Thicket map boss....am I missing something?

So I'm playing in Anarchy with a vitality-based, Witch Summoner. This boss has given me more trouble than I care to think about. I've died 4 times while soloing against him, to his Rain of Arrows, which is literally killing me (and most of my summons) in 1 shot.

My stats are as follows:

2.2k life
1500 armor (10k when I use my granites)
78% to all resists (with purity active), except Chaos (-44%)(it's a work in progress)

I am using Eldritch Battery to run 5 auras (debating on Anger, but I lose increased AoE on my curses if I use it).

Am I missing something or is this a boss that a summoner should simply skip when he/she is soloing? The only option that I can think of is to drop a skeleton totem and run like Hell, but that boss has literally hit me with Rain of Arrows from around a corner...

Yep, he is pretty hard. Also I think he deals some chaos dmg(?) I'm not sure it's been a while since I was there. Anyway the best bet is decoy totem and skeleton spam as summoner. The map layout is terrible, you can't really hide or your minion's won't attack. Sometimes it might be worth it to lure him to the hallway so you can actually place skellies beside him so he shoots at them without hitting you. The auras won't help much if you can't tank him, and it's hard to tank him.

I think skeleton totem is very silly, manual placing is a lot better so you can trick his AI. If lucky, you might even make him focus on skellies without taking out your ranged spectres which speeds everything up considerably. My experience is it is a lot about luck, though. One attack here, one attack there...

Just few thoughts, good luck!

"

wiggin wrote:

Yep, he is pretty hard. Also I think he deals some chaos dmg(?) I'm not sure it's been a while since I was there. Anyway the best bet is decoy totem and skeleton spam as summoner. The map layout is terrible, you can't really hide or your minion's won't attack. Sometimes it might be worth it to lure him to the hallway so you can actually place skellies beside him so he shoots at them without hitting you. The auras won't help much if you can't tank him, and it's hard to tank him.

I think skeleton totem is very silly, manual placing is a lot better so you can trick his AI. If lucky, you might even make him focus on skellies without taking out your ranged spectres which speeds everything up considerably. My experience is it is a lot about luck, though. One attack here, one attack there...

Just few thoughts, good luck!

A few good suggestions there, although I really feel that a skeleton casting totem is better than manual skeletons, because they will cast the skeletons directly on top of the boss, which will in fact cause him to cast Rain of Arrows on himself, rather than on you (skeletons aren't much better than zombies when they're manually cast). At least when you cast a skeleton totem, you can run and hide around the corner until the totem dies, whereas you have to get within his line of sight to manually cast skeletons on top of him (in which case, you're taking a big risk because as soon as the decoy totem dies, you're gonna be next). I would really be interested in some further confirmation on his using chaos damage? That would at least give me some indication as to why I might be getting 1-shotted, rather than simply him being 'tough to tank'. Personally, I think it's pretty poor design that the minions won't get aggro before you do. Who is actually going to spec their summoner as a 'tank' and have any hopes of soloing maps at a reasonable pace?

Double edit to mention that I'm using the following auras: Clarity, Purity, Discipline (for Eldritch Battery and minion survivability), Wrath, and Vitality.

I only get 40 life regeneration per second. Would I be better off switching Vitality with Determination? It seems that Vitality helps to keep my minions alive much longer, so I'd hate to lose it, unless it would be a substantial improvement.

A bit more about the skeletons if interested in my experience with them:
I know Skelleton Totem is very popular because it is very very useful utility lifting lots of weight, shattering aggro, distracting all the enemies and so on. But - according to my experience the skeletons do take aggro before you do if they are spammed fast enough on bosses (also placement might matter in some cases but I can't generalize, maybe you need to put them between you and boss or something, you would see how the AI reacts and get it right eventually). The problem is if there are none (all taken out by RoA or lighting ball or any OP aoe of bosses) and you don't recast them before another attack aimed at you is initiated. I link them to faster casting for such cases to make sure. Totem is slower and the skellies are weaker. When the totem dies you have to go back, without anything to take aggro for you, and when dropping the totem there is a very high chance you will be picked as a target soon enough. Maybe you can just keep hiding and cast the totem from your hide so the totem is in light of sight but you are not. I am afraid the totem is then targeted and doesn't really spam many skellies before it dies, though.

I don't think Determination would save you there, if hit twice in a row with high rolled damage (or even not so high) you are probably done. Although every little bit counts at times, still, I suspect his damage is as high it would pierce a lot even bigger amounts of armour...

Unfortunately I don't know much about HP there as my summoner is using CI - which is another thing - chaos immunity, although confirmation about chaos damage portion of his attacks I can't provide.

Generally speaking the game want anyone to be tanky. Insane spikes of damage everywhere. If you build a summoner how many points are sunk into minions? 40? 50? The rest must be in survivability and honestly I think life is now generally weaker than ES+CI in current patch. The only thing I can think of that would make me want to use HP as summoner is that unique wand.

Yeah, sorry I can't help more than "cast skellies". And it only took 4 paragraphs to do that... Sigh.

I hope you figure it out, or yeah, skip that map >_<
cheers
wiggin

"

wiggin wrote:

A bit more about the skeletons if interested in my experience with them:
I know Skelleton Totem is very popular because it is very very useful utility lifting lots of weight, shattering aggro, distracting all the enemies and so on. But - according to my experience the skeletons do take aggro before you do if they are spammed fast enough on bosses (also placement might matter in some cases but I can't generalize, maybe you need to put them between you and boss or something, you would see how the AI reacts and get it right eventually). The problem is if there are none (all taken out by RoA or lighting ball or any OP aoe of bosses) and you don't recast them before another attack aimed at you is initiated. I link them to faster casting for such cases to make sure. Totem is slower and the skellies are weaker. When the totem dies you have to go back, without anything to take aggro for you, and when dropping the totem there is a very high chance you will be picked as a target soon enough. Maybe you can just keep hiding and cast the totem from your hide so the totem is in light of sight but you are not. I am afraid the totem is then targeted and doesn't really spam many skellies before it dies, though.

I don't think Determination would save you there, if hit twice in a row with high rolled damage (or even not so high) you are probably done. Although every little bit counts at times, still, I suspect his damage is as high it would pierce a lot even bigger amounts of armour...

Unfortunately I don't know much about HP there as my summoner is using CI - which is another thing - chaos immunity, although confirmation about chaos damage portion of his attacks I can't provide.

Generally speaking the game want anyone to be tanky. Insane spikes of damage everywhere. If you build a summoner how many points are sunk into minions? 40? 50? The rest must be in survivability and honestly I think life is now generally weaker than ES+CI in current patch. The only thing I can think of that would make me want to use HP as summoner is that unique wand.

Yeah, sorry I can't help more than "cast skellies". And it only took 4 paragraphs to do that... Sigh.

I hope you figure it out, or yeah, skip that map >_<
cheers
wiggin

I'm experimenting now with using Determination, rather than Vitality, but I'm also thinking of Determination instead of Purity. My resistances without Purity are: 75/66/75 (cold/fire/lightning), so I'm wondering if that is good enough to forgo using Purity? The armor increase is only about 800 without a granite, but with a granite, it's about 4k (10k to 15k armor). I've got 2 granites equipped, so I'm experimenting with that now (kind of nervous about trying the Thicket boss again until I get some kind of confirmation on that chaos damage though). I'm dual cursing with Flammability/Elemental weakness, which is another reason why I'm using the skeleton totem (minion instability and all the extra minion life/damage nodes taken). My zombies have 15k life, so I'm trying to get the most out of them when they explode. If I can get my zombies within range of that boss and he does hit them with Rain of Arrows, they just about kill him with the first explosion that takes place. It's just a matter of figuring out how much life/armor/resistance I need to survive. Basically, in a nutshell, this build is relying on either spectres or minion instability for killing, so I would much prefer to use the skeleton totem, if I'm going to play very defensively. Skipping that map altogether has crossed my mind though...

After running Lunaris Temple and some maps for an hour or two, I definitely feel that Vitality is a lot better than Determination. My minions were dying much less frequently, if at all with Vitality active and quite the contrary with Determination in it's place.

I'd still like to know if anyone can confirm whether or not the Thicket's boss deals chaos damage or not with Rain of Arrows or if it's purely physical damage being dealt.

Yeah, you're probably missing something. I understand there's a bug with monster damage, and I have not had game access since before that patch, being out of town. (You should not be getting 1-shot with 2.2k HP.) Still, barring unlucky randomness, you should be able to clear the boss without taking a single RoA shot, as I've done it consistently on my necro.

Here's what I have, I hope it helps.

I love Thickets and I've only died once, total, to that boss (the very first time I soloed the map, then I went right back with the exact same (re)summons and cleaned his clock. Never quite liked the unexpected.) Level 72 when I started serious solo mapping including this map. Never optimised for either damage or survivability, which is why my build is this bad, but it works well enough so I don't really care either.

My setup:
skeletons + totem and nothing else
zombies + minion life + minion speed + minion resists
spectres + minion damage + GMP + life leech
casting enfeeble + TC for curses, using a Doedre's Damning ring
do not use Arc/EE, never had trouble making minions do what I wanted.
only running Vitality aura and nothing else.

Results in about 1.3k HP, 2.4k ES, between 0-50% all resists, 0% chaos resist. I think. Something like that anyway, I could take a hit or two in 0.10 patch.

With MB and Ullr, I run 4 spectres, 10 zombies, 14 skeletons and a totem. I favour Tentacle Miscreations for 69+ mapping, but Flame Sentinels are just easier to pick up and they do fine in 68- maps, so I've cleared Thicket with both sorts.


Thing with Vitality, it's better over long periods and many small hits. For burst scenarios, you would probably do better with Determination, as the time spent is not long enough to regen minions' HP anyway.

What I usually do for the Thicket boss? Run right into the room, making sure my army follows me. Cast skeletotem, cast curses. Not necessarily in that order. Run around a little, open the chest, watch the boss die. Resummon skeletotem if I notice it went down, though I'm not the best at noticing these things. Takes less than 10 seconds from entering the room to picking through loot. If I missed a spectre or four around the bend, I raise the skeletotem anyway then go back to coax it/them through.

My guess is that his damage is partly chaos, and I am in a position to test that, but the answer will have to wait for the weekend at least as I currently have no game access.

tl;dr enfeeble + TC. Also, running around in circles in order not to be hit twice in a row.