Wizards: Unreasonable Threat

[Luridis]

Here's the deal... I'm trying to play with the included NPCs so I can get their story. The wizard Aloth pulls threat from anything that can teleport with his mere existence. I'm currently fighting the shadows of various places and two facts seem apparent to me:

 

Wizards are targeted primary by teleporters.

75% of my resting is to restore wizard health, not tanks or anything else.

 

I've tried letting Aloth set idle for half the fight and he still gets targeted and beat down while doing absolutely nothing at all. Yes, I said he is sitting IDLE and pulling threat and thus I am STILL resting to regain his health instead of my tanks.

 

Whoever is working on threat mods please fix because I am just done playing till this is fixed. I cannot stand this kind of screwball threat in RPGs, it's immersion breaking for me. I can't imagine what's going though the mind of whoever is responsible.

[Ninjerk]

There isn't a threat mechanic that I'm aware of.  Some enemies just really hate Wizards.

[ChipMHazard]

Well he has the lowest amount of health, endurance and deflection. Pretty sure that's what's attracting the buggers. Or maybe it's his ill mannered roommate

[KDubya]

Shadows teleport, that is their thing.

 

They like to kill the easiest target, that'd be your wizard.

 

When fighting teleporting creatures you need to prepare a secondary line of defense in order to engage threats which appear behind your front line.

 

I find enemies that instead of shooting the guy in robes that can launch fireballs, instead decide to suicide charge the guy in full plate to be immersive breaking. With my party I try to drop the spell caster first, why should the enemy do anything less?

[Infares]

I don't think the game has threat mechanics, which is why there's engagement. Having more than one melee capable of rudimentary tanking and giving Aloth talents and abilities that allow him to escape engagement himself are all good ideas.

[Korgull]

The following contains very slight spoilers:

 

Luckily the shades seem to be quite rare in the game, I've only encountered them in large numbers in one place after the Eothasian temple. At which point I said screw this, and went elsewhere. When I'm going back I'm gonna put everyone in my party in plate armor and see how it goes, hopefully it'll be a bit easier. But the damn things sure aren't balanced, when the game's second dungeon is actually one of the hardest in the game (at least 30 hours into the game) just because of one enemy type.

 

Oh, and Aloth's fan of flames is really good against them. The yellow AOE doesn't hit friendlies so it's not as hard to use the spell as you might think.

[Infares]

The following contains very slight spoilers:

 

Luckily the shades seem to be quite rare in the game, I've only encountered them in large numbers in one place after the Eothasian temple. At which point I said screw this, and went elsewhere. When I'm going back I'm gonna put everyone in my party in plate armor and see how it goes, hopefully it'll be a bit easier. But the damn things sure aren't balanced, when the game's second dungeon is actually one of the hardest in the game (at least 30 hours into the game) just because of one enemy type.

 

Oh, and Aloth's fan of flames is really good against them. The yellow AOE doesn't hit friendlies so it's not as hard to use the spell as you might think.

My current playthrough (hard mode, haven't been past level 5 yet lmao) I have Fire Barb and Wild Orlan Chanter tanks, a priest, and the Wizard/Druid/Cipher wrecking crew, all in a sort of curved V shape so that the Druid and Wizard can cone AoE the piss out of things on the pull during hard fights. Have auto-attack disabled so I don't end up accidentally instagibbing my own guys, lol.

[pi2repsion]

1) Protect your squishy targets.

2) To protect your squishy targets, keep them far in the rear until you have the battlefield under control.

3) Teleporting enemies are able to bypass most of your control mechanics, so prioritize killing them.

4) And so are ranged enemies, so prioritize killing them too or keep your squishies out of their range.

5) "Kill the one in a dress" is generally good advice to everybody in a RPG - and that includes the enemy. Don't be surprised if your vulnerable characters get targeted; You do the same all the time and turnabout is fair play.

 

If you continually need to rest because your wizard's health depletes, your problem is not that your wizard is unreasonably being targeted, it is that you are using bad tactics in the face of a very reasonable threat to squishy characters.

 

The very nastiest enemies in the early game for wizards are the teleporting Shadows, but those have low damage reduction and low endurance, so you should be able to pick off one with your first ranged volley of combat (assuming a full party) and then whittle them down one by one while one or two melee keep the rest of the group occupied.

 

For particularly nasty encounters, whether it is vs. Shadows or in general, it is often worth spending a single second level spell on casting what is the wizard's single best general purposes defensive spell: Infuse with Vital Essence. 50 bonus endurance makes for a really good damage buffer.

 

For what it is worth, I use a custom formation with tanks in row 1, offtanks row 2, offset from centre, high-endurance ranged/support row 3, squishies row 5. It has done wonders for the survival of my squishies that except when I decide to send them closer to the front line to cast short-range spells or get perfect positioning for e.g. the rolling ball of flaming death they are out of range of most ranged abilities.  You cold also try a V, inverted V, or curve setup - the custom formations are there for you to use, and not making a custom formation that supports whatever group composition you are using and what your plan is for combat is a strategic mistake.

 

That said, teleporting enemies are just plain nasty. Kill them on sight.

Edited April 5, 2015 by pi2repsion

[Ohioastro]

It is good AI to target and kill weak and dangerous foes. Casting defensive spells helps a lot.

[Caerdon]

Put on armor when fighting shadows. Seriously, I don't get why people have such an aversion towards this. Slow casting Aloth >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> dead Aloth.

[ErlKing]

My whole team wearing fullplate, even wizard and cipher, though cipher occasionally wear dress, when there are no casters and archers around.

Edited April 5, 2015 by ErlKing

[cake-teleporter]

The answer is send Eder or someone to scout ahed draw the shadows in veer off, then have aloth fan of Flames and it should be all or nearly over at least on hard.

[Luridis]

1) Protect your squishy targets.

2) To protect your squishy targets, keep them far in the rear until you have the battlefield under control.

3) Teleporting enemies are able to bypass most of your control mechanics, so prioritize killing them.

4) And so are ranged enemies, so prioritize killing them too or keep your squishies out of their range.

5) "Kill the one in a dress" is generally good advice to everybody in a RPG - and that includes the enemy. Don't be surprised if your vulnerable characters get targeted; You do the same all the time and turnabout is fair play.

 

If you continually need to rest because your wizard's health depletes, your problem is not that your wizard is unreasonably being targeted, it is that you are using bad tactics in the face of a very reasonable threat to squishy characters.

 

The very nastiest enemies in the early game for wizards are the teleporting Shadows, but those have low damage reduction and low endurance, so you should be able to pick off one with your first ranged volley of combat (assuming a full party) and then whittle them down one by one while one or two melee keep the rest of the group occupied.

 

For particularly nasty encounters, whether it is vs. Shadows or in general, it is often worth spending a single second level spell on casting what is the wizard's single best general purposes defensive spell: Infuse with Vital Essence. 50 bonus endurance makes for a really good damage buffer.

 

For what it is worth, I use a custom formation with tanks in row 1, offtanks row 2, offset from centre, high-endurance ranged/support row 3, squishies row 5. It has done wonders for the survival of my squishies that except when I decide to send them closer to the front line to cast short-range spells or get perfect positioning for e.g. the rolling ball of flaming death they are out of range of most ranged abilities.  You cold also try a V, inverted V, or curve setup - the custom formations are there for you to use, and not making a custom formation that supports whatever group composition you are using and what your plan is for combat is a strategic mistake.

 

That said, teleporting enemies are just plain nasty. Kill them on sight.

 

1> Teleport negates attempts to do so.

2> #1 does not appear to be distance limited. If by "protect" you mean don't bring them... That, actually works.

3> Many undead, all teleport. I think I just need to be a little more careful pulling these.

4 & 5> I've not had problems dealing with ranged.

 

I think the reason these are so annoying is that not only do they teleport, their damage appears to be elemental and bypasses DR. But, I am so annoyed with them that I am determined now to find the best tactic to bring them down with minimal annoyance.

[Dongom]

1. Get some of the defense spells, it's not exactly like Wizard is brimming with amazing spells were you can't pick at least 1 survival spell per Tier.

 

 

2. Don't be scared to wear Armor, it won't mess up your casting as much as you think.

 

 

3. Priest knockdown seal on the Wizard, if you are in an area with Shades.

 

 

4. CC, most of your spell book should be full of it. Use it.

[Wolken3156]

Shades and Shadows are just complete jerks. Shades are even bigger jerks since they also bring a powerful cold based ranged attack on targets they're not engaged with and can summon more Shadows to teleport and overwhelm you. On higher difficulties, they're much more resistant to paralysis by their sheer... level of... jerkness.

 

That said, the Priest's Repulsing Seal spell is a godsend against these jerks. Plant it on your squishies, when they do their teleporting move into it, they'll get knocked prone which will give you enough to either reposition, or even flat out kill them. Complementing it with Warding Seal isn't a bad idea either.

 

Also I dunno about you guys, but these jerks target my Cipher instead of my Wizard =/

Edited April 5, 2015 by Wolken3156

[Luridis]

I got it... I wasn't understanding their attack. It's a melee that does elemental damage. Their defense is high physical DR, but not magical. Thus, these are useful:

 

Enchanted Weapon (Fire)

Paladin Flames

Most Spells

Arcane Assault

 

Best Defense:

Bulwark Against Elements (Pretty much negates their attack.)

Arcane Defense

Anything lowering attack.

 

My best play is to move the mage aside after casting Elemental Bulwark and use Arcane Assault to get them all to teleport to the mage and then cast Fan of Flames, that pretty much leaves them all in an extra crispy pile. A cheaper version is to use Arcane Defense instead, it's less health pool saving, but it prevents the two-shotting that normally happens.

Edited April 6, 2015 by Luridis

[invizo]

Here's the deal... I'm trying to play with the included NPCs so I can get their story. The wizard Aloth pulls threat from anything that can teleport with his mere existence. I'm currently fighting the shadows of various places and two facts seem apparent to me:

 

Wizards are targeted primary by teleporters.

75% of my resting is to restore wizard health, not tanks or anything else.

 

I've tried letting Aloth set idle for half the fight and he still gets targeted and beat down while doing absolutely nothing at all. Yes, I said he is sitting IDLE and pulling threat and thus I am STILL resting to regain his health instead of my tanks.

 

Whoever is working on threat mods please fix because I am just done playing till this is fixed. I cannot stand this kind of screwball threat in RPGs, it's immersion breaking for me. I can't imagine what's going though the mind of whoever is responsible.

If you had Aloth use his Fire spells this would be a non-issue.  Those enemies are incredibly weak to Fire, if anything the AI was too smart and took down their biggest threat first.

[bobthe]

Whoever is working on threat mods please fix because I am just done playing till this is fixed. I cannot stand this kind of screwball threat in RPGs, it's immersion breaking for me. I can't imagine what's going though the mind of whoever is responsible.

 

Well it would break immersion for ME if the enemies behaved stupidly and did not take advantage of targetting your weakest party members. It's not that they hate Aloth. They are targetting your weakest characters. And some of it is probably more generic "attack the back lines" scripting. The point is, it would be LESS realistic if they did not do this, contrary to your position.

 

Yes, the shadows and shades are annoying as hell. Try making a new formation and encircling Aloth. At least then anything that teleports close will be in range of other party members as well. Maybe even give Aloth better armor for the areas with teleporting critters. YOU not changing your strategy to account for enemies with different tactics and capabilities is the problem here...not the critters'.

[Vadász]

Just leave a damage dealer in the backlines when you are facing enemies like this, save arcane veil and have a nice buff spell prepared, the AI will still go for him even though they are falling into a trap. I have been using this strategy lately for getting oportunity attacks and some easy kills.

[Malovane]

Well, I've been handing Aloth the +Cold Resist cloak you get off the beginning inn. This helps his survivability a good deal against the shadows. Later on, this combined with his elemental resist spell makes him virtually immune to them.

 

Otherwise, you can typically avoid the teleporting by having your main tank engage everything, and keep Aloth way in the background until the shadows have settled in on their target. At this point you can usually sneak to their back and hit them with a couple fans of flames.

[Crucis]

If you continually need to rest because your wizard's health depletes, your problem is not that your wizard is unreasonably being targeted, it is that you are using bad tactics in the face of a very reasonable threat to squishy characters.

 

For what it is worth, I use a custom formation with tanks in row 1, offtanks row 2, offset from centre, high-endurance ranged/support row 3, squishies row 5. It has done wonders for the survival of my squishies that except when I decide to send them closer to the front line to cast short-range spells or get perfect positioning for e.g. the rolling ball of flaming death they are out of range of most ranged abilities.  You cold also try a V, inverted V, or curve setup - the custom formations are there for you to use, and not making a custom formation that supports whatever group composition you are using and what your plan is for combat is a strategic mistake.

 

Back in BG2 and IWD1/2, putting your squishiest targets, usually your mages, in the very back was often a little risky, because there were a decent number of battles that were ambushes where you'd get hit fro both the front AND rear.  So it was often a good idea to have at least one fairly strong party member covering the rear of the formation instead of the party's weakest member, usually the wizard.

[gergderfer]

In the same boat. At the level that this dungeon is offered, it is ridiculously difficult and the go after mages no matter what i do and kill them instantly even with heavy armor and them idling outside of them room. These should be in higher level dungeons instead.

[Nexus0]

I always throw down that priest spell which takes them out of battle and fully heals.

[Torm51]

Leave a hard hitter in the back and uncommitted you know they will teleport. I ran on hard mode

 

Tank fighter

 

Tank paladin

 

2handed dps paladin

 

Cipher

 

Wizard

 

Priest.

 

I sat the dps paladin who can tank one mob for a bit in the back waited for the shade to teleport engaged him with the paladin and all dps focus him he's dead in seconds. Actually my paladins FoD almost one shotted him. If you don't have a semi 3rd tank like me commit your hardest target that is dps sit him by the wizard and when he ports focus him with all dps.

[MadDemiurg]

That's all kinda funny given that wizards are one of the tankiest classes in the game.