Titan of Gold (spoilers)

Killed the pyre of man and got a rusty gauntlet once. Loot tables do seem really random.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the game for me... awesome battle!  I get a rusty breastplate?  WTF?

all i got was this rusty breastplate?  All the glitters is not gold.  jk.  seriously, i think some of the rewards just don't scale with the stage of the game you are in.  How many junky leather boots do I need?  (sorry Mrs Marcos!) I agree with ^^^

Yeah one of the game aspects that annoys me is the loot table it really needs to get fixed. I killed the guy that grinds coffee errr I mean mountains and got a hate stone. I swear this one was special and shaped like his middle finger. Jokes aside those grand elemental lords need to have their loot table set to rare only or something. I often just save right before fighting them and reload if I don't like the loot but that's a patchwork fix to larger problem. The good side though is I get to experience what makes this game so fun... over and over and over and over and over again. I've become very adept at slaying Abiex as a result.

the questing portion of the game needs better rewards, one of the many reasons heroes are so weak now.

They're "weak" now because the loot was really fine for a while, and a lot of noisy people complained that it was too good. So all the garbage was added, and nobody said anything, for a while.

I don't think the loot is too badly scaled at the current point. It is *not* randomized. It is randomized within classes of enemies determined by difficulty level. I think some monsters need to be reassigned within those classes, but not all, by any means. I've taken down some pretty hefty wilderness enemies and gotten good loot, so the problem isn't universal, and shouldn't be treated as such.

A bit unrelated to my first post but relevant to the general discussion.

A lot of weak weapons have insane level requirements (lvl 18 Druss Blade I am looking at you), when their 'precursors' like in this example Assassin's blade come with no level requirement at all and are arguably better or nearly as good (as most assassin's will be speccing into the armor ignore traits so they don't do pathetic damage anyways). I purposely picked a failing option during the second time I took this quest so that I could simply keep the Assassin's Blade instead. I wiped out everything on the map and spawned a ton of quests using maps and still never reached level 18 before I decided to put the AI out of its misery.

The general risk vs reward and level requirements for gear needs a second pass. There is a wildland where you can explore caves and you either get a freebie awesome piece of gear or a tough battle that gives you nothing. I guess this might sound cool as a concept but it basically means next time I see it I am going to suicide my Sov with no risk into it early game and get way better stuff than I could likely acquire after hundreds of turns. The dragons I spoke of in my first post gave me nothing as loot, I was hoping that the "dragon hoard full of countless treasures and rare magical artifacts" would at least toss me some gildar if not an infinity+1 sword (or spear, are there any good spears anymore?).

Slightly more off topic, I am kinda curious if anything weird happens when your Assassin has 75% armor ignore from traits + 66% armor ignore from Druss Blade or if it just caps out at 100% (making it something you would more likely give a non-assassin). I just gave up finding any good weapons and gave my Assassin's Void Swords since simple high damage weapons seemed far superior for them than even good assassin themed weapons like the Heartseeker that gives more crit chance and crit damage. This could be more of a meta issue with the current Assassin class or game balance though.

would be funny if 75% plus 66% =  141%  and it rolls past 100% resetting and you get 41%...

To answer Ratas question:

There is the Holthiarn Pike are something along those lines. It is pretty tough with 20 Damage and ignore armor (the usual spear thing) however it also increases impale by +50%

there are tons of issues with rewards for mobs and AI army:

many items never drop or have extremely low chances to drop

some items drop way too often 

many items not listed inside ingame wiki (spell books, special mounts, and many others)

xp reward not linked to actual power of enemy units

item rewards not linked to actual power of enemy units 

xp for AI combat is reversed for no good reason, in every game i know if units can level they level faster on other player\AI, this encourage rush strategy. 

This Titan of Gold is on one my maps and seems crazy overpowered.   I have armies with 600+ points and he wipes them out with spell after spell after spell. 

I've tried using spellcasters of my own but my spells barely seem to touch him.   He can drop the health of every unit on the map in one turn. 

Everything should have a counter-tactic but I'm not seeing one for this yet.   

Mages with maxed elemental damage and maxed initiative.

Tough melee units with high spell resist to protect the mages in case he lives long enough to charge in.

He WILL cast Despair, which is a "win button." You need to interrupt it any way possible. Pull Of The Earth or any spell that causes knockdown will interrupt a spell. Interruption spells will also work, but you have to pass his spell resist check. Bring multiple heroes with good spell mastery that can cast such spells.

Put entire army on mounts to avoid being knocked down by Titan's Breath.

Regular melee attacks trigger his melee defense spell that stuns attackers. Abilities like shield bash, cleave, crushing blow, etc do not count as a melee attack for those purposes.

I've added some better loot to the Titan of Gold. That guy is a beast, beware.