Please fix the garbage dragon fights

[bluepotions]

Never have I fought such uninspired and ****ty fights in my entire life. I've beaten both Adra and White March dragon, but they ****ing suck. It's literally just getting lucky rolls: the fight. If not, re-roll and win. Please make something with a little more substance. 

[qwert_44643]

  Well personally i enjoyed them and it took me a bit to figure out how to use every members abilities to their fullest and a little strategy and quite thrilling....if you want harder fight play on highest difficulty.

[bluepotions]

  Well personally i enjoyed them and it took me a bit to figure out how to use every members abilities to their fullest and a little strategy and quite thrilling....if you want harder fight play on highest difficulty.

 

I'm playing on hard and they're ****ing dumb. I hate them, and it's making me reconsider ever buying a PoE related product again

Edited September 2, 2015 by Tigranes
Now now, that's not nice to a certain demographic who have nothing to do with POE

[Hebruixe]

What level was your party when you attempted those boss battles?

[Springwight]

Never have I fought such uninspired and ****ty fights in my entire life. I've beaten both Adra and White March dragon, but they ****ing suck. It's literally just getting lucky rolls: the fight. If not, re-roll and win. Please make something with a little more substance. 

No, you just fought them like that. You can't blame the game for your playstyle. You can also defeat them using strategy and tactics, but you chose to save scum.

 

They're also both optional fights.

Edited September 1, 2015 by Springwight

[MunoValente]

The Adra Dragon destroyed me time after time the first time I tried to beat it, but once I figured out things that worked against it I've almost never have to reload when I fight it anymore.  Killing the Adragans quickly helps a lot.  

 

Paralyze and Revive scrolls are really good obviously, both in that fight and in general.

 

Once you know who to beat the Adra Dragon, the Sky Dragon is pretty easy.

Edited September 1, 2015 by MunoValente

[Mechalibur]

When I kept losing against really difficult fights, I adjusted my strategy and was able to win pretty consistently. You might want to try that instead of choosing to save scum and then complaining about it.

[bluepotions]

When I kept losing against really difficult fights, I adjusted my strategy and was able to win pretty consistently. You might want to try that instead of choosing to save scum and then complaining about it.

 

Lets hear your strategy. Please. I'm all ****in' ears.

[jsaving]

There are a couple of jarring moments in Pillars of Eternity where you suddenly realize the tactics that have served you well against "trash mobs" aren't enough to get the job done against tougher foes.  I believe one of the devs referred to these moments as "wake-up calls" that are deliberately scattered through the game to help players understand what tough battles are like at that stage of the game and help them gauge whether their tactics are sufficient to overcome them. 

 

There's no shame in a party wipe when trying one of those battles for the first time -- it just means the battle served its intended function of signaling something to the player.  Now, what the player decides to *do* with that signal is another matter.  The devs intend for players to adjust their tactics until the encounter becomes winnable on a consistent basis, which then pays dividends throughout the remainder of the game.  But it is also possible to simply reload until enough random die rolls go your way to scrape by with a victory, or (in most cases) bypass the tough encounter and continue along the game's critical path.  I find this approach to be a good compromise in that players who enjoy tough fights can experience and learn from them, while players who don't can still experience the rich storyline the game has to offer (albeit by missing out on some treasure). 

[MunoValente]

The first time I beat it, I had my main party members run like hell away from it, except my toughest tank and then surrounded it with summons.  Then I spammed the dragon and adragan with paralyze scrolls and area of effect damage spells to kill the adragans.  My best melee fighters and a cipher fought the xaurips.  Once the Adragans and Xaurips were all the dead, it was a lot easier.  I'd one have melee fighter and summons engage the dragon, using revive and new summons whenever I could, while everyone else attacked from as far away as possible and I tried to give as many negative status effects as possible.   The people who could revive were kept very far away, except when they were needed.   I think I also had the concentration reducing chant on my tank chanter and most of my party had interrupting blows and one of my main area damage spells was plague of insects.

Edited September 1, 2015 by MunoValente

[Mechalibur]

 

When I kept losing against really difficult fights, I adjusted my strategy and was able to win pretty consistently. You might want to try that instead of choosing to save scum and then complaining about it.

 

Lets hear your strategy. Please. I'm all ****in' ears.

 

Sure. 

 

 

I use 2 tanks, Eder, who deals with the additional enemies, and my main character paladin, who gets the dragon's attention. If enemies have charm abilities, I have my paladin tank those guys instead, since she has a high will save, and lowers the duration of all charm effects considerably. In the backline, I typically use Hiravais, Aloth, Sagani, and Durance. The backline people all need to be far away enough from dragons so that they aren't hit by area of affect abilities. Everyone is buffed up with dragon meat dishes.

 

First phase of the fight is clearing out the enemies so that I can put my full attention on the dragon later. I keep a close eye on my paladin, and have her use potions and lay on hands if her hp gets low at all. Durance can cast Barring Death's Door if there are any further issues. Sagani beings by using summoning items, and Itumaak charges for the regular enemies. Durance uses the most important buff spells: Blessing, Suppress Afflictions, and the high level one that boosts deflection. Hiravias spams electricity spells, and uses spiritshift if anything gets close to him in melee. Aloth uses the fifth level aoe prone spell, and then starts shooting out fireballs, or other appropriate elemental spells. Eder starts the fight by using vigorous defenses, and tries to knock any enemies prone that he can. The paladin gets the dragon's attention, activates sworn enemy, and uses lay on hands if her hp gets low. She also has reviving exhortation if anyone happens to die due to careless placement on my part.

 

Once the adds are dead, I can focus on the dragon. I wait until this point to use the Dragonslayer ability to lower its defenses temporarily. Itumaak goes into melee, on the opposite side of the dragon, to make sure it's flanked (a further -10 to deflection), and Sagani switches to a hunting bow to get in as many attacks as possible. The reason for this is that she has the talent that stuns on an attack, and despite the dragon's high fortitude, she makes enough attacks that she'll always get in a few grazes, if not outright hits, especially if the dragonslayer ability was just used. When stunned, its defenses are lowered considerably, and I wait until this point for my casters to alternate between crowd control abilities. Hiravias uses the stone ability that petrifies, Aloth uses abilities that cause prone, and Durance casts abilties that lower enemy defenses and buff ally stats. If the control is well in hand without Aloth being needed, he'll drop the really high level spells like Delayed Fireball or Killing Bolt.

 

 

This strategy has allowed me to consistently defeat dragons on hard difficulty across two playthroughs (my character was a wizard in the second playthrough, so I just swapped in Pallegina for the paladin role, and took out Aloth).

[Kilburn]

 

  Well personally i enjoyed them and it took me a bit to figure out how to use every members abilities to their fullest and a little strategy and quite thrilling....if you want harder fight play on highest difficulty.

 

I'm playing on hard and they're ****ing dumb. I hate them, and it's making me reconsider ever buying a PoE related product again. Fun boss fights? That's gay you should just be frustrated and reloading for hours

 

 

 

Reloading and trying it again is part of the game and it is fun. Baldur's gate, dragon age origins, etc all had this type of reloading especially if youre like me and only ever play on the hardest difficulty setting.

 

If you cant handle it, just put the game on easy and you probably wont ever have to reload.

 

Or maybe this kind of game just isnt for you. There are plenty of other games out there that are very easy and cater to the lowest common denominator, they will probably be more your style.

Edited September 1, 2015 by Kilburn

[Failion]

Lot of the late game fights are annoying in general especially with the new AI that ignores melee engagement and swarms like on Paranas on that one odd party member wearing armor that is not plate.  And the abundance use of crowd control effects that always tend to hit. Buffing spells in a game where buffs suck are even worse to use now. So paladin and majority of the clerics spells are useless. If you don't toss out offensive cc spells every encounter you die.

[Leferd]

Edit. Ninja'd.

 

Lols.

Edited September 1, 2015 by Leferd

[ManifestedISO]

Yeah, went through this already in the LotER forum. Chris Taylor from ZRG was long-suffering and kind with mister potty-mouth. I can't see anything he says for some good reason. 

[Springwight]

Lot of the late game fights are annoying in general especially with the new AI that ignores melee engagement and swarms like on Paranas on that one odd party member wearing armor that is not plate.  And the abundance use of crowd control effects that always tend to hit. Buffing spells in a game where buffs suck are even worse to use now. So paladin and majority of the clerics spells are useless. If you don't toss out offensive cc spells every encounter you die.

In my experience, in Path of the Damned at least, some fights are incredibly hard if you don't buff your accuracy and defenses.

 

Priests are great. They have some of the best spells in the game (though not more than other casters).  Here are some of them:

1. Crowns for the Faithful
2. Shields for the Faithful
3. Devotions of the Faithful
4. Salvation of Time
5. Champion's Boon
6. Prayer against X

I think the facts you don't use buffs and that you find crowd control effects to always hit are somehow related.

 

Paladins are... well, they have some pretty good buffs, actually. They're one of the better warrior classes, in my opinion. Ultimately, they just get overshadowed by the casters, though. But that definitely includes Priests.

 

It's true that in the harder difficulties you have to use crowd control. You also have to use movement, buffs (at least in my experience), and damaging attacks. Though crowd control is by far the flashiest thing you do, it's not very useful without a healthy dose of damage, and you can't use it if you're dead.

[GreyFox]

The combat is really boring I'll give you that...but hard?  Huh? We playing the same game?

 

Moshpit Madness is what they should call it

[Stoner]

I probably did something wrong but I honestly didn't understand those fights myself...

 

Entire game felt like a milkrun, I almost auto-combat through most enemies with rare moment when I had to think about positioning and skills that I use, but that was also pretty easy and satisfying at the same time, when I hit Adra Dragon with my max lvl party (wizard, warrior, priest, paladin, ranger, cipher) with probably best gear that I could find, on first attack (which is pretty far reaching and AoE) it oneshot killed all but warrior and paladin, second attack finished them off too... This is absolutely insane because my warrior have been built as pure tank and been able to hold out against number of hard hitting enemies for very long time without healing and never dying. I tried drinking posions, food, buffs and etc, but nothing changed, Dragons' attacks are simply too powerfull and status effects had very low chance to trigger, I beat it after maybe 15th attempt when I somehow inficted paralize before wipe and then Dragon bugged, just stood there not attacking, I have no idea how else I could kill it.

 

That's funny tho, I watched some gameplay videos, in most encounters my party performed almost like ones showed in those vids, but in Adra fight vids it felt like Dragon was somehow heavily underpowered, you seriously can't inflict much damage when party wipes after 2-3 attacks which is like 3-5 seconds, but in videos guys survived those hard hits, no idea how though.

 

Also there are plently videos of ladder exploit, which is too cheap IMO. If that fight was balanced, I don't think any exploits would be necessary.

[Gunnar.Maluf]

When I beated the Adra Dragon on hard, this strategy worked like charm. The same with Thaos. 

 

Im trying the Alpine Dragon fight on PotD and it's nearly impossible.

I tried the paralyse/malstrom scrolls , all the paralyse spells and priest support spells and I didn't win so far.

 

On PotD, with the Alpine Dragon, the paralyse effects dont last long enough for me to do damage on it.

I saw a youtube video of a guy beating the alpine dragon on hard, i tried the exactly same strategy and it didn't work.

 

Starting to believe the alpine dragon fight needs to be balanced on PotD. It's not fun.

 

My party is lvl 14th.

 

With the White March expansion the game became considerably harder in general. I had to think, regroup, heal and cast lots of spells to win from regular

enemies.

[Gunnar.Maluf]

The combat is really boring I'll give you that...but hard?  Huh? We playing the same game?

 

Moshpit Madness is what they should call it

Try PotD. 

The main game is not much harder than the Hard difficulty, but the expansion.....that's a whole other story.

[Failion]

I managed to beat that alp dragon with level 11 party. Have eder go in by himself while rest of your away. Also equipping that one item that procs invisibility on him is a good idea. eder went invisible while I cast that level 5 priest spell so my guys dont get stuck buffed my partys acc with the level priest spell. Then had the wizard confuse the closest mobs. Eder at this point is getting almost killed drink potions if you can luckily I had him revive with that ring item. summon any pokemon trinkets you have to keep the ai busy. Remainder of fight you want your wizard dropping will cc spells on top of the dragon constantly while your hardest hitters focus him. Your priest reviving the fallen and buffing accuracy again and your paladin chain healing. Luckily I had eder revive 3 times and one point confused the dragon and it helped me kill 1 or 2 creeps lol. It died anticlimactically to rogues raw damage talent. I didn't have finishing blow on my rogue on potd I imagine its absolutely necessary to have and a estoc to down him when he has less then half hp ASAP.

 

The funny thing about it all is pelligena with the defenses buffs is the only one that get paralyzed.

Edited September 2, 2015 by Failion

[brabe]

 

  Well personally i enjoyed them and it took me a bit to figure out how to use every members abilities to their fullest and a little strategy and quite thrilling....if you want harder fight play on highest difficulty.

 

I'm playing on hard and they're ****ing dumb. I hate them, and it's making me reconsider ever buying a PoE related product again

 

 

Well, my party is lvl 12 and still my Eder dies after 2s when he is in the first row. My hole party is dead after 15s and all other fights were simple.

I dont have any idea to kill him. The other 2 dragons were no problem.

[Hypersloth]

I had no problems with the Sky dragon, but that Adra dragon is just nails... It's the videogame equivalent of me going up to Jean-Claude Van Damme and asking him for a fight...

[ka1man]

The Adra Dragon fight was the single most memorable moment in the game for me. Took my lvl 11 party a few attempts on medium difficulty, but I was so overjoyed when it finally fell ... no other part of the game came even close to evoking that level of emotion.

 

Compared to that, Thaos dropped dead from just looking at him. He wasn't any challange on medium.

[Fen(rir)tastic]

I actually quite enjoy the dragon fights for their change of pace. Not only are they very tough (High deflection and DR) unlike most of the enemies you face but they also have awesome accuracy meaning they can chunk even the hardiest tanks. I also enjoy them because they have breathe weapons and some of them have adds. These fights require you to position correctly, control/handle the adds effectively and understand the buffing and debuffing potential of all your classes. That is assuming of course you don't cheese the whole fight using Gaze/Paralysis spells which i would never recommend unless you are playing on PoTD and then anything goes. 

Honestly if you want to cheese the Alpine Dragon fight the best spell is Stasis Shell (20-25 seconds of CC) from a Cipher. Use it on the big bad, wipe out everything, heal/rez and start a 6v1 romp stomp by chaining deflection/accuracy debuffs coupled with accuracy and DR buffs to the party. 

I enjoy the combat in this game my only complaint is that the level of difficulty scales up pretty quick meaning there is a tremendous difference between 90% of the game and certain boss fights or random pack of mobs. For example the mercenaries outside Concelhaut's tower with the brawlers were harder than any boss fight i did in the regular game or thus far in the xpac besides the Alpine Dragon which is weird.