Warded expedition undead need a nerf!!!!

I should not have unkillable mobs at lvl 56.

Running SST bleed, i slaughter everything in my path. Untill i run into expedition undead with a blue or purplish border around their health bar. 1 of those SOB's takes 3 minutes to burn down.

I'm loving the changes and the difficulty. But unkillable stuff at level 56? I can stomp all the zone bosses but a rare Lich with ward or whatever that buff is and I can't even move its health bar?

I'll continue playing but you're really gonna make all the cry babies quit and lose alot of your player base.

I play a caustic arrow ranger and cannot kill chaos immune mobs.
Others play cold based characters and cannot kill cold immune mobs.
Others play fire based characters and cannot kill fire immune mobs,
Yet others play lghtning.....yada yada.....

GGG will always design the game/leagues to require diversity.

Since you have already popped the Ward pillar for the challenge.....simply ignore that particular pillar when setting your explosives.

What does the pillar actually say on it? I haven't noticed a pillar that says Ward on it? I figured this was a mechanic because it only affects the undead,skellys,zombies,lich's. All the other expedition mobs melt like butter to a hot knife.

Challenge league content is always harder than the zone its in. I'd estimate that Ultimatum/Delirium was equivalent to 7-9 zones above posted level. This feels more like 4 or 5, varying wildly of course given all the pillars (remnants) you can activate.

This is the challenge of the challenge league.

OP either hit multiple reduced damage remnants, immune to a damage type he does a large portion of(or all of), or is getting blocked(literally mobs blocking his hits)

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dorkdude2 wrote:

multiple reduced damage remnants

This is the real sneaky one for people who haven't thought about math in POE very much.

Reduced damage taken scales the metric you care about literally worse than exponentially. The metric you care about is "time taken/DPS needed to kill enemy," or "enemy Life," and x% reduced damage taken models that as 1/(1-x), because taking the enemy's Life to zero over time is modeled as Damage per Second (so flipping it from time to Life is Seconds per Damage). As a simple example, if an enemy has 10 Life and you deal 2 Damage, 50% reduced damage taken takes you from needing 5 Hits to kill an enemy, to 10 Hits to kill an enemy (10/2 vs. 10/1), which is 100% more Life/100% more DPS required to kill the enemy.

And naturally the asymptote of 1/(1-x) as x approaches 1 is infinity...

Copy and pasting my examples from a previous thread:
1 of those: you deal 70% of normal damage.
2 of those: you deal 40% of normal damage - this is less than half
3 of those: you deal 10% of normal damage - you must deal 1000% of your normal damage to deal the same amount of damage as a monster without that Remnant, AKA it is like Monsters have 900% more Life, Ward, and Energy Shield and reduce your leech by 90%>
4 of those: Monsters can't take damage.

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dorkdude2 wrote:

is getting blocked(literally mobs blocking his hits)

I feel like this one might be the most likely explanation, honestly. I've noticed those skeletons with the shiny shields seem to have insane Block chance, and someone in Bug Reports thread reported that Expedition monsters Block 100% of damage instead of just a portion.

The mechanics of Ward mean that Ward itself is actually not that bad as long as you can hit your foes more than once per 5 seconds (maybe 2-3 seconds if GGG buffed their Ward recovery rate). You basically just need to deal some chip damage, then hit the foes with your big damage skills. Presumably Storm Brand, Orb of Storms, things like that come in very handy countering Ward. Personally, after getting 6 links and increasing my survivability (which means less time running around like a chicken and more time actually hitting enemies to break their Ward), I haven't had any issues with Ward specifically.

EDIT: Gentle reminder to anyone struggling with Expedition monsters that you can create Block Chance Reduction Support by selling any Puncture gem with a 20% quality Dexterity Shield (Evasion Rating) to an NPC vendor:

I'd think that bleed dot would do an end-run around block chance or a ward of a given size.

You can get yourself in real trouble fast with the mods on these encounters. They aren't whistling dixie. They put them in acts the way they are and you just need to think. Just like with ultimatums with inevitable doom or cumulative dps growth, or those metamorphs you slap together that have 1300% more life and a double dose of leeches life/regens.

The ones where you're BL miner with 118m shaper dps and you barely get their ES down by about a third with a full load of ordnance + Arcane Cloak + Bottled Faith. :popcorn:

You know the ones I'm talking about. The ones that made you bail on a map after 3 portals. Reap what you sow, etc.