#prob against my better judgment i decided to play through the fight before bed

[waterbearable]

YALL i need to excitedly ramble abt the house of hope under the cut

god DAMN god damn what a fight holy shit!!!!! like. what a perfect fuckin way to cap all my shit off before endgame. i think a lot of the lead-up with stealing the hammer was also pretty fuckin great (i went in largely unspoiled outside of the understanding that Raphael is a Boss and He Sings Or Something). i love hope with all my fucking soul and i was not expecting her to be there and such an integral part. i'll have to see if i can take a diff approach w haarlep next time bc i did just kill him askldjfasjf, but once i stole the hammer it actually felt fuckin tense and stressful! like an ongoing escape! my party comp was wink+laezel+astarion+karlach which i think was a RIDICULOUS advantage for me. split the party for the actual hammer-stealing so astarion was the one to pick it up and RUN(fly) out of there. the fucking HELLFIRE BALLS. TERRIFYING TO DEAL WITH. you realize that 'hm there's no point to getting stuck fighting here' so you just run!!!

alright the actual raphael fight. fucking the boss music is so. so good. it's deeply satisfying to finally get to kill this motherfucker. i could tell that the fight was Hard but i think i went in w a smart party comp for once/got EXTREMELY lucky by convincing yurgir to fight with the group (yurgir's not exactly the hardest hitter when he's supporting you but damn, can't imagine having to fight him and all the other cambions that pop up). the soul pillars were cool and i think i was equipped to Deal with them after experiencing how the cazador fight worked? but honestly i was expecting to TPK a few times before finally getting it, and that didn't happen :0 like i think i have underestimated previously the sheer hitting power of a very martial group, even though i didn't get any bonus fire dmg from karlach. i did however get to make her a Fuckin Giant (went through the ansur fight so i got the giantslayer greatsword. chefs kiss.) just slicing her way through shit. tbh tho lae'zel remains mvp, she's not as much of a tank as karlach but the way i've specced her she gets more chances to hit than karlach and hits almost as hard. astarion continues to be my special guy for staying the Fuc out the way and sniping.

wink didn't get to do a lot of flashy shit, in part bc of how i've built them i think? they're mainly useful for AOE,psychic dmg, and condition-altering, but cloudkill wasn't really useful w how much close up fighting needed to be done. BUT i think they were deeply necessary to keep a TPK from happening--i mostly just had them using eldritch blast to focus on the pillars and leaving all their spell slots to counterspell raphael's incinerates/other nasty spells. tbh, it worked most of the time! wink also has psionic backlash which comes in Clutch (raphael's actual final attack was some fuckin hellfire 6th level bullshit that downed lae'zel once it hit and had a wide aoe, but bc i'd whittled him down low enough psionic backlash as a reaction was enough for his attack to insta-doom him) (sidenote: didn't do it here but i also love having 2 party members w counterspell+one that has psionic backlash bc you can cancel the spell AND punish them for casting it buahahaha)

hellfire is a FUCK and i think that raphael has some really powerful attacks that had i brought a diff party comp/had a diff tav the party would have been very wiped multiple times. i would LOVE to play this fight in tactician/honor mode bc while i could tell this was meant to be a challenge and while i will aBSOLUTELY leave it for last every time, i don't think it was the hardest fight i've had in act 3! fighting cazador was pretty rough tbh (and viconia but that was mostly due to how many motherfuckers were in that room).

(related sidenote: they don't actually need to do anything about this but i think. something could be done to make gortash seem a more formidable foe--or maybe that's the point, that he's a politics guy with widespread power rather than being a deeply powerful being himself. idk it's been a bit since i fought him but i would not consider his battle particularly difficult, at least when i hit it, i don't think i had even hit lvl 12 at that point. like i think from a challenge standpoint at minimum orin holds her own alongside the other late-stage bosses in a way that gort...doesn't, to me? the steel watch are Scary to deal with when hostile but idk. i'll have to think about it. if he's not as mechanically terror-inducing then he really should have an additional more roleplay/discovery focused quest that's hard to just High Persuasion your way out of.)