[RANT] T16 Harvest + Archnemesis mods = WTF?

I am playing a reasonably tanky Raider (ele bow), able to face and quickly defeat T16 red map bosses without big issues. Found one conqueror so far, cleared it with 1 death. I've capped all resistances, have full spell suppression, full elemental avoidance, I am using Grace, Determination, Defiance Banner, and Granite Flasks. My defense stats look like this:


My HP pool is average (a bit over 3600), but for clearing T16 and map bosses this setup is enough.

So... I was clearing T16 map today. I did the map boss without any issues, did all 3 rituals (no issues, either), and then...

THEN I've entered the Harvest. And I was 1-shotted multiple times - first by yellow monster (Kitava's Herald) with single archnemesis mod (Soul Eater) - it was leaping on me with some huge blast, and I was gone from literally single hit. Tried few times, every time same results. Not a chance - I took like 20% of his HP total.

And then, last final humilating swift death, was caused by 2 small magic monsters, also with single archnemesis mod (Echoist) - they just electrocuted me in like 100 milliseconds, from full HP to 0, before I managed to even target them:


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So... My question is - how the hell I am supposed to play this game, when stuff like that happens? I am using every damn defensive layer I can. I am clearing the T14+ red maps rather quickly and comfortably. And then, basically out of nowhere, I getting 1- or 2-shot kills from rare and blue monsters. What am I doing wrong, here? What am I missing?

Could anyone explain to me why that rare KH, or those small 2 blue f.ckers were hitting me harder than damn map boss or conquerors? What kind of game design is that, for sake...?

GGG, please start analysing the numbers. ESPECIALLY those related to how often we die in 3.18 vs 3.17, and what causes our deaths.

Giving us some post-mortem information about what exactly killed us would be nice, too. Game is hard, and we will be dying - more or less often. But at least allow us to LEARN something from our deaths - instead of keeping us blind, and frustrated.

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TsunamiFM wrote:

My HP pool is average (a bit over 3600)

Can have all the defense layers you want. But if you get hit, at the end of the day you have 3669 life and no es, extremely low.

Also the POB i have loaded for you shows 76% lightning res with only +1% overhang. So a curse would wipe you out if you got one.

Rain of arrows build is a hard one. Its basically tornado shot but weaker (a lot of ele damage scale or a lot of phys damage convert to cold), so you might wanna look at a tornado shot guide and sort of work this into that. (different enchant of course you'd want the one that has an additional chance to fire a sequence of arrows). Or just use tornado shot instead. Your choice.

Also this kind of a build wont come cheap or new player friendly. Its not very tanky comparative to whats being played nowadays since you wanna run something like hatred/precision. Requires a bit more from players movement wise and such, cause you really cant be getting hit.

Its like a kill before getting killed build basically.

Probably should be deadeye as well and not raider for more damage.

Hope this helps.

Harvest mobs can be dangerous. When I do harvest, I tell myself, "Dont stop moving". Otherwise you die.

Your life pool is meh, I was getting 1 shotted with 5.5k health and 1k ES.

But yes, it is strange when magic mobs/rare mobs are harder than things like Elder, Shaper..etc..

The game is in a really bad state when it is required to toss on all types of defensive layers on your character to survive monster encounters. It gives no identity to a character.

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Chickenwink wrote:

Can have all the defense layers you want. But if you get hit, at the end of the day you have 3669 life and no es, extremely low.

Thing is that's really enough for T16 map bosses and normal (non-harvest) mob packs (with my levels of armor, evasion, suppression, and resistances).

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Chickenwink wrote:

Also the POB i have loaded for you shows 76% lightning res with only +1% overhang. So a curse would wipe you out if you got one.

Then PoB must have some problem during import - my stats in the game are as on the screenshot above, that is 92% lightning resistance (capped at 76%).

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Chickenwink wrote:

Rain of arrows build is a hard one. Its basically tornado shot but weaker (a lot of ele damage scale or a lot of phys damage convert to cold), so you might wanna look at a tornado shot guide and sort of work this into that. (different enchant of course you'd want the one that has an additional chance to fire a sequence of arrows). Or just use tornado shot instead. Your choice.

Also this kind of a build wont come cheap or new player friendly. Its not very tanky comparative to whats being played nowadays since you wanna run something like hatred/precision. Requires a bit more from players movement wise and such, cause you really cant be getting hit.

Its like a kill before getting killed build basically.

Probably should be deadeye as well and not raider for more damage.

Hope this helps.

I tried Tornado Shot (was leveling it with GMP in second weapon set), but when I used it in practice few times it felt absolutely inferior for me, compared to RoA (with Concentrated Effect). I know numbers will show that TS is better on paper, but in practice - everything around me dies much faster when I run with RoA.

TS might be better choice for single target DPS, but for map clear speed - all the way RoA. Mob packs in T16 are cleared very quickly with RoA, and I don't feel like I needed more DPS, to be honest - most of the enemies are almost instantly gone, even at T16 with elemental resistance mobs (btw. I use Precision, and also have elemental weakness on hit in ring, and properly balanced elemental damage for trinity support to be fully operational).

About Raider vs Deadeye - I wanted DPS with some survivability - that's why I decided to go with Raider (plexi-glass cannon), not Deadeye (glass cannon).

I am aware that elemental bow builds aren't cheap, but after investing few ex it started feeling good. It would shine with Omniscience of course (that was my planned way to increase DPS), but taking into account it currently costs like 50ex, it's rather pass for me - I will sooner clear all the content (except damn Harvest uber-magic mobs ;P) with what I have, than be able to buy Omniscience.


But what I really mean here is that I think my build is generally fine (aside of MEH-ish life pool - but mind it's multiple layers of defense, before those HPs are touched - I have maximum effective hit taken 24k, and effective hit pool 58k, with flask active). It's good enough for comfortably clearing T14+ maps (rare / corrupted rare), including bosses. BUT it failed hard at damn Harvest - which felt like I was suddenly transported to some crazy T30 area.

I would like GGG to start looking at those issues - it's not a good design, when random map events like Harvest are WAY harder than anything else. Blue mobs in Harvest hitting multiple times harder than boss outside of the Harvest - that's a mess, not a good design, IMO.

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TS might be better choice for single target DPS, but for map clear speed - all the way RoA. Mob packs in T16 are cleared very quickly with RoA, and I don't feel like I needed more DPS, to be honest - most of the enemies are almost instantly gone, even at T16 with elemental resistance mobs

As you stack amount of projectiles and projectile speed (equally important), a single cast of TS will cover much more effective AOE than rain of arrows, up to oneshotting screens with enough critical multiplier and pierce, while also shotgunning bosses (few skills are capable of both those feats at the same time). If you want to do endgame content, focusing on TS is preferable (just my opinion)

Switch to Deadeye and start gathering all sources of "bow attacks fire additional arrows" from tree and items

Harvest is BS, everyone knows it. My champion with 240k effective hp against hits could still get burst down in 1 sec. I also see you got some echoist monsters on the screen, those are very nasty especially if they were also affected by other rare monster auras.

Btw 3600 is not really enough for this level of content, try to get close to 5k if you can. Your gear has life rolls everywhere, so I'm guessing not enough life nodes picked on the tree? Degens will kill you in less than a sec with 3.6k hp since all of your defenses only mitigate hits.

OP, I think the issue is you expected a level of tankiness that's fine for T16 map bosses and mobs to also be fine for Harvest mobs. This has never been the case. League mechanic content has always been an order of magnitude rougher than the standard mapping content. Pretty much any half decent build these days is fine for map bosses and mobs because those are nothing compared to league content.

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TemjinGold wrote:

OP, I think the issue is you expected a level of tankiness that's fine for T16 map bosses and mobs to also be fine for Harvest mobs. This has never been the case. League mechanic content has always been an order of magnitude rougher than the standard mapping content. Pretty much any half decent build these days is fine for map bosses and mobs because those are nothing compared to league content.

I get it that league mechanics might be harder than the core. It was the case in 3.17, too - harvests were bigger challenge, than normal mob packs outside of it. BUT they were still managable - it was like maybe x2 harder content. In 3.18 it feels like it was x20 times harder.

I am not bitching around that some content is hard - I like playing hard games, and I like hard content, too. I finished Dark Souls, I enjoy games like Dwarf Fortress, I was hardcore raider in WoW doing achievements like "Glory of the Raider", etc. But what we've got in 3.18 is not hard challenges, but completely overtuned and broken mechanics - often resulting in randomly popping up impossible to beat encounters, simply devastating most of the builds - even really solid ones, able to clear whole content in 3.17. Those builds should struggle with uber-uber bosses, not random yellow or blue mobs in Harvest with single arch mod.