I wanted to give some feedback on the bosses, what modifiers really stuck out as problematic, and some monsters that felt tuned a bit high. I finished the full set of monoliths a few days ago at level 91 and am now working on the empowered ones. To put into perspective my stats used for completing the monoliths I’ll list them below:
Starting stats
Offense
200% increased personal damage
90% attack speed
5% crit chance
200% bleed and 200% ignite chance
100% increased universal minion damage
150% minion health
Defense
1000 health
35% armor mitigation
capped all resist
0% crit avoidance
15% all damage reduction (titans heart)
8-14% melee leech
As I leveled and refined gear throughout the monoliths my stats increased to:
Offense
450% increased personal damage
90% attack speed
5% crit chance
200% bleed and 170% ignite chance
200% increased universal minion damage
300% minion melee damage
300% minion damage over time
350% minion health
Defense
1300 health
40% armor mitigation
capped All resist
100% crit avoidance
15% all damage reduction (titans heart)
6% all damage leech (bleeding heart)
A snapshot of my current build and gear on completion can be seen here:
Bosses
The Abomination: I felt this was a fairly polished fight. The mechanics were clearly marked and the boss has very distinct tells for its attacks. Having a minion along to distract the boss while I cracked vessels may be skewing my view of the overall difficulty however.
Argentus: This was a cool fight. I wish there could have been more interaction with the ballistae to turn them off though.
Rahyeh: I got to see some of what this boss does (big aoes, pizza attack, line attack), but he froze on the edge of the arena halfway so my view of the fight isn’t quite complete. Rebuke carried this fight so hard for me I’m not sure if it could be made challenging for any sentinel based class.
Formosus: This fight isn’t quite hectic enough. He leaves himself so vulnerable during that beam attack that you can just wack him a few times from behind and then he falls over.
Lagon: I’ve read quite a few complaints about this boss, but I can’t seem to find any pain points with him. I’ll be rerolling my necro eventually and starting a spell blade soon so maybe that will offer more insight into what makes this boss hard. For now though I think he offers a generous hit box with very well communicated attacks.
Harton’s Husk: I thought adding the 2 monsters as distractions was pretty clever. After I figured out trying to kill the worms was pointless the fight got much more manageable. Overall the boss was fine. He’s got zoning to think about and telegraphs to dodge. Much like the ballistae in the Argentus fight, it would have been nice to interact with the environmental dangers. The worms could even be made more dangerous then.
Emperor of Corpses: This is the fight that made me actually have to learn what modifiers did. One of my first really big boss fails came from fighting this guy while enraged. His big green AOE attack went off so fast that it exploded before the green circle even finished channeling. Its after that I learned some boss shouldn’t be fought with speed modifiers. Outside of having to dodge certain speed modifiers the fight felt pretty balanced. I didn’t like how he slides around like a rag doll when I push up against him though. He a big hulking dragon but he floats around like a balloon. The killer blood DOT on the ground also needs to be made more visible. I had a hard time keeping track of where it was on the ground a large portion of the fight.
Fire Shamans: This was my hardest fight and earned me my 2nd of 3 boss deaths in the monolith. Deadly + enraged rolled right over me. I had to come back with about 60% health and damage modifiers instead. I still barely made it. The fight is hectic and everything hits hard. Two things really stuck out to me as pain points.
First I don’t like how every shaman knows every other shamans attacks. Usually in a group fight each member has a specialty. This allows you to single out whoever has the hardest mechanic for your build and kill them off to make the fight easier. Sometimes you kill off one or two and the remaining members gain empowered abilities. In other cases they absorb the skills of their comrades later in the fight. Either way there is some amount of breathing room. This fight never does that. Its just all on all the time, and you just have to hope they don’t use the worse ability on you to frequently.
Secondly the degen pools they leave after dying is very strong and the bosses like to stand in it when fighting you. Even with 15% all damage reduction, 75% resist, and an extra 30% damage over time reduction I could not stand in those green pools for more than 2 seconds without dying.
This wouldn’t be much of a problem if the shamans were easier to drag around to position their death pools ( its harder to position ranged enemies where you want them to die ), and if they didn’t keep trying to fight in them. As a melee character I was locked out of engaging with the final shaman as he literally stood as far back as he could in overlapping green pools and did not come out to fight me. I had to throw my Manifest Amour minion at him until he died. Thankfully I some how got out of it with 200 health, but I felt completely taken out of the fight.
Heorot (THIS IS A MERCY!!!): I really liked this fight. The telegraphs were good. The punish for using your movement skill to early when he is in his Wrath of Winter phase was clever. The wolves added some much needed pressure. All in all a good fight.
Elder Gasper: This was my 3rd and final boss death in the monolith. Overall the fight was fine. Most moves are telegraphed well and the damage didn’t feel to out of line. That being said The big void circle one shot move needs a better tell for where the safe zone is. My death came from not knowing where to stand during that attack. There is purple everywhere and just one small point in the middle to stand. I found myself running in and out not knowing what purple was the bad purple only to figure out its all bad. If the center opened up just a little more I think it would be fine. The elemental beam rotation could also be a bit slower. I soaked it with rebuke and then used the moves peed boost it gives to outrun the beams, but I would have been out of luck without that build path. Regular walking couldn’t out run it and lower mobility builds may suffer.
Modifiers
Undead / Void Monsters deal X increased damage: This modifier is a trap. It always buffs the main boss of the monolith and the % is ridiculously high. Undead usually started at around 80-120% and Void was usually 200%+. Those numbers are suicide when combined with any other offensive mod. 100% increased overall damage was usually comfortable for a monolith run of 30 or so echoes. 150% was uncomfortable. 200%+ was down right terrifying. One undead / void mod already takes a monolith close to if not at terrifying levels of damage.
Dodge / Glancing Blows: I don’t want them gone I would just like affixes to counteract them. They are obnoxious and have little to no counter play.
Deadly / Enraged / Frenzy + Haste: These modifiers swing the difficulty of a boss fight in a way I feel is unhealthy. They can either be outright ignored or they make some mechanics feel outright impossible to play around. If they are allowed to continue modifying bosses I will probably just sand bag my monolith runs until I can avoid them all together. I would much rather see boss specific modifiers that do interesting things to the fights. IE… Monster are now deadly if not hit recently / The Emperor of corpses zombies now explode on death.
Monster
Smoldering Lithrac: The on death explosion is far to high. I often get caught for 50-70% of my health if I stumble into one of these things with little to no offensive mods. The on death explosion either needs more wind up or less damage.
Meruna: Overall the monster is ok, but it seems to have a weird sweet spot for damage that can result in a one shot during its slam attack. One time or another I had what looked like multiple hits register from a slam wave that resulted in obscene amounts of damage.
Soul Cage: The breath attack does way to much damage. Even with 45% damage over time reduction and capped resist I’ve had my health plummet with little to no damage mods.
Sky Mage: Their big light bombardment attack feels like it hits a bit to hard.