how to beat cazador?

[heime2003]

i keep dying. he regenerates his health and does incredible fire/lightning damage. any strategy?

[northernwater]

There are many strategies. Most resolve around massive melee damage. You will get a bunch of those answers and I'm sure there is a ton of videos.

My strategy uses casters. Cast Daylight. When he is in the daylight lock him down with Flesh to Stone. It works for me but you have to understand Spell Save DC and Concentration to make it work. If you don't it won't work.

I also let most of them come to me so they bottle neck at the foot of the stairs and then use AOE on his groupies. A cleric with Spirit Guardians is very useful. I also never try and save the spawn.

[seeker1]

Tip one. Vampires hate sunlight, and especially Daylight.

Tip two. They are vulnerable to anything that harms the undead.

Tip three. Do stuff that reduces your vulnerability to spells, and hit him with things that interfere with regeneration.

[MachineGod]

Kill him

[Banelord]

I just kept stunning him with my 3 rogue 9 monk. Actually went really easy with my Cloud giant strength and 18 DEX.

[northernwater]

Be careful if he lives too long and the Spawn are still alive he can transcend in the battle. It has never happened to me but I have seen it happen on video. I also never take Astarion because he will be taken from you

[seeker1]

Yep, if you bring Astarion,

You will have about 3 turns to save him - the help action will unbind him from where's being held in place - before the ascension ritual consumes him and ascends Cazador.

If you brought him, releasing him from his bound state needs to be priority one.

P.S. personally, I find this easier with a party of six. Just saying.

[northernwater]

Originally posted by seeker1:

Tip three. Do stuff that reduces your vulnerability to spells, and hit him with things that interfere with regeneration.

Having at least one caster with Counterspell will shut him and his caster down pretty hard. Two stops them cold.

So a corollary to your tip would be, make sure you are careful and that you have spell slots available for Counterspell.

[seeker1]

The other great passive reaction spell defense, which doesn't even use spell slots, is of course, also having Psionic Backlash and Psionic Dominance.

[Traveller]

Just ♥♥♥♥ him like a useless twink he is. Smh.

[northernwater]

Oh, and if you use Counterspell make sure understand how it works regarding lvls. There is a bug in the log where if you do counter with a spell lower than the cast spell it may succeed or may fail depending on some mysterious Saving Throw you never see in the log. Best bet is to always counter with equal or greater.

[The Yeen Queen]

Originally posted by northernwater:

Be careful if he lives too long and the Spawn are still alive he can transcend in the battle. It has never happened to me but I have seen it happen on video. I also never take Astarion because he will be taken from you

If you go assist Astarion ASAP, you'll have him back and ruin the ritual. Not having him denies a pretty emotionally loaded cut scene.

[The Yeen Queen]

Originally posted by TheArmoredTitan:

Kill him

Originally posted by Traveller:

Just ♥♥♥♥ him like a useless twink he is. Smh.

I don't know if people who reply like this think they're being funny or if they're just unhelpful ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ or both.

[Morgian]

You can safely bring Astarion to the fight. But you leave him on the stairs when triggering it, out of range of the cutscene. Once battle starts he can run down and participate.

I recommend wailing on the vampire with the holy mace from the monastery, against which he is very allergic, and which will also cancel his batform. Between that and your melee damage dealers he should be dead fast. That was the point where Lae'zel used her bonus fighter attacks and my monk his ki points to speed him along.
A caster on counterspell duty is probably helpful. Use some of the scrolls you have hoarded like a hamster, if you need to cast offensive spells that would cut into your counterspells. I brought Gale, Shadowheart and a warlock, who was free to use his slots for offense.

You can retreat up the stairs a bit to bottle them up for AE spells, but that depends on how fast and far you can move before being engaged.

[TamTroll]

IIRC, you can have a character stand on the beam of light that emits from any one spawn towards the centre of the battleground, and this will both interrupt the ritual, and give that character a small buff provided by that spawn.

Chasing Cazador down with the blood of lythander is also a good call, as the daylight it emits pulls him out of mist form.

A cleric with Spirit Guardians up is handy against the bats that spawn in too.

[heime2003]

what makes this battle so hard is cazador gains free 15-30 hp each turn which i dont know where is from. and he does 60ish damaging spells that take more than half of hp of my party.
i might give up. too frustrating