You seem to imply that I suffered from his Meteor. Well, I didn’t. However, that’s besides the point. I’ll break it down the issue I have with Aleksander.
First of all, Malmouth layout is a nightmare. There are many thin corridors, small rooms, tons of stairs. It’s a labyrinth and is very difficult to navigate. Each and every one of these rooms is filled to the brim with the strongest monsters this game has.
Now, let’s see how well a character can navigate through all this mess, see Aleksander in a literal ocean of mobs, combined with all effects going on screen, and react accordingly. It’s incredibly difficult.
Second of all, Aleksander himself is actually pretty weak aside from his Meteor and can be dealt swiftly.
That’s why I only mentioned the Meteor, as it is somewhat a gimmick of his at this point.
Maybe. However, I fail to see, how it is benefical at general as game design, when even Super tanky Soldier builds have a problem facetanking him, needing to kite. Annoying? Good choice of word, especially when other Nemesises aren’t even at that point of power, beside the Reaper.
I would not say you gotta kite, you just go back a bit, turn on your most defensive buff, he gets on you while you keep buffing yourself and attack him again (talking about tanky build).
I don’t want to sound like a dick but unless you have faced a nemesis in campaign please don’t make suggestions about changes just based on your experience in crucible. You have no idea what you are talking about. The campaign nemesis are a completely different ball game to crucible and what changes affect them in one place affects them in the other as well. Kuba packs a huge amount of damage in the campaign, grava, fabius all of them are much much more powerful in the campaign. Spawning stuff with Kuba would be a complete nightmare. You would get blocked in those small areas and all the other mobs plus the kuba splits would slaughter you. Also blood pool healing as far as I understand (I could be wrong) heals all enemies not just Kub. Now granted you can kill all the other mobs first but then you are back to the “kuba being lonely” aspect. Grava honestly either needs some nerfs or he needs to be put in places where you can effectively kite him. Trying to kite him in those void areas is a nightmare, especially if you hit him undergeared.
ITT, people thinking Reaper of the Lost is hard. :rolleyes:
Needs more buffs, if anything. Definitely the weakest of the AoM nemeses.
Benn’Jahr doesn’t need more damage, he needs more survivability, particularly during his rage phase (which should be permanent as long as he’s under the health threshold).
Moose should have his 1st phase’s overhead shlap in his 2nd phase. That, or health pots shouldn’t be usable while frozen.
Valdaran needs…something. The issue with giving Vald too much damage is he’s got basically no telegraphs to his attacks and he’s already got spike potential due to his RR. He’s tanky enough so as to blow his full rotation on any character, but once you survive that, you’re basically never going to be threatened by him at all.
I always use a hoarfrost ointment on Moosy. I don’t know how people beat him otherwise. He can perma-freeze you even with hoarfrost ointments used on his 2nd form if you get unlucky.
I don’t agree with OP’s analysis of Moosy. Lifesteal isn’t going to save you.
I can facetank him with a few builds but even those builds require a hoarfrost
Gonna call bullshit on this when a Nemesis has the wonderful thing of having stackable RR. 40 flat from himself and then the Spiteful Wraith RR have -% RR. That plus Savagery that gives him 12% OA and DA, 24% crit damage. The ability to reduce DA by 455.
Oh and gaining 8% Total Damage when half of his health is gone, plus 35% damage absorption, 40% all damage and 20% Total Speed.
But nope, let’s buff him instead. He clearly needs it. :rolleyes:
Yeah, since you should be killing his adds as soon as he spawns them. If you don’t, you die. If you do, he’s not remotely dangerous.
People keep complaining about his stackable RR as if it’s a big bad thing. It really isn’t. Just try to fight him in practice rather than staring at grimtools.
I faced most of them in Main Campaign. I see you didn’t even read the thread. There are only four I didn’t face, and they are optional.
Kiting in Void areas is kind of easy. Go to a rift and attack him, if you need to retreat - use the void rift. I did that many times when my character was not optimized.
You are still making suggestions about the ones you haven’t faced. Also in this case anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. If I face Fabius with a tuned tank then my experience will be different to something like my glass cannon witch hunter. Different players are different levels of skill etc.
As to kiting in the void areas being easy. Um no. If you don’t use your rift to bounce in and out the fight is different. You shouldn’t have to jump in and out. Unless you can clear the area first (highly unlikely) kiting him will kite you into enemies that will make your life even more difficult. Also sometimes Grava’s attacks are hard to see in those void areas.
If I hadn’t read it I wouldn’t have commented. I read exactly what you said and I disagree with it. Your statement about Zanty is flat out wrong. He deals massive damage, especially his shotgun. He also summons the death revenant. Massive health regen, pet summons, curse of frailty.
Iron Maiden is not weak to kiting. She stays on your arse. You can run away from her but you just open yourself up to her blitz. She does massive damage with cadence and blade arc. She has fighting spirit and she has menhir’s will.
Just because something is optional doesn’t mean it isn’t important especially when talking about balancing said things.
I haven’t had a lot of nemesis runs in campaign since 1.0.4.0 so most of my opinions here will be biased towards crucible, where the environment is very different and the nemeses themselves have different (lower) stats than in campaign.
Once you play a crucible-viable build, all of them, with the exception of Zantarin shotgun and ones targeted specifically against a build (Maiden against fire builds, for example) are easy when isolated. They become problematic when together and that’s where the difficulty ranking of each one of them become different (imo) compared to campaign. My ranking from hardest below is as follows (1.0.4.1):
Maiden - as strange as it might seem, after the kuba nerfs, maiden takes my top spot of the hardest nemesis in crucible. This girl is just almost impossible to kite, and coupled with threats from the others who spawn in 160 and 170, she becomes a must kill because she’ll kill you if you don’t kill her fast. I don’t think there’s anything nerf-worthy on her. She’s just that thing who is made stronger by having a lot of friends.
Alex - especially if there’s 2 of them and valdaran’s around, then it’s just a meteor dodging contest with a lot of screaming. The tankiest builds can handle the rock but it’s got RR so it’s still dangerous even when tankable. Very dangerous with CDR mutator.
Reaper - don’t know if he retains his RR stacking but I think yes, but the slow is more annoying for me. And he hits hard with that savagery stacking. And he’s got heals. A lot more dangerous with Kuba. Got a little bit easier though with the nerf so I don’t think he needs changes.
Grava - He’s probably the hardest in campaign (never sided against Barrowholm so idk bout reaper) but in crucible, the only thing I needed to worry about was the disruption, I kite a lot and he’s not as fast as maiden. Still hits hard but the removal of the nullification is enough of a nerf for him in crucible.
Kuba - after the recent nerf, this isn’t as problematic anymore compared to before where some builds just couldn’t damage anything cause of the blood pool heals. Now he’s weaker but still a first kill priority (i kill him even before maiden) just to take advantage of his low hp).
Valdaran and Ben - I’m putting these two together because they’re weak but have really annoying utility in the swap and the root. You get swapped/rooted into alex meteor/zant shotgun and it just ends sometimes. It would be strange for me to ask this but I’d rather nerf these two instead of the ones above. Maybe reduce the cooldown of the swap/root.
Zantarin - most of you guys who have better PCs only worry about the shotgun. I worry more about the lag it causes when he summons a lot of skeletons. I had a game once where at wave 150, I had maiden and 2 zants. I had to kill maiden first because Zantarin is so weak but it took me a while (was playing bwc sorc). After I killed maiden I basically just died cause the two zants summoned a lot of adds that almost crashed my laptop. Died to shotgun without even knowing what happened because my screen was freezing. I say nerf the amount of summons he does.
Moose - he’s pretty much on the same category as Valdaran and Benn’Jahr with the but he’s much slower than the previous two so I put him lower. Don’t think he should change.
Fabius - aside from the occasional scary weapon, I 'm usually glad when Fabius spawns because while he’s almost as fast as maiden, he does not nearly hit as hard as her. Has a DA shred, iirc so still potentially dangerous.
Note thay I only cleared with dot casters (bwc sorc and bleed wb) so the tank players might have a different say.
Hahahaha. No. Not even remotely every build can just walk up to him and blow those wraiths out. Also, they debuff your resistances ON DEATH too.
Yes. Yes it is. You also didn’t mention massive DA decrease, which makes the above statement about RR silly. Completely disagree with you on this one, Ceno.
My computer is pretty decent but I hit 3 Zants on wave 150 and I was getting lag. When there are three shotguns you have to dodge, the RR which I’m not sure if it stacks from all three plus all of the ads spawning and three death revs at once. I also get the occasional bursts of lag that cause frame skips in which I miss telegraphed attacks. I fought reaper of the lost today when I successfully completed wave 170. He is nasty. He almost killed me but I was dodging three other nemesis grav, kuba, reaper and I believe it was aleks at the same time. He seems to do a massive bleed damage in his damage. I don’t even want to think about what it would be like to fight him in campaign.
Killing his Spiteful Wraiths is what causes them to release their RR, which will be stacked with the Reaper’s own RR. Something melee builds CAN’T avoid, so it’s not really an option.
I love this logic “If you don’t do this, you die”. Meaning if you are playing HC, you’re fucked then. None of the other Nemeses have this logic when you can survive Aleks’s meteor and Grava’s nullification, two of the most ridiculous enemy skills in the game.
And i only need to read Grimtools to know how ridiculous this thing is.
Agreed on the rest but what the fuck mate you think Reaper needs more buffs? Stackable RR, Charge based auto attack. The guy makes Grava look like a little bitch
No offense but it seems you’re the one who hasn’t faced him since his wraiths actually debuff you on death unless it was changed in 1.0.4.0 (cause I haven’t logged into my Reaper farmer since the patch)
If you read mine and autentist’s posts we did. He shreds Ret chars easily if they aren’t careful. I can still kill him easily using certain builds but same can be said for pretty much every other nemesis. Either he or his wraiths should have his RR removed
I still don’t think Aleks is ridiculous anymore. He is similar to Mad Queen, has a one shot bull shit attack to keep you on your toes but if you dodge this he is almost as threatening as a toddler.
Does that still happen? He hasn’t spawned for me in Cinder Wastes for quite a while
All I know is it that my 8 current 100s can facetank Reaper (and Aleks, other than avoiding the meteor) and yet they all need to run around waiting for pots/constitution to kick in while facing Grava/Kuba. In terms of vanilla nems, sure, Reaper is above most of them (probably not IM). In terms of AoM nems, Reaper is definitely on the weaker side, if not the outright weakest. I rarely feel threatened with death, whereas at least Aleks has his infamous meatball of doom.
RE: Melee chars not being able to kill Wraiths without being debuffed: I guess I just build more AoE than you guys. They die way out of range on most of my chars while I just focus down Reaper. Alternatively, when their debuffs do hit me, it’s easy enough to remove them with a Nullification/Ulo pop.
Funny how the people that think Reaper is strong are the same people that think Nullification isn’t worth maxing/Ulo isn’t worth taking in AoM, despite the wide range of dispellable debuffs introduced in the expansion. :rolleyes:
If you don’t avoid Zantarin’s shotgun burst, you die.
Edit: Mechanically speaking, Reaper isn’t difficult to understand nor is he unique in any capacity. Grava nullifies and has his multi-hit burst. Kuba splits and heals. Aleks debuffs damage and has a telegraphed super-nuke. Reaper…runs fast and hits hard? So does your average-Joe Aetherial Titan. I advocated for Reaper being more mechanically interesting during testing, noting that if his ‘gimmick’ was to be really fast, then that’d at least be interesting for Ranged chars to deal with, but it didn’t seem to be expanded upon and he just seems to have stagnated as a generic bitch-slap machine. If you can survive one instance of high damage, the rest just become a matter of timing. Time your health pots into your circuit breakers into your manual heals into X, Y, Z, etc., and do so in between the rotations of Reaper’s attacks. This is how we handle the other fights of the game, like Sentinel, Loghorrean, and Theodin during the mainstage and, when we’re ready, it’s how we handle Lokarr and Mad Queen as well.
Comes down to it, Reaper is just a melee version of Zantarin with more movespeed. And Zantarin is really easy once you fight him in melee.
So in conclusion: either be forced to use Ulo (specially if your devotion path is nowhere close to it), be an Arcanist or you die. :rolleyes:
No amount of AoE is gonna save a melee character from being debuffed by his wraiths. Specially when the aoe blast has a considerable area.
Who struggles with Kuba? He’s easily the weakest AoM Nemesis. The only dangerous thing he has is his punches but he doesn’t use them very often. Rest of his attacks deal piss poor damage and he dies too fast.
That’s why it has a long charge animation, can be seen from a mile away and it can be nulified of all things.:rolleyes:
Pretty sure you know what I am going to ask next. Have you tried Reaper on non-Ulo/non-Nullification character? Tbh I wasn’t even aware that RR could be removed
If nullification/ulo is the sole way (I hope not) to deal with this particular nemesis then it’s just outright bad game design
Before anyone bothers mentioning the Green Bug and how her fight is also trivialized by using nullify, I’d like to say that Queen’s fight indeed is made easier by debuffing her but that’s not the only way to deal with her aura you can stack deflection, remove projectile based devotions for the fight or just choose to kite when her aura is active
Those wraiths and their On-Death debuff they don’t seem dodgable to me and I don’t think every character should be forced to use one devotion or skill to deal with a particular enemy.
Also not every build can stack insane AoE, Pierce blademasters in my experience lack radial AoE despite having the ability to deal with multiple targets at once
As Norzan said, there’s zero reason for Reaper to be like this considering the fact his trove drops the same stuff that is obtainable by opening troves of other nemesis. I don’t mind challenging enemies like Queen or Aleksandr but Reaper seems to be retarded. Grava on the other hand is just annoying.