Got insta-killed by Act 2 boss on normal... ten times...

So here's the deal: I'm playing a ranger with a bow on normal, act 2. Up until now I've loved it, though if I had to complain about something, it's that it's too easy. I one-shot most normal enemies, and a few lightning arrows and burning arrows clears out rooms quickly. But hey, it's just Normal, right? No biggie. There's still Cruel and Mercyless afterwarsd.

Then I reached the Act 2 boss... oh, dear. While I did manage to kill it eventually, I kept getting instakilled over and over by it. It had a pattern to it's attacks at first that was easy enough to dodge once I figured it out, but then it suddenly changed the pattern into something random. The mobs weren't that bad, but if the boss hit me even once, I died.

When I reached act 3, I noticed the enemy level there were lvl 26, yet I was lvl 29 at the time. That measn I was at least three levels higher than intended when I fought the Act 2 boss, and yet insta-kill. Or one-shot, if you want. Is this normal? I do love a challenging boss, but I need it to be fair. Having a boss with tons of HP and attacks that one-shot me isn't fun. It all came down to the portal scrolls. Enough portal scrolls, and I would kill it by being persistant. If I ran out of portal scrolls, I would have to grind up more and try again. Where's the fun in that?

Well I did the Boss with my Marauder, Witch and Ranger. Non of them really had a problem since the pattern is extremly easy to understand an normally shouldnt take longer than a few seconds.
Indeed getting oneshottet CAN happen ... but only if you missed the pattern OR didnt take care of your resistances (or better defensives in a whole concept) at all.

But this is the part of learning how the game mechanics work. You will encounter some enemies that will kill you on first sight or maybe maybe will kill you several times because you underestimated them. But there NEVER is a situation which you cant handle by skill and knowledge of game mechanics.
Otherwise there wouldnt be any rangers/ranges in hardcore ladder.

Maybe try reworking ur character concept. Here an advice ... never let ur resistances drop far below maximum AND do not underestimate chaos damage as it will be a killer in later parts of the game.

One possible reason for this is that you have not invested any points into life nodes in passive skill tree. It is easily possible to skip defense at start but by level 25 you should invest into some life increasing nodes.
I believe his big attack is lightning-based, therefore, modest amount of lightning resist (on ring probably) would be helpful as well.

Don´t go glass canon. You have to stack Life / Resistances.

When i, a Melee, killed Vaal on Merciless, i had 2,4k life, 40 % dmg-red. with Armour (55 % with 3 Endurance Charges, low, i know...) and 80 % Lightning Resists. His Beam reduced my Life by around 75 %. BUT! It´s ok. If i get hit once, i made a failure. If i get hit twice, i deserve to die. Same goes with his big Hammer-Smash. It´s easy to avoid, but it kills me instantly.

Especially a ranged Charakter should have it much easier to avoid his attacks.

Rangers are too squishy. You will continue being one-shotted throughout the entire game. Just a heads up.

Well, put it this way: I one-shot pretty much everything up until this boss, and other bosses (Mervill included) was pushovers. Then when I found this boss, I got one-shot all the time. But since I didn't have any challenge up until now, how was I supposed to know what to focus on? When I get one-shot by a boss, I don't think "you should have put points in this or that five hours ago" is a decent explanation. I should have gotten in trouble long before this, then been forced to consider what to put points in.

I did beat this boss, yes. And now I know what to focus on from now on, so it's not too late. I just think going from one-shotting everything to being one-shotted the next second is unfair. Especially as I continued well into Act 3, and so far everything has been pushovers again. Doesn't that make it seem like the difficulty spike is a bit too high on that boss?

Oversoul is a defense check, which you are failing. It *is* possible to kill it without taking any damage, but usually you'll get hit by something (ranged adds or rocks). It sounds like you have no health. Get more from gear (coral rings, leather belt, +HP mods on as many slots as you can) and passives (+% health).

You're still on normal, so it's not a big deal right now because there are no penalties to death. At the higher difficulties, not only will all the content be much harder, but you'll start losing XP on death. Dying is the game's way of telling you to fix your build/gear.

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Smasherface wrote:

Rangers are too squishy. You will continue being one-shotted throughout the entire game. Just a heads up.

This isn't true, your class doesn't represent your build by any great margin, apart from maybe the two int classes, you can get a great amount of hp without too much effort. By the time I did vaal normal i had easily about 800-1000hp.

Depending on your build rangers can be very tanky, I was able to nearly face tank brutus last night on merciless hardcore, only had to port once. I suggest taking all available life nodes.

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Aggnog wrote:

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Smasherface wrote:

Rangers are too squishy. You will continue being one-shotted throughout the entire game. Just a heads up.

This isn't true, your class doesn't represent your build by any great margin, apart from maybe the two int classes, you can get a great amount of hp without too much effort. By the time I did vaal normal i had easily about 800-1000hp.

Yep, I play shadow and have tons of HP, you just have to go get them. I also haven't died once since OB came out. I play HC.

Vaal is easy, the only things to watch out for are the rocks, because those can't be dodged easily.

Here is a video guide Kripp made. It explains the fight in detail.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e2JoS2nXDw