Having trouble with the ball phase of searing exarch

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HoloKasT wrote:

If you have enough DPS you can kill him before he does any abilities, I did it with around 45mil DPS.

I'm really hoping the first person to feature a good exarch farming strategy guide calls their vid "Getting past the Balls"

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Maxtrux wrote:

Suiciding yourself with Forbidden Rite also works, if you are looking for the Challenge.

Apparently not, Forbidden Rite won't drop me below 1hp. I can also confirm he does more than four waves if you get him low before the first ball phase. Logging out does not skip the phase, as he restarts the phase and won't begin rolling balls until you move. Someone else suggested mirror arrow mines which, again, don't really work because of the mirror arrow cooldown. I've read a lot of ways to cheese it that don't work and put the attempt on another 28 map cooldown. I probably would have done better practicing the "watch maven, flame dash" method, even with as crazy as the high wave count phases get.

Ice Wall + Spell Cascade does actually seem promising though. Can encase myself in an ice prison that looks rather sizeable, one that I can move through and around with a phasing flask. The three charges scare me, but at least spell cascade uses one charge rather than all three.

I went back and tried a congealing mana flask (removes 15% of mana recovered from life). It damages for a big chunk while above 1hp and if you aren't topped up on mana (so you can use the flask.) It does not, however, kill you at 1hp. Also saw a mention of a /suicide command, but that's hardcore-only and doesn't do anything in softcore. And, obviously, would be useless for the challenge in hardcore.

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KalasenZyphurus wrote:

Apparently not, Forbidden Rite won't drop me below 1hp.

What I said is how I got that challenge. Forbidden Rite can definitely suicide the user.

Maybe you were wearing Southbound? Don't think it can actually leave you alive with FR - but if it actually can, that could open some interesting build option

I wasn't running anything that would prevent it when I was testing it, but I figured out a weird quirk. You can't die in hideout. You can certainly spend health down to one, but you can't actually die there. Heading out to the coast lets it self-kill. That worked with or without my Dissolution of the Flesh setup. So next time I'll try righteous fire + forbidden rite to quickly self-kill at the start of the rolling meteors phase and see if it moves on to the regular phase. With ice wall + spell cascade as a backup.

Edit: Forbidden Rite suicide totally worked in the fight to skip the phase for the challenge. You may want to pair it with something like righteous fire to get yourself dead quickly enough before the meteors get to you.

I used lightning warp, faster casting and less duration.

Worked well enough to get the job done

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KalasenZyphurus wrote:

I wasn't running anything that would prevent it when I was testing it, but I figured out a weird quirk. You can't die in hideout. You can certainly spend health down to one, but you can't actually die there. Heading out to the coast lets it self-kill. That worked with or without my Dissolution of the Flesh setup. So next time I'll try righteous fire + forbidden rite to quickly self-kill at the start of the rolling meteors phase and see if it moves on to the regular phase. With ice wall + spell cascade as a backup.

Edit: Forbidden Rite suicide totally worked in the fight to skip the phase for the challenge. You may want to pair it with something like righteous fire to get yourself dead quickly enough before the meteors get to you.

Oh right, forgot about it. Yes, in your Hideout you can't die, so it's absolutely ok if you remained with 1 HP when testing in there. My bad.

Glad to hear it worked. As a spell totem user, just going Faster Casting was enough, you have 4-5 seconds worth of time before the first wave of ball starts rolling. Otherwise, just sacrificing 2 slot for a Spell Echo + FR should be way enough even for a melee (provided they have 2-3 Blue Socket - perhaps equipping a Driftwood wand or an at least 2B Scepter in the second weapon slot may do the trick without sacrifices)

i found one strat but it can only be done with 2 players . obviously you need decent dps cause you only have 6 tp and it s hc viable as well . So you start the fight solo with a friend in ur party waiting in ur hideout then on ball phase he enters the fight and doesnt move for grace period . You log out and comeback when ball phase is over and ur friend can leave the area . it will consume a few portals but it doesnt matter if you wanna do it deathless . Rince and repeat till u have no more portals or you succed killing searing exarch . Hope it will help some of you doint it , Cheers !!!!

Stay close to Maven, more paths will be opened up. Make sure you are nowhere near ground degen , most builds can probably tank a ball during the phase but if you touch degen your going to get wrecked. Using blocking skills like the totem and frost wall will give you time to learn the patterns. If you die in sc wait for the balls to stop spawning so you dont spawn back into the same phase. Flame dash is pretty good for this section. If still difficult a sc option might be dropping all defense and going full glass cannon, all the other abilities are very avoidable.

The ground degen -

Searing Rune - Tiled rune patterns move across the arena causing players standing on them to receive two debuffs:
Cauterised Flesh: You have -5% maximum Fire Resistance and your Travel Skills have 50% reduced Cooldown Recovery Speed. Persists for 10 seconds after moving off
Searing Rune: Deals Fire Damage over time and prevents recovery of Life or Energy Shield. Applies while standing on the rune.