Pirate boss is too difficult, but why?

My ships seem to be taken hostage quite often by pirates, even with a lousy load of around 100k value of corn, and I'm stuck with beating the pirate boss or losing everything, my crew being the most valuable. You have only one try and my battles take 30 minutes, I'm not kidding. First of all, I have the highest attack and spell block that I can achieve and his "anchor drop" spell hits 100% of the time. Is this not a spell, does it not have a hit component? His charge attack also seems to hit me at the same rate. But an even greater problem is his life pool. I mean, I have 75k DPS, with 50% chance to ignore DR and with Resolute Technique. I consider this to be the highest I can achieve at this point, with decent gear. How can I hit him non-stop for 30 minutes and barely kill him, if I don't make any mistakes and be killed myself in 1-2 shots every time? There's no way to replenish your flasks during this time. Did the developers go a bit over the edge with this one? I mean, it's just a lousy ship. Can't the boss be similar in difficulty to a mediocre map boss? I really don't have 30 minutes to waste from my life each time. What should I do, send shipments only with the minimum value every time? Maybe I'll be surprised that even that won't keep the pirates away, knowing how this game works in general.

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Hitman473107#7521 wrote:

My ships seem to be taken hostage quite often by pirates, even with a lousy load of around 100k value of corn, and I'm stuck with beating the pirate boss or losing everything, my crew being the most valuable.

If its only 100k value you can send it with cheap crew. This also then costs less upkeep.

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Hitman473107#7521 wrote:

You have only one try and my battles take 30 minutes, I'm not kidding.

Get more DPS...

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Hitman473107#7521 wrote:

First of all, I have the highest attack and spell block that I can achieve and his "anchor drop" spell hits 100% of the time. Is this not a spell, does it not have a hit component?

Its an attack and cant be blocked. See https://poedb.tw/us/Admiral_Valerius#AdmiralValeriusPirateCoveBoss

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Hitman473107#7521 wrote:

But an even greater problem is his life pool. I mean, I have 75k DPS, with 50% chance to ignore DR and with Resolute Technique. I consider this to be the highest I can achieve at this point, with decent gear.

If you hire a proper Merc and equip it your Merc will do more damage than that.

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Hitman473107#7521 wrote:

There's no way to replenish your flasks during this time.

You can anoint 'Replenishing Remedies' for cheap.

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Hitman473107#7521 wrote:

Did the developers go a bit over the edge with this one? I mean, it's just a lousy ship.

I dont agree with the design here either... IMO the Admiral should only show up for valuable loads or some such thing.

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Hitman473107#7521 wrote:

Maybe I'll be surprised that even that won't keep the pirates away, knowing how this game works in general.

It wont keep them away. Im sending minimum value ships for that reason myself. My Kingsmarch would be bankrupt long ago without the Admirals generous funding. (Only takes ~2 min for my char now, build is still WIP. Admiral is a pushover if you have a working build.)

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Hitman473107#7521 wrote:

I mean, it's just a lousy ship. Can't the boss be similar in difficulty to a mediocre map boss?

He's easier than your standard Shaper Guardian. He just has a ton of health (~88M). Not standing in the waves and whirls, and not tanking his anchor (does surprisingly low damage) is a learning curve. Super easy boss with at least ~2M DPS. If you can't even manage that, well... best to look for a build guide, then.

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Super easy boss with at least ~2M DPS. If you can't even manage that, well... best to look for a build guide, then.

Draw me an elaborate and complete sketch (like passive skills, gear, gems etc.) on how you can achieve that melee damage and I'll believe it. Not otherwise, thanks. If it's just the gear that provides the difference, then maybe when I'll get better one.

+Zrevnur#2026

Thanks for all the feedback. When it comes to damage, this is the most I've been able to get from everything that the game provides, so far. And I've heavily invested in damage in the passive tree.

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Hitman473107#7521 wrote:

When it comes to damage, this is the most I've been able to get from everything that the game provides, so far. And I've heavily invested in damage in the passive tree.

I dont want to try to give advice on that kind of build as Im unfamiliar with it but a quick look at your char shows that you really need to get better gear. At least you would have better survival with better gear.

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Super easy boss with at least ~2M DPS. If you can't even manage that, well... best to look for a build guide, then.

I've done some research and you most likely were talking about an overstretched version of critical strikes, since it's the only thing which might achieve a high enough multiplier for your damage. However, not all characters should be solely focused on critical strikes. On the other hand, the amount of investment you'd need to achieve a 20x multiplier, somehow with 100% actual chance to critically strike, while applied to a layer of 100k flat damage, while also considering that even with max accuracy (75%), especially against bosses, is a dream, looks highly unfeasible. First of all, you need 100k flat damage, which is much more than I invested in the tree and from gear. Second, you need to spend a large portion of your passive skills on DEX and accuracy rating, which means less flat damage and less life (or less survival). You also need to gather all the critical strike chance and multiplier passive nodes, which are sometimes separate from each other. You have 25% chance to miss, no matter how much accuracy you gather. The passive points that you still have left will create a flat damage bonus much smaller. The weapon must have a high crit chance, so it means that its flat damage will be inferior to other types (such as maces). What passive points will you have left for actual defences, like block, armor, extra life and even extra resists? If you somehow do manage to align all the stars and come close to 2M, as you said, which means "barely reaching" not "starting from", then I don't think you'll even be able to apply that to anyone, as you can still be one-shotted often in this game, even with great defences. And even if there would be a divine build guide like you said, which has a shining star over it at all times, I still like to apply my own style and combinations, because this is what an rpg game is all about. Otherwise, why even have options? Just choose from the start one out of 5 possible builds, which guarantee the best version you could become and that's that. So, I still doubt that practically you'd reach 20M dps and even if you do manage to have more overall damage than a Resolute Technique user, the extra points you spent will mean less survival. And I think that a game which has a decent quality should be feasible, when it comes to the basic thread of progress, for at least 50% of build types, not just 5%. You should feel that it's very challenging (but not close to impossible) only if you add extra difficulty constraints and you chaotically invest in everything, without having a worthwhile aim.

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In case you didn't know, max accuracy is 100%.

Ok, my bad. I must've thought that it's similar to block and resists (capped by default at 75%) and I didn't look it up, since I haven't used accuracy and evasion at all in years. So, let's consider that you manage to gain 100% accuracy, even against bosses. What about all the rest? It seems like you take some gifts with one hand, but pay some tolls with the other one.

EDIT: And accuracy is dependent on the enemy's evasion, right? So, even if you manage to gain a huge amount of accuracy, it will be decreased proportionally by a huge evasion on the enemy's part, thus constantly truncating your practical accuracy (chance to hit). Maybe I'm not wrong about this one as well. So, I doubt that you'll ever gain 100% (or 95% more like it, after I've searched myself) chance to hit against stronger enemies, thus your overall dps is truncated by the accuracy mechanic.

I think it's that your damage is low. You can easily raise it with a few small changes, though. You have 4 life flasks which is almost completely unnecessary. Your amulet can easily be replaced by a new one for almost no cost. The one you have on is definitely not helping much.

You should also look for a new belt very soon. I suggest trying to find a Stygian Vise. They drop almost every time you clear an abyss and always come with an abyss socket. A decent rare may have triple the stats on your current belt.

That's where I would start anyway. Getting some new flasks will help you out so much. Magic flasks are really easy to get decent stats with some Alteration Orbs. You probably have so many now that you don't even pick all of them up lol