Blackguard Arcmages in the Barracks.

Hey all.

It seems to me that playing on Cruel at level 52 as a Shadow against Blackguard Arcmages is imbalanced. Anyone of these potential problems alone would be frustrating, but put them all together and it becomes tedious and unnecessarily punitive:

1) Blackguard Arcmages can shoot you from off of the screen at a resolution of 1920x1080.
2) Blackguard Arcmages can 2 shot me.
3) Blackguard Arcmages can as the name implies arc and as such can hit me even farther if I lay a totem down to try to draw mob out from off screen.
4) Blackguard Arcmages often appear in groups of 2-3.
5) Shock effects can stack 3 times increasing damage up to 90%
6) They appear to buff the Soldiers and Elites with a Lightning Shield.

Combine this with the death penalty on experience and I just lost all of the experience I had gained towards level 53 and now sit at 0% experience after a long gaming session.

Actually the main thing that really should be changed in my opinion is that they can shoot from off screen, which leads me to die frequently just as they appear on the edge of the screen.

Part of the problem is that I specialized in claws so closing distance rapidly isn't an option with the jump melee gem, and lightning warp is too slow. Maybe there are other options?

Of course I am using lightning resistance and healing flasks, and use cover as I can (usually after resurrecting as I now know where the little bugger is off-screen), but I have more problems with getting killed by off-screen Arcmages than any of the Bosses (except of course for the Blackguard Arcmage Boss).

Once I close ground it is a simple task to dispatch them, but repeatedly seeing a lightning bolt fry me from off-screen and eliminating all of my experience gains from the evening is not enjoyable.

That's my feedback at least, as for the rest of the game, great job guys! :)

Dealing with them in a tactical manner can be difficult, but is neccesary in the barracks. The Blackguard Soldiers act as meanshields while the arc mages actually take care of the person they are fighting. Your best bet is to retreat when they show up, and when they chase you immediately run towards them. This causes them to get the least amount of time to attack and allows you to dispatch them quiickly.

This is why I just skip past all the content I can in this level. You can just get the waypoints you need from friends/pubs usually, and the one boss guy is easy to kill if you have a bit of movement speed and just avoid combat.

@Epicly_Curious -

I appreciate that advice, and certainly put it to good use on the Normal difficulty, but the problem is that on Cruel they drop me to below half life before I even know they are in the vicinity, so running towards them is suicidal, especially if there is more than one.

I realize it is called Cruel for a reason, but they are functionally invisible instakillers as I am dead just as they appear on the edge of my screen.

If were possible to see them enter the screen and then cast I could employ tactics other than running back and forth at the edges of the screen waiting to be hit and run away downing a health flask.

No other mob presents such a problem to me. Alternatively if there was a rapid ground closing gem that could be utilized with claws, at least there would be a possibility for a fair fight.

Thanks for the reply!

Yeah the Boss is easier for me than the Arcmages, which it is commonplace to be instantly killed by 2 of them without even seeing their representations on the screen.

I'd presume that if you are getting killed in two blows, you lack survivability, and either need more HP, or more lightning resistance. Unfortunately this game does not promote "glass cannon" play all too much; which is a bit disheartening since I prefer to glass it out.

The arcmages are a very clear "gear check" - if you don't have the correct gear, with enough lightning resist and life, you're not going to get past that area. How much life and lightning resist do you have? And what's your build? Leap Slam, Flicker Strike, and a few other attacks are great at clearing ground.

You're severely lacking in resists and HP it seems.

On my Ice Shot Ranger on Cruel I avoided most of their stuff due to spell-dodge but even if they did hit me they'd only do about 10% of my HP per hit or less.

Had around 65% Lightning Resist and 2k HP at that point (or around that). But I'm on HC so I'm kinda of stacking a lot of defensive stats as it i.

Honestly, if anything non-blue, non-elite or non-boss is hitting your for 1/3 of your HP or more you're doing it wrong, regardless of HC or SC :P Be it Normal, Cruel or Merc.

You can use running speed and obstacles(carts) to circumvent them, or to separate soldiers from mages. Crema Piety can also be done in this way(use pillars to avoid her lightning hit).

I had a similar problem when first getting there. I prepared mainly for Cold and Fire, since there is very few unavoidable lightning-damage in the game. But I quickly noticed that you don't want to have less than 75% lightning-resist in that area. Depending on the build the over solution is to use Ice Spear or a Bow and off-screen them. Ice Spear is exspecially useful since it does a lot of damage even without being properly specced by using a two spell-damage wands just for this purpose (or if you have a good dagger), since it gets +600% Critchance at long range anyway, which normally freezes the mages, since they have low HP.

And at least for me Arc is no off-screen cast. It reaches that far, but they only target me on screen, but even if I run away Arc still hits.

Exspecially Cruel is often problematic for further CI-Chars. Most people lack the ES to go CI directly but still don't want to invest into Life-Nodes in SC.