Thena Moga unbalanced with faster mod

Hi there.

I came across Thena Moga in a wild Zana mission, which was in an Arachnid Tomb area.

Bug report number 4.079.018.766.
Screenshot here, just the place she was killed, nothing really to see there:


First, I see a dark silhouette zoom across my screen, then my life pool is suddenly at about 20% hp. I used my flasks, but 1.5 secs later my char was dead. Nothing I could do about it.

Looking back, she probably first cast Vulnerability, then attacked with Viper Strike, then with either of her two attacks, since my hp was at 20%, so either would kill anyway.

My char has capped resistances, 5.7k hp, 9.5k armour, est. phys dmg reduction 44%, so I really wouldn't expect _any_ enemy besides bosses to be that deadly.

The Zana mission had increased attack+cast+move speed, and Thena Moga's attack speed is already 30% increased by default.
I asked another player to kill her for me, and afterwards, he agreed that she was so fast, she would have killed just about any life build the way things were.
Ofc, CI-builds are immune to her chaos damage.

Now, increased attack+cast+move speed mod for maps is extremely common, so it would be very likely to meet Thena in a map with that mod.

So, this is one for the balance team:

I postulate, that Thena Moga becomes absolutely deadly for life builds, when there is increased attack+cast+move speed mod on the map, which is very common in itself.

Of course, this goes especially for places with limited space, but that should go without saying.

I suspect that this deadly combo is very much due to Thena's default 30% increased attack speed.

So, you're saying this isn't a bug but rather feedback on how elements of the game interact.

Yet you used the bug command and filed a bug report.

Ah yes, I guess in the back of my mind, I wanted this report to have a reference number, which only bugs get - I didn't really consider whether or not this was a bug.
Submitting this past midnight could also have played a part -.-

Perhaps if there had been another command for this type of reports, maybe /feedback , /ticket or /support , then I would have had to think about which to pick.

Of course, it isn't a bug, as such. My mistake.

Anyway, the thread has now been moved here, where it belongs.

There's a lot of this in the game, combinations of random stuff turning otherwise harmless foes into dangerous killing machines.

Like putting "Beyond" onto those act 4 arena zones, with doors closed and swarms of monsters streaming in. Good luck fighting 3-4 beyond bosses at the same time while your screen freezes and vaal detonate dead goes on all around you. ;)

Figuring out the "things that will all of a sudden kill me" can also be seen as a good thing, it's part of the experience. ;)

How much block do you have ?
How much regeneration ?
How much chaos resistance ?
She deals chaos damage, physical damage reduction matters little in this situation imho.

By the way, there is a mod on flasks granting poison immunity .....

Anyway, never had that problem, and I met her quite a bunch of times, in rare maps, probably some with vuln, probably some other with onslaught, might be both ( life build, but it sh*t on high attack speed builds with Aegis usually ).

Dont know if Thena is properly balanced or no but:

"

SpectralDrake wrote:

First, I see a dark silhouette zoom across my screen,

That is the "tell" for Thena.

"

SpectralDrake wrote:

then my life pool is suddenly at about 20% hp. I used my flasks, but 1.5 secs later my char was dead. Nothing I could do about it.

If you spam instant flask/s you hp wont stay at 20%.
Dont know about your evasion and chaos resist as you did not disclose it but: If you got no evasion and -60% chaos resist (double dips on chaos part) and are under vuln curse (sort of double dips) you will take a lot more damage if you just let her hit you.

"

SpectralDrake wrote:

My char has capped resistances, 5.7k hp, 9.5k armour, est. phys dmg reduction 44%, so I really wouldn't expect _any_ enemy besides bosses to be that deadly.

Some exiles are more dangerous to some builds than most bosses.

"

SpectralDrake wrote:

she would have killed just about any life build the way things were.

"

SpectralDrake wrote:

I postulate, that Thena Moga becomes absolutely deadly for life builds, when there is increased attack+cast+move speed mod on the map, which is very common in itself.

Life builds can have chaos resist, evasion, block, dodge, endurance charges, minions, ...
Note that I am not saying life builds are competitive or better. But your claims do not properly correspond with the truth.

"

Fruz wrote:

She deals chaos damage, physical damage reduction matters little in this situation imho.

Most of the initial hit is phys: http://poedb.tw/us/mon.php?n=Thena+Moga

This information seem very outdated :

"

Gain 10% of Physical Damage as Extra Chaos Damage
Always Poison on Hit
Base duration is -0.03 seconds

dismissed.


I didn't say that she didn't deal physical damage.
Just that it's likely not what did hurt in this case.

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Fruz wrote:

This information seem very outdated :

Care to explain why you believe this to be "outdated"?
Monster skills are often unequal to player skills with the same name.

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Fruz wrote:

I didn't say that she didn't deal physical damage.
Just that it's likely not what did hurt in this case.

If ~90% of the initial hit is phys then most of the poison damage scales off that.

I already bolded the "why".
And what could hurt a char with 10k armour (so prolly 20k with granite) is the poison, that armour wont reduce and that stacks and double dips.

"

Fruz wrote:

How much block do you have ?

Don't know, it doesn't say on char tabs. Probably default.

I followed Atmotion's 'Xogama' Ngamahu Cyclone build, tho I followed the discussion on it and went with a slightly different tree.

"

How much regeneration ?

393.2 life/s

Btw, my flasks are not instant.
I thought instant gave too little health, and therefore weren't necessary, until now :(

I do have Fortify support on my Cyclone skill, so that's almost permanent.
But, she may have hit me when it was timed-out.

I did a small calculation, let's say she did 80% damage of my 5.7k hp, that's 4560 damage.

Viper Strike converts 25% of phys dmg to chaos dmg, and I had 75% res, so only took 25% of that dmg. That's 6.25%, so her original hit was 4560/(0.75+0.0625) = 5612 dmg before conversion. That's pretty much a oneshot for many builds.

Anyway, the first Poison stack would be doing 8% of 4560 = 364.8 dmg/s, almost negating my regen entirely. If she cast Vulnerability first (I did not notice, my attention was on what was zooming around, and then my life pool), it was doing 364.8 * 1.33 = 485 dmg/s.

Or does chaos res apply to that, so it's only doing 25% of it?

I did for a split second wonder why it looked like I suddenly had a lot less regen after that first hit.

"

How much chaos resistance ?

Like I wrote, capped, 75%.

"

By the way, there is a mod on flasks granting poison immunity .....

Yes, I do have one flask with poison mod equipped, but I'm quite sure I didn't hit that one at the time.
I think I also met her before, without Onslaught or similar mod, and killed her without (much) problem.

But with Onslaught or similar, she is just too deadly for too many builds.

"

Anyway, never had that problem, and I met her quite a bunch of times, in rare maps, probably some with vuln, probably some other with onslaught, might be both ( life build, but it sh*t on high attack speed builds with Aegis usually ).

Yes, I suppose Aegis/block builds would handle Thena fairly well, unless you're unlucky and she attacks twice in quick succession, and you don't block twice in a row. But we don't all play block builds, and there's also a very limited amount of Aegis shields.