I’ve been taking my weaker chars through SR80-85, just to see how they do now with sunders and general boss reworks. Cold DE apostate (slow but tanky), Darkblaze pyro (pure glass), DEE witch hunter (nothing good about her) and ATV templar (the only good char so far).
Most bosses are challenging in an interesting way, with some clear winners like Ben-Jar forcing you into his dance, or Grava actually being fun to fight for the first time since his release. But then there’s Valdaran. Who, after taking those 4 chars through SR85, makes me contemplate quitting the runs.
His aura is bullshit. It just kills you, no matter what defenses you have up - so the only real solution is to disengage for the duration. On melee chars, that means forced downtime of not attacking the fucker. But there’s more! Because even if you disengage, Valdaran can teleport on top of you at random, and oneshot you anyway. Which is soon going to be my cue to alt-F4.
Even without teleport, forced downtime on melee is just not fun. And the aura is extremely poorly telegraphed, being lightning on lightning mob - and I’m yet to take a lightning char into the fight to make this trash completely unreadable.
And yes, we already had “disengage or die” boss in the form of Mad queen. Except Mad queen doesn’t teleport, doesn’t teleport YOU, and doesn’t spawn every single goddamn boss shard. Nor can a boss shard spawn 2 of them just to make you feel a bit more dead on the inside.
Bonus whine: for the love of fuck, remove Sphinx boss arena from SR. Just remove it. I know Crate hates humanity and wants us to suffer, but I think the torment was long enough. It’s the single most run-ending shard in the game, regardless of what bosses you meet there. It’s even worse now that more bosses demand kiting. Delete it. It won’t be missed.
You mean the aura he puts up that fires lightning orbs? That triggers from ranged attacks with 33% chance.
I assume Vanquisher? For some unholy reason the game consider Vocanic Stride a ranged attack and that triggers Valdaran’s aura heavily. From personal experience any build that heavily uses multiple projectiles has the worst time with Valdaran.
I now rate him as a major threat on boss shards if I’m running a melee build and learnt the hard way with ranged/caster builds to keep my distance from him.
He’s still easier than The Manifestations of Hunger though
I don’t agree about Valdi, I think he’s fine but I’ll definitely join the whinery about that cursed Titty Twister chunk.
In SR80+ it’s often a session-ending encounter, especially with pet builds and kiters. Even in SR65 it can mean the end of a run if playing a meme or non-optimized build.
The good old “turn the camera 180°” cheese trick can help but that shouldn’t be the solution.
But rather than deleting the chunk it should be expanded to be more like the original Conclave, with stairs to the upper levels left and right so there’s more space to avoid unnecessary aggro.
no i mean after that, post reflect barrage redesign
pretty sure i got sundered by his bolt like 2 weeks ago? and subsequently never got sundered again because he doesn’t use it in close range
btw - if you have plenty of adcth he’s a push over. Even the lacklustre Vit Blade Arc Warder I’m mucking around with can facetank him due to obscene lifesteal, even if it’s slow.
The main issue with the attack is the shotgunning. I barely even notice the aura on ranged kite builds since I’m usually stutterstepping and most of the projs miss. On melee builds its instadeath since all projectiles will shotgun for a ridiculous amount of damage and running away means you continue to tick from his electrocute and get hit by ranged attacks(99.9% of melee builds have some projectile proc which will trigger the ‘on ranged hit’).
IMO they should change it to a single projectile, adjust its damage and give it more damage at range(like the way they nerfed blades of wrath).
Hmm. This aura he casts, he uses it a few seconds into combat, but after it wears off you have 10+ seconds to kill him. So it can be avoided.
However I get that the damage looks too extreme with the shotgun potential, and a projectile based chance is not a good design decision imo. Projectiles are not just limited to ranged characters given the wide array of devotion and gear effects in the game.
I’d agree to change it, shotguns don’t feel good, and characters that can deal with them will rely on specific defences like flat damage absorb, max res%+ etc.
But, I don’t know if this change was applied to Valdaran’s aura.
With respect to this aura, the major change between 1.1.9.8 and 1.2 was that the RR was removed but the lightning damage from the projectiles was increased by over twice as much. This can be verified in GrimTools because you can switch between 1.1.9.8 stats and 1.2 stats at the top left.
TL;DR: Valdaran’s shotgun attack “Projectile burst (33% Chance when Hit by Ranged Attacks)” really needs a cooldown… Hell, every single shotgun attack in the game should have a cooldown!
More details:
Yeah, sorry but I have to agree with the OP; 1.2 changes are great and many of the bosses feel fun to fight. But Valdaran just feels like BS right now. And in my case it was with a ranged character, kiting and evading. I was not facetanking.
Here’s what happened:
I was in SR 88 where most bosses are difficult but manageable
I was attacking Valdaran at 10m distance, mid-fight, with all of my procs debuffing him.
He casts his aura but I’m at a safe range so nothing happens
Then he teleports to me, but just before he does, his 5-projectile burst shotgun attack (33% Chance when Hit by Ranged Attacks) triggers, leaving a barrage of lightning bolts mid-air flying against me.
Immediately after he teleports to me, the same proc TRIGGERS AGAIN, and shotguns me at melee range and leaving me at very low health
A split second after that, both his aura damage triggers AND the previous shotgun barrage reaches me and kills me.
He was debuffed with 200 OA shred and - 27% damage reduction
I had 83% elemental and aether resistances, and 100 flat damage absorption
I had 23k health, all of which just evaporated. I had no time to react.
How is this not enough to survive Valdaran? What exactly did I do wrong as a player?
Just to be clear, there were no other enemies around and I had zero debuffs active on me.
Valdaran’s shotgun attack “Projectile burst (33% Chance when Hit by Ranged Attacks)” really needs a cooldown… Hell, every single shotgun attack in the game should have a cooldown!
It’s not the first time I’ve died to a “WTF moment” of Valdaran since 1.2. Fighting Valdaran feels extremely unfun at the moment.
I always evade when he teleports to me.
But as I explained in the previous post, the on hit trigger happened immediately after he teleported to me. I had no time to react.
If you want specifics: I died exactly 21 frames (out of a 60fps video) after his teleport.
I had less than 0.35 seconds to react before getting double-shotgunned and killed from 23k HP.
Is that fair to blame on the player?
