Oneshots from white mobs or invisible sources must stop!

nvm

Thanks everyone,

thanks for all the input.
It gave me a new view on how hard the game really is, and I will at least try out all the content on normal.
Thanks for open words, I dont feel talked down to, and safe spaces are not for HC players :)

Since I never died in the first 10 acts from any monster, it seems totally fair to this point. Also, never died to any heist boss yet.
As a test, in normal I played through a yellow T11 map with a friend, which had 60% increased vulnerability plus 300+ monster crit plus crit mod, which I expected to kill me, and we succeeded, only killing me twice :)

About the white killer heist mob I was not able to replicate such damage spike. I can get rolled over by multiple of these lightning orbs just standing still, maybe I miss something, or it may be extremely random damage.
Played about a hundred white 67 heist maps total without experiencing such spikes before or after.
Same for Lithomancer, have killed him now multiple times and cannot replicate that hit that melted my 10K+ pool (4KES, 4K Life, 38% MoM with 22% Mana recoup) in under a sec, including Arctic armor etc. at that time.
-> might need more systematical investigation. Logs would have been so cool.

More explanations about the build:

1. Life Pools
- I started with life naturally.
- I added Mind over Matter more for the reason that it needs only a single skill point. So the price was small enough to hardly make an error here to try, and kept it that way since.
If missing mana for teleport may be a point, blood magic might do it, but was not necessary yet. I didnt ran out of mana because:
-> Mana is supplemented by "Mana recouperation", which will give me 10% of any damage I get back as mana first (Notable: Battle Rouse), followed by additional Gear that can give up to 3 jewellery recipes with 6% each, which can add up to 28% total, so 10% mana is needed only for 62% life (1:6) as long its not a single, big hit so that I maybe cant take up so much mana at once before its subtracted. (Mana is given on hit before subtraction said a dev in a forum).
-> So 1K mana could sustain up to 6200 Life. At 3K life, it adds about 2K Pool for a single skill point, some gear, and using nodes that give mana besides other bonuses. (100% / 62% = 1.63). Seems good enough.
- ES is totally dependant on gear, so I could not focus on it alone as long this gear is not available.
- I was very aware that MoM does not support ES, thats totally ok for me. Highly interesting that there is gear to even do this!
- I also was aware that ES Leech is halved by wicked ward. ES recharge after 1.4 seconds with full recharge in about 2 seconds after start was typically enough, and the leech support gem was no too big loss on DPS to not try out for fun (ES leech support gives mediocre (*more*) DPS tag).
As soon I take the first hit and port away and recharge started, I can count on another 8K ES recharge in the next 4 seconds with my now 4K ES. Vaal discipline gem might even help to start off ES recharge manually without delay (as soon I find one, meh), and I might even find one day an item that starts ES recharge on block.

Total Life pool:
- You do not look on 3K Life alone. You see 3K (now 4K) ES, +3K Life, +2K recouped mana total, all 3 pools regenerating/ recharging in parallel.
(Life at about 300/sec+golem+totem+flask+2k/sec endur.cry, maybe leech from amulet too, mana needs not much recharge due to recoup, and ES itself recharges in 2 secs, starting after 1.4secs).
--> So sum is 8K (now 9K) against onehits, which is not far from 10K ES builds in terms of a simple sum.
Sustain is an entirely different beast, focus on ES and pure leech might become mandatory in higher tiers to fasten that up.


2. Skills:
- I simply was not too fond of the idea to be a johnny- one- spell, and love firing different things. I thought it might not hurt to throw in DOT like flame wall or those golems in advance, but expect that these will become less and less useful and might get rid of some in the future.
- I was already using cwdt with immortal call ind increased duration. Thought about putting enduring cry into it too, maybe. Second wind on IC, does it even work? I need to try.
- Vitality indeed might become useless over time, maybe even enduring cry (2k life in a second, with second wind, linked to flame dash already to second wind it too). I expect leech to be a thing that might be unavoidable at some point in endgame due to increasing pools and stagnating regeneration.
- Cascaded Ice wall might not be an ultimate protection, but using a single slot for it doesnt make me losing much on my multi button mouse. It really pushed even bosses away, cannot be destroyed, and spams whole screen in seconds, while I still can teleport to move. Stopped even Ultimatum mob hordes. Helped us win the T11 boss fight on that yellow killer map. Better than nothing, at least.
- Recplacing Flesh and Stone and Arctic armor to offensive auras or vaal discipline is something I will try out in the near future.
- Shield Charge and Fortify? Thats something I need to try. Still I wonder if the programmers designed the game that way that all casters are forced to charge around all the time with shields to survive by keeping up fortify instead of casting spells, but I am open for giving it a try :)

3. Channeling:
You have a point, surely.
- Scion without canneling or muting- unplayable! SADLY. (uh-hah-har-uarrr-...) *facpalm*
- DI (divine ire): Standing 1 single second to cast instead of e.g. fireball and then continue teleport or move gives me 7 stages of divine ire already, or x2 or x3 stages (=max) if mobs are close. With a channeling AOE circle even out of the lower screen I hit so many mobs while channeling that it charges quickly.
- Scorching Ray: its fire exposure worked well in lower tier maps with a cascaded flame wall (might need boost in higher tier). Normally I just do a shot burst for exposure and add elemental weakness. Also such a fun spell that I could not resist :) Would be sad to throw out.
- Power of many sources: Indeed in T11 Yellow map my initial DPS was quite bad. Still, as soon as all sources start to add up mobs melt, and no need to stand still while throwing in all the dofferent spells. Indeed too slow for fast mapping.
- What I really need is a deeper understanding to create these millions of DPS. I guess its simply not so much about the tree, but more about item, flask, aura, crit, and weird combinations like some ailments or such I cannot create yet.

I still think less damage spikes, some combat logs for the last 5 seconds and more tactics instead of fast button mashing might profit this game in the long run.

But, despite all critics: I am thankful for such a fun, nerdy and challenging game with so much depth, content and love from the devs- for free! Keep it up, GGG!

yeah, I think almost everyone wants to have a combat/death log in PoE.
Sadly they spoke about that already and said it's not to be implemented in the near future.

I wouldn't count it out for PoE 2 maybe, but thats still a long while until its release.

For the Shield charge topic, it's a very different playstyle if u're used to running through maps. U need to get used to it's clunkyness and u need a lot of global attack speed for it to feel good. (u get some with the gem level aswell)
It's still not for everyone, but playing caster in HC with Fortify is much smoother. I even use it on my SC build atm.

Anyway good luck on ur next try :)
Btw. if u want to stay on HC, I'd recommend trade league. U can still play SSF for urself, but it doesnt hurt as much when u die or u can buy some build defining Uniques u might not drop urself.
The economy on HC Trade is pretty good aswell, just way less items on the market.

"

pax228080 wrote:

About the white killer heist mob I was not able to replicate such damage spike. I can get rolled over by multiple of these lightning orbs just standing still, maybe I miss something, or it may be extremely random damage.
Played about a hundred white 67 heist maps total without experiencing such spikes before or after.
Same for Lithomancer, have killed him now multiple times and cannot replicate that hit that melted my 10K+ pool (4KES, 4K Life, 38% MoM with 22% Mana recoup) in under a sec, including Arctic armor etc. at that time.
-> might need more systematical investigation. Logs would have been so cool.

Monsters do have a base crit chance. Even without crits map mods they still can crit. Its unlikely, but it can happen and it hurts.
Also monsters can have charges like frenzy or power charges which work similar to charges players can have just waaayyy more powerful.
Then there are auras provided by nearby rare mobs with nemesis mods which might buff all monsters in its auras aoe massively.
Last but not least there are nullifier mobs stripping you of all active buffs like flask effects on hit and then you just stand there with your pants down...

One of those modifiers on its own is bad enough even without synergizing map mods. But if several of them do stack and nasty map mods or sextant mods also come into play its getting super rippy real quick.


It takes time to get used to it and the best tactic against these things is being extremely mobile. Keep moving all the time - never go back where you have been a second ago because thats likely the spot mobs are aiming at and its about to get nuked from orbit.
Basically: You never want to be where the hammer falls.
Any buildtype requiring you to stand still for an extended period of time (means longer than 1 sec) is inherently a very bad idea and pretty much a death sentence.

Lightning ball and off screen sounds like these human like automaton robot monsters from Tunnel, Repository.

They have a big and slow moving Ball which they charge up for before releasing it. Range is quite big and even one ball can oneshot depening on the Contract mods or aura stacking. Even deadlier if it crits.

From wht i remember this monster ability got nerfed 1 or 2 times since lots of people died to them.

Today, two more green heist maps Level 69 with Lightning Ball casters (in normal, I need to farm heist progress again).
I forced myself to not dodge as a test. Got rolled over multiple times by these ligntning balls, also from a yellow.
No Damage spike in sight that would fully penetrate 4K ES at once, and far from killing off another 3K Life (5k with MoM). Some hits even did not hurt much.

I wonder how much an aura might do to enforce such Killer hits in a white level 67 heist to do >9K while having all resist and two defensive auras.

From what I have seen from streamers, they mostly get almost no damage, and then go from 10K ES to under 2K in under a second from something I cannot even see clear when going picture by picture.
I see the same spikes too from time to time.

Tonight was very strange.

In my pursuit for answers, I now tried the following, with still the same character and setup:

- standing still and taking the heist lightning balls, with almost no damage, even multiple ones.
- literally ran into those lightning balls, with also no success to get much damage, even took less (since contact is short if you run straight through them).
- raising the heist alarm, blasting through the hordes or teleport into the midst of them and blast them, and when reaching the exit, going in back again for another round during alarm. I was able to see a single damage spike from a boss with a big hammer, but could not repeat it when I gave him more chances to hit me.
- then I ran several maps (had rarely map drops, so I took level 1-3, what I could get, also magic ones) and stopped dodging any bosses at all. No spikes.
- In the plaza, I got reckless and even ran willingly into the goddess whirling blade traps and blasted her, and she was dead before I was able to take more damage than a third of my life, then the traps stopped.

It feels as if the normal mode refuses to kill me or do much damage to my life.
I am totally clueless. Has game been patched? Does normal avoid to kill you and HC does the opposite?
Was there an aura that day that only appears all millenia and then does 5x the normal damage in white maps?

Any more ideas how to investigate that matter?

EDIT:
I started actively chasing the lightning balls, running with them, trying to keep staying in them while they travel. With no success, ES recharged too fast and no damage spike at all in sight.
In another map I ran straight into the stacked ground circles of a blue pack willingly and waited until they fired all at once, but also here MoM worked well and I survived with the lower half of my life as I intended the build to work.

Without knowing what exactly the circumstance was on your rip i'd say it's a pretty useless endeavor. Those damage spikes usually stem from a couple of factors coming together that might even be harmless on their own but become absolutely deadly in combination. As i said in my first post here, normal white mobs don't hit 10k damage, 4-5k at most. But with stuff like curses, shock, rare auras, mapmods, crits, multi proj + increased AOE and other things thrown into the mix that damage can double or tripple quickly. It also depends a lot on the monsters present on your map. Some mods are utterly harmless or stupidly deadly depending on what monsters are populating the map you are running. Extra phys as element for example is very deadly on monsters that already have conversion on them. While multi projectiles can make baran mobs or porcs way more deadly than normal. If you keep playing you'll probably run into another scenario at some point that blows you out of the water but it's unlikely to be the same thing.

I really believe something is up with heist maps.

I was doing a 83 heist map with no mods yesterday and my max block gladiator, with 90% physical reduction, got one shotted while trying to get out with the loot.

I don't know what got me, I didn't see anything, there were 5-6 npcs on the screen at the time, I didn't see anything on the ground. One moment, my flasks were up, my health bar was 100% full, and then the next moment, I'm eating dirt.

This more than anything else is what makes POE so unfun to play.

At a minimum we need to know what killed us so we can learn and do better, but no such information exists.