she has two weapons then you've got two interrupt chances from one Guile with crippling strike. Blinding strike gets +10 accuracy but is more expensive. Sap is only a primary attack but it's cheap, gets +10 accuracy, and interrupts on graze instead of hit.

Does Konstanten have Barbaric Roar? That's also a spammable interrupt.

[Not So Clever Hound]

Yes you might as well focus on Will debuff and keep chanting thick grew. Your Cipher/Rogue also has a lot of good interrupts. Wizard: expose vulnerabilities will interrupt, Slicken too and the oh-so-amazing Concelhaut Crushing Doom can be an absolute godsend here if you have dealt with Concie before BoW. You don’t have it in your roster but for future ref. : a Forbidden Fist is incredibly powerful at turning this fight into auto win. Good luck!

[Boeroer]

You will not land crits a lot, so everything that does interrupt on crit is of little use.

Thick Grew Their Tongues is good to remove Concentration all at once. It targets Will though so you have to make sure Will gets debuffed. I use a club+modal. You can back it up with either Miasma of Dull-Mindedness or Arkemyr's Wondrous Torment. This drops Will by 45 points which makes it a lot easier for Thick Grew Their Tongues to finally hit.

Then use a weapon/ability that doesn't interrupt on crit but on hit or even graze. Don't spam it if you don't have unlimited uses (see Mule Kick, Crippling Strike etc.) but only use it once the Dragon starts to cast something nasty.

I however recommend to use weapons/abilites where you don't have to watch your resources, like Force of Anguish (Monk - a Morning Star helps to land this) or even better a crossbow/arbalest with modal turned on. Those modals allow to interrupt or even prone (which is interrupt+knocking over) on hit and it's not too hard to reliably land hits on the dragon. It's best to use two or more characters with crossbow/arbalest + modals and just keep shooting. If you are fast enough, especially with arbalests, the dragon will constantly be on the ground and get interrupted, too.

Reliable interrupts at an incredibly fast rate with an arbalest is the main reason why I recommend Troubadour/Arcane Archer so often. Sure-Handed Ila + Gunner makes reloading a breeze, Thick Grew removes concentration, max Arcana + Spearcaster + Marksman and so on leads to insane accuracy and thus you will kock down (and keep it down) alost every enemy very reliably with 0 ressource costs. Add some summons for the enemy to attack instead of your party members.

But it also works very well if you give anybody with decent accuracy a crossbow or arbalest and let them shoot. Of course this is not optimized, but you use two or even three party members it's extremely effective against a single boss, too. 

Edited May 27, 2022 by Boeroer

[yorname]

at least you have Ydwin's crippling Strike, it's a "interrupt on hit" ability so any hit or crit with it will interrupt.

Chanters have a chant that removes concentration, so you can use those to remove concentration stacks before spending rescource to interrupt

[Boeroer]

3 hours ago, yorname said:

Chanters have a chant that removes concentration, so you can use those to remove concentration stacks before spending rescource to interrupt

 

4 hours ago, Majorman said:

I have Konstanten as a howler [...]. Konstanten uses Willbreaker with the modal on to bring Fort low and keeps chanting Thick Grew Tongues/Long Night's Drink on a loop.

[...]

What I've tried so far (to a various success):

* Thick Grew Their Tongues...

4 hours ago, Majorman said:

Oh, and it would help if someone can explain whether Thick Grew Their Tongues can cause an interrupt by itself (once the Concentration is peeled away, anyway) or it only peels away concentration and prevents enemies from regaining it?

It doesn't cause an interrupt on itself. It only removes concentration completely (no matter how many stacks an enemy has). So you need some weapon or ability to actually cause the interrupt.

But if you are energized (Their Champion) it can interrupt if it crits - like any other attacks roll that results in a crit. 

[Majorman]

Allright! I came back from work and with your invaluable help won in two attempts (during the first one the dragon attempted the stun-plunge and when she landed, she de-aggroed and became un-targetable indfinitely). This time I equipped Pallegina with Shattered Vengeance and used the modal to decrease the dragon's Will, then Thick Grew Their Tongues... was able to hit reliably. I managed some interrupts, though I do not know whether they came through Konstanten using Potion of Impediment or the wizard using an Arbalest with modal (or both) or Urdel and Gurdel (who did some serious damage). As a matter of fact, the wizard was the only one to have the necessary modal in the group. Up to this point I've been using War bows - Veilpirecer, St. Omaku and Frostseeker (it gets bonus Penetration from Secrets of Rime  - I think it's due to the Community Patch) - as they offer decent damage w/o reloading time; and Ydwin had Pistol and Blunderbuss. I also only had a crappy Exceptional Arbalest, so underpen was guaranteed, but the interrupts seemed to hit.

Tattered Veils also hit this time around - I used it from scrolls Vatnir carried around - and I think the difference was that I managed to keep Vatnir inside the AoE of One Dozen Stood - it appers that the dragon was able to Interupt Tattered Veils before (one can't cast while cowering in the corner).

The dragon also seems to have a rather intricate AI when it comes to targeting Corrosive Siphon, as it relentlesly attacked the wizard first and then Ydwin when the wizard was out of range. So the wizard cast Arcane Reflection and Ydwin drank a potion of Improved Arcane Reflection - no healing for the dragon. It never seemed to target any of the other 3 Characters, even if they didn't have specific defences up.

 

5 hours ago, Boeroer said:

I however recommend to use weapons/abilites where you don't have to watch your resources, like Force of Anguish (Monk - a Morning Star helps to land this) or even better a crossbow/arbalest with modal turned on. Those modals allow to interrupt or even prone (which is interrupt+knocking over) on hit and it's not too hard to reliably land hits on the dragon. It's best to use two or more characters with crossbow/arbalest + modals and just keep shooting. If you are fast enough, especially with arbalests, the dragon will constantly be on the ground and get interrupted, too.

Reliable interrupts at an incredibly fast rate with an arbalest is the main reason why I recommend Troubadour/Arcane Archer so often. Sure-Handed Ila + Gunner makes reloading a breeze, Thick Grew removes concentration, max Arcana + Spearcaster + Marksman and so on leads to insane accuracy and thus you will kock down (and keep it down) alost every enemy very reliably with 0 ressource costs. Add some summons for the enemy to attack instead of your party members.

Yeah, I struggle when it comes to using the Monk properly. But I was planning to roll a Ghost Heart/Troubadour (Sure-Handed Ila + Gunner + Concussive Tranquilizer) for my next playthrough. I'll probably also take The Bride Caught their Ruse... for the extra speed due to Quick Inspiration (despite the steep price, it seems a decent opener).

[ArnoldRimmer]

The polearm that you can summon with a chanter has 10 knockdowns. I find that is particularly effective, even on the tough bosses.

[thelee]

On 5/28/2022 at 1:52 AM, ArnoldRimmer said:

The polearm that you can summon with a chanter has 10 knockdowns. I find that is particularly effective, even on the tough bosses.

it depends on your current clvl progression - it's lower for multiclass, potentially higher for SC (up to 11).

beckoner gets 2x polearms. they don't last as long, but that's a ton of knockdown. i've literally made a macro on my gaming keyboard just to easily automate queue-ing up tons of knockdown just to exploit the infinite free knockdowns a chanter gets, beckoner or no.

Edited May 31, 2022 by thelee