How do you deal with high AC?

[Space Cowboy]

I'm in act 3 and by now I run into enemies which can kill me within seconds but on the other hand can barely be hit due to their high AC (usually around 40). So, how do you deal with that? And how do I get such high AC myself?

[Ignis Imperia]

40 AC in Act 3 is not that high. First off, by now you should have pretty good stats and feat setup. Outflank on every melee, belts to support your attack bonus and damage attributes (strength/dexterity), you have ways of lowering enemy AC (Evil Eye hex from Camellia or Ember), Weapons with enhancement modifier of at least +2, you need to stack buffs a lot (heroism +2, guidance +1 for one roll, bless +1, prayer, true strike, and so on), you have ways to manipulate your and enemy rolls (misfortune/fortune hex, protective luck for defense), you also have ways to target flat-footed AC often, for instance when you trip an enemy or have them fall prone on grease.

You have to really look into your buffs and start properly utilizing them because that's wherea bout 80% of your power will generally come from.

As for casters, they just kind of need spell penetration or you can fully focus on snowball, but you need metamagic feats to keep it relevant. Then you just focus touch AC which is generally significantly lower than normal AC.

[Drake]

Basically use everything you have at disposal. And not just once, don't think just casting one spell is enough, use scrolls, flood the floor wirh CC aoes, have a touch caster target touch AC if it's still too high, overbuff yourself, debuff and dispel mobs.

The game expects you to use your full party of 6.

[mk11]

Sensei true strike buff on rowdy. Rowdy improved mythic vital strike.

[Ignis Imperia]

Originally posted by Drake:

The game expects you to use your full party of 6.

At the very minimum! *

[Space Cowboy]

Originally posted by Ignis Imperia:

40 AC in Act 3 is not that high. First off, by now you should have pretty good stats and feat setup. Outflank on every melee, belts to support your attack bonus and damage attributes (strength/dexterity), you have ways of lowering enemy AC (Evil Eye hex from Camellia or Ember), Weapons with enhancement modifier of at least +2, you need to stack buffs a lot (heroism +2, guidance +1 for one roll, bless +1, prayer, true strike, and so on), you have ways to manipulate your and enemy rolls (misfortune/fortune hex, protective luck for defense), you also have ways to target flat-footed AC often, for instance when you trip an enemy or have them fall prone on grease.

You have to really look into your buffs and start properly utilizing them because that's wherea bout 80% of your power will generally come from.

As for casters, they just kind of need spell penetration or you can fully focus on snowball, but you need metamagic feats to keep it relevant. Then you just focus touch AC which is generally significantly lower than normal AC.

I thought I was already doing that. However I always try to go for survivability. Like endurance on everyone + strength + dex + bless + haste. There's still situations sometimes when I just die within seconds after attacking. I barely get the chance to cast a dispell or anything, really.
That's only some fights, though. Others go the exact other way round. I just attack and things pop within seconds.
I think part of the problem is discerning what's actually happening. When I die that quickly I usually can't even identify, what just happened and how to prepare againt that.

[Ignis Imperia]

Originally posted by Space Cowboy:

Originally posted by Ignis Imperia:

40 AC in Act 3 is not that high. First off, by now you should have pretty good stats and feat setup. Outflank on every melee, belts to support your attack bonus and damage attributes (strength/dexterity), you have ways of lowering enemy AC (Evil Eye hex from Camellia or Ember), Weapons with enhancement modifier of at least +2, you need to stack buffs a lot (heroism +2, guidance +1 for one roll, bless +1, prayer, true strike, and so on), you have ways to manipulate your and enemy rolls (misfortune/fortune hex, protective luck for defense), you also have ways to target flat-footed AC often, for instance when you trip an enemy or have them fall prone on grease.

You have to really look into your buffs and start properly utilizing them because that's wherea bout 80% of your power will generally come from.

As for casters, they just kind of need spell penetration or you can fully focus on snowball, but you need metamagic feats to keep it relevant. Then you just focus touch AC which is generally significantly lower than normal AC.

I thought I was already doing that. However I always try to go for survivability. Like endurance on everyone + strength + dex + bless + haste. There's still situations sometimes when I just die within seconds after attacking. I barely get the chance to cast a dispell or anything, really.
That's only some fights, though. Others go the exact other way round. I just attack and things pop within seconds.
I think part of the problem is discerning what's actually happening. When I die that quickly I usually can't even identify, what just happened and how to prepare againt that.

Could possibly also be connection between difficulty and wandering somewhere you've got no place being yet early, for instance Wintersun in act 3 is accessible right from the start but majority of players will tell you you should not go there right away because there are some level 12-13 encounters there that might feel brutal at level 9-11, especially on Core and above.

endurance + strength + dex + bless + haste is good start but you're in act 3, you're long past only getting by with those buffs, I strongly recommend considering the bubbles buff mod for setting up your prebuffs as you'll go nuts soon if you try to memorize every buff available to you that you should always have on.

Off the top of my head, buffs you should ALWAYS have on in act 3:
mage armor, bless, heroism/good hope, blur, delay poison communal, resist energy fire communal, death ward on tank, barkskin on tank, inspire courage if you have bard, ward on tanks, protection from arrows communal, false life, ...

It gets very overwhelming in middlegame but honestly I'd say in act 3 you get A LOT from just gear alone already, for instance in my party there's a fighter/demonslayer with longbow that has attack bonus of +30/+30/+25 already, which is pretty decent, she's also a demonslayer so if demon has 40 AC, very good chances of getting past it due to demonslayer lv1 passive, then there's another archer who only has +22/+22 but still that's a very good chance to hit even the 40AC after buffs. Especailly since you can lower that AC to 36 immediately just by putting on Evil Eye with Camellia or Ember.

Maybe some example might help so I can at least try to tell you if you're tackling something that's just unnecessarily difficult for your stage of act 3 right now at your difficulty or it's just a build issue.

[Space Cowboy]

Originally posted by Ignis Imperia:

Originally posted by Space Cowboy:

I thought I was already doing that. However I always try to go for survivability. Like endurance on everyone + strength + dex + bless + haste. There's still situations sometimes when I just die within seconds after attacking. I barely get the chance to cast a dispell or anything, really.
That's only some fights, though. Others go the exact other way round. I just attack and things pop within seconds.
I think part of the problem is discerning what's actually happening. When I die that quickly I usually can't even identify, what just happened and how to prepare againt that.

Could possibly also be connection between difficulty and wandering somewhere you've got no place being yet early, for instance Wintersun in act 3 is accessible right from the start but majority of players will tell you you should not go there right away because there are some level 12-13 encounters there that might feel brutal at level 9-11, especially on Core and above.

endurance + strength + dex + bless + haste is good start but you're in act 3, you're long past only getting by with those buffs, I strongly recommend considering the bubbles buff mod for setting up your prebuffs as you'll go nuts soon if you try to memorize every buff available to you that you should always have on.

Off the top of my head, buffs you should ALWAYS have on in act 3:
mage armor, bless, heroism/good hope, blur, delay poison communal, resist energy fire communal, death ward on tank, barkskin on tank, inspire courage if you have bard, ward on tanks, protection from arrows communal, false life, ...

It gets very overwhelming in middlegame but honestly I'd say in act 3 you get A LOT from just gear alone already, for instance in my party there's a fighter/demonslayer with longbow that has attack bonus of +30/+30/+25 already, which is pretty decent, she's also a demonslayer so if demon has 40 AC, very good chances of getting past it due to demonslayer lv1 passive, then there's another archer who only has +22/+22 but still that's a very good chance to hit even the 40AC after buffs. Especailly since you can lower that AC to 36 immediately just by putting on Evil Eye with Camellia or Ember.

Maybe some example might help so I can at least try to tell you if you're tackling something that's just unnecessarily difficult for your stage of act 3 right now at your difficulty or it's just a build issue.

Thanks! I'll keep that in mind. I'm in Gundrun right now at lvl10 with a Bloodrager Primalist.
The fight in question is the first after opening the double doors which open with the keys of Dawn/Dusk.
I could sorta kinda wing everything else but the two undead which come at me there are just too much. In Wintersun I went through everything but the endboss - that one was also too much. No demonslayer, yet in my party.

[Ignis Imperia]

Originally posted by Space Cowboy:

Originally posted by Ignis Imperia:

Could possibly also be connection between difficulty and wandering somewhere you've got no place being yet early, for instance Wintersun in act 3 is accessible right from the start but majority of players will tell you you should not go there right away because there are some level 12-13 encounters there that might feel brutal at level 9-11, especially on Core and above.

endurance + strength + dex + bless + haste is good start but you're in act 3, you're long past only getting by with those buffs, I strongly recommend considering the bubbles buff mod for setting up your prebuffs as you'll go nuts soon if you try to memorize every buff available to you that you should always have on.

Off the top of my head, buffs you should ALWAYS have on in act 3:
mage armor, bless, heroism/good hope, blur, delay poison communal, resist energy fire communal, death ward on tank, barkskin on tank, inspire courage if you have bard, ward on tanks, protection from arrows communal, false life, ...

It gets very overwhelming in middlegame but honestly I'd say in act 3 you get A LOT from just gear alone already, for instance in my party there's a fighter/demonslayer with longbow that has attack bonus of +30/+30/+25 already, which is pretty decent, she's also a demonslayer so if demon has 40 AC, very good chances of getting past it due to demonslayer lv1 passive, then there's another archer who only has +22/+22 but still that's a very good chance to hit even the 40AC after buffs. Especailly since you can lower that AC to 36 immediately just by putting on Evil Eye with Camellia or Ember.

Maybe some example might help so I can at least try to tell you if you're tackling something that's just unnecessarily difficult for your stage of act 3 right now at your difficulty or it's just a build issue.

Thanks! I'll keep that in mind. I'm in Gundrun right now at lvl10 with a Bloodrager Primalist.
The fight in question is the first after opening the double doors which open with the keys of Dawn/Dusk.
I could sorta kinda wing everything else but the two undead which come at me there are just too much. In Wintersun I went through everything but the endboss - that one was also too much. No demonslayer, yet in my party.

That's one of the optional challenge encounters, kind of like the water elemental in prologue or Nabasu on market square, this one is very difficult if you don't know already what you're going into as the caster will have very high level spells that can straight up oneshot you and the other guy is just very nasty in melee instead, the trick to them is they are polar opposites basically, you put your physical damage dealers on the mage, ideally if you have Ulbrig with you, you can straight up pin him down with grapple and he'll never get a cast off, and you want to use CC spells on the warrior. Use Daeran's/Sosiel's channel oath - damage undead against them, they cannot resist that, and they'll be dead in no time, this is one of the teaching moments of the game, every enemy has a weakness, you just need to find it. Some enemies need their permanent buffs dispelled with Dispel Magic (for instance Blightmaw in Drezen), some are undead which means they have inherent strengths but also vulnerability to positive energy, and some just have very low specific save or touch AC, it's always about hitting Y to enable inspect and taking a look at what the enemy's stats, buffs and abilities are, and then playing around them.

Yes the endboss of Wintersun is I'd say the most brutal part of it, also the only one I had any difficulty with at level 13 (well, if we count him oneshotting my MC only to die a second later a difficulty), one thing I suggest for bossfights if you die too quickly to even figure out what went wrong is to turn on turn-based mode and watch what the enemy goes on to do, because generally they'll do the same thing as they normally would in RTWP, but you can see it very clearyl in TB.

But since you beat Gundrun and Wintersun already, you'll have tons of very good gear to start the act with, therefore now you should probably aim to do the easier parts like the minor locations with no quests tied to them, also Molten Scar, could be a good time to tackle morbid ridge, and so on. Some people consider the dragon hunt quest quite difficult but I'd just straight up disagree there, I'd say the dragon is actually disappointingly easy, but you do have to pay Greybor to take it on.

As for demonslayer, you don't really need one, they're great of course since most enemies you'll fight in the game are demons, but it's not like you need one in your party, in fact on most of my characters currently I don't even have one, but if you have a dedicated archer who isn't ranger class, it can be a worthy 1 level dip for some massive bonuses. :)

[Fistimus Maximus]

Originally posted by Space Cowboy:

I'm in act 3 and by now I run into enemies which can kill me within seconds but on the other hand can barely be hit due to their high AC (usually around 40). So, how do you deal with that? And how do I get such high AC myself?

doiing act 3 aswell, Domains are the key, depending who your support is sosiel or lann depending build, Community domain/hearth op with domain mastery so can use 2 buffs in one turn. Typical buff everything also seelah should be atleast lv 11 paladin for giving party smite. Early game evil eye though myself after act 1 had no need. Around act 3 your characters should start getting the gear that will propel them to op with mythics. Im playing unfair atm while early game was hard now becoming easier.

[Space Cowboy]

Originally posted by Ignis Imperia:

Originally posted by Space Cowboy:

Thanks! I'll keep that in mind. I'm in Gundrun right now at lvl10 with a Bloodrager Primalist.
The fight in question is the first after opening the double doors which open with the keys of Dawn/Dusk.
I could sorta kinda wing everything else but the two undead which come at me there are just too much. In Wintersun I went through everything but the endboss - that one was also too much. No demonslayer, yet in my party.

That's one of the optional challenge encounters, kind of like the water elemental in prologue or Nabasu on market square, this one is very difficult if you don't know already what you're going into as the caster will have very high level spells that can straight up oneshot you and the other guy is just very nasty in melee instead, the trick to them is they are polar opposites basically, you put your physical damage dealers on the mage, ideally if you have Ulbrig with you, you can straight up pin him down with grapple and he'll never get a cast off, and you want to use CC spells on the warrior. Use Daeran's/Sosiel's channel oath - damage undead against them, they cannot resist that, and they'll be dead in no time, this is one of the teaching moments of the game, every enemy has a weakness, you just need to find it. Some enemies need their permanent buffs dispelled with Dispel Magic (for instance Blightmaw in Drezen), some are undead which means they have inherent strengths but also vulnerability to positive energy, and some just have very low specific save or touch AC, it's always about hitting Y to enable inspect and taking a look at what the enemy's stats, buffs and abilities are, and then playing around them.

Yes the endboss of Wintersun is I'd say the most brutal part of it, also the only one I had any difficulty with at level 13 (well, if we count him oneshotting my MC only to die a second later a difficulty), one thing I suggest for bossfights if you die too quickly to even figure out what went wrong is to turn on turn-based mode and watch what the enemy goes on to do, because generally they'll do the same thing as they normally would in RTWP, but you can see it very clearyl in TB.

But since you beat Gundrun and Wintersun already, you'll have tons of very good gear to start the act with, therefore now you should probably aim to do the easier parts like the minor locations with no quests tied to them, also Molten Scar, could be a good time to tackle morbid ridge, and so on. Some people consider the dragon hunt quest quite difficult but I'd just straight up disagree there, I'd say the dragon is actually disappointingly easy, but you do have to pay Greybor to take it on.

As for demonslayer, you don't really need one, they're great of course since most enemies you'll fight in the game are demons, but it's not like you need one in your party, in fact on most of my characters currently I don't even have one, but if you have a dedicated archer who isn't ranger class, it can be a worthy 1 level dip for some massive bonuses. :)

Ah, okay, I'll stop banging my head against this one, then and come back later. I'll also get that bubbled buff mod - it's really getting out of hand.
Thanks for all the advice - especially the recommended buffs! I'll put that into action asap

[Ignis Imperia]

You're welcome, I of course didn't name everything because I am not currently at home and can't really remember every buff, but make sure to check your guys' gear and if it even works too. For instance if you don't properly know how bows work in this game, you might be confused why a longbow does only base damage ever. Bows work in a weird way where if you want the damage to scale, it has to be a composite bow, and when it is composite, unless you get feat to make it scale damage with dexterity, it will have a dexterity bonus to ATTACK rolls and a strength bonus to DAMAGE rolls, so if you've been say pumping Wenduag to 30 strength and wondering why her bow can't hit a blind deaf comatose lobotomy patient from 5 steps away, that might be the case.

Of course that's just one example of what might be wrong but be sure to check how well geared your entire party is and if they even work well together. For instance a party of 5x caster + 1 tank is generally not going to be that great because that tank yes will be basically immortal and have all the magical support they might ever want, but the moment anything decides to walk past it for your mages, you're dead, fully melee party is not ideal either as generally it will result in you getting splash damaged to high hell and your buffing capabilities might suffer. You also should try not to have multiple casters having the same party buffs as then you're just wasting their levels on stuff you already have and could've gotten a new buff instead.

In this game truly the best skill you can learn is to learn to figure out what stacks together and how to fit the highest amount of stacking buffs and debuffs, that will always beat raw damage because the stats will give you more damage than a fireball that can't pass through spell resistance because your stats suck.

[Space Cowboy]

Originally posted by Ignis Imperia:

You're welcome, I of course didn't name everything because I am not currently at home and can't really remember every buff, but make sure to check your guys' gear and if it even works too. For instance if you don't properly know how bows work in this game, you might be confused why a longbow does only base damage ever. Bows work in a weird way where if you want the damage to scale, it has to be a composite bow, and when it is composite, unless you get feat to make it scale damage with dexterity, it will have a dexterity bonus to ATTACK rolls and a strength bonus to DAMAGE rolls, so if you've been say pumping Wenduag to 30 strength and wondering why her bow can't hit a blind deaf comatose lobotomy patient from 5 steps away, that might be the case.

Of course that's just one example of what might be wrong but be sure to check how well geared your entire party is and if they even work well together. For instance a party of 5x caster + 1 tank is generally not going to be that great because that tank yes will be basically immortal and have all the magical support they might ever want, but the moment anything decides to walk past it for your mages, you're dead, fully melee party is not ideal either as generally it will result in you getting splash damaged to high hell and your buffing capabilities might suffer. You also should try not to have multiple casters having the same party buffs as then you're just wasting their levels on stuff you already have and could've gotten a new buff instead.

In this game truly the best skill you can learn is to learn to figure out what stacks together and how to fit the highest amount of stacking buffs and debuffs, that will always beat raw damage because the stats will give you more damage than a fireball that can't pass through spell resistance because your stats suck.

Hot damn! The bubbles buff mod just won the fight lol! This time it went the other way round - I'm not quite sure why I won, but I sure did. With my primalist main Char being the last man standing. They even turned my mastodon and my wolves against me.
But seriously - this puts on so many buffs - I couldn't be asked to put those on manually. I would have been sitting there for about 2-5 minutes straight! This really is a gamechanger!

[Ignis Imperia]

Originally posted by Space Cowboy:

Originally posted by Ignis Imperia:

You're welcome, I of course didn't name everything because I am not currently at home and can't really remember every buff, but make sure to check your guys' gear and if it even works too. For instance if you don't properly know how bows work in this game, you might be confused why a longbow does only base damage ever. Bows work in a weird way where if you want the damage to scale, it has to be a composite bow, and when it is composite, unless you get feat to make it scale damage with dexterity, it will have a dexterity bonus to ATTACK rolls and a strength bonus to DAMAGE rolls, so if you've been say pumping Wenduag to 30 strength and wondering why her bow can't hit a blind deaf comatose lobotomy patient from 5 steps away, that might be the case.

Of course that's just one example of what might be wrong but be sure to check how well geared your entire party is and if they even work well together. For instance a party of 5x caster + 1 tank is generally not going to be that great because that tank yes will be basically immortal and have all the magical support they might ever want, but the moment anything decides to walk past it for your mages, you're dead, fully melee party is not ideal either as generally it will result in you getting splash damaged to high hell and your buffing capabilities might suffer. You also should try not to have multiple casters having the same party buffs as then you're just wasting their levels on stuff you already have and could've gotten a new buff instead.

In this game truly the best skill you can learn is to learn to figure out what stacks together and how to fit the highest amount of stacking buffs and debuffs, that will always beat raw damage because the stats will give you more damage than a fireball that can't pass through spell resistance because your stats suck.

Hot damn! The bubbles buff mod just won the fight lol! This time it went the other way round - I'm not quite sure why I won, but I sure did. With my primalist main Char being the last man standing. They even turned my mastodon and my wolves against me.
But seriously - this puts on so many buffs - I couldn't be asked to put those on manually. I would have been sitting there for about 2-5 minutes straight! This really is a gamechanger!

Just make sure to set up your short, normal and important presets properly so you don't run out of spell slots all the time and are left casting garbage cantrips for the rest of the fight.

What I generally like to do is put cantrips (virtue, guidance, resistance) + light of heaven + anything that isn't limited by spell slots + bless (cos tier 1 spell that's just very useful and you tend to have many charges) on short, normal I go anything that I need at start of the map and for average encounter (aka mostly long-lasting buffs and low level buff spells that have expendable spell slots tier) and then important I have the big guns for bosses or when I know there's only going to be one fight on the map and it's coming up.

One more thing, before you pop your buffs, if you like to summon creatures, what you can do is pop out all of your summons before the fight, then use buff mod & for instance haste will get applied to all your summons too.

[jonoliveira12]

Buff spells, some feats, and having more damage channels usually does the trick.

[Space Cowboy]

Originally posted by Ignis Imperia:

Originally posted by Space Cowboy:

Hot damn! The bubbles buff mod just won the fight lol! This time it went the other way round - I'm not quite sure why I won, but I sure did. With my primalist main Char being the last man standing. They even turned my mastodon and my wolves against me.
But seriously - this puts on so many buffs - I couldn't be asked to put those on manually. I would have been sitting there for about 2-5 minutes straight! This really is a gamechanger!

Just make sure to set up your short, normal and important presets properly so you don't run out of spell slots all the time and are left casting garbage cantrips for the rest of the fight.

What I generally like to do is put cantrips (virtue, guidance, resistance) + light of heaven + anything that isn't limited by spell slots + bless (cos tier 1 spell that's just very useful and you tend to have many charges) on short, normal I go anything that I need at start of the map and for average encounter (aka mostly long-lasting buffs and low level buff spells that have expendable spell slots tier) and then important I have the big guns for bosses or when I know there's only going to be one fight on the map and it's coming up.

One more thing, before you pop your buffs, if you like to summon creatures, what you can do is pop out all of your summons before the fight, then use buff mod & for instance haste will get applied to all your summons too.

Gotta say, I'm glad I learned about all this early enough. I kinda suspected that buffs were important in this game but I didn't imagine that they were THAT important.

Without the bubble buff mod I would certainly have thrown the towel sooner or later. This or something like this should have been in the game right from the start, imo. The game plays well enough without it in Act 1 & 2 but after that I can't imagine playing it in a vanilla state. I mean, I can image that at some point you'll spend more time with buffing than with actual fights and at that point I don't think that I would wanna play the game anymore.