Offensive Conditions, instead of just DPS

[MalVeauX]

Hey all,

 

I'm curious if anyone has used a caster in some form, or many, through the course of the game (I've played through, spoilers are not a problem for me), using a lot of conditions, rather than just pure DPS.

 

For example, is there utility in things like mass prone, mass blindness along with things like confuse late game, from a Wizard?

 

I ask because I'm considering yet another play through, but this time, using a bunch of melee DPS characters, no real pure tanks, using a mix of fighters, rogues and barbarians with a wizard as support, with the ability to do lots of prone spells, blind spells, confuse, etc. Obviously meant for just a fun casual play through, not looking to be optimal, just seeing if it could work at all.

 

I'm not sure how useful prone/blind/confuse is through the whole game when you put it in the context of a bunch of melee DPS characters.

 

Thoughts?

 

Very best,

[View619]

CC wizards are very good, definitely worth trying for a play-through. Mass disables while your front-line goes to work shouldn't be an issue for you.

[manageri]

The AoE blind spells are very good for debuffing both the enemy deflection and accuracy, thus boosting both your dps and survivability. For your party in particular they should be great for allowing sneak attacks as well as boosting carnage.

[AshenPlanet]

The first level spell oil slick, is an almost guaranteed prone for a decent area of effect.

There is also blind, confusion, petrify, paralyze, etc.

Lot's of amazing stuff.

It's so easy to reduce their reflex saves to very little.

If you do use DPS spells, it's good to just memorize the reflex ones, and combo it with the debuffs.

 

[Nobear]

I'm with the other posters on this. I love CC. I've just discovered the awesomeness of a cipher's Ectoplasmic Echo for DPS, but I'm still a huge fan of CC. As others have said, those condition spells can allow your DPSers to go to town. I would not even bother with Confuse, but check out Miasma of Dull-Mindedness. You do the math, and that's -20 Deflection, -20 Will and -40 Reflex! Hey, your DPS is going to be doing some hurt with -20 enemy Deflection: that's equivalent to giving them +20 Accuracy!

[MalVeauX]

Heya,

 

I'm starting to ponder a party to benefit a Wizard dropping prone, blind, confuse and dull-minds. Since they last a while, the Wizard can be basically plate armor wearing to take a little damage in case he gets jumped (and maybe a minor spell for self-preservation).

 

I'm wanting to play through as a cruel Barbarian maybe. A party of Barbs. Or possibly a mix of Barbs & Rogues. All melee though. I know it will be hard to take on ugly spell casters, but really, if they're blind or prone, they shouldn't be a problem and instead, go down fast to some frenzy high DEX melee characters with a few sneak attacks mixed in there.

 

So I'm thinking maybe:

 

Wizard (focusing on condition spells for foe debuff, equating to indirect party buff and party survival)

Priest or Druid (cannot quite choose here; heals, buff, minor damage dealing)

Barbarian (raw damage output, pure dex, might & int, two hand weapon and talents for more carnage, frenzy, etc)

Barbarian (as above)

Rogue (all about the damage output, melee talents, evasion for mobility to get through a crowd)

Rogue (as above)

 

I don't think I'll worry so much about stealth on the rogues or barbs, and instead, will just go with athletics and survival. One of the rogues will have high mechanics.

 

Very best,

[Nobear]

The biggest potential problem I see you commonly running into with so many melee is horrible pathing through chokepoints. You can lessen the impact of this by techniques such as these:

 

a) Try to get enemies to come out from the chokepoints when you can. Having just a bit of Stealth can be useful here, as you can set a trap in a doorway, send your mechanic back a bit, then unstealth to start combat and wait for enemies to come through the door. I personally haven't found a need for Survival at all, or for more than 3 Athletics to reduce the combat fatigue gain, so what I typically do is get 3 Athletics first, then raise either Lore or Mechanics always a few points ahead of Stealth, and you can end up with pretty high Stealth on top of 10 Lore or Mechanics. That's my personal preference, just an idea.

 

b) You might want one barbarian to be at least slightly tanky, and give the other a reach weapon (Tall Grass tends to be a favorite). Even if you don't want any using reach or ranged as primary weapons, I'd recommend giving them all either a reach or ranged weapon to switch to for when you end up in a choke point with no clean way to fix the situation. And you are pretty much guaranteed to run into this at least from time to time, even if you play carefully.

 

Cheers.

 

Edit: The other thing I wanted to say is about your wizard wearing plate. Personally, I have tried the same tough fights (namely, ones with lots of Shades/Shadows) on PoTD with two strategies. First, I tried dressing all my characters in plate and focus firing the tougher enemies (Shades) who spawn the Shadows and whose Shadows die when they die. This strategy was recommended to me, and it sounds logical. However, what I found is that the non-tanks who were getting hit by teleporting Shadows still died, albeit much more slowly, through loss of Health and not Endurance, which you can't avoid no matter how much healing you have. Meanwhile, the plate and interruption reduced my DPS so much that I just couldn't bring down the Shades even focus firing them.

 

I tried the same fight with my ranged wearing their normal robes, focus firing the lower DR Shadows first, and switching to whichever one teleported onto my ranged members, and this worked much better. The fight ended up going much more quickly and cleanly, and I ultimately prevailed. So, personally, I prefer focusing on DPS or throughput for ranged. Even with a control wizard, you want his status effects applied as fast as possible. Wizards thankfully have some defensive spells you can keep at the ready for when they get targeted, so you can have some defense when you need it without focusing on it at the expense of CC/debuffs, which is indirect DPS for your party and which you want active as soon as possible.

Edited July 2, 2015 by Nobear

[AndreaColombo]

Druids have a spell that can AoE knock enemies prone (on top of damaging them.) can't recall its name but I love using it. 4th level, IIRC.

 

Curiously, I was never a fan of CC. In POE especially, as countering it ranges from hard to impossible and enemies wouldn't even try anyway.

Edited July 2, 2015 by AndreaColombo

[Nobear]

Druids have a spell that can AoE knock enemies prone (on top of damaging them.) can't recall its name but I love using it. 4th level, IIRC.

 

Curiously, I was never a fan of CC. In POE especially, as countering it ranges from hard to impossible and enemies wouldn't even try anyway.

 

So you're not a fan because you prefer a challenge? BTW enemy paladins do counter with Liberating Exhortation. But yeah, apart from this they generally don't and it's pretty OP for both control and DPS.

[View619]

Can't fault the AI for not countering CC when there's no real hard counter against it by design. Also, the silly spell graze system only makes it worse.

Edited July 2, 2015 by View619

[AndreaColombo]

So you're not a fan because you prefer a challenge?

 

Pretty much. When no one's left fighting back, it's not that much fun for me.

 

Can't fault the AI for not countering CC when there's no real hard counter against it by design.

 

That's what I meant by "as countering it ranges from hard to impossible." I'm not a fan of the "no hard counters" policy; it's also very annoying when spores can spam mind-control your men and all you can do is wait for the effect to wear off (except spores have an infinite supply of those....)

 

[Nobear]

That's what I meant by "as countering it ranges from hard to impossible." I'm not a fan of the "no hard counters" policy; it's also very annoying when spores can spam mind-control your men and all you can do is wait for the effect to wear off (except spores have an infinite supply of those....)

 

Priests eventually get prayers against that stuff, and paladins have their Righteous Soul, but those are only available at high level. I know the spores in Anslog's Compass were kind of annoying, but not close to the hardest fight in Act 1 even so. Will-o-Wisps do it too, and the fight at the entrance to Caed Nua can easily go south if you don't take care of them fast.

[Uni]

Can't fault the AI for not countering CC when there's no real hard counter against it by design. Also, the silly spell graze system only makes it worse.

I think the problem is not spells grazing but cc spells having too high accuracy bonuses. They could take the +5 or often even +10 modifiers away from cc spells so they would not be as overpowered, but still useful as even the grazes can have big impact. Having grazes is nice for damage spells so encounters are less coin flip -like.

[Tennisgolfboll]

CC is overpowered and removing some accuracy from it will be a must when perception adds accuracy or it will go from being borderline broken to absolutely insanely bat sh-t crazy broken.

 

And to topic creator playing mage as cc possible instead of dps?

 

Not only possible but much better.

 

Cc, cc, dmg spell, cc, dmg spell, cc etc is much better than dps.

 

I always open up with my spellcasters with cc. Be warned it will make the game very easy