Tora bosses - not QQing, but need advice/discussion on difficulty

Hey guys,

So I'm struggling to figure out what happened in my latest weird, totally unexpected death vs a Tora boss. Luckily its on Standard, so, while losing 10% exp at level 94 is extremely frustrating, it's not the end of the world. Still, I could use some explanation.

My defenses are as follows: 4008 life, 1749 es, 16k+ evasion, 75/76/75 res PLUS legacy Rumi's and easy 8k+ armor with granite flasks/molten shell. On top of that I use raise spectre as a decoy, decoy totem, and vaal summon skellies as decoys against bosses (raise spectre works surprisingly well as a decoy without any minion nodes, as long as you don't mind raising new ones all the time). It's true I don't use IC or have +max res stuff or high block, but that's tough to do on a ranger (and, frankly, we shouldn't be pigeonholed into those mechanics, but that's a topic for another thread).

I deal a ton of DPS with Lightning Arrow/Burning Arrow (yes, I know not the best skills, but this is a concept build and I don't mind). Semi-crit because I like that setup. This high damage gives me occasional issues with reflect, although I can deal with it 99% of the time just by being careful.

Today I got instant 1-shotted by a Tora boss in a level 75 Zana Promenade from offscreen with no visible animation besides a patch of lava on the ground next to me (no projectile to dodge, etc.). It was a Tora unique version of one of those rapid-fire iguanas. I saw the thing, got hit and almost died, ran away and healed completely, used Rumi's, then circled back to try to shoot from offscreen and was instantly dead. I have absolutely no idea how to prevent this from happening (without giving up immediately, which is probably what I'll do in the future!) - why did I take 5757 damage in 1 shot with 75% fire res in a level 75 map? Why couldn't I see any projectile and why do guaranteed hits for enemies exist? Does anyone else have strange unexpected difficulty with certain Tora bosses once in a blue moon, or do I just suck? Because me sucking is a totally believable explanation. Seriously. XD

I've changed my build around quite a bit since I first created it in order to make it a LOT less glassy than it used to be. Since the vast majority of content, including 78 maps and almost every map boss (and I can even do Death and Taxes, for the record), is easy for me to do I'm probably not going to put the effort into changing it yet again. Still, I think my greatest complaint with PoE is that the real difficulty comes from random crazy fluke instances that come out of nowhere.

To reiterate - while I'm definitely being whiny, this isn't meant to continue as a whiny thread. Instead, explanations of why this stuff happens and how the game's difficulty might be improved in order to be more consistent are welcome. Thanks!

pfft, you're being too reasonable, it wouldn't be any fun to make fun of you....


But actually though, I don't understand what you're describing. The Twisted Chimeral isn't known for being a heavy cannon, it's just known for being tanky. It has high resists and high HP, and it has corpse devouring abilities to replenish its life (it's a ripoff of that unique in the upper sceptre of god), but it doesn't have any insta-gib attacks. It has a chaos degen aura and just uses the ordinary rapid-fire attack. The "lava" you saw next to you was probably just it devouring a corpse. By all counts, it shouldn't come close to one-shotting you.

lag spike maybe?

Yeah, my biggest defense against other forum haunters is to kill them with reason and kindness.

But what you're saying is exactly why I'm so confused - I've killed this guy easily a million times in the past, and so the mystery about why I died just deepens... TBH I have a lot of similar stories about weird deaths, and then I read a lot about great HC players and even SC players who almost never die and I become self-conscious about my own experiences/builds.

*shrugs* PoE remains a mystery to me, even after 1400 hours. This is why I play Standard.

What were the map mods?

Crap, I don't remember! Positive there was no reduced max res, reduced regen, added ele damage, or reflect, tho. I avoid maps with those mods. It was non-obvious stuff - must have been more magics, monster variety, more monster life, more monster res, stronger map boss (who i killed easily), increased monster speed, immune to curses - something like those. No elemental effects on the ground. Wish I could answer with more confidence.

Point is, it was nothing that would have made me more vulnerable to what SEEMED like a fire damage death. But maybe the lava ground animation was just the boss devouring corpses and I died to something else?

I guess this brings up the point that a death log would be nice. It does bring me some validation that I've read about a lot of players who have no clue what killed them and why. I believe I have a good understanding of the game mechanics, how map mods/curses interact with monster mods, etc. but yet I seem to encounter mystery deaths quite often.

Edit: don't mean to re-negotiate this one death over and over in this thread; I'm curious if others have had similar experiences with Tora bosses/weird deaths overall.

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demon9675 wrote:

I guess this brings up the point that a death log would be nice.

...

Edit: don't mean to re-negotiate this one death over and over in this thread; I'm curious if others have had similar experiences with Tora bosses/weird deaths overall.

Mutated maw; I'm looking at ya.

Yeah, some sort of combat/death log would be nice at times.

I had a templar (static mosher build) enter the boss chamber in Jungle Valley. See some spiders coming down. Boom. Dead.

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unsane69 wrote:

Mutated maw; I'm looking at ya.

Yeah, some sort of combat/death log would be nice at times.

I had a templar (static mosher build) enter the boss chamber in Jungle Valley. See some spiders coming down. Boom. Dead.

But leap slammers are notoriously evil chain-stunners, and the jungle valley boss is equally notorious for being able to chain multiple consecutive very strong attacks.... This is much more confusing than either of those.

yeah Im not sure how that boss couldve one-shot you from offscreen. its main attack (rapid fire) should be quite managable thing for evasion toons (and Im pretty sure it doesnt have the nasty EK the labyrinth boss has). the chaos degen can hurt, but not from off-screen, obviously

the maw, vaal molten shell totems sneakily dropped by monkeys, and dropbears are waay more dangerous imo.

This unique chimeral is also throwing a poison bombs. So it's very likely that your chaos resist is not high and you took a lot of desync dmg from it.