Just did Malachi in Merciless

Was it fun? No
Will I do it again? No

Pretty much this, fight was so lagy and random that I had no fun at all doing it at the difference of Dominus where you can move around and dodge his stuff.

I have faith that GGG will fix Malachi and the absurd difficulty in the game soon.

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60x7 wrote:

Was it fun? No
Will I do it again? No

I did malachi as a summoner in cruel, tempest league (hardcore)

It was intense and immensely fun


Why wasn't it fun on merciless?

Same.

My favorite feature of this fight is kissing my entire XP bar goodbye. On my high level character I came back to, all XP I earned during Act 4, plus everything I'd earned from when I last played, went up in a puff. When I finally killed him, the drops were crap. I was hoping to get at least a skill point out of all that work, but no, the quest reward was one rare map. Why did I even bother?

After several more days of playing I still haven't earned all that XP back.

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Krehlmar wrote:

Why wasn't it fun on merciless?

One-shots and no room to maneuver in the final area.

If you go in without reading up on the fight, it's hard to know what's going on and what you have to do while dodging everything (I played a summoner, so boss invulnerability is even less obvious), and the numerous phases feel exhausting when you don't know when it's going to end or what has changed. Once I read up on how the phases worked, it was much easier, but still a pain with all those AOEs.

GGG should introduce some kind of tank monster in the Harvest that takes massively reduced damage while blood-shielded by its nearby immobile heart (with a connecting misty blood stream acting as a visual arrow), in order to help train players to identify an external strengthening object similar to the final fight. In other words, use miniature versions of the boss mechanics in the zones preceding the boss to familiarize players.

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teacherpeter wrote:

I have faith that GGG will fix Malachi and the absurd difficulty in the game soon.

I hope so. I've been having a bad PoE day, dying all over the place in maps from crazy monster damage (using evasion and es builds), so I'm just getting salty about the game's difficulty in 2.0.

GGG wanted to please the most masochistic hardcore players, and they did. I have a feeling, however, that their overall player numbers will start to drop. I'm curious how Tempest players are faring in maps, and which builds are being culled out as useless now.

Biggest thing about merciless Malachai: Was there a reward? Nope.

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zSavage wrote:

Biggest thing about merciless Malachai: Was there a reward? Nope.

^This. Whole act4 is a joke. Two hours of content just for what? 1 extra skill point? Wow, that was so necessary. Piety, at least, can drop maps for beginners.

I love Act IV, but Malachai is... peculiar. I had no trouble in normal mode, but that was mostly because I could place my support flame totem, chugging some fireballs (actual main skill) when I got some room to position myself.
Thinking about Merciless Malachai makes me shudder. A reward would be nice, and I'm sure GGG will introduce something.
As for the difficulty - when they nerfed Malachai, Chris (I think it was Chris) wrote that they were satisfied with the difficulty on Merciless, so I wouldn't bet on Mercichai getting easier.

killing Act iv Malachai is not a requirement for progression. you can do it at lvl 90 and 3-4 shoot him. it's pointless and useless to tone him down.