that’s one of the many frustrations in the game. Bosses really don’t seem to drop anything differently than normal kills. Bit anti-climatic.
Bateau
1542
The game’s a lot like D2 in that regard. Bosses have IIQ and IIR compared to the mooks but that’s not a guarantee of a unique or even a good item. Sometimes the RNGesus smiles on you but most of the time he gives you the middle finger.
Merc dominus is a fairly common farm, and people group up for that - 6 people runners run to him in different instances, one of them being a culler (something with culling strike) with high magic find/quantity to insta kill at 10% health (or was it 5%?). Quickly dump loot into stash, then pile into the next instance.
I got my first toon past normal Dominus! Yeah, it’s no big deal but since my last toon died so unexpectedly I’m happy about it. The first time I fought Dom, I had no idea what was going on, and I suspect I died to the bleed effect. So I decided to watch a youtube video of the fight. Once I understood what was going on, it wasn’t that bad (even though as a summoner you really can’t pull the initial champions out one by one, as the video suggests. At least I’m not that good!). On to act 4, which is also new to me.
Congrats, Charlatan! Understanding the fights really makes a big difference in PoR boss fights…except second stage Malachai, which has so much crap going on that knowing what it is still won’t help you avoid it.
In other news, patch 2.0.1 is out. Including this little gem:
WARNING: The final encounter in the end-game Core Map is extremely difficult. Players in the Tempest league should expect to lose their characters. This is intended to be the hardest content we have ever created in order to challenge top builds.
Good thing I’m not good enough to have to worry about it, then. :)
The first time I fought normal Dominus my Ranger beat him but died in Act I Cruel I think. Second time my Scion whupped him and is still alive. In both cases, I played it very cautiously, especially with the Ranger. That was tedious. With the Duelist I was stupid, but won anyhow. I bulled in there and actually took on the champs en masse then simply went toe to toe with the big guy. Probably not the most sophisticated approach. With enough life leech, life on hit, Fortify on hit, and Enduring Cry/Warlord’s Mark, and a ton of shield/block/defense passives, it actually worked in normal. I’m going to have to retool for Cruel though if I get that far.
The only thing I find terribly scary in the Dominus fight any more is the blood rain. His big chargeup attack is scary, I suppose, but so easy to dodge.
But yeah, totally died a bunch of times on him until I figured out the blood rain mechanic. I was pretty pissed off; for whatever reason I just could not figure it out.
…and dead at 37, Act IV normal, in the Mines, level 2. A pack of blues with the pink uber-suffixes. One second I was at full health, leeching away with Cyclone, the next…“Resurrect in town.” Heh.
In the old days, one of my very first characters was a Witch that specialized in wands. In the original Passive Skill Tree, that wasn’t this hard to get to. Now the wand nodes are all pretty far away from where the Witch starts. So the fastest way there is to go through Intelligence nodes. That’s okay. Tons of great RPGs like Fallout and others have taught me that more intelligence makes for the best dialog choices in the game! If this Witch survives, she’s going to be the smartest lady in Wraeclast!
I’m hoping I can defeat the bosses without the need for combat.
Most will duel you in a battle of wits, like Vizini.*
*Not really.
Unfortunately, playing as this Witch hasn’t been much fun. I’m always barely surviving by the skin of my teeth. And in theory that sounds like fun, but oh my god, I just want to get to the part where I can start kicking ass. Maybe I should play around with Cold powers instead of Fire and Lightning and Minions, all of which I’m dabbling in while my wand powers are super weak.
In theory, it should be a fun build, like it was in the beta, even if the passive skill tree is completely different now. But last time I had a ton of fun with the build, since I could start progressing towards it right away.
I pulled up that old Witch of mine to see if she could even pull off the same character with the new Skill tree.
(For those that don’t play Path of Exile yet, when your hardcore character dies in PoE, they get switched over to the Standard league. So even though they’re dead, you can still take a look at them and play them in standard if you’re so inclined. That’s got to be one of the best implementation of a hardcore system I’ve ever seen. It just doesn’t feel that harsh. Even though I’ve never actually played a dead character, it just makes a mental difference knowing that I could if I was motivated to do so).
It turns out most of her advantage is from her equipment. Nearly every piece of equipment from her wand to her rings to her shield to her gloves, necklace, shoes, hat; nearly everything of hers adds physical damage to her attacks. That’s why her wand attack is so freakin’ powerful even before you get into enhancing it through skill tree nodes. I played her for a few minutes. Holy shit! She is a mean wrecking machine. Destroying entire groups easily with her Cold Spear and her Siphon main attack and her freezing pulse.
I haven’t really looked at Wand stuff much, but I do know a bit about low level Witches. I’ve always had good results with Fire Trap and Summon Raging Spirit very early on, and then Summon Skeletons (with Spell Totem as soon as that’s feasible) after you get past Brutus. Those should work nicely well into Act 2, even if you aren’t doing any other minion stuff, and by then hopefully you’re into the area of the tree that you need for your real build.
In other news, I’m not ready to start another Sarah just yet, so I started up a Warbands shadow using Freezing Pulse and Ice Nova. Not a high-power build by any means, especially since you can’t “shotgun” with multiple projectiles on FP any more (that’s hitting the same guy multiple time with a single cast). I’ve picked up a decent amount of crit chance and cast speed, so stuff gets slowed all the time and usually frozen. He’s doing surprisingly well in early Act 4 normal, after making it past Dominus with only moderate difficulty. Herald of Thunder has made a huge difference since picking it up in early Act 2. Doing both cold and lightning damage with a reasonably high crit chance is great. He’ll probably hit a wall mid-Cruel (unless Malachai is so annoying that I give up earlier), but for now he’s a lot of fun.
My Lazy Templar has his level 43 but I’m afraid to fight Malachi. I watched a video of the fight and it seems so hard! Oh well, you only live (in hardcore) once I guess.
Malachai’s been nerfed pretty hard so depending on when the video you watched was made it might not be that tough now.
As long as you’ve got some defenses and don’t get hit by his telegraphed massive attack nothing else hits that hard; throw up a portal right away and run back if you need to refresh, especially your instant pots and he dies fairly easily. He does still have a ton of hp though so it takes some time, especially if you’re melee. It might be much tougher as an energy shield character which is what I’m leveling right now; I’m worried I won’t be able to get enough downtime to recharge, we’ll see.
I’m deep in alt-itis right now, with a 20 summoning witch (effective enough, but, um, boring), a 17-ish Scion (trying to be a samurai with two-handed sword and bow), and a 15-ish bowazon Ranger (fun but not sure about scalability) in A2N, with a dual-wielding Shadow, a two-handed club Marauder, and a mace-swinging Templar mucking about in A1N. None of them is quite right though. The Ranger is the most fun but my previous attempts at rangers topped out in the forties before dying; they tend to lack toe-toe-ability when totems don’t distract enough. BTW, I’ve found that a flame totem is a sort of budget decoy totem. It seems its damage taunts mobs, if not as much as a real decoy.
I want to do a pure spell-casting Witch one of these days, maybe using a staff so I can be like a D&D wizard! But my Witches tend to die a lot.
My summoner was kinda mediocre until…30? At some point the build starts putting down the accelerator and shit gets done. Getting through A4N was a pain (when is it not?) but I motored all the way through Cruel yesterday and laughed the whole way. Bob is totally right that at some point your minions just kinda stop dying, and you can focus on curses/Flesh Offering/skeletotem/staying alive and the whole thing just works.
Cruel Dominus was hilarious. I might have gotten hit once?
KevinC
1558
Witches end up in ditches.
fdsaion
1559
If you’re playing with spells, do not dabble. Unlike with weapons, which are mostly interchangable early on before specialization, and you can easily swap in a higher DPS axe for a claw or something, spells scale solely off of their level. Which means swapping around and using low level spells will make you suck. Oh and not all spells are good, and not all spells are good early, so there’s that too =p
The way to go with spellcasters is to use the vendor crafting recipes to get an early +1 to Fire/Cold/Lightning skill weapon and ride that pretty much until you need a 4 link or more for your attack, which likely doesn’t happen until late cruel or early merciless.
A lot of people apparently run spellcasters as their first character in a league specifically because of this weapon independence.
Bit of a build question –
I’ve been feeling like Culling + Rarity on my skeletotem isn’t really the best option, since the skellies don’t hit everything as much as my spirits/zombies/spectres do. Am I missing something, or is it more of a “well, skellies do fuckall damage anyway, may as well give them Culling so they occasionally actually do shit” kind of thing?
Currently running:
Skeletons+Totem+Rarity+Culling
Zombies+Spectres+MinionDmg+LMP
Spirits+Echo+Multistrike+MinionDmg
various and sundry utility type things and also the Chaos Golem who is the bossiest boss in bosstown.
