Help - Shaper Fight - Stuck in Bullet hell

Hello,

I'm hell-bent on making my build work for shaper - going the hard route - life-based / not CI.

I feel like my damage/DPS is decent but I am stuck currently with the bullet hell phase due to bad gameplay/knowledge of mechanics on my part.

Here is a sample video that I would appreciate you having a look at - to diagnose what am I doing wrong (besides the simple dodging issues that resulted in two deaths in phase 1).

Usually, I can get to Phase 2 easily with no deaths, but fall apart during the bullet hell phase.
As you can see at around 3:35 of the clip - https://youtu.be/hv4T7JCY8U8, I am standing in Zana's protective circle, but the bullet still enters the shield and I die!
Note that I just added Phase Run to my build but have yet to effectively utilize it during the Bullet Hell phase.

Thanks in advance for any tips/guidance.

https://youtu.be/hv4T7JCY8U8

That was an unfortunate mistake you made there. The safe zone is spherical in nature, but cut off by the ground. However, this messes up the perspective. From what I've seen in the video, the ball didn't enter the safe zone. You left it, concealed by the (to be hones pretty confusing) animation of the safe zone.

Couple of clear mistakes you're making. First, as the previous poster mentioned, the visual on Zana's shield can be a little confusing, but the safe zone is a simple circle around her, and two of your deaths came from just stepping out of it.

Two more of your deaths came from balls to the face because you were stuck in casting animation when he started his attack sequence. When he's not pulling off his big attacks, Shaper will either use a melee attack if you're in melee range, or the three balls attack if you're not. If you can tank shaper's melee attack then stand right next to him so he only uses that (can be a good time to stack up some damage on him). If you can't tank his melee then you need to focus on dodging the balls attack; you may be able to pull off one or two casts after you've moved out of the way and he's started his attack sequence, but your focus needs to be on dodging during that time since things can go bad very fast if you don't. In this case your time to stack up damage will mainly just be when he's using his laser.

Another death was from his slam, but ultimately came down to you having triggered the vortexes in bad spots (which then slowed you down so you got slammed). You try to kite the vortex balls so they don't trigger, but then things get hectic and you end of triggering them in bad spots. I'd instead recommend triggering them as soon as possible, and placing them at the very edges of the arena so you have the center clear to move around in.

You also really need to work on watching the shaper and anticipating his attacks better. As I mentioned, when he's firing his laser will be your best time to deal damage, but several times, despite his wind-up, you were right in front of his laser when he started firing, so instead of using the time dealing damage you were desperately trying to get out of the beam. There were also several times when you were slow to pick up on the adds phase starting, resulting in Zana being knocked out for a bit (your final death was because Zana was out of commission during the bullet hell phase). In general, learn to recognize each of the Shaper's moves quickly, and stick close enough to him that you can see what he's about to do and respond to it.

Your damage seems just fine for Shaper, you just need to learn the mechanics better and anticipate the Shaper's attacks better so that you're not caught off guard so much.