1y ago

What are the current metas?

I’ve personally found great effectiveness using cloud of daggers maybe more than any other spell. Funnelling enemies through a passageway with multiple cloud of daggers cast on the spot is probably my current meta. Then I utilize thunder wave/ black hole to keep the enemies on the other side of the daggers once they make it through.

Another thing if found amazing success with is getting a party to strength 20 as fast as I can, which then I find 90% of enemies can be thrown off cliffs for instant kills. Throwing enemies off cliffs also only requires stealth checks where the body hits the ground and dies.

Lastly there is a fun little cheese strategy I’ve picked up that I don’t see anyone talking about. If you cancel an improvised weapon attack with an NPC before you deal damage, you can move NPC’s without angering anyone.

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If there is a patrolling guard past some chasm or whatever, when they get close, jump into turn based and try a shove off the edge as they pass it. They won't register a failed shove as an attack and will just tell you to back off. So you can keep trying till you get them. Thin out a few guards before a fight.
Might be common knowledge now, but I was playing with a friend the other day who never thought of it.
- I'm making a moshpit party now

I refuse to throw someone off a cliff, they have things to sell!
I have 2 patterns, that sort of overlap, depending how the fight is going. I have my paladin and Karlach up front. I have shadowheart just a little back usually next to my "option" character (4th slot rotates out a lot based on needs, but usually Frost mage Gale)
Example, use someone to cause a giant ice slick on the enemy, right in front of my front liners. Then use shadowheart to possibly throw an Insect Plague on top. They have a heck of a time getting to me, and if they do they get to meet a paladin who's really hard to hit (decent AC + light cleric shadowheart) and Karlach with aspect of wolf means there's a beatdown right there. This pattern works really well for the most part, there's always exceptions.

Wall of fire has been great to me, as well as Thunderwave. My Warlock has it, my Astarion has it, my Shadow heart can summon a Djinni with it, and then Karlach can just throw almost any size monster off a cliff with her hands.
Honestly environmental kills trivialized a couple boss fights thus far.
- What happens to the loot once the boss is thrown off the cliff? My fomo is keeping me from trying it. Where does it go?
  
  That depends on the boss. The boss at the end of Astarions quest line can be trivialized by pushing him off, then he responsible a coffin for the second "phase". The phase is trivial so you'll get to loot him.
  
  Yeah I refrain from using it in many situations but in the ones where it's favourable, e.g. landing into combat surrounded by low level mobs, a single Thunder Wave can win the fight in the first move, just have to mop up the boss and any mobs that succeeded a saving throw and still get all of the more valuable loot
  
  It's just gone.
- I cheesed a major boss fight in Act 3 with Thunder Wave. Still got the loot, too, because the baddie was supposed to "escape" after being reduced to 0HP and got put back on the map.

Any persistent AoE damage spells seem to be extremely good, especially if you can set them up in a choke point and continually shove enemies back into them. Hunger of Hadar, Wall of Fire, Cloud of Daggers, Spike Growth, etc.
Spells that reposition enemies can also take the place of shoves: Thuder Wave, Eldritch Blast with repelling invocation. You miss out on loot if you kill a boss this way, but sometimes the cheese is too delicious.
Spirit Guardians has been good to me. Sometimes I just have Shadowheart cast it and spend her action dashing through all the enemies on screen.
Would definitely recommend giving Astarion the Thief subclass for the broken bonus action economy. It meshes well with his vampire bite ability.
- I'd say Thief just seems to be way to go for any Rogue. Surprise can be a little unreliable to get in the game's combat system for Assassin and last I checked, Mage Hand Legerdemain still isn't working for Arcane Trickster.
- I respecced Shadowheart to have more strength initially, and a reroll later after finding certain gloves, and made her a tank with spirit guardian. Stays in range of other characters for more potent touch heals, can take a blow, and Spirit Guardians in the middle of a pack of a restraining CC spell, and it builds up the damage. Freedom of movement, or equipment that grants the same/similar are super useful for this strategy. That said, I have only played on the Balanced setting, so take it with a grain of salt.
  Edited to add, Life domain provides juicier heals and access to heavy armor.

Another thing if found amazing success with is getting a party to strength 20 as fast as I can, which then I find 90% of enemies can be thrown off cliffs for instant kills. Throwing enemies off cliffs also only requires stealth checks where the body hits the ground and dies.
lmao, I've got to try this

For raw damage output, I don't know if anything's topping the Open Hand Monk + Tavern Brawler Build. Run STR instead of DEX, dip into Thief for an extra bonus action, and use some of the tons of unarmed attack bonus gear that the game throws at you.

My favourite tactic is based around Hunger of Hadar, a Warlock spell that creates a zone that a) deals damage to everything in it at the start and end of its turn; b) is difficult terrain (aka slows everything down); c) blinds everything in it; d) best of all, has no save. Plonk it down in the middle of the enemy team, use another control spell to slow everyone inside even more, use shove/repelling blast/whatever to push anything that's made its way to the edge back to the middle. Wait for everything to die, rinse & repeat.
But the greatest cheese in the game must be casting darkness (or shooting arrow of darkness) on your own party. As long as you're inside the cloud you are basically untargettable by spells and ranged attacks - and the enemies don't seem to be smart ebough to be throwing Fireballs on just any weird clouds they see. On your turn you just need to step out, cast/shoot, step back in. The only way they can get you is if they come inside the cloud with you (aka in range of whoever is on blender duty, Lae'zel or Karlach like this posting a lot), and the AI gets a bit confused when it can't see you so it's not a sure bet that they'll even try. It's a thing of beauty.

I like my ballistic missile Karlach: she's built for speed. A ring of speed (+3m), aspect of speed (+1.5m), fast movement (+1.5m), longstrider (+3m, so 18m base speed), and boots of speed (bonus action for twice the speed, so 36m). This allows her to go absolutely anywhere on the battlefield and kill the target. With a potion of speed it's even more ridiculous. She's the MVP of the group.
My paladin on the other hand is the immortal pillar of the group: armour of persistance, shield, ring of regeneration, cloak of displacement, and defense fighting style. Nothing can hit him. So he can grind any fight and revive who needs to be. He is the backup piece, when Karlach can't do fast enough.
Of note was the slow spell during my playthrough. This was the best controle spell I could use, because the area it can affect enemies is absolutely gigantic and it completely neuter the enemies. I didn't use it all the time though, only when a fireball or wall of fire wouldn't do it. Globe of invulnerability was also key for some encounters.
That's the height of my first playthrough. I'm not the optimizer kind though.

- What is CC?
  
  Crowd control

my friend and i have been using summon spikes with hungar of hador on top of it. my friend also summons a whole god damn party with his druid to drop more spikes on the ground

Keep in mind this is theoretical, so assumes perfect setup + max damage rolls
Hasted sorcerer attacking a grouping of five enemies
action 1: throw a bottle of water at them
action 2: twinned spell Chain Lightning
initial targets hit once, doubled for wet (80x2=160)
each enemy aside from the initial two targets is hit twice, doubled for wet (80x2x3=480)
(very) theoretical max damage of 640 for one spell slot and 6 sorc points
Meta it is not, due to the very specific use-case and the setup required, but it's a great opener or closer, and I pretty commonly hit +200/250dmg using this. Cleared every single ad in the >!Orin!< fight in one shot this way lol
Another fun build I just tried out in my friend's game
Paladin/tempest cleric
Moving parts are as follows
Thunderous Smite (spell slot)
utilize Destructive Wrath to ensure max damage roll on the thunder damage (channel divinity - short rest)
use Luck Of The Far Realms to ensure crit (long rest)
use Divine Smite on Crit for more booku bux (spell slot)
Haven't played w this one too much, for stats you'll want to dump CHA tho, weird for a paladin build but the important bits of this build don't involve the actual spell effects for paladin so ¯(ツ)/¯ in terms of efficacy though, at level 7 I did 120 damage in one attack lol.

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