High Templar Avarius - DoT Death

In stage 2, he's doing something to me every now and then, which I don't even see happening, that suddenly drains all my energy shield and life to nothing and kills me. Just crashed on a HC run with this.

I had:

485 Life
1,525 Shield (Ghostwrithe)
Capped Resistance
Potions for Burn, Freeze, and Bleed/CB Immunity.

I pressed the potions buttons as I watched my shield and life drain down across two instances, once while shield was up, the next while shield was down, both times potions were definitely full, and yet, my life kept draining and I died, with nothing hitting me or touching me...

What did he do to me? I'm annoyed out of my mind with this, had a good HC run going, would like to understand why I have passed this dude before but he did this to me.

(Edit: Assumed you were talking about act 10 version, but rereading more carefully, you are speaking about act 5, high templar avarius (Innocence), in phase 2. Which I think the DOT you are talking about is the giant beam? Will try to provide information for that. Looks like you have played through the campaign multiple times, maybe not on HC? So if it's something other than the beam, describe it a bit more and others may be able to advice. I can't think of other DOT in that fight. It's possible that you may not of even encountered the mechanic before, particularly if you had more damage when doing the fight, you may of beaten him without him even using the skill. It is possible to skip right to the ad phase without him going though his full skill rotation. As mentioned later, the ball mechanic is typically seen as more dangerous than the beam, and you may not of seen that one yet either.

Basically you have to get out of the beam, standing behind him. I think ontop of him, it may still damage you, but slightly further back behind him it is safe. He is slow spinning it if you are near him, so long as you are moving and not face tanking it, you should be safe, but even on full life build, I would not suggest relying on just flasking, need to avoid it. When behind him, it can be a good window to get some damage off. I don't think there is other DOT in the fight, unless as mentioned below, maybe you get crit and ignited.

With the potions themselves, sounds like you might of had ignite immune. Burning removal will not help with this I don't think, it is fire damage, but not a burning that will be removed, (May be wrong, interested to know if it does). Further though, your life flask will not proc while on full life, unless it has an instant portion. This means while your es is being removed, the flasks will not proc and remove ailments, or do any healing, until you get down to under full life, then press them. Or have another mechanic that is causing your life to need refilling under the es, like say life cost for skills. An instant flask does let you remove the ailment with the mod, spending the charges. Partial instant should also work. This may be why your flasks were still full, if they were pushed before your life pool was partial depleted. They may of worked when it was, but might not of been enough to overcome the beam damage.

https://poedb.tw/us/High_Templar_Avarius#HighTemplarAvariusAvariusCasticus
I'm not sure if any of these relate to the beam, think this shows 1st phase, and I don't know how to see second, which contains the beam. However, it has a debuff icon in game. Two in fact, that might be hard to see while staying alive. Listed here on wiki, https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Divine_Beam , doesn't have numbers, but it says damage increases if you stay in it.

https://poedb.tw/us/Innocence%2C_God-Emperor_of_Eternity
This may be it on PoeDB, but not certain that is exact for this fight. May not be accurate. I find it hard to search the exact bosses on there, and doesn't exactly explain the ramping, but hopefully gives the gist of what it might be doing.

lvl47
"AvariusDivineBeam
Spell, Area, Fire, Channel, AreaSpell
Cast Time: 1 sec
Cooldown Time: 18 sec
10% increased Fire Damage taken
Deals 1191.3 Base Fire Damage per second
Base duration is 5 seconds
Base secondary duration is 0.75 seconds
150% increased beam length"

If you didn't encounter the ball mechanic yet, that needs to be looked out for as well. With capped res and 2k hit pool, you can probably tank a couple, but it needs caution. It is possible to manually maneuver between them, or get in a safe position by rotating to where he is not firing them, but when learning it can be tough. A lot of this damage is fire damage, so a ruby flask can be helpful if you mess up, particularly on a build where your whole hp is not life. It may be hard to have one at that point if in SSF, as I think the flask reward is from that quest, and is not a complete defenses, but f you do have one it may be useful.

Hopefully this and the other is somewhat helpful, if it relates to what you are actually asking about. Both these fights are some of the more dangerous parts of the campaign for HC. They are not so bad once the fight is know, but for learning they are more dangerous, and potentially DOT does expose a bit of a weakness in your build, being reliable recovery, if it is handling everything else easily with the hit pool. Chaos dot would be something else to watch out for in act6. Even with a good amount of chaos res from the chest, it is potential still dangerous on this build, since it goes through the top 2 thirds of your HP, if you don't have further mechanical changes.)


Will leave this here as may be useful for doing act 10, but may not be completely relevant as relates to your post. It's the same arena for differnt fight in act 10:

It is a dangerous boss in HC both for hit damage and dot in the arena. He does pretty much all phys damage and I think the balls he shoots at you might the fire as listed on PoeDB.

https://poedb.tw/us/Avarius%2C_Reassembled#AvariusReassembledAvariusCasticusWickermanStandalone_

The big laser things in the area cause a lot of DOT if you touched them, and it is a debuf that continues on for a few seconds call heretical flame. It looks like it would be a corrupted blood debuf, but CB immunity won't stop it I don't think, even though it is phys dot, it is separate I believe.

The problem with hybrid build is you're flasks aren't effective until, your into life pool and you may not have recovery applying to the top half of your hit pool. I'm not not sure if this will overpower your flask entirely, probably depends on the flask base and mods, I don't know how to see thedot number, because I think it is an arena effect. There might be a way to look it up.

Not sure there is other dot in fight. It's possible you might of got unlucky a few times and crit ignited, or something like that, I don't really know.

The statue men in the arena can put you in danger of other abilities as well. Generally I do this boss last before Kitava/lab when playing HC, as I find it the most dangerous of anything else in the act, without mods. I typical try to stand behind him if i'm on a build that is in melee range. As with a lot of POE1 bosses, this often the place your least likely to get hit. If the fight is extended due to low dps, you probably do need to micro around to avoid some of the skills. Not sure, but I think the balls might be able to overlap. There is certainly one skill that one-shot builds that don't have a very high hit pool at that part of the game.

2k hit pool isn't terrible, but I think flat life builds in HC are looking to have above 3k at that point if they want to be safe. Particularly since you cant panic flask on hybrid with the es. It sounds like you are pretty certain it was DOT both times. If you didn't touch the beam I would think it must of been ignite. I don't know he or the statues can bleed, they are doing phys, but I don't know if the have bleed chance mods. Someone who knows the fight better might be able to correct if there is another source of dot in the fight.

So you would clearly be as stumped as I am.

It was not the beam. I got touched by the beam on my second fight with him with this character in SC, it hurt a bit, but didn't do anything like I'm describing.

My ignite health flask reads as follows:

"Grants Immunity to Ignite for 6 seconds if used while ignited
Removes all burning when used"

I tried this both with my energy shield up, and when it was down with my life draining, just to be sure my health didn't have to be hurt for it to work.

The second time especially, I was watching so closely, and cannot even tell what hit me. It wasn't any of the high damage sparks, nothing like that.

I have over a thousand hours in the game, I've been playing HC lately, every single death I had, I know I messed something up, but this, I have literally no idea why that dot continued.

It literally makes me not want to play the game again. HC seems like a joke when my whole life-pool can just drain away randomly for an unknown reason.

Yeah, it's hard to comment without vision. Some of the mechanics in the fight are a bit buggy with animations. I don't know of anything like what you are saying with dot though. Maybe I'm missing something. Did you see an effect of anything hitting you, or standing in something if you can remember? Or just suddenly out of no where your health is drained?

It may possible be something else unrelated to the fight, though it seems strange you would only notice it in the fight. For example, some unique flasks will put a dot on you, such as forbidden taste, corralito's signature. I think the character is still on your account, was it Mercurytwister? Seems to match the description. Not seeing anything on that as yet that would cause it, but taking a look. (Not seeing anything that would do this on the build. You have a lot of dot effects, like infernal legion, but nothing I can see that would cause DOT on you.)

With the flasks on that character, they will not proc through your energy while on full life, except the one in the fifth slot with poison immunity, as it has instant. It's possible that when the flasks were pressed during the life section, they did function, but didn't overcome what ever the DOT was, so it looked like they were not functioning at that point. Large flask are not capable of healing through everything. It would be unusual, but maybe if the mods are not preventing what ever it was, the dot might of been strong enough to overpower the flask. The only way to know would be to see if the visuals indicator or the numerical value on the flask charges went down. There's noting that prevents flask use in the fight that i'm aware of, so if they didn't work, the only thing I can think of is a mechanical input problem. However I think this is all secondary to knowing what the damage you were taking is.

I'm not sure exactly what everything in the fight does. I tend to not get hit by anything in the fight much anymore. Maybe one of the other mechanics can put a DOT on. Might need someone else to explain if this is possible or not. In the fight during second phase, how far where you getting? I'm assuming this happened in between the ad phase? Sounds like you know the regular innocence skill rotation, and it was none of these things?

The other things having pause enable in menu and/or logout macro. It is a personal choice. I stopped using log out macro a long time a ago, and found the game to be more enjoyable without it. It can be useful though, particularly while learning in HC. If you see something you don't understand or think is a bug or technical problem, to avoid losing all your progress it can be used, and is generally understood to be part of the game by the community. Dropping portals in the boss arena preemptively is also a middle ground to that that I often use for potentially tough fights. Potentially it is not as fast and safe, and may not of helped in this case, as what you encountered was unexpected , but it is a useful strategy, especially in HC.

Recording game play can also be helpful. Another thing I use sparingly, because of the resource load and annoyance. Might be if this is the only place you encountering something strange, that you are able to recording it and see exactly what is happening on the frames, to see if it is a normal game play mechanic, or something else such as a bug or technical problem. I've not encountered this myself, or remember other players describing something like this. It makes sense why this type of thing would be dangerous for your build, but not what it is exactly. Running the fight on one of your available softcore character might also be worth doing. To see if you notice anything in an experiment that doesn't have the pressure of a HC fight. Might be that it is only occurring on your HC build, but you might notice something, like a specific mechanic, or bug/technical problem that has been introduced since you played through in SC.

Still I have noticed nobody else talking about this on the forum, and this is an un-skippable boss. It may relate directly to something on your setup or character. Probably need some more information to understand what that is exactly, because neither of us can put a figure on what it may be. Might take someone more familiar with the fight to advise. I think there are some old guides for the fight available. It is pretty old content, so there may not be anything extensive, but it was a major boss and is still a tough aspect of the game. If it is not mentioned any other source of DOT, that might be an indicator of something unusual going on. Maybe the game is desyncing or something and not showing that the beam is hitting you visually.

I recorded, and it turns out it's desync... The beam is firing, but invisible.

Absolutely absurd bad coding.

Yeah don't play... games in hardcore mode, and ESPECIALLY not Path of Exile.

When you look at it from a certain angle, the light will show you that the only reason to even play hardcore is to inevitably die. Because that's when you experience the only difference that playing HC provides. Until then, you're just playing SC and haven't died yet. And you will continue to play HC, endlessly, forever, until you hit that point that you're unknowingly looking for... which is you dying. Because, outside of dying, there is no other point in time where you're finished with your character.

Like I said. You have to look at it from a certain angle for the light to be able to show you this truth.




... ... And, ultimately, crap like lag or bad programming is the biggest reason not to subject yourself to a hardcore mode.

With all the ridiculous 'goals' and endgame challenges they slap into this game, the bare minimum should be stuff like this corrected and supported before they do new stuff.

To me, it's insane that companies keep slapping new stuff into their games without polishing and correcting stuff like this, like wtf, it's also not legal if we wanted to get into it.

These guys got bought out by Tencent, they have huge resources, stuff like this should be priority, not sit unaddressed for over a decade. That's just weird.

I don't find any of the new leagues near as exciting as the idea of just finishing the campaign in HC without dying. I was right at the edge at the last battle on one of my earliest runs and made an idiot mistake with a flask on one run, I know I can do it, I don't mind whatever deaths it takes on my side to complete this, but this, their mistake, was so utterly ridiculous I can't get over it. Why is the animation not locked to the skill.

I couldn't even buy better internet if I wanted to. I'm stuck with Cox, they literally have a monopoly on my area, I called the other providers today. I dumped good money into all the cosmetic stuff to be a reliable 'supporter.' As a supporter, I know actually fixing things before doing new stuff is important to me and other rational people like me. I don't want to accept 'oh just don't play this other game mode.'

I've been getting some desync this league too. Must be almost 10 years since I've encountered that. Much more minor than you are describing, but i'm also in HC, can understand the frustration if that caused your death.

I've asked for some advice about it on the tech section. If anyone knows much about it here I would appreciate some advice about preventing it as well.