Make Lab level = exile level

 After listening to the Path of Exile Atlas: The Lioneye's Watch Podcast #08 - Changes, Build of the Week & Leveling! about the labyrinth (among other leveling concerns) is that of having the lab level = the level our exile is at. That way we can do lab runs at anytime we complete the trials and not have to wait until we are over-leveled to the point that we are pretty sure we can defeat Izaro 3 times. GGG would need to set minimum levels to unlock the lab so in Standard league where we don't need to repeat trials we can't run the lab with a new build at level 1. Right now GGG sets the 3 labs (Normal, Cruel, Merciless) at a fixed level and thus GGG makes Izaro extra hard to the point that most players will wait until approx. 10 levels above the lab level before taking on Izaro. By GGG making Izaro extra hard to defeat it just delays our doing that lab run until we are at a higher level to make that Izaro boss fight easier/easy to win. It makes no sense for GGG to fix the lab's level of difficulty and it should be the same as our exile's level. That way Izaro can be re-balanced to be a tough fight no matter what level our exile is at and over-leveling to face roll him is eliminated.

Izaro's damage output is broken and unpredictable. scratch now. one-shot 5 seconds later. with the same attack.
in addition, first two encounters can be randomized to anything from extremely easy to ridiculously hard, and the third one is the first two + traps. random traps.
and the arena with the Goddess' attacks and minions (and traps) is a clusterfuck...

that's why I really don't think matching him to the character level, is a good idea at all. he is not a boss you'd want to align to character level, unless you want to completely discourage players from fighting him.

also, level is only a small part of the equation. for example, many people can't do Uber Labyrinth even at level 90+, because they lack the gear.
over-leveling alone isn't enough.

TL;DR - imagine a level 90 Izaro. with speed and damage buffs, and sawblade traps all over the place.
I rest my case.

Well if he would match the level all 3 Izaros would basically be the same. So you would defeat merc Izaro at lvl70 3 times. However it would also mean that you cannot wait too long to defeat him, because once you are lvl85 or even 90 he would be a nightmare.

Merc Izaro right now is fairly easy. If you do him at the level of the labyrinth he is likely the most easiest of the 3 regular ones. So setting all 3 to his level wouldn't actually do much. The only ones that are too hard are the cruel and for some builds the normal one (mostly because at lvl35 or so your build might still lack some things, you only get the latest supports with 38).

Cruel is kinda hard, whenever I let cruel open because I don't really need the 4th point I notice that when I do cruel and merc right after each other that there isn't much of a difference.

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johnKeys wrote:

Izaro's damage output is broken and unpredictable. scratch now. one-shot 5 seconds later. with the same attack.
in addition, first two encounters can be randomized to anything from extremely easy to ridiculously hard, and the third one is the first two + traps. random traps.
and the arena with the Goddess' attacks and minions (and traps) is a clusterfuck...

that's why I really don't think matching him to the character level, is a good idea at all. he is not a boss you'd want to align to character level, unless you want to completely discourage players from fighting him.

also, level is only a small part of the equation. for example, many people can't do Uber Labyrinth even at level 90+, because they lack the gear.
over-leveling alone isn't enough.

Well what makes his damage so unpredictable like you describe is Crits... Which is not just an issue with Izaro alone but just about any boss in this game you will run into this issue. For example yesterday i was doing Minotaur And was able to pretty much handle everything he threw at me including his burrowing attack. I got hit with it multiple times testing it damage values. And then out of nowhere one got lucky and rolled and crit a BOOM! One shot for 11K instantly. After this i got hit by this same attack a few more times on purpose and nothing.. Would barely hit me for half my ES.

Point is the fact that boss's have this increased critical strike chance as well as critical strike multiplier causes these issues. It makes it almost impossible to know whether or not you can take the hit or not.. Sometimes you can but if it happens to roll a crit its a one shot no matter what. This makes for just about any boss have the ability to have very inconsistent damage. Ive run into this many times on many different boss's and it should be more clearcut. A chance for any attack from a boss to one shot you just because its a boss and it being so inconsistent to the point you can do a boss litteraly dozens of times and never have a problem when out of nowhere get one shot because it got a lucky crit is kinda off putting. Well telegraphed attacks should hit hard and always hit hard but at the same time they shouldnt hit hard only when they roll a crit either. Same goes for their normal attacks when you can eat 100s of them no problem but if one rolls a lucky crit its game over from an attack that typically does very little.

Either way this isn't just a problem with the Lab this is a recurring problem with almost all boss's in the game. This is a problem with the increased crit mechanic with all boss's in the game leading to very inconsistant damage output. Its just more noticeable in the lab because of the mechanics in the first two phases being able to buff Izaro's damage on top of the increased crit chance and multi. This is also a huge factor in why so many builds feel almost required to run Enfeeble in some form on thier builds and even that doesn't always work.. Again its just lessens the occurrence. But it still happens even with Enfeeble. Same reason evasion feels so terrible because its only a chance at mitigation that when it works its great but when it fails it does literally nothing. Those however are a different discussion.

well put, Demonoz.

and the real kicker is, monsters and bosses scale (greatly) with level, while player-characters ... not necessarily.
so all that over-9000 crit multiplier which for some reason didn't one-shot your character at level X, surely will at level X+1 because X+1Izaro just went fkn Super-Saiyan, while your character grabbed one ultra-powerful +10 Dex node and is wearing the same stuff...

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johnKeys wrote:

Izaro's damage output is broken and unpredictable. scratch now. one-shot 5 seconds later. with the same attack.
in addition, first two encounters can be randomized to anything from extremely easy to ridiculously hard, and the third one is the first two + traps. random traps.
and the arena with the Goddess' attacks and minions (and traps) is a clusterfuck...

that's why I really don't think matching him to the character level, is a good idea at all. he is not a boss you'd want to align to character level, unless you want to completely discourage players from fighting him.

Right now GGG discourages us from taking on Izaro at the same level he is (33, 55, 68) and thus we have to wait until over-leveled sufficiently that we feel we can comfortably defeat him. Linking lab level to exile level means Izaro is rebalanaced to be damage tuned better. Currently most are getting one-shotted by 3rd Izaro battle if trying to take him on at 33, 55, or 68 exile level. So if Izaro is always same level as exile and then nerfed down to match content difficulty appropriate for that level and made so there isn't any RNG wild swings from easy to uber hard then I don't see why that would discourage players.

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Arrowneous wrote:

Right now GGG discourages us from taking on Izaro at the same level he is (33, 55, 68) and thus we have to wait until over-leveled sufficiently that we feel we can comfortably defeat him.

Speak for yourself. I can comfortably defeat him on those levels.

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Arrowneous wrote:

Currently most are getting one-shotted by 3rd Izaro battle if trying to take him on at 33, 55, or 68 exile level.

Source?

Edit:
Also, right now if you have trouble taking down Izaro (lvl 55) at level 55, you will have the same problem taking down Izaro (lvl 51) at level 51.

Who here remembers Final Fantasy 8, the JRPG where character level and XP were irrelevant, power was entirely invested in gear and spells, and your character was more powerful if you ran from every non-boss fight than if you gained levels?

I mean, there's a decent number of people annoyed that traps give zero fucks about what level you are... does Izaro really need the same treatment?

Really, more than anything else, this suggestion sounds like someone shooting themselves in the foot. "Hey GGG, right now I over-level for Lab because Izaro is too hard. Please remove my ability to do this."