Tone down merciless Argus

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grepman wrote:

there are plenty of tools if you want to do the optional part that is argus:

1. hes very easily aggroed, so totems/summons completely take his attention. his ai is dumb
2. if ranged you can pew pew and dance around him
3. finally you can lure him out of his room into traps into which he will rush
4. stibnite flasks work even if you have IR. if you have US, of course, tough luck
5. since hes not an act boss, enfeeble crushes his damage (and accuracy/crit if youre not using US) by a shitton

• He doesn't stick aggro very well on an individual summon; he often forgets that a stone golem has aggro'd him, and if he doesn't, he'll still annihilate it quickly.
• Ranged is easymodo for this game; it wasn't being discussed. The fact that ONE build can have zero issue (*cough*LAVoltaxic*cough*) is a sign of the game's weakness and poor balance.
• You actually just assumed that, didn't you? He doesn't take damage from traps.
• Another "fuck you if you're not evasion."
• Yay, mandatory curse selection! Better hope you weren't relying on just an individual DIFFERENT curse...

I just don't see the issue, it's a truly optional boss that hinders efficiency anyways, it's always going to be better to get the highest possible enchants per hour than keys when it comes to lab runs, so Argus is just for the completionists out there who want to do him just for the hell of it.

How many people would skip the trio if they weren't mandatory for Atziri?

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He doesn't stick aggro very well on an individual summon; he often forgets that a stone golem has aggro'd him, and if he doesn't, he'll still annihilate it quickly.

what I meant is if you play totems or a classic summoner, he will rarely if ever get to you. golems is a single summon

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ACGIFT wrote:

[li]Ranged is easymodo for this game; it wasn't being discussed. The fact that ONE build can have zero issue (*cough*LAVoltaxic*cough*) is a sign of the game's weakness and poor balance.[/li]

like 70% of the game is ranged builds. about 85% if we consider things like reave and GS melee. how is that one build ? your statements dont make any sense.

totems, traps, summons, bow, ranged spells, ranged 'melee' skills, etc all can deal with argus just fine.

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[li]You actually just assumed that, didn't you? He doesn't take damage from traps.[/li]

yes he does. the damage wont be enough to kill him but some will be powerful and some will halt him in place

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[li]Another "fuck you if you're not evasion."[/li]

you can use a stibnite with zero evasion rating. I use it on armour characters.

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[li]Yay, mandatory curse selection! Better hope you weren't relying on just an individual DIFFERENT curse...[/li][/list]

nonsense, theres nothing easier than swapping out a curse for one fight especially if you use a same color socket. you dont like enfeeble you can use temp chains.

my diagnosis here, is that you just dont want to vary your strategy/use different tools for few somewhat challenging content fights left in the game. the game already have very few 'challenging' content nowadays, yet you want each and every build to handle each and any content. why ?

and voltaxic ? why voltaxic ? argus cannot be shocked, chain on LA wont chain since argus is by himself in the room unless you kite him...and LA is meh single target skill in general

voltaxic LA should be a middle pack skill if not worse against argus. sure, chaos damage+poison helps, but really theres dozens of safer skills against him

You seem unaware of the LA Voltaxic build.

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grepman wrote:

you can use a stibnite with zero evasion rating. I use it on armour characters.

IR != non-evasion. IR is a hybrid evasion-armour build.

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grepman wrote:

nonsense, theres nothing easier than swapping out a curse for one fight especially if you use a same color socket. you dont like enfeeble you can use temp chains.

I'm referring to how much, especially with blasphemy, things like Warlord's Mark can be near-mandatory to keep in. You can't just arbitrarily switch that out, and lose out on your leech and endurance charges.

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grepman wrote:

my diagnosis here, is that you just dont want to vary your strategy/use different tools for few somewhat challenging content fights left in the game. the game already have very few 'challenging' content nowadays, yet you want each and every build to handle each and any content. why ?

Way to go... "If you can't justify your cause, just insult the other player's ability."

Uber Atziri is challenging. Merciless Argus is not challenging, he's just "fake difficult." Uber Atziri maanges to do this while prohibiting FAR fewer builds than Argus does.

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grepman wrote:

and voltaxic ? why voltaxic ? argus cannot be shocked, chain on LA wont chain since argus is by himself in the room unless you kite him...and LA is meh single target skill in general

voltaxic LA should be a middle pack skill if not worse against argus. sure, chaos damage+poison helps, but really theres dozens of safer skills against him

I take it you've never even looked at Voltaxic builds, let alone used a Voltaxic.

The lack of shock isn't an issue for it.

Voltaxic offers the option to literally run ANYTHING and still be fine. For Argus, that means you can offscreen him, making him inconsequential.

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grepman wrote:

and voltaxic ? why voltaxic ? argus cannot be shocked, chain on LA wont chain since argus is by himself in the room unless you kite him...and LA is meh single target skill in general

voltaxic LA should be a middle pack skill if not worse against argus. sure, chaos damage+poison helps, but really theres dozens of safer skills against him

Blast Rain son. Blast Rain.

Argus is pretty tough yeah. He is far tougher than labyrinth's zone level of 68.

I had 3.4k HP 1.3k ES with Blasphemy - Enfeeble and Arctic Armor with Granite flask up and died pretty quickly. It was pretty funny, since I didn't expect such high damage and saw my life went down in rapid succession with not enough time to back off. I think it took him about 1 to 2 seconds to kill me.

I learned the hard way that I should skip merciless Argus until higher level. I am now running a new character since the other one died.

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ACGIFT wrote:

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grepman wrote:

you can use a stibnite with zero evasion rating. I use it on armour characters.

IR != non-evasion. IR is a hybrid evasion-armour build.

if you have 5% chance to evade and 15k armour, then youre running an armour build.

US is a separate case, really.

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grepman wrote:

nonsense, theres nothing easier than swapping out a curse for one fight especially if you use a same color socket. you dont like enfeeble you can use temp chains.

I'm referring to how much, especially with blasphemy, things like Warlord's Mark can be near-mandatory to keep in. You can't just arbitrarily switch that out, and lose out on your leech and endurance charges.

ok, then don't use the curse. once again, it is only one of the tools available to you.

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Way to go... "If you can't justify your cause, just insult the other player's ability."

I did no such thing, your reading comprehension was poor while analyzing that post. Nowhere did I say
you lack skills. I asked you why do you want any build handle any content. To me, I WANT each build archetype to have an achilles heel, ie content this particular build has problems against. (for example, evasion used to have problems with physical spells and RT uniques) Im wondering why would you NOT want to have that ?

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Uber Atziri is challenging. Merciless Argus is not challenging, he's just "fake difficult." Uber Atziri maanges to do this while prohibiting FAR fewer builds than Argus does.

nonsense again, uber atziri cannot be done with tons of builds that dont have crazy dps to dish out damage fast. all those builds eat argus for breakfast. I can do merciless argus with double siege ballista with ~4k dps per ballista. I cant do uber with that.

for uber, top tier dps and good-sized hp pool are mandatory. no such thing for argus. you can keep him at bay with a totem, golem, movement skills, etc. the only archetype that has perpetual problems against him is melee range builds that lack ability to evade/block/soak damage

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The lack of shock isn't an issue for it.

Voltaxic offers the option to literally run ANYTHING and still be fine. For Argus, that means you can offscreen him, making him inconsequential.

you can offscreen with any bow build if you want, I dont see your point.

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allbusiness wrote:

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grepman wrote:

and voltaxic ? why voltaxic ? argus cannot be shocked, chain on LA wont chain since argus is by himself in the room unless you kite him...and LA is meh single target skill in general

voltaxic LA should be a middle pack skill if not worse against argus. sure, chaos damage+poison helps, but really theres dozens of safer skills against him

Blast Rain son. Blast Rain.

sure, BR is extremely powerful, which is all fine and dandy, but we were talking about LA

the notion that *ONLY* an LA voltaxic toon has it easy against argus is preposterous. hes a relatively slow heavy phys (I think its overwhelmingly phys damage) hitter who can enrage at certain points

pretty much any build with any range shouldnt have big problems with argus, period. the only builds that are always in danger are the ones that try to facetank him in melee range through his enrage having subpar defenses for the fight