Viper Boss Feedback from a POE casual

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rhazas_ghul#0026 wrote:

Long, rambly post... sorry, not sorry for that.

So I'm a POE casual but played loads of D2, I never played a souls game in my life. However, I did play bunch of roguelikes, so the idea of dying a lot in a video game isn't new to me. I played one season of POE1 until I reached maps following a build guide from Mathil. Didn't enjoy the pace of the game. For POE 2 I only reached endgame once. I did love the pacing though. It felt very very good. I played an Infernalist minion build in SSF at the beginning of EA, so I did beat good ol' viper lady. One thing I remember from that playthrough is that the spike in difficulty was pretty big (specially in normal difficulty... I feel cruel difficulty was easier somehow... my Infernalist had way more meat shields and DPS at that point). Anyway, I love the games pace, the SSF experience was both times very good. You just need to make sure to check vendors as soon as you level up and get any DPS upgrade as soon as you see it. No need for a PHD in POE to do that.

Anyhow, I just started my second playthrough. I'm doing SSF again and this time with a Tactician mercenary and only loosely following build guides. I had no issues on bosses or the campaign until the act 2 main boss (needed like 5 tries or so) the Queen of Filth fight (I needed like 3 tries or so) ... and then, well viper just beat the living crap out of me...

I did beat her eventually but only after respeccing my passive skill tree a little bit (got the giant slayer node-cluster) and using completely different active skills. I want to repeat: this was not necessary on this scale at any other point in the campaign so far (I did need to use gas grenades + armor piercing rounds on the unique bosses before because galvanic shards alone are ass for single target dmg, which is fine... not every skill needs to do everything).

At the beginning I was trying to use galvanic + shock burst rounds, as well as voltaic grenades (something that more or less destroyed act3 without much issue, including previous bosses) and using those I got her down to like 1/5 of her health several times (sometimes even less) but ran out of the health potion. I then looked into this boss fight a little and read that she has high elemental resistances and that it is best to use physical dmg/armor breaking skills. I tried that and beat her first try. First try... I was a bit confused about it all.

Now... is that a skill issue? Maybe yes, maybe no. The POE nerds will probably say: it's a build issue!!! I would say it's not the greatest game design. Now coming from D2 I know that there are similar issues in doing a SSF run: F.e. if you play Paladin you start with Holy fire aura + zeal until reaching act3 nightmare and then you respecc into Hammerdin (fire immune monsters become a big problem in act3 NM hence the respecc to magic damage). But that's it usually... a onetime full respecc. It's not changing the character for a particular boss and then changing him/her back to what you want to actually play.

I guess once plasmablast (or however it is called) becomes available in cruel difficulty... she might be easier to take down also with the lightning build I want to play. Also, yes... by trying to beat her with my lightning build and failing many times I did get better at reading her attacks, dodge rolling etc....The main issue was damage and her resistances (before you ask: yes, I did use nodes and support gems for -%lightning res). I didn't have enough single target dps to get her down before the arena gets too small, and her dudes trying to impale me followed by viper shooting high velocity poison projectiles right after I come out of the last dodge roll. Another (tentative) feedback: I don't know, but I think you can't dodge those projectiles if the RNG is against you.
Anyway, at one point my health potion was always too empty. I got pretty frustrated with this fight because it feels like such an outlier in terms of difficulty. I did bring double poison charms for immunity, had 50% light and fire res and around 60% evasion... so not horrible defenses. Yet, respeccing and using different skills (the gems weren't even lvled up properly) I beat her first try and had like 3 or 4 charges of my health potion left.

In conclusion: respeccing and using a completely different skill rotation after reading a guide did not feel like solving a puzzle. It felt like I was a clown for trying to use the lightning build that more or less comfortably carried me through everything up to this point.

PS: I don't think the nerf to viper did anything... the difficulty spike on normal was as big as I remember it from my first playthrough.