Act 2 Boss

Just burned all 13 portal scrolls dying to the Act 2 boss as an archer. I have life on every piece of gear and 5 passives for life...totaling 1312 life. 43% lighting resist on ruthless.

One shot every time by lightning. If he missed the first shot I could keep moving and dodge it. But the first shot fired so far normally I was just one shot.

Meanwhile while trying to keep range rocks kept falling, stunning, and 3 shotting me.

Very not fun guys. I ran out of portal scrolls and found myself at the bottom of the pyramid again.

Now I know why everyone rolls a life regn marauder or CI sorceress. You need to seriously give some survival to other classes.

How about giving us bow users a one handed bow (crossbow) so we can use a shield for tought fights like that?

Try using temporal chains.
Makes it way easier to dodge his attacks.
Amazing curse for brutus and vaal.

How would being CI help against lightning?

"

SL4Y3R wrote:

How would being CI help against lightning?

I guess he meant the +50% ES part.

I had 1300 health when i was fightning Vaal as a full evasion Shadow on Merciless...

You must be doing something wrong. Really.

As a ranger you dont stand still longer than to fire 1-3 shots. keep moving, use suport skills like lesser multi projectiles so that u dont need to realy aim at it. Like others said lay down a decoy totem for the adds..just keep moving and shooting. The main advantage of ranged on vaal is you never see the mighty hammer blow of DOOOMMMM well u shouldnt lol

I have also been posting about the Oversoul (end-end boss) recently, but I have just been looking for information, I always assume it must be me doing something wrong first off.

However, from researching for my post and then seeing this one it does occur to me that this topic is one that will be a mainstay in the Forums for eternity as it stands.

Firstly, it appears some people have mastered how to deal with this foe and know exactly what's required. However, I suspect these people might get sick of typing the same information to similar threads over the years and develop an 'oh, ffs, figure it out for yourself' mentality (something which I am glad to say hasn't happened yet).

Secondly, the end-end boss does indeed need to be as hard as 'possible' so that players really do get that epic feeling of victory and reward for grind and character choices (as long as they aren't too off the wall?).

Speaking now directly to the devs (but am happy to hear people's views on the following) I retell a story from an old CRPG:

Icewind Dale is a lesser known Isometric RPG classic which was around at the same time as Balder's Gate. It is still played and loved by enthusiasts to this day, much as Balder's Gate is, even without it having any online group play appeal.

It's as close as you can get to a pre-MMO ARPG as it's possible to get and the primary hook is improving equipment rather than getting all one's bonuses from levelling up (this is because it was based around a Dungeons and Dragons Ruleset which demanded this).

Equipment was rare. Very rare. And even the slightest improvement gave huge emotional happiness. Also, with regular mages, spells had to be 'found' (or bought) rather than 'given' and then the mage would decide for themselves which to combo and use when, etc.

An MMO could never compete with this game for variety and depth of character choices, but the idea was still the same - find the best way to take down mobs.

Now, about the Oversoul:

At the end of one of the chapters was an End Boss. An incredibly difficult End Boss. Really, quite astoundingly difficult End Boss.

She had magic. She had huge resistances. She had lots and lots of minions, she had traps, she was exceptional at melee and she had a fair amount of life to boot.

Some people did KNOW how to beat her. But the 'majority' found the imbalance to be really quite unbearable. A game-killer. Yes, you could run away and come back, but it didn't help much. Yes, you could try various spells and skills, but other than speed/haste, not much had that much impact.

What had happened was that the devs had made her immune to all non-magical weapons. A magical weapon in this game was a sword +1, +2, +3 etc. And not only was she immune to non-magical weapons, she was also immune to all magical weapons up to +2. And at no point would the player be aware of this. Pretty much the only way to find one of these items was to buy one from a vendor by this point in the game.

Eventually the 'hardcore' had to bite the bullet and she was reduced so that she was hittable with +2 weapons. And as simple as that the End Boss was suddenly perfectly balanced. N00bs and fools would have a nightmare, average players got a good challenge and the 'hardcores' could still feel superior in being able to cream her with careful use of tactics, equipment and skill combos.

I feel the same situation is emerging with the Overlord. I think a very minor tweak is required to 'purfect' this game challenge. My feeling is:

Firstly, Put it in an area where the player can retreat and recuperate easier, at least give them a chance at 'quick thinking' to rejiggle their inventory and skills before the bad guy 'catches up' with them.

Secondly, Reduce the impact of the One-Hit-kill to perhaps 75% so that the player feels genuinely threatened, but does have the necessary couple of seconds to regain health, mostly so that the player can actually have some real time observing the Oversoul's routines before they decide what to do.

I understand that everyone will have different life quantities and different resistances, so exactly judging what is 75% will be hard, but I suspect the 'majority' of players will likely go into this battle with not much more than what they needed for all the other parts of the game. I suppose you could work out from seeing lots of builds what a mean average is.

I hope this makes sense :)

You should always max ligning res vs Vaal - as you said you have to survive the first hit.

Get some instant recovery life flask too, they help in case you get hit by rocks/laser.

You can also get a Skele-totem (Summon skelets skill + spell support totem) to keep him busy - works really well against bosses.

In my opinion as hp archer it's quite easy vs vaal as high mobility helps alot to avoid projectiles.

As a marauder you usually need melee range and vaal hits really hard - not really that much easier. CI witch is really hard against Vaal as you have no life flasks and your shield only regenerates if you didnt't take damage for some time - if your unlucky you get hit by 4 or more stones.

You need to improve your light res. 43% is really low for Ruthless Vaal.

You could use enfeeble / temporal chains for this particular battle.

My 2 cents

"

Never_nou wrote:

I feel the same situation is emerging with the Overlord. I think a very minor tweak is required to 'purfect' this game challenge. My feeling is:

Firstly, Put it in an area where the player can retreat and recuperate easier, at least give them a chance at 'quick thinking' to rejiggle their inventory and skills before the bad guy 'catches up' with them.

Secondly, Reduce the impact of the One-Hit-kill to perhaps 75% so that the player feels genuinely threatened, but does have the necessary couple of seconds to regain health, mostly so that the player can actually have some real time observing the Oversoul's routines before they decide what to do.

I understand that everyone will have different life quantities and different resistances, so exactly judging what is 75% will be hard, but I suspect the 'majority' of players will likely go into this battle with not much more than what they needed for all the other parts of the game. I suppose you could work out from seeing lots of builds what a mean average is.

I hope this makes sense :)

A good way to retreat is to have a portal open in the lower corner of where the entrance is. This is good to just run and jump in it in case things are going as planned lol. I am a duelist, so getting really close to hit him was/is a big challenge. I didn't find a problem with just running around catching my breath, so to speak.

Your thoughts on Vaal's damage is a topic that always comes up. In patch 0.9.12k, they did lower the damage from his attacks and made changes to his lighting and club of death.

"Reduced the damage that the Vaal Oversoul's laser attack does.

Changed the Vaal Oversoul's slam attack to be half physical damage (it was entirely fire damage before). Reduced its overall damage by around 10%."

In Merciless, I am usallu around lvl 61-63 before I try and take out Vaal. This gives me a good amount of time to get better gear, get those resists up.

Hope some of this info helps!