Let's discuss tactics of a normal encounter

[Beartrap86]

I suck at this game. Like, really really suck. Over 250 hours so far and I've only been east twice, never won. I think it has to do with me rushing through mobs and getting careless. I want to fix that, but not exactly sure how besides I have actually slowed the game's movements down so I can't button mash through mobs anymore.

I know it's highly class specific, but let's consider a melee character, or melee hybrid such as Doombringer.

So I ask you all the following humbly:
1. What is your normal tactical set up?
2. How do you handle a rare or rand boss?
3. How do you tackle a zone carefully, without dying obviously.
4. What do you do once you are hit with many status effects, and your infusion is on cool down? Any you can't run? Do you just have to know ahead of time when you could die and run?
5. When inspecting a rare, what do you look for in order to decide to nope outta there or to fight?
6. I know that most people prioritize +hp gear, but when do you use gear that is mostly "on melee hit" stat or when do you decide to change weapons? Say you have a tier 1 weapon with a good effect, or a more damaging tier 2, what do you pick?

I'm playing on nightmare too as well. Help is appreciated.

[whitelion]

Here's my 2 cents

1. Not totally sure what this means.

2. Useful to check what classes they have (you can further look at the talents if it seems like a dangerous combo) as well as their immunities so you know which of your debuffs will be useful. Stun is amazing obviously and you should stun dangerous enemies if possible, but don't count on it if they are stun immune or you can't beat their saves reliably. Decide how dangerous it is to be close/far from them and where you will ideally position yourself in the next few turns. Look at the terrain around you and figure out if it's good or bad for this fight, as well as where you can run to if you need to escape. As a melee against ranged enemies, it's very nice if you can break LoS and lure them closer to you before starting the fight in earnest so you can save your mobility options.

3. Using skills like Track to scout is hugely helpful. Once you know who and where the enemies are, you can try to avoid fighting too many at once (although the new AI sometimes inexplicably knows where you are. I don't understand how it works.) When running, try to run back to areas you have already cleared, otherwise you might run into worse enemies. Don't wait until you're totally spent to try to escape.

4. If you get to the point where you can't cleanse or run, then you are in trouble and probably should have run away earlier. I generally try to hold back at least one emergency defense/escape option that I will only use to attempt to flee. Also, if you get so many debuffs that you aren't going to be able to effectively output offense, you should consider stepping back to regroup even if you're not about to die/totally out of talents.

5. Certain combos, such as nuke spell (e.g. Freeze) plus talents that up critical multiplier (e.g. Dark Ritual), plus corresponding respen (e.g. Uttercold) can be dangerous. Enemies that can act super fast or slow you down a lot so they are taking multiple turns to your one can be dangerous. Enemies with lots of good gap closers can be hard to run from. Other combos, like oozemancers with lots of armor and healing, can be time consuming to kill, so you don't want to be fighting them while 3 other rares are on you. On the other hand, if your enemy is a Skirmisher and you have lots of armor, then that's not very dangerous.

6. It depends on your strategy. Debuffs are useful, but at some point you get diminishing returns if you are applying every possible debuff to the same enemy. You also need enough damage that you don't stall out against, say, an oozemancer with lots of armor and a couple healing spells. At the same time, on higher difficulties, you can't always burst everyone down in 2 turns. I try to stay in the middle.

For going for your first win, it can also be nice to choose a strong class. Paradox Mage is very powerful and has lots of great defensive and control options, like Dimensional Step, Temporal Reprieve, Time Skip, Webs of Fate, and Reality Smearing, so you can get out of some very sticky situations. It's not the simplest class, but also not super complicated, and so might be a good option if you have 250 hours of experience.

[Beartrap86]

This is helpful. For #1, I'm saying do you stick with a routine for normal zone clearing with a "core" outfit of gear or do you constantly change it up due to circumstance. It seems like the answer is of course it depends lol.

I've tried paradox mage earlier but I can give it many more runs now that I'm more experienced with the game.

[Snarvid]

To add to whitelion's excellent non-class specific advice (I have a very difficult time thinking about the answer to this question outside of class specifics), I think melee characters are at a core disadvantage compared to other character types. If you want to be next to an opponent in order to maximize your effectiveness, you've already lost a great deal of tactical flexibility in how you respond to a situation - you're either moving yourself to them or them to you, and that's a relatively small area of the total possible responses to a situation. Things like "retreat, Track, and corner-snipe" or "summon and run" aren't generally good options for melee characters, but they can be the difference between life and death in difficult situations.

[Micbran]

I haven't done much but shitpost recently but I'll toss my two cents in here because it stalls me from doing coursework.

1. I don't hot-swap gear for specific zones particularly often, hot-swapping gear for specific threats is far more likely. Its nice to have a mental cleanse torque on when I see an enemy rare type with a lot of mental status effects or to have a mindblast torque when I see an enemy mage (turns out, silence is good). If you wanted to, you can keep specific items around with high amounts of certain resistances for key zones like Daikara and the like, but you're playing on nightmare so swapping gear like that is not only annoying but also pretty pointless since the increased rare generation basically means you're always going to be fighting a smorgasbord of damage types.

2. Look at the class of the rare+ and generally back away. The Skynet AI (as mentioned by whitelion where it just "inexplicably knows where you are") makes it difficult but it's a hell of a lot better than just running in (which is generally not something you can do if you can avoid it). The rest of it really comes down to what specific class you're playing, different classes want to do different things to tough enemies. Cultist of Entropy for example wants to use the same brain-dead combo on every rare to summon its only source of damage. I would really say that in general it comes down to positioning, where you are in relation to the rare, its range vs. yours, are there other enemies nearby, who can currently hit you, do you have an escape route, etc., etc.

3. Track is a huge help, if survival isn't unlocked on the class and I get a rogue escort, I usually try to make sure it survives, Zone order also helps since some of them have godawful terrain. Zone order is pretty weird in 1.6 because of the "hey rares spawn at level 4 btw" thing whereas before Trollmire and Kor'Pul had significantly reduced rare+ generation rates so they were basically guaranteed to be safe zones (and you had drowning but that's pretty irrelevant now). This comes down to positioning yet again and some zones just set you up to have terrible positioning. My best advice is that if you just have a shitty stair start location on a zone (cough Heart of Gloom cough), just come back later. There's no reason to rush any zone when there's so many T1's to do.

4. Getting saddled with status effects feels a hell of a lot less punishing than it did in 1.5 but it can still be pretty nasty (Burning hex destroys you for any fight that lasts more than 3 turns). Your best bet would be to try and reset the fight and if you don't have a method of escape then well, you kinda deserve it. Movement infusions work wonder for that kind of stuff and they're basically mandatory on melees, if not everyone. The lower CD and generally higher numbers that 1.6 gave them works wonders now (1000% CD 8 movement is insane). Honestly, things do a lot less damage in 1.6 than they used to (except for when they don't, looking at you Freeze) and stun is way less punishing too so depending on the damage output of the enemy you're dealing with, you might even be able to just ignore the status effect altogether and keep fighting. That isn't to say that cleanses are bad (double wilds are still godly) but... they just matter a little less when the enemy hits you for a whole 20 of your 600 health every turn.

5. I usually don't run from specific types of classes unless their base type combination is just absurd. I will say that there are a few types that tend to be more dangerous than usual (Anorithil comes to mind, annihilator rare+'s oscillate between extremely annoying to extremely dangerous, Cursed rares hit like a truck), but I swear most of the rare+'s are jokes until one comes along to kick your shit in... so stay vigilant, I guess?

6. On melee hit stuff is unironically pretty good early in 1.6 (in 1.5 higher base dam like from massacre used to be supreme) but it falls off unless you're a huge multi-hit class or just using a shitty weapon base type (see: daggers) around the T2s or so. Swapping between a "good effect, low damage" vs. "high damage" weapon comes down to what kind of class you're playing and what the effect is. I would check the character sheet to see how much weapon damage you're actually getting out of the swap though, it might be less than you'd expect. If you're getting good mileage out of the "good effect," like say, gloom stunning everything in a 12 mile radius with your gloom-projection double daggers whenever you flurry, you might not want to replace it unless your weapon damage hits a wall against a high armor enemy. For other slots, a lot of the fixed arts are absolutely insane in 1.6, so don't feel bad about hanging onto something like Wyrmbreath for 30 levels or Rope Belt of the Thaloren. Also the rare item generation is absolutely -, so always be on the look out for some sort of oddity. I got a T1 mindstar with +27 mindpower yesterday (this was before psiblades). Something to keep in mind.