So far I cleared two out of the four “levels” of the new dungeon. I really like the “nonsensical” and unpredictable layout of the area. The enemies are fine, but some variety would be welcome.
With that said, I think that the current iteration of the dungeon boss may need some love. In particular, it seems that there is a very high chance to get one-tapped by her attacks. Thus, even though it may be “fair” to lose the session because the boss killed you, it feels a but underwhelming when it happens in a split second, sometimes mid-fight. Grim Dawn has the same idea of keyed dungeons, but the game there offers multiple “circuit breakers” to save the player from instant death.
After a little more testing, it appears to be the “tearing” ability (void). My void resistance is overcapped, but it doesn’t make a difference in this battle. On the last occasion, the flash came too fast before I could react.
Still, much better than Sirus, for which I thank you.
All her other attacks are telegraphed so getting away from them is relatively easy once you understand the pattern. Some of the direct attacks can be even shrugged off…
But its the DoT of the permanent void splashes on the ground - they tick for relatively huge damage that cant really be mitigated beyond normal resists… The main issue for me is that you have to have a high level of awareness of where these pools are during the fight so that you dont swap eras and end up in the middle of a mess and die before you have time to move away… And you need to strategically position yourself so that she drops another pool in a useful spot - i.e. so that you dont end up with a floor covered in DoT.
Things like DoT amulets and a high regen do help, but at level 100, its hitting damn hard.
I dont want the fight to be easier at level 100… there is a lvl 95 that is fine for making most Legendaries anyway… but imho it would be nice if the void pools were not permanent - that would keep it difficult, but less frustrating especially for longer fights…
I agree!!! You stack so much extra enemy damage when you go throug those dungeon doors. Those void pools are the worst. Even with full capped void resistance they tick for 2k dmg and that is too much to take for my Rogue. I dont like that they dont disappear once they are on the ground. So if you switch to the other timeline you often end up in one of the pools Jula left on the ground and you die instantly.
Apart from that this is the BEST boss fight since UBER ELDER in POE. Whoever created this or got the idea for time travelling in that boss fight is a Genius!
The only attack that 1 taps my character against level 4 Julra is the wind up room aoe attack. Anything else she does, I can tank a hit or two from it and I’m a shieldless BD. The only unavoidable damage is the first tick of the void puddle she drops on you after passing through time.
The boss’ mechanics and difficulty are more than fair for the reward she drops. On the last run yesterday, the dungeon dropped 21 exalted items, 9 of which were from the boss.
It ticks mine for 560, which is less than 25% of my hp.
Out of interest, can you remember the boosts that were enabled when you were getting this 560? For me its generally less than HerrPeppschmiers 2k but still just over 1k or half my HP… 560 void tick I could also survive thanks to regen/bleed etc…
and just to confirm, we are taking about the Lvl 100 version…
I always take the 2x150% damage paths, because generally they drop more exalts.
The damage of the puddle is dodgable, blockable and could get clancing blowed. I have unbuffed 31% glancing blow, 23% dodge and 900 armor (with blade shield).
And yes, it’s level 100. The only thing that I allow to hit me, in order to have more uptime on the boss is her ice missile, which hits me for between 2000 and 2200 damage. My total HP pool is 2350. However, the fight for me is fairly short. Generally I do 1 time lap to skip the first aoe attack, a 2nd one to avoid the void lazors (that’s where I drop the first puddle), another skip to avoid the 2nd aoe attack and generally she dies on the 2nd void beams, or shortly after I avoid them with another skip.
Depending on the the level of the Sanctum, the modifiers and of course your character and items, you can of course survive the void pool for a few ticks (on low levels with the right character you should even be able to just stand in them).
My Marksman with ~1,3k life and capped void resist died before I could even react on the level 3 Sanctum version even tho I had full health. Basically I switched time and insta death from the pool. I unfortunately can’t remember all the modifiers tho.
That is kind of the only part of the fight that I don’t really like because, as others mentioned, you have to memorize every pool. I also don’t know if she can spawn pools while you are in the other time zone so you can’t even know where they are when you switch back but I kind of doubt that. Still the void pools are a bit too strong I feel.
She marks you with a puddle each time after the first time skip you do. The first time she is like “omfg he can skip time WHAAAAAAA?” and each time after you jump through, she marks you with a circle and drops a void puddle on you. You can decide with 100% accuracy where void zones spawn.
Now with 1.3k hp I assume you are playing Bow mage?
I completely forgot the pools - good point, especially with all the visual clutter and chaos on the screen when moving. Permanent degen is one of the worse aspects in PoE and I’d rather not see it here, especially when flipping between two arenas in real time.
On a side note, “it works for me” is not a strong argument when talking about a game that aims to retain more than one player. Glancing blows, if I remember, are no longer in the game (at least I haven’t seen such an affix on a long while).
As L92 Lich, the only meaningful defenses are life, ward, and critical avoidance. Can’t do much blocking, while armor and dodge are close to non-existent due to stat pressure. Let me know if I miss something.
You are in full control, where those void pools are located, everytime you switch the era with the dungeon ability and she follows you she marks you and you have a brief window to place the pool properly.
It is the player’s responsibility, to keep track of where you lay down the pools.
They have a finite duration. This duration scales up massively with Tier and on T4 they last several minutes, which makes placing them proplery one of the key mechanics.
Generally my suggestion for tactic is: Place all of the puddles in the same location (bottom left/bottom right for example) in both era’s.
There are of course other tactics, but this way you always know where puddles are, when you switch era’s.
I really like the fight and there is only one gripe I have with the dungeon fight, which becomes very apparent on T4:
The Void Line Projectile Telegraph is very faint, barely visible and does not have any noticable windup animation on the boss.
I think that Void Line Projectile Telegraph needs to be more prominent.
This is a part of the issue I wanted to address originally when feeling that one-taps come too fast - not enough warning, especially in the chaos of totems, pools., rotating beams and that not.
In general, a good fight involves chip damage from random (chaotic) sources and lethal damage from well-telegraphed or well-patterned attacks. Lethal damage should not come from random or feels-like-random soruces.
Julra is intended by design to have hard hitting attacks and to be challenging side content. The boss is balanced around your ability to endlessly use Temporal Shift to essentially dodge any mechanic the boss has with a small downside, a void rift at your feet.
You aren’t supposed to tank any of the damage Julra does, it’s more of a fight based on if you can do the mechanics correctly and strategize your void rift placements between the two eras.
Thank you for the reply Kissingaiur. However, the issue of being able to reliably notice when she is about to do something still remains. It takes just once to be hit.
However, Temporal Shift is only used against the screenwide aoe. If you use it at other times on tier 3/4 it is more likely to get you killed than anything. So dodging any mechanic with Temporal Shift is effectively an overstatement.
While I do also have a Bow-Mage, this was with one of my other Rogues which is a simple Phys Marksman. Feels a bit stronger and durable than my Bow-Mage and is also my highest level character. Has the same issue as most dodge based characters… if you get hit you really feel it.
I wanted to beat the T3 version with my Dodge based Beastmaster, but this fight completely counters that style of play. Beastmasters have a lot of defensive layers that are dependent on hitting the enemy (Aspect of the Boar, Dodge increases from Serpent Strike, Haste from hitting the enemy, offensive buffs like Aspect of the Shark / Viper). Each time you switch eras, she doesn’t become hittable for 5+ seconds, which removes all of your temporary buffs.
Then she throws a bunch of hard-hitting attacks at you in a way that makes it hard to notice all of them, and that doesn’t include the “whack the fountains or they become invulnerable and hit you with even harder projectiles”. That makes it a lot harder to stack the necessary offensive buffs to make this fight tolerable.
I’m still learning the ins and outs, but I get tired of having to farm keys just to have the opportunity to fight her. Especially since I want to learn all my timings to avoid getting one-shot because I can’t hit her often enough to get the buffs I need.
I am really happy with the fight mechanically, but the thing you mentioned here also bothers me.
It takes to long for her to follow you into the different Era.
As a Reaper Form Lich that relies on Leech, you always start low health until you can finally leech again.
Speaking of the Lich, the Reaper form has worked as “two lives” for me during the rest of the gamer. Although rarely, I’d receive fatal damage sometimes and will be bounced off Reaper into human form. With Julra, a hit against the Reaper kills you entirely with no human form.
