Malachai too many worms and zombies

Did the fight on last diccifulty and the zombies are ridiculously strong. They spawn so fast, all i can do is kill them. took me about 1h to kill the boss. could not kill all the zombies, kept spawning. Boss alone is hard enough, but the constant zombies waves made me die too many times.

I agree, but I'd go even one step further, the entire act 4 is too strong. I feel like it is trying to catch up with Atziri, but this should be the main part of the game, not a side quest for epic loot. For casual players like myself, this game is quickly becoming not fun. I feel like GGG is catering far too much to "professional" players and is forgetting about the people who like to play for fun and don't mind dropping money to support a game they love. Since I finally beat merciless in non-hardcore, I think I'm pretty much done with this game. It shouldn't take an hour and 100 deaths to kill the final boss when using a cast on crit character with 56% base crit chance, assassin's mark, an ice golem, and lvl 18 gems: many with quality. Too many things just one hit kill the player's character. There is not nearly sufficient means of reducing physical magic damage on evasion/ES characters. Too many nodes have been nerfed (Ondar's Guile, Acrobatics, etc.) to make evasion/ES a viable option. I think these changes have been made in the spirit of balancing the game, but they just make it less fun. We're not killing real monsters here. There's no limit to how many the game can create. Challenge is fun. Sadism is not. I like the atmosphere of the new act, I think the escalation has just gone too far. Couple this with having to start from scratch whenever a new league starts up (unbelievably including masters), and you get tired of having to find EVERYTHING again.

Oh well, eventually I quit playing D2 as well. I guess it's just that time.

huh

the zombies / and worms are the only reason why i can kill malachai w/o tp out of the fight
they are a great source of sustain for leech/LoH/MoH and flasks

+1 to Sjaka's sentiment.

If he didn't have those adds, my chain build would take 4 hours to kill him including the 80 times I had to tp back to town.

Merciless Malachai is completely optional (there's not even a quest reward) just like Merc Dominus used to be and should be looked at more as an end game map zone than anything else. Some builds handle certain bosses better than others. Your build probably stomps certain map bosses that mine just can't fight at equivalent level. Skip him and go on about your business if he's that much of a pain for you. You've already seen everything he does in Cruel (which you can easily outlevel and roflstomp no matter what build you're using).

I agree with above statements that zombies/worms are important, especially worms in first phase of the fight.

I can also attest that the fight is very different, more or less difficult, depending on how effective AOE you have at your disposal. I did the fight with 2H Marauder using both Ice Crash and Sweep. Sweep run on Merciless difficulty was much easier than Ice Crash because Sweep is much more flexible, much easier to target and faster to perform. Ice Crash has significantly higher DPS than Sweep but I still prefer Sweep most of the time because it is much easier to use.

Due to above, I can imagine that some builds might feel it is too cumbersome to deal with heavy AOE situations.

"

psyberjock wrote:

I agree, but I'd go even one step further, the entire act 4 is too strong. I feel like it is trying to catch up with Atziri, but this should be the main part of the game, not a side quest for epic loot. For casual players like myself, this game is quickly becoming not fun. I feel like GGG is catering far too much to "professional" players and is forgetting about the people who like to play for fun and don't mind dropping money to support a game they love. Since I finally beat merciless in non-hardcore, I think I'm pretty much done with this game. It shouldn't take an hour and 100 deaths to kill the final boss when using a cast on crit character with 56% base crit chance, assassin's mark, an ice golem, and lvl 18 gems: many with quality. Too many things just one hit kill the player's character. There is not nearly sufficient means of reducing physical magic damage on evasion/ES characters. Too many nodes have been nerfed (Ondar's Guile, Acrobatics, etc.) to make evasion/ES a viable option. I think these changes have been made in the spirit of balancing the game, but they just make it less fun. We're not killing real monsters here. There's no limit to how many the game can create. Challenge is fun. Sadism is not. I like the atmosphere of the new act, I think the escalation has just gone too far. Couple this with having to start from scratch whenever a new league starts up (unbelievably including masters), and you get tired of having to find EVERYTHING again.

Oh well, eventually I quit playing D2 as well. I guess it's just that time.

With that build I'm seriously surprised you died only 100 times. I don't think you can even do Malachai merciless with that lv 68 char in warbands in 300 deaths haha.

You have 6 items without a HP roll AT ALL and you're trying to do the hardest boss in game merciless Malachai. Why do you find it strange that you die so much? Your build lacks survivability. And no it's not just armor it is overall life and life regeneration.

Malachai is one of the most fair fights in terms of one shots. There is not a single attack he does that can't be avoided. If you can't kill the zombies you should really look at your dps they die almost instantly along with those worms lol. Learn the boss and learn how to build a character that doesn't die constantly. You don't need to play the game a lot, having a strong skill for killing bosses (like flameblast for example) + customizing your character well should be enough.

Nobody runs a character with +40% max hp that also has like +20% max energy shield. Your survivability is absolutely horrid I don't even want to know how you made it to Malachai with that character it must've been a pain in itself. If you want help with a character build I can offer you it if you tell me what you roughly want.

"

Sogolon wrote:

"

psyberjock wrote:

I agree, but I'd go even one step further, the entire act 4 is too strong. I feel like it is trying to catch up with Atziri, but this should be the main part of the game, not a side quest for epic loot. For casual players like myself, this game is quickly becoming not fun. I feel like GGG is catering far too much to "professional" players and is forgetting about the people who like to play for fun and don't mind dropping money to support a game they love. Since I finally beat merciless in non-hardcore, I think I'm pretty much done with this game. It shouldn't take an hour and 100 deaths to kill the final boss when using a cast on crit character with 56% base crit chance, assassin's mark, an ice golem, and lvl 18 gems: many with quality. Too many things just one hit kill the player's character. There is not nearly sufficient means of reducing physical magic damage on evasion/ES characters. Too many nodes have been nerfed (Ondar's Guile, Acrobatics, etc.) to make evasion/ES a viable option. I think these changes have been made in the spirit of balancing the game, but they just make it less fun. We're not killing real monsters here. There's no limit to how many the game can create. Challenge is fun. Sadism is not. I like the atmosphere of the new act, I think the escalation has just gone too far. Couple this with having to start from scratch whenever a new league starts up (unbelievably including masters), and you get tired of having to find EVERYTHING again.

Oh well, eventually I quit playing D2 as well. I guess it's just that time.

With that build I'm seriously surprised you died only 100 times. I don't think you can even do Malachai merciless with that lv 68 char in warbands in 300 deaths haha.

You have 6 items without a HP roll AT ALL and you're trying to do the hardest boss in game merciless Malachai. Why do you find it strange that you die so much? Your build lacks survivability. And no it's not just armor it is overall life and life regeneration.

Malachai is one of the most fair fights in terms of one shots. There is not a single attack he does that can't be avoided. If you can't kill the zombies you should really look at your dps they die almost instantly along with those worms lol. Learn the boss and learn how to build a character that doesn't die constantly. You don't need to play the game a lot, having a strong skill for killing bosses (like flameblast for example) + customizing your character well should be enough.

Nobody runs a character with +40% max hp that also has like +20% max energy shield. Your survivability is absolutely horrid I don't even want to know how you made it to Malachai with that character it must've been a pain in itself. If you want help with a character build I can offer you it if you tell me what you roughly want.

Btw this is the reason why I would like the developers to make standard players be able to lose levels in cruel and merciless to avoid this type of zerging so that players realize that they will have to build their character differently as opposed to dying 500x through merciless.

"

SjakaWaka wrote:

huh

the zombies / and worms are the only reason why i can kill malachai w/o tp out of the fight
they are a great source of sustain for leech/LoH/MoH and flasks

Same for me, I did malachai merciless 2 days ago and i was thinking that it would be a lot easier if there were twice as many zombies to get flask and frenzy charges (blood dance) from.

I did all the bosses from piety to malachai and maligaro was the only one I died too.

"

Sogolon wrote:

Btw this is the reason why I would like the developers to make standard players be able to lose levels in cruel and merciless to avoid this type of zerging so that players realize that they will have to build their character differently as opposed to dying 500x through merciless.

And for every player that zergs bosses in Standard, there is a player like me that tries to play as if it would be Hardcore league. I'm still against the death penalty as it is implemented now but that is just another reason not to die.

There are valid builds in Standard that can be classified as glass cannons because they try to utilize rules of the game for their benefit. They reach a point when build is complete, slap a whole lot of MF gear on and just reap the benefits. They do die from time to time, maybe even a lot, but who cares when they are already at point when they do not care about experience.

"

Sogolon wrote:

With that build I'm seriously surprised you died only 100 times. I don't think you can even do Malachai merciless with that lv 68 char in warbands in 300 deaths haha.

You have 6 items without a HP roll AT ALL and you're trying to do the hardest boss in game merciless Malachai. Why do you find it strange that you die so much? Your build lacks survivability. And no it's not just armor it is overall life and life regeneration.

Malachai is one of the most fair fights in terms of one shots. There is not a single attack he does that can't be avoided. If you can't kill the zombies you should really look at your dps they die almost instantly along with those worms lol. Learn the boss and learn how to build a character that doesn't die constantly. You don't need to play the game a lot, having a strong skill for killing bosses (like flameblast for example) + customizing your character well should be enough.

Nobody runs a character with +40% max hp that also has like +20% max energy shield. Your survivability is absolutely horrid I don't even want to know how you made it to Malachai with that character it must've been a pain in itself. If you want help with a character build I can offer you it if you tell me what you roughly want.

You use as a defense, one of my main criticisms. I have to find all new gear! I've only played in this league for a week or two, and I'm not really into trading, so I'm forced to do what I can with what I've got. If I could find godly gear with 100 life on every piece of armor and jewelry, I would gladly use it and have little trouble. The thing is, you have to get to a certain level before you can find such items, or your masters have to get to a certain level before you can craft such things with them. That seems to be even more impossible every time a new league starts. Grinding for gear is one of the most tedious parts for new leagues. Combine that with ever more opportunities to die and you slow down character progression substantially. Moving maps up to lvl 68 when the final boss's area is lvl 70 is ridiculous. If we're going to be doing maps before the boss anyway, why raise their levels? That just makes it even harder to gain new levels.

In concern to the zombies and worms, I think you're confusing me with the original poster. My DPS is quite good. I can wipe out the zombies with little trouble, and my crit refilling potions stay full a lot. It's all the physical magic damage that is getting me. Those swirling red tornadoes that follow you as you try to destroy the trees, Piety's crazy tornadoes and rotating beam of whateverthehellthatis, etc. are the main problems. I have anti-bleeding flasks, but they don't help at all.

I know I'm running glass cannon, but there's little else you can do in the beginning. If you don't go magic at first, your characters all get stuck around lvl 50-60 when you can't find a weapon that does enough damage to allow you to progress. If you don't have the gear you need, you have to use passive skill points to make up for it. I can't very well improve my dps AND health sufficiently at the same time. One or both are going to be inadequate.

Sure there are some "sure thing" builds, but that's boring! I don't want to be forced into a build that EVERYONE and their dog are using just because it's the only viable way to beat the game. Think about the righteous fire builds. In the beginning, if you wanted to do Atziri, that was a sure way to get it done. Everyone else was pretty much exempt. So what happened? EVERYONE build righteous fire builds. The cost of the gear if you traded was ridiculous, and if you don't trade, you couldn't find all the pieces within the time frame of the league unless you were extremely lucky. So what was the response to everyone having righteous fire builds? Nerf it! Now we're on to the next build that EVERYONE uses.

My point is this: I'm not terrible at the game. I understand what it takes to survive. The problem is, I don't like to do the same thing as everyone else, and the constant resets make it tedious to get to a point where I can do what I enjoy. I'm sure you could give me some good advice on how to change my build to work better, but that's not the character I want to play. As a first character in a new league, it's probably even a character that I can not yet make.