"team B" fight in threshold - what the actual fück??

[rumpelstiltskin]

my controllable characters in it are: 3 mercs, which are not present on the map, amber, who i haven't leveled since act 1 (and i don't want to think about her build to level 20 just for one fight), and arushalae, who's actually a semi-decent archer. the allies help a bit, but they take about half of one boss's health before they all die. if the combat ends, they'll respawn, but will die immediately to an aoo when they try to get up.
now, if i buff aru and use one of the mercs' pets (which is present, unlike the mercs themselves), also drop the difficulty to core, i can actually kill the demons.. but not before my ai-controlled caster mc charges into melee with his staff and dies, ending the game. with some foresight i can probably pre-buff him with mirror image, blink, etc, or try putting pits on his path to slow him down, but that fight is so abhorrently bullshît, that i didn't even bother and killed everyone in toybox.
"team B" fights are a terrible idea, owlcat, and team B fights where your uncontrollable caster character is forced into melee are absolutely wtf retarded. seriously, just fire the person whose idea that was.

[LordSith]

Team B fights are not "bad" if you have some warning such as to avoid exactly what you have: underleveld character, and not enough.

Let's not speak about the uselessness of the npc.

[seeker1]

So I have to admit I also don't quite get how it "allocates" your team B members. At one point, I had about 10 companions and 5 mercs.

5 went inside with me to thresh. 5 were outside on "team B". None of my mercs were there when the battle starts. I don't freaking get it? Why not at least one? I can understand not all but why not one to round out team B to 6? Come on, you mooks, bail on me when I need you most...

But yes, forewarned is forearmed, if you stopped levelling a companion, be aware you might suddenly need them for team B. It seems to take every companion you didn't take inside and put them on team B, even if you sorta neglected them.

[angrytrex]

It's not sudden. They very explicitly warn you before hand to level and equip your team B. It doesn't make the fight any better though having them equipped because Team B still sux

[rumpelstiltskin]

Originally posted by angrytrex:

It's not sudden. They very explicitly warn you before hand to level and equip your team B. It doesn't make the fight any better though having them equipped because Team B still sux

ha, i reloaded a save, and yes, technically there was a fine-print warning, but that's like saying "haven't you read the EULA?". still, i think team B fights are a bad idea to begin with. they are team B for a reason - i don't care about them. if the designers absolutely want to have one, make it optional. for instance, i can lose it, but then those characters will be dead in the final slides. fine by me. maybe i should have just kicked everyone from team B out for good (i wonder how the game would have handled it).
but that's not even my main gripe with it. my main gripe is forcing my mc caster into melee as an npc. if it's not a bug (caused by having mercs, or whatever), that's definitely the worst design decision in the game, and by no means due to lack of competition.

[seeker1]

BTW, the very first time I went through, there was something weirder. One merc was on my Team A. And suddenly when the Team B fight started, he was also there on Team B. BTW, that was the first and only time I saw a merc in that fight. However, he definitely did not have the special ability to be in two places at once.

As always, it seems to me the team-b allocation algorithm is not making much sense even if working properly, and might have been, or possibly, still bugged.

The team-B fight is low-consequence; even if you lose, it's just an additional encounter for your Team A; but still. And yes, I know you're warned your team B might need to provide backup. But seriously, if you've not been doing shared-XP, I doubt anybody on earth is making sure the characters they left at lvl5 are going to be taken out to lvl to 20, just to provide backup for this one fight ...

[provokastoras]

I only won with team b in normal difficulty.... the fact that they are usually 5 levels lower don't exactly help their chances... well last time lann switched from team a to team b so gafrey can join team a, he almost carried the fight until my ally, terendelev killed him (along with the rest of my group with a wail of the banshee... good thing you don't loose the game if you loose the fight.

[rumpelstiltskin]

Originally posted by seeker1:

The team-B fight is low-consequence; even if you lose, it's just an additional encounter for your Team A; but still.

well for me losing was a game-over, since my mc was an npc in that battle, who always charged headstrong into the fray.

[seeker1]

That's a bug, definite, 100%. I've now had that three times, and weird ♥♥♥♥ happened, as I said, but your MC is not supposed to be on Team B. I mean, he's there leading your team A group to the conclusion. Dimension door isn't that strong ...

Conclusion: shock, it's still bugged. Your MC is NOT supposed to be there.

[rumpelstiltskin]

ok then i guess it's not that awful (though still completely unnecessary imo)

[provokastoras]

interestingly enough I am soloing the game atm... and my bench is higher level than ever just by taking them to do their companion quests....
Some companions join you at the MC exp that is: wolfjif, camelia, nenio.... which meant nenio joined me and she was level 7. it really seems that exp share on just steals exp...

[Alacrity]

I felt like they tried to replicate that encounter in DAO's final quest where your remaining companion defend except it's horribly executed. The fact that you don't have any time to prebuff makes it basically impossible on unfair difficulty. You need to metagame it somehow, i.e. change your party several times by swapping out party members to prebuff everyone before triggering the fight and even then it's completely random who you'll get.

[gmwaddington]

Two of my mercenaries' animal companions were allocated to the fight, and ended up winning the battle for me: quite an achievement considering they were simultaneously on their way to the final showdown with Areelu. Meanwhile, Woljif didn't take a single action in the whole fight, Nenio charged a Balor and died, and Regill basically just provoked AoOs.

[Mindeveler]

Yeah, I suppose that battle sucks for caster MCs.

Though in my 2 games I was lucky so far:
1) My MC was mystic theurge legend, but built for melee and fully buffed so the moment when he barged into the camp, enemies' fate was sealed. (Unfair)

2) Solo Kineticist - now, that was suprising. I still had a full party of companions (sitting in the camp) because I took no-one with me and the game simply skipped that battle.
Like, It didn't happen at all.
I was shown a cutscene where demons attack a camp but was never switched to an actual fight.
Still all companions survived and had their endings.

Perhaps - just a guess - that fight happening or not depends on the strength of the camp somehow?
On the one hand, it was full of companions, so quantity-wise it was strong.
On the other hand, all of them were underlevelled (sometimes as low as lvl 3), so quality-wise they were weak.
I'm not sure if any of that had an effect on the game letting me skip that fight, but, well, I was happy it did.

Next time I'll probably try dismissing all the companions (I don't really like any of them anyway) and see how it goes then.

P.S. Now that I think about it, it might be like a very poor man's version of ME2 Suicide mission's "last stand" (where your surviving companions stay behind to hold the ground and their success depends on their strength).

[Gorwe]

Time for SUICIDE! Or "Kill All Enemies" with Toybox /whatever. Really, I don't know why that fight even exists because it is ... meaningless. Nothing depends on it.

[seeker1]

If you lose, the final fight for your MC is harder. If you win, it isn't. That's it. Not much is at stake. You still get epilogues for the companions you left at camp; if they're all dead, presumably somebody surviving resurrected them.

... I now have 4 playthrus, and I got the Team B fight each time, and this was pre-1.2, but all I can say is, each time, Team B fight triggered, and each time ... something was weird and wonky. Sometimes chars were both inside and outside (never my MC though), most times my mercs left behind just weren't there, ... it was always wonky & bugged on who it showed as "left behind".

If they fixed this post 1.2 dunno, all I've played post 1.2 is the DLC itself.