Diablo 2 Fallen - Early Boss Difficulty

[lightbringer32 4]

First, I want to say how much I've enjoyed the little innovations throughout this mod.  You've made the new classes fun to play, and seeing familiar faces from Diablo 2 all over the place is a lot of fun. I laughed when I spotted Flavie

I'm fairly early in a run, having experimented with several classes and builds, settling on a melee Paladin. This early -- around level 20 -- it's essentially Antitrust's Queen of Blades. I've taken the Queen through the Silver campaign from start to finish in vanilla, so I know how she's supposed to feel and play. I'm not twinking her, with speedran Niobium buyers or anything like that. I'm just playing a character straight from the start.

I don't remember the Goblin (Devilkin) Chieftain being this difficult. I'm not poorly equipped, but I'm getting one-shot by his boulder toss. I remember it hurting and trying to avoid it, but not being one-shot.  I had to stop using Zeal, because of the lengthy animation. I switched to Vengeance, and started avoiding the boulders. Fine. After 81 health potions consumed, I had brought him down to about half health, and ran out of potions. Instant death.

After rezzing again, I farmed vendors to buy a new batch of 100 health potions.  That's over 70,000 gold worth, and not small, given that I had 440,000g at that point. Six more tries and I'm broke. I switch auras from Fanatacism and Prayer to Fanatacism and Conviction -- figuring that the Armor reduction will make me kill him faster.  It did.  I got him down to about 1/3 health remaining before I got maneuvered between a cauldron and a rock pile, couldn't run away from the boulder, and got one-shotted. Again. I had less than 20 potions left, so I wouldn't have defeated him anyway.

In vanilla, Silver, I could face-tank the Chieftain with the Queen of Blades at this level, without going through all that many potions, and only risking death if I got too careless. Mistakes could be recovered from. Here, there's no room for error, and it takes more than all the potions I had collected to this point of play. 

I have 782 hp, Attack 267 Defense 124, physical armor of 236, and Vengeance damage of 156-194 -- about 40% of which is cold damage. I'm not twinked, but I'm fairly well geared -- including the level22 lightsaber that dropped at my feet upon character creation. I don't think bosses should require crazy twinking though ...

Am I doing something wrong?  Is there a difference in difficulty or expectations from vanilla that I missed? I remember being able to defeat every boss I came across, when I first came across them, in vanilla.

[lightbringer32 4]

I should add that I'm not using any of the optional Inferno or Supermob(?) addons.

[Flix 5,184]

Hello! Thanks for trying the mod and writing back.

Gahanka is currently overtuned in v14. I've heard the player feedback and will nerf him back to vanilla in v15.  Well, close to vanilla anyway. He will be easier to kill (no damage mitigation or vitality boosts) and will do vanilla damage. He will still have a boosted chance to hit in melee.

For a fully leveled-up player, this boss is not any tougher than any other.  The problem is that most people will be facing him early on and I didn't really account for that when adjusting him.

I should also say, the Paladin is not the Seraphim. They will not feel the same even if left every enemy identical to vanilla.

[lightbringer32 4]

Thanks for the reply. I'm glad to know it's not just me, and it is just Gahanka :) Perhaps I'm missing it, but I thought that, if anything, the Paladin is more powerful than the Seraphim -- with all the great auras and their mods. Synergies with the Holy Auras, Ancient Magic, Conviction and several of their attacks felt like you could make a powerhouse of a caster -- lack of broad Area of Effect being the only thing deterring me from a caster Pally. Well, that and lack of understanding how to make a caster work well, I think, but that's another topic ;)

[gogoblender 3,223]

6 hours ago, lightbringer32 said:

First, I want to say how much I've enjoyed the little innovations throughout this mod.  You've made the new classes fun to play, and seeing familiar faces from Diablo 2 all over the place is a lot of fun. I laughed when I spotted Flavie

I'm fairly early in a run, having experimented with several classes and builds, settling on a melee Paladin. This early -- around level 20 -- it's essentially Antitrust's Queen of Blades. I've taken the Queen through the Silver campaign from start to finish in vanilla, so I know how she's supposed to feel and play. I'm not twinking her, with speedran Niobium buyers or anything like that. I'm just playing a character straight from the start.

I don't remember the Goblin (Devilkin) Chieftain being this difficult. I'm not poorly equipped, but I'm getting one-shot by his boulder toss. I remember it hurting and trying to avoid it, but not being one-shot.  I had to stop using Zeal, because of the lengthy animation. I switched to Vengeance, and started avoiding the boulders. Fine. After 81 health potions consumed, I had brought him down to about half health, and ran out of potions. Instant death.

After rezzing again, I farmed vendors to buy a new batch of 100 health potions.  That's over 70,000 gold worth, and not small, given that I had 440,000g at that point. Six more tries and I'm broke. I switch auras from Fanatacism and Prayer to Fanatacism and Conviction -- figuring that the Armor reduction will make me kill him faster.  It did.  I got him down to about 1/3 health remaining before I got maneuvered between a cauldron and a rock pile, couldn't run away from the boulder, and got one-shotted. Again. I had less than 20 potions left, so I wouldn't have defeated him anyway.

In vanilla, Silver, I could face-tank the Chieftain with the Queen of Blades at this level, without going through all that many potions, and only risking death if I got too careless. Mistakes could be recovered from. Here, there's no room for error, and it takes more than all the potions I had collected to this point of play. 

I have 782 hp, Attack 267 Defense 124, physical armor of 236, and Vengeance damage of 156-194 -- about 40% of which is cold damage. I'm not twinked, but I'm fairly well geared -- including the level22 lightsaber that dropped at my feet upon character creation. I don't think bosses should require crazy twinking though ...

Am I doing something wrong?  Is there a difference in difficulty or expectations from vanilla that I missed? I remember being able to defeat every boss I came across, when I first came across them, in vanilla.

Happy to see you on the boards lightbringer and digging into Flix's mod

welcome to the forums!

 

gogo