Ice orbs with horrifying damage, plus totems that pop up anywhere and spray projectiles in all directions while wiping out all your buffs—you’re forced to tiptoe around frantically just to avoid getting one-shot. Didn’t dodge and got your buffs stripped? You’re dead. Tried to kite it but accidentally pulled another boss that messes up your positioning? You’re dead, no questions asked.
For builds that aren’t tanky, Shriek has an absurdly low margin for error. Either pray you dodge perfectly, or pray those totem attacks don’t land on you. The moment your buffs are gone, it’ll execute you the next second. Fighting it gives me zero joy of outplay—just pure disgust and rage, because it’s not a boss that rewards skill; it’s a boss that punishes your mistakes—and worse, it doesn’t even give you a retry. If you revive and re-enter the Shattered Realm, you’ll find those damned totems still sitting there, preventing you from even getting close again, and it can place more than one of those things!
Honestly, I absolutely hate the mechanic of bosses clearing player buffs. It was fine before the DLC, because at least back then bosses with that ability gave you enough room to maneuver. But after the DLC, this Shriek? Just outright loathsome. I forget that I’m playing a Diablo-like, not Dark Souls.
There is one way to deal with it—kill it before it puts down totems—but that requires insane DPS, and as far as I know, hardly any of those builds survive the nerf hammer.
Once you run into Shriek on a boss floor, the whole SR experience turns into an utterly disgusting and humiliating ordeal. Please, please, please, please nerf it—either stop it from oneshotting players after it clears buffs, or reduce the number and placement frequency of totems, or at least make totems disappear when the character dies! Right now it’s just torture.
I promised myself I was not going to ever again reply to monster nerf requests on this or any other game forum I participate. But I found this particular part worth of one last comment.
When almost everything a game does in terms of game balancing over its 10 years of existence is to nerf monsters, one shouldn’t complain that one of the most obvious consequences of all that is the mandatory nerfing of player characters. And I’m out.
Not getting hit is a skill. Your reward is not being killed
That’s literally the point of enemies in video games. I don’t see the issue if some are particularly dangerous. Game would be boring if they were all the same
I have not experienced this at all. There’s plenty of room to deal with him. If the floor is being covered in null totems before you kill him then your build likely needs tuning. What SR level and build are you using?
Ice drain essence reaper
Based on my build’s DPS, it’ll drop totems at around 1/4 health and then strip my buffs.
If there’s no other mob interference, I might be able to tank through it and kill it—but that’s a big if. If I stay too far away, it just spams ice orbs and one-shots me.
Hmm I usually just run away from the first totem and the boss dies shortly after. Really comes down to avoiding nullification and if you do get nulled immediately pop aether cluster and your mark of torment. You can even sit in blade barrier to give your buffs more time to come back
I have only fought him once and it was a real PITA. Granted, it was on Ascendant, so that’s kinda on me, but… on a build that can facetank all other Nemeses (other than the new Lord Hierophant, screw this one - for other reasons) and some Celestials, I wasn’t expecting to struggle that much. Well now I kinda know what to expect of him I guess.
I got 2x Shriek in a small boss room earlier today. Within about 15 seconds, the entire room was covered in aether traps, and I was basically permanently nullified. The traps are invincible and never despawn, so the only real option is to dodge. But when there are 10 traps in a small room, that’s practically impossible.
The most null totems I’ve had to deal with is two at once and even then it’s not a problem because the totem has safe zones around it. You can stand in between the projectile paths and keep fighting (image). Also if shriek lives long enough to make that many totems, you probably need more damage. I’m not having many issues with random pre-foa builds that have no potion/ascended upgrades. Shriek isn’t very tanky at all.
Of course it’s unbalanced. That’s the whole point of using death waystone. No loot, no balance. Crate has said many times over the years that it’s only for masochism/bragging rights. If it felt balanced in the past, that was most likely unintentional. Nobody is forcing you to play sr40
I’m sure crate knows that if they start making efforts to balance sr40 it will never end. They will have people asking nonstop to balance sr45, sr50 etc. Imo they have better things to worry about
Then if it’s unbalanced now, then it’s how it should be. And no, lower SR isn’t unbalanced, it’s pretty much the same as before.
Also, Shriek is like the most passive, easiest Nemesis in the game. All you have to do to avoid the null is position yourself between where the projectiles are shooting since they go off in set directions.
If anything, it needs a buff, because it’s too fragile.
That is…completely not true though. SR30-31 is perfectly fine and consistent even on my worst builds. Shriek or no shriek. I dunno what you’re saying man
