Tyrant-Old Faith: Mid to Late Game party composition

[JuanMi]

Wanted to hear out some opinions on how to handle party composition at this point of the game. I'm currently in the middle of Third Act, trying to manage party composition and flex spots.

Hoping you guys could give me a piece of your mind on pros and cons on different options.

So currently, I'm mainly using the following heroes:

- Champion/Defender: Mordred, Black Knight, Red Knight

Using Mordred as he's mandatory for most Main Quests, though damage-wise, I'm not impressed. He's a rather good tank though, and brings some CC with this lightning-based spells. He can get huge physical and mental debuff which is proving useful against hose pesky Sidhe fog warriors.

Black Knight and Red Knight are flex spots. Black Knight deals out impressive damage and can stun, but his resrictive AP movement doesn't mesh well with his front-line role in the party.

Red Knight has been decent, but unimpressive so far.

- Sage/Vanguard: Guinevere, Balin, Boudicea, Tegyr

Guinevere is definitely S-tier for me. She can buff, teleport, chill, reduce cooldowns and deal decent damage. Doesn't have counterattack, though.

Balin has great mobility, disses out amazing backstab damage, recovers APs on kill...only con is he's rather fragile and I haven't exploited his trap and hide/rogue abilites that much. Has counterattack.

Boudicea is a couple of tiers below the other two, but is more durable, has a long range attack and is a good replacement when the other are in the Cathedral/Hospice.

Tegyr would be up there with Balin but my morality choices reflect on his loyalty. He's way more than decent when needed, nevertheless, bringing mobility and damage.

- Arcanist: Merlin, Morgana

Merlin might not have that many CC resources (mainly Mind Fog and Copy, which are still mildly effective) but his Fire damage and DoT fire damage is still amazing to me, and brings a lot of AoE options to the table. Having shield armor at the beginning of the duel and teleport for mobility makes him extremely useful for me.

Morgana has better CC than Merlin with her ice spells, and while her damage output might not be in par with Merlin's, it's still very good. Her mobility suffers for lack of teleport, though.

- Marksman: N/A

- Party composition options:

All in all, I'm trying to bring at least one tank to the party, with two vanguards/sages and one arcanist.

So an ideal party would be composed of:

- Party 1: Mordred, Guinevere, Balin, Morgana/Merlin

Can't really dedice on whether Morgana or Merlin is the better option at this point.

I have also thought about brining a second arcanist to the fray instead of the second Vanguard, but can't decide wheter to keep Guinevere for the extra CC/Buff or Balin for pure damage:

- Party 2: Mordred, Guinevere/Balin, Morgana, Merlin

I've also been trying to have two tanks to keep enemies at bay while the other two deliver the pain from long distance, but yet here I'm not sure if I want two straight arcanist, or one arcanist+one sage/vanguard. Something like:

- Party 3.1: Mordred, Black Knight, Morgana, Merlin
- Party 3.2, Mordred, Black Knight, Guinevere/Balin, Morgana/Merlin

Thoughts and opinions are appreciated.

Thanks ya'll.

[Thicc Mittens]

I haven't really used most of the knights you're using, so can't really comment on those, but for my own Tyrant/Old Faith playthrough I used:

Mordred: tanking and crowd control with some ok ranged damage.

Black Knight: damage dealer and off-tank (via regain armour on kill).

Sir Dagonet: crowd control and debuffer, very quickly getting the whole battlefield cursed into near uselessness and grinding down groups with AoE DoT.

Morgawse: also crowd control and debuffer via mass shock and multiple stuns, with some area damage.

In short, Dagonet, Morgawse and Mordred quickly debuffed the entire battlefield so they were barely able to do anything (slowed, stunned, and with reduced AP from shock) and weren't much good with the attacks they did get off (weakness vs good armour/block), while Mordred held their attention and Black Knight murdered them all (Dagonet and Morgawse also contributed a lot of damage over time, just not in as big bursty numbers as BK).

In long:

Mordred started most battles with a shield charge in to draw enemy attention and knock down someone vaguely significant (if I had a choice, and later most enemies of significance ignored knock down) or just the closest convenient enemy. Sometimes I'd wait til second round to let the enemies gather up a bit before he went in. He'd then drop either a Chain Lightning to hit back rank archers or apply shock to heavier front line enemies, or a Thunderbolt to a key target to get them hurt and stunned. Stigma whenever it was recharged to strip armour as much as for Vulnerability. I had him with a relic making him always face the enemy attacks and I think one to reduce incoming armour break, so he rarely ever got hurt. He also had enough debuff resist to shrug off most stuns etc.

Morgawse would drop a Thunderstorm down to cover as much of the enemy forces as possible (possibly not directly if she could position it somewhere they'd have to move into to get to us), and raise an Ice Shield to keep herself safe from stray arrows etc. She'd also Thunderbolt a key target, especially if she could one-shot them since that'd get it recharged instantly for a second use. Chain Lightning for similar purposes to Mordred. I didn't use Ice Wall much until late game, when I mostly used it to help bottleneck or freeze enemies. Generally within the first turn or two she had everyone under the Shock debuff, reducing their AP, and dealt consistent if not earth-shattering damage over the course of the battle, whilst rarely being in any danger herself.

Dagonet would start by dropping a Slow to hinder one significant grouping of melee-based enemies, and a Desecreated Ground to hit a different grouping (ideally in a choke point, but sometimes in the back ranks to deal with archers/casters), Stigma for armour strip and vulnerability on hard targets, plus bleed curse somebody ranged to weaken their attacks. With his cooldown reduction mechanic, he'd often cycle more than one of those in a turn - the goal was as many Desecrated Grounds as possible. Death Hex was applied when there was a big target that I reckoned my damage dealers could burst down before it wore off (or sometimes just to trigger that cooldown reduction mechanic). I almost never used his Force Bolt, relying almost exclusively on his hexes (and I took all the hex intensity upgrades and gear I could).

Black Knight would cover whatever ground Mordred couldn't, usually open with an Earth Shaker to get a kill or two to get the damage buffs started, take a few hits to get him raging, and proceed to rampage through the now largely useless enemy ranks. He stayed alive via armour-on-kill items. At one point I had him with an axe that on kill would teleport him to the nearest enemy within 8 tiles which was great for reducing downtime, but I eventually dropped that due to how often he'd end up in the middle of Dagonet's Desecrated Ground (which was often the only actual damage he took during the fight - most enemies were too debuffed or stunned to get past his armour). He was a bit prone to stuns, but eventually I got his debuff resist up enough to at least allow one attack while recovering. I never really exploited the whole AP-on-kill tactic, or the cheesier stuff like attacking my own ice walls for kills, so he wasn't quite the murder machine some people's champions or vanguards are, but he still smashed face good.


My backups were Morgana to stand in for Dagonet or Morgawse, Red Knight to stand in for Mordred, and Sir Brunor or Tristan to stand in for Black Knight. It was rare anyone got injured though (3 or 4 missions across the whole game I think) so I didn't use them often. I don't think BK missed a single mission once I got him (maybe one? not certain). Morgana was pretty great the few times I used her - that glacial spike did great single target damage and her AoE damage and debuff/cc worked nicely.

Prior to unlocking those characters, I had Ector as my mage (early game, mostly using Slow and Force Bolt knockback to keep key big boy targets from ever reaching me), Balin or Tristan for damage, and whoever I felt like trying out in the third slot. I used Mordred every mission except when he got injuries from story choices.

[JuanMi]

I see this working. It's an innovative approach indeed, as most of videos and opinions have Dagonet as a rather low tier, focusing only on hexes and no much else, but I can see the synergy here.

Too bad I killed the poor man in his recruiting mission... :=)

Have to agree with Ector, until you get Merlin/Morgawse/Morgana, that man was always a lock in my party.

[Siccario]

Mordred, Kay, Morgawse, Morgana

You have basically 2 tanks, since Morgawse can tank some and freeze. Yeah, at the start she can go right next to the biggest ugliest fomorian, freeze him and he wont fight back. Also with proper chill/freeze bonus items she does very nice dmg, getting kills rdy for Kay.

Mordred doesnt do much, except crowd control with chain lightning/thunderbolt + can be used to finish off stuff with culling hits, which is unconvenient for Kay to reach.

Kay....is Kay. DPS

Morgana freezes, chills, hexes, icewalls.

[ec928]

I'm old faith rightful but this team works for both, especially if you like mages:

Mordred - tank
Ector - hexer (top hero, but would have swapped him with Sir Dagonet if I could)
Merlin - damage
Morgana - damage, hexer, and defense using ice walls. But you either need the remove trait book to be in the same party as Ector or just use Sir Dagonet instead of him

This team does very well with hexes and spells. I don't even need a defensive tank because of the hexes. In fact, if I had gone old faith tyrant, I'd seriously consider booting Mordred and replacing him Sir Dagonet. 3 heroes that can cast Death Hex and have the Mindstorm passive is going to be powerful

[Spitz6860]

did you already get rid of Tristan? I would give him Tegyr's spot if you haven't, once you unlock third rank skills and lower his basic attack from 4 ap to 3, he outperforms both Tegyr and Balin imo. He would also get your Isolde, who's a nice backup when Guinevere gets injured.
I would also give a spot to a marksman like Sir Bors, their damage get pretty decent with end game gear pieces.

[Saeko]

I play on Hard, with Mordred, Balin, Morgana & boudicea.

On side i use Dagonet & black knight & Morgawse

[holy-death]

You could consider using Gawain.

His main problem is the lack of strict dedicated Armour-recovery skill (Taunt -> Armour Bait doesn't really count), but this can be mitigated to a degree with Shield Block and Hardened Armour, which you want for a tank anyway. Throw an item that gives Armour per kill and you'll be set. All other points can be thrown into pure damage.

That said, Gawain and Red Knight seem to compete with each other for the spot of damage-dealing tank and Red Knight is perhaps the best character for a bleed-oriented build.

He also has Recuperate that can be combined with Vigilance and any "When attacked gain +X% damage per turn" item AND he can make use of items that give Armour when he heals X amount of HP, thanks to Unyielding -> Ruthlessness.

So all in all it comes down to preference.