Izaro - Is he overtuned?

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

I think I only managed to half-read the conduit descriptions, I saw they give damage etc to Izaro, but because they were activatable objects as opposed to enemies, I assumed they gave damage to him if I activated them. Because I'd heard this was a multi-phase fight with mechanics that pass on, I clicked on two, thinking it must be some kind of risk/reward thing where you give yourself an optional challenge in this phase to help with the next phase. Turns out I had that all wrong of course, and yeah, maybe it was a silly thought, but hey, no time to stop and think.

That was exactly what I thought too. I even had the benefit of minions surviving for 5 seconds to allow me to fully read the statues.

Izaro is totaly fine, even on Merciless difficulty.

I killed him today with a level 75 Ranger [Raider] with Caustic Arrow (Level 17 CA in a 5l blue +1 Bow!)
First i tried to do him while staying ranged --> get rekt hard.

Then i tried going in melee range with my CA guy and stayed at melee range all the time. I got:

- 17k Evasion
- 56% chance to dodge attacks (66% with Quartz flask)

I also used a Stipnite flask on top of it to keep up blind all the time during the fight. Also used Ice Shot - Curse on Hit - Temp Chains constantly on top of that.

Result:
Izaro is unable to hit you at all :-D. If a hit goes through you simply use a life flask to be full HP again before the next hit comes in - he constantly spawns mobs to refill your flasks. The fight took a while due to low CA DPS at this level but it was very easy.


If you got high DPS you simply can burst him down from range without any trouble. If you can't do that you have to work out a clever solution (like i did) or wait until you have enough DPS to do the fight quickly.
Sure you always can play very skillfull and dodge every one of his attacks while staying ranged (which might be difficult because of constant lag and because you are no robot with 100% accuracy)

Judging by the wide variety of experiences, I'd say Izaro's problem is likely to be with the random elements to his fight: certain mods can be murder if he takes them with him (and keeping him from doing so in my experience can be difficult due to poor feedback or simple bugs).

Another good point is the trap rooms. Get the lava room and your only concern is Izario. Get the spike and dart room and you have this tiny space to safely maneuver.

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I_NO wrote:

it's bad enough the lab takes like a billion years to traverse.

But, but, but, you have done ~40 runs according to your other thread. You must be time traveler, only way.

I'm glad to see you have overcome the challenges. In only a couple days to boot. I am seeing other people that were struggling finally overcoming the challenge as well. To me this seems like Izaro is in a pretty good spot. A nice sweet spot between challenging but not impossible.

He feels overtuned on normal and maybe cruel.

Merc he can stay where he is.

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Opinionated wrote:

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I_NO wrote:

it's bad enough the lab takes like a billion years to traverse.

But, but, but, you have done ~40 runs according to your other thread. You must be time traveler, only way.

I'm glad to see you have overcome the challenges. In only a couple days to boot. I am seeing other people that were struggling finally overcoming the challenge as well. To me this seems like Izaro is in a pretty good spot. A nice sweet spot between challenging but not impossible.

Yeah I did him a lot in merc :P My build absoutely destroys him in a heartbeat. I had a lot of issues with him in normal since my build was ramping up still.

No issues with cruel well one death but that's it.

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ACGIFT wrote:

He suffers from a major problem that extends to most of the newer content in this game: doing jack-all to explain precisely what you're supposed to do. Sadly, a lot of this game relies on trial-and-error learning, which wouldn't be so bad if the player wasn't heavily punished (EXP loss, having to re-run the labyrinth, etc.) at the same time for not psychically knowing what to do.

As far as his actual tuning... He's likely a little overtuned. I can't quite say for certain, as I'd need the fight to actually not drop my framerate too much (in spite of having a gaming PC better than probably 80-90% playing) to be able to reliably tell what's going on.

That was the issue that I had as well. Wasn't reallly what he was doing, but the performance of the fight. Everytime those skeleton adds would come onto the screen I would lag bad. I used my standard HC character to "Test" the waters, and he nearly died.

I won't even try him on merc because it's just too risky.

I'm up to lvl 42. I still don't feel ready. I went in at level 38 or so IIRC and it was a sad, pathetic joke. First run I found argus and died before I could even grasp what argus was. Second run I skipped the death puppy and went to Izazo and lo' did I try to kite and die miserably. Given that I have limited time, and I know my build is at least conceptually solid, I decided to respect my time and push on through Malachai. Who I wrecked. More casually than I ever had before. I'm up to 43 and I *still* don't feel like going back in there is a good use of my time. I'll come back at 50 I think.

So, yes... Malachai seems way over tuned from my perspective.

Quibble on my part: This content is not "optional" IMHO. This content is the entire point of this expansion. It's not like Perandus adds new zones or anything like that.

Oh shush! I was complaining because I kept getting dced in the middle of the fight :_;

imho yes he is overtuned, but NOT BY MUCH.

I feel its a slight bit of over damage, but not by much. It is a very good mechanical fight, as Char keeps saying its not like Mal in the craziness.

That being said, the damage of Mal is also a bit lower, I would say Izzy isn't near the level of release-Mal, but he is definitely higher than current-Mal.

Also I love calling him Izzy, everyone should do so. D2 lovers unite!



Was doing the lab from about level 33-38, normal this is, and found that by the end, his damage was 'survivable' (with 0 buffs from random stuffs) at about 1.2k hp (with scary almost die but no 'def dead' unless mess up his buffs). I feel this needs to be toned down slightly to 1-1.1k hp. This is max res btw. Not much, it is very good where it is because you literally can keep running and he will just not hit you.

Cruel is similar, not sure of the hp threshold for this one, but I felt it was similarily very good mechanically, but was just that tiny bit of too much damage.

Overall I feel this is like how we used to think of Vaal (who we now think is simplistic), in that its a mechanical understandable fight, with acceptable movement and combat effects.



Also nothing is more fun than using the stage 3 traps against Izzy, pinning him with those spikes and just laughing as he stands there. Revenge!