What kind of terrible play testers do you employ? Please explain to me why I can not use any of my alchemy abilities before the draug fight. I am basically a level 7 rather than lvl 28. What a fucking joke. I'm not even going to bother trying to do it. Shit shoddy design. Fix it.

You do realize you comments are actually inviting "learn to play" replies right?
God forbids you find yourself at any kind of disadvantage in a fight right?

I'm pretty sure you're supposed to fight the Draug without potions. Fortunately, the Draug fight is (in my experience) the easiest boss fight even without your potions. Really, the loss of potions is a pretty serious blow to any build, not just an alchemy-focused one. All those mist fights gimp your abilities in various ways - for instance, the sword fights are unusually hard for a magic class.

As an admitted Witcher fanboy, I would like to defend W2 with gusto but . . . there does seem to be some issues with the game play balance. Along with the QTE problems, the game play can be frustrating at times . . . especially when compared to W1 EE which had amazingly smooth game play. Expecting the same polished game in W2 and not finding it nearly as polished has been disappointing for me.

I moved on to other games while waiting patiently for patches that will bring W2 up to the same awesome game as W1 EE. Once fully patched . . . I expect W2 to be a fantastic game. . . =)

I would suggest you do the same. . . giving CD Projekt RED some time to work out the problems that obviously exist, much to my chagrin.

This doesn't have anything to do with l2p. The manner in which you consume potions in this game is shit. What possible reason would there be for Geralt to do this fight without potions? There is no narrative reason at all. It is just shonky design.

Tied to this problem is due to my alchemy specialisation I use a lot of bombs. Apart from I can't against the draug because it enters me into some weird run animation where I can no longer dodge.

BAD DESIGN.

The bomb thing is a garden-variety glitch - should be fixed in a future patch. The "do the fight without potions" thing is from the books - Geralt doesn't always have time to get out his elixirs and drink them. Personally, fighting toe-to-toe with an arch-wraith strikes me as a pretty solid story justification for not being able to drink potions. Now, whether you think including elements like this is justified from a gameplay standpoint is another question, but Witcher as a game series is pretty prone to making gameplay changes for story reasons.

Personally the moment that annoyed me with my Alchemy-sword build , was in Chapter 3 , the fight in Dethmold's HQ , once you entered it you could not drink a potion anymore even though you were not in a wraith mist this time , just in the central court of Kaedweni HQ of Loc Muine , that was annoying because Geralt had all the time in the world to do it after killing the first wave of soldiers , but a message telling you "you can't meditate at this time " prevented you to do it until you got out of Dethmold's HQ .



Same against the Dragon , i thought i could drink a potion just before the fight , but it wasn't possible , i had to drink it way before , just before going to the war council actually , but since the timer goes on during the chat , you end up with 3 minutes to kill the dragon .. unless you invested in potion duration talents , but i didn't .

I was in the same position as yours (alch only) and back then, there wasn't even a savegame before the draug. I just set difficulty to 'easy' and marked it as the worst boss fight in gaming history !in my opinion!.

But I agree... not being able to use potions in boss fights is a terrible design decision, given that players who chose other paths can use their skills.

Depends on your build. So far, I've done two runs -- a Roche-path swordsman/mage combo (to the degree of getting both Heliotrope + Group Finisher, and adrenalin for basically doing anything), and an Iorveth-path almost pure mage (spent six points in training, spent most points in mage, spent two points to get Position to compensate for low hp/damage resistance, then spent another two points in training for more vitality). The latter was *extremely* good at dealing with mobs of soldiers, harpies or necrophages, but with circa 400 hp / less than 70 armor / low damage reduction, highly vulnerable to single tough long-reach opponents in very confined spaces like the Draug boss, or the golem in Loc Muinne.

The second encounter with Letho might be the easiest for a non-swordsman-specialist, because you can keep your distance indefinitely by running in circles around the water; Letho takes the shortest path, even if it's running into Yrdens; and Letho doesn't automatically use his ranged attacks as soon as he can (at least on Normal). He's very nasty up-close, however.

Point is that any pure-path specialist gets hurt badly somewhere. The game's design strongly encourages spending a fair number of points in the Swordsman tree to get the extra vitality and damage reduction, at least, but even a very tough Swordsman specialist will need to be at least somewhat careful against crowds, and going purist and not having Heliotrope is pretty harsh.

The current implementation of alchemy and potions does hurt the alchemy build sometimes.

Personally i feel its due to 2 factors.

1) Requiring meditation to drink. I dont see the need for that other than for having a forth option for the UI. Far better to just allow it outside of combat by right click the potion ala TW1 if they didnt want to keep in-combat potion drinking.

2) The short duration of potions. 5mins for cat is fine, but the other should be 20-30 mins minimum imo.

i think requiring meditation to drink is part of the Witcher lore , because these potions were highly toxic to humans , so you just couldn't afford to drink it like normal beer , but needed at least a few minutes of mental and physical preparation for the witcher to be able to drink it

what is annoying IMHO , is that sometimes in the game , they simply prevent you to meditate in some locations or if enemies are present in an adjacent room , and that is the thing that is annoying because you should be able to meditate when not directly in combat


The second point you raised can be addressed by investing points in "potion duration" , then your potions will last 20 minutes , however in my playthrough , i didn't invest in those talents because it is not really needed until late in game , and since the points are so scarce , i prefered to boost my attributes with other talents


Personally , i wish they would hve integrated side effects when your toxicity bar goes above 80-90% , and unlocked a more powerful berserker ability which would make Geralt deal ridiculous damage to the enemies in addition to generate adrenalin , alchemy tree would be even more appealing then

I agree about not being able to meditate / drink potions in Dethmold's HQ. However the human opponents are rather easily dispatched (they are slow and they don't leap), unlike the Draug who has a long reach, relatively large area of effect, and has the aid of trebuchet / archer.

Btw for the dragon fight, you can actually meditate right before entering Sile's tower. True. All builds are damaged by the no-potion boss. However the Alchemists take the heaviest damage since they rely on potions to activate the passive bonuses. On the other hand, the Swordsmen still have their buffs/techniques and the Mages have access to all their spells.

Don't think Swordsman without Heliotrope is that hard. I mean I can buff up my Catalyst and down some potions to become a tank. I didn't even have the group style and I only acquired the group finisher near the end.

That's a good point - I went pure mage and dipped swordsman for footwork and schemer, so it make sense that I'd be unusually gimped by not being able to roll or cast haha.

Letho I actually found easier (on hard) up close - at long range, he throws quen up and uses bombs and aard. Although I might just be unusually bad at fighting Letho - that guy killed me more than everything else up to that fight.

Good point about the game encouraging versatility - there were definitely some fights where I seriously regretted not having more sword skills, and as we can see, OP ran into some major problems by going pure alchemist.

I have to agree that the way alchemy works is somewhat frustrating sometimes - only being able to drink potions during meditation AND way shorter potion duration AND not being able to drink potions at all before some battles is a bad combination.

In the first Witcher, I used potions a lot, and I used a wide variety of potions. Basically, before entering any area that had monsters, I decided on 1-2 potions that I thought might be useful or interesting, and if there was need for them, I drank cat, swallow or white raffard's decoction.
In the second Witcher, so far (I'm now in act 2) I've only rarely used potions - since the duration is so short, I almost never use them when exploring some area, or, generelly speaking, when I don't know what's coming - so basically, I only use potions when I have to repeat a difficult fight because I died the first time. Also, of all those potions available, I usually only use swallow and rook - since I use them so rarely anyway, I didn't feel motivated to experiment so far.

I think the best way to improve alchemy/potions would be to give potions a much higher duration, perhaps half an hour without that duration-expanding skill.

I have a feeling that we are back to demanding "I win button" again...