Fortress pulse-explosion

I remember playing Final Fantasy X as a kid and setting up my Sphere Grid so poorly, but then I mulled some things over and used some Clear Spheres and made better decisions, and voilá I was able to beat the final boss.

Interchange Sphere Grid with Passive Tree and Clear Sphere with Regret Orb obviously.

Im really glad I randomly clicked on page 21 because I was trying to figure out why on earth this thread made it past 2 pages.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

Why do you think a bad build should be able to run the hardest content without struggling?

Because I think the idea of a game "checking" you or gating content and not allowing you to experience it just because you don't follow the meta is pretty boring.

Except... that's not happening. Unless you think "meta" builds have literally zero elemental resistances?

You don't have to follow the meta. I never do, and I don't struggle with this content. Here's a list of things I played this league, and every single one of them could tank Collapsing Fortress pulses. I'm pretty sure all of them could literally go AFK in collapsing fortresses, to be honest, but I only tried that with some of them:

- Animate Weapon / Farrul Tiger Guardian
- Stormburst Totem Heirophant
- Herald of the Hive Elementalist
- Fireball Mine Deadeye
- Sweep Warden

Please point me to the meta build on that list. I'm currently levelling a Warden with Fire-converted Ice Shot, found a Fortress in my third map, and managed to escape very easily. My items are absolute garbage, I think I still have -60% chaos res and near-zero physical mitigation, but somehow I was able to kill my way to the exit. Then again, I do have more life at level 73 than your build has at 98, so... there's that.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate#2605 wrote:

Except... that's not happening. Unless you think "meta" builds have literally zero elemental resistances?
Then again, I do have more life at level 73 than your build has at 98, so... there's that.

This is amazing. Im sure toforto has a simple excuse.. i mean explanation.

League mechanics that exist inside of maps have always interacted with map mods in whatever ways the ability tags match. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, or difficult to build around.

The only thing I found initially questionably balanced in keepers was the boss pair, simply because the presence of large physical components in their bullethell abilities kinda overpunishes a lack of phys mit and/or reactive recovery when you don't have the raw firepower to just ignore them.

Never once struggled with a fortress, especially not with the explosion waves at the end.

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Bigwilleh#1842 wrote:

The only thing I found initially questionably balanced in keepers was the boss pair, simply because the presence of large physical components in their bullethell abilities kinda overpunishes a lack of phys mit and/or reactive recovery when you don't have the raw firepower to just ignore them.

Except this should be expected too, especially given the source material is that they are Breach Bosses.....all of whom were designed to do exactly that.

Plus.....nearly every attack from the bosses is easily dodge-able. Even on the first time seeing them.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Except this should be expected too, especially given the source material is that they are Breach Bosses.....all of whom were designed to do exactly that.

Plus.....nearly every attack from the bosses is easily dodge-able. Even on the first time seeing them.

Just gonna throw in the datamined values for the bullethell spray between Tul, Creeping Avalanche in a flawless breachstone (level 84) and It that was Tul's two bullethell variants, for comparison.

Tul, Creeping Avalanche, flawless breechstone area...he will get 250% more life than displayed plus 4 random modifiers, but those don't interact well with added as x mods because his only dangerous ability is pure frost.



It that was Tul, always in a level 83 area.




Ice shower is the raining crystals bullethell, and tentacle barrage is the basic tul style spray bullethell. Big chonker physical damage present on both, where it is absent on the original.

I don't disagree that physical damage baseline is expected, though I will say that having both physical and frost as base damage instead of phys base and frost converted is a bit new (its not as good which makes me scratch my head a bit).

That said, I challenge you to go in and poke these guys with about 2 million dps, no armor, no reactive recovery, about half block, and around 6000 combined life and ES. Bonus points if you do it on an older pc that has significant chances of not rendering boss abilities until after the second time you enter the area with the bosses active (I've resolved that issue through upgrades since).

I also understand that me going in to a pinnacle encounter that was new to me blind on a character that was maybe 15-20 hours past campaign was a bit ambitious as a casual player. Basically I'm not saying your wrong, I'm just saying the design was much more heavy handed than the original breechlords they are based on (and I understand they are supposed to be different).

Edit: fixed the tul, creeping avalanche ss, I had had the wild one selected on POEDB instead of the breachstone variant

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Bigwilleh#1842 wrote:

That said, I challenge you to go in and poke these guys with about 2 million dps, no armor, no reactive recovery, about half block, and around 6000 combined life and ES. Bonus points if you do it on an older pc that has significant chances of not rendering boss abilities until after the second time you enter the area with the bosses active (I've resolved that issue through upgrades since).

I do understand your point that it isn't EXACTLY like the original encounter: I only meant that Breach bosses have always hit for extremely high specific type damage and so going into fighting any of those bosses would require defenses. Just like breachstones have always required high damage to complete in the time limit.

As for the paragraph I quoted....I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't tell anyone to do that. It's certainly a challenge to do what you describe, but its a self-imposed and self-destructive challenge. Remember that encountering the two-boss fight requires a rare fragment usage. And ANY fragment usage to encounter a boss comes with certain expectations on their ability to dish out serious damage. Not only that...but this is a current league boss, which is ALWAYS without fail harder than a typical "boss" like The Shaper.

Going in with a glass cannon or a weak build is a choice. Dying is expected. That has absolutely NO bearing on an argument over whether something is "overtuned". In fact, it detracts from any meaningful argument in much the same way some previous posters have devolved this thread with inferior builds (mostly in terms of defense) for the content.

Yeah to be fair overtuned isn't the perfect word for it. Armor-encouraging perhaps?

Basically I'm just fumbling my words in expressing a grouse for baseline pinnacle encounters that over-favor one type of defense over another (evasion wouldn't have much to say about getting winged by those bullethells for example, suppress would help a bit but not as much as 30-40k armor).

That is certainly a much broader discussion to be had on "physical damage" and "physical damage mitigation" options for us to build.

That said, we DO have a lot of physical mitigation options available to us....the problem is they are restricted almost entirely to specific items that don't fit with every build. Endurance charges are great, but the majority of builds can't fit endurance stacking in. Losing the phys reduction mods and the reduction of phys taken as elemental values kinda sucked for those who were NOT maximizing and stacking them.

The build that REALLY gets the shaft hard is any pure evasion build. But pure evasion gets the shaft from basically.....everything the game throws at you.