Dealing with Plague of Insects

[soulmata]

Scenario is: Party level 9, main character Cipher, Hard/Expert.

 

To this point, not much has been super challenging. There have been some tough spots, but nothing that wasn't manageable by thinking up some tactics.

 

But what the crap is the deal with Plague of Insects? This spell seems absurdly imbalanced, to the point where I have to wonder if I'm seeing what I'm supposed to be seeing.

 

The description of the spell implies it does a huge amount of raw damage over time. Raw damage, as I believe, bypasses DR and affects you directly. That part I'm behind. What I'm not behind is just how insanely high that damage is, to where often encounters with Ogre Druids are leaving my party dying (red health) before they lose EN. When I look at the tooltip and the damage output, here's what I see:

 

"89 damage over 29.75 seconds...", which would be something like 3 damage/s

 

Then, I watch the health of my party - health plummets at 3-4x the rate of Endurance. On all my characters except the tanks, their health drops *faster* than Endurance. It's not even possible to heal through that - if I try to keep them awake, they will die, even from Green health at the start of the fight.

 

Additionally, multiple plagues seem to stack - which makes sense for some damage types, but this seems out of control.

 

OK, so that said, exactly how am I supposed to deal with Plague of Insects without resorting to fog-of-war nuke tactics like charming from just outside engagement range? Given the relative difficulty of an Ogre/Ogre Matron/Ogre Druid, I feel that one single spell should not be the difference between "a relatively easy fight" to "this fight is luck based".

 

I must be missing something! Can it be dispelled?

[soulmata]

Note to date I've been using Suppress Affliction to try and get through the fight fast enough, but that's quite often not enough. 

[b0rsuk]

I must be missing something! Can it be dispelled?

 

Maybe a patch ?

 

In unpatched game, Plague of Insects cast by Ogre Druids has infinite duration.

[Space]

Plague of insects and psychic blast are the raw damage abilities that make the most difficult encounters in the game. Naldred the wise and Lord Exarch Sserkal are the most difficult encounters besides the adra dragon.

 

Like you mentioned suppress affliction works for saving low endurance characters like mages that are annihilated even with constant healing due to limited heath to replenish endurance. I don't know about any way to dispel plague of insects so suppress affliction is the best you can do with despite it only having two uses and limited to target.

[soulmata]

I'm patched. It wears off after combat or after the timer expires.

 

I'm just talking about the plain damage it does. My level 9 (now 10) party gets massacred by it due to how fast it drains health and that it stacks.

[Space]

The paladin ability liberating exhortation relieves plague of insects. In my previous post I confused suppress affliction with liberating exhortation.

[Shadenuat]

I feel like after updates Obsi broken something again - during day 1 playthrough I rarely was affected by more than 1-2 plagues, but recently I was doing bounties on PoTD and seen 6 stacks of that **** on my characters.  Naturally party died in seconds. Maybe it's a hit/miss/graze thing though, but on PoTD getting spammed with that stuff ruins your day.

 

Anyway, if you're having trouble then you can always outcheese them. Give whole party ranged weapons and buy/find 3-4 summoning figurines, and craft a stack of Paralyze scrolls. Send one guy into encounter, then throw into there summons and cast scrolls. AI will cast Plague on summons, then you paralyze them all and shoot with guns and eat with your summons.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Shadenuat

[Ceranai]

Scenario is: Party level 9, main character Cipher, Hard/Expert.

 

To this point, not much has been super challenging. There have been some tough spots, but nothing that wasn't manageable by thinking up some tactics.

 

But what the crap is the deal with Plague of Insects? This spell seems absurdly imbalanced, to the point where I have to wonder if I'm seeing what I'm supposed to be seeing.

 

The description of the spell implies it does a huge amount of raw damage over time. Raw damage, as I believe, bypasses DR and affects you directly. That part I'm behind. What I'm not behind is just how insanely high that damage is, to where often encounters with Ogre Druids are leaving my party dying (red health) before they lose EN. When I look at the tooltip and the damage output, here's what I see:

 

"89 damage over 29.75 seconds...", which would be something like 3 damage/s

 

Then, I watch the health of my party - health plummets at 3-4x the rate of Endurance. On all my characters except the tanks, their health drops *faster* than Endurance. It's not even possible to heal through that - if I try to keep them awake, they will die, even from Green health at the start of the fight.

 

Additionally, multiple plagues seem to stack - which makes sense for some damage types, but this seems out of control.

 

OK, so that said, exactly how am I supposed to deal with Plague of Insects without resorting to fog-of-war nuke tactics like charming from just outside engagement range? Given the relative difficulty of an Ogre/Ogre Matron/Ogre Druid, I feel that one single spell should not be the difference between "a relatively easy fight" to "this fight is luck based".

 

I must be missing something! Can it be dispelled?

you are supposed to move out of the way lol (unless you are thinking about a different spell to me)

Edited April 9, 2015 by Ceranai

[cavemandiary]

My autoresponse to druids have been high stealth plus confusion on a wizard, and simply walk away afterwards watching them plague each other.

[soulmata]

you are supposed to move out of the way lol (unless you are thinking about a different spell to me)

 

 

 

What would that accomplish? The effect sticks no matter how far you run.

 

And it looks like the consensus is so far to deal with it out of range, i.e. confusion. Thanks.

[Ichthyic]

also, you can use stealth with your wizard, and paralyze ogre druids with the level 2 spell fetid something...

and the level 2 priest spell that supresses afflictions works for your whole party, not just one target, and you can refresh it for as many times as your priest can cast a level 2 spell.

also, there are protection scrolls (again level 2) that you can make/buy/find that reduce the effect times.

also, noxious burst (level 3) works fantastically on all ogres, both the damage (ogres are very weak to corrode) and the efect (sicken).

all that, aside from  the confusion or charm being useful.  charm works best on a regular ogre though, as they have very low will scores.  then just send it to pound on the druid.

ogre druids are tough, but there ARE many many ways to deal with them, and these are just a handful of the possibilites.

 

[player1]

Any updates on this one?

Spell is still punishing as ever.

[abaris]

and craft a stack of Paralyze scrolls. Send one guy into encounter, then throw into there summons and cast scrolls. 

 

That's my standard equipment for difficult encounters. But as I said in another thread, paralysis seems to be bugged under certain circumstances, since some chars start to move and blast away long before their affliction counter reaches zero. And to top it off, in that state, they're immune to another paralysis hit. Nether from scrolls nor from Cyphers.

[Uni]

Concecrated ground and/or moonwell should be enough to deal with the dot, but you will still lose health. There arent that many enemies using insect plague so one can just accept that getting hit by it means you lose more health than from most encounters.

[player1]

I was just doing 3rd level endless dungeon on hard when at 8th level. Obviously my group was much higher level then inteded for this area. Still due to many orge druids in the area, each combat led to many health lost.

 

Various tactics where used to minimize the damage and encounters were fun and challenging, despite area being intended for lower level players.

 

I guess this is due to insect plague threat still staying relevant despite higher player levels, unlike all other attacks.

Edited July 1, 2015 by player1

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

 

I too, in 1.06, have had absurd fights with Ogre Druids casting Plague of Insects.

 

And I have used Plague of Insects with my Druid on enemies and it absolutely nukes the room. I open a lot of fights with Plague of Insects, it's broken for sure, something is really not right in that spell. It doesn't seem to miss, ever, and does raw damage, and it does so much damage so fast, I think the timer ticker is busted and it's really high DPS and the duration just never stops until way after the battle music stops and you're looting.

 

So when I face anything with Plague of Insects, I have to try and lure them with a single character while the other party members are far away from that mess. Otherwise, get wiped.

 

I place traps, seals (hazards) and open with a single character that I can afford to lose, while the rest of the party waits out the initial Plague casting. More manageable.

 

Very best,

[Luckmann]

Plague of Insects is just a really crazy spell, from a really crazy class. I'm not joking when I say that the only times I've had real problems in PoE have been when I've faced enemy druids, whether they're the spellcasting dryad-like things, the ogre shamansorwhatever, and when I met 3-or-something random druids by the roadside. Druid enemies really just are a huge step upwards in terms of potential i-rape-you-ism, and never in line with equal-level partners.

 

I can casually steamroll a full dungeon just to run into a few druids at the end and be taken by complete surprise, party wipe.

 

The best way to deal with them is either massive amounts of CC - just keeping them stunlocked or unable to cast spells, this is usually easy if you have a Cipher in the group and if there's only one or two druids - or to just go all-out BLITZKRIEG! on them, and sacrifice everything to get them down before they get anything done.