Grava'Thul, the Melee Nemesis

Grava’Thul is the ultimate enemy of every melee build. Multiple homing pools with unprecedented fumble chance, on top of disrupt (2 secs of complete helplessness with all safe abilities blocked) and dmg reduction skills, make him by far the toughest enemy a melee build can encounter within a pack of bosses.

I’ve played 1H, 2H builds of every dmg type (as well as casters), and every time i see Grava i play around him and him alone, regardless of the dmg type. The last experience is with 2H aether Blade Arc. What’s the hardest boss for an aether build with single RR? Hard hitting Reaper? Aleks with his shards and meteors? No, it’s Grava’Thul (15% aether res). I can reliably facetank any pack of bosses with any mutators, except when Grava is there.

It happens with half of melee builds i played (not only mine). It doesn’t mean that the other half is somehow immune to Grava, it’s just that builds like Rah’zin Witch Hunter have enough dps to kill Grava before he summons enough of his pools.

Even though his full version has dispel, he is not as deadly in MC/SR because in there you have a chance to single him out. In Crucible you cannot.

What makes him so painful for melee builds, is fumble pools. They are many, they are fast, they will hunt you and halve your dmg output as well as make the most important tool of melee survival, leech, very inconsistent.

I don’t think it’s healthy when one single nemesis is the hardest encounter for 1/3(?) of all builds in the game.

One might argue that i have to turn my builds into immortal tanks if i want to beat the hardest content in the game. But this topic is not about the difficulty of the game. It’s about the balance between bosses. Sometimes Grava makes me wanna quit the game.

I suggest to rework Grava’s pools: either split it’s fumble chance between fumble and impaired aim, or change the pool properties towards more dmg and other utilities like slow.

What’s your experience with this boss? Does it seem to you like it’s too strong compared to the others? How is it to casters?

9 Likes

I completely agree that Grava is a true Nemesis for most builds. While - as you mentioned - some builds like Rah’Zin WH can easy demolish him, others struggle very much.
And while playing some builds like melee fire Defiler of Retaliation Warder, I got completely destroyed.

He has not only fumble, disrupt and %damage reduction but also very powerful attacks that can kill you through all your layers of defence.

For casters, he’s easier, and some skills like SJ are just melting him.

I really suggest to make his fumble pools static or lower their lifetime, and lower %damage reduction, as it also impacts your ADctH.

I’m playing pyromancer with a pistol and shield. My first and only character so far. I’ve had major problems with Valdaran, Moosilauke, Benn’Jahr and yet I killed Grava’Thul without dying on first encounter. I kept hearing how tough he is, but apparently wasn’t for me. Not bragging, but somehow it was the easiest Nemesis fight I’ve had so far.

It seems a bit unhealthy when a single nemesis outperforms almost all the others in terms of danger and negative effects.

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@banana_peel did specify, for MELEE builds.

arcane harmony leggins have become a popular item because of Grava but not all builds take them, and disrupt is only one problem when there is a plenty of them.

Get outta here tis a game for casters :wink:

Peachy

Look at Entropic Void, his summon. 52% fumble.

2 Likes

Fire an effect that removes buffs from enemies and debuffs from allies (100% Chance on Attack)

This is kinda good telegraphed though and if he is alone you can easily dodge it (e.g. in MC and in the SR boss room if you use camera rotation aggro abuse trick)

Plus, the fumble debuff is not seen in grim tools. You have to look up his summon https://www.grimtools.com/monsterdb/1512/skills combine that with lower attack speed and you have challenge to sustain with life steal for sure.

I think the author is referring to Grava in the Shattered Realm. He is kinda easy in MC because he is usually the only guy around (save for some thrash mobs and orange heroes) and you have no (or at least not that many) mutators (depening on which area you meet him in)

By himself, he is fine regardless of build imo. Sure he is tough on melee but the thing to remember is that he is alone in MC and can be killed with attrition.

However, he (IMO) is not balanced around multiple nemesis encounters. In a boss room, SR 75+, with a room like (which I have experienced), him with IM, Ana, the res shred basilisk…dear lord the room took me well over 10 min because they chain pulled. If I wasn’t:

A) dot build
B) 80% relevant cc res caps with 30+ over cap on all res base PLUS consumables
C) favorable mutators

I might as well just closed the game.

This could happen to a lesser extend in lower SR.

Yeah yeah, not balanced for 75+ or whatever blah blah blah…it still isn’t fun…and…

However, as I type this and see the OP’s point.

Best suggestion I have, make the pools static (they follow you, right?) so he can be repositioned, making the fight more of a “don’t stand in the bad shat” as opposed to “run for your life”

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I agree with the author. Grava is too strong compared to all the other nemeses.

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No leave him as he is. He is fine. Just don’t pull him with all the others.

I would change Kuba though. For non cold builds he is very easy and even for cold non melee builds. But for cold melee builds it just a chore to kill him if you are even able to. I would lower his cold res a bit and give him more of all the other res instead.

It is Mad Queen that is OP as hell in SR.

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I have a 2H melee Sorcerer with 7 Aura Buffs. Not 3 or 4, 7. My dps, resistances, surivability depends on them. And for that particular melee build, which has very very low DoT has to facetank monsters to efficiently kill them. However one can not simply facetank Grava. Yes I can kill him, kiting 7-10 mins, If I be careful I don’t even get half of my hp mostly my skeletons and thermite mine kills it. But I made peace with him, when I encounter him, I say god bless you, keep your rewards for yourself and move along. Why? Becauste it’s so PITA for melee builds. But in a game like this, I think every build type must have such counter creatures. I have never played with casters and ranged builds yet for now but If they have not a counter creature like this, then the right balancing is to make sure they have a grava’ish nemesis/boss too.

main thing that annoys me about grava is A.) the ridiculous spam fumble pools and B.) the nullify orbs which not only they purge EVERY possible buff, including consumables, but also almost 1 shot you.

Of course he is. However, it seems that the better your builds are the less devs listen to your feedback for some reason.

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If any change were made to grava’s null, it should be that he only casts it if you’re a certain distance away from him (trying to kite). Even then, I don’t think it’s an absolutely necessary change since his animation is one of the most telegraphed in the game.

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It must be bitter to be so good at the game and also so bad at it at the same time.

17 Likes

Wait this is clearly worse then my last post and this isn’t locked yet?

Edit: this is in regards to ya’s statement…

/bogglingofthemind

My post above sums up how I feel. He is good as is. I think having this kind of mechanic helps to make planning required to take him on as opposed to mindlessly pushing buttons. Goes for all null type mobs.

It’s the time required to place all buffs back on line is what’s rough. But that could be the intended purpose in which case my argument sucks.

The worst part about Grava is you can’t encounter him in a Roguelike.

Fumble pools posing an issue? Kite away from them to drag them away and then get back to bashing him.

Surrounded by too many other Nemeses to do that? Welcome to SR60+ where the game isn’t supposed to be balanced.

E: Don’t get me wrong. He and Kaisan are definitely the most dangerous Nemeses. But it’s a refreshing sort of danger.

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Regardless of whether myself or anyone else doesn’t like it, Ceno is 100% right.

To be fair, this is arguably a good thing and a bad thing. Bad as you get less of a round haul of general gear/Legendaries but good if you’re just farming him for his MIs.