Act 2 Boss

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we want this game to be hard and a challange
...winers go play D3 TL2

While this might be your stock reply to anyone saying anything about anything with regard to battle balance, please do remember this is a BETA forum, and any points raised in these forums will come in multiples of hundreds once the game goes Open BETA. I feel sure even you will tire of repeating this mantra to hundreds of threads.

Think about your health, just imagine the Repetitive Strain Injury, the weeks out of work, the jokes from your nearest and dearest about having a wrist in bandage...

But seriously, and I have noticed this a lot in 'unpolished' RPGs, confusing the concept of 'hard' with the concept of 'easy XP farming levels followed by a one-hit-kill End Boss' does not, actually equate to 'hard', it equates to 'making the player laugh out loud at the stupidity of someone else's concept of hard'.

I'm not going to repeat what other people have said who think this End-End boss needs tweaking as I think every one of them (obviously including myself) has made excellent and valid points on the subject and they are already there to be read, but it should be really, really, really obvious that forcing someone to go through four mentally/physically (but not hard) gruelling levels of basically XP farming, without a single waypoint, only to them dump them infront of a confusing and cumbersome one-hit-kill Boss which requires skills that no other aspect of the game has prepared you for is, really quite obviously, 'a little bit strange'.

The encounter is fine as is.

I've done it on both a bow-using ranger and a lightning strike templar.

Currently working through Cruel on the templar.

Folks should learn to have situational awareness and max their resists. Please don't listen to the whiners and nerf the encounter.

I did it on hardcore/ruthless with 1k life and acrobatics (1 rock takes ~900 hp) using a melee ranger.

I am not trying to show off I just want to point out that you need to prepare for the encounter, like you cannot just go straight through act2 get to the boss and expect to kill him.

This is what you need in your case
* More life, I would say over 1.5k is pretty easy to have
* 65+ lightning resistance (if hardcore 75)
* Some armor if you want to survive the falling rocks without dodging everyone of them (yes you tell where they will land)
* Leap slam, whirling blades or good run speed boots
* As others have pointed out you need to see him all the time, so you know what attack hes going for
* Temporal chains will make everything much easier

If all else fails practice in lower difficulties and learn to dodge everything.

I usually start to plan and prepare for Vaal right when I enter Act II in every difficulty.

I've got a crazy idea on how to make the fight with act2 boss less infuriating ; Add a meaningfull animation before unleashing the bolt!

Or offer glasses ?

This is why I think the defense system in this game is so broken. With my summoner witch, I can run through all bosses without getting hit once. I've killed Normal and Cruel Vaal without even getting touched. Literally. Bit more trouble on Ruthless, but still didn't even die.

It is debatable, but Shadow is the weakest class in survivability.

I just completed Vaal Ruth on my HC Shadow and it was simple.

Vaal Is REALLY easy once you know how he fights...
- MAX YOUR RESISTS : 75% Fire + 75% Lightning

- Dodge his fucking attacks : They're SO EASY to dodge, the lasers the first one can be hard to dodge, but after that its fucking simple to strafe for 5 seocnds and make him miss. And his huge mallet attack? If you get hit by that you're either melee or retarded.

Thats all it takes, I've gotten every class to end game, and have never had any real trouble with vaal.

Movement is key, especially in your case as ranger, your dps isn't enough to straight up out gun him so you need to shoot then run, then shoot etc.

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tinghshi wrote:

This is why I think the defense system in this game is so broken. With my summoner witch, I can run through all bosses without getting hit once. I've killed Normal and Cruel Vaal without even getting touched. Literally. Bit more trouble on Ruthless, but still didn't even die.

Why would the defence system be broken when you didn't die when playing one of the easiest builds in the game. No idea how you even made that connection - you arrive at the boss with an army of zombies and skeletons and they soak up all the hits from him and his minions and somehow the defence system is broken, logic at its finest. :)

Vaal fight is fine, it feels like people just do one round against him and come to the forum to complain. You don't really need max resist to kill him, you don't need ridiculously powerful gear also, you just need to understand all the mechanics of the fight and control your character accordingly - and that last thing just takes a few tries. I can sit here and tell you how enfeeble/temporal chains/decoy totem/minions/etc.. make that fight a joke, but there is no real replacement for just practising the game a bit more.

Just learn the patterns like any boss to any RPG, I can kill him on any character without being hit by the lightning once... especially as a ranged character.