Annoying Shar fight

[ff.hake]

Need some advice with that one stupid fight in Act 3 against Shar folks in a House of Grief. Everyone just casts darkness around my party members and of course enemies are immune to it while everyone in my party is pretty much useless (great design, gotta cheese another fight I guess?).

Daylight only helps once a turn and I don't have that many uses of it anyway, some suggestions?

[wendigo211]

When I fought it, I used a hasted Gale with the Bloodlust Elixir and the Ring you got in Act 2 from Nathaniel that gives you immunity to blindness. Just had him drop fireballs until every Sharran was dead.

[Sleepy Sylvie]

I'm not sure if it was intentional, I doubt that it was, but when I did the fight, I had started the dialog with Shadowheart, switched to Astarion and walked behind Shar and just kept backstabbing her. for some reason, she, nor anyone else agro'd so it was an ez kill

[Glyph]

Retreat into the corridor you came in from to bottleneck everyone at the door. Makes the fight way more manageable.

[Zok]

silence, flame wall and insect swarm worked very well for me. Equipment that makes you immune to blindness helps, too and i think devil vision ignores darkness.

[Splicer]

What I did was move everyone up the stairs and casted wall of fire at the end. NPCS just walk through it taking major damage. Also radiant damage does more damage to the Shar worshippers (except Viconia, she's immune to it).

[Dread Swoop]

Since the gimmick of the fight is that most of the enemies are vulnerable to Radiant damage (at least on Balanced), I'd recommend using Shadowheart's Spirit Guardians at the highest up-cast you can. Anyone who gets close to her is gonna get torched, so you can either fall back to the stairs to form a chokepoint so the melee cultists all get burnt up, or send her charging to kill as many as quickly as possible. I opted for the stairs strategy and it worked pretty well.

Just be careful not to hit Viconia with it, though, her damage reflection is nasty with that effect. Plus she's much less dangerous in her wolf form.

[Mr.Gold]

Originally posted by Zok:

silence, flame wall and insect swarm worked very well for me. Equipment that makes you immune to blindness helps, too and i think devil vision ignores darkness.

Silence is legit the best way against most of these encounters. I don't know why people never use it.

[Yaldabaoth]

Run back up the stairs, slap them with aoe when they follow. Bonus points for leaving a few smokepowder barrels.
If you don't have them, grease bottles. Fire walls and/or blade barrier are also op.

[Yasahi]

Rogue/Ranger Astarion with +8 Initiative going first, chucking down a Haste potion and having Elixir of Bloodlust active will just BRRRRT the fight (like any other fight pretty much) using Arrow of Many Targets.

Enemies can't cast Darkness or anything else for that matter if they're dead. Going first in this game is worth more than many other things that you can get from elixirs and feats. Elixir of Vigilance helps the low dex characters like Gale not be a slowpoke.

As for Darkness, Warlocks love it. One of the Eldritch powers allows you to see even in magical darkness so you'll have advantage in most situations. Paladin/Warlock will wreck them all in House of Grief. You can also find a helmet in the Foundry that gives you the ability to see in magical darkness.

[Dornan]

As other people said, place your people in the corridor on the stairs. Use somebody quick (Astarion for example) to trigger the fight and retreat. The enemies will run after you with the same speed and gather in the corridor in big amounts, becoming an easy target for any AOE. Spam them with disabling effects and damage (fireball, line of lightning etc.) and they will die in no time.

[ff.hake]

Thank you for suggestions, I beat them on the 2nd try unintentionally though which really caught me off guard ... apologies for wasting everyone's time.

As for the fight, I froze the whole place with a scroll and setup cloudkill halfway through, and that alone cut their efficiency by half to say the least, allowing me to more safely scatter party members around the place to limit the effectiveness of darkness.

Perhaps I need to change my attitude but some of those boss fights feel so unfair that they are not fun, especially at the beginning of each encounter (githyanki patrol, bhaal "test" ambush, etc.).

[Rappeldrache]

Originally posted by Glyph:

Retreat into the corridor you came in from to bottleneck everyone at the door. Makes the fight way more manageable.

Done the same ... and cast Fire-Wall and Posion-Cloud on the stairs ......

[Gilmund]

Originally posted by ff.hake:

Thank you for suggestions, I beat them on the 2nd try unintentionally though which really caught me off guard ... apologies for wasting everyone's time.

As for the fight, I froze the whole place with a scroll and setup cloudkill halfway through, and that alone cut their efficiency by half to say the least, allowing me to more safely scatter party members around the place to limit the effectiveness of darkness.

Perhaps I need to change my attitude but some of those boss fights feel so unfair that they are not fun, especially at the beginning of each encounter (githyanki patrol, bhaal "test" ambush, etc.).

I used Shadowheart's Spirit Guardians too and a few wizard icy/fire area spells.
Laezel was focused to down quickly the two-handed.
I've started with the low-hp novices then the two-handed. Darkness is annoying but no big deal, it's no damage from te casters.
That fight was very fun to play, Easier than the Lorroakan fight.

[Ramen]

Cloud of daggers(?) and radius attacks works wonders. The path the ai follows will most times lead into your pathway, if they're not using ranged abilities. Spirit Guardians is an OP ability to get rid of some enemies trying to gang up on you. Really like everyone else said: Projectiles , AOEs, and gear/abilities help out immensely.

[eric2572]

Easiest way to cheese the fight:
1. Summon familiar, pick raven
2. Have the Raven fly to Viconia
3. Peck her until she dies, a fight won't trigger
4. Everyone will just be sad and let your party walk right through, they won't attack