How do hardcore players survive act 4?

I'm still somewhat new to PoE, playing my first character into the game. A witch, a caster/summoner hybrid, currently level 41.

Before act 4, the character seemed to be doing alright. The only death was to Merveill, I'd account that on my lack of experience. After that I could keep the character alive in all boss fights, including Piety and Dominus.

Then act 4. Voll was somewhat ok. Kaom is crazy. I haven't counted how often my character died there. My character even died before reaching the final battle in Kaom's dream. That means, the dream already is worse than the fight with Dominus, if one is unlucky, but Kaom in his arena is just crazy.

Daresso was a bit easier. Still, a lot of deaths, again, also a few in one of the early arenas, where Daresso fights the first time.

Piety, the abomination. Instakill with the flamethrower. Repeatedly. Even that my character has maxed resistances to all elements but chaos.

At that point I decided to take a break because just running into a boss till one is lucky enough to wear it down after a dozen character deaths and restarts, is not the way I want to play.

So the results:

Act 1: 3 deaths to Merveill
Act 2: No death
Act 3: No death
Act 4: 40+ deaths to Kaom, Daresso and Piety, the Abomination

WTF?!

So, for me and my character act 4 is a whole lot more difficult than any of the former acts. I don't think level 41 is too low for act 4, I've tried to do all side quests and clear all extra areas to have proper equipment and a well developed character.

So, how to hardcore players survive act4? I'm asking, because there were a few instakill moments. Some I could have avoided with more experience e.g. Daresso has an instakill attack, but I think one canb avoid it, if one already knows it, but others like Pieties firestream is hard to avoid, and almost intant death.

You're overestimating the difficulty of evading all these skills. Basically you can dodge 100% of the actually scary skills from the mandatory Act IV bosses. It's pretty much all a lack of experience on your part, although I imagine your defensive stats also aren't quite up to the standards of your average hardcore player either.

I can explain in more detail if you'd like, but as an example, Piety's laser will never hit you if you stand in melee range of her and run in a circle (and make sure to be moving before it starts, of course). It's only dangerous if you stand too far away and can't outrun it. Or Kaom, I'm sure you can see that his own attacks are easy enough to dodge, but the main thing is making sure you're in the correct part of the arena that isn't being bombarded with fireballs, and also getting rid of the spirits he summons on low life quickly because they really hurt.

It's all stuff like this.

I'm slow in the seeing-understanding-reacting chain. My character was too slow to outrun Pieties firethrower, I tried to cross it (run against it's direction) to have the least contact, but that didn't work sufficiently well.

As a summoner, it's more or less the default way to stay away from the enemies. But good to know that there is a inimum distance within one is safe.

Kaom was just chaos (for me). I never found a safe place in the arena. I was just running around, trying to give no good target and now and then raise some minions and cast some spell - but there wasn't even time to aim properly. In my head it all merged to some chaotic impression.

I had this problem already with the merveil fight, and also piety and dominus. The latter two I was (I think) just very lucky and the flasks lasted long enough to actually win. Piety I didn't even really see, Dominus was similar.

If it depends on my recognition and character control skills, I'm lost in higher difficulties. I mean, this was normal difficulty, and Kaoms arena clearly asked too much of me, in regards of recognition and reaction :(

Gear, well, my character has some rares, which dropped plenty enough - got maxed resists but chaos, but I guess armor could be better. 700 life and 390 energy shield didn't look too bad.

I'm not sure what to think. I come from Diablo II, where almost everything was slower in normal difficulty than it is in PoE, particularly the bosses in Diablo were not moving this fast and erratically as most of them do in PoE.

My problem in D2 came in hell difficulty, when things became too fast, and the only class which I could win the game with, was a summoner.

That's why I took a summoner again, becuase I hoped I can get better control and more sfatey from behind the summons. But it doesn't work against PoE bosses, because they jump, run, whirwind, briefly they mvoe fast and a lot. Which is something I cannot deal with ...

Can I build a melee tank? I have doubts, but at the moment it seems to be the only option - if I can't avoid damage by staying far and behind my summons, then only a tank build will help. For everything that needs twitch reaction, I'm too slow.

Not sure what to do now. Guess I'll finish act 4, regardless how many character deaths it will take, but I'm not really looking forward to cruel or merciless difficulties right now.

Well, the bad news is that you're gonna want to have around 1.5k life/es by the end of act 4. So you're on the paper side. Armour and Evasion don't matter for now. In fact, they don't really matter unless you're going to extensively build on them. Otherwise you stick to Enduring Cry (Endurance Charges) with Arctic Armour or some other defensive auras/reservations. If you have a CWDT, link CWDT-AB-GMP-Increased Duration, but if you're not sure what's that you can skip it.

Act 4 bosses are all about soaking minor damage while avoiding the nastier hits.

For A4 Piety, you really need to stick very close and run away from the beam. Also, kill all the spawning things in the area or you're still gonna die. You ALWAYS grab a quicksilver flask if you feel you're not running fast enough here. The laser does 50 physical 50 lightning I believe, or 100 physical.

For Kaom, having a skeletotem (summoning skeletons - totem) will make it slightly easier to navigate. As a traditional summoner you either curse in your spare time or cast offensive spells during boss fights : there's not always enough corpses to make zombies and spectres. As a SRS summoner, there will be enough time inbetween the attacks to use SRS. Don't die to the Kaom spirits (just run). NEVER tank any of his slams.

As a summoner, you want at least one unique that will make your life easier. 1 Bones of Ullr will help with spectre or zombie count. For SRS summoner, gear with life and resistances will be sufficient (no uniques).

Ok, I'll try to change my equipment to get more life. Also I have 5 passive points left, and I think there are a few +life nodes in reach.

I have no idea about the abbreviations that you used. I just started this game 10 days ago.

Quicksilver flasks looked useless to me. 5 seconds duration? I really can't imagine to make use of this short timespan of enhanced speed. I haven't tried them though, just read the flask description and put them aside.

What's a skeletotem? Is it an item that I can find, a skill gem? Or a passive skill?

What's and SRS summoner? Whats CWDT?

I skipped spectres, becuase the gem said, I can hvae only one spektre, and that all minions get a 40% life penalty when I use this gem.

I also haven't found out how this "charges" thing works that is not and then mentioned.

CWDT - Cast When Damage Taken : Useful utility support. Can only support Active Gems of its level requirement and below. No limit on Support Gems.

Skeletotem - A summoner's best friend. Consists of (Summon Skeletons + Spell Totem) with 2 more supports (Usually Minion and Totem Resistances, Minion Life or Increased Duration). Auto summons skeletons slowly during its duration, which provides a lot of cannon fodder. Nicknamed the Skelebrotem, some other terms.

SRS - Summon Raging Spirits : Traditional summoners use Zombies/Spectres/Skeletons. Zombie Summoners use Zombies with Special Zombie Unique Weapon. Summon Raging Spirit summoners use Zombies as meat shields and Summon Raging Spirits as their main form of damage.

CWDT - AB - GMP - ID : Cast When Damage Taken - Arctic Breath - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Increased Duration. Arctic Breath leaves a trail of ice behind, which chills enemies (unless they cannot be chilled, this applies only to unique tier monsters). Increased Duration increases the duration of this ice. Greater Multiple Projectiles increases the amount of Arctic Breaths shot out per trigger, reducing its damage. The chill effect is not affected. Cast When Damage Taken causes Arctic Breath to be not castable manually (can only be triggered). The setup will auto-fire when you take damage, and its best to keep CWDT at lvl1 and Arctic Breath at the level where it will be below CWDT.

Charges : Read the wiki. For short : Endurances Charges improve tankiness, Frenzy Charges improve damage, Power Charges improve critical chance.

Quicksilver Flasks : Movement speed is important. When running around an area, you want to skip empty areas. When fighting mobs (and bosses), you want to avoid dangerous attacks. 5 seconds might not be a lot, but it's enough. By extension of this idea, high movement speed on boots is ideal. But prioritise health first (or energy shield later on), and resistances where lacking before movement speed.

Note you want up to 3k-4k minimum health by end of Merciless. Note you can not do Merciless Act 4 if you don't want to, but it would be good to at least get the skill point.

Thanks for the explanations. Particularly that 700 life is way under par for end of act 4. After spending my passive points, I could reach 900 life and 400 Es on my character, and it gave a bit more time to think and act. With another 50% more (life-)time, even I should be able to handle the fights.

The godless three were quite easy, compared to Kaom and Daresso. I guess mostly for me, because they did not move so erratically. I had no problem to outmaneuver them, and they fell rather quickly. Given the prior experiences in act 4, I expected much worse.

The final fight was the expected mess. But in hindsight I must admit, with more clever watching and moving, it could've been less messy, in the end I felt a bit of "in control", at least in respect to know what to do. Too often I kept standing in blood pools until I noticed them. I'd say, that was the number one problem there.

Good. Or bad. But done now. One time through the game, and I only missed one quest, the second Cptn. Fairgraves quest. Other than that I think I saw all regions and monsters.

My former character finished act 4 in normal, but I decided to make a new character after that, a pure caster, base class shadow. They way through the game was mixed, act 4 still a big leap in difficulty, compared to act 3, both in normal and cruel.

For some straneg reason, cruel was easier in parts than normal. I assume it depends on the skill development, that good scaling happend during the levels in cruel.

Strangeness includes that I made the fight against the oversoul in merciless without death of my character, but therefore had two kills by Piety in the crematorium ... maybe I was too tired or not focused anymore.

Now in act 3 merciless I meet more of the "WTF" moments, when single monsters are unexpected dangerous, while many are still pushovers; the dangerous ones often can kill my PC before I notice the problem :/

Most annoying fight so far in merciless was The Weaver. Merveil and Brutus both were easier, the oversoul was easier too. The Weaver really was another class. And I really dislike Cava, the Pain Artist in the corrupted sewers maps. Very dangerous, both in cruel and merciless. And there is ushc a Merveil lookalike in the neglected cellars, which can one-shot my PC. No idea how to kill that one, left it alone ...

It seems that things get dififcult now. The experience loss on death makes levelling slower, and while I could place the known boss fights so that my PC just had completed a level and there was little to lose, the unexpected random deaths on normal maps are taking their toll.

I'm currently trying to learn more about skill combinations, since compared to what I've seen in some videos, my PC does comparably little damage and also has litle defence, but the later I can blame on the lack of items, a problem that should ease over time.

And I feel a bit puzzled about the boatlod of skill gems that the game throws at me. It seems I must buy some more stash tabs ...

"

Ferrocet wrote:

Most annoying fight so far in merciless was The Weaver.

That's probably because the weaver stacks chaos damage on you. If you are having problems with the weaver you can bring the already mentioned skeleton totem to give it additional targets. That way it won't focus all its damage on you. You probably want to bring some instant heal flask or teleport back to town if you are taking too much damage.

You will have these WTF moments for some time in PoE until you know all the game mechanics, bosses, dangerous mobs and unhealthy debuff combinations on maps. Sometimes you die to random bullshit just because you didn't know about it. (I'm looking at you tormented spirit that makes mobs explode!)

Once you start playing maps (in the Eternal Laboratory) you should probably look up each new map and check out the boss fights first. Some of the bosses are really easy to deal with, others are much harder than you would expect for the level!

Here is a list of maps with video tutorials for each map boss sorted by tier:
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Map#Upgrades
Just click on the name of the map and watch the videos.

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If you feel like you are not doing enough damage that's normal. Most builds need some good gear and skill gems to really shine in combination with a well planned skill tree. You will get much more dps once you find/buy better gear and optimize your build.


Regarding the skill gems: Don't hoard too many. You can buy most skill gems from the traders in town that are useful for your character. If you find a superior gem with quality, that's worth keeping or you can use it for the gemcutter vendor recipe:
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Vendor_recipe#Quality_Items
Don't put use high quality gems (12%+) in the vendor recipe though! You can bring them to 20% and either use or sell them.

The exceptions to that rule are skill gems that you need for your current build, gems that are high level or drop-only gems:
http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/List_of_drop-only_gems

I always keep some skill gems for movement skills, Increased Duration, Fire Trap, Flame Totem and curses around as well. Stuff like Curse on Hit, Cast when Damage Taken and so on are worth keeping, too.

Don't worry, you'll figure most of this stuff out for yourself and the wiki is really helpful sometimes. PoE has lots of mechanics and it takes time and patience to learn them.

Good luck!

Some more tips on flasks:
- Add quality. Glassblowers are easy to find (or get from vendors) and increase the amounts healed or the duration of flasks.
- Roll mods. You should always have (at the very least) a flask to dispel freezing and bleeding. Having flasks that recharge on crits are also a good thing to have.
- Switch flasks around if needed: resist and granite flasks are more situational than health and quicksilver flasks, so you should make sure that you don't run around with flasks you don't need.