What is the design goal of the Monkey in Act 3

I'm not trying to complain. I'm just genuinely curious at this point.

I'm choosing to play Hardcore solo self found. I accepted the terms of service when I created the character.

When I died to Dominus on my first roll because I didn't google the fight and was thinking about the maze, and I was so juiced I thought "surely he wont go invuln in 15 seconds and then I'll watch half a shader pull the ground out and one shot me.

That was my fault. My bad Johnathan.


But when I walk into act 3 on my reroll with 900 life 40% armor and the monkey roars and slams me trying to grab the Barrens checkpoint, what are you trying to teach me about the game?

When the water hag pins me in the corner and that's the first time I get to learn that the bubble is a kill plane in 0.1, and that's the only guaranteed kill mechanic in the game before arbiter, I was upset. I in fact cried. But I accepted my responsibility when I clicked accept on the dialog when I made the character.

I just don't understand what you're trying to teach me in the first level of act 3 when Monkey claps me off the rip.

Do you want me to have more stats? I felt lower than my first roll but 700 health 40% armor seems pretty close to what I could expect. There's nothing in the tree. I don't think there's a a lot of extra life I could have grabbed from the T5-9 affixes available to me.

I'm ready and willing to play a lot. I'm not tied expositionally to any character or class or ascendency, I'm pretty confused by the plot actually. Whatever you think should be good I'm ready to jump on each season.

I didn't even really want or need the two points. I felt pretty ahead against jamanra ra, and even ate the cleave and slam because my partner was texting me and I was looking down at my phone.

Coming into act 3, what would you like me to do when I run into the monkey?

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clarkrinker#0429 написал:

But when I walk into act 3 on my reroll with 900 life 40% armor and the monkey roars and slams me trying to grab the Barrens checkpoint, what are you trying to teach me about the game??

1. Do not play HC unless you really know the game and ran out of challenges.
2. Not every attack can be face-tanked, especially in campaign. Learn to dodge.

Yes, the monkey can be a pain with his fucking pillar, but how boring would that game be if it weren't for bosses like this?

As a Hcssf player as well..

What is the point of playing hc if you never want to be in danger of dying?

The goal is a threat.

Any good game should have obstacles to overcome.

It's a very fair boss. I've died 2 or 3 times to it and not once have I felt like it was for any reason other than my own mistakes. People always want something else to blame.

trying to teach you to avoid/dodge the attacks that have a red flash to them.

so i imagine jonathan would like you to not get hit.

positioning and knowing when to attack and when to defend.
that sort of thing.

y'know, playing the game.

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clarkrinker#0429 написал:

I'm not trying to complain. (...)

Proceeds to complain.

It tries to teach you that GGG wanted bosses to be "challenging" so they made their slams powerful enough to kill almost any life-based character and you need some really crazy defenses hardly obtainable on SSF to have a chance at tanking them. Therefore you either roll a ES character which will make your campaign a walk in the park starting from late act 3, or go full offense so that you kill bosses before they kill you. And since recently, you'll have to deal with this BS in every endgame map, too.

It also tries to teach you to skip the monkey until you have at least 1250 hp. That's the hardest it hits. It's not that hard to evade his slam but why risk it?

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onetruelai#7327 написал:

Therefore you either roll a ES character which will make your campaign a walk in the park starting from late act 3, or go full offense so that you kill bosses before they kill you.

Or you actually learn to dodge the attacks that one-shot you. It's really not that hard. Challenging? Yes, but it's not like you get one-shot out of the blue by some random rare.

"

Or you actually learn to dodge the attacks that one-shot you.

I understand where you're coming from. I'm on HCSSF and i can survive most bosses just fine. Since 0.1 release i never died to viper or geonor or any of the other bosses people complain about all the time. This league i'm yet to reach the endgame first because of my mistake of not noticing the one shotting spikes from Tavakai and the second time when ctrl on my keyboard got stuck on the same boss so couldn't use flasks and when i hit esc to pause, windows start menu showed up instead. Overall, bosses are "fair" and their attacks are most of the time well telegraphed. Except Azmadi, f*** this guy.

But the game has a mechanic called "defenses" and if they immediately become decorative once you get to a boss, it ends up being much less relevant.

You CAN get enough defenses in the endgame to tank a lot of one shotting boss hits, though it's very difficult in SSF. But throughout the campaign, there's no reason to even try unless you're playing a ES build. So the game pushes you into going full offense and there's no variety here. You CAN learn to dodge deadly attacks, but you can do that AND go full offense to lower your time on boss and thus reduce the probability of making a deadly mistake. There is NO option for going full defense with the same purpose, except ES. And this is a terrible design in an a*RPG* game that revolves around character building.

If you check poe1 characters, you'll notice substantial difference between how people build their characters on HC vs SC. Because you can actually invest in defenses and they'll matter throughout the entire game instead of just letting you survive normal mobs better.

But in poe2, two characters of the same class and chosen skills are gonna be almost or exactly the same between the leagues. Because yeah you can survive trash mobs better if you get more armour or whatnot, but it doesn't matter if say an arbiter will kill you just as fast as they will a glass cannon, but a glass cannon will have to spend much less time fighting it as therefore will have less opportunities to make a mistake. So by investing in defenses you just trade survivability on bosses for survivability vs trash mobs. Your overall survivability remains unchanged.

You can't just make a game with a promise of a "slow methodical combat" and then punish players for investing in defenses instead of killing everything within seconds.

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onetruelai#7327 написал:

You can't just make a game with a promise of a "slow methodical combat" and then punish players for investing in defenses instead of killing everything within seconds.

Investing in defenses is never a bad strategy, even with bosses like the monkey. You surely have noticed that the damage from the "red" slam attacks is highly dependent on where you stand in relation to the pillar, so good defenses can mean the difference between life and death if you don't manage to fully get away in time.
Also, with proper investment in defenses, you can even face-tank those slams in T15 maps later, e. g. my Lich build last league:

Lich vs. Monkee

That being said, I agree that dealing huge DPS is the safer bet against bosses for sure, but maybe they're getting there eventually.

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C4Guy#0918 написал:

Lich vs. Monkee

Well that's a ES build. I mean yeah, ES is the kind of defense that will carry you throughout the game and there's a reason why on HC it was the second most played ascendancy in 0.3. Because it's either ES or full offense in this game.

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but maybe they're getting there eventually.

I think so. Johnatan mentioned multiple time that this is the intentional design for some weird reason.