Struggling in some fights

offline, maybe?

 

Ohh sweet, I should use that to test builds!

 

Just now noticed the two don't stack. I was using both because I assumed they stacked. SoE is definitely the more useful in my case.

 

They used to stack...

 

I'm still in the process of processing (pun intended) all of your information, but erst the while, a few quick things:
1. I LOVE Immolation and Ignite Weapon for AoE. Just me.
2. A fully-charged spinning attack absolutely OWNED the mobs of siege engineers and ebon cultist marksmen/champions/high wizards. I love seeing 6 to 8 red bars on the screen all simultaneously suddenly sliced in half in one sweep of my enhanced, jewel-socketed halberd. The main challenge, really, is surviving the onslaught of arrows, swords and fireballs while you're charging your attack. Obviously armor, protection buffs (parry/glancing blow/valiant warden et al) and fire resistance, plus heal-over-time buffs help with that.
3. There are some spells that at least in theory SHOULD work on mobs that I'm struggling with. Dazzling Rays should OWN mobs for example - if it would actually stun them to the point where they don't shoot arrows or cast spells for 15 to 20 seconds that's plenty of time for two fully-charged spinning attacks which usually end the fight right there. It just doesn't seem to work as well as I'd hoped. I've also tried fully-charged Earthquake and Solar Flare - those, at least in my opinion, should work a little better against mobs than they do. Maybe I just didn't stick with them long enough before giving up and going back to Spinning Attack.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

 

mesmerise is broken when the target takes damage, unless it's continually being reapplied like with the bardic song. ...so if you have a nice mezzed cluster around you and you do a spinning attack, no, you don't get to do another without interference.

 

Or just being close enough to them with immolation going will pop them out of a mez too.

 

Ah - got it. Well nonetheless, if I go in without AoE and mesmerize them, I should be able to at least not take damage while I'm charging my spinning attack. I'll try that next time I'm in the game.

Still a little curious about earthquake and solar flare - shouldn't those be useful against mobs? Am I just misusing them?

 

Once again, it comes to attunement + intelligence + magic gear. Spells are very weak if you use heavy armor and a weapon, so although you can still use them, the will feel weak. Its the same thing as what I explained in an earlier thread about life magic healing for low amounts.

 

Who fancies a swim?

 

Okay getting back to this now since I have more time and am no longer on mobile :

1. Yes, Immolation and Ignite weapon are great, but lose out on a ton of effectiveness lategame, that is why I ignore them, and focus on Crystal Shield which will give me health and earth attunement which will result in more strength from my Strength of Earth buff. Ignite weapon you could pretty much use it fromm now until the end as it is free DPS

2. Yes, this is true, Spinning attack is good for groups of mobs. The thing is where I fight nowadays, I either ignore groups, or don't see them. I am usually fighting bosses (single target), Shadow monsters (I can only take 2 at a time without risking a death), and Tartarus's 3rd level which I rarely ever get more than 3 mobs at a time. If its working great for you, keep it up!

3. You got the answer for the Dazzling Rays Mez' mechanic, and a bit aboiut the other spells, but let me give you a bit more details on this. As a warrior, you should focus on spells that serve some sort of utility, ex.: Dazzling Ray's mezmerises enemies, so it is great, your low attunement wont affect it much, meanwhile, a fireball requires high attunement and magical investment, so better ignore this one. Things like Fireflies, Blind, and maybe some sorts of crowd control spells are great, but anything DPS related will really struggle with a setup like yours.

 

Thanks again for all the info in that post, and for ALL the help you've been to me. A few specific questions after reviewing in detail:
1. Out of curiosity, why don't you use Valiant Warden?
2. How often do you explicitly use Trip and Poison Weapon?
3. What is your overall AL?

 

if you are finding that your heals can not keep up you could add into your mix Fiona Fitzowen's lute which is a 30% Heal modifier which helps a lot. you can also replace a 3day buff and get 10% more heal modifier which gets you 40% more heal. you can then use two decks if you like to swap between two different instruments as well even more buffs. if you are not changing any armor or weapons its fast enough to swap on the fly.

 

Hey sorry, I had made a reply to this but I somehow never posted it, so here are my answers this time around!

1. I don't use Valiant warden for 2 reasons : 1. I play solo 80% of the time, so it's useless and 2. When I play in a group, my healer would rather have 1 health bar to focus on than two. If we have someone who is an "Off-Healer", then I might use it considering my large health pool.

2. Trip, never, Poison, ALWAYS. Trip is useless for Polearms and Bludgeon, because Polearms already has a trip with leg sweep which does damage as well, meanwhile Bludgeon is the king of CC and does not need an extra cc. Blades can use trip because they lack CC (apart from body slam, which I would use over trip anyways). The only reason I personally would use trip is to use the blades combo that combines Rend and Trip.

For the Poisons, you have Festering death that slows down the recovery of big mobs and bosses, Corpion poison that helps clear out small mobs, Spider Venom which slows down attack speed of mobs who hit hard when they do hit, so basically it is a big utility tool, which you should be using unless you are fighting in scenes that are already too easy.

3. My AL is now 120. I've been using the same build since I was AL 110, and I am 100% sure it works at even lower levels (probably at AL 90 you can start doing most of the stuff that I do, and simply need to push a few levels before you can do everything. AL 115 is the "Max Goal" if you are using the builds I recommend, but might need more if you want those super specialized builds or some stronger mage builds.

 

Any particular strategies or tactics that work against the cabalists? Banish Undead maybe? Poison? Magic Resistance? Smelling Salts to remove that blasted confusion? I've killed 6 of them so far. The last 2 that I still need to kill are usually at Ardoris, Resolute or the 3rd town where when I find them they're not alone. I can BARELY kill one cabalist - I have no hope against 2 or more. I'm AL 105 now so I'm starting to feel like I should be tougher than I am.

I have pretty good gear now - a warlock chain, ring of brittle brawn, belt of troll skin, ring of tempestry, all bronze gear all socketed.

I'll post my decks and some of my abilities if it would help.

 

Cabalists aren't undead, so banish won't work, but most magic works pretty well against them, as does melee and ranged.

Engage opponent can help you get close to guys while confused, and if you're a close range fighter, then you just kill them once you're in range and confusion isn't much of a factor. It's a lot more annoying if they're teamed up with wacky teleport guy.

Avara and Corpus are really the only two that you have to really go out of your way to do something different. Avara gives you a huge focus damage debuff which causes you to kill yourself pretty quickly when you use skills. He's easiest to kill with ranged since ranged can do decent damage without using focus. Corpus is super easy, but he has a debuff that will wreck your gear if you just run up and tank him, so its best to either switch out of your good gear or keep a distance.

edit: It's been quite a while since I've fought any cabalists, so some things might have changed, but not that I'm aware of.

 

Smelling salts won't do anything against Cabalists because they literally spam confusion effects. The intended counter is moving with Blink rather than walking. Engage oponent and body slam may do the trick for a melee character.
I don't think I was able to solo any Cabalist at adv lvl 105, so I think you're doing great so far.
As @Lazlo stated above, Avara is the trickiest one with the focus damage effect. For that one I would take my Brittle Brawn ring away and use another one, trying to use as few skills as possible (all fully stacked) and using charged manual attacks. Remember to drink a Haste Potion to ensure attack speed!

There are instances with 3 Cabalists sometimes. If you can't face them, I would suggest you to open a party in LFG, lots of people like to group up to beat sieges, me included!

 

In theory, you can get all 8. But that will only happen in player owned towns, and the next chance for that is a few hundred years away. I've gotten four at once, though.

 

Would Purify or Purify Burst remove the debuff?

 

I'm not sure, but if so, they recast it so quickly that you're wasting your time. Those Cabalysts cause curses, and those curses are super strong.