VAAL Fight OP for Solo Evasion

Hate to tell the OP but someone beat this boss with a level 1 character.

I kinda agree with OP.

it is possible to fight him as evasion, but only with enfeeble and extreme high life.

Evasion though is useless in this fight.

Reason:

Chaos Adds cannot be evaded (because spells)
Smash cannot be evaded (because spell)
Rocks cannot be evaded (because spell)

It's true you can dodge everything. But desync and you are gone (at least for the smash).

And it happens often.

Vaal lifts his arm.
I back off.
Still getting hit even though I'm far away from him because of desync. Life drops to almost 0, my heart skipps a beat.


Vaal is the single most terrifying enemy in the game, especially for melee.

I have no problem with him being powerful and epic. But his smash should be evadeable as long as there is desync issues. Or give evasion some other bonus over vaal, because evasion being 100% useless against him is kinda bad design.

"

KenshiD wrote:

Vaal lifts his arm.
I back off.

As i already said back off earlier if thats too late. The duration of Vaals spells is the same, know how often you can attack without risk and get out earlier. May not be an efficient way but its safe and works. Even with desync. And without high life and enfeeble / tc / whatever.

Sry, but bad play doesn't make a boss OP.

"

KenshiD wrote:

I kinda agree with OP.

it is possible to fight him as evasion, but only with enfeeble and extreme high life.

Evasion though is useless in this fight.

Reason:

Chaos Adds cannot be evaded (because spells)
Smash cannot be evaded (because spell)
Rocks cannot be evaded (because spell)

It's true you can dodge everything. But desync and you are gone (at least for the smash).

Well the projectiles from the constructs are attacks and a character with Arrow-Dodging is literally never hit by them. I'm not sure why they changed them from Attack to Spell back to Attack.

The Rocks are easy to evade by standing directly next to him. Even as a ranged char I normally stay close to Vaal, because the fight is so much easier, because the only thing that is troublesome are the rocks without armor, the Smash and the Lightning are easy to dodge and the cold-spill does not deal much damage.

And I never had any issues with Desync in this fight, propably because Vaal doesn't really move.

"

KenshiD wrote:

Evasion though is useless in this fight.

Reason:

Chaos Adds cannot be evaded (because spells)
Smash cannot be evaded (because spell)
Rocks cannot be evaded (because spell)

You forgot:
Laser cannot be evaded (because spell)

"

KenshiD wrote:

I have no problem with him being powerful and epic. But his smash should be evadeable as long as there is desync issues. Or give evasion some other bonus over vaal, because evasion being 100% useless against him is kinda bad design.

The only real defenses an evasion character has is Evasion, Elemental Resists, and LoH/LL.

A Ranger is in a beautiful position on the tree to get resist and evasion nodes, not to mention the Arrow Dodging Keystone. If done defensively, by level 30 you should have about 60-70% Evasion, Maxed Elemental Resists, and Arrow Dodging. Arrows cannot touch you without projectile weakness curse. Melee attackers get in some good hits and this is effectively countered by Reflected damage and LoH from your gear. Most spell damage is elemental up through 3/4 of Act 2, and that is countered by resists.

Things that hurt are Physical/Chaos SPELL damage, and that is literally the entire Vaal fight. It is like it was designed to do nothing but take out Evasion. The only hope is to get the Phase Acrobatics Keystone, but it is far enough out of the way that you sacrifice too much in life, elemental resists, or evasion to go for it at that stage, and it only offers a 20% chance not to die.

"

Emphasy wrote:

Well the projectiles from the constructs are attacks and a character with Arrow-Dodging is literally never hit by them. I'm not sure why they changed them from Attack to Spell back to Attack.

This isn't true, they are Spell Damage and cannot be evaded.

Evasion not the problem here.

The problem is getting hit by the slow fucking 1-shot hammer. You see the arms swap, pay attention and avoid the hammer slammer. Congrats, you just beat Vaal.

That said, I lost my 49 acrobatics ranger to a Vaal hammer 1-shot last week. He targeted my totem for slam which I was standing behind a bit and I got caught in the cone. Shit happens, I shouldn't have been standing there.

"

Emphasy wrote:

Well the projectiles from the constructs are attacks and a character with Arrow-Dodging is literally never hit by them. I'm not sure why they changed them from Attack to Spell back to Attack.

Not true, I have Arrow Dodging and they are not projectiles but Spells.
They can only be evaded with Phasedodging.

"

The Rocks are easy to evade by standing directly next to him. Even as a ranged char I normally stay close to Vaal, because the fight is so much easier, because the only thing that is troublesome are the rocks without armor, the Smash and the Lightning are easy to dodge and the cold-spill does not deal much damage.

And I never had any issues with Desync in this fight, propably because Vaal doesn't really move.

Rock are not that big a deal, especially not for melee.

But the smash desyncs quite often. I haven't died to his desync smash but I sure was close many many times.

"

CyberDweller wrote:

You forgot:
Laser cannot be evaded (because spell)

But they are easy to avoid. No need for evasion to work on that one.

I also don't think Normal Vaal is a big problem. He becomes a problem in Cruel and Merciless. Because in normal you can still get some armor to fight him, or just 800 life.
But in Cruel or Merciless is my build kinda set in stone and if evasion was my choice there is no going back.

If you think reg vaal is rough on a melee based character, then Brutus on Cruel will be a wake-up call.

I've lost melee chars to Cruel Brutus, that face tanked normal Vaal's hammer.

anuther faceroller hit a obstakle, game must be broke, ool.