How to tell "Spell" from "Attack" for boss abilities?

If we boil down the post to the desired goal, I think we would only need to know that info if we were to gear specifically for one boss fight. The rippy mechanics for x boss are spells? Then mitigate spells.

In my experience, gearing for one fight is something I might do for a first kill of the league and only for some bosses. You’ll need that spell & attack mitigation for mapping and league mechanic anyways, so the distinction is somewhat moot unless you are gearing for a specific fight.

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EveryZig314 wrote:

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Cimmerian_ wrote:

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EveryZig314 wrote:

So do Sirus, Shaper, Elder, and Maven just have "spells" only and no "attacks"?

https://pathofexile.fandom.com/wiki/The_Elder


This page will tell you each attack and spell for every boss in the game, and I believe every monster as well. Check it out.

This page refers to everything as Attacks, from the ice spears to the siphon, and describes none of them as Spells. The word "spell" does not even appear on the entire page. Are you telling me that everything the Elder does is Attack type (rather than the page just using "Attacks" colloquially to refer to the Elder's offense abilities")

The wiki isn't the right resource for this. Ignore that guy. Instead you can look it up on poedb. All the boss moves are broken down there, including with their tags. That'll tell you whether they're spells or attacks. For instance -

Maven is very spell heavy - https://poedb.tw/us/The_Maven#TheMavenTheMaven

But Aul has a lot of attacks - https://poedb.tw/us/Aul%2C_the_Crystal_King#AultheCrystalKingProtoVaalCityBoss

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Exile009 wrote:

The wiki isn't the right resource for this. Ignore that guy. Instead you can look it up on poedb. All the boss moves are broken down there, including with their tags. That'll tell you whether they're spells or attacks. For instance -

Maven is very spell heavy - https://poedb.tw/us/The_Maven#TheMavenTheMaven

But Aul has a lot of attacks - https://poedb.tw/us/Aul%2C_the_Crystal_King#AultheCrystalKingProtoVaalCityBoss

Thanks! Weird that the info is that hard to find, but still good to have.

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yamface wrote:

so what youre saying is youre too incompetent to play the sirus fight properly so you resort to stacking dodge to cheese the die beam... fyi dodge does nothing against that move because its a spell and therefore you need spell block/spell dodge and not regular dodge. and even then you have to get cb and shock immunity AND build a well above average hp pool. ive looked at your expedition characters you are nowhere close to tanking that beam so knowing which one is which doesnt even matter

I'm entirely willing to admit I am not good at "1.5 second hide-and-seek with maybe a clue from squinting at teleport pixels beforehand". Maybe it was luck with some of the beams hitting totems or multiple being dodged, but I have sometimes been hit by that move and not died to it. Thanks for the info about it being a spell though, that does actually help to know.

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budawpi wrote:

If we boil down the post to the desired goal, I think we would only need to know that info if we were to gear specifically for one boss fight. The rippy mechanics for x boss are spells? Then mitigate spells.

In my experience, gearing for one fight is something I might do for a first kill of the league and only for some bosses. You’ll need that spell & attack mitigation for mapping and league mechanic anyways, so the distinction is somewhat moot unless you are gearing for a specific fight.

I don't gear for specific bosses (aside from maybe swapping a potion), but it still is useful to know things like how from looking at POEDB, it seems that most endgame bosses are very spell heavy, meaning that spell defense is a somewhat higher priority than attack defense.

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EveryZig314 wrote:

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Exile009 wrote:

The wiki isn't the right resource for this. Ignore that guy. Instead you can look it up on poedb. All the boss moves are broken down there, including with their tags. That'll tell you whether they're spells or attacks. For instance -

Maven is very spell heavy - https://poedb.tw/us/The_Maven#TheMavenTheMaven

But Aul has a lot of attacks - https://poedb.tw/us/Aul%2C_the_Crystal_King#AultheCrystalKingProtoVaalCityBoss

Thanks! Weird that the info is that hard to find, but still good to have.

You're welcome! You can also find additional help with bosses from some content creators who've made pretty detailed breakdowns of various boss fight mechanics.

Huizui is one whose vids are excellently edited, albeit they aren't as active off late - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZDdjJmAxq0Hq5EJa3-CbHQ/videos

Sirgog is very active, whose vids are more basic but thoroughly explain how to approach each fight - https://youtu.be/BXWEs63s998

Good luck!

If evade would render it useless its a spell, so generally anything that isn't a huge damage hit will be a spell. Its safest to assume spell until you have reason to believe otherwise really.

If you went in assuming slams were attacks and everything else was a spell you wouldn't be wrong that often :p

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budawpi wrote:

Easy, just look at the combat/death log.

thanks for the laugh

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EveryZig314 wrote:

This page refers to everything as Attacks, from the ice spears to the siphon, and describes none of them as Spells. The word "spell" does not even appear on the entire page. Are you telling me that everything the Elder does is Attack type (rather than the page just using "Attacks" colloquially to refer to the Elder's offense abilities")

yeah....some newbie add that ....he does not even know rare monster name is random and he just name monster whatever he like or just make up one

Just fixed here

https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/The_Elder#Skills

Spell and attack are jokes of tags.
So many attacks look like spells.
As for melee..and being actually ranged..yeah.

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al3xro wrote:

Spell and attack are jokes of tags.
So many attacks look like spells.
As for melee..and being actually ranged..yeah.

They just reskinned some player skill so that we can't really tell it is spell or attack or intended was spell but they forget to change the tag

For example Slave Driver actually use a modified Flame Surge, so is it spell or attack?