Brutal Difficulty Tips

[Ditto]

Hi All,

Recently got back into Shadow of War and started on Nemesis but decided to restart on Brutal difficulty after a few hours in. I'm now in Act 2 and getting killed sooo many times. Usually its to ranged or shielded grunts as I get swarmed by enemies. If its only a few grunts and a captain its not too bad but if I try to fight at an outpost it almost always ends in death as they surround me.

I'm level 17 and recently got a body guard as well as the counterstrike upgrade which kills grunts. The counterstrike kill is helping when getting surrounded but not really of use to the shield guys or spear throwers. I'm also mainly using my might now on drains to keep my health topped up.

Any tips with dealing with brutal difficulty and getting swarmed would be great.

Thanks

[Nam]

Tip 1. Upgrade your range skills (These are really good for 1 on 1 fights vs captains and are useful for getting away {As long as you have focus}
Tip 2 Once pulling a captain towards you via the ranged skill or Wraith skill ;--; just spawn your Bodyguard and hide :)
Tip 3 Never and i mean NEVER fight a Orc thats op he's most likely gonna destroy you if you mess up
Tip 4. Use the environment to your advantage (Explosive Barrels fire camps the BEE'S ect)
Tip 5. If a low level captain is weak to anything exploit it (Via captain abilities environment advantages ect
6. Sending like 4 captains to bully that 1 captain that killed you (Just do it if he's giving you troubles and pull em over to dominate em)
-Lizi

[Pandora]

Yeah, shielders are the annoying ones, just before ranged grunts, always interrupting combos from behind. Start by quietly dispose of bowmen, and if see isolated hunters or shielders below use whatever you have to get rid of them (flies are a bit to much here, you can brutalize but having to fight a Pain Seeker in an Outpost is usually a bad idea at this point, grog is fine if you are patient enough, and be careful with the Poisoner...).

Dont forget to upgrade your gems, specially green ones, can be good for armors and sword at least. Same for gears in general xd.

Be careful with commanders gangs (banner...), if you knew how many of us were killed by htose grunts xd.
Lol, and another one, I have doubts for him but hey.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2362220026

Learn the moves of the captain to quickly know when to avoid, specially with berserker, bowmen in general and hunter (this explosive shot is faster than us, curse it).

For crowd control, depend of your game style, but its usually a bad idea to face a hord at this difficultie. Wont use elven rage on grunts, I hope...
If they arent near a Captain, you can forget them and go above to hide and approach the Captain. If Captain is with a hord, no need to try reckless moves, just use some arrows to make them move and use whatever you can to kill max of them.

Some also love to mount cara (or Graug, obviously) for the meat shield extra life but keep an eye on ranged hits, they can still reach YOU. Rip, dead kitties.

If you are humiliated a lot, you can think about ending your Brutal game, your life will be troublesome if have to deal with constant high odds betrayals...

[Glitchy.AF]

Hey, I'm doing the same thing. I've been poisoning grog barrels and just waiting it out. Currently at level 18, just recently converted a captain only to have him executed by an Orc captain seeking revenge for his blood brother, dagnabit!

[Blue Thunder]

I've done a full Brutal playthrough from the get go after purchasing the game this past Xmas sales. The skills I recommend picking asap as soon as available are:
-Fatal Might for Execution. Since getting hit in Gravewalker/Brutal means certain death, it won't matter if you lose your Might by getting hit. It takes only 4 hits to fill 1 bar of Might.
-Fatal Counter for Perfect Counter. A mob of grunts can be more dangerous than Captains, so being able to dispose of them by just countering is nice. Alternatively if you just want more might, go with Mighty Reversal instead.
-Reckless Hate for Brutalize. Dispersing a crowd of uruks by simply Stealth Brutalizing one is a good thing in this difficulty. Abuse that.
-Brutal Aggression with Ceaseless Might. You want that double Might gauge as fast as you can so you can build more and spend more. That and using a Burtal Executions will scare some grunts away, so less to fight.
-Waters of Lorien for Shadow Strider. This is a very important one in my opinion. It consumes focus but once you get the Mask of the Undying you'll be blinking everywhere. It will also grant might when blinking through enemies. Waters of Lorien bypasses Captains being Vault-breakers or having adapted to you vaulting, which makes it perfect for Defender Captains who have that, as you will still be able to easily get behind them.
-Elven Light with all its elemental sidegrades. Nothing to add, this is a must as soon as you can.

[Ditto]

Thanks all for the tips,

I've started to go down the range path now and should have shadowstrike in a few more levels.

Now i'm diving in and out of combat to fight captains who can be stealth attacked. I was trying to take on a lvl 50 legendary lord (wanted to shame and eventually recruit him). While fighting him though two other captains joined in. I managed to dominate a few ranged guys to keep them busy and a wild Graug joined in the fight which helped a lot.

Managed to kill one of the captains (who had previously destroyed my weapon after killing me) and then the main level 50 captain decapitated my body guard but I eventually managed to get him low enough to shame him.

However instead of dropping levels he became a maniac and jumped to level 70+ . After that I tried to take on the last captain who was only around level 18 but had forgot I used both of my downed comeback lives killing the first two captains and got a nice spear to the face.

I've seen people use that dash move on some youtube videos and will try and get Waters of Lorien. I've also tried poisoning the grog barrels but I'm not sure if its working right. I'm aiming my ranged weapon and pressing Y (xbox controller) however I get no indication that the grog has been poisoned (I have the poison grog barrel skill). I think there's usually a poison cloud animation around when it gets poisoned but its didn't seem to show anything for the 3 barrels I tried it on even when I continuously hit Y.

Regarding the Gems I've heard a lot of people say that its better to have white gems in order to level up faster. I might try green ones though to survive better in tough fights.

Will have to see how things go now with a bit more hit and run tactics until I get some more skills.

[Pandora]

Be careful with grog and brutalizations (specially brutalization, the Poisoner usually come only once but Pain Lovers are many. Maybe need to come closer to see the green fog around barels... not my thing, I prefer poisoning them then shooting on it, Balefire doesnt joke around.

You can subscribe to WB newsletter for the exp, they arent to intrusive^^.

A maniac lvl 70 that early... thats the issue with all this shaming thing xd. Bad luck.

Still be wary if you get humiliated a lot.

Wonder if will see your vendettas xd. Would love being thrown into a world full of guys who kicked your ass and are 30 or more lvl than me-_-. Happens sometimes.

[Ditto]

Originally posted by Pαndốſa:

Be careful with grog and brutalizations (specially brutalization, the Poisoner usually come only once but Pain Lovers are many. Maybe need to come closer to see the green fog around barels... not my thing, I prefer poisoning them then shooting on it, Balefire doesnt joke around.

You can subscribe to WB newsletter for the exp, they arent to intrusive^^.

A maniac lvl 70 that early... thats the issue with all this shaming thing xd. Bad luck.

Still be wary if you get humiliated a lot.

Wonder if will see your vendettas xd. Would love being thrown into a world full of guys who kicked your ass and are 30 or more lvl than me-_-. Happens sometimes.

Have got to level 26 now and things are going a lot smoother. The lvl 70 guy upgraded to a warchief? (guys below the overlord). So I dominated his bodyguards and had them betray him.

I also got the multiple dominate grunt upgrade that sure has helped getting a mini gang to fight captain's and stop from getting surrounded.

Trying to work now on the sub quests to get the dominate from shadowstrike skill to make quick work of getting ranged guys on walls.

I figured out what was wrong with my poisoning the grog barrels skill. You can't be sneaking at the same time as you try to poison the barrels (L2 + R2) so you need to come out of stealth to perform it (L2 +Y).

[Pandora]

well we cant use bow while sneaking.

Hope those 1 turn nemesis quests arent messing with you, its really scary when even strong ones can die in a cara hunt... At least will solve the nemesis missions' bug later xd.

[CrazyGoblin]

Stealth. Stealth stealth stealth. Not only does it deal an incredible amount of damage to non-immune targets (which on Brutal still takes a significant chunk out of captains), but it's also generally the way you should be playing: Avoid open confrontation. You're a sneaky ranger, use hit and run tactics to wear your opponents down. Don't be afraid to run and hide away before coming back when you've got the drop on them again.

Moving down the Predator tree, you can unlock some skills that drastically increase the viability and versatility of stealth attacks. Wraith Chain is the big one, as it allows for stealth attacks to be used during open combat by exploiting grunt terror mechanics.

A fleeing enemy is open for stealth attacks, even though they technically know you're there. Curse damage on grunts causes them to flee in almost all circumstances (commander-buffed grunts are an exception here, as are enemy undead of course), so having a dagger with "quick throw applies curse every X seconds" gives you a guaranteed "make this grunt run away" button, which can then be exploited to stealth attack them and then chain it into a nearby captain for significant damage.

This of course doesn't work for vigilant vs. stealth captains, but it can still help out even with the ones who are if you just add a lifesteal gem to your dagger. Brutalizing a grunt will cause so much damage that you can go from nearly dead to full health in a single grunt, much more efficient than draining (although if you'd rather keep a damage gem on the dagger for some reason, the terror effect can of course be used to simply stealth drain the fleeing grunt instead).

Predator also has the absolutely hilarious Deadly Spectre ability, which can let you create a "Wraith Trap" by leaving behind an afterimage of yourself that will sneak attack the first thing that comes within its reach (and it's used as part of the attract function, so *generally* you'll be convincing your target to come closer and feel the pain).

Why is this skill hilarious? Well, the spectre doesn't count as *you*. Which means a captain can come over to inspect the image, get stabbed, and still be in "partially aware" mode rather than fully activated, since they never saw "you". Using this, you can just sneak your way around an obstacle and cheese captains to death with multiple stealth attacks (buildings are excellent for this; simply get the target captain on the roof and then hang off the ledges. Attract with a wraith trap, then scoot your butt a little ways down the ledge. Repeat until target is dead).

Other important abilities are:
**Shadow Strike Pull Isolating captains away from their mooks is *invaluable*, and can be very funny if you plonk them down somewhere that doesn't have pathing data for orcs to get to or from there. This also mostly works on arrow-proof captains, as it functions like a long-range attract that will make the captain come running to investigate.

**Fury This one took a while before it grew on me, and I'd only recommend it for certain builds, but it's one of the most straightforward and reliable methods of taking down any single captain that I know. While captains can adapt to normal ground executions and render them harmless, only the final dagger stab of Fury can be adapted to... Every other punch before then will still deal damage, as well as build might and hit streak. Combined with a stun that lets you knock them over, such as unupgraded Elven Light, Fury can whittle down even the toughest uruks (be mindful of rages, however! They can make stunning and grounding an orc much more difficult).

**Ground Drain The other option for ground executions, Ground Drain is useful because while you don't have I-frames during the animation, it *does* discourage other enemies from attacking you if you're already in the animation when they'd consider making a swipe. If someone's already in the process of attacking you however, they won't stop their attack short, so be mindful. Using any sort of drain attack when you don't have Domination selected as the drain subskill will damage a grunt and if they survive, they'll immediately start fleeing. This can be chained into stealth abilities as mentioned earlier. Very handy.

**Talon Strike For the cost of one arrow, you launch a wide-area damaging stun that cannot be adapted to or resisted by anything. It's also great for moving around the map quickly. And it also combines fantastically well with...

**Eagle's Eyrie Don't want to make yourself vulnerable by climbing up a wall mid-fight? Vault over a grunt and immediately get launched high enough into the air that you can use Talon Strike again. Great for clearing out chaff and getting another hit+stun off on a captain.


I generally don't use fatal counters anymore because nearby grunts are simply too valuable as Wraith Chain starters/health batteries/launchpads that I don't want to get rid of them senselessly.

There are of course other useful abilities, not to mention gear and combinations (such as the Machine legendary sword + Deadly Striker for multiple glaive strike combos), but these are some of the things I used regularly through my playthrough, and will help bring down most of the hurdles you'll come across without having to resort to *forbidden knowledge* such as the caragor donk.

[Ditto]

Originally posted by CrazyGoblin:

Stealth. Stealth stealth stealth. Not only does it deal an incredible amount of damage to non-immune targets (which on Brutal still takes a significant chunk out of captains), but it's also generally the way you should be playing: Avoid open confrontation. You're a sneaky ranger, use hit and run tactics to wear your opponents down. Don't be afraid to run and hide away before coming back when you've got the drop on them again.

Moving down the Predator tree, you can unlock some skills that drastically increase the viability and versatility of stealth attacks. Wraith Chain is the big one, as it allows for stealth attacks to be used during open combat by exploiting grunt terror mechanics.

A fleeing enemy is open for stealth attacks, even though they technically know you're there. Curse damage on grunts causes them to flee in almost all circumstances (commander-buffed grunts are an exception here, as are enemy undead of course), so having a dagger with "quick throw applies curse every X seconds" gives you a guaranteed "make this grunt run away" button, which can then be exploited to stealth attack them and then chain it into a nearby captain for significant damage.

This of course doesn't work for vigilant vs. stealth captains, but it can still help out even with the ones who are if you just add a lifesteal gem to your dagger. Brutalizing a grunt will cause so much damage that you can go from nearly dead to full health in a single grunt, much more efficient than draining (although if you'd rather keep a damage gem on the dagger for some reason, the terror effect can of course be used to simply stealth drain the fleeing grunt instead).

Predator also has the absolutely hilarious Deadly Spectre ability, which can let you create a "Wraith Trap" by leaving behind an afterimage of yourself that will sneak attack the first thing that comes within its reach (and it's used as part of the attract function, so *generally* you'll be convincing your target to come closer and feel the pain).

Why is this skill hilarious? Well, the spectre doesn't count as *you*. Which means a captain can come over to inspect the image, get stabbed, and still be in "partially aware" mode rather than fully activated, since they never saw "you". Using this, you can just sneak your way around an obstacle and cheese captains to death with multiple stealth attacks (buildings are excellent for this; simply get the target captain on the roof and then hang off the ledges. Attract with a wraith trap, then scoot your butt a little ways down the ledge. Repeat until target is dead).

Other important abilities are:
**Shadow Strike Pull Isolating captains away from their mooks is *invaluable*, and can be very funny if you plonk them down somewhere that doesn't have pathing data for orcs to get to or from there. This also mostly works on arrow-proof captains, as it functions like a long-range attract that will make the captain come running to investigate.

**Fury This one took a while before it grew on me, and I'd only recommend it for certain builds, but it's one of the most straightforward and reliable methods of taking down any single captain that I know. While captains can adapt to normal ground executions and render them harmless, only the final dagger stab of Fury can be adapted to... Every other punch before then will still deal damage, as well as build might and hit streak. Combined with a stun that lets you knock them over, such as unupgraded Elven Light, Fury can whittle down even the toughest uruks (be mindful of rages, however! They can make stunning and grounding an orc much more difficult).

**Ground Drain The other option for ground executions, Ground Drain is useful because while you don't have I-frames during the animation, it *does* discourage other enemies from attacking you if you're already in the animation when they'd consider making a swipe. If someone's already in the process of attacking you however, they won't stop their attack short, so be mindful. Using any sort of drain attack when you don't have Domination selected as the drain subskill will damage a grunt and if they survive, they'll immediately start fleeing. This can be chained into stealth abilities as mentioned earlier. Very handy.

**Talon Strike For the cost of one arrow, you launch a wide-area damaging stun that cannot be adapted to or resisted by anything. It's also great for moving around the map quickly. And it also combines fantastically well with...

**Eagle's Eyrie Don't want to make yourself vulnerable by climbing up a wall mid-fight? Vault over a grunt and immediately get launched high enough into the air that you can use Talon Strike again. Great for clearing out chaff and getting another hit+stun off on a captain.


I generally don't use fatal counters anymore because nearby grunts are simply too valuable as Wraith Chain starters/health batteries/launchpads that I don't want to get rid of them senselessly.

There are of course other useful abilities, not to mention gear and combinations (such as the Machine legendary sword + Deadly Striker for multiple glaive strike combos), but these are some of the things I used regularly through my playthrough, and will help bring down most of the hurdles you'll come across without having to resort to *forbidden knowledge* such as the caragor donk.

Thanks a lot for the detailed info.

I've started using Shadowstrike Pull and it has made some fights soooo much easier. Wish it worked on Arrow Proof and Oologs though

I've started to use the Deadly Spectre ability now but primarily to dominate a bunch of grunts before starting a captain.

[PuNiSh3R]

Please, does anyone know how to clear the combat statistics? I started playing the brutal difficulty and I have the statistics of the normal difficulty, and I don't like it at all