Boss fights - general tactics

Hi,

I just started playing PoE as a LA/frenzy ranger. Managed to beat Normal yesterday but I need some tips on how to get through the harder difficulties. I was level 41 and had about 1200 hp. Basically, whenever there is a boss fight I just ran around the pillars and threw fire trap until the boss died eventually. If i die, i had a portal ready to bring myself back to the fight. Obviously this won't work on cruel and beyond because I'd lose experience each time I died. Are we expected to "tank" bosses or is there a smarter way to fighting them?

Which build are you working on? Are you evasion-based with Ondar's Guile and Acrobatics? Iron Reflex/Unwavering?

Also, how much life do you have? How are your resistances? Life and high if not max resistances make progress much easier, and are essential as the game progresses.

I find the evasion build to be a natural with bow ranger, since we do our damage from a distance, keeping distance seems the most logical choice. Also, there are many nasty ranged attacks in this game, and being able to almost ignore them is pretty sweet. Once you get used to kiting and maintaining range, you'll find yourself moving constantly, which keeps you from standing in things like poison clouds and fire, and is a fun, active playstyle.

Standing still in POE after normal is a very good way to die a lot, and you'll soon sour on the game.

And don't limit yourself to LA/Frenzy. Although they are two of my favorite attacks, I keep explosive arrow, barrage, and poison arrow leveled up as much as I can, because I find uses for them in certain situations. Barrage is a nice boss pounder.

Right now I'm at about 1400 hp, like 10% resistance (yeah I know bad). The build is using Unwavering Stance, blood magic, iron reflexes. Here it is ZiggyD's build About to face Marveil on cruel and I had already died 1-2 times from unique mobs killing me really fast. I did use Poison Arrow in the beginning but gradually stopped using it. Some fights like Gravicious I had to run and shoot poison arrow and slowly kill him. I will start leveling up the other abilities.

So even with good stats and gear we are still expected to kite a lot right? I'm wearing plates atm and there is a -8% move speed penalty. If I don't move as soon as an ability fires I can't dodge it. Also, I noticed that in some boss fights the boss will teleport to you if you get too far away. Is that normal or am I lagging? I only notice it on boss fights and my pc should be fine with i7 and gtx670.

One thing about builds. Most builds you find posted are builds based on great gear, and aren't so friendly for those that haven't geared up yet. Your resistances are killing you, most bosses are going to crush you. That seems to be most of your problem, so if you're up for trading, up those stats as soon as possible. Craft some situational rings and swap them out, like Viper suggested, I carry two or three rings and ammies.

As for kiting, well, it seems the natural fight style for a ranged character. I kite with my little mage, and kite like crazy with my ranger. I can't say it's the right way to play, since I'm new and haven't gone past lvl 75 yet, but I can confidently say it works. I admit since I'm evasion based I wear nothing BUT leather, but that's a choice I made, and I'll stick with it until I'm forced to change by the game.

Peace.

Something which helps me alot against unknown bosses:

Use Decoy Totem to see his skills and his damage output before you fight him. If you feel that he is too hard for you at the moment for whatever reason you can also use Decoy Totem to distract him/move him away and circumvent the fight completely.

Use Decoy Totem.

Thanks every one for the input. I will work on getting resistance up. I had Diamond Skin specced for +15% all resist then I removed it (cuz I felt I had enough life hehe). Yes the decoy totem is useful, sometimes I will spam it just to I can dps for 2-3 sec while the boss pwns the totem and I use it again.

Was having the exact same problem as you on cruel, took me forever to kill merveil having to constantly kite and hide from her for a very large amount of time.

After reading this thread it really helped,had no idea how much the elemental resistance helped since I always favoured extra life or mana over elemental resistance.

Since then I have managed to fix this and have bee able to progress loads without dying. Thanks :D

Don't underestimate the importance of flasks. Many players ignore them. Just having a bunch of vanilla flasks will not cut it at later levels. Dispell burning, bleeding, cold, quickness, are all life savers.

And I like using tree nodes for resists, as (a) they can increase your max resists and (b) if you get enough of them, you have added flexibility for gear (e.g., don't always need triple resists on gear).

there's all the standard tips to make your char stronger, but if you want one specific sneaky trick to fight bosses, it might be to time it out so you fight them shortly after leveling up.
you will never de-level from death penalty, so worst that could happen is you hit the beginning of your level.