What the hell is wrong with the Searing Exarch?

I killed the Eater of Worlds, so I moved on to the Searing Exarch, and for the life of me I just cannot figure out what is wrong with this fight.

I have capped Fire Resistance (Doesn't matter, he one shots you anyways no matter what)

And every time I fight him he bugs out, going into his Fireball wall phase (Great hitboxes by the way, nothing quite as fun as one shot instant death mechanics being tied to moving hitboxes with tiny little gaps to avoid it (Same issue with the pirate boss)

I die, whatever I go back in, he's swapped "Phases" again, and I go to attack him. I can't hurt him, his energy shield isn't moving, and then I just randomly blow up from full health to dead with no attack indication whatso ever, this repeats over and over again, until he decides to swap back to his fireball phase again.

What is even the point of having capped resistances if everyone bloody one shots you anyways?

I'm at 3.5k HP as a Juggernaut Maurader
I have Capped Resistances on every single Resistance type
90% Physical Damage Reduction
64% Base Evasion (goes up to 78% with Flasks)

I genuinely just simply do not understand what I am doing wrong with this Searing Exarch Fight.

Why does so many of the fights in this game seem to exist around suddenly ridiculously spikey elemental damage that the game itself actively gimps you constantly from being able to protect yourself against?

There's ways to deal with the balls, if u touch the degen it gets bad fast, so try not to walk on it.

If you don't have much damage it does get tough with lots of ball phases, will give some tips when I get a chance.



That's pretty low defenses for pinnacle bosses, or just in general. 3.5 life and baseline res. Also 90% PDR is an estimate, it won't be that much against large hits if you are using armour.

So you are probably going to have to get not hit in the ball phase. Some things you can do are stay close to maven. She destroys nearby balls which will give more paths to move around. Otherwise you can block the balls using various skills. Some examples are frost wall, totems and possibly some minions. If you arre getting one shot by the balls and your guard skill is on CWDT you might need to self cast instead. Flask might also help, ruby flask gives +5 max fire res, but I think u are mainly going to have to not get hit with that much life. It is generally a bit harder than the eater fight, particularly if you don't have damage. The main thing is not to touch the degen, it will disable your recharge.

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I can't hurt him, his energy shield isn't moving

He shouldn't have much energy shield, so if its a problem you probably need more dps for the fight. Unless of course you are running mods on the fight, in which case avoid energy shield on bosses, its one of the worst mods to have on low dps builds. The fight gets harder on the second half of his health, so if you are having trouble getting him half way it will be hard to complete.

Try to understand the fight. Watch some vids with instructions.

This fight was for me one of the taughtest (from the fights i experienced, and i still miss some endgame bosses). All that balls, moves, agility test. It was impossible for me. But i tried.

And thet i kille it for the very first time. With my 5 deaths but still.

And then i killed him with two deaths.

And recently i killed him with only one.

Thats is progress. Just be paitient ans persistetnt.

Yeah for sure, I found this fight very difficult to learn, particularly in HC. Though once you learn it it is pretty easy, very mechanical, and I also don't have the most precise mouse skill. You can try and cheese the ball phase by logging out, but it wont help without enough damage because you will run out of portals. If in SC and I do die, I wait until the balls have finish before respawning so you're not back in the middle of it.

With jugg if your endurance charges are up you might be ok, but are they up in ball phase? Are you using enduring cry? A lot of the damage in this fight is spell damage, so evasion my not be helping that much. If you have POB you can see how much damage the balls will do on the configuration tab by selecting 'exarch ball'. It's coming up as 17375 fire damage for me, so with 75 fire res you will need 4350 life and be on full health to tank a single ball. Less with endurance charges, POB will give you the exact number for you build.

I don't -Think- my damage is that low?

I mean, I'm not clearing T16 maps in under two minutes like some people.

My build is built around Cyclone of Tumult

Running:

Determination (Mana Reserve)
Grace (Mana Reserve)
Herald of Purity (Mana Reserve)
Herald of Ash (Health Reserve, only while just going through fodder, it gets turned off during hard fights)

I don't have any 6 link's yet. Still saving up Fusing orbs for that.

But right now it's:

Cyclone of Tumult (Lv 22, 20% quality) - Pulverise Support (Lv 22, 20% quality), Lifetap Support (Lv 20, 20% qual), Physical Damage Support (Lv 22, 20% quality), Fortify Support (Lv 22, 20% qual)

The on-sheet DPS for Cyclone of Tumult when it hits max speed says it does 248,500 dps. (Not counting Damage increase from Flasks, Blood Rage, Rage Bonuses from Axe Passives, Onslaught bonuses, for always being fortified and using the Perseverance belt)

Reason I'm using Evasion and Armor is I have a belt that gives me 1% Bonus Damage per 200 Evasion I have. (Perserverence is the Belt's name)

I'm trying to hit up being as tanky as possible while doing constant damage, and keeping myself alive through Life Leech.

When I can hit the boss, his health goes down fairly steadily, but I'm running into weird issues where after he does his Fireball phase, I'm still getting hit by invisible fireballs, he's in the middle of the arena attacking, but still unable to be harmed.

I don't know what causes this.. I don't feel like I'm doing -that- bad. I took down the Eater of World in two attempts, but 3 attempts into the Searing Exarch I still get this issue where I just am dying and can't seem to do anything about it. :(

As for Endurance Charges, I do have a way of keeping them up. While Fighting.

My gloves are the Ceaseless Feast, which is chewing away at defenses on enemies and giving me frenzy and Endurance charges (Basically always on) long as I can keep attacking. So they do fall off during the fireball phase, but I don't know how to stop that. There's nothing to hit.

Pirate boss has like the easiest gaps of all time don't dump exarch in with him

Defensively your issue is simply life is too low, 3.5k with capped regular resistance is well within the one shot threshold for any boss fire skill on a crit or with penetration and barely survives under regular circumstances. With those values you can probably take two balls max which isn't a great deal of leeway. If you stepped on some - max res runes in the previous phase they will 1 tap you.

I feel like you aren't understanding the phase either, when he teleports and the screen zooms out your only job is to survive the ball phase - the boss itself is invuln at this time. If you die or logout when you come back into the arena the mechanic repeats (because players used to just logout and come back in to skip it) until you succeed.

At that point you can resume the fight normally again. Exarch itself is a very easy fight the regular version at least 99% of the challenge is surviving ballorama.

Sadly i've not got any great tips for the ball phase aside from you can use skeletons and/or frostwall to blow the balls up before they get to you - its still a skill check though. Probably the best thing I can recommend is getting a molten shell with extra duration and turning it on the first time you make a mistake to give you margin to recover. And do your best not to get - maxres from standing on the fire runes.

Be patient with it the ball phase isn't that bad once you've practiced it a while.

Yep I agree with what the above post is saying. Can't see you profile, but you've given a good enough description. It sounds to me like your build is close to being able to do this but might still need some improvement. In particular, defenses might be ok, but life pool is low. At least low for not knowing the boss mechanics. This is an end game boss. Ubers are in the game now, but this boss was one of the hardest bosses only a handful of leagues ago. It's a harder fight than eater while learning the mechanics, mainly because of the ball phase being a dps check, if you cant dodge them.

Are your endurance charges up during the balls and the fight as a whole though? It wont help tanking the balls if the are only up during mapping. Your build sounds fine, but it's possible it runs into some challenges on this fight. Like I said in previous post, the balls probably do more damage to you than your full life pool. So you either need to learn to dodge them, throw down something to block them or get more health.

If all your regen is based off leech, this might also be contributing, becuase you are running it to problems when you can't attack, and I'm assuming this might be because you stop leeching.

You probably do have enough damage to do the fight on a 5 link, but these bosses weren't made to be done before you're geared out. Still im sure someone who knows the fight will be able to complete it using your current build. Not sure what level you are but I'm assuming there is still a fair bit of improvement in your build as well.

Have you done shaper? That might give you a good indication of where you build is at.

Try frost wall as well, it's very good while learning the ball patterns, can save you from being hit.

A big question I would like to know the answer to is what damage type you're using. If it's straight up physical damage then it's fine, but if you convert it to any element, you need some penetration.
All endgame bosses got a rather significant amount of elemental and chaos resistance after all.

if he says "Incineration!" run to the edge of the map that's his big blast.


if the ball phase comes and you cant handle it just die and sit dont respawn wait for him to finish the ball phase then respawn and go back in.

Yep, as above, this is what I meant in first post but didn't explain it properly talking about cheesing.

The corner is immunity from the Incinetarion I'm pretty sure (Possibly edge too?). I've had it where I was pretty close to him inside radius and though I would die, but didn't because in the corner. (EDIT: Just died while in corner on uber exacrh when he was right next to me, so this is probably incorrect, there must be at least a certain radius that you have to be away from him)

Do not under estimate the degen. I know I said that before but it is the most dangerous thing because of loosing regen, especially once you get to the point you can tank a ball. Sometimes you can die to balls but it's actually because you walked on the degen and couldn't heal.