Bahlak Chaos Trial Consec. Cleave Dmg Overtuned or Poorly Telegraphed

Lv39 melee-focused Druid with 1709/66% armor/physicalDR, 905/50% applying to elementalDR, before Barkskin, 750hp, 135shield, and many damage mitigation passives; playing blind and fighting Bahlak for the first time; no Chaos modifiers that contribute to boss doing more damage

This bosses' somersault into rapid, consescutive conal AOE cleaves killed me in 2 seconds despite any other Act 3 bosses' attacks never dealing more than 40% of my health with their longest-telegraphed attacks. Bahlak seems to deal the same amount of damage with a single cleave.

Having not encountered this boss before, it was unclear whether the somersault indicated another aoe slam (which the boss also has), prompting me to dodge toward the edge of the arena. Additionally, it was unclear that after the first cleave (which dealt a lot of damage), it would continue cleaving. This resulted in me taking 3 cleaves for an absurd amount of damage and dying within 2 seconds.

This reaffirms to me, that I will never play hardcore for reasons such as those above, which make the first-time experience unfair. Playing softcore while pretending it's hardcore is the move if you have the mental discipline, perhaps unless you're a veteran who knows all the bosses in and out. But otherwise, looking up a guide before each boss to avoid surprises is unfun and should not be expected of me.

Generally, blindly figuring out the bosses' mechanics is a lot of fun, moreso when trying my utmost not to die, but Bahlak's consecutive cleaves in particular seem to be disproportionately punishing such that a proficient first-time player does not have more than 2 seconds to figure out the mechanic before death, with more than double the typical defensive stats for the area. Chimera is a cakewalk relative to this boss.