Correct me again if im Wrong but - i consider normal by far the best to play so far. as hard is just more mobs, i wonder if some1 could make a mod that would give same amount of mobs as normal and just make em harder. Because only difference is that hard require you to use lame cc tactics and 2 tanks with multiple ranged chars behind. unless some1 has been able to do hard with ( no shield ) or only 1 dude with shield ive tried so far ive got dead chars if i try. any1 have any ideas for balance here ?... Because to me the whole combat system is rather Meh, i mean i know what they were trying for but basicly u use tanks and seals to fuck ppl up really saddens me, id rather play on norm with 4chars and no tank then.

and last but not least Sorry for my terrible english.

P.S
If you have any coool setups you can recommend ( party setups) ill gladly take it

I didn't try harder but from what I read its not MORE mobs, but rather stronger mobs instead of others that you would've encounter on normal.

You don't HAVE to have tanks but you need someone to take damage if you want others to focus their builds on making damage, its a tradeoff!

I assume, that is like the classic BG1 when was balancing the things, instead of only wolves, you got a wolf that only got hurted by magical weapons, plus a lot of normal wolves. Anyway, if you want more, then increase the difficult to the last one, there are even more mobs with higher stats than you.

Example: I'm betting that the temple in the first town don't has shades as adversaries in the normal setting, only shadows.

Both Shades and Shadows can be oneshotted with the wizard AoE first level spell.

Guess my point was mainly that hard just requires 2 tanks because instead of making encounters harder or opponents smarter they just added to many mobs for 1 tank to grab a hold of, also its all about how you position it just feels like a really lazy combat style to me. and due to miserable pathfinding you always ending up opening with spells traps and shit all ready laid down. i guess my point was id wish they made hard simply buffed mobs a bit or made em a bit higher level. instead of just making everysingle fight ... how to AOE and use preemptive strikes to win + walk in to doorways ( kindda feels like Diablo 1 when i do that )

I have finished game on hard with only one tank (Eder). My formation usually looked like Eder at the front, Pallegina and my main chanter on flanks (both in heavy armors so you can consider them offtanks), Durance, GM and Aloth at back line. AoE dps was not that usefull, as many enemies has high damage reduction, more important was mind control (GM can take control over most of the enemies, even dragons if you are lucky), chanter can spawn phantom or ogres on enemies back to give you flank bonus, or at least to distract some enemies.

ahhh to me mind control spells are way way way to good in this game so i tend not to use em. that is ofc my own fault:D

I met my first dragon yesterday. When I suddenly had it under mind control, that felt simply completely totally wrong.

Well... this is true, I had similar feeling when I had under mind control strongest dragon in the game, and he killed all his adds with one breath....

Ok so i am such a noob. the Mindcontrol CIPHER has. now thats obscene also those petrify scrolls u can make... no grp is to big to get obliterated while under that influence at least if u have a druid and a mage ( or just a druid ) casting spells and a rogue + ranger with cloudpiercer. OR a Barbarian ( carnage destruction )

I started with hard. But some of the fights just seem really hard. I'm sticking with it, but sometimes I feel I've gone off track because somethings just seem way too difficult for where I encounter them. But I solve these with reloads or some tricks: standing in a doorway; making sure only a few of the group see me then back off quickly, etc.

Ie, things just stream around the fighter who can't engage them all and the mage or rogue get slaughtered so fast it's ridiculous. I can't bring the mage out to throw some of the low level spells that look useful (the fan shaped flame), though later I got fireball which casts quickly and you can toss it over the heads of the guys up front. If I'm in the doorway then I can't get the bigger damage dealers to move ahead to get good attacks in. Once the enemies are toe to toe with us the mage can't do much of the useful stuff without affecting the party, so I'm keeping a mix of AoE and single target spells. The priest is difficult to make really good use of: the endurance restoration is iffy, because that often means a perma-death for the squishies rather than let them go unconscious; a good area effect lowering of will seems somewhat irrelevant unless I have attacks that can make use of it.

Some of this gets better with more levels though. It comes a lot slower though and I can't fix the mistakes I made early.

On the other hand it's not at all as frustrating as BG2 was. I loved that game but hated the combat. Spell-vs-spell requiring far too much memorization of whether rock defeats paper or vice versa, I would gladly remove all of that.

I'm slightly worried it'll be like BG2 where I get to the final part and it's just far too hard to solve (the irenicus battle was so frustrating). So many games like to double the difficulty right at the end.

PoE gets a bit easy towards the end, actually.

Well only if you reach the max level by then, but the special hidden boss,.. is random madness, I got luck with the cipher only once time but were like 9 - 12 reloads

Yeah, it was hard to keep all those adds on tank, so when I wanted to quickly clear area I was just using heavy armors. Most of the mobs can't pass through damage reduction of the plate, and 50% longer cooldown is not that big deal. As for mages, it's good to keep them behind until every enemy has some target (because there are almost always first target for ranged mobs when in range). I know it's tempting to start fight with AOE spell when they are together, but it's not worth it.

My party is level 12 already, but I have not tried that fight yet. The normal encounters (also 'boss' fights) are not really challenging anymore.