Act 4 Normal Sucks and Is Way Too Hard

"

AkuTenshiiZero wrote:

"

NeroNoah wrote:

That's not true. The secret is not avoiding all the damage, it's being selective about what not to take at any given moment. Also, if you kill ads you can have few seconds of safety in some spot to recover in the second stage. Attack Malachai while he casts summon tentacle. Act IV teaches you to choose the lesser evil (think Piety and her giant energy spheres, it's preferable to eat the laser beam).

Are you even listening to yourself? In what universe is it good game design to force the player into a "get hit or get hit harder" scenario!?

I swear, you people have got to stop drinking the kool-aid...

Most combat in PoE is a situation where you will be hit and you have to be selective about what to take and what not. Specially if you are melee. I see nothing new.

"

NeroNoah wrote:

Most combat in PoE is a situation where you will be hit and you have to be selective about what to take and what not. Specially if you are melee. I see nothing new.

Sorry, but that's just not true. Acts 1-3 do not force you to take damage. Even Dominus, for how absurdly strong he can be, has attacks that can easily be completely avoided. He telegraphs just long enough that you can react accordingly, his attacks have clear origin points and landing zones, and his arena provides ample room to maneuver freely. Even his widest area attack, the corrupting rain, comes with a large protective bubble that clearly communicates itself to be a safe zone. There is no point during any main boss battle during Acts 1-3 that you have to choose the "lesser of evils."

Everything designed post Act 3 has been getting progressively more and more unfair. For fucks sake, Izaro spams AoE volleys of God-knows-what damage type as a passive effect. For a game and community that love to talk about skill, the design of this game does little to encourage skilled play vs. just having raw stats.

You are talking about bosses, I'm talking about the game in general. Also, those designs were part of the reason ranged has an advantage over melee. Now they can share the fear. Dominus wasn't as scary as ranged for me, for example. Most designs in Act IV just level the field for many types of builds.

"

NeroNoah wrote:

You are talking about bosses, I'm talking about the game in general. Also, those designs were part of the reason ranged has an advantage over melee. Now they can share the fear. Dominus wasn't as scary as ranged for me, for example. Most designs in Act IV just level the field for many types of builds.

If that was the idea, then it's a terribly executed one. If the problem is "ranged is good, melee is bad," then the solution is not "ranged is bad, melee is worse." Flicker Strike and proximity shields are both examples of mechanics that effect ranged but have no real impact on melee. They are, at the very least, a creative and effective way to impact one without impacting the other. Flooding the screen with damage not only maintains the ranged > melee status quo, but it's also extremely lazy and uncreative design.

I'll just have to disagree about it being uncreative. It forces you to fight differently, and being able to tank is more relevant (before, people got away with less defenses).

Act 4 : From Dread lake, a huge side area that only gives one quest update to mines that lead to an Arena which leads to The Belly of the beast ( quite trippy ), it feels like they glued together some good themes. Also after collecting two items from the arenas its a bit of a chore to collect even more things from the harvest.

Each of those themes could almost have their own act alone. The Arena theme would be great for a dark Midevil Castle city like envirement. You would start as a rooky gladiator and get harder fights troughout the act until a long travel towards a nasty endboss.

THe belly theme, well the old Diablio feeling which is great, deserves much more than few liniar paths to some too easy mode placed sub bosses in vague side rooms. Almost feels like they`ve put so much time in trials they forgot they had to make an act 4 so rushed some stuff together which is a pitty.

Stick to your themes, every act has its own unique feeling, act 4 is an exception, in my humble opnion, and needs a revamp. Im 100% positive you can do better than this. Dont rush your content.

Maligaro is overtuned due to dealing massive chaos damage, against which there are no real defenses as chaos resistances are rare. Malachai is a just a clusterfuck and vomit into your eyes but it's actually a pretty easy fight for tanky builds with decent regen.

Took a friend with me through Normal difficulty a couple months ago.

He made it through most of it with no real problems.

The Piety and Malachai fights pretty much broke him though. I got through the Malachai fight with only a couple deaths. He died upwards of 20 times. At the end he went "I think I need a break from this game. A really....long break. That was the most demoralizing thing I've ever experienced in a Diablo-like game."

I don't expect anything to change, just figured I'd share that. Personally I loathe getting through the boss fights myself but I understand the mechanics of the fight well enough. It just becomes a tedious slog of trying to do damage while dancing through acres of damage.

But if there's one thing I really, truly want changed....please get rid of the need to fight all three mini-bosses in the same sitting as Malachai. PLEASE. I get thematically why it's that way. But there has to be a better way. Did you DC? Congratulations, you will fight them all again. Can you not devote as much time as needed to tackle 6 really difficult boss fights in one go? Welp, guess you're not playing that character today. For being the last act of the game, the last bosses I get a grande finale is required. It's just awkward the way it's structured though, because GGG didn't, I dunno, save boss kill data in any way? So that once you've killed all three, the door to Malachai is just open from then on? This single reason is why I despise the game's finale. Forget how bad the fights themselves actually are.

Tl;dr year later, ACT 4 Belly of the Beast Endgame mission Bosses are still super broken and remained unbalanced/reworked.

But yes. Let's nerf the players in a PVE game, because f*** 'em rite!!

Thanks GGG,
You're all incompetent.

But Malachai is the coolest fight in all of Act 4 when you first get there!! D:
(started playing in Talisman, HC only)

Only died to Piety's Beam when i first encountered her in Act4..
It's great to have some fights where you need to think, plan ahead and make decisions on the fly...

Just fought Malachai on normal (yeah leveling slow this time, damn rl..), still a great feeling how he gets more and more desperate throwing all he has at the player.
Killing Merc Malachai with Static Strike (almost ssf, only the mace dropped for my teammate, char is on my profile) in Perandus was a pretty cool experience too.

*agree with NeroNoah*

Edit: i guess it sounds like showing off.... just wanted to say that it's possible. Why not try to enjoy these fights and get better as a player. Try to handle the panic when everything starts to explode and concentrate on a way to survive while attacking. Don't despair...
It's what makes games worthwile to me :)

80% of my deaths come from getting careless in easier content...