Mephistopheles fight as Aeon

[dubs]

Ok, what the hell ? What is the purpose of this encounter ?
I'm on normal and I can't beat him. Dispells don't work, nothing works.
inb4 "hire a skald" or "you need this build for your companions". I repeat, I am playing on normal, I shouldn't need core or above strats.

[Dragon Master]

hilburnashua の投稿を引用：

Dragon Master の投稿を引用：

35 seems high to me. I've been playing on normal to help learn the game mechanics.

Seelah has a fully upgraded radiant sword, I buff her with +6 strength bracers and +4 con and dex belt, I use the divine weapon bond and bless weapon spells for her.

My go-to buff spells, since I'm playing as a cleric, are death ward, shield of faith, protection from energy, protection from arrows, communal bull, bear, communal true-sight, communal stone-skin, and the azata spells.

EDIT: Seelah does use smite evil as well.

You are missing Greater Heroism. + 4 to your attack, saves and skill checks. Or Heroic Invocation, no bonus to saves but you get +4 to damage. Both morale bonuses so they don't stack. If you have the succubus in your party, have her use Instant Enemy on Meph, then use Ranger's Bond ability to give the rest of the party a +4 (untyped so it stacks with everything) on attack/ damage rolls, if have been stacking her favored enemy ability. Also, remember those cooking bonuses from camping. Remember Seelah has access to Divine Favor spell, that is a luck bonus on attack rolls and you can cast it as a swift action if you have either Sorcerous Reflex or even a lesser quickening rod.

If he is throwing around a lot of AoE fire spells, consider using party members that have access to evasion ability.

Finally beat him.

Used Me (cleric of Nethys), Seelah, Woljif, Arushalae, Nenio and Ember.

Seelah and I absorbed the hits, Nenio was crowd control, Arushale, Wojif and Ember were damage.

[RedwoodElf]

24 hour duration Cave Fangs Plus Mark of Justice can power down just about anything, IIRC. Or does your Ember not have Extended Spells?

[Icedfate]

doesn't cave fangs need to be used outside of combat to set it up? does this fight allow you to do that?

as for +35 ab. i'm not gonna say that's "low". it could be higher.

my seelah has +39 walking around, but that's not fully buffed with everything

she has
beb +18
strength +10 (from conflagrant taco, bull strength, shy liliy helmet a profane bonus)
luck +1 (windfall) a belt i found, but a +6 strength belt would probably do the same job. would overwrite the bull strength though)
enhancement +4 (radiance)
morale +4 (heroic invocation)
other +2 weapon focus longsword, mythic weapon focus
in battle , hasted would be anither +1

it "could" be +80. . .
when you see those screenshots people post, it's because they put guarded hearth, touch of madness and true strike on themself but i don't think that true strike technically "counts" because true strike is only for 1 attack and then it goes away.

in addition, there's bonuses you get in combat like the smites and outflanking.




but the only reason i chimed in is because OP says they are playing as an aeon and being an aeon myself, i figured i could contribute.

my toon is a 15 demonslayer / 2 sohei / 1 hex channeler

and i have +48 while dual wielding estocs
bab +17
+5 enhancement (night flash estoc) (i actually have finger freezer light macein the offhand)
dexterity +12 (+6 dex from belt, +4 from tacos, +2 human, +2 vellexia amulet)
morale +4 from heroic
+1 from weapon focus (no mythic, i'm not even optimized. . .)
+4 from ring of triumphant advance. i just found this in the DLC midnight isles, it "doubles" all morale bonuses
i also took mythic 2 weapon fighting, so that's technically +2, but it's really just cancelling out the -2 dual wielding penalty for a net 0

actually. . .it's 43 walking around. . .would be 44 with haste, i have a cloak that grants permanent haste to everyone in a 30' radius and inflicts slow on the enemies if they fail their saves.

the aeon gaze is another +4
then there's the aeon bane

and then i have outflank

my build is suboptimal
any enemy with less than 60 AC is gonna go down in seconds to my attacks.

this is the reason i chimed in and asked if OP is "using" the aeon gaze and the aeon bane.

OP specifically says they are playing on normal, struggling and doesn't want to learn to use "core strats", so i (perhaps mistakenly) inferred from that , that OP hasn't learned to use all the tools in the toolbox.

i suspect normal mode lets you get away with it for the majorityof the game, you could probably get through without having to learn to use buffs or optimize your gear.

but then bigshot OP informs me that they "know all that" already, so then if they know about all the tools, i dunno why they are struggling on normal mode. . .

[Wither]

I think they 'upgrade' mops and bosses so the fight doesn't feel trivial, unless you play kineticist. Take the goat man at act 4, for example, in my angel run he hit me with 44 DC overwhelming presence, after stripping all buff. With his initiative of 33, it is impossible to do anything but savescum until you roll NAT 20 on save.
My KC even had that ring that make you immune to mind-effect condition, and it does ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ through out the game. Hold Person, Confuse, Charm, everything hit him like he has negative Will save.

[Icedfate]

i did run into some DC 40 saves and i also wonder how is the player supposed to pass those, when their classes only give between 6-12 even at level 20, so all the rest has to come from gear and stats or take feats.
i hate wasting a feat slot on +2 to a single saving throw, but i always end up eventually taking iron will for everyone. all my animals have iron will and greater iron will because their will saves are garbage and i have +6 cloaks of resistance on everyone (the cloaks came from the midnight isle DLC vendor chaplain), except seelah has this weird cloak i found that "skins" the enemy when they fail their saves.
i learned that seelah's bestow grace works on herself, stacking with her own bonuses, she she has like +40 on every save, but nobody else in my party is "good"(filthy neutrals, you dunno where they stand), so it doesn't work on them, they all have in the mid 20's.
i'll take a +x to saves over some other effect

[RedwoodElf]

Cave Fangs CAN be used out of combat to set up traps, but you can also put it right under an enemy's feet IN combat and it will go off immediately. The extended version is 24 hours, and you can trigger one "Trap" per 10 minutes of duration. That's 144 traps. And it's a FREE action to place the traps, so you can spam all 144 of those traps in the same round you cast the spell.

Mark of Justice removes the target's DR for the rest of the team. So Cave Fangs would do its full damage with every trap. There are few things in the game that can take what, 288 D8 Damage?

[Icedfate]

i didn't know that. . i thought you could only take 1 swift action per round. that seems broken to be able to take 144 swift actions all at once.
i actually took this combo with nenio, but haven't tried using it yet


edit : i just tried it and yeah, in rtwp, you're only limited by how fast you can click. but who can click 144 times / second?

[Baldurs_Gate_2]

Wither の投稿を引用：

I think they 'upgrade' mops and bosses so the fight doesn't feel trivial, unless you play kineticist. Take the goat man at act 4, for example, in my angel run he hit me with 44 DC overwhelming presence, after stripping all buff. With his initiative of 33, it is impossible to do anything but savescum until you roll NAT 20 on save.
My KC even had that ring that make you immune to mind-effect condition, and it does ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ through out the game. Hold Person, Confuse, Charm, everything hit him like he has negative Will save.

You can just spam mass creeping doom before hepza, protect em with protection from energy communal, so they don't die against the mobs there. Equip Clemency of Shadows ring, so a spider spawns when summons die.

44 DC is pretty ok. Nocticula's Seductive Presence has a 59 Fortitude DC.

[Icedfate]

hepzamirah fight, you don't have to kill the adds, just focus her down. on core, hepza only has 41 AC.
baphomet just shoot him with a midnight bolt and the fight ends immediately. doesn't matter that he automatically dispels everyone. .
yeah, the only problem is if everyone fails their save, but as long as one person can move, and i assume they need to be able to equip a ranged weapn, but not sure, they can just use the bolt, unless you used them all or got rid of them for some reason.
even if you're not going for the secret ending, you can still do this anyway.

although, i almost forgot and just started fighting him and my team took him down halfway before i realized, oh yeah, i forgot, i'm supposed to use the bolt. .
hepzamirah though, that was insane , she attacked my AC 67 leopard and was like
hit 97
hit 97
hit 97
crit 394 leopard died
switches to AC 62 wolf
hit 97
hit 97
hit 97
wolf died

and i look at the combat log and she's getting +57 AB on the first hit and then +71 on each additional attack and i'm like WTF.

but given her glass cannon AC, i was able to just burst her down and then the others ran away and then the cutscene ensued .

actually , i'm not sure how my party resisted baphomet, at least, i mean, 2 of us resisted, seelah and my Mc, despite us only having mid 20's and since he dispels all our buffs before the battle automatically,


ediit : i just realized my MC is immune because aeon, lol. .



edit 2 : just gonna stick the needle in a bit more on OP, because again, going back to the "i can't dispel mephisto's buffs" and thenadvice i gave was "check your aeon abilities" and the response i got was "that's too generic, you have contributed nothing".

well, okay then.
i just reached ML 7 and there's a level 5 aeon spell "Zero Sum" attempts to dispel EVERYTHING with +10 to the CL check, if you still can't dispel the buffs with a uber dispel spell that gets +10 then I dunno what else to say.
but of course OP clearly stated that they know all the tools available to them and obviously know something i don't which determined that this spell is completely worthless so i guess i'll just show myself out.


edit 3 : even better. .at ML 8, aeon spell 6th lvl, freezing nothingness if the target fails the save it is paralyzed, but even if it succeeds, it becomes entangled and. . ."cannot cast spells"! that would solve the issue of the boss tossing 6 spells at you per round

[sbudy]

FunkyMonkey の投稿を引用：

This fight made me quit my Azata playthrough :D Didin't feel like continuing after only thing that worked against him was "Kill all enemies" on Toybox...

I was very close to that, even though I've used the kill all button ("Thra'axfyl the Ambitious, I command you to DIE!"). Instead I've reverted my review for the game and blasted the poor balance. Childish, I know. That fight on core was actually harder than the final boss fight (both the standard fight and the secret ending one (spoiler) At least Baphomet and Deskari were too arrogant to spam summons, plus Areelu killed both for me)

[Zzyl_tsw]

sbudy の投稿を引用：

FunkyMonkey の投稿を引用：

This fight made me quit my Azata playthrough :D Didin't feel like continuing after only thing that worked against him was "Kill all enemies" on Toybox...

I was very close to that, even though I've used the kill all button ("Thra'axfyl the Ambitious, I command you to DIE!"). Instead I've reverted my review for the game and blasted the poor balance. Childish, I know. That fight on core was actually harder than the final boss fight (both the standard fight and the secret ending one (spoiler) At least Baphomet and Deskari were too arrogant to spam summons, plus Areelu killed both for me)

I am still wondering if some "balance patch" mixed it up, because the figth seems way harder than it was when i won it a year or so ago (on azata path, "daring difficulty", so not uber difficulty)

[forkofspite]

Zzyl_tsw の投稿を引用：

I am still wondering if some "balance patch" mixed it up, because the figth seems way harder than it was when i won it a year or so ago (on azata path, "daring difficulty", so not uber difficulty)

I can't verify that it's been ramped up, but in version 1.1.x, it certainly did not live up to an enemy worth 1,179,648 xp.

I've linked this before, but might as well for this thread, too. In version 1.1.x, the Aeon version of Meph had a 51 AC on Core difficulty, so yeah, it has probably been ramped up a bit. That 51 AC includes failing a save against a slow effect.

The combat starts at about 16:20 in the linked video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H13e9OuP730&list=PLRgit1BuilmuWNW5i1AZ427-WH2ca3AGm&index=193

[Icedfate]

i thought this was an aeon only fight. didn't know Azata also has to(gets to?) fight him.

i finally got up to it and Mephistopheles, he has 75 AC in core.


my aeon MC has 48 AB fully buffed and yet, something i did enabled me to hit him and when i was attacking it said i only needed a 2 to hit him. ( i probably caught him flatfooted)
I used the aeon gaze, ..as i advised OP to do. that gave me an extra +5.
I also used aeon bane. and my MC went first before anyone else. i used charge and only got to hit him once but i got him and dispelled 3 buffs, knocking his ac down to 65.
i had Lann use guarded hearth, which added another +10 to the party attack bonuses from his wisdom so my MC now had 63 AB to mephistophelese 65 AC


then mephisto took his turn and a zillion archers and hellhounds appeared and all took their turn at that moment.
all of them shot at my MC, who has 62 AC, was levels 16 demonslayer/ 2 sohei/ 1 witch hex channeler from archmage armor, barkskin, shield of faith etc. .
i had casted mage armor on myself which is +4+another 8 from archmage armoe, the barkskin was +5 shield of faith another +5, the monk dip allows both WIS and DEX on there, my 2 highest stats. the cooking bonus from tacos, bull strength, cat grace ETC. .

)i walked around just outside on the map until a random encounter appeared and rested and put pretty much every buff i could on my party)

every enemy devils (not the dogs) dog piled MC and missed most of the attacks but a few connected and i barely survived.

the hellhounds did 0 damage because we had resist fire.
then it was our turn. seelah used mark of justice. nenio used weird and killed all the adds.
arue used instant enemy and then the ranger bond to share it with the party.

daeran. i had daeran use heal on MC

i had 4 pets, a leopard, raptor, wolf, and that dumb triceratops that bugged out and is still level 9 for some reason.

round 2, my aeon dual wielding had 8 attacks and got him with all 8 attacks.

then it was his turn and he summoned the same zillion guys again and they all did the same thing dogpiled MC but mostly missed. the hellhounds breathed and did nothing.

seelah charged at meph, nenio used weird again, lann and arue shot him down and my pets finished him off.

what helped was crusader's edge on all my melees and pets and my aeon bane dispelled his buffs, nenio was spamming weird to kill all the enemies.

almost a million xp bumped us to level 20

[forkofspite]

Icedfate の投稿を引用：

i thought this was an aeon only fight. didn't know Azata also has to(gets to?) fight him.

Yes, but I'm not that far, yet. If I make it that far, it wouldn't surprise me if that's where the game ends.

As for the Aeon run in version 1.1, we had a surprise round (no idea why), and killed Meph before his first action.

[Zzyl_tsw]

forkofspite の投稿を引用：

Icedfate の投稿を引用：

i thought this was an aeon only fight. didn't know Azata also has to(gets to?) fight him.

Yes, but I'm not that far, yet. If I make it that far, it wouldn't surprise me if that's where the game ends.

As for the Aeon run in version 1.1, we had a surprise round (no idea why), and killed Meph before his first action.

Now that you mention it, i do remember my party starting the fight (instead of Mephisto OSing my full party before i can move), so there might have been indeed a surprise round. Plus Aivu's caster level was 30 sth at the time, so it was 'easy" to dispell Mephisto's buffs.

I am not 100% sure the fight is mandatory for azata, because there were several perception checks and choices (and perhaps some quests along the way) leading to fighting Mephisto. Not sur what happens if you avoid these choices.