So, Dorudugan, how do you defeat him?

[brogenk]

This is hands down the most annoying boss in the game. Today (I don't know if it's because of the patches or if it has always been like thiis) in the Path of the Damned Difficulty level, this guy:

 

• Is inmmune to stun/paralyze/immobilize or any other movement impairment skill or spell I tried
• Is uninterruptible
• The explosions of his meteor shower will always do damage, regardless of how much fire protection you have
• It´s a fight with phases... (and I totally abhor those!)

I had read many things on the internet on how to kill this boss, and even watched a couple of videos on how to do it on youtube. However, they all involved either a very specif uber combination of items or split time annoying micromanaging. There's no way around this boss without tailoring a very boss-specific strategy for this fight. However, I read some post on this forum which pointed me in the right direction. The poster said he was using a dual wielding monk with guns (a gun-fu (?) monk) and he was using resonance touch. I immediately knew this was the right tactic for me, because resonant touch is a nice generic all purpose skill, that (somewhat) helps you circumvent the complicated process of figuring out the right type of damage and items for a fight. However there were a couple of issues with his suggested strategy:

• he said it takes 800 resonances aprox to bring him down. You really need to have 1000 resonances on the boss to make sure he'll go down with a single trigger of resonant touch
• He suggested to go solo on this fight... I'm guessing he was clad with heavy life-regenerating gear, making intense use of dichotomous spirits and mortification of the soul and that he had to go through lots and LOTS of micromanaging

So after a few (or rather a few dozen) failed attempts I came out with this formula.

 

The Party

• My Main --> Elf, shadowdancer (assassination rogue/shattered pillar monk) Almost completely useless for this fight but I never re-train characters in games, specially not for a single fight
• Custom made wildrhymer (no subclass chanter/no subclass ranger (although it should have been ghost heart ranger))
• Custom made shepherd (darcozzi paladin/no subclass ranger (although it should have been ghost heart ranger))
• Custom made monk (extremely high perception and dexterity, proficient with guns)
• Custom made monk (extremely high perception and dexterity, proficient with guns)

Important notes:

• Custom made Wildrhymer has to have a chant with the phrase "Many Lives Pass By, Each Leaving Footprints" repeated three times  (Very important!)
• Custom made Wildrhymer has to have the enhanced version of the skeleton summoning skill, "If their Bones Still Slept Under that Hill, None Can Say"  (very important)
• Gear, scrolls and food to increase perception/accuracy to the max for your monks (very important!)
• Sheperd has to have improved accuracy, healing and speed auras (very important!)
• Custom made monks have to have Dichotomous spirit and resonant touch (absolutely important!)
• You may need to play this tactic with very low graphic settings, because for some reason it will become very slow by the end of the fight regardless of which system you have. I had to play it with the lowest settings and windowed.
• Monk has to have the skill that makes him more accurate the more wounds he/she has (Razor's edge) and dance of death, which generates wounds and increases accuracy
• Ideally, your shepherd would have reviving exhortation and your wildrhymer would have the enhaced version of the resurrection skill, "Rise again, rise again, scions of Adon" (recommended)

The fight

 

Make sure you have the chant with the summon-skeleton phrase on. You want to send one of your pets first to pull the boss. When Dorudugan is pulled (and the fight  is paused), use mortification of the soul on your monks to gain wounds and start summoning your skeletons with the wildrhymer. Kite the boss with your pet towards your party and cast mortification of the soul again until you reach max wounds. Have your shepherd cast sworn enemy and marked pray on the boss. The boss should have been intercepted by the song-summoned skeleton by now and the the band of three summoned skeletons should also be up.

 

Make sure your paladin has the accuracy aura and have everyone in your party is shooting the boss.

Tip: do not have all three skellies attack the boss, have one of them go around the boss to flank him (helps the fight) and keep the other ones standing passively as spare tanks. As soon as you have three phrases re-summon your three skellies.

 

Tip 1: If you see the boss is beginning to cast meteor shower, and you are in the middle of summoning skellies, cancel the summon and continue to shoot him.

 

Tip 2: Do not run away from the boss until he does the clap animation for his meteor shower. While he is casting meteor shower, have the shepherd switch to the quick aura so that your party can run faster when he does the clap animation. When the boss claps, run away from the meteor shower. Waiting for the clap is the key, because once he claps, the meteor shower is locked on a location. If you start running prior to the clap animation, he will recalculate the shower's trajectory as you run. so that it's always facing you... so by the time the meteor shower is cast, you will have given away some precious space to run to. Besides... those are precious little seconds to put a few more resonances on the boss...

 

From then on it's rinse and repeat, just mind that you always have skellies between the boss and your party (not necessarily attacking him). If at any time you feel like the phrases won't start soon enough to restock your supply of skellies, have one of your monks summon dichotomous spirits for some emergency taking. Whenever you do that, make sure you use mortification of the soul to gain wounds and (maybe) switch your shepherd's aura to replenish life.

 

Tip: Try to keep the boss slightly above the hurt threshold, when he goes from healthy to hurt he starts using a massive ground spell that does huge fire damage.

 

When you get 1000 resonances on the boss, trigger resonant touch, he's dead.

[thelee]

one suggestion - instead of a generic chanter, you use a troubadour. with brisk recitation, you can get 2x skeletons out of many lives pass by with that (and summon more faster). because you only care about the skeleton chant, it doesn't matter that you lose linger (which doesn't apply to the skeleton chant).

[dunehunter]

This is hands down the most annoying boss in the game. Today (I don't know if it's because of the patches or if it has always been like thiis) in the Path of the Damned Difficulty level, this guy:

 

• Is inmmune to stun/paralyze/immobilize or any other movement impairment skill or spell I tried
• Is uninterruptible
• The explosions of his meteor shower will always do damage, regardless of how much fire protection you have
• It´s a fight with phases... (and I totally abhor those!)

I had read many things on the internet on how to kill this boss, and even watched a couple of videos on how to do it on youtube. However, they all involved either a very specif uber combination of items or split time annoying micromanaging. There's no way around this boss without tailoring a very boss-specific strategy for this fight. However, I read some post on this forum which pointed me in the right direction. The poster said he was using a dual wielding monk with guns (a gun-fu (?) monk) and he was using resonance touch. I immediately knew this was the right tactic for me, because resonant touch is a nice generic all purpose skill, that (somewhat) helps you circumvent the complicated process of figuring out the right type of damage and items for a fight. However there were a couple of issues with his suggested strategy:

• he said it takes 800 resonances aprox to bring him down. You really need to have 1000 resonances on the boss to make sure he'll go down with a single trigger of resonant touch
• He suggested to go solo on this fight... I'm guessing he was clad with heavy life-regenerating gear, making intense use of dichotomous spirits and mortification of the soul and that he had to go through lots and LOTS of micromanaging

So after a few (or rather a few dozen) failed attempts I came out with this formula.

 

The Party

• My Main --> Elf, shadowdancer (assassination rogue/shattered pillar monk) Almost completely useless for this fight but I never re-train characters in games, specially not for a single fight
• Custom made wildrhymer (no subclass chanter/no subclass ranger (although it should have been ghost heart ranger))
• Custom made shepherd (darcozzi paladin/no subclass ranger (although it should have been ghost heart ranger))
• Custom made monk (extremely high perception and dexterity, proficient with guns)
• Custom made monk (extremely high perception and dexterity, proficient with guns)

Important notes:

• Custom made Wildrhymer has to have a chant with the phrase "Many Lives Pass By, Each Leaving Footprints" repeated three times  (Very important!)
• Custom made Wildrhymer has to have the enhanced version of the skeleton summoning skill, "If their Bones Still Slept Under that Hill, None Can Say"  (very important)
• Gear, scrolls and food to increase perception/accuracy to the max for your monks (very important!)
• Sheperd has to have improved accuracy, healing and speed auras (very important!)
• Custom made monks have to have Dichotomous spirit and resonant touch (absolutely important!)
• You may need to play this tactic with very low graphic settings, because for some reason it will become very slow by the end of the fight regardless of which system you have. I had to play it with the lowest settings and windowed.
• Monk has to have the skill that makes him more accurate the more wounds he/she has (Razor's edge) and dance of death, which generates wounds and increases accuracy
• Ideally, your shepherd would have reviving exhortation and your wildrhymer would have the enhaced version of the resurrection skill, "Rise again, rise again, scions of Adon" (recommended)

The fight

 

Make sure you have the chant with the summon-skeleton phrase on. You want to send one of your pets first to pull the boss. When Dorudugan is pulled (and the fight  is paused), use mortification of the soul on your monks to gain wounds and start summoning your skeletons with the wildrhymer. Kite the boss with your pet towards your party and cast mortification of the soul again until you reach max wounds. Have your shepherd cast sworn enemy and marked pray on the boss. The boss should have been intercepted by the song-summoned skeleton by now and the the band of three summoned skeletons should also be up.

 

Make sure your paladin has the accuracy aura and have everyone in your party is shooting the boss.

Tip: do not have all three skellies attack the boss, have one of them go around the boss to flank him (helps the fight) and keep the other ones standing passively as spare tanks. As soon as you have three phrases re-summon your three skellies.

 

Tip 1: If you see the boss is beginning to cast meteor shower, and you are in the middle of summoning skellies, cancel the summon and continue to shoot him.

 

Tip 2: Do not run away from the boss until he does the clap animation for his meteor shower. While he is casting meteor shower, have the shepherd switch to the quick aura so that your party can run faster when he does the clap animation. When the boss claps, run away from the meteor shower. Waiting for the clap is the key, because once he claps, the meteor shower is locked on a location. If you start running prior to the clap animation, he will recalculate the shower's trajectory as you run. so that it's always facing you... so by the time the meteor shower is cast, you will have given away some precious space to run to. Besides... those are precious little seconds to put a few more resonances on the boss...

 

From then on it's rinse and repeat, just mind that you always have skellies between the boss and your party (not necessarily attacking him). If at any time you feel like the phrases won't start soon enough to restock your supply of skellies, have one of your monks summon dichotomous spirits for some emergency taking. Whenever you do that, make sure you use mortification of the soul to gain wounds and (maybe) switch your shepherd's aura to replenish life.

 

Tip: Try to keep the boss slightly above the hurt threshold, when he goes from healthy to hurt he starts using a massive ground spell that does huge fire damage.

 

When you get 1000 resonances on the boss, trigger resonant touch, he's dead.

 

Do you mean this youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-e-Qj0sEJ4

 

Only takes 15 min to solo it

[omgFIREBALLS]

I've finally killed this guy, the last megaboss on my list. No creative tactics, just tank, spank and run out of fire.

He might be the least stimulating opponent I've fought in either PoE game. Being a mega boss, he of course has a generous helping of defenses and a truckload of health, but what makes it all worse is his crazy resolve. I find that only permanent debuffs are worth anything here. You have a poor chance of landing anything to begin with, and if you do, it's going to have terrible duration thanks to his resolve.

He's dead alright, but despite having attempted him with half a dozen parties before finally killing him, the victory gives me little joy. Aside from dodging fire (and making him dodge it), the fight just feels like a tedious repetition of very basic RPG combat concepts because his resolve just doesn't allow for any whittling down of his defenses.

[dunehunter]

14 hours ago, omgFIREBALLS said:

I've finally killed this guy, the last megaboss on my list. No creative tactics, just tank, spank and run out of fire.

He might be the least stimulating opponent I've fought in either PoE game. Being a mega boss, he of course has a generous helping of defenses and a truckload of health, but what makes it all worse is his crazy resolve. I find that only permanent debuffs are worth anything here. You have a poor chance of landing anything to begin with, and if you do, it's going to have terrible duration thanks to his resolve.

He's dead alright, but despite having attempted him with half a dozen parties before finally killing him, the victory gives me little joy. Aside from dodging fire (and making him dodge it), the fight just feels like a tedious repetition of very basic RPG combat concepts because his resolve just doesn't allow for any whittling down of his defenses.

How does INT and Resolve affect duration? Do they add or multiple with each other? 

Lets say u have 30 INT and enemy has 35 Resolve, how long will a 60 second debuff lasts then? Is it 60 * (1+5%*20) * (1-3%*25) = 30s, or 60 * (1+5%*20-3%*25) =75s? Which one is correct formula?

[Kaylon]

You should use the double inversion formula which means 75% reduction is in fact -300% duration penalty... To use debuffs on Dorudugan you should first lower his resolve with a cipher (psychovampiric shield + tenous grasp).

[omgFIREBALLS]

He is immune to mind afflictions, so only the weirdo spells outside the inspiration/affliction system will work. Psychovampiric Shield should. I prefer to open with Borrowed Instinct, and that's what I was trying to do repeatedly throughout the fight. I occasionally had his will reduced by Bewildering Blows and constantly by Hunter of Hunters (Ngati's Tusk on a survival pumped character), my cipher had a healthy amount of accuracy (Exalted Focus, The Empty Soul), but I actually never managed to land a spell. The chance wasn't horrible, but my cipher had many jobs and couldn't keep trying over and over.

There also wasn't some easy extra monster I could cast Borrowed Instinct on to have more accuracy for when trying Dorudugan. If anyone has a neat trick (item/spell) for spawning a useless hostile monster, sigil, totem or just a damn barrel, that would be awesome to know.

The point stands that it's really hopeless to methodically crack open someone you have a very hard time landing anything on, who is immune to half your tools and who will greatly reduce the duration of those that work. On an easier boss I could constantly have Borrowed Instinct and Psychovampiric Shield up and still have focus left for other jobs. It's obviously a lot to ask that this should be easily accomplished with a mega boss, but it doesn't even happen that I can do it by blowing all my focus on it. I'm getting nowhere near it. Maybe I would have had a different result if I prioritized Psychovampiric Shield over Borrowed Instinct, but I suspect it wouldn't have made me feel like this boss suddenly had depth.

I also tried to figure out the answer to dunehunter's question (I'm curious too), but I don't have anything conclusive yet. I figured at this point @MaxQuest would have told us ^^

[dunehunter]

12 hours ago, Kaylon said:

You should use the double inversion formula which means 75% reduction is in fact -300% duration penalty... To use debuffs on Dorudugan you should first lower his resolve with a cipher (psychovampiric shield + tenous grasp).

Interesting, if the resolve really uses double inversion formula, that means no matter how high your INT is, as long as enemy has high Resolve, u cannot land debuff that has reasonable duration.

Because even if u have 35 INT, the duration would be 1 / (1 - (1 + 125% - 400%)) = 36.4% of original duration...

Edit: Verified with my save and man.... this system is tedious... If target has 35 Resolve, with 10 INT your debuff has 25% of its original duration, with 30 INT, its 33% of original duration, 35 INT = 36.4% of original duration! This makes INT really sucks in front of high resolve enemies.

Edited April 29, 2019 by dunehunter

[MaxQuest]

 

18 hours ago, dunehunter said:

How does INT and Resolve affect duration? Do they add or multiple with each other? 

Lets say u have 30 INT and enemy has 35 Resolve, how long will a 60 second debuff lasts then? Is it 60 * (1+5%*20) * (1-3%*25) = 30s, or 60 * (1+5%*20-3%*25) =75s? Which one is correct formula?

Besides of multiplicative and additive, devs could also implement it as:

v3. mixed: 60 * (1 + 0.05 * 20) / (1 + 0.03 * 25) = 68s

v4. with double inversion (as Kaylon already mentioned):

coef_1 = 1 + 0.05 * 20 = 2

coef_2 = 1 - 0.03 * 25 = 0.25

step_sum: (coef_1 - 1) + (1 - 1/coef_2) = 1 + -3 = -2

coef = 1 / (1 - step_sum) = 1/3 = 0.333

duration = 60 * coef = 20s 

 

I haven't tested in the game which variant is the right one. But judging by Obs love towards double inversion, and Kaylon's post above, would expect it to be v4...

6 hours ago, dunehunter said:

Interesting, if the resolve really uses double inversion formula, that means no matter how high your INT is, as long as enemy has high Resolve, u cannot land debuff that has reasonable duration.

Yes. That's part of the reason why I don't really like double inversion; beside being complicated enough...

Edited April 29, 2019 by MaxQuest

[Elric Galad]

On ‎4‎/‎3‎/‎2019 at 5:34 PM, brogenk said:

This is hands down the most annoying boss in the game. Today (I don't know if it's because of the patches or if it has always been like thiis) in the Path of the Damned Difficulty level, this guy:

 

• Is inmmune to stun/paralyze/immobilize or any other movement impairment skill or spell I tried
• Is uninterruptible

This is bad design in my opinion.

Once upon a time in PoE1, there was no such thing as immunities. Any build could work against anything.
Crowd Control was OP then, but mostly because hard CC duration.

Then they started introducing bunch of immunities in the game, and now we are here, standing by a colossus of ability denial.

Hauani O Whe is probably close to the limit of what is tolerable about immunities.

IMHO, Dorudugan should have been :
- Resistant to Perception instead of Immune
- Interruptible (but starting with a lots of Concentration)
- Have maybe half less HP
- Have a bit less Resolve, maybe around 32 (-66% duration) so your detrimental effect can still be a bit efficient.
- Receive some other bonus (maybe some summons) to compensate a bit.

[Boeroer]

Disables in PoE were OP mostly due to the grazes mechanic that didn't downgrade the effect of the disable but only the duration. Combined with the huge defense rebuffs that came with the disables. 

Immunities are ok if used wisely. For example it makes complete sense that a Flame Blight is immune to burn damage.

But we could do with less if not only resistances downgraded afflictions but also grazes (and crits upgraded). No duration fiddling from graze/crit. That way an enemy with resistance to let's say constitution afflictions and high Fortitude would be kind of immune to Sickened and Weakened as long as you can't hit.

You could buff the effects of afflictions a bit then. Not back to PoE values (was too good) but a bit more impactful that they are now.

Just an idea though.

[dunehunter]

30 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

This is bad design in my opinion.

Once upon a time in PoE1, there was no such thing as immunities. Any build could work against anything.
Crowd Control was OP then, but mostly because hard CC duration.

Then they started introducing bunch of immunities in the game, and now we are here, standing by a colossus of ability denial.

Hauani O Whe is probably close to the limit of what is tolerable about immunities.

IMHO, Dorudugan should have been :
- Resistant to Perception instead of Immune
- Interruptible (but starting with a lots of Concentration)
- Have maybe half less HP
- Have a bit less Resolve, maybe around 32 (-66% duration) so your detrimental effect can still be a bit efficient.
- Receive some other bonus (maybe some summons) to compensate a bit.

I think boss should not be interruptible, otherwise you can stun lock it with interruptions. One example is the Alpine Dragon in PoE 1, it is not immune to prone so I just prone it to death, which is bit boring.

The resolve thing I agree, I don't think the designer really understand how resolve works, such high Resolve means no way to extend your debuff duration (because of double inversion).

The only thing that bothers me is overfloated hpmax for these mega bosses. 16825 hp is way too much for any resources limited classes. Only monk and chanter can be effective against these, even then it is very tedious and boring, the combat should be intensive, not of repetitive actions.

Remember how much hp the dragon bosses in PoE 1 have? 1k at most! If we want some WoW dungeon experience we can go play WoW, but this is a single player rpg and we shouldn't be treated like we are playing MMORPG thanks!

Edited April 30, 2019 by dunehunter

[Elric Galad]

Resistance mechanic has been a huge step in the right direction, and affliction upgrade/downgrade based on graze/crit would have been excellent too.

Immunities are usually OK in PoE 2. It's only when a boss is immune to everything that the problems start. Probably only Dorudugan is concerned.

I killed Giant Cave Grub by taking advantage of its vulnerability to Intellect affliction, dominating it with whispers of treason when too many larvas were spawned. This was definitely good design.

[Elric Galad]

10 minutes ago, dunehunter said:

I think boss should not be interruptible, otherwise you can stun lock it with interruptions. 

Which should be a valid strategy ! Currrently, you can lock bosses with summmons if spec for it. This wouldn't be worse.

There are plenty of ways to make bosses difficult to interrupt while still making them interruptible :
- Starting Concentration
- Regenerating Concentration
- Why not "Interrupt resistance" ? : Immune to Interrupt, but Prone are only dowgraded and cause Interrupt.

The problem here is the tremendous difference between somthing that is harder to do and something that is impossible to do and simply deny the player a big part of his abilities.

 

However, I fully agree on your point about HP. This only makes thing boring.

Edited April 30, 2019 by Elric Galad

[dunehunter]

3 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

Which should be a valid strategy ! Currrently, you can lock bosses with summmons if spec for it. This wouldn't be worse.

There are plenty of ways to make bosses difficult to interrupt while still making them interruptible :
- Starting Concentration
- Regenerating Concentration
- Why not "Interrupt resistance" ? : Immune to Interrupt, but Prone are only dowgraded and cause Interrupt.

The problem here is the tremendous difference between somthing that is harder to do and something that is impossible to do and simply deny the player a big part of his abilities.

Lock bosses with summons is more than an AI things to me.

Starting Concentration - there is a phrase that totally remove any concentration, so even if u have 100 stacks at beginning of combat, it won't work.

Regenerating Concentration - this is a good idea.

[Elric Galad]

6 minutes ago, dunehunter said:

Lock bosses with summons is more than an AI things to me.

Anyway, Dorudugan being so annoying, I would consider changing my homerule of always keeping the same party just for him. 

I Wonder how he deals with my MC and 4 Ghosthearts/Tacticians. 

[MaxQuest]

23 hours ago, dunehunter said:

Remember how much hp the dragon bosses in PoE 1 have? 1k at most! If we want some WoW dungeon experience we can go play WoW, but this is a single player rpg and we shouldn't be treated like we are playing MMORPG thanks!

 

23 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

However, I fully agree on your point about HP. This only makes thing boring.

The HP bloat indeed is a strong one here. It downright kills a solid segment of character builds / party compositions that can't sustain for that long.

Meanwhile majority of non-megaboss fights can be ended in under 1 minute. So there is some sort of dissonance in what direction to optimize.

 

23 hours ago, dunehunter said:

The resolve thing I agree, I don't think the designer really understand how resolve works, such high Resolve means no way to extend your debuff duration (because of double inversion).

Could be.

Also here's some extra info on Dorudugan. Yes he has 16825 HP on PotD.

But his base stats are:

• "BaseDeflection": 5,
• "BaseFortitude": -20,
• "BaseReflexes": -45,
• "BaseWill": -25,
• "MeleeAccuracyBonus": 35,
• "RangedAccuracyBonus": 25,
• "MaxHealth": 2000,
• "HealthPerLevel": 142

He just happens to be of lvl 30 with 34 CON

23 hours ago, Boeroer said:

However, I fully agree on your point about HP. This only makes thing boring.

Immunities are ok if used wisely. For example it makes complete sense that a Flame Blight is immune to burn damage.

Indeed. Immunities used wisely can be awesome. And by that I mean, that they can help with tactics variety.

If a player would come up with a single very strong strategy and was applying it 1:1 in every single encounter... it would become repetitive and boring.

But if there are 4 hard cc's (stun, paralyze, dominate, terrify), and one enemy type is immune to a subset of 2-3 of these, another enemy type to another, the player would have to adapt. Plus there is an additional layer of thinking involved: how much do I want to askew my party to have these disables in it's arsenal, or those ones.

Meanwhile an enemy is immune to everything it's boring. If it's a boss, I'd rather see him being immune to no more than 75% of existing hard disables. And if designer is afraid that there is a possibility of hard-locking this boss, just design some sort of time windows when he is susceptible/not; or some abilities/obelisks/minions that would provide the boss with necessary inspirations.

Edited May 1, 2019 by MaxQuest

[Boeroer]

Sorry @MaxQuest, but the last quote about boring HP pools was from Erik Galad, not me.

[MaxQuest]

Oops, meant to quote the paragraph related to immunities

[Lampros]

On 1/5/2019 at 5:58 AM, Bhall said:

 

 

1) My standard spec was full spell focus build, but for this boss i respeced to melee damage, took more warrior tallents. For damage i was using penetrating strike

2) For weapon i used a crush weapon, best i cound find was the Chromoprismatic Quarterstaff from Nemnok. Mainly for high damage, but also the bonus speed and damage reduction were handy (maxed out metamagic). I was a bit worried by the loss of deflection, but with Arcane veil i had 150 deflection, which was good enough.

3) I used Rekvus Cloak to not take firedamage (that one is a nobrainer) and after first try where i died on 5% because of interupts i used also the helm, it made it much easier.

4) This is with no rest character, i have full world buffs. On vessels i had 150 accuracy which made it very easy to hit this boss. 

5) General strategy

a) prebuff lengraths safeguard and pull with draining wall

b) place mauras tentacles to flank the boss and gain brilliant - keep recasting them when they die, sometimes better to wait if there is AOE coming, because they always die. They dont damage the boss, so they never agro, they only die from AOE

c) buff myself with everything immaginable. Top priority is unbending for healing, disciplined strikes for accuracy, all various mage buffs including arcane veil, delateriuos alacrity, lengraths, merciless gaze, also i used potion of deftness, penetration potion, perfect strikes potion and the drug giving 15% melee damage and -5% damage taken. After that i spam draining wall as much as possible. Its important to constantly have at least 2-3 walls up, more the better, you need to build up the buff duration early on, because later the boss will do more aoe etc and it will disrupt you (need to recast tentacles more).

d) then you basically alternatate penatrating strike/draining wall and cast tentacles when they die.

e) It took me over 1 hour to kill the boss, because half of the time you are casting the walls to keep your buffs going and you are not hitting him. Also the boss heals from the aoe damage he does. In general the staff hits were for 50-90 damage each.

f) If you dont let your buffs fall of, unbending scales up constantly and it will heal 200+ hp per hit, making you basically unkillable. Only danger is when the boss reduces your HP by many cleave hits. I am not sure how exactly it works, but at one point i got down to 163 max HP (originally 384), there i was a bit scared of being oneshot, but then he missed a cleave or two and my HP went back up.

 

I am confused. Wouldn't Penetrating Strike or any other resource-based abilities run out very quickly in one hour fights?

[Lampros]

On 4/30/2019 at 3:52 AM, Boeroer said:

Disables in PoE were OP mostly due to the grazes mechanic that didn't downgrade the effect of the disable but only the duration. Combined with the huge defense rebuffs that came with the disables. 

Immunities are ok if used wisely. For example it makes complete sense that a Flame Blight is immune to burn damage.

But we could do with less if not only resistances downgraded afflictions but also grazes (and crits upgraded). No duration fiddling from graze/crit. That way an enemy with resistance to let's say constitution afflictions and high Fortitude would be kind of immune to Sickened and Weakened as long as you can't hit.

You could buff the effects of afflictions a bit then. Not back to PoE values (was too good) but a bit more impactful that they are now.

Just an idea though.

Isn't this how debuffs work in this game, too? For instance, if a debuff spell grazes, the effect remains and only the duration is reduced, no?

[Boeroer]

Yes, only the duration gets reduced. But if you are applying a hard CC like stun the enemy still will still get stunned from a graze. It would be better imo if he only got dazed (but not for reduced duration but the normal one). That would also make more sense in terms of "realism"(TM): if you only graze the face of an enemy with a stunning blow he shouldn't be stunned, only dazed. Graze = Daze you know? 

[Lampros]

25 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Yes, only the duration gets reduced. But if you are applying a hard CC like stun the enemy still will still get stunned from a graze. It would be better imo if he only got dazed (but not for reduced duration but the normal one). That would also make more sense in terms of "realism"(TM): if you only graze the face of an enemy with a stunning blow he shouldn't be stunned, only dazed. Graze = Daze you know? 

I agree; I wish there were mods that did this. And yes, I like games to retain some level of realism/verisimilitude as long as it doesn't interfere too much with game-play.

[Lampros]

By the way, a few days ago I saw a video where a guy claimed that Mule Kick interrupts this boss? I didn't finish the video, because it was long, and I had a hard time making out everything he was saying. But is this correct?

[thelee]

23 hours ago, Lampros said:

By the way, a few days ago I saw a video where a guy claimed that Mule Kick interrupts this boss? I didn't finish the video, because it was long, and I had a hard time making out everything he was saying. But is this correct?

mule kick doesn't interrupt per se. however, it will knock up dorudugan and cause it to require to stand back up again, even though normally prone (which is an interrupt) is prevented by concentration or interrupt immunity. the same thing is true for monk's knock up ability. this also works on the oracle and the memory hoarder in FS (who are interrupt immune). edit - unlike a true interrupt, knock up alone won't waste the enemy's resource when properly done during their action. however, you can mess up AI scripting a bit to buy yourself more time because enemies don't always try the same action again--they might do some other stuff for a while. 

more importantly, for a tactician, the brief window when an enemy is knocked up in the air, they are treated by the game as not being in combat. this can be bad if you have attacks or spells in mid-flight, because they'll whiff against the enemy. for a tactician, though, that brief window is enough that--if that was the only enemy around--you temporarily gain briliant. you lose brilliant as soon as the enemy lands back on the ground and re-enters combat, but a second or so of brilliant is all you need to restore a resource. in my ultimate run i would mule kick enemies if they were the only ones around, to help restore resources for the priest half of my character.

Edited October 19, 2020 by thelee