High SES guy, low SES girl
Crazy Rich Asians, love 'em or hate 'em. Somewhere in China, people forgot Zhang Liang's virtue as the great Sage of Strategy (Link is only for those who understand spoken Chinese). Then somewhere in Singapore, people don't know why Cao Cao was such an awesome dude (Again, the link is only for those who understand spoken Chinese).
Then in Barovia, you got the high SES guy and low SES girl. It's never a case of welcome to Singapore, but you can be very sure this post is about welcome to Berez. The low SES girl was someone named Marina, the high SES guy was none other than Strahd von Zarovich. Hell has no fury like a woman scorned, but the Nine Hells have no wrath like Strahd von Zarovich angered. That's why something like this below was a common sight in the ruins of Berez.
Somewhere in the ruins of Berez, you could see a tree shedding leaves of ethereal beauty. No one should ever deny Strahd being a jerk. But you have to admit Strahd's steadfastness when it came to love. Yes, he's a philanderer. But for some funny reason, his love for Marina was more of a Shakespearean Romeo than the common Romeo. If you're lucky enough, you'd see him kneeling before her grave lamenting his loss (i.e. Marina's death). You can try taking him down. Don't worry, you won't die until you face him in Base Ravenloft.
Actually, there's a reason why Strahd was a Shakespearean Romeo before Marina. Despite the journal text concerning him, Strahd did have a humane side. This was why Madame Eva persisted in trying to save him. So what if Neverwinter Online painted him out to be a heartless monster? There's a reason why Hellsing Ultimate (8.3/10) scored higher than Wonder Woman (7.5/10) on IMDb.
Stunlock and counteroffensive
The enemies in the ruins of Berez are 100% undead. Nature of existence wise, the variation is the same as those at the Howling Hills. Same family, different members. This is unlike the Cursed Meadow and Whispering Wood where distinctively different enemy types are present.
At this point in writing this post, allow John to offer a personal advice: Unless you're really confident, try choosing for yourself the ideal hunt zone. You have four to choose from, so choose two or three at the most. This is mainly due to Cryptic upping the difficulty level in the Barovia zone. If you're still surprised at this, it means you're most likely spending too much time playing World of Warcraft. After all, that one requires a monthly fee, unlike Neverwinter's F2P model. Whispering Wood and Cursed Meadow would be John's recommended choices. Howling Hills zone is NOT to be recommended for alts and lower geared mains now. The lupine Chippendales brigade has yet to alter the modus operandi, but the Wolf Dude's BFFs sure have gotten harder and faster. Simply put, their zerging game failed the dope test. Not only that, their zerging game dodged the dope test. Definitely not a good thing for gamers out to test their luck considering Howling Hills is always the hardest open-world zone in Barovia. This looks worse than the two-panel sequence below.
Then again, worse things have happened in real life before. And you think stuff like Hellsing, Berserk, and Matou Sakura killing her rapist brother in Heaven's Feel aren't realistic?
Okay, back to ruining Berez. The Germans are good at one thing. Apart from Auschwitz and Özil, there's this one thing called clockwork counteroffensive. Break up play>boss the play>score the goal. Despite the K-shockwave coming from the #TGWarriors, Der Löwe remains Der Boss, Ottoman Turk or no Ottoman Turk.
Stunlocking in the ruins of Berez works in a similar way. Break up play=fight>boss the play=stun>score the goal=continual pummeling while maintaining the stun. This is most evident when fighting ghouls. To be fair, some of the undead enemy types are much easier to deal with. Zombies and skeletons belong to that category. Zombies don't do a thing apart from walking up to you and trying to grope you in the most damaging way possible. As for skeletons, the archers are the primary source of dps. So take them down before they start targeting your knee. If the tanking skeleton is present, just bait that thing to the archers. One shield bash and you're stunned. And with that, the undead would just make a French toast out of you.
Dealing with ghouls means dealing with one mob of them (either that or a ghoul-zombie combination). Enemy mobs in Neverwinter tend to operate along the line of racism. It's like seeing a group of white people minus any other person. It's like seeing a group of Singaporean Chinese minus a Malay, Indian, or Eurasian. Not all the time, of course. But definitely most of the time. Therefore, dealing with them shouldn't be that hard. Against ghouls, it's a race of dps. Considering the increased level of difficulty, it's even more imperative that you must out-dps them. While preventing a stun can be 50-50, try not to be stunned more than once per fight. A ghoul stun can last quite long, so please have a decent form of control resistance. Otherwise, make sure you have a jailbreak ready (for a trickster rogue) or CC (for a control wizard). Great weapon fighters shouldn't have a problem with this due to #UNSTOPPABRU while the rest (minus guardian fighters) can be a bit dodgier, to say the least.
Vampires come in three forms: Spawn, Vampire, and Honor Guard. Spawn shouldn't be a problem. But vampires and honor guards are much dicier to deal with. Because both belong to the fully fledged type unlike the half-turned sorry failure of a Barovian, they're able to turn into a swarm of bats. While this is different from the Bat Swarm mount attack you can pull off, this move was meant to be jailbreak+evade. You can't hit them when they're in this mode. So you got no choice but to bid your time until they reappear in their original glory. Vampires tend to be accompanied by their spawns, so try to take down the spawns first. The reason why being that vampires enjoy pouncing on you. This means the risk of getting knocked down. Knockdown attacks can be interesting at times. Against opponents immune to it, such moves are next to useless (unless you're a melee HR pulling off a Flurry). In fact, knockdown immune opponents are more common than those immune to other control effects (note that control immunity can be either partial or total). Unfortunately, no player is immune to knockdown unless it's a master infiltrator TR triggering a non-stealth Impossible to Catch. The vampire jump comes out fast, so it takes a quite bit of practice to avoid getting hit. At the same time, the terrain in Berez is full of broken walls. Which means you'll be fighting in an enclosed space while trying to dodge the prone and stun. Considering how fast the CC attack can come out, it's the same old story: Try getting a decent control resistance game. It's not that hard if you can get a Sigil of the Controller. Otherwise, you'll really need something else to buff your defense, potion or no potion.
Thorns, Vengeance, Steadfast, and Kumar
Apparently, the devs did something interesting to Thorn Ward. Previously, you may have realised Thorn Ward being unable to throw the dps to other players. This is most likely due to critical hit=increase in damage instead of higher damage resistance debuff. Now, the rules have changed. Unless the tooltip is calling a bluff, critical hit most likely would result in higher DRI debuff. At the same time, it's also likely that critical damage has been lowered. Out of 10 raids, John noticed Arylos' dps count dropping despite a 14K+ total item level score. Out of every such moment, Arylos was using Thorn Ward to debuff first. Which wasn't really that bad if so. In fact, it merely made the combat HR more interesting to play when it comes to raiding. This effectively made the combat spec more of a higher end debuff-dps build when it comes to ease of usage. As anyone can tell you, end-game raids (read: advance and expert queue raids) require more buff/debuff than pure dps muscle.
And speaking of combat spec HR, John is now messing around with Seeker's Vengeance on both loadouts. The reason being why was that dps stormwardens on the combat spec basis can be easily straitjacketed at times. In open world, it's not a problem. In raiding, however, there will be specific moments where you couldn't change loadouts. The reason why John mentioned this was because of Twin-Blade Storm. That thing is very efficient in crowd clearing dps. It can rack up the damage and body count like nobody's business. But there's a problem: Say for example facing that undead beholder boss in Castle Never. You'll need to manually change the class feature. Which is doable, but annoying. Not to mention if you have to run stuff like Illusionist's Gambit where you won't have the time to do a switch. Seeker's Vengeance requires positioning, so movement speed is important. If you wanna go with that one, make sure you get 2-3 points in the Vampiric Grace boon. In fact, John recommends a full 3 pointer because the main weakness in combat HR lies in the movement. Get yourself a Gladiator's Guile and a maxed out VG. That should do the trick. Don't worry about the rest. Unlike other campaigns, Ravenloft boons are mostly support-based with the two anti-undead ones and Blood Lust being the exception. And even then, BL is for crit-based dps. If you're running on a pure power or arpen-power build, either go for Righteous Sacrifice (quite fun if you're crazy enough to go either instigator or sentinel GWF) or Hypnotic Gaze (executioner TR running on a Shadow Strike stealth refill, anyone?). At the same time, running SV on open-world is surprisingly doable, believe it or not. But you'll need two fast-hitting encounters, one with fast cooldown and the other with high damage. Thorn Strike and Plant Growth should be a no-brainer here.
Steadfast Determination. Should your destroyer GWF get it? The synergy with Destroyer class feature seemed quite good. GWF relies on consistent damage, so going with Destroyer-Weapon Mastery combo is a no-brainer. As for Destroyer-Wrathful Determination, it's can be very tricky. Yes, the dps would scale according to your #UNSTOPPABRU meter. But what's the use if you're a destroyer spec? Destroyers need to destroy the opposition via #UNSTOPPABRU mode. WD is all about saving your #UNSTOPPABRU for a specific moment of awesome heroism. That's for instigators and sentinels, not destroyers. It's like hiring the ideal bodyguard for Taeyeon against those howling 사생팬 all over the world. You don't hire someone directing the security from behind because the aggro would always be too damn high. You don't hire a defensive tank as well because the aggro would want to repeat history again. You hire a Cimmerian named Conan. If you can't keep them at bay, gimp them as if you're at Normandy, Stalingrad, or Iwo Jima.
Lastly, Kumar. Not the Indian but the Indian bear. Because that uncommon critter was bind to account, John couldn't sell it. He could only stick it to any of his toons. Then he did the dumbest thing ever: He allowed a scourge warlock to adopt it. As the result, the solo loadout had to be tweaked from temptation to damnation. Otherwise, what do you expect? 10% lifesteal proc with only the warlock benefitting from it? That's dumb! No choice, go damnation. At least a SW going with an augment comp benefits best as a damnlock. Of course, it won't solve the problem of having the comp effect next to useless. John should have given it to the GWF.
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