Nerf the gnolls!

[Jyggalad]

Sweet Jesus these things are infuriatingly difficult for such an early enemy, and need a nerf.

Especially near the cave. Who thought this was a good balanced?

There should not be 2 hyenas and a bunch of gnolls, the gnolls which all have:

-Enrage
-Multiattack WITH enrage that can be used every turn where the damage is equal to a normal attack for each attack
-Bonus action blocker
-Heal
-A tanky boss with paralyzing action

If you don't want to use you illithid powers, damn guess you're gonna have a fight that's just straight up unfair. Cc and group attacks and sneak attacks only do so much. Like I'm pulling out all the stops, it's still a ridiculously difficult battle. There are much better and more entertaining ways to set up a difficult fight. This is just stupid. Nerf the gnolls

Edit-
To avoid any "git gud" comments (Though I'm sure they'll still pop up) I've beaten them plenty of times, however it is hair rippingly aggravating and in no way a fun challenge.

[$CRWD]

This is a common issue in game development of cRPGs; fights aren't always balanced for each difficulty. Fights are designed around a narrative, and usually only one difficulty mode: normal. On Tactician, really early on, the Gnolls, and even the Harpies with high Concentration saves are very tough fights. But if you're on Tactician to begin with, you (probably...hopefully) have the wherewithal to handle them, with every feature and mechanic at your fingers.

A sign of excellent game development, however, is when every fight is carefully balanced around each difficulty setting, not just "enemies have bonuses to rolls and more HP" - sort of like how MMOs like WoW offer normal, heroic, and mythic dungeon and raid modes: added mechanics and surprises. BG3 probably wouldn't have had that level of complexity, even with years more of development time. In fact, I can't think of any cRPG that is developed well in that respect. It's more of an MMO standard. It's very cost intensive, and of course, you have to have talented minds who can produce it.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Pietro:

This is a common issue in game development; fights aren't always balanced for each difficulty. Fights are designed around a narrative, and usually only one difficulty mode: normal. On Tactician, really early on, the Gnolls, and even the Harpies with high Concentration saves are very tough fights. But if you're on Tactician to begin with, you (probably...hopefully) have the wherewithal to handle them, with every feature and mechanic at your fingers.

A sign of excellent game development, however, is when every fight is carefully balanced around each difficulty setting - sort of like how MMOs like WoW offer normal, heroic, and mythic dungeon and raid modes. BG3 probably wouldn't have had that level of complexity, even with years more of development time. It's very cost intensive, and of course, you have to have talented minds who can produce it.

I don't know if I would call that excellent game development. WoW content is incredibly homogenized and has been dumbed down considerably over the years. Vanilla absolutely had huge variation in difficulty and challenges depending on your class and what specific thing you were fighting, and many would argue that added richness and variety to the experience. This was all traded off for sameness in later expansions, where sometimes even classes just feel like cosmetic variations of the same thing, and dungeons no longer have complex mechanics or group composition considerations.

That's how Blizz wants to handle WoW, and that's their call, but I would never call compromising depth for accessibility 'excellent design'. It's just design aimed at a mass market.

[$CRWD]

Originally posted by Midas:

I don't know if I would call that excellent game development. WoW content is incredibly homogenized and has been dumbed down considerably over the years.

I was specifically addressing the dungeon/raid difficulty feature, not the game as a whole. Important distinction. WoW was one given example, as I said before, this feature exists in just about most MMORPGs, where higher difficulty doesn't just mean + stats, but actual, mechanical differences and challenges, the player has to face when confronting the same enemy.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Pietro:

Originally posted by Midas:

I don't know if I would call that excellent game development. WoW content is incredibly homogenized and has been dumbed down considerably over the years.

I was specifically addressing the dungeon/raid difficulty feature, not the game as a whole. Important distinction. WoW was one given example, as I said before, this feature exists in just about most MMORPGs, where higher difficulty doesn't just mean + stats, but actual, mechanical differences and challenges, the player has to face when confronting the same enemy.

Sure, but everything I said still applied. Back in Vanilla wow, tanks couldn't just casually hold aggro to everything, healers couldn't mass heal indefinitely, DPS classes all had different roles and brought different CC to a fight, and even a basic group of enemies required some coordination and planning. Had to have the rogue sap something, or the hunter trap something, had to have everyone make sure they were hitting the tank's target so they didn't pull off them, had to minimize damage to the group because the healer would burn out if they had to heal anything but the tank too much. You needed some rudimentary level of tactics. Basically all of that is gone from the game now and was traded off to make the difficulty and the experience more consistent.

[Wedge]

You can easily kite them all with just some mundane bows and moving. There's cliffs on either side one to toss them off and one to get high ground with. It's easy af.

[Aramada]

it's a tough encounter if you leave the hunters alive for too long, make sure to approach them from an angle that you can get close first and try and take them out quickly, the non-hunter gnolls are no problem

[$CRWD]

Originally posted by Midas:

Sure, but everything I said still applied. Back in Vanilla wow, tanks couldn't just casually hold aggro to everything, healers couldn't mass heal indefinitely, DPS classes all had different roles and brought different CC to a fight, and even a basic group of enemies required some coordination and planning. Had to have the rogue sap something, or the hunter trap something, had to have everyone make sure they were hitting the tank's target so they didn't pull off them, had to minimize damage to the group because the healer would burn out if they had to heal anything else. Basically all of that is gone from the game now and was traded off to make the difficulty and the experience more consistent.

Your first point certainly doesn't. In your mind, you read my point as pertaining to the homogenization and dumbing-down of WoW content, when my point was specifically about a feature, which is frankly, not strictly tied to WoW. WoW was just a convenient example.

When difficulty modes are a function of mechnically different fights, rather than additional stats, or roll advantages, that is a sign of excellent, and thoughtful game development. That shows devs actually *care* about the challenge they offer to players. It's not added there simply for the sake of having it - it's *meaningful*.

[pirate135246]

cloud of daggers + grease on the high ground to force them into it

[Midas]

Originally posted by Pietro:

Originally posted by Midas:

Sure, but everything I said still applied. Back in Vanilla wow, tanks couldn't just casually hold aggro to everything, healers couldn't mass heal indefinitely, DPS classes all had different roles and brought different CC to a fight, and even a basic group of enemies required some coordination and planning. Had to have the rogue sap something, or the hunter trap something, had to have everyone make sure they were hitting the tank's target so they didn't pull off them, had to minimize damage to the group because the healer would burn out if they had to heal anything else. Basically all of that is gone from the game now and was traded off to make the difficulty and the experience more consistent.

Your first point certainly doesn't. In your mind, you read my point as pertaining to the homogenization and dumbing-down of WoW content, when my point was specifically about a feature, which is frankly, not strictly tied to WoW. WoW was just a convenient example.

When difficulty modes are a function of mechnically different fights, rather than additional stats, or roll advantages, that is a sign of excellent, and thoughtful game development. That shows devs actually *care* about the challenge they offer to players. It's not added there simply for the sake of having it - it's *meaningful*.

The point is that feature only exists in wow BECAUSE they started dumbing it down. Heroic dungeons and class/dungeon standardizing were both things that came with BC. Even then, the dungeon difficulties still aren't actually 'difficulties' in the conventional sense. You don't jump straight into mythic ungeared because you want a challenge, you do it because you've already geared up in heroic and need better gear. It's just a way to recycle the dungeons so they can be part of endgame progression. So doing Mythic with heroic gear is no more meaningful than doing heroic with regular gear.

[Vexillarius]

If you sneak up on the gnoll leader you can connect with its tad pole and make it fight against it's buddies. Then you can make it eat itself.

[Userfriendly]

I’ve had the most success here by splitting up my team. Usually a ranged or casting team of two up on the high ground. And then two melee fighters on the low ground will ambush from behind once the battle begins. I generally try to hold the choke point but if they make some headway, I’ll retreat back down the hill and make them spend their actions dashing.

I’ve been taking them on at level 3 on tactician. Definitely challenging but I find this one to be a really fun fight in Act 1.

[Nomad]

Originally posted by Aramada:

it's a tough encounter if you leave the hunters alive for too long, make sure to approach them from an angle that you can get close first and try and take them out quickly, the non-hunter gnolls are no problem

Exactly. The hunters are the real threat in this fight and it is possible to sneak up the hill undetected and assassinate at least one of them before the fight even begins. There was a gnoll encounter before this too where he should have learned that the Gnoll Hunters will break you badly if you leave them alive. If the OP is STILL leaving the hunters alive for too long even after that first gnoll encounter then thats on him.

[Darwin]

Why come here? Go get a level!

[❃ Galiäna Krüger ❃]

Huh they easy though... always check your enemy with T to see their info tool tip make sure you're not doing ineffective attacks.

[Nomad]

Originally posted by ❃ Galiäna Krüger ❃:

Huh they easy though... always check your enemy with T to see their info tool tip make sure you're not doing ineffective attacks.

You can easily lose to them if you leave the hunters alive and kill the melee gnolls and hyenas first. If you kill the hunters first then its pretty easy.