Melee Fourm Challenge

[contributor]

A smart player would look at a situation and say "yup this is where I lost my last Nightmare Ironman group because I was too stubborn to back up" and then they would proceed to retreat until the could block and stretch out the incoming archers...

But, you know... last time they didn't have Vincent the frosty ol' snow-mage...

This was actually taken after I killed at least one more mob. So at the start of the turn when I should have retreated there were actually more archers. Any guess on how much damage i took the next turn? 

[Zhivago]

You have big cojones!

[mrsarfa]

Ouch. That is a LOT of archers.

[fallen]

contributor - I'm mostly curious if you were able to survive that!

[contributor]

Dec 4, 2014 16:31:57 GMT -5 Zhivago said:

You have big cojones!

...which goes a long way towards explaining why I'm not an epic nightmare ironman contender.

In this case however, we survived handily. I have a whole new appreciation for Frigid Air. At level 4 it gives -6 ranged accuracy and the only person to take ranged damage was Fyona. Selen took another 31 from one hit by the Arhaive Elite below her for a total of 102 damage as a team. Only the furthest down archer didn't have any curses on him. Everybody had Frigid Air, if not Flash Freeze as well. If this would have been episode 2, where Vincent would have been fair game, we definitely would have been running for the hills.

[CdrPlatypus]

Man this is hard. I keep failing at my  challenge. Maybe my play skill is not up to par. Congrats to those who are still alive. Its back to the drawing board for me.

[contributor]

Dec 5, 2014 2:53:31 GMT -5 CdrPlatypus said:

Man this is hard. I keep failing at my  challenge. Maybe my play skill is not up to par. Congrats to those who are still alive. Its back to the drawing board for me.

Sometimes it's just dumb luck too. I lost my first group in the Nordhall ambush due to a really bad spawn and there wasn't much I could do about it. Otherwise you just have to play really conservatively and never let your non-tanks get out in front of your tanks. In my current group, I also have to keep the moto: Curse first and ask questions later. I don't let Vincent get into the stabbing action till he's stolen all the archer's dice and all the AP he can. And I almost never let anyone go one-on-one with the big scary guys (deathkin, giant rats, etc). I'm really spreading the damage around between Selen, Kincaid and Fyona. The last thing I'm doing is using Sly Look very liberally to make sure nothing can come out of the dark and land a full set of attacks.

[rygar]

contributor always wondered about any appreciable difference in lowering critters ranged accuracy due to frigid air. Never had the inclination or chance to really test it especially as I got further into the game in ironman mode.good to hear its rather viable

[CdrPlatypus]

rygar FA is amazing

[En1gma]

I've just started using it in a non-ironman group and I'm enamored with it.

[contributor]

Dec 5, 2014 7:13:12 GMT -5 rygar said:

contributor always wondered about any appreciable difference in lowering critters ranged accuracy due to frigid air. Never had the inclination or chance to really test it especially as I got further into the game in ironman mode.good to hear its rather viable

Yeah, thanks to CdrPlatypus for starting the melee challenge. Without it, I probably wouldn't have tried FA, but I knew I needed something to really knock down the archer damage. I cast it on almost everything now just for the damage reduction. It can really reduce that chance of somebody landing those huge attacks that kill your heroes dead fast. It's pretty SP and AP cheap. I have to decide about it's long term trajectory for this group. I really want to boost their damage and accuracy (Thundering Blades?) but I might find other ways to do that. Ultimately, staying alive means doing more damage.

[CdrPlatypus]

contributor Thundering blades + Holy Strickening or boost the empowered attacks of each char. I'm not sure what you're team build out is like, but if you are not using crippling strikes on kincaid up lunge and/or storm of steel each pt of acc from an empowered attack counts as a strong die. Whereas the dice gained from thundering blades are standard. So it may be better to level up say, lunge, ZS, Storm Strike, frenzied blows

[contributor]

That's good advice, but I don't think it's going to work for my team. Holy Strickening takes a dedicated build for Fyona and I'm not that keen on it. I'm making this team tough, so she's focusing almost exclusively on Shield of Cortias for the moment. The empowered melee advice is more of a possibility. As I look at my team, I realize I've built an all melee team without investing in their empowered attacks at all. I finally took one point of Selen's Frenzied Blows at level 12 because her accuracy was getting so bad, but that was not part of the plan. With Kincaid I'm waiting for the Storm of Steel talent to get him AoE. I think I'm going to take Flanking Unity up to 5 by the end of episode 1. I really want to get their buffs well established before putting much into melee. As always on Nightmare, there's just never enough talent points to go around.

[mrsarfa]

Quick update from me after a break playing other groups: Just defeated the first Deathkin and entered the Vermin Warren. Point total is just north of 21M.
Deathkin fight was fun. Theme song was definitely "Can't Touch This," as between Sure Parry 1, Cunning Footwork 4, and Warder's Shield 4, Deathkin landed zero hits on Kincaid.

[rygar]

Yea FA is probably very essential for an all melee build as your team don't have the luxury to limit those attacks to a party member who is best equipped to mitigate those damage. All your party members will need to be upclose to deal damage and therefore within arrow and melee range all at once . contributor your statement "staying alive means doing more damage" probably is even more so applicable for the all- melee parties you guys are attempting here. Personally, I place accuracy ahead of damage and just behind damage avoidance in order of importance for team build. As such I can't recommend enough having some form of group accuracy buff on top of the melee enhancing accuracy die. You probably should have one staple ranked-up melee enhancing attack for each toon if you haven't and you can't go wrong either by adding accuracy die on top of those. Having reliability in downing critters in say 5-6ap means saving more ap for another critter and if your accuracy goes high enough, if means forgoing the need for defense debuff and spending more ap on what matters - killing more stuff the more efficient you kill the less ap you spend on healing those inevitable damage you get for your all melee team. This goes down to less dependency on sp and health pots too.