One Shots and Boss Design?

So I've been playing hardcore poe2 (because I hate myself), and so far I'm kind of confused by the boss design. On one hand, the game is beautiful, the bosses are all visually interesting and the boss zones being inescapable is fucking awesome. On the other hand, I miss a single dodge roll and die instantly.

The concept of making boss areas this inescapable cage match is great. It opens up all this design space where the player can't leave or save scum the fight. You have the ability to just slowly burn through the players resources over a sustained fight. Something that was impossible in poe1 (outside of lab) due to portals or logout macro. It means you can make fights longer and more engaging.

Instead it feels like they threw this opportunity away and I'm unsure why. Every boss has some ability that just instantly kills you if you don't dodge it. I can kind of (maybe) understand this for bosses in late maps where you should already be familiar with mechanics and players can have crazy stats, but in the early acts where you're going into fights blind it seems strange?

Anyway, yeah, besides that I kinda like everything else, idk.

It all comes down to resists if your talking the Act 1 boss. My first character had 10% cold resist was gettin 2 tapped, raised cold to 41% beat the boss next try. This would be alot more obvious if they had something in place to tell you what your last 5 hits against you were.

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It all comes down to resists if your talking the Act 1 boss. My first character had 10% cold resist was gettin 2 tapped, raised cold to 41% beat the boss next try. This would be alot more obvious if they had something in place to tell you what your last 5 hits against you were.

I had 42% fire res and got melted in about .5 seconds against the candle boss barrage in act 1. I was also a level over the zone and all my stat nodes were in strength. Maybe I'm expected to cap fire and cold res in act 1? Unsure.

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It all comes down to resists if your talking the Act 1 boss. My first character had 10% cold resist was gettin 2 tapped, raised cold to 41% beat the boss next try. This would be alot more obvious if they had something in place to tell you what your last 5 hits against you were.

You're absolutely right, but the game compounds this issue by being a stingy POS with usable loot, especially early on. I'm not an idiot, every build guide for poe1 has said to buy a sapphire ring for merveil for years. So when I get to the act 1 boss and see a bunch of ice attacks, I go "cool, let's get some cold res because so far I've only got the 10 from killing the ice witch."

Go back to town and... nothing. No rings for sale (not that I could afford them anyway), no vendor recipes to make a sapphire ring like poe1, no gear from merchants with cold res, nothing I can equip with an open socket to slot a rune, don't have enough gold to even try gambling on a ring because jewelry is overpriced af... wtf am I supposed to do? I was told poe2 was more about crafting gear than the first game, yet I can "craft" myself a ring to solve build problems in poe1 for three wisdom scrolls and an extra blue skill gem.

It's infuriating to keep dying to a boss knowing exactly what my problem is while the game prevents me from fixing it. I swear to god it was easier to gear when everything was just priced in orbs, gold sucks.