19 réponses à ce sujet

[DarthGizka]

Just started Amgarrak with my last Origins character (level 25 mage) and I'm having trouble figuring out the yellow golem beasties. I already lowered difficulty to hard in order to get rid of the gratuitous spell resistance but the golems keep resisting as if they were nightmare dwarves instead of mere mortals with 0% spell resist. I'm talking about spells that do not have physical or mental resistance, like the hexes or Crushing Prison.

 

Also, things like Flame Blast or Fireball shave only tiny slivers off their health bars. Either they have on the order of a thousand HP or more, or they have more resistances than normal golems. The wiki says for the latter that stone golems have 50% fire resistance and the steel ones 0%; neither type is supposed to have resistance against spirit and shock damage. An Inferno mixed with Tempest plus Affliction Hex plus copious Fireballs and whatever else I could fling in their direction was not enough to kill them outright; the steel things had perhaps 5% left and the stone ones 15%. At 115 SP that's on the order of 1500 damage against resistance 0% before even figuring in the hex.

 

I read elsewhere that a full SotC takes away about two thirds of a golem's HP. Since SotC is slightly weaker than Inferno + Tempest, that would put golem HP in the 1500 range as well. The mind boggles...

 

Does anyone know a source of accurate information? I don't want to resort to kiting and the buggers like to resist more than half my CC repertoire which has mostly physical resistance. Sleep doesn't work at all. Hence I cannot simply wing it as it comes, I need more accurate estimates of what my spells can deliver in order to figure appropriate tactics. Like when it becomes time to run and find a nice place for kiting.

 

There won't always be a handy doorway that Snug fits into like a cork in a bottle, which this time allowed to add the duration of Force Field to that of Paralysis Explosion.

 

P.S.: hat off to those people who did this with a new level-20 character. With all the player bribes from DA:O my toon is effectively at least ten levels ahead, and she had to bring every last bit of her arsenal to bear on those four golems. On the other hand, the transparent thing with the bossy health bar went down nicely enough, much easier than those four. Something's off here.

[Mike3207]

I hate to say it-but I think a mage really needs to do Awakening first. Spellpower simply isn't high enough to beat the Angarrak enemies straight from DAO.

 

As for information-you might check the wikia entries for Amgarrak.

[luna1124]

^^Agreeing With Mike3207^^^ You need all the extra health and lyrium potions you can carry, and bombs, lots of bombs, and lots of stuff... I played it with a level 34 Warrior and still had trouble.

[Mike3207]

The only other thing that I think might work might be if you were to turn on the sustained skill Combat Magic and simply attack the golems with a sword. Work on getting the rest of the Arcane Warrior skills and it might be enough to beat Amgarrak. Any level ups you get, put into Dex to help with defense and hit ability. After Arcane warrior, work on talents that help your spellpower. There's one mage one that adds +10 spellpower.

[DarthGizka]

Had him down to 20..25% when everything suddenly disintegrated. Jerrik had the Harvester on his tail and got exploded, and my mage was coning a minion when another one teleported in, stunned her and did a backstabbing number. She was dead in two seconds. The useless golem had bitten the dust much earlier, although with hindsight I should have stashed him somewhere safe, for Revival...

 

The map as such was nice enough but the Harvester fight is total crap, a micro-management nightmare with double kiting and a boss who reacts only to things like proximity but not to taunting. Triples of skellies or whatever they are teleport in continuously, and the useless dwarves take forever to kill a white one even if they gang up on it (except when Peon's Blight is recharged). The whites seem as hard to kill as the yellows outside (except for golems). The yellows need an Inferno with lots of extras to go down. I guess that's why it is called Hard. Instead of nuking the boss, my mage had to baby-sit everyone else and even clean up most of the minions. Not fun.

 

I'll probably switch down to Easy in order to get the sash and leave the Grim Reaper for post-Awakening, as you suggested.

 

The thing that I reported in my original post must have been a glitch. I was still on Nightmare when I entered the building and only switched it down to Hard later, so the golem stats may have been those for Nightmare. When I reloaded the auto save, the golems were perfectly normal. A simple toasting with Inferno and Tempest plus the usual extras was more than enough to take them out. I only used one lesser lyrium and one lesser health pot before the boss fight, because of the wonderful way Blood Magic is broken... Spells cost next to nothing when cast from HP, and there was nothing outside the Forge that needed more than one mana load (default willpower, never increased) plus a bit of blood magic. The potions were needed when one of the bossy golems resisted three spells in a row and the one after the next one as well; so I had to cone-kite him for a bit until the CC spells were recharged. The only resistance problem I noticed was with white undead, who crossed glyphs way too easily for non-ranked non-golems and didn't take too well to coning. By contrast, glyphs repelled golems more often than expected, even the orange ones sometimes.

[luna1124]

I have a male arcane warrior I will try this DLC again when I have time. I really want to beat the harvester on hard. I hate to give up.

[DarthGizka]

"La terza volta è quella buona" as the Italians know, or "aller guten Dinge sind drei" where I come from. Something like "third time lucky" in English.

 

Anyway, the Harvester fight seems to be more about luck than anything else, plus your ability to think on your feet - for staving off disasters, recovering from them, and for pouncing when opportunity offers. And timing things such that you can take down the flesh golem with one or two spells when a red phase is beginning, so that the switch can let you enter phase 2 with a clean slate.

 

The crucial element for me was to keep the Harvester away from the three companions guarding the switch, at all cost. Most of the time my mage was cone-kiting the bastard around - and through - the two stone things the middle of the arena. Cone of Cold, Flame Blast and Hexes through the wall, bomb spells when there was line of sight, Fireball splashing around corners. It reduces the probability of getting hit by whoever resists a coning, and the Harvester will likely bomb himself and his troops when he does a Vile Disembowelment. Plus, the incoming minion is right where you want him - among the troops travelling with the Harvester, who are all undergoing treatment at the same time as their boss.

 

Free-form kiting in the big free space makes it more difficult to set up a glyph shave reliably. I.e. Glyph of Repulsion on self, followed by Mind Blast and or Cone of Cold against whoever resisted, then upgraded to Paralysis Explosion and spiced with Fireball, Tempest and/or Inferno. A glyph can plug the free space between the stone slabs, and the small passage compacts the herd to a nice tight cluster. In the free arena you often have to cope with minions homing in on you from different directions, meaning you have to tap your CC spell reserves and/or call in the bronto.

 

All adds were dispatched with extreme prejudice, and all CC spells were reserved for dealing with the adds. Even a single yellow can pose a serious threat to the three companions, despite Carapace, Frightening Appearance, copious potion guzzling and a helping hand in form of a Crushing Prison. Hence the Warden needs to be able to intervene effectively, at a moment's notice.

 

Bulk DPS against the Harvester was from Flame Blast, Fireball and Cone of Cold, plus the bomb spells whenever they were available. Ranged DPS from companions was directed against priority targets among the minions (softening up yellows or mopping up whites), leaving the Warden more freedom to concentrate on mass treatments like Fireball and Inferno.

[themikefest]

I have a male arcane warrior I will try this DLC again when I have time. I really want to beat the harvester on hard. I hate to give up.

My current level 32 female mage just finished awakening and will start Golems shortly. I played arcane warrior for most of awakening, so I'm looking forward to defeating the harvester on hard mode to get that trophy

[Starki113r]

It doesn't matter what class you are, or, hell, even what difficulty you play on, the Harvester is a ****** to beat for all involved.

 

Seriously, no other fight in the series' history is as hard or as luck based. I'd rather fight the High Dragon at level 10 on Nightmare than the Harvester on any difficulty.

[DarthGizka]

I've been trying to figure out why mages get so seriously shafted by the difficulty scaling mechanism while non-mages would be hard-pressed to tell the difference, apart from scripted things like the number of yellow and orange Harvester minions obviously. Rogues are bound to notice the shortened stun durations, but that's about it. Conversely, lowering the difficulty helps mages more than other classes, to the point where it feels like a walk in the park.

 

It's mostly about DPS: spell damage reduction, increased spell failure, and failure chains. 20% spell resist is worse for a mage than 20% dodge would be for a non-mage, because a resisted hex is equivalent to not being able to turn on Momentum or to doing only normal damage instead of critical/backstab for a while.

[Mike3207]

I've been trying to figure out why mages get so seriously shafted by the difficulty scaling mechanism while non-mages would be hard-pressed to tell the difference, apart from scripted things like the number of yellow and orange Harvester minions obviously. Rogues are bound to notice the shortened stun durations, but that's about it. Conversely, lowering the difficulty helps mages more than other classes, to the point where it feels like a walk in the park.

 

It's mostly about DPS: spell damage reduction, increased spell failure, and failure chains. 20% spell resist is worse for a mage than 20% dodge would be for a non-mage, because a resisted hex is equivalent to not being able to turn on Momentum or to doing only normal damage instead of critical/backstab for a while.

Is it your low spellpower? 115 is low for Amgarrak, and a lot of Awakening mages should be in the 175-225 range. You may get more spell resistance because of the spellpower score.

[DarthGizka]

I'm not talking about spell effects being resisted because of a saving throw, although it is somewhat surprising to see lowly white undead resist a Glyph of Repulsion more often than usual.

 

I'm talking about spell resistance and elemental resistance, both innate and rank/difficulty based. Yellows get +10% spell resistance and +10% all elemental resistances, bosses get +15% and +20% respectively. Unlike innate resistances, the additional elemental resistances cannot be hexed away because they are applied after capping a resulting weakness at 100%. In other words, a yellow golem can be hexed to 90% weakness at most, and the Harvester only to 80%.

 

The spell resistance bonus is reduced by 2.5% on Hard, the rest is the same as on Nightmare.

 

Also, quite a bit of the information information about spell damage and resistances in the wiki is seriously off and led me to overestimate the HP for a golem. I'm still trying to figure out the correct formulas for spell damage, which is why I haven't posted anything yet. But HP for the four golems of the reception committee is 830ish (for my level-25 mage); their elemental resistances are 65% cold, 60% electrical for steel, 60% fire for stone, and 10% for the rest. That's on Hard/Nightmare, measured and verified by torturing and killing several boatloads of the golems.

 

Spell resistance cannot be measured directly but two resisted spells in a row is not uncommon and even three in a row happens on occasion.

[Mike3207]

It seems like the best strategy for the higher difficulties would involve ways to cause damage that don't involve offensive spells. Shapeshifter forms never stop increasing STR/DEX/CON as long as you increase spellpower. I had one mage that had 950 HP in Bear Form with 350 spellpower, but will admit I used a few tomes with that one. Same thing with a Arcane Warrior's Combat Magic-it scales with spellpower as well. Finally, don't underestimate a Ranger's pets-i think your dwarf companion is a ranger. Master Ranger will give you 90% of the stats that your PC will have, and would be  additional method of causing damage.

 

EDIT-just realized I repeated myself from earlier in the thread.Ah well.

 

I only got to 350 spellpower by duplicating Tomes of Mortal Vessel and some of the other tomes. I think you'd face a cap of about 220-250 without using exploits. I really wanted to see how strong I could make a shapeshifter that playthrough.

[DarthGizka]

No harm done, and thanks to you, Shapeshifter is now a very strong candidate for Fiona's third specialisation. I like the idea, and it adds a lot of versatility to a solo-inclined mage.

 

350 spellpower sounds thoroughly evil - with that you could even one-shot the bossy golems (1867 HP at level 25 and 2317 @ 35). Got to play the Awakening thing some time, if such seriously serious power boosts beckon.

 

I've completed my measurements: the yellow golems have 858 HP at level 25 and 1103 at level 35. For the Harvester it is 8880 versus 9780.

 

Maybe I'll go measure the yellow and orange skellies some time, when I feel the need for a bit of punishment.

[DarthGizka]

[DarthGizka]

 

The Harvester's opening move was a boss-mode corpse (top centre tile) so that's the only type of minion I could measure during that phase. In the bottom row there are three generations of yellows, and it is easy to see that a later-generation yellow is tougher than a first-generation boss, except for the lower HP.

 

Nightmare difficulty with PC at level 26.

 

Displayed stats are raw, without factoring in rank-/difficulty-based resistances and hidden manipulation by scripts (e.g. spell resistance).

[Mike3207]

Given those numbers i can think of a couple ways to go:

 

Fire damage looks like it will be effective against the Harvester and its minions. With those defense scores though, you might supplement it with using Combat Magic and the arcane warrior sword with full magic.

 

Another way to go is to Bear form with   say max 250 spellpower. At that level your bear will have 65 STR, 65 DEX, and 81 CON. Spider form with that spellpower will have 37 STR, 80 DEX, and 66  CON. If you don't get the spellpower that high, the numbers will scale down a bit.

 

Another alternative is to divert your magic points into strength and build a strength shapeshifter. 36 magic, all other points strength. It'd give you about 25 DEX/CON, maybe as high as 100 STR. You might want to equip dex gear to make up for the lower dex in form.

 

I looked at the ranger spec, but the bronto counts as a summon.

[DarthGizka]

Looking at the stats progression of successive minion generations it is clear that all attempts at tanking and/or fighting them are doomed to fail, sooner or later. The only hope is to take down the flesh golem before that happens.

 

When I did my Nightmare measurements it seemed that using the switch had only one effect - that of speeding up the cycle of harder and harder minions appearing. After a while things got pretty chaotic but it seemed as if killing minions via the switch did nothing to reduce their number, as replacements were teleported in without delay.

[rosey1579]

Well I won with a level 20 mage. SPIRIT HEALERS UNITE!!! Just focus everything on one at a time. Force field tank?

[DarthGizka]

On hard? That would be quite an accomplishment... Do you remember how many phase changes there were in your last battle, and how often you used the switch yourself? Did you respec the rogue or the warrior?