I know it's only been out a few days- and many have not/will not purchase the new DLC. For those that have- anyone tried soloing The Descent? Given the sheer size, volume, and health power of the trash mobs- I'd love to see a video of someone trying to solo it.
Disregard- here is a video of someone doing it
https://www.youtube....h?v=POlbicr8qvE
I know it's only been out a few days- and many have not/will not purchase the new DLC. For those that have- anyone tried soloing The Descent? Given the sheer size, volume, and health power of the trash mobs- I'd love to see a video of someone trying to solo it.
Disregard- here is a video of someone doing it
Soloing with my 2H champion. Only made to B3 floor so far. But I soloed through JOW and to be honest I think JOH is more difficult than Descent. it should not be a problem soloing in here.
Soloing with my 2H champion. Only made to B3 floor so far. But I soloed through JOW and to be honest I think JOH is more difficult than Descent. it should not be a problem soloing in here.
What's B3 floor?
How do you deal with Ogre punches as melee? Their damage seem to scale up infinitely until it oneshots you.
What's B3 floor?
How do you deal with Ogre punches as melee? Their damage seem to scale up infinitely until it oneshots you.
B3 means level 3....
I have 511 front armor rating ( guard on) and when I fight orge I will take rock armor tonic. it will make the front armor rating to 546. with this number, it seems every punch from Ogre only makes 10 damage.
Alright I followed your advice and pumped my armor a bit. I'm planning to try the three specs for this fight, I gave Templar a go, it's nice but not groundbreaking so far.
75% fire resits, 46% magic resist, 79% melee resist, 540ish front armor rating (before the rock armor), emissaries shoots me for 70ish while the ogres punches me, it's annoying. I'm pretty sure some punches scale in damage though. On every try, the punches that killed me dealt 200ish damage or large chunks of guard away, whereas all the other dealt only like 1, 4 or 16ish and couldn't even move the guard. Ogre punches also ignore a large portion of stagger on being hit (tried with 85%).
My guess is, the damage scales and you reach the "you die" punch sooner or later depending on your total armor and melee resistance; in my case they took 10 minutes to reach that kind of damage, and during that entire time I could only bring one of them to about 60% due to all the interruptions (and their insane grab range). If you can do better with a two hander, you might have a good shot.
I'm not sure if their punch damage resets. If my theory of scaling punches is correct, one would be better off saving the tonics until they start seeing punches for 16, and then keep the tonic up, because it's the only thing in your arsenal that can proc and break the punches.
On my last attempt (hella tired, more than an hour per try is too much), I managed to capture the sequence of finishing punches. If you look at the RED damage figures, they go 4-8, 16-32 (with and without guard) before the final 150-250.
I swear someone at Bioware hates people who solo as warrior.
I did a run with two characters. From fire assassin room to killing the alpha took 20 minutes. Solo I could probably do it with a ranged character assassin archer or mage exploiting heal on hit. Would take longer. Actually I think the enemies after the alpha are more challenging except the end boss that is. After alpha it almost gets to hakkon level difficulty in patches.
Ranged seems exceedingly easy to solo with in this DLC if you can survive the Shrieks, to be honest.
That part probably but not the lower levels where the ranged units attacking you become devastating to low armoured classes. But on the last map I soloed quite a bit because even ai controlled ranged archer Cole was not holding up in the limited two party setup and I had to sort of nuke with overwhelming force and retreat , rince repeat with the mage there. But that was literally only the last skirmish before the final boss.Ranged seems exceeding itly easy to solo with in this DLC if you can survive the Shrieks, to be honest.
Alright I followed your advice and pumped my armor a bit. I'm planning to try the three specs for this fight, I gave Templar a go, it's nice but not groundbreaking so far.
75% fire resits, 46% magic resist, 79% melee resist, 540ish front armor rating (before the rock armor), emissaries shoots me for 70ish while the ogres punches me, it's annoying. I'm pretty sure some punches scale in damage though. On every try, the punches that killed me dealt 200ish damage or large chunks of guard away, whereas all the other dealt only like 1, 4 or 16ish and couldn't even move the guard. Ogre punches also ignore a large portion of stagger on being hit (tried with 85%).
My guess is, the damage scales and you reach the "you die" punch sooner or later depending on your total armor and melee resistance; in my case they took 10 minutes to reach that kind of damage, and during that entire time I could only bring one of them to about 60% due to all the interruptions (and their insane grab range). If you can do better with a two hander, you might have a good shot.
I'm not sure if their punch damage resets. If my theory of scaling punches is correct, one would be better off saving the tonics until they start seeing punches for 16, and then keep the tonic up, because it's the only thing in your arsenal that can proc and break the punches.
On my last attempt (hella tired, more than an hour per try is too much), I managed to capture the sequence of finishing punches. If you look at the RED damage figures, they go 4-8, 16-32 (with and without guard) before the final 150-250.
I swear someone at Bioware hates people who solo as warrior.
Well IMO Templar is not a good option to do solo. Their main WOH-->purge combo doesn't work at most bosses. as for champion, it can do a very good damage by using To the Death.
Back to the Ogre. I haven't made to the fight you posted, so I test the first ogre: http://youtu.be/XjlN-W4lkUo
you can see the first part of this video I take 10 rounds of its grab and punch and it doesn't hurt at all. but maybe you are right it takes few mins to reach the "oneshot" threshold. so you need to kill ogre before that happens. As a champion, keep To the Death engaged with the ogre will make you do a crazy damage, adding the Bees, it should not be a problem to take him down in 3 mins, as you can see in the video from 3:45.
By the way, one small question, how do you make 540 armor rating by using a templar? I thought only champion can make it since you need two armor bonus passives and one is in champion tree...?
Well IMO Templar is not a good option to do solo. Their main WOH-->purge combo doesn't work at most bosses. as for champion, it can do a very good damage by using To the Death.
Back to the Ogre. I haven't made to the fight you posted, so I test the first ogre: http://youtu.be/XjlN-W4lkUo
you can see the first part of this video I take 10 rounds of its grab and punch and it doesn't hurt at all. but maybe you are right it takes few mins to reach the "oneshot" threshold. so you need to kill ogre before that happens. As a champion, keep To the Death engaged with the ogre will make you do a crazy damage, adding the Bees, it should not be a problem to take him down in 3 mins, as you can see in the video from 3:45.
By the way, one small question, how do you make 540 armor rating by using a templar? I thought only champion can make it since you need two armor bonus passives and one is in champion tree...?
I have 537 front armor to be precise, but that's with a shield. Without a shield I'm stuck in the 400s like you'd expect from non-champions. The particular fight I'm talking about is against 2 ogres, 4 infinitiely respawning Genlocks and 1 infinitely respawning Emissary, and killing the Ogres spawn an emissary alpha, which is the stupidest enemy ever, as he teleports, shields up and puts a debuff on you to force you to run away from him. I thought Templar would be a good idea for him, but I'm not exactly attached to it. As a matter of fact, I only put 2 points in this tree, and I've yet to even spawn him so yeah.
I'm glad I managed to solo everything else in the game, including Jaws, without commiting to a spec, I'd be pissed to find out that you absolutely need to be a Champion to solo two ogres. I'll try out a few different tactics that don't require a specialization, and if all else fails, I guess I'll go Champion.
To be honest to the death really looks like an I win button, it's essentially arbitrarily high damage.
Anyway I switched back to no spec, working on my execution and fine tuning, right now the timing goes like this:
- Kill 10 shrieks: 5 minutes
- Kill 2 Hurlock Alphas: 3 minutes 30
- Respec, change gear: 1-2min
- Clean up those 6 ridiculously immortal hurlock archers: 2min
- Kill 2 Genlock Alphas: 10 minutes
- ~1 hour: testing various tactics to take down those damn Ogres.
---------------------------
Right after writing all this stuff down, I swallowed my pride, popped to Skyhold, completed the Champion quest, came back, and on my very first fight as a Champion, killed both ogres and the Emissary alpha without thinking too much. I still don't understand how To the Death works, what causes it to drop off so often. Meh. It's like playing with baby wheels on 
Something is very wrong with the game, if it's mechanically impossible for a class to solo some encounters without choosing one specific Specialization though.
I'm glad I managed to solo everything else in the game, including Jaws, without commiting to a spec,
Damn, it is impressive. have a video? I really want to see how you deal with the temple fights. Personally I can't image how to solo Gurd Harofsen without using champion, not mention no spec.
Well...maybe if I bring 7 x confusion bombs.....
Damn, it is impressive. have a video? I really want to see how you deal with the temple fights. Personally I can't image how to solo Gurd Harofsen without using champion, not mention no spec.
Well...maybe if I bring 7 x confusion bombs.....
Sure, you have the right idea with confusion bombs. Your main weapon though is patience and willpower.
Gurd Harofsen:
Montage of the Solo Temple (deaths and kills):
Sure, you have the right idea with confusion bombs. Your main weapon though is patience and willpower.
Gurd Harofsen:
Montage of the Solo Temple (deaths and kills):
Haha so you are that guy. I saw this video long time ago, really a good fight.
Just made to fire room and beat Emissary alpha. Too cocky so didn't stack any fire resistance. got to say it is a mistake. Grabbed by Ogre then taking Emissary fire bolt by side or back is no joke. died 3 times and barley made it. Then the Emissary alpha. This bastard is not difficult, but so annoying. Teleporting, barrier, teleporting, barrier. and you have to chase him and chase him and chase him. Use warrior to solo this fight is NOT enjoyable at all. and all the process started from fire room you can't save.
Hope I don't have to fight 2 x Emissary alpha afterwards.....
Haha so you are that guy. I saw this video long time ago, really a good fight.
Just made to fire room and beat Emissary alpha. Too cocky so didn't stack any fire resistance. got to say it is a mistake. Grabbed by Ogre then taking Emissary fire bolt by side or back is no joke. died 3 times and barley made it. Then the Emissary alpha. This bastard is not difficult, but so annoying. Teleporting, barrier, teleporting, barrier. and you have to chase him and chase him and chase him. Not enjoyable at all. and all the process started from firm room you can't save.
Hope I don't have to fight 2 x Emissary alpha afterwards.....
Congrats! This fight is annoying as hell, but after doing it as Champion with litterally no experience of the class, I was pretty sure you'd be able to get through. You're right, Fire Resistance is really important in this fight.
Something is very wrong with the game, if it's mechanically impossible for a class to solo some encounters without choosing one specific Specialization though.
Scratch that, I did it without specialization. I killed the Ogres!
I figured out their grapple mechanic and soloed the two Ogres, without a specialization. I'm 5% into the Emissary Alpha now, I had to pause the fight to take a break. It's going to be a long one. The trash before the Ogres took me roughly 20 minutes, the ogres themselves took 20 minutes. Per ogre. I think I will never ever find a similar situation ever again: I lured an emissary to the beginning of the bridge and jumped off a cliff, and he forgot about me. All Genlocks were "bugged" and busy fighting the dwarves in one corner of the room. And I managed to pull only one ogre.
So here's how the Ogre Punch works: It deals roughly 500ish damage per hit, so if you have 500ish armor, you're good to go. Once every while, it deals about 750 damage per hit, for a total of 2500 damage if you have 500 armor. So either you make sure you have 2500 health & guard, or you make sure you have 750 armor up at all time. Which is possible for unspecialized warriors!
So I did just that, cycling improved War Cry and improved Horn of Valor. Whenever I see damages that look like 15-20 instead of 4-5, it's the prelude to the big Punch series. When I see 60-70, that means I'm in the middle of the Big Punch and I've buffed myself. I will probably have to soak a few 200-250 punchies in the face, so afterwards I just run away and take a deep breath, a nice healing potion, and get ready to charge back in, as the next few big punches will be mundane 4-5 damage ones.
If you're cycling your armor buffs correctly, you should be fine.
Many Cadash died to give you this information.
Fake Edit: ...and this is what happened thirty minutes later. A scene straight out of Life is Strange. Bioware please, my feels, you're breaking my 
:'( :'(
Meh. I want to call it a win. Can I call it a win?
ok this is my coolest necro video so far...I think. solo Guardian kill in 3 min. And I do play with friendly fire on now. that walking bomb casting animation is so cool.
...an update.
I indeed considered that "reverse bullet time" bug during the Emissary Alpha a win for me. I'll try to do it properly another time. Now that I know all about the ogres, I can stop being overly defensive and start being a bit more stabbity stabbity. The fight with the Emissary was won before it started anyway, and like ottffsse said I apparently have places to go and people to kill downstairs. So I switched to Casual, cleared the encounter (...it still took close to half an hour, what the hell Bioware, what the hell, this is CASUAL), switched back to Nightmare, and proceeded to the next area.
First thought: yeah they hit harder than I remembered. Poison is a scary thing, it ignores armor, and it freaking *hurts*.
Second thought: they can be knockbacked. Oh how much fun we're going to have together, Earthshakers and bolters. I'm going to teach you how to fly. Or swim. Either way, it's going to be fun.
I stopped halfway down to kill the Arcane Horror miniboss, and doing her forced a trip back to Skyhold to test my Magic Resistance gear. No surprise here, Bioware, please fix your game, neither Magic nor Spirit resistance work on this boss. It could be lightning. But even then, 85 magic resist shouldn't give the same incoming damage as 40. So basically, the dwarven racial doesn't work either. And since he teleports around super fast, is basically YASSTB (yet another Sword and Shield tank buster), and has a metric crapton of health, he's basically a hard counter to everything I stand for: patience, perseverance and dwarfiness. But I also stand for pragmatic fighting, so I thought outside of the box and simply killed him by abusing the unliving hell out of everything I could abuse about him. Two words: Earthshaking Strike. He didn't stand a chance. When attacking once every 15 seconds from behind a pillar deals 10 times more damage than a constant stream of gap closers and a storm of melee attacks while under constant spell barrage that ignores your magic resistance, you know Sword and Shield is in a pretty bad spot.
After knocking back a half dozen Earthshakers into the underground ocean, I was ready to take on the gauntlet. I simply rushed through, opened all the doors, knocked another earthshaker and a couple bolters into the sea, and killed the last two reverred guardians. Total encounter time: about two minutes, tops. Maybe sword and shield isn't all that bad after all.
Overall difficulty for this part: you can die, but it's pretty quick and tactics are straightforward, all things considered the Emissary Alpha fight is difficult to top in overall bullshitness.
Overall difficulty for this part: you can die, but it's pretty quick and tactics are straightforward, all things considered the Emissary Alpha fight is difficult to top in overall bullshitness.
Okay so I kind of underestimated the damage you can take if you're not completely aware of what's happening here. Fortunately I had Dagna prepare a special something during my attempts on the Ogres earlier, a special suit of power armor. Dwarf-only, of course, because I'm a roleplayer. It's a 10% Masterwork Dragon Bone & Veil Quartz Legion of the Dead armor suit. It comes with a ton of armor and a ton of health. The additional health increases the total guard amount, and the 30 additional armor on it reduces the Bolter damage to "tickling" instead of "lethal".
It made the remaining of the game very easy, with only one dangerous target: Earthshakers and their poison bullshit, and even then, the added health proved to be a very good choice. 10/10 would recommend crafting.
The most hilarious fight was the last pull. Two Earthshakers, Two Bolters, Two Revered Defenders, Two Shades and Two Cretahls! Woah! I wonder if I can teach them a new trick with this ladder? I shall dub it "The Cadash Diving Board"
The end boss is essentially an Ogre Alpha, except it has slightly more health but deals its damage in one swift go. So the same tactic applies here, leading to a long, long fight. The tentacles deal either four times ~500 damage every 2 seconds, with a random (about 10%) chance to deal four times ~750 damage. Maybe the numbers are off, but that's the gist of it. If you're a tank, you have a random chance to be instagibbed every 2 seconds, unless you have an armor buff or you're a Champion or something, and otherwise you take like 4 damage.
It took me two or three attempts to really understand what was killing me, but once I noticed the random tentacle burst bullshit on video, I immediately knew what to do. I sometimes wonder why this game doesn't have a combat log.
So basically, the strategy is as follow: equip your crazy tanky masterwork Legion of the Dead Armor/Health, equip a x5 Hidden Blades and a x4 Hidden Blades (Walking Fortress is useless here), get all the crit chance you can find to lower your cooldowns, ignore the tentacles and go straight for one of the crystals, War Cry, attack for 5 seconds, War Horn, attack for 5 seconds, war cry, warhorn... combat roll out, avoid the lightning, charge back and immediately war cry, attack a bit, war horn, attack a bit, etc. It's easy to execute, but long (about 15 minutes). I was very conservative here though, as I didn't want my stamina to deplete.
I'm happy to have figured out *how* to defeat the entire game solo on nightmare with an unspecialized warrior, but I really need to find 2-3 more hours, some coffee and some redbull to defeat the Emissary Alpha once and for all and say I really did it all. Damn you, reverse bullet time bullshit bug.
I have so much boring raw footage though, I kind of want to sort and edit through all of that and turn it into a mildly entertaining/informative video!
ok this is my coolest necro video so far...I think. solo Guardian kill in 3 min. And I do play with friendly fire on now. that walking bomb casting animation is so cool.
Looking back at your video and after doing it myself, I can now definitely say GG, you win 
I have a question, wouldn't it be even faster to focus fire the Lyrium crystal? I seem to remember that it was invulnerable for short periods of time when I did it with four-men, but one crystal was vulnerable the whole time for me when I soloed it.
Is it possible it's tied to the tentacle life/death cycle, as mine were alive the whole fight?
I edited my looooong solo experience into something that's hopefully watchable/entertaining/educating(?). Covers (almost) all of the DLC. If anything else, here's to adding 4gigabytes of crap video to youtube!
Please guys, keep the good vids coming
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