Boss fights - general tactics

Some basic tips:
(Mainly aimed at beginners with their firsst playthrough, mainly selffound)

1. Resistances are highly important.
- Take basic resistance Rings with high base ressitance and trans alch them until you get one decent extra resist if you dont happen to find an upgrade.
- Vendors might sometimes have a fitting upgrade for trade, check them too if you are in need. (Tehy restock after every level up)
- Resistances from tree are awesome. They points can be regained later, when your gear makes it possible.
- Belts! Trans alching a life belt for life and one resistance is incredibly easy!

Those belts can be made with just a few lucky alts and one regal and the chances are good.
- Gear swapping has been mentioned a few times. Im no fan of it since you can allways run across a monster that you didnt expect so I allways try to have 75 lighting resistance and at least 50% of the other two from cruel onward. Even if it means having less damge output.

2. Playing as a selffoud Bow char is hard (but doable nevertheless;))
- Finding a weapon upgrade can take ages for bow users. Thats at least in my experience. Either trade for upgrades or start off with another char maybe. Or grind your ass off^^
- Some areas and encoutners (such as boss fights and the bandit fights) are hard for selffound bow users because you will lack damage output and need to stay in the area but cannot sustain mana and or life. These encoutners take ages because your sinlge target damage is crap. Thats mainly why I wouldnt play self found bowers.
- Also esspecialy the badit fights have near to no room to kite. Thats why I struggled to move past the bandit fights on merciless several times with self found bow users or casters. Be aware that it might take some time grinding to pass that point.

3. Defenses are valuable on all chars regardless of their playstyle
- Life/ES and resistances are the basic must haves for every char. At some point you wont be able to progress even when dishing out good damage.
- Be aware of gap closing monsters and ranged fire since these are the hardest to avoid on ranged chars.
- I dont find secondary defenses like armor and evasion to be worth investing into until later in the game. The scaling allows for awesome stuff later but isnt worth putting points and gear into while leveling.
- Allways run endurance charges. Why would you not? Even on ranged chars 15% physical reduction (for absolutely no investment) can mean life or death. If you dont have a cast on damge taken gem the upkeep can be quite a hussle but might be nessecary in some encounters.
- Curses! Slowing foes or enfeebling them can be a great defense.
- Cold damge can slow or even freeze enemies. It might now be the best offensive element but its the best defensivly in comparison to physical, lighting or fire.
- Block is absolutely hot when playing melee.

regards

Thanks again for the tips. I just finished killing Marveil and it's super easy this time.

1200 hp
66% cold resist
42% armor damage reduction

I dropped decoy totems and spammed frenzy. The extra cold resist helped loads when she was spamming me while I get the totem up.

Yes getting new gear is hard because all the gears are so random. I spent 1 chaos orb and bought a death's harp then made it 4L.

Update:

Ok just did Vaal Oversoul on the first try.

1500 hp
about 65% resist to fire/cold/lightning
42% armor

Got hit by the laser a couple of times but it didn't hurt that bad.