A collection of thoughts I've had on tactics and optimization during my first play through of Baldur's Gate 3 full release. My subreddit: www.reddit.com... BG3Builds subreddit: www.reddit.com...
I moved comfortably up to tactician today and am having a blast. I've never been terrible at cRPGs but never exceled and this is the first time the mechanics have really clicked for me in a way that I am loving. Your content has helped a ton with my understanding!
For a decade I was mediocre at tactics game, until other content creators helped me conceptualize them in a way where I could start to make improvements, and it really made them more fun for me, so I am delighted that I could pass that experience on to at least one other person!
It's cool how many ways there are to be strong. Wish there was a harder mode but it would probably get silly, might do something like a "no items but weapons and chestpiece" run if I do another.
Skin grafter is a stand alone weapon in the Githyanki Inquisitor’s room in the Rosary. I use Glyph of Warding in fights for damage as this adds at least 3 stacks of warding per cast. Stone skin and the amulet of prot from good are also sources of charges. The robes are bought from the light tavern in shadow lands. I throw my wards on anyone taking damage. Very powerful ability for all fights.
Half ork champion with 1 lvl dip into old one warlock. Dark Justicar crit helm, heavy weapon master + haste. Crit on 17+ with fear on easy crits. Tons of attacks/round.
Beating the game, I only was able to make, from loot, 9 elixers of haste and one elixer of bloodlust. I never looked too hard at vendors though to see if they have them in bundles and if you can just let them restock. There's some crazy elixers like the Elixir of Universal Resistance, which just makes you resist all damage. With just loot I was able to make 2 of those.
Ah, yes, I've been looking forward to your next video! Everyone else is dumping out generic BS 1-2x a day, but this is quality content worth waiting a few extra days for!
been messing around with the build a bit. Did sorcerer 2 dip - white dragon. Gives armor of agathys, and extend spell and spell range metamagic. This allows me to cast Blade Ward that lasts 4 turns. Also chose cantrips that are not combat cantrips, and mage armor and shield as spells. (because those cantrips and spells would in the future be cast using CHA and not INT)
A couple notes: - currently, the extra attack from warlock STACKS with regular extra attack, so Oathbreaker 7/ GOO 5 can attack 3 times (6 with haste), and add cha twice on every attack because of aura of hate. Darkness seems to have been fixed, so easy advantage to make GWM attacks reliable, for another +10 per attack - Necromancer x/ Tempest 2 can still get chain lightning. With your channel divinity, on a wet target, that is 160 damage, without friendly fire, and with freecast, you can do it once per short rest, or twice per fight. This obviously should work well with the Oathbreaker build - eldritch blast + lightning charges is still bugged. You add your cha another time because of the +1. Then, be a draconic sorcerer x/ GOO 2. You can add your cha another time to every blast because of your subclass. Then, there is also the Potent Robe, which, again, lets you add your cha another time. Lastly, quicken and haste for 9 blasts. I am not 100% certain, if agonizing blast is added to every additional damage, or just the lightning charges, but yeat, lots of damage. Without the bug, it is 9*(1d10+5+1d6+1+5+5)=225 With the bug, it is 9*(1d10+5+1d6+5+1+5+5+5+5+5)=405 - With the slashing flourish and a ranged weapon, sword bards can attack the same creature twice, instead of two different creatures. This gives you 5 attacks from level 6, if you use hand crossbows, and it works with Sharpshooter. Sadly, they do not get archery. With haste, you get 9 attacks!
People on reddit say, that tavern brawler is bugged in the same way and added to rage damage for example. But I have not seen that yet. Would make it even more OP lol I have also heard that tavern brawler works when wildshaped. This could also have some potential, since the animals also get three attacks
Wizards are competitive with sorcerers after all, I think. I used a tempest/ storm multiclass, and it is fun, but I very rarely even need twin haste, since potions are so abundant, and heighten gets expensive after a while. The subclass effects (free flight etc) are very nice, but wizards can learn from scrolls, so they can learn 6th level spells (call lightning) even when multiclassed. I am thinking about running a necromancer in an evil playthrough, with Minthara as an Oathbreaker. Especially with Necromancy of Thay, that should be quite potent
Can you do a wizard subclass ranking? I have not tested all of them yet (for example, I did not know of the Abjuration changes). That would really be helpful :)
I made a similar build for my second playthrough but i took one level of war cleric and one level of sorcerer to start it off (for the weapon/armor proficiencies and the armor of agathys). Im in late act two and I can say it definitely works as well in practice as on paper. The abjurer build works amazingly with heavy armor and a shield and that opens up more armor and weapons that give damage reduction, resistances or retaliation damage (one example is the defender flail). The downside of starting with these two dip levels is waiting longer to get 4th level spells for wizard, but its a strong enough character to play early on that you dont really notice it.
I actually just tried this before this video, 10 wizard (for short rest ward increase the sub class gets at 10) and 1 sorcerer, I'm only level 11 currently. There's some amazing very rare and legendary items that synergise with this as well (I won't spoil them for everyone). I didn't even think about the cold shield thing and didn't use warding bond either. Just running around solo (Tactician) watching everything kill themselves on me, whilst also casting high level spells with absurd hit ratios, due to items. Im terrible at optimising so be interested to see what build you come up with when you get late game and see all the items!
Also, another interesting interaction. Using level 12 pact weapon warlock. Using a legendary that gives you an extra reaction per turn and you may use a reaction to deal your proficiency bonus as extra damage, and gives you a bonus action attack as well. What's more fun is that hex procs off the weapon attack, your life drinker proc and the reaction damage, I think it's messing up as its all necrotic. But that's 3 attacks a turn with 3 hex procs per attack! Have fun with that one haha.
You can cast Warding Bond from a cleric you leave behind at camp. :) They do still take the damage, though, so they will very possibly be dead when you get back. So save a slot for Revivify on a cleric (or bard, I guess) you do actually have in your party. :)
If you respec Gale as a cleric and have him cast WB on your party, then leave him at camp, he will heal himself after a 2 second animation of taking damage from WB and will also refresh his spell slots
I’m only 5 min in but wouldn’t the best be to go two lvls of warlock to get infinite mage armor and keep stacking that way? That way no waste of spell slots
Yes, that is better. I tested it for this video and wrongly came to the conclusion that the game doesn't let you cast it multiple times, since after you cast it once it greys out. However, if you re-equip your armor than unequip it, you can cast it again, so it does work after all. I learned that trick after making this video.
Wouldn't this work better on wyll, with pact of the blade (armor of agathys, potential extra attack if leveled up, use charisma for atks) and multiclass in wizard?
Sorry but if the wizard gets hit by a skill with multiple hits, like scorching ray for example, does he lose a ward stack for each instance of damage? So 3 for scorching ray?
You can use Gale because you can respec his stats for 100 coins. With the news subclasses for Wizard, do you still prefer Abjuration? Any other that has caught your attention?
Abjuration is definitely good, but there are others that are also fun. Divination is powrful. Conjuration could be quite strong. Necromancy is probably REALLY strong. Enchantment is awesome. There are more good ones then bad.
Cool build! My karlach returning pike build is coming along. I found and ring, amd a set of gloves, each add 1d4 to thrown object. Going to take tavern brawler at level 8. Should be a silly amount of damaged every round, with 3 throws per round. Although i do think the returning pile is glitched because it doesnt come back sometimes. In which case i just pick up and throw my enemies
Start grabbing all the +1 throwables you can. Since the returning pike equips when it returns, it locks you out of using other weapons, and you'll eventually want to have the returning pike just as backup.
@@jiaan100 But Barb 5 means you'd lose a Feat. Balanced seems easy enough so get Paladin Extra attack later on anyway, while also getting Polearm master, Resilient STR, Ability Improvement STR to 20 by end.
@@Charok1 You can just get the barb 5 extra attack and wait until your paladin level gets to 4 and respec with Withers to barb4/pal5. That way you don't need to wait
This is actually so broken. I used this build for the second half of act 2 and I don’t think I lost a single point of actual HP on the wizard in any combats.
I am playing it in my second run right now, and it is indeed broken. There difficult part is tricking the AI into attacking you, but its definitely possible. I think its in the same league as all the talked about broken builds, like Sorlock, but no one knows about it. Even this video has gotten very few views.
Yea if you set up your positioning right the AI seems to almost always melee attack you. It Doesn’t seem to have any (or at least very little) understanding of melee -> retaliation damage. Side note: I’m curious what your thoughts are for limiting # of companions for hardcore. I understand the reasoning for not wanting to do solo as it limits strategy a lot, but I feel like 4 companions with solid builds has really been trivializing some of the boss fights.
@@Aestus_RPGI've been considering trying something similar with either a dwarf or gith (they have big weapon proficiency and medium armor,) going 15 str, 8 dex, 16 con, 8 wis, 17 int, 8 cha on creation, and using lv 4 feat heavily armored to get heavy armor + bump str to 16, and then use Ethel to get int to 18. Theorycrafting, I would stack armor of agathys + the heavy adamantine armor damage reduction + arcane ward reduction to do similar. And use a big ass sword (tyr sword makes gith AC even better) or big ass hammer/axe as dwarf. Would likely be a lv 12 wizard build, no multi.
@@Aestus_RPG thanks, i am actually running a lot of campaigns and wanna test a lot. I am also playing bard (as you can assume from my questions before) but i lack tankiness. I was thinking about building 1 lvl cleric to get shield and armor prof and then to bard and become ultimate support machine. What do you think may be best stats for that? For now i have 8/8/14/8/14/16, 6 stats to add somwhere and +1 bonus, but i have no idea how to make it optimal, same with cantrips*. I was thinking about dexterity because i was our team thief but i think that may not make sense anymore and we can not have it because my team is annoyed by stealing mechanics. What an expert like you may think about this? *You said light is S tier in your guides so i'll take that i guess. This concrete campaign is very meta and optimising oriented so i want to fit in here, in my games before i didn't think about it too much.
@@TheMateuszNH I would go 8/16/15/8/8/17 for stats. That will help a lot with tankiness. You can get the shield and armor proficiencies from Valor Bard, so the Cleric dip is only viable if you are thining of going Swords or Lore. That said, a 1 dip into Light Cleric offers ALOT of durability, with shield, medium armor, and Warding Flare.
@@Aestus_RPG Yes i was about to pick lore bard, is valor better? I can also have heavy armors with cleric lvl 1. And i guess first feat is getting 16 con and 18 cha
Funny title. I can't stand Gale in every way Larian made him. The most annoying part is I wanted a wizard on my main team for the fun spells, so instead I'm only sometimes going to take the gnome hireling wizard out to play, who could have been so much fun as a crazy character if Larian used him instead of terrible boring harry potter british Gale. I would have been the wizard myself, but I chose to be the skill monkey because I can't stand Astarion.
@@Tentacl NP! Like I said, I think I got it from Grymforge somewhere, but I can't remember exactly. I've just been collecting every interesting magic item I can find, so I can't remember where a lot of them were. Sorry I can't be more specific.
@@Aestus_RPG yeah, I did the same in my playthrough and still don't have this on my chest. Maybe some side quest I missed, I saved the gnomes, killed all slavers and opened the full map. Oh well, not like this is gonna be my only playthrough.
Alright, finally finished the video between work. I haven't gotten into Act 2 yet, but for the Elixir of Bloodlust, I assume have a Transmutation Wizard would effectively double the amount of elixirs you can craft for yourself. And I wonder whether there may be a vendor somewhere that either sells the elixirs, or else the worg components necessary to craft your own. Also, regarding not using Gale, is there really any reason not to, given you can just respec him to be STR-oriented for 100gp? (Other than the obligatory, "this MF eats your loot", of course.)
Would your wizard build here work better as a Blade Pact Warlock build with an abjuration wizard dip to get the Arcane Ward? My thinking is that you could use the warlock level 2 invocation to cast Mage Armor on yourself at will to stack Arcane Ward to whatever number you want (if it works that way when repeat casting it). And with that magic Halberd, you have extra attack from Pact of the Blade at warlock level 6. Thoughts, Aestus?
One thing I forgot to mention in this video is Arcane Ward maxes out at 2x your wizard level stacks, which is why I said you want as many Wizard levels as you can get. The only dip I think is worth doing is Warlock 2 to get Armor of Shadows. I didn't know this when I made the video, but if you cast it, equip some armor, then unequip, you can recast it. That allows you to get max stacks between combats.
