Not Feeling the combat

[Dekeon]

 To me..this maybe 44.99 wasted. The combat is too fast. Your characters go down WAY to fast. Seems combat wasnt polished. I loaded up the enhanced version of icewind dale and u can tell..there's a HUGE difference in the way combat works and feels. Whats the point of having a tank character when the mobs are all over the place? They are hitting every character and the characters go down  fast. I think the reviewers are being to forgiving because on other message boards the combat seems to be the #1 compliant. I'm still playing it...im hoping its gonna get better maybe after i "practice" with the new combat system. But so far..not feeling it.

[Darkpriest]

use positioning and engagement system, also AoE spells are your friend (such as blind). Combat is good, but unlike IE games you cant abuse single pulling mosnters from a pack abusing LoS. use doorways and other narrow spaces, get a fighter and engage 3 targets at once with defensive posture, etc. it is not Dragon Age....

[Suna]

You have a space pause for a reason so please use it

[Gairnulf]

Check out this guy's guides:

 

[Dakcenturi]

Yeah the combat is fast paced but if you use the pause system then and proper positioning it isn't too bad. Also, helps when you have a good front liner that can hold aggro with talents.

[sparklecat]

Practice definitely helps.  I'd also suggest watching the above video from about 20 minutes in for the combat tutorial, yes.

 

Beyond that, you can slow down time in combat with the S key, and I highly recommend turning on a lot of the autopause settings in the game options; at the very least set it to pause after your characters use an ability.  I'm not saying combat isn't difficult, but I went from feeling the same way you are to quite happily playing on hard, and I don't think there's been any fight I've needed more than two tries for.  My general way of handling difficult fights has been to stealth my tank, sneak up to a group of enemies (or a straggler or two if I can manage to pull them off), then shoot someone in the face with a high damage gun and run back to the group where I've got two priests to buff the party while everyone's still running to us.  Beyond that, make sure to check out the cyclopedia as you kill things; if something's got 20-odd DR against most types of damage but only 5 against fire, say, you need to make use of that.

 

You also need to bear in mind, though, that some fights may simply be beyond you at certain points, and go away and come back with more people/higher levels.  I'll be vague to avoid spoilers, but in the downstairs area of the first town, I initially went in with two people and was horribly murdered in seconds on my first fight.  So I reloaded, left, and came back a level later with two more companions and successfully cleared the place.

Edited March 27, 2015 by sparklecat

[Number1TheLarch]

Yeah, if you don't grok the engagement system and try to do it just like you would in Icewind Dale, I think you're going to have a bad time of it.

Pre battle positioning is extremely important. I use two tanks, and make sure they start a fight with ranged weapons to draw the enemies. Switch them to melee weapons, engage the enemy, then bring in the other party members.

 

There's some talents and class abilities that help with engagement, like letting you engage more than one enemy, etc. I've not had any problem not being able to control most battle so far using engagement.

[PrimeJunta]

It's true that it's pretty different from IE combat, not so much the pacing but the engagement and use of many active abilities. Personally I like engagement -- although you need two tanks to really make proper use of it -- and the rest takes some time to learn. If you're expecting to play like a master from day 1 just because you finished IWD on Heart of Fury, well, no, that's not gonna happen, it's a whole different system.

 

I don't think it's too fast though, or any faster than the IE games. In fact I believe they spent a lot of time tuning that aspect to be quite close.

[Dekeon]

Yea thanks for the advice. This non-stop pausing is what isnt fun for me. 

[Farmy]

Tanking fine on Path of the damned sooo...

[sparklecat]

Yea thanks for the advice. This non-stop pausing is what isnt fun for me. 

Ah.  Unfortunately it's pretty mandatory; you can't really play this game in real time, at least not right out of the gate or on anything above easy (and possibly not even then, not sure).  But I find having the game pause itself whenever one of my people finishes an ability to be sufficient, at least.

[Katarack21]

Yea thanks for the advice. This non-stop pausing is what isnt fun for me. 

The pausing is an integrated part of combat; it's built, designed, and balanced around pausing regularly in combat as part of the gameplay. If that's an issue, this just might not be the game style for you.

[Brutii]

Yea thanks for the advice. This non-stop pausing is what isnt fun for me. 

 

You can allways try slow mode while your in combat.

[Jayngo]

Pause and or "S" for Slow mode. For some reason Slow Mode was set to default everytime battle started on my game. Was driving me crazy...

[Dekeon]

OK i'll try that. Just seems like the mobs are on top of me and someone is dead so fast. My party is 2 wiz's, druid and barbarian. Maybe i need a fighter?

[Tartantyco]

Yeah, you need some crowd control. A Fighter or Paladin geared for high deflection and high DR.

[Brutii]

OK i'll try that. Just seems like the mobs are on top of me and someone is dead so fast. My party is 2 wiz's, druid and barbarian. Maybe i need a fighter?

 

Yeah man there really nice because they can handle multiple engagements and they seem to hold there ground allright.