I started playing about 10 days ago and got killed by Keely like 20 times. Even when I was higher level than her, I could not just face tank. Once I realized that every boss fight is going to be about damage avoidance first, and damage second, the game became much easier. I use the environment to avoid a lot of damage. Seems to be working.
I would agree about defensive abilities, with one exception: necromancer builds. If you have two abilities slotted in that spawn undead without requiring a kill, you can overwhelm a lot of bosses in the game with a constant, steady flow of disposable undead. Enemies will *usually* focus the undead, though they might throw the odd ability your way you scan sidestep. Bone Explosion is a great ability to sub out as well in boss fights where there are a lot of adds; you can get it gemmed to do truly obscene AoE damage and spawn clusters of skeletons. A perfect gemmed Bone Explosion competes for strongest basic spell AoE in the game, and everything it kills stands up as your own adds. In some fights, I will even rock a second AoE spell with Bone Explosion, typically a chaos spell to put ignite on. Ignite -> Bone Explosion causes a huge AoE domino effect that wipes out add waves on bosses and produces a small army of undead to rush them. I have more combos that have no defensive but wreck shop, if anybody is interested.
also something i’ve found is that if you are confident in your dash + weapon skills, unholy dash, corrupted skull and chaos volley can absolutely wreck most things
While true, one thing to be aware of is the devs have done a LOT to counter them in mid/late game bosses. Foulrot has a counter, and tons of other bosses have giant aoes that will instantly delete all skeles, making them less useful. And also to note, the hardest bosses entirely ignore them, making defensive spells pretty much mandatory
@@NorNamor One great combo (though you might have to grind for it) is to get ahold of a chaos crossbow to inflict Ignite in a big area, then sweep Aftershock through with any third AoE. Void can work well for this. You'll have to decide if you want to reapply Ignite, or blast the orbs out before the Aftershock and pack enemies up while strafing away so they line up. It'll trigger an effect where every enemy has Ignite for sure, then the Aftershock will pass through and detonate all the Ignite debuffs to make chaos explosions. So imagine you have six enemies, and Aftershock passes through to cause every one of them to explode for 40% AoE damage. Then, as an added perk, any who die due to overkill from the Ignite just explode due to how Ignite works. It is absolute carnage on a cooldown of only a few seconds. Aforementioned Bone Explosion is a good sub-AoE contender due to its mentioned damage output and making all those deaths become skeletons. Edit: For clarity, there is a gem effect where Aftershock can consume Ignite to make an explosion when it strikes enemies. My favorite for bosses where you don't want adds, such as the ones Timmy is talking about in a reply, is Blood Wolf. It requires a little setup, but in practice it's pretty easy to get ready, and it can take down any boss with good sustain. Gem Phantom Wolf so you have shield from consuming Weakened plus the augment so it bounces back to heal you. Gem Sanguine Coil so it bounces, which lets it bounce back to heal you. Focus on dodging enemy attacks, and pinball the absolute hell out of the boss. You will have a constant, steadily-replenishing shield that will prevent loss of max health from damage, and a flow of healing that puts full blood healing specs to shame. As an added bonus, this generates seeking smart missiles that will ping off the boss and annihilate any adds they spawn. Works great with ranged weapons to keep distance, but also (oddly) it's effective with weapons that give disengage, like the slashers for stealth or the greatsword for i-frame. Ranged weapons that can apply Weakened do have an advantage, however, in giving you more sustain, but it's not really necessary. If you are struggling on a fight you can't win and can use adds, skeletons plus the Wolf half of Blood Wolf works super well. The heal won't target the skeletons, only you, and the skeletons will swarm the boss. I have more if you want more.
@@terribletimmy2 There are some bosses you don't want skeletons on. Particularly ones that trigger shields. Though I would say that there are a few bosses that meet that criteria where they ignore the skeletons, but they also spawn adds that won't and will spawn extra skeletons, or they will throw abilities out that the skeletons body block, trivializing the encounter. One of my favorite tricks lately is using Death Knight as a sort of wall to block. It's like having a deflect ability I can use to peel for others, the DK survives the hit because it's rather tanky, and usually will run up and smack the boss for 100-150% spell power in damage to apply Condemn.
Brutal vs normal is Such a HUGE difference. Like, “this is the same game?” Kinda difference. Goes from V-rising to what people make dark souls seem like. Bosses get SUPER spammy, new attacks are basically instant, no reaction time attacks, that require memorizing them, or planning around them (fighting the farbane bosses without the gear you get later on IS ABSTRACT PAIN), I had to turn it down when I got to the first necromancer boss (foul rot I think it was)
It really is crazy hard (and good tbh). The way I describe it is it makes regular bosses feel like they were in tech alpha. Awesome mechanics, def very hard
Playing on Brutal. Sometimes you can't afford keeping your distance, if you're not aggressive enough you are toast. Other times, if you don't keep your distance you get blown to bits. Brutal makes you respect the bosses, learn their moves, and use anything you can to your advantage. Defensive abilities help in the above mentioned situations, when you're caught out of position, or to extend your damage window, or to create one where there would be none to begin with.
100%. Brutal is really challenging, and will absolutely push your bossing/PvE to its limits. Defensive abilities to me are WAY more valuable in Brutal bossing as well.
I just utilize mobility usually for bosses, my most favorite one is to summon a skeleton guardian, the bounce attack shield, the spirit dash and elect ultimate. Basically I summon the skeleton first and load the initial attack with a bow, crossbow or gun, when they come close I dash leaving a shadow for them to hit, a few more auto attacks than sheld to reflect their attack into and ultimately if I'm low on health a dash hence and repeat. Works for me for most bosses
Rogue Blood and Long Bow also helps a lot in learning a boss skillset. Movement is king. There are also some moves that bosses will not do if you are not in melee, which make some of them easier to fight.
Just got V, game is amazing but i was struggling hard because like you said, this isnt a face tank kind of game 😂 You're vids have saved me a great deal of pain and new controllers, thank you good sir.
Something for new players learning bosses, they all say something (if they can talk) before they do an attack. If you learn the catch phrases you know whats going to happen
"You can't just face tank bosses" I disagree, on normal you absolutely can. But if you switch to brutal, say goodbye to your health, because more often than not, if you get hit by one attack, that's half of your HP, gone. The difference in difficulty between normal and brutal is so absurdly huge it's not even funny
Which boss on Normal do you find possible to facetank on level? I would argue that other than bosses like Beatrice, there isn't a single boss in this game that you can fully facetank on level and beat them.
@@terribletimmy2 The ones from Quincey to Maja, at a minimum. Me and my buddy got tired of getting our asses kicked fighting Quincey on brutal, so we switched to normal. After that, while not literally standing there and tanking every single attack, we just didn't bother too much with dodging. We basically did what you did in the beginning of the video, which is "get it in the face and hit it till it dies". Killed most bosses first try that way, some took two, but not more than that
@@terribletimmy2 ill give it a try. The jail dudes i can almost kill he pwned me 5 times with dmg potions in a blood moon cause patrols suck. And tristan just kills me out right. Lol
@@terribletimmy2 I dont have gems for either of those and it hasnt helpd. Yeaj this is rediculous aparently ita luck of the gem drop to play this game :-( im using iron weapons and getting wrecked
V Rising is a tactical game. Everything is on a cooldown and you need to be paying attention. Always have a ward or counter available. On bosses that spam attacks my Ward of the Damned gives me an ARMY to eat through V-Blood Health. A gem that causes it to occasionally spawn mages instead makes it even better as they just start laying down hell, turning this defensive power into a POWERFUL offense while also serving as a distraction.
bro its been 2 days how are you already that far??!!🤣🤣 did you stream your progression in the game? also could you make another series like you did in the last patch please? I really enjoyed it 🙂
Yep, I will be doing another progression run. Nah sadly I didn't stream it. I've been pretty busy with video stuff after I play. Took the day of the launch off, and I hit 83 that day. Chilled yesterday mostly, got a legendary weapon which was cool.
I actually don't know of anyone other than Adam where this strategy doesn't work well, and even then you can make it worth against Adam if you know how to do it.
for some reason i decide to start on brutal, after getting to around Ilevel 55, I found that I could tune it dowm to easy and normal, and found THE GAME SO EASY holycrap I remember fighting tristam on brutal, and I couldn't take 1 hit for GOD SAKE
I dont understand how to get relatively geared enough to face henry when he's too high of a level for me but to get the next sets of armor you have to beat him
I like the game but it's frustrating and ultimately boring since it's all about evasion for all combat in your level-appropriate zone. You are persistently undergeared for the pve content. You do trash mobs? Dash and evade. Ranged attacks via spells or weapon skills. You do bosses? Dash and evade. Ranged attacks via spells or weapon skills. For the amount of bosses in the early access launch it was fine. With gloomrot the progression around octavian and gloomrot got weird, you gather tons of materials you can't use unless you take big risks on bosses that vastly outgear you.
Literally this is the only comment I’ve seen addressing the actual issue with the game, the core combat system isn’t built towards they way the designed the game itself. It’s extremely boring when I have to go craft something to help me win that I don’t have.. just for the barrier in my way to be some ridiculously spammy boss, only for then to realize I need another thing ( weapon, potion, later game system ) that again I don’t have. It’s also not about wanting to face tank anything.. your evasion capabilities are extremely limited and on brutal the boss multipliers are ridiculous. You basically have to play 1 way.
I explained in the video this was simply to show the method of approaching a boss fight you're unfamiliar with, not necessarily how to beat this boss on level.
This might have been literally the worst Boss for this demonstration. Show me how you rely on defensive abilities against something that attacks in melee, stuns/freezes and summons minions. Edit: A significant amount of bosses summon minions and those will swarm and kill you if you play too defensively.
Man, you must be a god at this game if this type of info is so bad. Feel free to make some videos showing your tactics. Would love to learn from the best
@@terribletimmy2 I don't even think the advice is bad. I just think Maja was a poor choice to demonstrate this. Because you can't play the way you did in the video against the majority of other bosses.
@@Exilis This exact strategy is the same strategy I use against every single regular boss in this game except 2. It's what has allowed me to do clears of bosses 7 to 10+ levels lower all the way through Act 4.
Thank you for these videos, I been waiting for more of your 1.0 guides. I am currently really struggling with Bane in brutal, his normal attack patterns are fine but once he does his hide and seek one i get overwhelmed by the mob and it seems impossible no matter how many tries I took.
@@Simon-xp1sjtry keeping a dot on him. When he hides the human form that is him will have the dot visual on him. On Brutal he triggers his ambush fast so you gotta find him fast and the dot helps. Chaos or static are the usual dots that work.
Finn the fisherman gave me and my friend a hard time on brutal (we got him down eventually, but he went brutal). I know we could have just skipped him, but we wanted to do all bosses in order. I would still like a guide cause I don't think we ever understood the mechanics of the fight, cause we sort of just killed the boss and had to dodge sooo many of the adds.
Any tips against brutal geomancer? Me and my buddy had the hardest time with her last night cause she constantly was summoning her sheild golems everytime we'd take them down. 😅
Try reaper + bone explosion + a defensive option. Mark with bone explosion, and then reaper E is a "set and forget" ability. If you kill them while condemned, they should also spawn a skeleton to draw aggro.
True, but this spell setup is still very good for Adam. At least 1 defensive ability to give breathing room, and 1 offensive to hit the lasers from long range
Nope, he's unchanged. I will say it should be a bit easier this time around for you though if you max out passives and get the highest tier weapons and armor you can when fighting him! Let me know if you still struggle because I went from really bad at that fight to eye-rollingly-familiar with him.
I think they nerfed Maja a little. Very easily got her the first time only, i was the same level as hers. I died to leandra once and needed to reset twice, she was different from last version. Needed to study her a bit. The 3 shadow balls she throws now deal massive area damage at the end and the shadow assassins are spawned more i think. But still at Lv 53 rn. Going slow for the 1st playthrough.
While I don’t disagree that you should use defensive abilities, I find myself not using them for bosses. The only attacks they work on are easily avoidable. It’s quite frustrating.
@@terribletimmy2 they all have moves in which the counters don’t work. Not sure about the shields. The most recent boss I did was Adam and the only counterable attacks were the little ground slams he does which send out a projectile or multiple on the ground. Easy to dodge and do minimal damage anyways. Like I said, I’m not disagreeing or saying it’s bad advice. I just got tired of having to find out which moves could be countered/blocked from the bosses and just eventually went full offense towards end game.
I'll see what I can do! Try discharge+bloodrite+reaper/axes. Brutal mode I found double counters/defense was extremely helpful in a lot of fights. Reaper E to combo with static damage on her, and Q to knock adds away. Axes work too for long range hits and AOE damage on minions
