Cruel Dominus

Problem with dominus is that if you can kill him on cruel, then merciless up till act three is going to feel like a stroll through the tulips :/

Way harder than virtually anything you'll face in merciless till act three IMO. Keep his merciless super strong, but they should nerf his Merciless big time. (its about being disproportionate here, not QQ)

I soloed him with my selffound HC Marauder.
I was 59 when i finally decited to do it. I got 2200HP, max lighres and with vitality my HPregen was like 160/sec.

First part is easy, just agro the uniques one at the time and fro the second part stay at the lower part of the map, so his minions can't find you..just keep moving around that little wall in there... :D

My problems started when i didn't do anything about his minions in the last stage, soon there was 10 around me and couple of those tittyshooters... i exploited the TP heavily but i was about to give in and change my tacktics... i know he can be lured to the stairs=his minions can't get to you.

I used Heavy Strike(loh), Spectral Throw(loh) and some Cleave(loh) for those minions.
And ofcourse instahealthpots with bleed removal and 2 granites with +armor.

So you don't even need 3-link skills as a Marauder to do this, just keep your portal open/close to you.

MY dps was ~800, 1300 for the HS and ST/Cleave dps i don't even remember.

E: i just remembered one thing, killing Piety grants you 2 points.. i used them to give me sworddamage(my plan was to boost the damage for my current weapon type.. you can allways respec those when switching weapontype)

E2: this song came to mind when i was fighting him... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qNFwM7SfPk
I believe it's the "now your messing with a son of a bitch"-part... :D

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SkillFree wrote:

Just wanted to add a note, from my experience:

This seems to be the first encounter in the game where it's a hard delete/reroll check if you built your skills "wrong" (ie: anything which didn't maximize HP). My character has about 1400hp (with max resist, and 50%+ armor), and Dominus will unavoidably one-shot me with flicker strike and lightning burst.

Are you standing on shocked ground/not dodging at least half of the lightning beam? If you're talking about his fist of god it should never really hit you, it's easier to dodge than Vaal Smash imo since Dominus never desyncs.

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TheTenthDoc wrote:

Are you standing on shocked ground/not dodging at least half of the lightning beam? If you're talking about his fist of god it should never really hit you, it's easier to dodge than Vaal Smash imo since Dominus never desyncs.

Wise words, your best defence is your mousehand.. if you wanna stack shocked onto yourself and get instagibbed, you can do that.
This reminds me about D3 and Belial, people were standing still and whining for nerfs, which sadly came..

Those people that are struggling with this fight i'd like to say:

1. you must have enough life+regen(and remember that those lifenodes boosts the life FROM YOUR GEAR= i'd say that having +70 life on 5 pieces of gear is a must)

2. Don't even try to take the uniques at the same time..this is only for people that have insane gear for that level

3. there is an option to overlevel(this option is good, if you have +life/armor/damage to gain without spending too much points).

4. Practice.. it will only take 5 mins to run into this fight in Normal diff..(learn to separate the uniques, dodge the lightning attack and hand of god)

5. take a few moments to think what you are going to do.

6. Don't ever underestimate the power of TP( never set that too far away.)

7. Have at least 1 instaheal-pot and roll bleedremove to the other(i even roll that to my manapot)

8. Retreat in time, if you find yourself in a situation: i can probably finish him, althought my healthpots are gone--->99% RIP

9. Some builts just don't work at this level.. make some leveling built instead.

10. There is a possibility to use Viper Strike in his first form, slow but effective.

11. enfeeble/temporal chains is your friend here(atleast i found these better that the dpsboost ones)

12. read number 8 again

i know its a rather old post, but i just wanted to say thank u for those 12 points u made. just killed dominus on cruel for my first time (am new to the game) and it was intense but doable - especially with those tips!

cheers

After you learn the rhythms of these fight, they become rather easy. The biggest thing is capping whatever element they use, then it's just avoiding the hits. I literally just rushed a toon to lvl 60ish(and I mean solo rush no boosting). Was in merciless at lvl 50. I just defeated piety at lvl 61 with 1.9k hp with 0 deaths and only used a portal to refill mana pot. Of course I was using facebreakers/meginords to lvl, but the only dps nodes taken were attk speed and the +2 melee range.

Sorry for reviving an old thread but I don't think my question warrants a new thread. My current character is level 56 Shadow with

I know there are some mistakes in my passive skill tree (which I plan to fix) but can anyone point out anything I would need to change in my gear before I attempt this fight? My character does pretty good damage and has good elemental resists (65,75,75) but is a softy against physical damage. Maybe farm around till I get better armor?

My biggest worry is life regen (which is why I use Vitality) and I'll switch to a topaz flask. During the fight I will probably drop Herald of Thunder and use mana for Clarity. My move speed is at +48% so I can mouse-dodge most attacks. My gloves auto-cast TC which is also helpful.

If anyone is wondering, I use Arc only against enemies that resist cold. Also, I find Arc has much better range than FP.

Any suggestions will be appreciated. I hate losing XP every time I die. :)

Edit: I realise I need a flask that dispels bleeding.

While fighting cruel Dominus is always a rush of adrenaline, he's in fact a sissy if you know how the fight works. I routinely kill him at level 52-55 with around 1700 hp. Only close calls I usually get are from the second wave of uniques (the miscreations).

Just get flasks with bleeding removal, stay on your toes and far from upper left corner during his first phase, and get good AoE damage for the second phase (his attacks alone can be flask-tanked with refills through town portals, but the adds he spawns can mess you up, especially the projectile-spamming tentacle b1tches).

@AODBluu, I recommend rolling your granite flask to get the "of Iron Skin" mod with a good value (it often rolls 90% and more), so the +3000 armor from the flask becomes almost +6000.