Starting to see the power of the Herald, as my team wiped and my Herald saved the day alone.

[Ouroboros226]

I remembered Hasango incorrectly as an easy low lvl area. So I went there at lvl9. Well PoTD hit me hard here. Those snakes ambushing you from the wall against a team with only 1 ranged? Had to get up the stairs, which pulled more. Oh a barricade! It was a real cluster****. I'm trying triple crown so I thought it was over when only my Herald was left against like 4 snake archers and a snake priest or shaman thing.   

Turned out that the AOE damage chant that heals you, the AOE heal chant, and wyrms. Was enough to actually make it. I still had to run out and in a bit, use a potion and a bomb and some other stuff. But I really wasn't expecting to survive that at all. My character felt sooooo beeeefy mmmmm. And even before having good gear. 

Anyway the thing I'm wondering about. Do enemies have infinite spells on PoTD? The snake was casting 2 different heals and a stun wave. Thing is, it took forever mostly because it seemed to never run out of spells. So I had to take the backline archers first and some stuff. Even then it took a long while to kill it. I know POTD is supposed to be extremely hard, but infinite spell use? Really? 

[thelee]

20 minutes ago, Ouroboros226 said:

Do enemies have infinite spells on PoTD? The snake was casting 2 different heals and a stun wave. Thing is, it took forever mostly because it seemed to never run out of spells.

depends.

kith (e.g. humans, orlans, etc.) are like you - they have resources and spells and they can run out. some enemies are extremely kith-like (e.g. xaurips) and follow the same rules. notably - the megaboss Auranic is pure kith-like and you can totally outlast her spells at which point she just has a rod to try to hurt you.

 

non-kith (e.g. boars, spiders) have an infinite use of their abilities, and they are limited only by their AI script. some enemies may seem kith-like, but are actually more like this and follow these rules. the naga casters may fall into this category.

 

keep in mind there are also kith-likes that are chanter-likes, so given enough time they will use an infinite number of invocations - and their invocations may be unique to them. (sirens are like this. maybe naga casters are also like this? because i could swear that naga followed the kith rules. a stun wave is a pretty recurrent special invocation only available to enemies [and tekehu])

 

only way to really be sure I think is to dig in to the game files, or use an ability that only targets spellcasters (e.g. mage slayer).

Edited September 13, 2021 by thelee

[Ouroboros226]

Thank you! This is kinda vital to know about in TC. My preferred strategy is to outlast anything. 

[thelee]

yeah, i don't know how much you played poe1 if at all, but one major change is that you definitely need a little bit of offense because otherwise fights can go on for literally forever. At least in PoE1, health/endurance means that all fights have to eventually end (and was pretty much the only way I triple-crowned solo with my paladin in many fights).

there are a few bosses here and there that can be extremely annoying if the fight goes on enough that their AI script starts looping (Neriscyrlas's casting of Llengrath's Safeguard for example).

[Ouroboros226]

On 9/14/2021 at 4:26 PM, thelee said:

yeah, i don't know how much you played poe1 if at all, but one major change is that you definitely need a little bit of offense because otherwise fights can go on for literally forever. At least in PoE1, health/endurance means that all fights have to eventually end (and was pretty much the only way I triple-crowned solo with my paladin in many fights).

there are a few bosses here and there that can be extremely annoying if the fight goes on enough that their AI script starts looping (Neriscyrlas's casting of Llengrath's Safeguard for example).

I just noticed this in the most painful way. I entered some sort of Skull fortress. And the cultists (calling themselves scribes) in there not only constantly charm my summons, the fight goes on and on and ooooooon. Every encounter took ages. Even worse @thelee  An Eoten boss in there almost ruined my triple crown run. I'm lvl14-15 so maybe I'm low lvl for this area. But this Eoten boss seemed to heal his allies or something. The fight took so long in fact - I went dry on resources. I killed many, but eventually lost 4/5 members. 

With only my herald left. I had to run away to reset (still stuck in combat because of permanent brand / gouging strike), and pull them 1-2 at a time and kite around the entire area summoning ogres. The Eotens had disrupts and knockbacks and ugh. It was an extreme slog.  

  

So what you said about needing good DPS. I'm seeing it now. If you can't focus target down targets fast enough, battles becomes an infinitely long boring slogfest. 

[thelee]

5 hours ago, Ouroboros226 said:

I entered some sort of Skull fortress.

loooooooooooool you definitely wandered into a high-level area.

you should be proud of your survival!

 

5 hours ago, Ouroboros226 said:

But this Eoten boss seemed to heal his allies or something.

yeah the eotans have a chanter that can chant a robust inspiration to everyone, IIRC .super annoying.

 

in one of my ultimate practice runs, i got some bad luck on a megaboss named belranga. if you don't know, the megaboss has impossibly high defenses, and to bring them down you have to kill baby spiders she keeps summoning - but as her defenses go down her power and speed increase. she also has an attack that knocks your character down and drains them for some health.

i didn't have enough damage, and i killed too many baby spiders, so that i reached a point where i'd get her closer to death, but then she'd bite me and heal an enormous amount of health back up. even though i could never die with my game, it was functionally a failure, because i could also never kill her, and the ultimate means you can't just alt-f4 the game (you're supposed to record your entire run if you want official credit), so i had to just fail the run. you better believe i planned for that better in the next attempts...

Edited September 15, 2021 by thelee

[Ouroboros226]

Thanks for sharing. Argh that sucks :S I'm gonna skip the super bosses on my first triple crown run. I'm on some iceberg now with a waterfall and portal puzzle which is making me lose my mind.