Undying Alchemist and Undying Incinerator

I recently spoke to a developer about this in-game (I will not mention his name for his sake), however I feel I should make a thread about it.

The majority of the monsters in this game are fine. I have no problem with them. Some are harder than others, some have funky or difficult mechanics, it's great.

However, there are a few outliers. Some are just really hard (piercing 3 way cobras in act 3) or some seem to do more damage than they should (explosive arrows in act 2 north of crossroads). I'm willing to accept these are just difficult mobs; they may be a bit stronger than most, but that's fine. However; personally, I feel two monsters are just broken.

These mobs are the Undying Alchemist (Throws Poison Bombs) and Undying Incinerator (Throws Fire Bombs).

Now, the Undying Alchemist is one thing. It throws chaos bombs, and I don't have that good of chaos resist (or, none at all, rather). If I get hit by one of these things, I do expect it to hurt. The problem with these guys lies in the fact that their chaos damage seems to be absurdly ramped compared to anything else. Viper Strikes, ancient constructs, and even cobras do nowhere near as much damage. Either the explosion or the degen will kill you in an instant, regardless of your HP pool. Regardless, like I said, I can blame this on my own lack of chaos resistance; it does make sense, though I do think they are slightly stronger than other chaos mobs and are a bit of an outlier in that respect.

However... the Undying Incinerator is a completely different story. If this monster shows up in a map (or if I'm going through where they actually spawn) the situation completely changes. I have to either leave and not come back, or face deaths risking trying to kill them. I have over-maxed fire resistance (77%) and use Enfeeble, but these things still do fire bombs for all of my health (and energy shield) in an instant (over 2000 damage). The game actually does become annoying because, while end-game maps are fun, if these things decide to show up it's basically a failed (or extremely annoying) run. Any other fire damage (firestorm, golem, etc) is highly mitigated and manageable, but for some reason these things just DECIMATE anything they hit.

This becomes a bigger problem for me because I play a summoner. Most characters can simply nuke them from afar and kill them BEFORE they do this nasty attack, or get in their face/behind them and kill them. As described by the dev, they are a "glass cannon monster." If the strategy of "kill them before they one shot you regardless of your resistance" works, that's great, but for me personally, it does not. While my zombies and skeletons wail on monsters nearby, work their way to them, or attempt to kill it... it will throw a fire bomb. Despite having zombies with 13,000 health and skeletons with around 5,000, they will all die in a single fire bomb. If I am lucky, a couple will be outside of the blast radius, however, in an instant, ALL of my minions are dead.

Now, I understand AoEs are a problem for pets (and spell damage too sometimes) so I run Purity. Purity works great, and they can survive most things just fine, or long enough to kill the monster or get out of the way (golems). However, in this specific scenario (this ONE mob type) it will completely one shot all of my pets, with one fire bomb. Alchemists do it too, but the fact that they are chaos makes more sense at the very least. Both incinerators AND alchemists become an even larger problem when you get a map that is "Monsters fire xadditional projectiles." Normally, I wouldn't care and do fine, but every time I run this map mod, I run the chance of getting incinerators or alchemists. If ONE fire bomb kills me and my pets, a spread of multiple is absolutely ridiculous. If it's outside I might actually have a chance with or without the additional projectiles, but indoors... good luck. Minions die before they can get anywhere close (trying to kill mobs in skinny passages to reach him and/or stuck in doorways). I can try to summon skeletons on him, and that's usually the best strat, but eventually one fire bomb will kill me and/or all my minions. You could make the argument of "well then summoners just aren't good against this type of mob" but I shouldn't have to change my entire playstyle or skills because one random mob type decided to show up. I even maxed out fire resistance to attempt to handle it and it does me no good at all.

Now, don't get me wrong. This isn't complaining about my minion's lack of survivability, or the difficulty of the game. The negative feedback goes directly at the Undying Incinerator (and Alchemist). I strongly believe these monster(s) to be far too strong, much stronger than they should be. Something is wrong when, even though you max out 77% fire resistance (the IDEAL counter to this monster type) it will still kill you in one hit. It stands out from every other mob to an extreme, in its own native area and in end-game maps.

Thanks for reading.