Hit a wall at Innocence

I've been banging my head against Innocence in Act 5 for a long time now. I suspect my build is somehow not optimized enough, as I die pretty much I'm touched by anything other than a basic melee swing.

What I'm not sure of is if it's that my survivability is too low (increase to Fire Resistance, Armor, Health) or that my damage is too low and the fight is taking longer than I though. I get that I need to straighten out my build, but I don't see anything current for 3.4 that I can get to from where I am now gear-wise.

I could use some help thinking about the problem and going about how to assess where I'm going wrong and what to do about it. Build is on the Kaynoire character linked to this profile.
Last bumped on Sep 22, 2018, 12:25:36 AM
Your character tab is private. You can fix that here.

In general, Avarius/Innocence often feels like a difficulty spike to new players because he's the first boss that really forces you to dodge most of his skills. You may also have issues with your stats and I'd be happy to look into that for you, but the way I'd suggest playing the fight, regardless of your build, is to treat getting hit by anything other than a basic attack or the little sparks coming off his dash as a mistake on your part. Try to watch carefully for all the skills coming out and dodge them via strafing, or in the case of the big projectile nova just running as far away as possible (preferably behind a statue).
Have you done something awesome with [url=http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Sire_of_Shards]Sire of Shards[/url]? PM me and tell me all about it!
Thanks, I've unhidden my character profile.

I also found a 3.4 updated version of my build, it's Sovyn's Lazy Pally:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/105920/page/701
I'm a very new player so take everything I say with a grain of salt but I was kind of shocked by the jump in difficulty the first time I went up against Innocence. I got him down but only because of the boss mechanics in this game that allow you to just keep rushing them without starting the encounter over.

Through most of the game as long as you pay a minimal amount of attention to gear you basically can right click your way through without even thinking of what is going on. My first rough boss fight was Kaom and in that case I realized I had been ignoring resists and once I capped my fire resist he was easy.

Innocence I realized my resists weren't capped either so I amended that and also realized that he really telegraphs his hits. If you have some sort of fast movement skill like Blade Flurry it is very easy to avoid. If not you have to just be very aware of what he is doing and your positioning and react quickly. Also make sure your dps is at high as possible for your level. Are there any gear upgrades? Are there better support gems for your attacks?

Finally if you are new I would recommend following a build guide. When I firsts started playing I thought I could just wing it and I would be OK but there is so much to learn in this game I feel like you are new you are better off following along a guide of someone more experienced.
I had been playing for a while before innocence was added and because it was fully new content, so I tried figuring out the tactics alone, but it turns out I didn't see everything.

What I initially overlooked and what makes the fight considerably easier is that the statues block the abilities when they stand still. So while it's theoretically possible to dodge stuff like the mass of projectiles released from the "I am your god" shenanigans (I have managed at least once), it's much easier to sit still behind a statue for a few seconds. This also works for the beam if you're too slow to evade it.

And if all that is too complicated for you, you can play a build that deals enough damage to skip literally everything except the add phase. For me that was an RF totem glass cannon that failed to reach yellow maps. ;)
Innocence isn't the first boss you need to learn and dodge.
Dominus' soul stream / touch of God is no joke, and Malachi certainly isn't a pushover.

But Innocence is a huge difficulty spike, the player can't really anticipate.
He has a lot of mechanics that are "end game" in both damage / punishment for failing to dodge them, and in terms of the next place in the game where you'll meet similar attack patterns (end game).
Plus fast pace and quick combos of deadly move you must react to in split second timing.

That and invulnerable phases with very strong minions - while most minions you meet until that point are basically free flask charges.

He's a dick.

But the next boss after him is even more BS.
Alva: I'm sweating like a hog in heat
Shadow: That was fun
Last edited by johnKeys on Sep 20, 2018, 7:46:53 PM
As many already said, Innocence is the first real gear check in the game. However, most of his attacks can be dogded if you pay close attention. My main advice is to always have him in your sight and watch/listen carefully to anticipate his next attack.

This video lists all his attacks and I would suggest also watching videos for other bosses from this channel since they are concise and really well made:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdiuPc9N_7Y

In my experience, he has four dangerous attacks. All his other attacks are easily dodged and/or do not hit very hard. So just pay attention to these four and you should be golden:

Super Projectile
This one I died to the most. Especially if you are playing melee, you have to get behind a statue or far away from him as soon as you hear "I am your god". If you get hit by multiple small bullets, it's curtains even for the more tankier builds. Once you're further away, the bullets spread out and are easier to dodge. Alternatively just tp out and come back in after.

Delayed Blast
High dmg slam attack but also easiest to spot with the big circle on the floor and him saying "I am the end". This one might one-shot depending on resists and health pool.

Divine Slam
This one hits pretty hard but it is telegraphed (he even says "Kneel") and can easily be dodged by moving in a circle around him

Divine Beam
This one is pretty dangerous. If you stay in the beam, you get debuffed and take more and more damage. He telegraphs it by saying "I am the torch". Use a quicksilver and get close to him. Once he starts the beam, run small circles around him. Alternatively, you can use a statue to hide behind.

On top of these attacks he makes the statues move (just keep your distance since they hit quite hard) and spawn adds at certain life thresholds. You can either fully clear the spawned minions to regain flask charges OR (if they hit too hard and/or you lack damage) just run in a circle around them. They automatically disappear after a while. Also note that some mobs have a shield around them. To kill them you have to get into the shield since they are immune to ranged damage.

Gear
A few notes to gearing. Getting life and resists on your gear should be main priority while leveling. Your helmet and amulet would be the first two to upgrade. Also try to get movement speed boots since they make it easier to dodge attacks. Your build is rather tanky but low dmg as 1h + shield. This leads to my last point. Many beginners struggle to kill bosses because they lack damage. Two point are important here:

1) As soon as you can, try to get your 4-link or 5-link setup. Even if you lose a bit of life and resistances, it should be worth it. It boosts your damage significantly and if you kill stuff faster, you take less damage.

2) For most builds, you should either go ele dmg OR phys dmg. You have a weak weapon equipped right now since it only has a low phys dmg roll and one decent ele dmg roll. Having two+ rolls for the same dmg type gives you more dps in the end due to passive scaling. Since your passive points went into phys dmg scaling so far, I'd suggest to look for weapons with both "xy increased phys dmg" AND "adds yz phys dmg" mods. Attack speed or another ele dmg on top would be ideal.
Last edited by Afghani84 on Sep 21, 2018, 2:47:32 AM
"
Afghani84 wrote:

Gear
A few notes to gearing. Getting life and resists on your gear should be main priority while leveling. Your helmet and amulet would be the first two to upgrade. Also try to get movement speed boots since they make it easier to dodge attacks. Your build is rather tanky but low dmg as 1h + shield. This leads to my last point. Many beginners struggle to kill bosses because they lack damage. Two point are important here:

1) As soon as you can, try to get your 4-link or 5-link setup.
...
2) For most builds, you should either go ele dmg OR phys dmg.


Thanks for this meta-advice about the balance between offense and defense. There are so many different dials I can adjust on my character, it's hard to necessarily know which one is the right now to get over my hurdle. I think the build will always struggle with bosses because it's all about parry/block responses - I'm mowing through magic packs at a pretty good clip and my health barely moves. The build also explicitly avoids focusing on a single skill in favor of being easy to use.

I finally cleared Innocence last night. I went back and checked out the 3.4 version of the build I was using and redid my passives exactly to match. I also started using Purity of Fire - between those two things my survivability went up pretty dramatically to the point where I could tank either the giant or a tick of the big attacks. I died a lot but he eventually went down. I can't say it was a particularly fun fight, even after getting setup correctly.
I took a quick look at your gear as well and you should really try to pick up more items with resistances. The game is balanced around being at the cap starting around act 3. That means you want a total of 225% resistances on your gear, which is a lot. Starting with act 6, your resistance will further be reduced across the board by 30%.

So by that time, you want 105% total resistance to each element.

If you don't have full resistances later on, you will die a lot.

For completion's sake, after act 10 you get another -30%, in mid maps you can be cursed by level 10 elemental weakness and in top maps by level 15, respectively reducing your elemental resistances by 29% and 34%, and by that time you should essentially have 169% resistance to each element, meaning 507% in total (to give you an idea, how relevant picking up resistance is on gear).

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