Innocence's damage is just way too brutal.

"

Slicer9875 wrote:

Thank you. It's reassuring to hear other threads about how OP Innocence is.

In my view, even Kitava is better than Innocence. Kitava, you die a few times, no big deal but with Innocence I have fire resistance capped, 1.5k life and he still nukes me in 5 seconds. Kitava at least gives you a chance to fight back.

My experience with Innocence is a "Welcome to the Suicide Squad.". Fight for 30 seconds, die, and then go fight again. I've done this fight on 3 builds and all had the same result (2 distinct builds).

Uh... you say you're getting nuked. If you are getting hit at all, you're doing it wrong I'm afraid. That would be why the fight is hard for you.

If there's a truck speeding straight at you, try getting out of the way before it arrives.

Same goes for Kitava and Malachai for that matter. You can all see it coming and move out of the way. But I get why most die. They are obsessed with DPS and refuse to let go of the attack button because might take 2 secs longer to kill the boss.

Kill speed vs safety. You can maximise either of those at your leisure, but you'll never have both. Practice makes perfect.

"

LaiTash wrote:

The glowing ball everywhere is easily avoided once you've learned the "i'm ur god" phrase. His tone is so different when he says this that you know what he's gonna do the moment he says "I". Then you either hide behind a statue or escape through the portal.

I personally hate "i'm the torch" and "i'm the end" (or whatever it is he's saying before making that one-shot slam).

I prefer to play without sound (only drop alert).
So?
The point is that his damage is why too high.

"

Apachy wrote:

"

LaiTash wrote:

The glowing ball everywhere is easily avoided once you've learned the "i'm ur god" phrase. His tone is so different when he says this that you know what he's gonna do the moment he says "I". Then you either hide behind a statue or escape through the portal.

I personally hate "i'm the torch" and "i'm the end" (or whatever it is he's saying before making that one-shot slam).

I prefer to play without sound (only drop alert).
So?
The point is that his damage is why too high.

Then you prefer to take away half of your chance to see attacks coming and avoid them with ease.

In other words: You prefer to die.

If you refuse to use the tools presented to you to beat a boss, well... what do you want me to say?

"

Xavathos wrote:

"

Apachy wrote:

"

LaiTash wrote:

The glowing ball everywhere is easily avoided once you've learned the "i'm ur god" phrase. His tone is so different when he says this that you know what he's gonna do the moment he says "I". Then you either hide behind a statue or escape through the portal.

I personally hate "i'm the torch" and "i'm the end" (or whatever it is he's saying before making that one-shot slam).

I prefer to play without sound (only drop alert).
So?
The point is that his damage is why too high.

Then you prefer to take away half of your chance to see attacks coming and avoid them with ease.

In other words: You prefer to die.

If you refuse to use the tools presented to you to beat a boss, well... what do you want me to say?

You could simply say nothing and rely on the previous poster's good judgment to figure things out on their own.

Some players are deaf. Some have home situations that require the sound be off. Some just ... prefer to have the sound off, which isn't wrong.

At least there are reliably visible visuals for all of Innocence's attacks that warn you what's coming. For Kitava, if you're in melee you might not be able to see the head move to signal the "fire everywhere" attack, so the sound becomes your only cue that you can rely upon to be warned of his most deadly attack before it happens.

Audio cues raise less questions about the design of a boss fight when they're not the only reliably available tell for what a boss is about to do.

To address somebody else's question, when you're in melee you see tells quicker and more reliably. Also, Innocence often turns relatively slowly once he's locked into one of his attack animations, so you get a fair amount of time to hit him from the side or back as long as you're ready to switch to offense as soon as those opportunities arise.

As long as your character has good move speed and reasonable attack speed, and you have a decent computer and internet connection, Innocence is in some ways easier for a melee character.

"

bwam wrote:

Nice feedback!

I also want to shout, "NO, NOT HC!!!" to save you from doom, but it seems it's already got its hooks on you and there's probably no saving you now.

(If you ever get tired of RIPing ending your fun, SSF SC is a good alternative, if I might be so bold.)

Edit: I see you have a lvl80 in SSF Standard from your profile... It seems you're just a masochist and want HC to punish you :P It's okay, maybe you're good enough :D

That was just a one-time thing because of the event, and actually my first time playing hardcore so I'd have an excuse to finally go to bed :P the idea of losing all my progress in HC because of a potential lag or random difficulty spike like this is normally too much of a turn-off.

Thank you for the answers so far. I know generally how to handle the fight, and as I said, I agree that overall it is very well-designed - the skills are mostly well-telegraphed, and the fight just feels spectacular and important.

But in most cases, it's just an enormous difficulty spike. Nothing before, and long after hits you nearly as hard and is so unforgiving. After playing through the whole new story in 3.0 I'm pretty sure the fight is probably the third hardest after act 10 Kitava and Gruthkul (which are both poorly designed fights). Act 6-9 main act bosses aren't nearly as punishing as Innocence is, you have more time to react and don't die on the spot.

That shouldn't be this case at this point in the game. Probably most people who beat Malachai have a solid idea how the game works, but not nearly good enough to confidently face a boss that pretty much doesn't forgive even one mistake. The current difficulty scaling is really quite good now, but Innocence just sticks out as a Mount Everest-type of difficulty spike kinda like act 10 Kitava.

Just reduce the damage a bit and maybe slightly tone down the AoE spam from some of the skills, and this fight will still be very challenging, but actually enjoyable and possible to learn without dying 20 times over.

I would agree that his damage is a bit high. I've done some deathless runs of him before, but it's quite tough. Though when your ping is garbage (I sit around 800ms usually), the balls all over usually ends up killing me before I can react (I usually hit him when I have around 1600-1800 life, though the best builds I had against him had about 2200~ with high life regen by time I got to this fight).

I imagine if my ping was 50ms like when I could get cable internet, he'd probably be just a minor speedbump as long as I'm not too reckless.

"

EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

Some players are deaf. Some have home situations that require the sound be off. Some just ... prefer to have the sound off, which isn't wrong.

I never said it was wrong to play without sound. Sigh. What I said was that if you play without sound, you are playing with a handicap. Whether that's willingly or not is irrelevant to the fact.

Melee char Gladiator lvl 47, 1900 hp, full res, 60%+ phys reduction + fortify. None of his skills dealt really too much damage to me. Statue hits maybe for 1/3 of my HP pool and his strongest slam into the ground 1k damage max. I could even tank the beam easily just by using a simple hallowed life flask.

HOWEVER then I got literally one shot from full to zero by that stupid orb thing. Seriously how is that possible? It was my first encounter with him and since I am a hardcore player im kinda pissed about this.

In terms of gear there was hardly anything more than I could do ... Now I tried to fight him a few times again and saw some 1 sec charging before he shoots the orb, but that is completely impossible to predict for a first encounter and the damage on that thing is simply impossible to survive.

"

TheLiberation wrote:

But in most cases, it's just an enormous difficulty spike. Nothing before, and long after hits you nearly as hard and is so unforgiving. After playing through the whole new story in 3.0 I'm pretty sure the fight is probably the third hardest after act 10 Kitava and Gruthkul (which are both poorly designed fights). Act 6-9 main act bosses aren't nearly as punishing as Innocence is, you have more time to react and don't die on the spot.

I agree it is one of the most frustrating boss fights in the current game. Little or no room for error. Having said that, I used to struggle with Gruthkul until I figured things out, now I have no problem. The tips about the audio cues from Innocence will help me in future encounters. I am one of those who has music cranking in the background so wasn't aware of his audio cues. I guess a little study goes a long way when your defenses aren't up to coping with the balls of death :)

"

shazec wrote:

Melee char Gladiator lvl 47, 1900 hp, full res, 60%+ phys reduction + fortify. None of his skills dealt really too much damage to me. Statue hits maybe for 1/3 of my HP pool and his strongest slam into the ground 1k damage max. I could even tank the beam easily just by using a simple hallowed life flask.

HOWEVER then I got literally one shot from full to zero by that stupid orb thing. Seriously how is that possible? It was my first encounter with him and since I am a hardcore player im kinda pissed about this.

In terms of gear there was hardly anything more than I could do ... Now I tried to fight him a few times again and saw some 1 sec charging before he shoots the orb, but that is completely impossible to predict for a first encounter and the damage on that thing is simply impossible to survive.

Basically, this. The "glowing balls" skill is by far the worst. The rest is definitely avoidable, and even though hurts a lot, there is a solid chance to survive. This skill gives you a slight chance of not dying.

And lol, 1900 hp at lvl 47 is absolutely insane. I doubt many people playing this fight for the first time even have the 1200 that I had on my characters during the events.

"

Arkwright wrote:

I agree it is one of the most frustrating boss fights in the current game. Little or no room for error. Having said that, I used to struggle with Gruthkul until I figured things out, now I have no problem. The tips about the audio cues from Innocence will help me in future encounters. I am one of those who has music cranking in the background so wasn't aware of his audio cues. I guess a little study goes a long way when your defenses aren't up to coping with the balls of death :)

Yep, I mostly agree, but even when you learn the fight - which takes at least several attempts - the margin of error is almost none.

This. Should. Not. Happen. At. This. Stage. Of. The. Game. Leave this kind of crap for maps where people are supposed to be ready for this kind of thing.

And Gruthkul is a very poorly designed fight in my opinion. Unlike Innocence, you can't even see what's killing you.