RF build dies spectacularly to apex vaal

wow - that was a disaster. the RF build got nuked by the vaal.

i don't do enough damage and i can't survive the vaal damage.

the lightning, both ball lightning and laser could basically take me down to zero in a couple of seconds. the hits i encountered while TRYING TO AVOID them, were just destroying me. topaz ? lol. don't help at all...

so i'm really, really missing something.

apparently the vaal are so easy i can't even find videos of an RF build running them.

having to hop on the vaal and cyclone around is just a death sentence. and BTW, when the lightning damage wasn't killing me, the cold damage was really rough too. yes- 77 resists for cold and lightning.

ok. so i know that 5.2k life isn't even close to being enough, but it's not at all obvious to me that 6.5k would be enough either.

it was quite the QQ moment. didn't expect to do that bad. the frustration is , i don't have the foggiest idea how i would do it better. i just can't see how an extra 1k of life would make any difference at all. so i'm missing something really significant about the mechanics of the fight.

the lasers come out, the ball lightning comes out, get chilled and smacked around by cold rain. there is no pause, especially since the two of them are after you at the same time. i run around trying to avoid the damage and die anyway. or i cyclone the vaal trying to do damage, and ... die anyway.

blah.

any help appreciated.

Are you snapshotting with dual redbeaks in your weapon switch? It helps.

The vaal fight is pretty much a typical vaal fight except tougher. You're supposed to constantly dodge the lasers,ball lightnings and ice storm. You should also try killing them together. Your HP is enough for them honestly. Having an antishock flask helps of course.

Here is Ziggy's first attempt at doing them ever. He actually fails to do Atziri that run, uses subpar flasks, makes big mistakes including killing one vaal too early. Still does them without too much trouble though.
http://youtu.be/IoYbN0pvbrU?t=3m50s

For your tree i'd drop all the armour node since you don't really need em, and pick up more hp nodes instead.

Also what's your movement speed? try to get at least 25% if you can the slower your MS the harder the fight is.

You could try dropping grace during the fight for Purity of Lightning.

Also remember to Proc EE somehow it adds a big bonus, buy a doedre's damning and dual curse Flamm/Ele weakness or Ele weakness/Vuln. Pick up a Searing bond totem and drop it on the vaals for even more damage.

"

The vaal fight is pretty much a typical vaal fight except tougher. You're supposed to constantly dodge the lasers,ball lightnings and ice storm. You should also try killing them together. Your HP is enough for them honestly. Having an antishock flask helps of course.

yeah- the problem is that while i'm hopping around i get killed, even with a topaz up. i mean once that laser gets going i just can't get away from it, and even momentary hits are taking out 1/2 my life. and they use it _often_. so then i'm out of rubies and it's all over. there is no dodging. ball lightning cannot be dodge. the spread is over the entire area, i take damage the whole time.

i mean eventually i have to actually, you know, attack. lol.

thanks very much for the video link. i'll see what i can figure out from that.

once i died i was really in trouble. every time i went back both the stupid vaal were together and i just got destroyed.

"

For your tree i'd drop all the armour node since you don't really need em, and pick up more hp nodes instead.

ok. i can try that. won't give me that much more life though. but worth trying. that's what i don't understand. i was taking so much damage so quickly, i can't see how even another 1k of life is going to make any difference.

"

Also what's your movement speed? try to get at least 25% if you can the slower your MS the harder the fight is.

boots are 25%, but i've probably got an armor penalty. have leap slam.

"

You could try dropping grace during the fight for Purity of Lightning.

yeah i thought that might help. then i went in with my incinerator and died even though the incinerate build has PoL AND has beat them twice before. grrrrrr. the encounter just plain seemed harder. the lasers and ball lightning were running pretty much non-stop and they do stupid 1-shot damage.

"

Also remember to Proc EE somehow it adds a big bonus, buy a doedre's damning and dual curse Flamm/Ele weakness or Ele weakness/Vuln. Pick up a Searing bond totem and drop it on the vaals for even more damage.

of course! i have added lightning on my ammy (which i didn't link) so both leap slam and cyclone proc EE, well if i hit that is.

also, i ran with doedre's damning. however i was using temp chains instead of vulnerability. i was trying to slow down the attacks because i was taking damage so quickly. that didn't work at all, so vulnerability next time. if there is a next time.

well, running out of midnights. gonna try my archer next. doesn't have a prayer, but has great move speed. should give more time to figure out what's going on, and then maybe i can transfer that knowledge back to the RF build.

thanks very much for the help. i'll see what i can figure out. not too hopeful though. i really suck at this game. i see builds much weaker than mine cruising through atziri and i just freaking die everywhere, but i just can't seem to get a handle on the mechanics.

"

kasub wrote:

Are you snapshotting with dual redbeaks in your weapon switch? It helps.

The vaal fight is pretty much a typical vaal fight except tougher. You're supposed to constantly dodge the lasers,ball lightnings and ice storm. You should also try killing them together. Your HP is enough for them honestly. Having an antishock flask helps of course.

Here is Ziggy's first attempt at doing them ever. He actually fails to do Atziri that run, uses subpar flasks, makes big mistakes including killing one vaal too early. Still does them without too much trouble though.
http://youtu.be/IoYbN0pvbrU?t=3m50s

two things i noticed about the vaal fight.

he basically runs through the ball lightning, going back towards the origin. i was trying to "outrun it". big mistake, because i ended up running along it, and take more damage.

don't know how he avoided the lasers, i absolutely could not, and everytime i got touched i took a fuckton of damage. that's a real mystery as to why i seem to be having so much more trouble with that.

the most significant thing i noticed is how much more damage he is doing even though he has only 800 more life. that's probably a dual-redbeak snapshot thing.

and finally - is he playing the same game ?!!

there is NO chance i had that much time between attacks. none. they were attacking much, much more frequently than what i see in that video. and i noticed the same thing when my incinerate build went in too. and that was with both alive- i know that the other gets frenzy when one dies.

A way to avoid the lazers is having more move speed, do no use movement skill for this, unless you have whirling blades, bring some quicksilvers just in case you can't do it.

You mentioned you used temporal chains, yes this make them slower but doesn't it also make the ball lightning they sent out cast longer and also their icicle spear last longer?I'm not sure since I never temp chains the vaals but it may explain why you felt like they were attacking the entire time

For ball lightning avoidance you can do what Ziggy did, wait a second then jump to the vaal, or jump either left/right of the ball lightning to get hit only by the last ball.

Yes Dual redbeak snapshotting increases the damage significantly.
Though you have a doryani so you could use Doryani+redbeak snapshot.
You also did not take Growth and decay which gives a lot of damage and 1% life regen.
Another way to increase damage through snapshotting is using animate guardian
Animate a Dying Breath staff/ Leer cast mask, put it in your redbeak, go low life, cast RF, switch back to Regular set up.

"

GodTheUndead wrote:

A way to avoid the lazers is having more move speed, do no use movement skill for this, unless you have whirling blades, bring some quicksilvers just in case you can't do it.

You mentioned you used temporal chains, yes this make them slower but doesn't it also make the ball lightning they sent out cast longer and also their icicle spear last longer?I'm not sure since I never temp chains the vaals but it may explain why you felt like they were attacking the entire time

For ball lightning avoidance you can do what Ziggy did, wait a second then jump to the vaal, or jump either left/right of the ball lightning to get hit only by the last ball.

Yes Dual redbeak snapshotting increases the damage significantly.
Though you have a doryani so you could use Doryani+redbeak snapshot.
You also did not take Growth and decay which gives a lot of damage and 1% life regen.
Another way to increase damage through snapshotting is using animate guardian
Animate a Dying Breath staff/ Leer cast mask, put it in your redbeak, go low life, cast RF, switch back to Regular set up.

yeah a quicksilver seems to be far more valuable than a topaz at this point.

yeah i think i see how to avoid the ball lightning, i was definitely doing it wrong!

whatever i thought about temp chains - i was wrong. i'm going to put vulnerability on CwDT (along with ice nova) and just worry about casting elemental weakness. generally manually casting curses is almost not worthwhile on the bosses since they get a curse effectiveness reduction. reaction time is more important and trying to manually cast a curse every once in a while is a distraction.

i've been attempting to get growth and decay, i agree it's a valuable cluster, but i'm just not quite sure how to modify the tree.

I came up with this :



i give up 12% life and almost 80% of armor nodes, but i think it's worth it to get the damage boost AND 1% regen. or is it ?

This is the tree I'd go with you lose the duelist 1% regen node but it's compensated by having the growth and decay nodes.
You lose the armor nodes from the duelist side, but now your grace also increase armor so they're not really needed now.
You lose an endurance charge but now you have more hp, you still can pick it back up but i'm not sure it's worth the 3 points.
Also try taking out that empower and see if you lose any max resists if you dont you can leave it out and drop the 4% reduce mana res node and pick up more hp.

"

This is the tree I'd go with you lose the duelist 1% regen node but it's compensated by having the growth and decay nodes.
You lose the armor nodes from the duelist side, but now your grace also increase armor so they're not really needed now.
You lose an endurance charge but now you have more hp, you still can pick it back up but i'm not sure it's worth the 3 points.

Too funny. That used to be my build. But I kind of like the armor/evasion approach, so i'll have to think about going back. The fact is that against environmental damage, it just doesn't matter.



DOH !!!! I just realized that one of my toons has a level 20 PoF AND level 20 reduced mana.

good grief. that's a game changer. not only does in save me that aura res node, more importantly it frees up gem slots which means i can slot searing bond. I can also use the helm I've _really_ want to use which has a bunch of life on it.

With those changes i could be pushing 5.5k life in my tree and almost certainly 6k if I use your tree.

Wow. I'm going to have to sit down and figure this out.

Thanks again.