So Zestiria, my first character to hit level 100 is a cold damage based spellbreaker.
She went into the Bastion of Chaos, as one does at level 100, to farm things and stuff. Of course, a Nemesis showed up, even before she used her key. She dispatched it easily and quickly. I thought, “Nice, this bodes well for the rest of this foray”.
Then shortly after using her key, another Nemesis came to pester her again. I thought, “Even if this one is tougher than the last, there’s no way she’ll die to it.”
Right? Nope. DEAD WRONG.
A few seconds into the fight, she seemingly gets one-shot. I mean, ALMOST instant death. When she got back to fort Ikon, I looked at her DPYES and it showed the following:
Now you will notice that she has 3 times the HP of that “best one second total damage” record. This means it should have taken 3 seconds for her to die if that record damage to her had been sustained for that long.
I simply don’t get it. Please help me make sense of this!
Did the second Nemesis have wings and look like a gargoyle? Or was it more like a big Obsidian thingy?
Edit: Because I see Chaos, Fire and Physical but no Pierce on your DPYes I am assuming you faced Benn’Jahr first, Grava’Thul second.
Grava’Thul is insanely dangerous. When you see it standing up and raising its wings, it will fire an orb. If you do not avoid this orb, all your passive buffs are gone, including your sphere of protection… if you let this happen, run for your life.
the orb doesn’t just dispel your buffs, it has massive dmg too
it’s likely what killed you
/you’re meant to avoid the orb before it hits you
that said, could also be Benji’s cluster bombs simply exploding in your face, enough explodes at the same time/you didn’t move away from static bombs = lots of dmg potential
i’d suspect DPYes might simply just not be 100% accurate in those cases, and that’s why the dmg looks small but it was actually much bigger/too fast to get a proper reading on (can even happen to char sheet highest dmg taken)
Yeah, that sounds like Grava. AKA the nemesis that made me finally sit down and learn how to build characters because I just couldn’t get to Malmouth without getting killed.
Besides breaking all your passive boosts and auras, he also reduces your total health. Which means you die much faster than you would without debuffs.
Oh, and were any other enemies nearby? Harbingers have a very nasty debuff that (again) reduce your health and most of your resistances. If you get a few of those debuffs stacked, you can die very easily even in the campaign.
Yes, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I saw “the Voiddrinker” on the second Nemesis. Couldn’t recall the first name though, they’re all still just a garble to me.
Thanks for your input! It makes sense now. She was fighting the literal demons from the pits of hell itself, but just past the entry gate.
Time to study how to counter or, it seems better yet - just RUN. Those Nemesis troves though… They’re JUICY!
Thanks! Very useful to know. Oh, hell - it looks like cold damage is “easy mode” against that dude? No resist to speak of… Now I don’t want to imagine level 110 Nemesis that’s built against cold. That would be the uh, ice gorilla looking thing that divides and divides, right?
He’s very beatable once you learn to recognise the telegraphed moves.
Though it is made a lot harder by the fact you often encounter him in those very dark Chthonic Rifts where I can’t see what the hell is going on and end up dodging in a wall.
The first few times I made sure to trigger the spawn somewhere I could see before going in the rift.
Anyway, the things to look out for are the Sunder (as always) and the big purple ball. The purple ball does not come with the sunder graphic, but he will stand still with glowing purple hands for a bit and when it releases there is a distinctive thunder sound. THAT is when you run.
The ball is very slow, so you can outpace it easily without a movement skill. It tracks, but will expire after a bit, and has a long cooldown.
When you dodge the ball and sunder, Grava is very beatable.
Ah, OK then! It was my first time encountering it, and so I had no idea what to expect. I know that it “insta-killed” me when I was standing basically chest to chest with it. So if that purple ball was emitted, I never saw it, as it must have IMMEDIATELY made contact…
Always fun when that happens I mean, it has obvioulsy never happened to me. It’s also totally not the reason I made a build stacking all the chtonic racial damage I could find
Nemesi are generally the first enemy type where you have to learn/know about their moves and attacks.
Fun fact - Grava’s Nullification orb used to be very fast with near perfect homing. His current iteration is severely nerfed compared to his release state.
Also important to note that once Benny dies, all the bombs explode at once. A ton of bosses in Grim Dawn have nasty on death effects to look out for. Same for Fabius. His Blade Spirits have a death explosion that can shotgun. Or Moosi - same deal with his freezing patches, that explode on his death.
Yep. If they are stacked on top of each other and you are standing in the middle of them (where the projectiles spawn, it can easily one shot non-tanky builds or those that have “only” 80% Pierce resist by itself.
I mean, it has obvioulsy never happened to me. It’s also totally not the reason I made a build stacking all the chtonic racial damage I could find 
