Dwarven Defender, Barb and SCS questions
Hello!
I am playing with SCS (Tactical difficulty) and am going through the entire series (done with BG1, early SoD right now). I've played the game many times and cleared BG1 twice with SCS but haven't played BG2 SCS yet.
I like to create full or close to full customized parties to maximized my characters and try all sorts of party combination. I went very heavy on magic users this time around (to try it for fun and also because it seemed like BG2 SCS would heavily revolve around mage fights and that I would need a lot of spells to counter the enemy ones). However, I am already starting to get bored with it as I hate all of the pre-buffing to be optimal all the time (and SCS Sarevok fight was harder than last time around because of the enemy casters dispelling my defenses over and over).
I will finish my current SoD run with my current party (F/M, Berserker, Shadowdancer, Priest of Tempus, Sorcerer, Invoker) but I am thinking about keeping my F/M main character and doing some changes for the other members once I reach BG2 (the Berserker was meant to be Berserker>Mage but I think that would make my party very weak in some fights).
So here are the questions I currently have:
1- I always was curious to try out a Barbarian and use the flail that gives some physical resistance in BG2 in order to have high physical resistance and still dish out good damage. I forget what % the flail is at but is it cumulative with Barb's passive (and if I use the HLA that adds some too, what happens if I reach 100% or above)?
2- I totally forgot about Dwarven Defenders because I never play shorties (usually Human, Half-Orc, Elf and Half-Elf). They seem like they would possibly be the best tanks in the game (or at least pure class tanks). However, would that tank be rather useless if I have 2 other decent melees that can frontline (say F/M + Berserker and maybe even a F/T that can backstab and add a bit of extra damage)?
3- Both the Berserker and the Dwarven Defender can have high resistance against physical damage but no resistance against magic damage (Rage from Berserker can help vs many effects while Dwarven Defender has saving throws that are a bit better vs some spells). Considering I'm using SCS on top of it, won't that be near useless since the deadliest enemies almost all mostly do magic damage (I can only think of fire giants in ToB maybe that can hit hard with physical damage)?
4- What would be the minimum I'd need as party members with SCS to be able to counter powerful casters (liches and such)? I mean, do I need to have a sorcerer or a mage dedicated to mostly breaking enemy caster defenses? I'm guessing a priest is near mandatory for some buffs to protect from effects like confusion? I'm asking this because I always want to nuke with my mages/sorcerers but it often feels like I can't do it as much as I'd want to because of friendly fire and they often turn out being boring mostly putting debuffs onto enemies and stripping enemy caster defenses.
I find my Shadowdancer to be boring so I'm thinking about replacing him with a F/T, a Kensai>T, a WizardSlayer>T or some sort of C/T and try to use righteous magic for big backstab crits.
I find the Priest of Tempus rather boring but I think I may still need a pure Cleric if I want decent heals and defensive debuffs.
I dislike the Berserker fatigue and have played some several times in the past. I'd probably like to fit in classes like Cavalier, Berserker, Dwarven Defender, Archer and I'm trying to figure out what I could remove to have them fit in.
I am playing with SCS (Tactical difficulty) and am going through the entire series (done with BG1, early SoD right now). I've played the game many times and cleared BG1 twice with SCS but haven't played BG2 SCS yet.
I like to create full or close to full customized parties to maximized my characters and try all sorts of party combination. I went very heavy on magic users this time around (to try it for fun and also because it seemed like BG2 SCS would heavily revolve around mage fights and that I would need a lot of spells to counter the enemy ones). However, I am already starting to get bored with it as I hate all of the pre-buffing to be optimal all the time (and SCS Sarevok fight was harder than last time around because of the enemy casters dispelling my defenses over and over).
I will finish my current SoD run with my current party (F/M, Berserker, Shadowdancer, Priest of Tempus, Sorcerer, Invoker) but I am thinking about keeping my F/M main character and doing some changes for the other members once I reach BG2 (the Berserker was meant to be Berserker>Mage but I think that would make my party very weak in some fights).
So here are the questions I currently have:
1- I always was curious to try out a Barbarian and use the flail that gives some physical resistance in BG2 in order to have high physical resistance and still dish out good damage. I forget what % the flail is at but is it cumulative with Barb's passive (and if I use the HLA that adds some too, what happens if I reach 100% or above)?
2- I totally forgot about Dwarven Defenders because I never play shorties (usually Human, Half-Orc, Elf and Half-Elf). They seem like they would possibly be the best tanks in the game (or at least pure class tanks). However, would that tank be rather useless if I have 2 other decent melees that can frontline (say F/M + Berserker and maybe even a F/T that can backstab and add a bit of extra damage)?
3- Both the Berserker and the Dwarven Defender can have high resistance against physical damage but no resistance against magic damage (Rage from Berserker can help vs many effects while Dwarven Defender has saving throws that are a bit better vs some spells). Considering I'm using SCS on top of it, won't that be near useless since the deadliest enemies almost all mostly do magic damage (I can only think of fire giants in ToB maybe that can hit hard with physical damage)?
4- What would be the minimum I'd need as party members with SCS to be able to counter powerful casters (liches and such)? I mean, do I need to have a sorcerer or a mage dedicated to mostly breaking enemy caster defenses? I'm guessing a priest is near mandatory for some buffs to protect from effects like confusion? I'm asking this because I always want to nuke with my mages/sorcerers but it often feels like I can't do it as much as I'd want to because of friendly fire and they often turn out being boring mostly putting debuffs onto enemies and stripping enemy caster defenses.
I find my Shadowdancer to be boring so I'm thinking about replacing him with a F/T, a Kensai>T, a WizardSlayer>T or some sort of C/T and try to use righteous magic for big backstab crits.
I find the Priest of Tempus rather boring but I think I may still need a pure Cleric if I want decent heals and defensive debuffs.
I dislike the Berserker fatigue and have played some several times in the past. I'd probably like to fit in classes like Cavalier, Berserker, Dwarven Defender, Archer and I'm trying to figure out what I could remove to have them fit in.
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Comments
Cast protection from magical energy on everyone. It's an underrated spell with an extremely long duration. Now cast Skull Traps at will, without worrying about friendly fire.
With just SCS... barbarians can reach 80% resistance to melee damage with DoE (20%), their innate resistance, and Hardiness. Fighter/clerics can hit 85% with DoE, Hardiness, and Armor of Faith - but part of that's dispellable. Dwarven defenders can hit 90% with DoE, innate resistance, and Defensive Stance. Anything more ... you need shapeshifts. A fighter/druid can reach full immunity to physical damage with Hardiness, earth elemental form, and Armor of Faith - and that's still 90% if you get dispelled.
There are also some sources for specific type protection; the helmet Roranach's Horn for 50% crushing resistance, and SCS adds a dragon armor (Kill Anadramatis in the improved Abazigal's lair) with piercing resistance.
Ascension adds some options for the protagonist; one of the Bhaalspawn powers you can get is 25% physical resistance. That makes reaching 100% a lot easier.
I just finished a run with a Dragon Disciple protagonist and excessive incineration. The key to it was setting the whole party up to be passively immune to fire, so that I could do things like open battles with a triple-Incendiary Cloud contingency and just fight in the cloud. That also helps a lot defensively - there are a lot of things out there that deal large quantities of fire damage. In fact, I've got another iteration planned with even more firepower.
Sure, the sorcerer then went on to strip defenses during battle ... because letting enemy mages get away with casting Protection from Fire just isn't OK. Dispels to deal with that, with the more involved stuff on the rare occasions they put up abjuration immunity. For lesser mages, sometimes I'd just ignore them and focus on the warriors first.
One perk of this style is that you only have to take the defenses down once; enemy mages prebuff their elemental defenses and don't memorize any extra copies to cast during the battle.
I guess the upshot is I didn't care much for it. You usually need to stack damage resistances before the effects add up, and that can't really happen until you're close to ToB at the least. Meanwhile their rage was a serious downgrade from the Berserker's, leaving lots of gaps in your defences.
I just can't imagine Dwarven Defenders being much different? Let, say, Firkraag get his way and he'll still tear your dwarf apart, or just swat her away and now she can't get back to the action. Etc.
There is so much gnashing of teeth about mages in SCS and I'll just say, you'll figure it out. You absolutely don't have to carefully unweave each and every spell protection you ever encounter, there are usually many ways to deal with spellcasters. But in my opinion, arcane magic has always been by far the best, most fun aspect of BG2 and it's certainly not worse with the mod.
By the way, if you're tired of prebuffing, have you tried familiarising yourself with SCS's ease of use AI? It's actually a huge quality of life improvement in that regard, and it blows my mind that it's not brought up more often.
Tough melee characters are great, even in SCS. While mages act more intelligently in that, so do other characters and one result of that is that thieves are far more dangerous than in the unmodded game. It's nice to have well protected characters that won't die from the odd backstab.
Even unbuffed, high level shorties can shrug off the vast majority of status effect spells, which will be helpful to you if you find buffing tiresome. They will take magic damage if you don't buff them, but with lots of HPs they still don't die easily. While mages are a bigger threat with SCS, most combats in BG2EE are still mainly physically based and fighter types are always helpful to allow you to progress through those quickly.