Xandro Blooddrinker vs noob: unexpected result

In the blue corner, we have Xandro Blooddrinker - one nasty rogue exile, proper nightmare for any archer!

In the red corner, we have a noob: Fins_, scion archer, who made to A3 merciless solo, no-twink, no-trade. She's my 1st PoE character in cruel and merciless.

By all intents and purposes, i was supposed to run away from him and let him be, right? Archers are not supposed to be able to drop him easily - he's regenerating his health, his hits can't be evaded, he's fast runner, and he hits hard with his 5x attack per cast. And Fins_ is not most tough archer character around... By far. But my old ironman D2 habits did not allow to retreat.

This is how it's ended.


P.S. Clvl 62. Area level 61. Also got minute-long video with her this-fight-config stats, flasks, gems and items displayed. She's possibly the 1st character ever to defeat Xandro, who's level 60+ by definition, with a Decurve bow rare - a bow which has level 38 requirement and can drop in Normal mode. %) Yet, she had to put on two higher-armour items (body armor and boots; found them earlier and stashed), and use 4 gems i normally don't run with, just for Xandro. She's no tank, but in this fight, there is no choice but to tank it - gotta stand and DPS him, at least with that low DPS.

Also, i found one original method to deal with him (used it in previous run in on him, before i turned capture on - that's why he's not full health, his regen stops when player is too far, it seems). The method is: level one Lightning Warp supported by level one Cast when Damage Taken. This instantly teleports player character behind Xandro's back after taking 1-2 hits out of any of his 5x hit casts. Obviously this greatly reduces damage taken when fighting him (or any similar boss who does multistrike-like thing), making it times less intensive damage-taken than you see in the video (to finish him off, i removed Lightning Warp, cause with it, he was too easey to worth a video... %) The key to this "auto-teleport behind enemy's back whenever some damage is taken" - is CwDT gem being level 1, for its very low damage treshold (440 damage taken per each trigger cast). Obviously Lightning Warp can't be too high, too - gotta stay at 31 lvl required tops, for the method to work. Might be a great thing to use in some boss fights for melee characters, may be?

P.P.S. He spawned from a rare monster box, which dropped me a Chaos orb for Xandro's death. Neat. %)

Thank you, sir!!

When i say "noob", i mean the fact that i am noob to PoE. I never played this game until late January 2015. I am veteran D2 (and some hardcore D3, but not much) player, though. Kinda old-school. I guess this is the source of your impression.

That, plus my habit to win, too. But in terms of PoE knowledge, i am still a noob. Will remain so at least to some degree for a few months onwards, too - this game is surely deep.

But the way you dealt with him is noobish. Standing in his attacks. :-)

If you position yourself properly he starts bashing and it ends just right before you (not hitting you at all) and you can shoot without even taking dmg. :-)

All praise chill.

You should try using blink arrow in a situation like this it might have helped (or mirror arrow for that matter)

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Filousov wrote:

But the way you dealt with him is noobish. Standing in his attacks. :-)

If you position yourself properly he starts bashing and it ends just right before you (not hitting you at all) and you can shoot without even taking dmg. :-)

I am a noob in many regards, but this is not one of them.

Even if there is such a position you talk about - this is a sort of exploit. He's not supposed to miss with his ranged attack (ground slam) when he uses it on stationary target. And i am not the kind of guy to share a video of defeating some NPC via using an exploit, you see. :P

Quite contrary, i dealth with him quite well. As you can see in the beginning of the clash, it is possible to dodge his attack - i "dance" left and right near him without taking damage, - but obviously one can't DPS him while moving like this. And he attacks constantly.

"Kiting" him around is useless. If you'd check the link to his description, you'd know he gets +5% movement speed per every 10 levels, means he always has at least +30% movement speed (since he doesn't spawn in level less than 60). In addition, he also has Leap Slam, with the bonus of 150% base damage. Furthermore, his main attack - Ground Slam - is supported not only by Multistrike, but also by Increased Area of Effect. Means he can hit you with it almost whenever you see him on your screen and stop just for a moment to make a shot or two.

And then the main problem is - his Ground Slam stuns very badly. There are some chances to get out of its AoE if you were hit by very edge of it and avoid following hits (Multistrike, you know?), but if he manages to hit you any well - you'll be stunlocked and will take all 5 hits (can't evade them - another bonus of his).

That's why you gotta stand - even as an archer, - and soak his damage, while putting out solid DPS to minimize his regen powers (he regenerates nearly half of his health in just half a minute - 1.7% per second). On top of two replacement pieces with high armour, i also used +90%sh armour on one of those health flasks.

Furthermore, the only way to reduce intensity of his stuns is to reduce frequency with which he casts his Ground Slam. What little of it i could achieve at that time, i tried to: two lightning damage skills supported by level 1 cast when being hit were hitting him all the time. Both skills had no cooldown other than CwDT internal 250ms cooldown. One of those skills had innate 10% chance to shock. Plus lightning damage from those, however little, plus more lightning damage from my bow was chilling him (visible in the video) - yep, my lightning damage chills, due to that headgear piece Fins_ found in early Cruel. He remains chilled for almost all duration of this short fight - you can see him getting un-chilled only for a short moment when he runs from me and around the corner. For a brief moment, his true movement speed is visible at that moment.

I certainly tried, at first, to kite him. Useless. You can't shoot while you move - but his regen works. Worse, you can't shoot any often because of his movement speed and leaps - but his regen works all the same. Can't kill him with kiting - at least not with under-2k DPS i had in the tooltip at the time. ;) Whole point of the story is: even when you are NOT supposed to be able to defeat something real nasty - if you think well, there is a way, however unusual and nonsensual it might seem to be at first!

Why do you have 5 life flasks tho?

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rockmassif wrote:

Why do you have 5 life flasks tho?

Because i didn't need anything else to beat him. Flasks #1 and #2 are my usual health flasks from normal play, 2k+ health regen each over relatively long duration. Flask #3 was rather weak health flask i had in my stash, taken specifically for this fight - it had curse immunity in it, and Xandro is happy to curse you with Vulnerability if you let him do it. Flask #4 was many-charges (5 uses, was it?) heath flask "just in case". Flask #5 was giving me some +90%-sh armour for 8 seconds, helping to mitigate his damage. I made a noobish mistake using it twice in the beginning of that clash - nervous, i was, darn finger pressed the button twice despite the mind saying to it to press it only once... This thing was _definitely_ noobish. %)

You can see me hovering over those flasks in the second video (also linked in the 1st post).

In my normal setup, a single 5-hits cast of his Ground Slam was hitting me for ~2k health. Obviously i had to mitigate that, and used what little means for it i had in my stash.

Ranger vs. Exile: pew pew, kite, pew pew = win :P