Why am I so bad at this? (White March part one)

[Grand_Commander13]

Ever since the backer beta I've known I'm not as good at PoE as a lot of people. Most fights in Normal are fairly easy for me, but the fights meant to be difficult are, and in White March part one I've actually encountered some fights I don't think I have the ability to beat. One was fine, fampyrs on the map that I didn't have to engage.

 

However, I'm in Durgan's Battery and I've taken the workshop key, riling up all of the spirits. The main room of the mine warren, with two sirens and several wraiths, is kicking my teeth in, big time. To give you an idea how bad it is, I've started actually *gasp* using consumables, and while the flame shield seems to help I still get my front line torn apart eventually.

 

Now I could reload the autosave and not do that, then use my rite to let me lockpick the door, or I could just drop the difficulty level, but what do I need to do to actually beat the encounter? I have a level-eight party with a cipher main character, Pallegina, Zahua, Maneha, Durance, and Devil of Caroc in my party. I could rest and get the +10 accuracy bonus against spirits (typical that the enemies change from vessels to spirits as soon as I use camping supplies), but I'm getting beaten hard enough I'm not sure that would put me over the edge.

 

Usually it ends up with Durance and my cipher main character standing against a wraith and both sirens, and there's no way they can out-damage that.

[Boeroer]

Which character level?

[Ben No.3]

He is level 8, I think he said that.

What you may try is take a look at the wiki (not very reliable) or gamebanshee to discover the strenghts and especially the weaknesses of an enemy.

Let me show what I mean with an easy example: Your avergae flame blight. Now, the flame blights main strength is its immunity against pierce and burn damage, so those are not damage types you want to attack it with. On the other hand, it has a major weakness: Lowered DR  against freeze damage. SO here is where you could try to hit it especially hard.

 

Now, let's for example look at the wraith you mentioned. It has pretty high defenses, with def 71, ref 71, wil 81. But it only has a fortitude of 58, so any attack that might target  that defense could be very useful (give Maneha Brute Force for example, or obviously spells). Or look atits DR: It has a base DR of 10, against freeze it even has 20. Those are very high numbers, so it might be usefulto search for and exploit a weakness, and that weakness is its burn DR, which is only 5.

 

A few more general tipps: Try getting Durance to cast more buffs and debuffs than heals, those are much more worthwhile. Try and get one more caster in your party, one focused on damage would be great. For example Hiravias would do the job quite well. Aloth would also do well. If necessary, you can also not only preparre for certain enemies by adjusting your offensive repertiore, but you could also improve your defensive situation by for example preparing for certain damage type (adjust armour) or upping certain defenses the enemies are likley to target.

 

 

So.. yeah Good Luck

Edited October 30, 2016 by Ben No.3

[KDubya]

Set Zahua up as Juggernaut 3.0 and give him the superb hide armor from White March area and the Bartender's ring for the extra damage versus spirits. His damage output from lightning strikes and torment's reach should drop the spirits pretty quickly. Also get him the Shod in faith boots.

 

How is Devil built? I find using a stunning weapon like Cladhliath or Starcaller flail with balgrdr barricade shield works well as a tanky Rogue.

 

Also don't be afraid to drop down a few figurine summons to help, they make a big difference even just as cannon fodder.

[Grand_Commander13]

On one hand I guess I should be happy that the difficulty seems to be my party build (though Aloth is so useless to me in the early game that he's now level five when the rest of the party is level eight, so putting him back in now would be really difficult). On the other hand, a lot of this is advice I can't take until I get back to my stronghold, which would mean a whole lot of walking.

 

Those sirens though, and that paralysis they just spam: that's what's killing me. I Story Moded my way through this one fight, then found another fight with a siren that was too hard, so I avoided it until I got a plot item and now I have another fight with a siren that just wrecks me because, again, I can't resist paralysis.

[Ben No.3]

As I said, optimisation goes also the defensive way... Look at what defense is targeted by paralising attacks (I think fortitude?). Try to get that defense high. Check the Priests prayers against. You'll get into it after some while

The problem is that the same strategy does not work for every enemy. You will need to aquire a set of strategies to deal with different challenges

[Grand_Commander13]

Do you honestly think I'm so dim I don't understand the concept of defenses? If there's a spell I have (not one I get at level nine) that I'm not using, then that would be helpful (but incredibly unlikely, since my eyes have been over Durance's spell list so many times), or if there's an observation based on the experience of beating these enemies before, that would be helpful. Explaining what defenses are? Doesn't help me.

[Tigranes]

Why get snarky at people just trying to help? Nobody knows for sure what you tried or haven't tried.

 

There's obviously Prayer against Imprisonment, and if sirens are jsut using standard paralysis spells (I can't remember), then problem solved.

[Kaylon]

Use summons/figurines to distract the sirens while you're dealing with the others.

[rheingold]

Found a cipher with mental binding pretty much paralyses the wraiths and battery sirens almost all the time. It only effects one at a time though, but it makes it really easy to kill them quickly. I'd also move past the key to the left as far as possible, so you bunch up at the dead end. It might prevent one or two of the wraiths/sirens from attacking you. Focus fire also helps.

[Ben No.3]

Hey, if you know what exact defense every single spell targets that's cool... I don't

Look, I'm sorry... But I've seen people cast shields for the faithful and don't understand why they get dominanted

 

Something that might work is using pulsing spells. By that I mean spells that deal damage over a period of time every so and so often, like for example chill fog. Which gets me to my first recommendation... If you don't want to use Aloth create a wizard. But chillfog applies a blind debuff, which is very useful. For damage you can for example look at Druid spells. Insect swarm goes against fortitude I think, so spamming that might do the trick (because as I said before, wraiths have low fortitude). But I like damage over time and pulsing spells because they mean the enemies will get hit regardless of your own ability to move. But other people don't like it because of how heavily DR affects the output. A matter of taste I guess

Edited October 30, 2016 by Ben No.3

[Tigranes]

For Lagufaeth, I've found the best strategy is just paralyse them before they paralyse you. Sometimes hard to have good enough accuracy stats if you're lower level, but at 8 and above, you can reliably get most of them before they get you. Sirens I think are more difficult in that regard.