Eternal Knights are busted

hi

I was running a T15 map that had monsters with 40% extra lightning and cold damage stacked with one another. These are the only to modifiers that made this map more difficult than usual; however, I've had this problem with eternal knights ever since I started mapping. This frustrating enemy death during this map stirred a deep rage within my soul that I feel I must vent. While the method for playing around their reflect mechanic is straightforward on paper, in practice it's not easy to pull off.

The idea is that you're supposed to bait out melee swings so the shield that reflects projectiles is lowered or just attack them from behind. The problem is that the damage from the reflected projectile is a 1:1 ratio (at least from what I could observe from multiple other maps fighting them). With the above-mentioned method for dealing with Eternal knights it's not practical to deal with them the way you're intended, because of many factors.


1. They are always surrounded by other monsters which HAVE to be dealt with first given how deadly normal monsters are. So, as you are fighting them the knight is going to inevitably reflect one of your attacks as you're dealing with the pack.

2. The damage Eternal knights deal is obscene. One reflected attack from a player utilizing an endgame build is capable of one-shotting you, and they come out fast.

3. When they come in a magic pack it is even worse trying to deal with any of them, because at that point even if you manage to get behind one of them, your attacks are likely to proc reflection on the surrounding death knights.

4. Rare variants of Eternal knights are even more cancerous, since half the rare modifiers in the pool are anti-thetical to melee range gameplay, you as the player are more likely to say, "fuck this map, I'm gonna go somewhere else because it's not worth getting 10 percent-ed."


I'm not a game designer, but I'm very passionate about PoE 2. Personally, I think Eternal knights either need to have their damage nerfed, or have the shields break after a number of times they reflect projectiles (maybe 2 or 3 reflections would make them drop the shield). I would prefer the shield change because at least a player would still have to treat the reflected projectile like the threat that it is, without every encounter with Eternal knights being a battle of attrition.

Thank you for listening to my TED talk.

5. They often start shooting projectiles off-screen. Which make the situation even worse.

It looks like the projectiles they shoot back are Spell Physical, so get some armour or dodge the projectiles.

Jonathan said they needed to fix the BS mechanics. This is just one of many they need to fix or rebalance.

I've only noticed them reflect projectiles. My monk runs through them while my ranger struggles with them unless I use ground based skills like lightning rod or gas arrow.

Eternal Knight is perfect as he is and one of the handfull well designed mobs in the game.

80% of the mobs are currently zDPS 1 tap bowling pins, just with different skins.

Mobs like Eternal Knights stand out because you have to take care a bit when fighting him.

Instead of nerfing him they have to bring the other 80% on par with him, so we have interesting fights even with trashmobs and not a boring 1-hit fiesta like in Diablo 4.

No point in nerfing them now, if their damage is indeed based on the player's damage. Because end game player damage is way too high, so the damage will be reduced when player damage is.

I got a rare one with Proximal, mana drain, haste and some other bullcrap ability.

Freaking took me forever on my ranger.

I disagree. Eternal Knight is essentially the only mob that makes a ranged character, like for instance a spark mage, think for a second how to best solve this situation outside of holding LMB pressed.
While I am not a huge fan of reflect mechanics, there certainly should be more mechanics that counter ranged.