Vaal Oversoul on Merciless

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Sony_Black wrote:

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thedestroyerofkids wrote:

Holy crap guys, im lvl 55 and only have 777 life and 23 ES with my ranger, im also running the evasion to armor passive and i have 47% reduction, all my resists, besides chaos are in the 60s, am i screwed in merciless?

Probably yes. Whatever defense you want ot focus on you need a LOT of life (the only exception is of course an CI build)

Really?, beacause i was killing the lvl 58 monsters while i was lvl 52 fairly easily just needed to use a bit of kiting, even the boss monsters werent that hard.

Do the next acts really scale that horribly, granted most of my gear is like lvl 28-35.

Certain mobs in merc hit for over 2000 dmg good luck with 700 life.

That moment when you realize that the passive tree build isn't as freeform and open as you first thought it was...

Get a skill, make sure you can spam it, then aim for +resist and +HP nodes. So boring.

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thedestroyerofkids wrote:

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Sony_Black wrote:

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thedestroyerofkids wrote:

Holy crap guys, im lvl 55 and only have 777 life and 23 ES with my ranger, im also running the evasion to armor passive and i have 47% reduction, all my resists, besides chaos are in the 60s, am i screwed in merciless?

Probably yes. Whatever defense you want ot focus on you need a LOT of life (the only exception is of course an CI build)

Really?, beacause i was killing the lvl 58 monsters while i was lvl 52 fairly easily just needed to use a bit of kiting, even the boss monsters werent that hard.

Do the next acts really scale that horribly, granted most of my gear is like lvl 28-35.

i guess u focused on dps and forgot completely about health / resistance nodes , u will have serious problems in merc , 1 rhoa will 1 shot u for example.

The falling rocks like alot of dps in the latter part of the game are too OP.

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inDef wrote:

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SeikenZ wrote:

I just attempted this boss on my lvl 60 Witch, died about 4 times in total of which 3 times were due to falling rocks which practically 2-shot me at 1500 hp (and then got disconnected to boot after losing nearly half a level in exp). It seems to me, that these rocks do a bit too much damage when you're not having a high armor value, but I'm interested in hearing what others think about it.

I'm lvl 49 and have 1700 hp.

I'm level 47 and I have more than 2000 hp

My 67 melee Ranger just died to Merciless Vaal in Hardcore.

The rocks and adds are a joke. You can heal through it.

His single "smash" attack is pretty shitty design. I had 2500 HP and was one shotted with 42% base damage reduction, and 80% resists. Chances are I was benefiting from some auras as well as I was not alone.

My game crashed, I teleported back in after reloading, and my attention slipped I guess. Just walked towards him noticed his arm raised, walked away, too late. People say it can be too late because of desync.

That's really lame honestly, you ought to be able to survive with a decent amount of HP and be at 5% health or something and have a chance to react.

The problem with this attack is that it happens too fast. It's bad design plain and simple. YOu barely get a chance to react. Either make a one shot kill attack and give players the time to react, or make something that does a lot of damage like the laser beams that you can heal up if you are very careful.

Sadly the game remains playable in hardcore only for the top crop of the playerbase who enjoys "exploting" the mechanics (as intended) and stack up megatons of life for having a chance at playing a long time in Hardcore.

Sadly this means my next character is just going to have to end up cookie cutter 4000 HP minimum by level 60.

And before you say anything, I had a level 94 *MELEE* Amazon with 1500 HP in Hardcore league in Diablo II. Yeah, it's not the same game but my point is POE is still very rough in places and would benefit from being less of a "exploit the mechanics" type of game.

If you still dont understand my frustration. It's basically that there is no point for me to create a new Hardcore character. I can play as safe as I want, if I want to enjoy something that's not a 4K HP cookie cutter build (I had a reasonable 2500 HP effective after auras), then it will simply be a throwing of the dice. Maybe I will be able to see the smash attack in time, maybe not. Just RNG. Just this one encounter. Play sixty fucking levels doing really good, and then throw a dice.

:/

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brgillespie wrote:

That moment when you realize that the passive tree build isn't as freeform and open as you first thought it was...

Get a skill, make sure you can spam it, then aim for +resist and +HP nodes. So boring.

Exactly.

Pretty disgusted right now.

I did not play Hardcore specifically for that reason in closed beta.

The game balance has become a lot better since, so I decided to play HC League in open beta.

Sadly, there are still spikes of damage such as Vaal's "smash" attack, and Perandus.

I could have died to Perandus earlier, because his trap + EK was so unexpected. COmpeltely unable to move. I used a seething pot to survive through it.

It's really really lame. There really is no point at all to play the game in HC unless you want to stack 4000 HP and more. Since I had 2500 HP with 80% resists I would imagine 3000 would barely make it.

Plus look at what Kripp plays. I love the guy and his stream but let's face it, he found the magic formula for going cross class on the upper part of the skill tree, get megatons of life nodes. Why are there so many 34% life node grapes out there? It's so easy to hybridize and stack all the base life bonuses and life. On my melee Ranger it's quite challenging to reach 250% and a lot of compromise had to be made for. That's why I had "only" 2750 HP at level 67. I needed to get to level 81 to get around 3650 and even that would have been too little for end game Maps.

As others have said, 1500 is INCREDIBLY low. I usually have close to 1500 as I fight Piety in Normal. You should have at least 3000 Life when fighting Vaal in Merciless, carry 2 Granite flasks that you pop as rocks are falling, and if your flasks are empty you TP out to refill them then come back. I've fought Vaal on Merciless 5 times so far, never even really had a close encounter on HC.

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SeikenZ wrote:

I just attempted this boss on my lvl 60 Witch, died about 4 times in total of which 3 times were due to falling rocks which practically 2-shot me at 1500 hp (and then got disconnected to boot after losing nearly half a level in exp). It seems to me, that these rocks do a bit too much damage when you're not having a high armor value, but I'm interested in hearing what others think about it.

If you were saying normal and dying to rocks i would have told you well before the big rocks falls down there are smaller rocks falling before the big ones.

But you are in merciless and thus must know the mechanics of this fight pretty well. Therefore suck it out and if you do not want to avoid rocks then die all you want.