Hey! My experience in the game so far has been a variety of builds in 0.8.2 and leveling a Forge Guard from scratch in 0.8.3. Loved the patch so far, but I’m getting eaten alive in the Lower District. I even maxed my poison resist because I knew that’d be an issue, but just the physical damage is even proving a bit much. My gear isn’t terrific, it’s just shoddy leveling gear with poison slapped on, but it still hadn’t been an issue up to this point, even earlier parts of the chapter (which were still darn hard!). I’d go into more details about the build, but it’s really more about the discrepancy between earlier areas and this one feels a bit strong.
Personally, I like when the main campaign is a notch easier than Chapter 9 in general, but I’m still making forward progress without much issue so it’s not a deal breaker. Just this particular map is really digging at me, especially the Rogues who are impossible to run from and attack super fast.
Now that I’m farther, it’s even a bit more than that - Crystal Lotus’s shockwaves are killing me in 2-3 hits, and when he does a dozen+ of them that’s a tall order to dodge. Especially when I can only move directly towards him, where his stomps crush me! And actually tanking it, even with Rebuke up for the entire duration, is only barely possible at long range and impossible in melee range. I’d expect from the previous chapters that meh gear would make things annoying but not impossible, but this is veering on the impossible side for my skill level.
Everything after Lower Maj’elka Lower District to monoliths is probably over-tuned some at the moment and sadly it’s not explicitly the poison damage. Chapter 9 mobs get way worse in monoliths however, especially if the echo/arena is having a blast stacking Diamond Matrons, whom are very obnoxious at the moment.
Finished the chapter! The new monsters that stood out to me as unusually lethal:
Ambushes (hitting 30 stacks means I sure don’t have any poison resist anymore!)
Scalebane Rogues (as mentioned, damage came too fast and too hard to outrun)
Diamond Matrons (the ability to heal on top of making me run around to dodge instantly-lethal Void Beams means that I can easily lose any progress in killing them - god help me if they’re Of The Ox)
Crystal Lotus (shockwave attack nearly instantly lethal at melee and the tight corridors make it really hard to dodge at range, versus an open arena where you could run circles around it)
Majasa Phase 2 (I wasn’t going to include it at first, but the huge stacking physical debuffs were just way too much)
Everything else was fine, I’d like a slight touch to make it easier but I’d understand if you didn’t want to. Those are the five I really think do need a significant nerf bat.
I was able to finish Chapter 9 on my 55 marksman last night (bleed puncture, dropped multishot since it became useless even for bleed spread). It was rough. Lower district was very tedious as mobs just popped up outta nowhere and the pack density is very high. People progressing through the story are going to have a tough time, imo, as the jump in skill needed and damage received ramps up quick. Don’t get me started on Ch 9 mobs in 90 monos, they hit like a fucking truck.
Majasa wasn’t too bad. Granted I have a lot of dodge, but only 800ish hp and 10% poison resis. I never got any physical debuffs I don’t think? I learned quick to avoid her gaze or you get petrified and stomped. Also, the 3 adds being vulnerable to melee just didn’t help matters any especially if you tunnel them and forget about her gaze.
I did the whole campaign after the patch with a new Necro. Chapter 9 was very difficult for me. Not at the beginning, but suddenly after the landing. At that moment, things became a nightmare. The gap between before the landing and after was huge!
I strongly feel this part of the chapter needs yo be reevaluated in terms of difficulty.
Apart from that, the chapter is interesting and very beautiful!
I love the evolution of the story.
Same trouble here with a lich. I raised two heroes before this patch and even without a proper build it was fairly easy to get through campaign.
And now with chapter 9 I feel like its a pain in the ass for new players, even with more than 100 hours of play behind me im struggling very hard
Just to add to this i just encountered a mono that was filled with these Gorgons (snakes that summon tornados) and the moment i approached them the whole screen got cluttered in these tornados making it impossible to see anything at all.
Despite what I thought were taking a bunch of defensive passives and having synergies, my old build sucked a lot. Just awful DPS which amplified all defensive issues a ton, which it had plenty of due to being a 2H Forge Guard and not having a way to dash out of danger. I’ve since gone back and completely rebuilt it from the original vision (2H polearm 100% crit) to a minion-focused build with a shield and my damage is higher and it can handle the mobs much easier. Bosses still a pain, tho.
The enemies mentioned above are still significantly more threatening than everyone else, including some other elite mobs from this same chapter, let alone my experiences in previous chapters, and I would be happier if they went down a bit. Not a ton, but a little bit.
Holy hell, ran into a Twinned Diamond Matron and that nearly slaughtered me. Which is amazing considering nothing else in my current level 75 monos even damages me…
EDIT: And then two Diamond Matrons and a Gorgon killed me in like 10 seconds of fighting, when otherwise I can pull the entire map at once. Yeah this ain’t it chief. Either the rest of the game needs to be made a LOT harder (PLEASE DON’T) or they need to be taken down a notch.
Did you have a “rares do XXX% increased damage” modifier? I had one of those in a monolith with a lot of Gorgons (anywhere up to 4 at a time on me) & that hurt, there were several times I’d run out of pots & had to execute a rapid rearward translation…
I did, yep. It’s still notable that when I redid the mono with the exact same modifiers I had no trouble because it was just Siege Golems instead of Diamond Matrons. And while I absolutely could have been smarter about it (reroll the map as soon as I saw a single Matron, be extra careful when I have rares do increased damage, etc etc) I’m not a fan of the fact that this one new monster type is so centralizing. Either all horrendously lethal with rares increased damage (pls no) or not.
I have about 1000 hours in the game, and have played it since it was… version 0.4? 0.5? Something like that. Either way, I have to say that this is the first time that I’ve found newly added mobs to be this big a difficulty spike from the old ones. Before they’d add variety, but now it gets pretty deadly fast. I didn’t have difficulty with them in the story, levelling a new character, or even in regular monos, but there are some enemies that just outright decimate me in empowered monos, no matter what I do. Some highlights (and suggestions):
The new caster birdmen with the meteor. They don’t have a clear telegraph of where the meteor will land (unlike the old ones), and they have a VERY short windup to cast. This means that if I’m in the thick of things with tons of enemies and effects everywhere, it can be very easy to miss one. And compared to everything else, they will often 1 shot me, even though I have capped resists and 1700 HP.
The snake casters that cast the poison tornado. That poison tornado is brutal, and ticks up extremely quickly. Thankfully it’s easy to avoid, until you have 8 of them on screen. They’re easily avoidable enough (just backpedal like crazy), but still worth mentioning). If I was playing any kind of melee, though, and not staying at range, this’d be a serious issue.
Matrons skybeam is definitely one of the highest damage abilities, short of boss 1-shots, I’ve seen. I typically play casters right now, because even the thought of trying to deal with those in melee is a “no thank you” for me.
Those are the big ones for me. I feel like a lot of the caster types have way overtuned damage, and as such I’m pretty much just playing ranged/caster characters, unless it gets changed. I’m
I want to add a few observations here. They are not the biggest offender but they deviates from mob designs in previous patch.
The big golden golem punch tracking are too good for the amount of damage it can do. Big mobs so far like siege golem and void horror has proper telegraph with no tracking. While we do not have to stick to the archetype big=slow and dumb the damage has to be adjusted accordingly. Also can come in packs of 2, maybe 3, and avoiding their punches as melee when they are grouped together is impossible.
The big brown scarab that digs out of the ground. In mono, sometimes they come out in packs of 3-4 and they spam their charge attack relentlessly. Their damage is fine, problem is they block everything on the screen and they take a while to kill. Please reduce their size by half if they keep the ability to spam their charge.
Crystal elemental. Specifically lightning. Either its damage is too high or it is able to shotgun melee character. Their cast speed for 5 way lightning is too fast with seemingly 0 cd. They are brittle so individually they are manageable but they often comes in packs of 2-4 spamming lightning in all directions.
Lightning golem that shoot lightning cannon and shock you if you hit them. There is a similar necrotic mob with similar mechanic that shoot high damaging lightning in straight line and it has delayed cast time with ground aoe indicator. While we don’t want lightning golem to have repeat mechanic, their cast speed is still too fast, might be less than a sec while still having respectable damage. Comes in pack of 2-3 and will blast melee char that approach them before we can even reach them. Also, personally I dislike their modifier to shock when hit. On fast attacking char, it racks up to max stack quickly even with just 2 of them.
Lightning elemental. Old enemies and I am not sure if it behave this way in old patch but I notice it is able to do his circular AoE attack 2 screen away offscreen.
