Act 4 Normal Sucks and Is Way Too Hard

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Kreaper_669 wrote:

i really hope ggg will not listen to whiners in here. im going fully self found, hardly caping my resistances and struggling with damage output and yet the only encounter i sometimes have trouble with its maligaro since my current char is dual wielding/evasion acro/frost blades and he really likes to cast that desecrate under you. besides that evan mala is ok on normal and cruel. the only thing that hurts are slugs he throws.

mark my words: after one month people will be farming harvest merci in softcore without any further nerfs

Fix'd

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scabre89 wrote:

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Kreaper_669 wrote:

i really hope ggg will not listen to whiners in here. im going fully self found, hardly caping my resistances and struggling with damage output and yet the only encounter i sometimes have trouble with its maligaro since my current char is dual wielding/evasion acro/frost blades and he really likes to cast that desecrate under you. besides that evan mala is ok on normal and cruel. the only thing that hurts are slugs he throws.

mark my words: after one month people will be farming harvest merci in softcore and hardcore with flametotems without any further nerfs

Fix'd

nah, those fights are mechanical. if people cant figure out that you have to stay close to piety in order not to get hit by that beam... well thats that. or just put temp chains on her like i do and then burst her down by barely having to move - problem solved. mala can be perfectly killed by using whirling blades only (thats how i killed those three hearts - just spammed it lol).

as i said, people will find solutions to what they are struggling with now.

regardless of difficulty - why farm him at all?

for currency/alts - there are better (shorter) runs. for drops - low level maps are probably both easier to do and less annoying (or Domino). for exp - low/mid level maps

ggg made this fight so 'hardcore' that 'market' voted with their wallets (time) and farms elsewhere

hardcore game is in fact trading sim and in such game malachai farming needs some 'incentive' to be attractive. currently there is only the challenge part and that sells for wisdom scrolls

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sidtherat wrote:

regardless of difficulty - why farm him at all?

for currency/alts - there are better (shorter) runs. for drops - low level maps are probably both easier to do and less annoying (or Domino). for exp - low/mid level maps

ggg made this fight so 'hardcore' that 'market' voted with their wallets (time) and farms elsewhere

hardcore game is in fact trading sim and in such game malachai farming needs some 'incentive' to be attractive. currently there is only the challenge part and that sells for wisdom scrolls

same reason why people were farming dominus - he was lvl 71 so 5 levels highier than minimum map and some mfers were farming him hard. besides, belly and harvest drop div cards for exalts so thats an additional incentive for those who have high iiq

Just got through Act 4 Normal for the first time, playing a 1H Static Strike Templar. Figured this was an okay place to put this.

The Malachai fight was a lot of fun, felt pretty well tuned for my character. Second stage was crazy, but in a good way; I'm glad to see POE get a somewhat over-the-top bossfight rather than more "you in a big circular room with one monster". Became more visually manageable when I realised the added monsters didn't seem dangerous, more just pot-fillers. Obviously that may differ if you're using a more fragile character or a skill that doesn't just hit everything around you at once.

But being able to handle Malachai was a big surprise after the trio of sub-bosses before him. I didn't die to Malachai. I did die to each of Shavronne, Maligaro and Doedre. Not as much once I started to just portal out to refill pots, at least - that was probably the main difference between them and Malachai for me, Malachai spawned monsters, so I could sustain myself.

Doedre seems like it could be a pretty neat fight...for a ranged character. The curse circles are a nice gimmick, at least. But as melee it was really boring; I felt like it was pretty much a toss-up whether I'd be able to dodge her projectile lobs at close range, and her normal melee obviously comes out pretty quick, so it was just a dumb slugfest where I'd eat some hits, run away, eat some more hits and portal out to refill, or eat some hits and get caught in a projectile blast and die. I had some ES and a little HP regen, so it's the kind of fight that I probably could have done safely, but it'd have taken forever so bleh.

Maligaro was kind of the same - it felt like there might have been more to understand, and it'll probably improve as I do the fight more (and read the wiki as it updates) but in this initial encounter I didn't really get a handle on what I was supposed to be doing, so I didn't enjoy the fight at all. He was dropping some Desecrate type thing under my feet, okay, I've dealt with that before with other monsters (Catarina quests come to mind) but they've usually had a good few seconds' cooldown - there didn't seem much point dodging Maligaro's one because he'd just make a new one right away. Just had to get out before he blew them all up. Fight just felt like a huge gear-check for, I guess, chaos resist?

Shavronne was pretty good! Best of the three by far. Tendrils was the only thing I couldn't reliably dodge, so I did okay. Really like the whole design of her projectiles, they felt forceful, and they were fast and plentiful enough to be rewarding to dodge without the burst going on so long as to be draining.

Doedre and Shavronne felt like they had too much HP for normal, but I don't make any real judgement on that at this point, especially because it's also possible my weapon just wasn't up to date.

A less mechanical comment is that all the clean circular boss arenas are a turn-off. Compared to the earlier fights (eg Merveil in the cave with a pool, a raised section etc), all these later arenas start to feel incredibly artificial. I'm not a rabid anti-D3 guy but this is something I didn't appreciate about D3 either. It breaks your world design efforts by making the whole thing feel very "gamey". (This was my first time noticing you've shrunk Piety's arena in Lunaris too - I'm not against that change on its own but it does nonetheless contribute to this pattern)

I think only the fencer (boss in arena), Piety and Malachai are too hard. It's almost impossible to not die on Malachai fight unless you:
a) Overleveled
b) Or have hand-me-down OP yellows/uniques from previous characters
Piety takes some practice and it's possible to not die on this fight, but it's still too hard compared to bosses from rest of the game. Definitely not an encouraging fight for new players. I'm betting lots of brand new players just gave up somewhere in act 4. This game isn't exactly friendly to newcomers anyways since drops are absolutely atrocious, the worst I've seen in any dungeon crawler, and most people don't even know poe.trade exists.

I laughed, to be honest.

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Derpey wrote:

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silumit wrote:

Dialla gives you a map. In Highgate.

Let me guess.. Another Lv 68 Map? WAOW! Thanks GGG!
Do they even play their own fucking game? You get them dropped by just walking through the game in Merciless.

But... b-but... this is a yellow map, dude! YELLOW!

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azoriuss wrote:

Theres audio warning when he do that. Theres visual warning when he do that and you have enough time to escape. Its very simple. If he goes underground to slam-teleport just dont stop moving. Profit.

Nah, no profit. Fought him several times and two times he just instantly portslammed me. Didn't die thanks to lucky blocks but there was literally NO time to react. And no, that wasn't lag spikes.

Well, I'm just going to share my story regarding this matter.

I play HC, so this most likely wouldn't apply to scrub players.
My first tries ended up pretty badly. I tried to play builds that I personally enjoy, buy they just weren't up to the challenge.
A Dual Strike crit/eva Shadow, an Ice Spear Witch and a Split Arrow Ranger. They all got destroyed. Shadow died on Cruel Barkhul, Witch on Cruel Malachai and the Ranger on Merc Merveil (cold res capped).

So I decide to do exactly what I don't like to do. Build the single most tankiest toon I can think of. So I made an Ice Crasher Marauder. And this was the result:





At lv 65--> 3.7k HP + 43% armor + Fortify + Enduring Cry + Chaos Golem + insane amount of life regen + resistances capped + Soul of Steel. I get oneshoted by the Vaal slam on Merc. I missed dodging it for a few pixels (that's on me) and it wrecked me. I wasn't shocked, although I didn't see the need to pop Granite either.
I specifically decided to make it so that toon wouldn't deal much damage, but he would be able to take as much punishment as possible without ripping. You could say I screw up, but I honestly assure you my life went instantly down from at least 95% to zero.

The main sign that something is not right ---> lots of builds unviable. Yes, you can make it to Merc with eva/MoM but armor/life is waaaaaaaay ahead. And you can see that. On Tempests you almost only see Marauders.

Anyways, don't take this as a QQ. This is just my take on the game status right now, at least on HC. I assume I'll be back in a few weeks. But I really don't feel like rolling a new toon like this right now.