Act 10 Kitava fight is absolutely stupid

"

Drakaris wrote:

How do GGG expect new players to deal with this is beyond me. You're just pandering to the "elite" no life streamers and they are not your main audience, just sayin'.

This sentence summed act 10 Kitava fight perfectly.

Every now and then you see comments like: "no problem with 234523534k dps, 213535k HP, capped resists, don't nerf"

Surprise, some of us have bad luck with gear, don't like copying other people's builds, and don't have reflexes of a 16 year old. (some even can't play certain builds because they cause lag, been there before, friend crashed my game by spamming some flashy attack, luckily after getting new PC that is not a problem anymore)

I've been playing since beta, and constantly see GGG catering to no lifers, while doing almost nothing for casual players who like poe, but also have life and like to play other games.

Kitava's fight is dumb and irritating. GGG totally fucked it up. I just got kicked by the server fourth time and now I have to repeat canals and feeding trough. Maybe GGG should consider placing fucking waypoint before final boss.

This doesn't sound too promising. I just cleared act 5 kitava and by googling arrived at this thread. First time going through all the new acts that were introduced last year.

I honestly dont like the final encounter of act 5 (or act 5 in general). First of all he is introduced hastily throughout the act. Not a single mention of Kitava during acts 1 to 4 and then suddenly he is the big bad guy in Wraeclast. By killing the beast, you have a certain god Innocence manifesting itself into Avarius, leader of the Oriathian templars. By killing Innocence there is then a vacuum created which Kitava wants to fill in. There is no buildup as was the case with Piety who's being introduced in act 1 and 2 before you finally meet her in act 3. I am not feeling it with Kitava.

Secondly Kitava is just one big giant statue which doesn't manouver at all. It is so not Path of Exile and seems to be copy pasted straight from Diablo 3 or other console games.

And finally I dislike the fight alltogether. Too many telegraphed attacks that do too much damage. I didn't have any fun fighting Kitava. Brutus, Merveil, Fidelitas, Vaal Oversoul, Piety, Dominus, Kaom and Daresso are all more interesting.

I will reserve my final judgement until I finished all the acts. But I hope it is not a case where 6 acts were churned out too quickly and the quality of them drops as you go on.

On a positive note I really like DELVE.

All I can say about what I consider the single most poorly designed boss battle I've ever seen in any game is this.

Whoever thought THAT was fair, balanced or fun should never be allowed to touch another game period.

3.7K HP between 2500 life and 1200 energy shield, capped fire resist, my chaos resist I manged to get into the positive by respeccing the build (or as some would say "optimizing") level 69, only 4 slot gear (I'm not a farmer or a trader, and this should NOT be needed, contrary to the git gud opinions)

And with all that, hahahaha yeah, it's so much fun walking into the heart room, and watching the mobs kill you in under 5 seconds as a witch whose primary attack is a channel. Through chaos golem damage resist, and arctic armor DR as well which pretty much proved meaningless, as does ES when there's not a single moment you won't be taking damage in that tiny ass arena.

That's before we talk about world on fire eating through my max fire resist AND abberoths 100% burning ground reduction, AND a life flask giving 3763 over 7 seconds!

IN WHAT. G.D. UNIVERSE IS THIS BALANCED!

I guess my build only having 640 armor and a 10% DR just didn't cut it? Or maybe it was the fact all the mages cast chaos damage which is virtually impossible to gear against? Maybe I just [dripping sarcasm] needed to "optimize" my build more?

Seriously anyone who defends his fight as balanced has no ****ing clue what you're talking about. The overtune of Kitava and his mobs compared to just outside the arena is beyond OP and stupid.

Frost bomb on echo and cascade, ice spear with curse on hit to weaken further, cold snap to slow, incinerate and arc paired with cast while channel. It can kill any pack in not even 5 seconds. Hell frost bomb alone usually does it as the damage is past 1500.

My previous deaths on bosses? The only one who killed me more then 3 times was innocence and the puppet mistress. Mainly cause i suck at bullet hell dodging, and low chaos resist on the latter. Not even aberroth managed it except after he died and a lucky fireball got me.


But get more DPS you say? As others have pointed out, any DPS past what I have is overkill. I shouldn't need to "optimize" further at this point when I can curb stomp the main story. And I wager I'll be laughing at maps (as others have pointed out in the past) now that I'm past a brick wall of zerging 50+ deaths to get to them.

Look it boils down to this.

You shouldn't need to grind 8 levels at the end before the final boss when it's not needed for anything else.

You shouldn't need to endlessly farm for 5-6 slots for the final boss when it's not needed for anything else.

You shouldn't be resorting to a trade site for gear.

You shouldn't need 3 to 4 times the DPS and DR the main game requires, just to get to maps. PERIOD!

You shouldn't be considering zerging it with righteous fire spam as a tactic.

You shouldn't in a node system with this much variety have to go out of your way for chaos resist points or take every single life node possible just to stand even a slight chance. This right here is what kills me, there's no room for experimental building when the bosses demand a rigid choose X or have no chance mentality.

You should be able to use the mechanics the game provides like say picking a golem for DR, or slotting an armor skill (HAHAHA) to try and have extra survival.

Not that this matters when 3 OP champions with FF HP levels flicker strike and stun lock you. Oh and punch through your HP so fast mind over matter is pretty pointless, and in fact a hindrance as designed because there went all your mana too....

That's the problem people and GGG need to own up too. Kitava does not play by the same rules the rest of the game does, he's overpwoered, his mobs are over tuned, and the fight isn't fun at all, it's a unbalanced crapstorm

And let's remember something else about PoE's wonderful gear system. Even if you get something with nigh perfect stats. How long and how many rolls to get the links and colors right?

Ah yes, more "optimizing"

Nerf this garbage already. Take his damage down by about 35% and I could see it being a fair fight on par with others. But when positioning is meaningless (world on fire) and you have the damage so high that normal builds (i.e. a majority of your playerbase) will look at this and uninstall like I did the first time. You really need to rework it already.

"

Dragonkat42 wrote:

But when positioning is meaningless

You could not be more wrong, its actually all that mathers.
He is a experience fight more than anything else.

I hate trading, the only time I really do it is when I'm purchasing items important in my endgame build, or when I kill A10 Kitava and am ready for mapping. That said, almost all of the gear I get up to that point is found off the floor. I don't think I've had much issue fighting Kitava in act 10. All you have to do is make sure you have a decent amount of resistance (not necessarily maxed) and HP.

I've had a lot more trouble fighting Innocence by comparison, with his ridiculous bullet hells and constantly moving around.

"

Viljan wrote:

"

Dragonkat42 wrote:

But when positioning is meaningless

You could not be more wrong, its actually all that mathers.
He is a experience fight more than anything else.

You mean when you experience the entire arena on fire and positioning is meaningless? You know, the second part of that sentence you left out. Along with the part that even with max fire resist, aberoth and a life flask you can barely survive this?

Or when he lights up half, only to have the other half covered in a death orb?

Or when it's black goo covering everything which you try to run from only to miss the creeping cross blast because of poor design in coloring of attacks too?

Or when you try to phase run with a flask to set up an attack on the heart mobs only to have them flicker strike and deal stupid OP amounts of damage in an instant?

Or when the entire tiny arena is lit up with flame blasts you're running from only to walk into the next aoe before you can take 1 second to stand still and attack?

In my "experience" poor game design is poor game design. And I'll say it again, Kitava doesn't play by the same rules as the rest of PoE. It's a brick wall that rewards sheer numbers over strategic game play. DPS > all

As evidenced by the fact i'm tearing through T1 maps now like candy, and doing it with what? A build that relies on a combo of multiple skills to set mobs up for death. Not a OMGUBERZ 27K Scorching ray of doom build. Which you all but need due to the obscene amount of life kitava's heart mobs have, combos don't work because you're lucky to get two attacks off before their overtuned damage shreds the aforementioned 3.7K EHP

I can see the difference between this and my trickster build. One diversified across multiple elements to use elemental equilibrium and overload vs one that focused on pure chaos and two primary attacks (essence drain and contagion) cranked as high as I could get the DPS to go. With the bonus of essence drain adding to regen. Before we talk about trying to cover a build for multiple elements vs a build that had the ability to focus on pure chaos dps and dot. While still trying to get life nodes on top. And the differences show when you hit the brick wall of kitava. Two different builds that can tromp all over act 10, but guess which one didn't die 50+ times against kitava and his overtuned BS.

Poor design is poor design. Period. No amount of positioning or experience changes it. When two totally different builds are viabale up until that point you tell me where the problem lies.

"

Turtledove wrote:

"

aleksandor wrote:

"

Turtledove wrote:

This feeling of a stupid wall boss is bad for many more builds other than just Cyclone. It's not quite as bad for the bow builds I've done but even then it still feels stupid to me to be fighting a wall.

I understand their thought process ("This'll make the boss seem BIG!"), but in practice its just annoying.

I agree completely, kudos to GGG for the courage and coming up with a unique boss fight. The bottom line though is that it really doesn't work well. Please don't create another one like this.

Belial from d3. No idea why they took the worst boss in d3 and copied it

"

Dragonkat42 wrote:

Poor design is poor design. Period. No amount of positioning or experience changes it. When two totally different builds are viabale up until that point you tell me where the problem lies.

No.
Arguably, the content before that it's too easy, that could be said I guess.
I do agree that the arena is a be too cluttered, and most important that the effect's colours are too similar, making it hard to see what's happening.


However, there seem to be a lot wrong with your character ( which is completely normal if you are starting ).
- That flask lasting 7 seconds is pretty much pointless, you want the exact opposite : a flask that is either instant, or providing quick recovery.
- If you could just tank the burning ground with Abberath's power + one flask, it would be stupid. It is supposed to be scary, you are supposed to avoid it at all cost.
- If you are splitting your health pool between life and ES, 3.7k is not much reaching maps. ( when playing HC, I usually have ~4k life at Kitava )
- You are not going to scale damage as well if you don't specialize in one type of damage ... so of course, specialized builds will have more dps and be 'better'.
- Kitava is the last boss of the story, it is supposed to be scary, you might want to change a bit your expectations imho, I really don't think that grinding more than usual for the final boss is a problem given the kind of game that PoE is.