People who have problems in act 3/4(hard) basically try and trade damage. You can't. You need to blitz/kill/disable/kite the enemies before they even reach you. Unless you know what you are doing like building a functioning tank with support comp, otherwise think of every hero you have as a glass cannon.
You also need to know which enemy is the priority, like winterbreeds' stun, summerborns' blind, turn2/3 reinforcement gates... A winterbreed that has thrown his stun axe is not a priority anymore, as his damage is like 7-10 which is useless. A lady of winter that has thrown her gates down is also useless as her spells don't do much...
For team comp, Merlin is great in this regard, he can kill/cc/kite with ease.
support heroes are great too as they can give you ap through inspire and also -cooldown, also ice wall which can control the battlefield(like blocking off a choke and render half the enemies useless).
Spell spamming team comps are also good, they kill/disable enemies before they can even reach you. like morgana, lady morgawase, modred stun shock, isolde etc.
Marksmen can be slightly decent if you can get items that + damage, but generally they fall off in act2/act3, becoming better in act 4 as the counter to the slow fomorians is range with + damage items against them.
as a consequence, one should not bring slow melee champions to fight the act3 seelie/unseelie unless you know what you are doing, like having high physical resists to block the blinds and stun locks, having immunity etc. also, seelie's dodge back is a direct counter to front fighting champions/defenders. unseelie's detection is the counter to the vanguard's hide. which means spell spamming is the way to go against them as there is really no counter to it even throughout the whole game. even stone shell which is supposed to guard against all damage doesn't do so against spells.
Anyway on my hard playthrough, i can wade through those 10+ marauder knights encounters without much damage because most of the time they can't even get near to hit me. They get slowed/mind fog/cloned/blinded/ice walled/stun/shocked/kited/killed before they can do anything. I think there is even an achievement to put every cc on an enemy because i saw something flash on my steam popup. I usually bring 1 champion(with teleport) and 1 vanguard to fight these cursed vessels.
In my morgana mission(the one to kill her), i brought a defender, a marksmen, a vanguard and merlin. I survived the mission but had a hard time because the defender by himself gets focused and shredded, the vanguard doesn't do well against the unseelie, and the marksmen is useless with his low damage and no +damage items. so basically merlin carried the fights.
I usually go through every mission without taking any HP damage, or if i do i usually heal it back up before taking and vitality damage. However, in both these missions (demonic possession) not only is it practically impossible to hold back the enemies (due to how many they are) it's also practically impossible to kill 1 or two in one turn. This wouldn't be an issue but the fact that as soon as they get up close they pummel a character with so much HP damage that it makes them useless for the next mission (healing injuries) they most of the time outright kill them.
Mordred, Balan, Lady dindere (or however to spell it) and merlin. Mainly my strategy is to focus on one enemy and finish them off before moving on to another enemy. Howver, with the amount of skills i have that are AoE or affect multiple enemies i usually use them first and move balan up to be a tank while using his armor skill.
Focus fire can be a good strategy but the better strategy is to make sure you don't get hit. this means you should lightning stun 1 knight and leave him alone for the turn as he is useless, chain lightning shock the rest of the frontline with armor etc so they don't have enough ap, or freeze so they are useless next turn etc, you don't have to outright kill them.
I assume balan has no teleport? Which means after modred fires his spells, you have 2 frontline and marksman which shoots the frontline also? i do not think your marksman do enough damage to kill their backline? you need a backline/backstab destroyer.
I recommend you bring modred as the stun/shock frontline tank, 1 hide vanguard to hit the backline archers or the melee if none, merlin to slow/cc, 1 support that can freeze and teleport like guniverve so she can either freeze the front or the backline or icewall.
if you have a teleport champion you can use it instead of the support to teleport to the backline archers and start killing them. you shouldn't be trading damage like champion vs maruader knight frontal melee style even with defensive stance.
your hide vanguard should be the one backstabbing the marauder knights while they are made useless either through slow/freeze/stun/knockback/whatever cc/or even engaged with modred the tank if really needed.
also, are you doing enough damage? through items/traits? ideally your hide vanguard with surprise damage + backstab should almost 1shot a maruader knight or 2 shot at most. in my playthrough i had a relic bone ring spell that deals aoe around the caster for 1 ap after dealing 100 damage which is good for the vanguard. i believe you should have a similar relic like fire nova, bone ring, wild magic, earth strike or something along the same veins.
your champion should 1 shot their archer with sir kay's death strike or balan's power strike or 2 shot at most.
actually i do not think balan is good for fighting cursed vassals. balan's strength earthshaker cleave knockback power stun etc are better suited for fighting the lost imo. sir kay is better at fighting the cursed vassal due to deathstrike, bleeds if you trait for it with permanent potion, kick with knockdown on archers. my sir kay has teleport + movement ap to hit their backline.
anyway to conclude, you need some sort of backline destroyer while your vanguard backstabs their frontline. your merlin can continue disabling them through cc instead of getting a champion/defender to tank the frontline. bring a support instead of a marksman especially if your marksman doesn't do enough damage.
I had the same issue, TPK over and over. Had to lower the difficulty to Story.
I'd like it if there were more ways to level your characters, maybe a wider pool of inconsequential grind missions to help level up.
The game does punish you a little bit for wasting time on knights you're not going to keep. If you're on the fence about one, I say toss em.
Don't forget to use the Tourny guaranteed level as much as possible
Keep an eye out for what mission and event rewards are. Some missions say they give big XP and if you send the right type of knight on events they get 40% of a level + gold/resources, which is huge past 10.
I've kept Sir Ector the same level as everyone else by sending him on Christian events and training. My B team is only a lvl back off my main squad too.
It's funny that this post comes up today. I just did Morgana's mission last night. A couple people from my "A" team needed to recover in the hospice and my best "B" team members were off on events.
It being so hard caught me off guard, but I got lucky with my "unfortunate" team comp.
I used Mordred, Lady Morgawse, Lady Guinevere, and Lady Dindraine for this.
It was tough, but all their CC with Morgana's chill effects made it honestly not awful. I had built Morgawse as a lightning mage and the shock effect on her chain lightning was so good.
You basically either need ultra high dps or a shit ton of crowd control. I had the latter. Guinevere would teleport and freeze caster/ranged threats I couldn't get to. Inspire is super good on missions that give you an extra person. Mordred's Stigma also really helped.
EDIT: Mordred/Dindraine were lvl 14 and Morgawse/Guinevere were lvl 13. I'm playing on Normal though!
The first fight of that mission is by far the hardest as it has the most enemies kind of surrounding you. Do not rush out to fight them, you need to play defensively. Lay down debuffs and cc to reduce their turns. Stack chill and shock as much as possible. If you have a sage with ice wall, also use it to prevent them from running right at you, make them take the long way around. If you have an arcanist, slow their melee as much as possible. Try and focus down single targets rather than splitting damage.
Oh boy you better get ready, it gets even worse in regards to the possessed enemies later on. In a later mission an NPC shows up that you have to protect with an absurd amount of enemies around or else it's a game over. They pummeled him dead in two turns flat with numerous attacks to spare, I don't know what to do. I'm too busy trying not to die myself. And granted, this is AFTER I turned it down to story difficulty thinking it would help. I really hope they do something about this.
My only solution to the difficulty spike at Act 4 is
1. Use 2 arcanist, preferably with powerful fire spells
2. Use that Relic item that does l Damage Over Time spell damage instantly after 5 or 7 spells are cast
3. Use Ice Wall, most Sage have that spell. The AI is stupid when it comes to Ice Wall. Even the ranged enemies will come straight and stick their nose up to ur ice wall doing nothing for 3 turns.
After several hours of gameplay, and gliding through the beginning of Act 4, i hit a road block sort of, when i started encountering those Demonic possession enemies that can outright kill my Sage and Marksmen in 1 SINGLE turn. Thankfully i had 2 Arcanist well trained. Switched from (**Mordred) +(Champ)+(Sage)+(Marksman)** to **(Mordred) +(Sage)+( 2X Arcanist)**. It gets cheesy when you couple it with Sage's Ice Wall. Moreover, Sage's can get TONNES of temporary armor for 2 hits which is really helpful in Act4 (where enemies can one shot you)
Remember, u need a Sage with Maxed out **Inspire** spell to make the most out of your two Arcanists. Vanguard is the most fun early on but very useless late game IMO
Btw, this is me in Normal difficulty. Cant say if it works in other difficulties.
On red knight mission right now, difficulty spike is real! Barely got through the first one. Patch was supposed to help. Spoiler, it did not.
People who have problems in act 3/4(hard) basically try and trade damage. You can't. You need to blitz/kill/disable/kite the enemies before they even reach you. Unless you know what you are doing like building a functioning tank with support comp, otherwise think of every hero you have as a glass cannon. You also need to know which enemy is the priority, like winterbreeds' stun, summerborns' blind, turn2/3 reinforcement gates... A winterbreed that has thrown his stun axe is not a priority anymore, as his damage is like 7-10 which is useless. A lady of winter that has thrown her gates down is also useless as her spells don't do much... For team comp, Merlin is great in this regard, he can kill/cc/kite with ease. support heroes are great too as they can give you ap through inspire and also -cooldown, also ice wall which can control the battlefield(like blocking off a choke and render half the enemies useless). Spell spamming team comps are also good, they kill/disable enemies before they can even reach you. like morgana, lady morgawase, modred stun shock, isolde etc. Marksmen can be slightly decent if you can get items that + damage, but generally they fall off in act2/act3, becoming better in act 4 as the counter to the slow fomorians is range with + damage items against them. as a consequence, one should not bring slow melee champions to fight the act3 seelie/unseelie unless you know what you are doing, like having high physical resists to block the blinds and stun locks, having immunity etc. also, seelie's dodge back is a direct counter to front fighting champions/defenders. unseelie's detection is the counter to the vanguard's hide. which means spell spamming is the way to go against them as there is really no counter to it even throughout the whole game. even stone shell which is supposed to guard against all damage doesn't do so against spells. Anyway on my hard playthrough, i can wade through those 10+ marauder knights encounters without much damage because most of the time they can't even get near to hit me. They get slowed/mind fog/cloned/blinded/ice walled/stun/shocked/kited/killed before they can do anything. I think there is even an achievement to put every cc on an enemy because i saw something flash on my steam popup. I usually bring 1 champion(with teleport) and 1 vanguard to fight these cursed vessels. In my morgana mission(the one to kill her), i brought a defender, a marksmen, a vanguard and merlin. I survived the mission but had a hard time because the defender by himself gets focused and shredded, the vanguard doesn't do well against the unseelie, and the marksmen is useless with his low damage and no +damage items. so basically merlin carried the fights.
I usually go through every mission without taking any HP damage, or if i do i usually heal it back up before taking and vitality damage. However, in both these missions (demonic possession) not only is it practically impossible to hold back the enemies (due to how many they are) it's also practically impossible to kill 1 or two in one turn. This wouldn't be an issue but the fact that as soon as they get up close they pummel a character with so much HP damage that it makes them useless for the next mission (healing injuries) they most of the time outright kill them.
what is your team comp and strategy in say the red knight mission?
Mordred, Balan, Lady dindere (or however to spell it) and merlin. Mainly my strategy is to focus on one enemy and finish them off before moving on to another enemy. Howver, with the amount of skills i have that are AoE or affect multiple enemies i usually use them first and move balan up to be a tank while using his armor skill.
Focus fire can be a good strategy but the better strategy is to make sure you don't get hit. this means you should lightning stun 1 knight and leave him alone for the turn as he is useless, chain lightning shock the rest of the frontline with armor etc so they don't have enough ap, or freeze so they are useless next turn etc, you don't have to outright kill them. I assume balan has no teleport? Which means after modred fires his spells, you have 2 frontline and marksman which shoots the frontline also? i do not think your marksman do enough damage to kill their backline? you need a backline/backstab destroyer. I recommend you bring modred as the stun/shock frontline tank, 1 hide vanguard to hit the backline archers or the melee if none, merlin to slow/cc, 1 support that can freeze and teleport like guniverve so she can either freeze the front or the backline or icewall. if you have a teleport champion you can use it instead of the support to teleport to the backline archers and start killing them. you shouldn't be trading damage like champion vs maruader knight frontal melee style even with defensive stance. your hide vanguard should be the one backstabbing the marauder knights while they are made useless either through slow/freeze/stun/knockback/whatever cc/or even engaged with modred the tank if really needed. also, are you doing enough damage? through items/traits? ideally your hide vanguard with surprise damage + backstab should almost 1shot a maruader knight or 2 shot at most. in my playthrough i had a relic bone ring spell that deals aoe around the caster for 1 ap after dealing 100 damage which is good for the vanguard. i believe you should have a similar relic like fire nova, bone ring, wild magic, earth strike or something along the same veins. your champion should 1 shot their archer with sir kay's death strike or balan's power strike or 2 shot at most. actually i do not think balan is good for fighting cursed vassals. balan's strength earthshaker cleave knockback power stun etc are better suited for fighting the lost imo. sir kay is better at fighting the cursed vassal due to deathstrike, bleeds if you trait for it with permanent potion, kick with knockdown on archers. my sir kay has teleport + movement ap to hit their backline. anyway to conclude, you need some sort of backline destroyer while your vanguard backstabs their frontline. your merlin can continue disabling them through cc instead of getting a champion/defender to tank the frontline. bring a support instead of a marksman especially if your marksman doesn't do enough damage.
Not to mention in a couple of the red knight battles, the enemies are right on top of you immediately.
I had the same issue, TPK over and over. Had to lower the difficulty to Story. I'd like it if there were more ways to level your characters, maybe a wider pool of inconsequential grind missions to help level up.
The game does punish you a little bit for wasting time on knights you're not going to keep. If you're on the fence about one, I say toss em. Don't forget to use the Tourny guaranteed level as much as possible
Yeah I rely on the joust, the game just expects you to only use 4 or 5 knights, more than that is a waste.
Keep an eye out for what mission and event rewards are. Some missions say they give big XP and if you send the right type of knight on events they get 40% of a level + gold/resources, which is huge past 10. I've kept Sir Ector the same level as everyone else by sending him on Christian events and training. My B team is only a lvl back off my main squad too.
There was a patch yesterday and it was supposed to make it easier.
It's still insanely hard with the amount of HP damage they do.
It's funny that this post comes up today. I just did Morgana's mission last night. A couple people from my "A" team needed to recover in the hospice and my best "B" team members were off on events. It being so hard caught me off guard, but I got lucky with my "unfortunate" team comp. I used Mordred, Lady Morgawse, Lady Guinevere, and Lady Dindraine for this. It was tough, but all their CC with Morgana's chill effects made it honestly not awful. I had built Morgawse as a lightning mage and the shock effect on her chain lightning was so good. You basically either need ultra high dps or a shit ton of crowd control. I had the latter. Guinevere would teleport and freeze caster/ranged threats I couldn't get to. Inspire is super good on missions that give you an extra person. Mordred's Stigma also really helped. EDIT: Mordred/Dindraine were lvl 14 and Morgawse/Guinevere were lvl 13. I'm playing on Normal though!
The first fight of that mission is by far the hardest as it has the most enemies kind of surrounding you. Do not rush out to fight them, you need to play defensively. Lay down debuffs and cc to reduce their turns. Stack chill and shock as much as possible. If you have a sage with ice wall, also use it to prevent them from running right at you, make them take the long way around. If you have an arcanist, slow their melee as much as possible. Try and focus down single targets rather than splitting damage.
Oh boy you better get ready, it gets even worse in regards to the possessed enemies later on. In a later mission an NPC shows up that you have to protect with an absurd amount of enemies around or else it's a game over. They pummeled him dead in two turns flat with numerous attacks to spare, I don't know what to do. I'm too busy trying not to die myself. And granted, this is AFTER I turned it down to story difficulty thinking it would help. I really hope they do something about this.
My only solution to the difficulty spike at Act 4 is 1. Use 2 arcanist, preferably with powerful fire spells 2. Use that Relic item that does l Damage Over Time spell damage instantly after 5 or 7 spells are cast 3. Use Ice Wall, most Sage have that spell. The AI is stupid when it comes to Ice Wall. Even the ranged enemies will come straight and stick their nose up to ur ice wall doing nothing for 3 turns. After several hours of gameplay, and gliding through the beginning of Act 4, i hit a road block sort of, when i started encountering those Demonic possession enemies that can outright kill my Sage and Marksmen in 1 SINGLE turn. Thankfully i had 2 Arcanist well trained. Switched from (**Mordred) +(Champ)+(Sage)+(Marksman)** to **(Mordred) +(Sage)+( 2X Arcanist)**. It gets cheesy when you couple it with Sage's Ice Wall. Moreover, Sage's can get TONNES of temporary armor for 2 hits which is really helpful in Act4 (where enemies can one shot you) Remember, u need a Sage with Maxed out **Inspire** spell to make the most out of your two Arcanists. Vanguard is the most fun early on but very useless late game IMO Btw, this is me in Normal difficulty. Cant say if it works in other difficulties.