First, I would like to thank everyone who gave advice in my previous topic. I have been able to achieve pretty much everything I wanted to do since I made that topic.

That being said, I have had a bit of trouble with the boss and his minions right before the portal into the Arcane Sanctuary. The Dark Knight himself wasn't a problem (decrepify from lawbringer + crushing blow took him down pretty quickly). The odd thing though is that the accompanying minions, Soul Armor x2, were tougher than the boss himself!

They somehow managed to one-shot me from about half health (around 1.8k) to 0 in a second. I do notice that they cast Decrepify (or what looks like decrepify) on you, and, like all Reanimated Horde mobs, their charge attacks hurt a lot. But what else are they capable of? They seem to be able to reflect damage, and have a very high physical resist as even when decrepified, they were barely taking any damage from my attacks.

I did manage to evade them after dying twice, but what is the deal with them? Do they have CS like Hatestorm, which allows them to deal close to 2000 damage in one hit?

For the record, my paladin is a lvl 70 zealer, on NM. I have a max of 3.2k life. I did mess up this char a bit, but I want to see how far I can get with him. I'll post a summary of my gear if necessary.

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It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
-William Ernest Henley

Even standard chargers from a5 are a pain. They can do loads of dmg when charging. Ofc, soul armors and DK, as being minions and boss, do even more dmg, and even more if someone around has "might" aura, or DK himself, making those bastards unbelievable strong when charging, with "101% chance to 1HKO when charging" if you are not uber DR% and life boost equipped ... and thats not always enough.

Also, that "reflecting" dmg you take is their "ctc bone teeth when struck", which are also painful , due to the magical nature of that skill ( if no MDR or the seldom seen magic resist% ).

That makes those mobs hard to fight on melee , and a suicidal quest for ranged/caster characters

I suggest that, unless you are not playing tag with a summoner of any kind, when facing that zone you should just run asap to the portal, and let your merc die vs those fuckfaces. They are not really worth to fight, unless you like deadly risk.

♥

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"I am who I am. Your approval isn't needed"

Also, they are undead, so even with Lawbringer it seems like it would be worth bringing a Holy Craft armor (with Sanctuary) to a fight such as that, as it would reduce their physical resists even further.

That seems to be the general consensus for the uber-strong undead fellows, anyway, but someone with more experience may well correct this statement.

$.02

only problem with using sanctuary against chargers is that it can bump them out of melee range and force them in to their charge attack again - which is NOT what you want to happen

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People who live in cinder block houses can throw whatever they want.

pin them to the wall with smite and the sanctuary aura

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Touché. Unless you perhaps place the Holy armor on a merc and let them be a squishy decoy?

But Smite will definitely help, although it's single target. It depends on the time difference between Sanctuary proccing and the chargers deciding to charge

Thanks for all the advice everyone . I was surprised at how much damage those bastards could inflict. I generally don't like the idea of running from monsters, but you are right that it isn't worthwhile to fight them at all. The DK himself did drop some uniques... that I would have wanted 10 levels ago -_-. But at least I won't have to see him again for a while.

The damage reflection that I thought I saw was probably a combo of the ctc Teeth, as well as my own thorns damage from my shield with a couple skulls in it that I have on switch. It was a bit difficult to see whom the effect was on.

I initially thought that they were like the bugged Tomb Vipers from Act V hell in vanilla D2. If i recall correctly, their poison spear attacks inflicted the total damage each frame, as opposed to spreading it out over the duration of the poison. That is how they could take down a char with 20k+ life in one hit. Thank goodness though that there don't seem to be any enemies like that in this mod. Some things can inflict a hell of a lot of damage in one hit, but they can be countered with good strategy and appropriate resists.

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It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
-William Ernest Henley

chargers from a5 hell while amped by succubis. 1 charge on a char with less than 10k hp -> you most proly die in 1 hit. And they use to appear in funny crowds... gl when facing them alone

♥

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"I am who I am. Your approval isn't needed"

On a slightly related note, do monster's ctc abilities have a chance to cast repeatedly on duration-based damage? [open wounds, poison, etc.]

I distinctly recall fighting this guy and his buddies on my poison necro and his golem some time back, and watching in horror as the room we were fighting in filled to the point of client-lagging with teeth flying around everywhere.