Blackguard Arcmage needs another nerf

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ionface wrote:

I hate how these always offscreen me. The range for their Arc is absurd. Combine that with chain and you have a spell which stops players from using totems.

The cast speed and damage (and shocks) will melt nearly any character leveling up, and you have to really single these guys out and treat each one like a boss character, when they come in groups, it's even more difficult to avoid the instant-kills. Packs with these were already nerfed.

Lightning Thorns, still a devastating monster buff, it was already nerfed.

The cannot miss.

Anything that messes with totem users is a good thing. And what's wrong with having to specifically target the mages and take them out first? Also, if the mages weren't dangerous, the melee guards wouldn't be either. You would just ignore the mages, take out the guards, and then kill the mages.

What's makes this encounter fun and challenging is you need to ignore the guards and take out the mages, not really easy to do with totems, but pretty easy for melee players that use a movement skill.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

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scorpitron wrote:

well for you, i would say you have played long enough to know who the blackguards mages are and what they are all about. knowing this, your build needs to take into account all mobs you will face.

Nononono that's not how it works. I don't give feedback based on MY knowledge or MY experiences to date. I try to be 'a new player' when I give feedback, which is why I only give feedback on non-twinked, self-found character experiences. Sure, *I* know the Arc Mages are there *I* could be ready for them, but my argument is for that first experience.

yes, that is how it works.

you cannot balance a whole game around a person's 1st ever play through, you know very well what issues that would cause. You said you were in cruel so you had already been to that map (as this hypothetical first ever charan playthough). why should you expect "cruel" to be the same as normal much less "merciless"? its not a spike in difficulty its a deficiency in your build/tactics that is being exposed at higher difficulties. Each mob presents a new challenge...some are easy and you attack the same regardless...others eventually require a change of approach as you get to higher difficulties and your failure to address that is not the game's fault.

in this hypothetical 1st playthrough of yours...you hit a wall and either change something to overcome it or reroll if the issue is too big to fix on the fly, you do not say the mob is OP and imply a nerf based on your 1st playthrough ever.

feedback from a new player's perspective is important...by the time you are lvl 50 and in a higher difficulty version vs mobs you have seen before it becomes less of a "new player" issue and more of a "l2p" issue.

the proof that everything is ok is that you didnt mention having a problem with them in normal difficulty eh? THAT is where the new player balance feedback belongs.

I want to make two points clear.

It's not fun to be instantly killed. Expecting to die on a boss from their massively choreographed swing is one thing, but I'm saying, getting instagibbed is not fun in general. There is no skill involved with surviving these, only luck.

A lot of people don't understand what I mean by "offscreen". I mean, they can shoot you, and kill you or massively damage you, while you are in the midst of a casting animation and they are not visible to you. They literally shoot you when you cannot see them, when they are "off" the "screen". If reaction time was effective, I would have less a problem with them, but as I've said, they kill some of my dudes without me having a chance to do a thing.

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ionface wrote:

I want to make two points clear.

It's not fun to be instantly killed. Expecting to die on a boss from their massively choreographed swing is one thing, but I'm saying, getting instagibbed is not fun in general. There is no skill involved with surviving these, only luck.

A lot of people don't understand what I mean by "offscreen". I mean, they can shoot you, and kill you or massively damage you, while you are in the midst of a casting animation and they are not visible to you. They literally shoot you when you cannot see them, when they are "off" the "screen". If reaction time was effective, I would have less a problem with them, but as I've said, they kill some of my dudes without me having a chance to do a thing.

I lol'd at your explanation of offscreen for the mentally challenged - not me, sorry, in case you thought so. And nah they dont do it offscreen, told ya already, get over it. Total bs.

Get more resists and purity and use a flask, it will not hurt like that, 89 light res, and if it still does, use saffell on swap. (94 resists with flask) Make sure totems have the resists support. And help kill them with some skills yourself like a 4 link firestorm or something.

Adapt, advance, and soar through the skies like a condor in majestic flight of glory! NOW GO MY SON!

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mvm199 wrote:

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ionface wrote:

I want to make two points clear.

It's not fun to be instantly killed. Expecting to die on a boss from their massively choreographed swing is one thing, but I'm saying, getting instagibbed is not fun in general. There is no skill involved with surviving these, only luck.

A lot of people don't understand what I mean by "offscreen". I mean, they can shoot you, and kill you or massively damage you, while you are in the midst of a casting animation and they are not visible to you. They literally shoot you when you cannot see them, when they are "off" the "screen". If reaction time was effective, I would have less a problem with them, but as I've said, they kill some of my dudes without me having a chance to do a thing.

I lol'd at your explanation of offscreen for the mentally challenged - not me, sorry, in case you thought so. And nah they dont do it offscreen, told ya already, get over it. Total bs.

Get more resists and purity and use a flask, it will not hurt like that, 89 light res, and if it still does, use saffell on swap. Make sure totems have the resists support. And help kill them with some skills yourself like a 4 link firestorm or something.

Adapt, advance, and soar through the skies like a condor in majestic flight of glory! NOW GO MY SON!

Now you are starting to entertain me.

Yes, let's nerf another enemy which poses a remote threat. Let's make this game a masterpiece of tediousness where no use of brain is necessary to win.

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Fusion_Power wrote:

The Mages are pretty harmless alone, same for the Guards. It's the combination of both that makes the difference so I would say it works like intended.

I disagree. I got zapped by 3 of them off screen and was left with a tiny sliver of health WITH lightning resist. Versus Galvanic Ribbons in Solaris Temple who can spam at me and it's nothing.

I started reading this thread because I agreed. Especially for melee characters.

I have a level 62 duelist that I could not get past the arc-mages but as I continued reading through this thread I figured that maybe it is indeed me that is not adapting to the situation and instead am just using the same skills that I use otherwise. I was mainly using cyclone for multi-hit and heavy strike with single hit.

So, I changed around some stuff and ended up using shield charge supported with enderance charge on stun, leap slam supported with life on hit and then heavy strike for single target.
I have 75% to lightning resist, 1800 life and 60% damage reduction without endurance charges.
The first thing I noticed was that indeed when arc-mages come in a group of 3 or more, they can instantly reduce your life to almost zero. When that happened I shield charged or leap slammed away depending on the situation. I then regained my life and then tried to spot an arc mage at the end of the screen and used shield charge on her. If the shield charge did not kill her out right I used heavy strike to finish her and then used shield charge or leap slam to get out of the heat because as soon as you get shocked, from the other arc-mages, the black guards can cause quite some damage.

I continued through the level with this tactic and it did indeed work, even when there were 5 arc-mages in a group. I just had to make sure that I kept my head cool in all situations.

I cannot speak for everyone else but for me I have to conclude that it was my inability to adapt the situation that made the arc-mages seem too powerful rather than in imbalance in the game.

Here is my build:
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgQAAecFLRLhE0wUIBRxGlUa2Rv6IWAl3yb4ME8wdTB3Mgk26DrhQKBBqkZpR35N41BHU99Yr1jbYEthIWRSZKNlTWWnbPZuaXKpdO108XgNeu982YTZhO-HKYjxlZuXtJkrmsybLZuDnrmi6qQZplemz6cwqW6rxaxZrK-suq6TtfK9gb6nwA_Bo8qQ0EfSTeHa4mHvTvcy97746_6P

@CharanJaydemyr

Yes, you are right of course that the dilemma is where to draw the line. I think one thing that contributes to the fact the we may not feel like we should adapt to the arc-mages, can be that there aren't that many monsters before them that we have to drastically adapt to. The only ones I can think of is the poison archers together with a group melees, such as in act two, or the summoners in act 2. If there were more monsters in act 1 and 2 that we have to more drastically adapt to, we would maybe not feel so strange about adapting to the arc-mages. Just a thought.

I think we all, in a way, like the feeling of succeeding with something we thought was impossible. The arc-mages really delivered that feeling for me at least.

One thing that I forgot to mention about the arc-mages in my last post was that they indeed cast arc outside the screen, ie before you can see them. This is most apparent when you run downwards due to the camera perspective. This I feel could be tweaked, as it feels like they are cheating.

After having read Charan's posts, I'd like to add someting that actually bugs me about arc mages (apart from the ridiculous offscreen insta-shockstacking):

The WRONG kind of difficulty spike.

It's not one of those spikes that are manageable with the right strategy and adaptations that can be made on the spot: the uphill battle when you meet the necros (overcome by killing the culprit, plain dps superiority or detonate dead/ice), the "deadly" combos - titties+whippers (overcome by curse-flask or movement, either will do) or rhoas+vuln water-things in graveyard or flicker-dischargers and their kin in act3, or even the bog-standard voidbearers with LMP (that aren't even that frequent to start with).

It's different - you can have maxed light res, you can have the topaz flask, you can have the anti-shock flask, and you can have 3k HP/ES - and it's all pointless because you get insta-fried offscreen, you get shockstacked, and you also get stunned. And then the cavalry rushes in for the kill.

Or you get lucky and RUN the hell outta here with 10% hp left over, while drinking all sorts of flasks to patch yourself up. And then you don't know how to get close and not get killed.

While playing with the sort of build that can already solo-facetank merc piety or the general.

Now, if that's what happens to someone with a sound build and gear, what would happen to self-found blokes, or newbs, or poor ppl with no orbs to afford good gear?

A challenge should be a stumbling block, a hard climb, not a bloody unavoidable brick wall that you run into full-force.