Zekvir ? ? Overtuned Sadism

I hear ya, but there are advantages to being a healer. Spittle is a non-issue. Generally speaking, his melee is also not an issue since you can heal through it. I guess you just trade one problem for another :smile:

Hopefully thereā€™s content for the players that want to challenge themselves and also content for players that want to breeze through on easy mode then

There isnā€™t going to be a single challenge equivalent for all roles, honestly. Even things like Kruul, specifically tank challenges, are completely unalike for tanks with how their toolkits work (dh being outright immune to the knockback for instance). For fewer specs they made 7 challenges and even then there clear easier and harder choices

I donā€™t use waā€™s at all.
You donā€™t need them to be a successful player lol.

So, having finally conquered the challenge on my 612 Priest (I tried many times to do it on my 615/616 Destruction Evoker, but just couldnā€™t,) I can say that it was most certainly a trial in frustration, anger, but ultimately, satisfaction when finally coming out on top of the boss.

Honestly, I have to wonder just how much gear really plays into the fight now that Iā€™m sitting back to think about it. A lot of it I feel comes down to pattern recognition and determining when to be where and how.

A lot of the fight just felt like it was me remembering what each attack was, and knowing roughly where to be and when at each moment. Get in fairly close, but not so close that you have no way to run out when he casts the fear, move towards his arms when heā€™s about to do the claw, and so on.

For me, I donā€™t know if I would call him overturned, I felt a lot of frustration throughout my many attempts of fighting Zekvir, with an equally large amount of time going over different ideas, different talent paths, Brannā€™s curios, reading and watching other players successful runs against him, and so on. But now having beaten him? I feel the right amount of challenge is there, at least for a Shadow Priest, I canā€™t say entirely I feel the same about Destruction Evoker since I have yet to even get him to phase 2 on my Evoker. I should try again sometime just to see if I can.

My biggest complaint is that thereā€™s a tad too much RNG for my liking. For example, you could have just accidentally moved a bit too close to Zekvir at the wrong time, and now you wiped because you were just an inch too close to him as he cast his empowered Fear. Or you simply could not survive because Brann was knocked out, which I noticed was a constant occurrence during the second phaseā€¦ to the point that it was more harmful trying to heal him/get him back up than to ride out the 30 seconds.

Outside of that, it felt rewarding to finally win against him, but I still understand and can relate to the frustrations players are having with him. Iā€™m curious to see how SE 2ā€™s BBEG will work now that Brann is getting a dedicated tanking spec?

Also, congrats to you Eau for getting your clear on him, and the same to everyone who has beaten him either on Normal or Hard difficulty.

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Gear lets you get away with less egg uptime and reduces the length of the fight, but really you just need the bare minimum to kill eggs consistently. Which for a priest is, and this is no typo, genuinely around 530.

Gear, RNG, Skill, and Innate Class Advantage are all factors. The less of one you have, the more of the others you need to make up for it. The biggest thing is for most people this is their first experience with content that challenges the player in the way Zekvir does, the learning curve is quite steep for those who arenā€™t used to higher end content but youā€™re right that itā€™s manageable.

These arenā€™t RNG though, theyā€™re situations caused as a direct correlation with your actions, no?

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I just meant more mage tower like where they had things for specific melee toons, for the tanks and healers and different ones for different casters and what not.

I donā€™t use anything to track my rotation or my DoTs/bleeds. I donā€™t have anything altering my UI

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Did you use a PVP trinket?

I grey parse in raid for ilvl in a parse group though. So you donā€™t even need to be competent.

I am older and sometimes not fast enough.

I kept getting clipped by the cone or the AoE by being a fraction of a second too slow.

I switched some gems and enchants and gave myself a speed boost. I think it was at 9% and it dramatically changed my attempts. I got twice as far into the fights and was consistently getting into phase 2.

I also had so many attempts (because Iā€™m terrible lol) that I became comfortable with the rhythm and was moving in anticipation of what was coming.

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That doesnā€™t favor your argument.

Right, but using these abilities is non-negotiable. You canā€™t play a demon hunter using nothing but Blade Dance, Chaos Strike, Immolation Aura and Sigil of Flame. Over half of the Demon Hunterā€™s kit locks you into uninterruptable animations. And purely to RNG those abilities can instantly ruin a run because in that split second between casting it and resolving it, Zekvir starts casting something thatā€™s going to kill you and has a narrow window to avoid.

A fight shouldnā€™t destroy your optimized build just because Blizzard canā€™t come up with anything original. Itā€™s not interesting boss design to reward systems knowledge and then force you to completely handicap yourself.

Egg, a cone AOE, a linear AOE with no floor indicator, heal, spittle, enrage, auto-attacks being completely decoupled from his animations meaning you can easily eat three in a row, changes in mechanics post enrageā€¦

I see indicators for both aoes?

I finally got him down tonight! It felt like taking down Uber Mother in D4 for the first time.

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Congratulations!

The only real rng in the fight is that he can actually crit you. Which is stupid af. Everything else you can pretty much prepare and position for.

Nope, where he throws the egg is also RNG and can completely mess up a run if he throws it across the room and then claw smashes while you are trying to down in. The claw smash isnā€™t RNG but man it sucks, he needs to drop that egg a lot closer.

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He will smash right after the egg so you just tag that away from the egg and go for it. You have mobility talents exactly for this.

Nope! The smash timer doesnā€™t always align with the egg timer. Especially in stage 2 there are times where he will drop an egg and then horror and then claw smash.4

Thereā€™s also no guarantee when heā€™ll cast self heal. Never mind that punishing the interruption of spittle is stupid, but you only actually get forced to sit through a heal you canā€™t do anything aboutā€¦ sometimes.

And sometimes pathing just breaks on the stairs. Iā€™ve had at least two wipes caused because my character got caught on thin air.

And if Zekvir drops the egg in the doorway, youā€™re screwed.

And I now have a combat log that claims that the egg can auto attack sometimes, so thereā€™s that.

Iā€™m left with the distinct impression Blizzard didnā€™t really do a lot to test the encounter.

His claw strike has a clear aoe indicator.

You donā€™t really know where his web shot is going.

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I killed that boss with 610 ilvl. That boss is all about mechanics and ignoring damage, knowing when to use your abilities correctly, and interrupting the right power. Simplifying it just because people donā€™t know how to play their class or donā€™t have the skill would take away the sense of accomplishment from beating it. The idea is that itā€™s a challenge, not a gift

In P1, itā€™s just a frontal. In P2, itā€™s a frontal then moves between the portals so you stay out of the middle of them.