Baldurs Gate 3 - Combat Tactical Guide

hi friends so by request of viewer Chris W who asked me if I could do a more detailed video on combat tactics I apply whilst playing as a response on my combat controller guide linked down below if you haven't seen it yet and want to know more about combat with the controller this video will not be about the controls but as mentioned combat tactics before I want to get into the video I want to mention I don't consider myself a balers Gate 3 combat specialist per se um and I make very regular mistakes given I am somewhat pressed for time between video making working and playing games I enjoy the game on balanced mode I like a challenge of course but I figured this way was the way to enjoy the game for me as of right now very likely in the future I will do a tactician difficulty play through at some point also when it comes to tactics this can be extremely varied in the game given and so many classes and party setups are available I will go over the basics and some more advanced tips I will show what situations in combat I am on the lookout for and one major thing that comes into play is attack roles and trying to get a bonus and or advantage on your attack roles is what we will be on the lookout for to summarize I have a guide on all the basic terms and go over it there I've go I basically go into uh Advantage disadvantage Advantage AC DC all those terms so click the link if you want to know more about that but anyway Advantage basically means you roll to die and you keep the highest result this will make you more likely to hit enemies in terms of attack roll bonuses and Advantage I find that balers Gate 3 paints this in a rather realistic way so if you can imagine it it will most likely be the case what do I mean by that so imagine standing in the dark and you don't have dark Vision or you don't see well in the dark and you're against an opponent who does you will be literally at a disadvantage the game takes this into account so making you a really good Target in the dark this involves a popular mechanic in balers Gate 3 around light and dark as well similar is also when casting darkness and having better Vision than your opponent um for example Devil's side comes to mind besides Darkness you can also blind your enemies and gain advantage that way similarly sneaking up or being invisible to an enemy and attacking when they can't see you again big bonus to damage here as well besides vision and other ways it's also very realistic making your opponent fall prone um restricting their movement with some kind of spell like hold for example they can do nothing to defend themselves basically and also this gives Advantage then being a fantasy game there is also uh less realistic Ways by means of spells and Buffs to get advantage and or bonuses on your attack roles be on the lookout for them in the spell description the famous ones are for example bless fairy fire guiding bolt or through strike just to name a few the thing with Advantage is that when you yourself have disadvantage when attacking for any of the above reasons and you can cause a reason to have Advantage yourself this will not turn into an advantage in that case it will just cancel out the disadvantage you can see here on the screen when you try to preview a selected attack in green you can see what benefits you on your attack roll and in red the penalties you get to your attack roll usually separate it with a slash if there are multiple besides Advantage I think it's also good to be aware of reactions reactions are a mechanic whereby you can react to certain actions your enemy does you will be prompted in combat even when it isn't your turn to intervene and you can decide to take it or not you only have one reaction resource per turn so once you react it uh you can't for the rest of that turn so good reactions to know about um are of course attack of opportunity you can imagine this also realistically if fighting someone and you try to run away they will try to hit you in the back Um this can also happen when walking past an enemy you weren't previously engaged with so you don't have to worry about this if your enemy has already used the reaction um also when disengaging this generally costs you an action but if you are a rogue for example you can do this as a bonus action if they are blinded or prone you don't have to worry about that either because they can't see you or they can't get to you uh or some spells and and melee attacks that prevent reactions of which there are several uh also while enemies are holding a a bow they can't do opportunity attacks either another useful reaction is defeat Sentinel this allows you to attack an enemy that attacks an ally while you are in melee range very useful for Marshall classes to get some extra damage in some reactions are defensive in nature too uh really good ones are shield and snake missile and counter spell I will show them here so knowing about reactions is key the way I commonly use this is to get close with my melee classes to range DPS like spellcasters and Rangers also realistically here B take a moment to draw and imagine shooting it when someone holding a sword is right next to you same with spells in in this case where you have to assume it takes some movement and gestures to cast this will put put them in a threatened State and causes disadvantage on their attack roles for them often times they will try to get out of range first taking an opportunity attack to get away from you a very big part of combat is positioning and mainly getting the higher ground since you get a plus two bonus to attack rolls on a ranged attack which means you are more likely to hit an enemy also defensively since enemies trying to hit you from lower ground have a penalty of minus two to their attack role this gets me into the second point of basic combat and that is using your environment ideally you can scout beforehand but you can't always control this uh but since it's a turn-based game you have plenty of time to look around things to look out for are elevations like I just mentioned uh chasms damaging elements in the environment a difficult terrain uh barrels explosive mushrooms hanging l lamps and rasur things like that the thing with chasms is that it can kill anyone instantly even bosses but the big downside is that you miss out on some potential great loot so be careful you can use the shove bonus action or certain spells with knockback like eldrid blast or Thunder Wave the same thing can be done with elevation instead of killing enemies out right you can cause falling damage this can be done either by pushing or by pulling off Ledges is equally effective for example with the torn whip spell throwing characters works too if you're strong enough and the characters are light enough it's a kind of a weight thing also using the environment for breaking line of sight is very effective when fighting an overwhelmingly large Force I often try to get into a position that allows for a choke point like a room with a door entryway so I can lay on the heat in a particular Zone and my party is mostly protected from ranged attacks we know about Advantage reactions and we know about the environment let's look at how to approach combat with an example here so I have my pretty standard party set up here um I have a fighter uh a rogue a wizard and a cleric Shadow heart here um the cleric in my playthrough is a dedicated healer and I do recommend respecting her into life domain and changing her attributes as well I got these recommendations from a YouTube channel YouTuber joles I will link it down below but I I really agree with this setup here so check it out over there but don't worry too much about it now it's just something I recommend doing if we can help it before we H combat we have to check a few things um how are we doing on spell slots uh do we have enough to make it through the fight have I done my summons already because it's wasteful to spend an action in combat on this are there any class specific ones so long rest spells I still need to cast like bount weapon for example or packed weapon for the Warlock I also Tred to pre-cast my Buffs like blast if I can help it blast lasts uh 10 turns so it helps to be already in turn based when you cast it but if it goes down a few turns before starting the fight don't sweat it too much the fact that it's active when you start without having to use an action is already a huge bonus once I check this I usually get into combat uh if I can help it I can sneak in uh to the fight especially if not all my party members are engaged into the fight yet I can attempt uh a better angle with some party members but let's keep it simple here and let's just have a generic good old fight here so when combat starts almost every time your highest dexterity character will be first to go since their dexterity modifier gets added to the initiative roles aarin goes first here and I will start by examining my enemies it helps to to recognize the different threats based on the weapons they're wielding I am generally very worried about bosses of course uh but secondarily archers and casters I tend to go after these first uh if I have the chance to take away some of the high damage the enemy can deal from basically anywhere also with ranged enemies it's very useful to move a Melee character right next to it uh since they would become uh threatened and at a disadvantage for their range attack so what often ends up happening is that they try to get away from your Melee character first possibly taking an opportunity attack and then try to do their ranged attack but not always my melee DPS usually fulfills this role my tankier character my own fighter here in this case um will make sure that the melee uh enemy melee damage and tanks are taking care of moving them close to or keeping them close to try and keep my Wizard and healer safe so in a position like this the major threat to my backline is their uh range DPS at this point I try to focus my damage on one target if I can help it reason being is that an enemy with one HP can still do all his damage uh having multiple enemies and low Health can do still all their damage that did in like like it were in the beginning of the fight so the most important thing is to lower the incoming damage to your party as soon as possible if there is an opportunity to deal a lot of damage to multiple enemies at once with a nice placed uh AOE or U area of effect I'd say that uh that's the exception and we're doing otherwise keep focusing your damage on just one target priorities for me are dangerous enemies with lesser Health enemies that have summoned or soulbound soulbound a creature since killing them would make their pet disappear as well and so you kind of get like uh two flies with one stone or two birds with one stone isn't it um then I would focus enemy healers because they can they can drastically prolong the fight enemies that are concentrating on a spell it's worth sometimes attacking them as well uh an attempt to break the concentration depending on what the spell is but yeah it's something worth considering uh and then for last I would say melee enemies with high Health pools for later I will let this fight play out now and will comment on it every step along the way I should mention in this particular fight there is three groups fighting each other which is somewhat rare in the game and makes this one not super difficult but unpredictable but I figure it allows me to show a lot of things happening so there you go so I fly my cambion here which is a powerful summon from Shadow heart which I did beforehand I fly to this High Point to get the higher ground for his ranged attack so after a bit of thinking I decided to go for the enemy wizard here since he does not have that much health and can be dangerous to my backline so here the enemy Ranger summons an animal uh I keep this in mind not to focus my damage on the pet but on its Master since if he dies they both go away so I reposition Gail here with Misty step to the higher ground for safety and also the potential damage bonus I decide to cast Fireball here for its great AOE damage from my position I also have a good line of sight to cast this one lots of good hits here uh I killed the enemy spellcaster and the hunter lost his concentration on Hunter's Mark for the stone lord it's my main character here now which is a level seven fighter multiclass with five levels in warlock for anyone who has seen the last video I came up with it there I cast hunger of Hadar which causes this black sphere that causes Frost damage to everyone inside and blinds them if I manage to hold everyone in there this will be hugely powerful I decide to cast it over the wolf companion here so he can't react to me when moving away since it won't see me anymore because I have my eyes on this master and want to get rid of him soon a tiny mistake here is that I should have done my eldrid blast before Misty stepping close to him since you can see it I will be casting with disadvantage I decide to turn off the push effect on eldrid blast because I want to remain close the reason being is to put him in a threatened State and give his ranged attack disadvantage my faith will protect me my cleric Shadow heart next uh I decide to give her haste which basically means she gets more AC which makes it harder for enemies to hit her and she get an extra action every turn for five turns she is currently standing in acid which I want to get her out of yeah since it lowers her AC while she stands in it as I mentioned before I aim to keep as many enemies trapped inside Hunger of Hadar so I decide to cast level five hold that would allow for more targets to be held at the same time and I made another mistake here with Shadow heart I must have been tired yes I I casted Celestial haste which is a concentration spell and yeah I had the intent of casting hold anyway which is uh yeah which would have replaced that right away but yeah that [Music] happens the cast was really successful all but one enemy managed to pass his saving throw so I got four enemies heal right now that can do absolutely nothing but wither away unless they do something Dr itic and break concentration on either my fighter or my cleric this fight is over for them first victim of hunger of Hadar here and aaran has his turn again I'm just going to use stealth ranged attack again since he has advantage on the enemy he is allowed to use it [Music] My Wizard can counters spell the Hunter's Mark here nicely I don't know why he's focusing aarion here but his loss he misses his attacks also next up is my cambion again I decide to split my rays of fire between the ranger since he's almost down and K's here and the ranger is down and his pet as well the L board is [Music] set then pretty unimaginative I know but effective another level Fireball on this group from The Wizard two enemies left at this point and I finished these off fairly easy as well I can go with my fighter inside Hunger of Hadar without being blinded since I have Devil's sight which is a great way to fight much larger groups and very effective Shadow heart now I opted to use a lower rank of guiding bolt here since the remaining enemy does not have that much health left and does not really warrant a level 51 or spell slot economy they will now [Music] bit not My Brightest moment with aarion here but I am not too worried I wanted to change to melee weapon but the controller version still has no button to do this like mouse and keyboard um so we won't be able to do an opportunity [Music] [Music] [Music] attack and that's Victory anyway that's all for today's video thank you all for watching if you learned something new and you enjoyed it please like the video subscribing would be much appreciated as well since we are very close to 500 now thank you so much for watching and see you all in the next video bye

Channel: Tissy The Banshee

Views: 702

Keywords: baldurs gate 3, baldurs gate 3 gameplay, trailer, official release, rpg 2023, crpg, panel from hell, Larian, character creation, Exploring, city, dnd, lore, exploring, release, Monk, dragonborn, 5th edition, Guide, Showcase, supercut, tutorial, gameplay, guide, how to, Controller, tips, spoiler free, answering, questions, Multiplayer, online, ps5, multiclassing, combat, tactics, tactical

Id: M5oefdNJ7BY

Length: 22min 0sec (1320 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2023