Shaper fight...

...is a big disappointment. I got to experience it the first time this league, so I guess you could take this as a "first impression" post.

I usually don't do this, but considering how scarce Shaper sets are, I decided to check out a clear vid beforehand. First time for everything. I watched two videos; first one from fyndel (who I think is some rich guy? not really familiar with famous poe playas), but the video didn't really tell me much as the guy basically went zerg mode and won with op gear. Second video was some HC clear from Zizarian; this one was a lot more informative.

On my first run I got stuck at phase two. Phase one and Uncreated were easy to the point where I was a bit shocked. After that I got stuck at Uncreated and third phase, eventually clearing the fight on my seventh set. Today, before quitting the league to take a break until the next one starts, I ran my eight set and cleared the entire map deathless.

The yellow projectiles 1shot me. This is fine, they're easy to avoid. The huge beam gives plenty of time to spam instaheal pots and get out of it's range even if I get hit by it. Devoto's + 30% ms boots make his smash unable to ever hit me. Zana protection phase is just free flask charges.

Unshaped is basically Laboratory boss. Yawn. Nothing to see here, move on...

The reason I got stuck at phase two was me having a hard time grasping the timing of the subsequent attack after the bullet hell. After I learned to dodge that, the phase was pretty much as simple as first phase. Making silver balls explode around the edges of the arena required me to pay slight attention, but nothing worth noting really. I really expected those balls to be a lot more difficult to handle.

Uncreated is probably the most difficult part of the map for me. If a single Frostbolt hits me I'll die. not sure how the damage calculations on those work, since according to wiki damage charts, there's no way in hell the balls should 1shot me. Either way I need to pay quite a bit of attention to not get hit by any of them. This encounter is quite enjoyable.

Phase three, the clone and actual Shaper attacking simultaneously isn't too hard to dodge, but the problem I had with this part was also paying attention to the silver balls. Lost several times because I let silver balls explode through the entire middle of the arena. Once I got hang on the multitasking of keeping an eye on silver balls while dodging Shaper's attacks, the phase became about as easy as second one.

All in all the fight felt extremely easy, considering it's supposed to be an 'apex' end game fight like über Atziri. Some parts required learning, but I still managed to clear the fight with only seven sets and two videos beforehand. I feel like Shaper is content made for a small part of the player base (with requisites for dps as well as the ability to kill guardians) but for some reason the fight itself is made to cater for casual players. Über trio still keeps taking huge shits on me, and if I compare that part from über Atziri to the entire Shaper fight, Shaper feels about as difficult as Twilight Strand. Maybe it's a build-related thing, but still.

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Anonymous1749704 wrote:

Maybe it's a build-related thing, but still.

It's a build-related thing. If the Uber Trio is harder than the entire Shaper encounter for you, and you get 1-shot by the Unshaped's frostbolts... I don't think the problem is with the Shaper fight ;)

Didn't understand. You said you watched videos, checked wiki, learned the mechanics, it took you 7 attempts... And your conclusion is it's an easy fight which caters to casuals?

Atziri Trio is hard because they do shitloads of damage with everything and never stop attacking. Especially in Vaal Temple map.
Give me 5 minutes with PoE code and I will create a "hardcore" boss like that, for you to get fkd by, unless you are Fyndel with full Mirrored best-on-server gear.
How? I will take a zombie, and change these three integers labled "life", "speed" and "auto attack damage" to a trillion, each. Done.

Shaper? I complained about him when he was introduced, but now I see just how much effort and thought was put into designing him, his lore, and his boss fight.
He's hard, without resorting to stuff like Elder freezes or "all attack damage is a one shot".
That's quite an accomplishment by GGG.

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Kelvynn wrote:

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Anonymous1749704 wrote:

Maybe it's a build-related thing, but still.

It's a build-related thing. If the Uber Trio is harder than the entire Shaper encounter for you, and you get 1-shot by the Unshaped's frostbolts... I don't think the problem is with the Shaper fight ;)

There isn't any problems with Shaper fight, that's my point. As far as getting 1shot goes, it's probably an issue with my build. I'm also getting 2shot by Death and Taxes boss' Ice Nova, while my friend can facetank it with no issues. Sometimes it feels like I'm playing with an Abyssus that has "40% increased cold damage taken" mod... I've no idea where the problem lies or how to pinpoint it.

And no, I'm not playing a glass cannon 3k hp build.

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johnKeys wrote:

Didn't understand. You said you watched videos, checked wiki, learned the mechanics, it took you 7 attempts... And your conclusion is it's an easy fight which caters to casuals?

I checked wiki afterwards. I was told the wiki has exact damage charts after complaining about dying to the miniboss Frost bolts. And a "last boss" of a game only taking 7 attempts to clear... That amount's a joke. If I went in blind, I'd only needed 9-10 tries anyway.

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johnKeys wrote:

Atziri Trio is hard because they do shitloads of damage with everything and never stop attacking. Especially in Vaal Temple map.
Give me 5 minutes with PoE code and I will create a "hardcore" boss like that, for you to get fkd by, unless you are Fyndel with full Mirrored best-on-server gear.
How? I will take a zombie, and change these three integers labled "life", "speed" and "auto attack damage" to a trillion, each. Done.

I've killed the trio, same as Vaal Temple boss. It's just way way way harder to kill trio without wasting ports than clear Shaper deathless.

My point is Shaper is in a good spot as the hardest mechanical fight in the game.
As he should be.
Are there harder fights? Maybe. But it's all about where that difficulty comes from.
It's easy to make a bad-MMO type of hard boss with the hit points of a small planet and base damage over-9000 x three million auto-attack, that covers the entire screen with AoE (Hi Kitava!).
Much harder to make a boss who kills you 7 times in a single-player fight without being that.

You call Shaper easy and casual?
Maybe you just prefer said BS MMO bosses.
Anyone in the Dev team can probably make that zombie-god boss I mentioned, in minutes.
It took much more than that, to make Shaper.

Uber Atziri is just Atziri with more life and damage.
Many bosses in the game and maps follow this pattern.

"Harder" can be doing twinned Core because of the tiny area and two bosses doing shitloads of damage, each.

Saying Shaper is easy and "casual" is not respecting the effort GGG put into Shaper as both a lore character and a boss.
He has unique, difficult, mechanics.
We did not have a unique "final" boss in the game a couple of years ago.
We had story boss clones with bigger integer values.