I am level 64 with keeping my gear updated as best as possible and this took place in the 55 zone of the monolith (I don’t think it matters as it should scale):
I just fought this boss and I have to say, it was not enjoyable at all. I am on my first playthrough and I died four times up until this point. After 15+ deaths and actually asking in global chat to find out what the heck was happening, I just logged out.
There is a mob spawning in the center that when I went near him, I died to void damage and if I stayed away I got hit by a bleed dot that just drained my life. Death after death due to doing mechanics properly was not fun. I was avoiding everything I could and still would die due to what felt like a homing dot that would latch on and just drain me quickly. My resistances were as good as I could expect with the gear that was obtainable to me up until this point.
P.S. Rerolling the gambling screen should not cost anything. After 60+ rerolls of the screen, I saw a poignard four times.
There might be a mechanic that is not obvious to you, but usually all of Shade’s Mechancis are very well telegraphed.
The Blood Effigy that spawn in the middle is not super dangerous immediately, but it will deal increasingly more damage over time.
I don’t know what void ability you died to, so it’s really hard to help you.
I am working on a Video Summing up all individual Shade Abilities and showcasing them.
A Shade will always have 5 Abilities:
2 of it’s respective type (blood in your case). The 2 blood abilities are the blood effigy, that spawn in the middle of the arena and the 3 blood orbs, which chase the player and need to be either soaked one by one or jsut run away until they expire.
2 random void abilities from a big pool
1 movement ability from a small pool
Since you are not aware fo what exactly killed you, it might be super hard to know what exactly you are stuggling with.
I saw all the telegraphs of the moves. The Blood Effigy in the center that spawned was constantly surrounded by other crap that as soon as I approached and got it, something else would kill me. If I did not kill him within two seconds of him spawning, I was spamming potions to try to stay alive and would just fall over dead from a dot before I could get to the Blood Effigy.
My best attempt was maybe 80% of the boss health pool. The tentacles respawned extremely fast that I could barely address the boss.
I just tried again and the other thing is Blood Drain. As soon as it latches on, I am toast. I am even getting to the Blood Effigy quick enough.
Just went a third time since posting this:
The Blood Effigy spawned and I used Shift to run through everything to kill it instantly and still died to the dot that it cast out before it died. Also, I did not even hit zero on my health pool. My health regenerated back to full after I was dead.
The BE dot is killing me in less than 2 seconds every time. I can’t leech health back from anything fast enough and I have plenty of leech.
I upped my physical resist to 70% and the dot from the BE just tears through me still. My void resist is 40%, void really isn’t the issue, it is mainly this dot. I am attacking the BE and it is barely dying or it I barely do any damage. Up until this point I have had really zero issues with anything when I have been paying attention and I have been this entire time (except with names of skills and I even wrote down what is killing me now).
As a rotation, how do you play?
Throw a Smoke Bomb, then Synchronized Strike then Shift? And Shift procs Shurikens and Cascade?
You have no Dodge (it’s converted to Glancing Blow chance) so I hope your GB chance is really high (it is only 35% damage reduction) and your Endurance is high with a high threshold. If not, you have very little defense.
Shift to run through as needed
Synchronized Strike and Shadow Cascade when the BE comes out (this isn’t one shotting the BE all the time, BE could use a small health nerf)
Smoke Bomb as needed, which is rare in this fight
Lethal Mirage to try and save my butt when needed
The BE needs a bit longer cooldown on respawn. The void circles on the ground need a 10% damage reduction.
I am now over 40 deaths easy on this fight. My best is around 40% and the BE spawned back to back nearly and a dot got on me. I had to hang around a small circle in the center.
This fight is wearing on me badly for my enjoyment of this game. If I am able to beat this, it won’t even be a celebration, just a feeling of finally. No boss should feel like that.
what about life sustain? for example you can slap ‘hybrid health leech’ on gloves and relic to get a good sustain. on wepon you can get ‘health on hit’, ‘chance to apply frailty on melee hit’ is also worth a look.
If you happen to stuggle that much with that particualr shade, you can just continue exploring the web and find the next shade, each shade node on the echo web has a different shade.
It really hard to tell, from what you are actually dying.
Also the tendrils are not eally meant to be cleared, just ignore them and dodge their attack.
Otherwise, could you provide a video or you doing the boss?
@wast3d and @Heavy have far better knowledge than I have so I will step back a bit.
My current idea is that you lack damage reduction. You can’t leech if you’re dead, so you first need to be able to receive a strong hit. My first reaction would be to enhance the life pool and Endurance. Then, you can rely on Leech to get health back quickly.
Pretty sure that @Heavy and co will reply but after a quick look I see two issues… You have little to no defence… and I am not sure you are using the skills optimally to be honest.
First of, you are doing pretty well in terms of mechanics. Your particular combination of shade skills is actually one of the more nasty combinations. Those big void puddles that the boss puts on the ground do deny ALOT of space, while the blood orbs and tendrils require alot of room to savely manuveur them.
When you died, you jumped in the void puddles, which obviously is bad.
You don’t have any defenses besides resistances. Which makes you not being able to endure the Blood Effigy for a longer period of time. (Get some more health) Also dodge is an very good defensive layer for rogue, even though that wouldn’t protect you against the void puddles and Blood Effigy.
Also you are very busy dodging and dealing with the tendrils. Just leave the tendrils alone and focus more damage on the boss. There are very few tiems, that you actively try to attack and damage the boss.
Speaking of dealing damage, your build is not very synergistic.
You do have 2 great melee weaposn right there, but you took “Porcupines Wrath” in Shadow Cascade, whic hremoves the melee portion and buffs the throwing portion.
This way your melee weapons do not affect it that much anymore. If you want to go for a Throw focused build, that is perfectly fine, but if you gonna do that, you need to scale throwing damage, you especially need to get base throwing damage (ring and/or amulet prefixes)
Without recrafting alot of items i would suggest just remove Porcupine Wrath for the time being and decide if you wanna go melee or throw.
Another point: Shade is entirely optional and you do not need to kill it.
Especially on normal timelines it’s not a mechanic that you have to deal with in any way.
