Larian Banner
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
#767839 01/04/21 09:52 AM
Joined: Oct 2020
OP Offline
Joined: Oct 2020
I'm giving bless another go after a playthrough where it seemed to help with the Githyanki Patrol - I was so underprepared that I didn't expect to survive, but bless her shadow heart, Shadowheart hung back kept bless going which seemed to help and had enough heal to throw some life to downed people.

Previously I'd seen very little help from bless, and just treated as a wasted turn for our Sharian friend. She casts, might get some advantage, then she hits someone, with a a spell or a stick or an arrow, then someone hits her and she loses concentration and the bless goes, for whatever good it did. To be fair the Patrol and the Hag are fights I've had where my hits v their hits seemed difficult to deal with.

An alternative strategy I've tried is cast bless and keep out of the way which as a tradeoff one team member not hitting at all for three that can hit a bit better didn't seem that great, with the last run being the exception.

This time I'm still on the nautiloid, and the first set of imps. Usually I just sneak in one at a time take out the left with Lae'zel then shoot the others as they become available. I guess I could sneak on turnwise time, but I usually just wing it when their backs are turned.

With a cleric Tav this has been one of the trickier runs.

It would be nice to bless before battle (both for game utility, and if you've got a priest that's kinda satisfying), but there is a timer, so a free movement run seems to lose bless turns before the battle starts unless I get very lucky. The bless and Leroy Jenkins approach has so far mostly all died in a fire. Maybe that's a tribute, and those little imps have certainly been more painful since they realised that they could use the environment

If one character starts battle and the other is still hiding the bless countdown runs ahead on the one outside combat, so by the time they are in combat they don't have bless anymore. The most efficient run was just to let Lae'zel do all the work with a little blessing from afar

If both characters go in without sneak they start battle order together, but then it's a crapshoot as to whether the cleric will get to bless before the soldier kills everything anyway.

If both characters enter in turn based mode, waiting for the imps to look away we get a bless before combat and an opportunity to get closer to the targets, but if only one is spotted and enters the battle order, the other's timer goes into freefall. One run Lae'zel snuck up behind the left imp but had no actions left, then the Tav snuck down the right side and was spotted when the imps turned on their turn. By the time I'd clicked on Lae'zel to bring her into combat she'd already counted down one or two more turns of bless. Had I been a little slower to decide who to attack with it would have been more.

Most battles are pretty easy to just bring everyone to the party together, but if you want to hold a reserve or manage some strategy for something that could prove to take a while, it's nice to be able to introduce team members as needed.

Is there a good way to do this when looking to take advantage of support spells like bless?

Last edited by hypostase; 01/04/21 01:59 PM.
hypostase #768214 04/04/21 03:56 PM
Joined: Oct 2020
Joined: Oct 2020
Bless is huge, the most powerful utility in the game.

Giving your party a 15%+ extra hit chance and leas chance of being hit/CC/debuffed is humongous.

Casters suck ass in EA anyways, especially warlock since summons are a static 65% hit chance regardless of bless or backstab, and warlock is an Eldritch Blast bot with poor damage potential and only 2 spell slots, one of which is always taken for Hex to do any meaningful damage.

Since Hex is a concentration spell, and concentration is a garbage mechanic that disallows your casters from layering utility or CC combos, warlocks are pretty much gimped.

Your Hex+EB still does less damage thana single Lazael greatsword autoattack swing without poison or fire coating.

So, forgwt Wyll and grab Shadowheart+Lazael for best results, and you only take Gale whwn you have the magic missiles necklace to make him relevant, otherwise it's an all martial party with Astarion since casters are super weak.

Particularly because racials are so imbalanced with humans and tieflings being really weak, and human casters have no darl vision in the Underdark, making their hit rates awful ubtil you buy the magic ring from the vendor in the Myconid colony that removes obscured statua from enemies, or if you use Darkvision on your druid to give your human casters Darkvision.

Link Copied to Clipboard
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5