Tone down merciless Argus

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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Raudram wrote:

Considering that I have picked every single HP node I possibly can (over +100% increased HP) and have HP on all pieces of gear I possibly can, as well as using jewels with HP, four endurance charges, arctic armor and two-use basalt flask

in fairness that sounds pretty glass. Not saying its unusual to have a character with those defenses in act3 merciless, been there myself many times. But you have to expect a character like that to face severe challenges. Unless by over 100% hp you mean about 220%, Im going on the presumption here were talking more like 120%

What I meant is over 100% additional HP from nodes (around 18-20 HP nodes) plus a couple of jewels, pretty much everything I can get without burning a dozen of points moving to another class cluster, every node I can possibly get, I did.

post the build tree so we all can see it.

there are different definitions of what is 'reasonable to get' and what % of nodes should be spent on defence/offence purposes. some have very damage-biased ratio there

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Starxsword wrote:

Argus is pretty tough yeah. He is far tougher than labyrinth's zone level of 68.

I had 3.4k HP 1.3k ES with Blasphemy - Enfeeble and Arctic Armor with Granite flask up and died pretty quickly. It was pretty funny, since I didn't expect such high damage and saw my life went down in rapid succession with not enough time to back off. I think it took him about 1 to 2 seconds to kill me.

I learned the hard way that I should skip merciless Argus until higher level. I am now running a new character since the other one died.

The key to argus is his enrage. While enraged he seems to always attack the closest target to him... but he is deadly. While not enraged he is pretty harmless.

Small hint... he might be immune to chill, but not to slows. Temp Chains + Hinder or Maim make him slow enough to outrun him just with the boost from boots. He is mostly annoying to kill since he has such a high HP pool and he isn't really meant to be killed on first entry, he is mainly part of the Lab farming.

On any Evasion/Acro char he is really harmless. I'm not entirely sure but during enrage his accuracy seems to go down, at least he didn't really hit my ranger when I did normal lab today and I could just stand there attacking him. Outside of the enrage his damage is fairly managable and during the enrage he barely managed to hit me. Which to be fair would make sense. He also often attack the Siege Ballistas during enrage.

I can actually live with Frost and Chill immunity on bosses, since that just makes them too easy and I kinda understand the reasoning for Shock Immunity even though I don't really agree, however there is never a good reason to allow Poison and Bleed on a boss but not Ignite. Ignite is just a way to deliver damage and honestly it can be a whole build centered around it. You cannot center a build around shock and frost with some funny exceptions that can be bypassed easily (a char with Southbound can still easily kill non-frozen bosses). Those chars will still have damage, which they need to shock and freeze in the first place, since the duration is based on damage. For Ignite this is a bit different, your base damage can be fairly low despite having a really huge burn on the enemy.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

honestly if you are talking about a melee character it sounds like you have unwavering and/or iron reflexes. Generally speaking those nodes will get you killed in exactly the manner you are describing by harsh, relentless physical attack mobs like argus, jungle weaver, colonnade kole, general large magic skele mobs of various sorts in high maps etc etc. Theres obviously builds where its a thing, an Aegis max block armour tank maybe takes both those nodes because they make sense for that niche build area.

not trying nitpick that excellent post you wrote (and I mean it), but Id say weaver should be fine with IR+US. that fight is so much harder for an evasion toon, since not only is weavers EK a phys spell, but those flickering spiders will reset your evasion 'entropy' counter all the time, resulting in a lot of hits that do get to you. whereas the armour toon doesnt have a problem with that trash. you get max EC's via enduring cry easily and just go to work, plus youre always at max leech.

(of course in todays game state you can just rely on your dps provided you dont get oneshot)

another fight that resets the entropy counter on trash is death and taxes animated weapons. an evasion toon actually has some problems against those weapons chucking at you, believe it or not (lol)

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You either want block or evasion as a melee, maybe both..

imo key point here. blind is amazing, and block is also amazing. blind is nearly free nowadays though (stibnite is crazy), while block isn't (and rumis is fairly expensive).

there's a reason people played cyclone all the time for melee. immunity to stun without US is actually quite nice. plus it provided a sort of a 'manual dodge'

I fought Argus quite a lot with ranged or totem characters, stibnite flask etc..., and thought "this is super easy, what is everyone talking about in this thread?" Sure he hits hard, but if you do ever get hit by him, just pot up before his next hit. He's easy to kite, easy to evade, and easy to distract. No probs.

Then I tried it with a melee/life/armour character yesterday, expecting it to be easy still. I was totally wrong. The thing hit me for half my health, and I thought, "That's OK, i got this, just pot up and"... *wham* he hits again already. Down to low life know and running around like a idiot wondering why I risked my HC char on testing out this guy.

I then tried chucking down an Ancestral protector to whittle him down, but it basically just died before even getting a hit in. So I ran away. :)

Sure, my toon wasn't super high-level, but it seems like Argus hits harder and faster with his basic attacks than pretty much anything else in the main game content. I think that probably the next strongest enemy below Merciless Argus would be Cruel Argus.

I think that instead of a gear-check, he is basically a strategy-check. You have to put something in your build for when you can't just facetank.

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dudiobugtron wrote:

I fought Argus quite a lot with ranged or totem characters, stibnite flask etc..., and thought "this is super easy, what is everyone talking about in this thread?" Sure he hits hard, but if you do ever get hit by him, just pot up before his next hit. He's easy to kite, easy to evade, and easy to distract. No probs.

Then I tried it with a melee/life/armour character yesterday, expecting it to be easy still. I was totally wrong. The thing hit me for half my health, and I thought, "That's OK, i got this, just pot up and"... *wham* he hits again already. Down to low life know and running around like a idiot wondering why I risked my HC char on testing out this guy.

I then tried chucking down an Ancestral protector to whittle him down, but it basically just died before even getting a hit in. So I ran away. :)

Sure, my toon wasn't super high-level, but it seems like Argus hits harder and faster with his basic attacks than pretty much anything else in the main game content. I think that probably the next strongest enemy below Merciless Argus would be Cruel Argus.

I think that instead of a gear-check, he is basically a strategy-check. You have to put something in your build for when you can't just facetank.

the key, like Emphasy mentioned, is his enrage.

Tone down JUST argus? Why just argus? The problem in general damage that monsters and bosses (all) do, not just argus.