Act 1 End Boss Count Geonor

[ronaldl128]

Need help...has anyone beaten this final boss in Act 1 (COUNT GEONOR )...playing as a Witch? If so can you share some tips as this just seems ridiculously hard. I made it so far but as hard as I try, no success. My gear is up to snuff, but the challenge is moving around and avoiding him. Many have made it to Act 2, so if anyone can assist, I certainly appreciate it Thank you all !!!!

[VVaЯF0xу]

Dont use skeletons, use spell power. Use this bone shotgun spell, i forgot the name. Forget about tanking damage, just kill him before fight takes too long.

[robruckus65]

I killed him so fast on my witch he never did the fog phase. Wall of fire with raging spirits go into minion damage. Hit him with contagion then just keep wall of fire under him and recast as the skulls die to keep all ten up.

[The Pester Jester]

As a fellow witch, I used the chaos spells to damage him while my skeletons tanked. You could also find a two rune slot chest piece from one of the vendors and equip two cold resist runes.

[svoulzor]

yes first try easy

[Pervy]

Originally posted by The Pester Jester:

As a fellow witch, I used the chaos spells to damage him while my skeletons tanked. You could also find a two rune slot chest piece from one of the vendors and equip two cold resist runes.

Or just have any gear with cold res on.

[DirtyMick]

Yeah cold resistance helps a lot.

[ClAyMoRe*]

Originally posted by ronaldl128:

Need help...has anyone beaten this final boss in Act 1 (COUNT GEONOR )...playing as a Witch? If so can you share some tips as this just seems ridiculously hard. I made it so far but as hard as I try, no success. My gear is up to snuff, but the challenge is moving around and avoiding him. Many have made it to Act 2, so if anyone can assist, I certainly appreciate it Thank you all !!!!

You will have to start over to get raging spirit, idk if it is still viable as it was supposed to get nerf , or respec to chaos damage if you want to make it easier , if not you will have to just get better with each attempt and use essence drain together with contagion .

[spider-gwen]

I got brutalized as a merc with minions on Count, died like 30 times before I found a recharge on kill flask and raised up a shotgun ammo to Lvl 5 when pets and grenades just wouldn't work out at phase 3 when the blood red moonfire starts dropping and its a flatout DPS race. Up until the flask my best fights always ended the same way, phase 3 blood red moonfire spam and just nothing in the tank for burst DPS before he became unhittable in the mist portion. I started the fight at level 16 I think, finished at level 19 after spam clearing ramparts and mansion as stress relief + item and exp farm as my phase 3 DPS wasn't up to snuff.

In the ae moonfire portion of phase 2 you can hug the outer Arena wall and eliminate bad backwards rolls as an option so you always get at least a good starting roll in due the AE spacing, but after that its a crap shoot. This is significantly undesirable if you lack damage dealing ability though as after phase 1, which you can cheese hard with a shield and skeleton archers without a single flask hit, its a DPS race and battle of attrition where getting the Count standing still and primed for a combo is the most reliable window to pump damage. My merc, as a minion and grenade specced silly build with weapon swap & reload skills that relied on poison cloud from the skeleton archers and grenade combo, I had to pick up my own gas grenades & the 80% fire damage ammo skill and could only use skeletons reliably in the non AE windows. Even that wasn't enough until I got a lucky flask drop.

My final successful fight I cheesed phase 1 hard with a shield and all skeleton archers out of habit, then only pulled them out in the mist minion segment and ice field channeling portions while also spamming shotgun blasts after using up their poison cloud and tossing grenades in. The minions in the mist became a boon once I had the DPS to take them down and they recharged my flask. So maybe a life steal or on kill bonuses can help but for me gear drops just feel bad and unreliable at present.

Overall just a very frustrating fight as I worked up to a minion build by chance starting in the Mud Cave when I got a scepter and shield, and felt super good about it on every fight up until that final fight in Act 1. The Counts minions don't leave corpses to convert, and spam rolling that whole mist minion phase feels stupid, then the AE phases and abilities wipes my minions out sometimes the very second I summoned them in anticipation of a stationary after charge wind up only to end in that red circle ceiling drop that insta destroyed my skeletons, and I didn't discern any huge tell or pattern to predict that goop-mode teleport and ceiling body slam within the giant red circle.

Avoiding damage in phase 3 is difficult when the moonfire beams turn red, and being so heavily specced into minions, and liking that for literally every fight except Count, made me begrudgingly stick it out and pick up some redundant and to me undesirable skills that I purposefully passed in favor of minion / grenade interactions. Which feels like a bait and switch and punishment in one, I adapted to every challenge the game threw at me up until that fight, and then it was an insurmountable wall that a lucky flask drop helped me overcome only after I had picked up gas cloud grenades that my skeleton archers already had covered.

Raw stats did not feel very noticeable when I got them, and weapon swapping with minions linked to scepters feels broken despite an entire merc tree branch just for it that I specced into, with no grace period for swapping back and forth, and minions going on timer if you use your primary weapon out of habit or an accident trying to click something and shooting a bow / cbow. So I just had a terrible build made worse by not so great gear, which I was crushing and hall clearing everything up until the Count, and then my build that integrated pets, merc abilities, and enemy corpses, was rendered toothless and I had to invest in and farm up abilities that were contrary to my needs and desire up until that point, and that now in Act 2 I have an entirely flow to combat that while less complex doesn't feel as good and its not a choice I wanted to make myself but was forced into.

So I am hoping it gets tuned to be a bit friendlier to pet classes

Sorry for wall of text, but just DPS rush and have a good flask or life steal set up. Dodging too much while not dealing damage will just lead you into a worse phase for pets and where you can't seem to harm the rushing wolf form Count.

[wulfster42]

You don't need ragiing spirit or summons at all.

Instead get yourself a lightning staff, any will do but it would be great if you have one with +lightning skills on it and hopefully spell and lightnign damage, none is needed just a basic one will do. Then slot Orb of storms from elemental and fire wall.

On firewall put fortress which makes it into a circle (yes this works great with raging spirit but if you didn't get it, you didn't get it).

With fortress going you cast firewall and then cast orb inside the fire circle, then just keep casting lightning while you stay in the orb of storms radius (Add AoE increase to it, possibly even 2 (one adds 6 seconds the other is just a flat 40% boost).

Dodge around avoiding getting hit while you spam lightning on the boss. Every time you cast lightning (which costs nothing so pump it up with faster cast speed and something that boosts it's damage significantly (tons of choirces).

You can also slot frost bomb if you want, put in extra freeze buildup and duration and you should freeze the act 1 boss the first time you use it on him, giving you plenty of time to nail him with spells while totally safe.

You can add in essense drain (Added duration and boost it's damage) and a few other spells but none of it is needed the above will take him out easily for you. Witch gets plenty of spell damage and minion damage nodes, so you are not really weaker than a sorc using spells at that point. Yes, if you had SRS (Summon raging spirit) it would be even easier, but it's not worth running another character up if you took a different spell.

[wulfster42]

Merc is the only class I highly recommend getting it's early level unique for (heck it works for every other class even if it's just a backup). It is a crossbow and it adds 2 chains to your attacks when using it. Base damage is bunk (1d6 physical and 1d6 cold) but honestly just add 2 slots to it (you can get the ingrediants buying random weapons with slots in the store) and add 2 cold runes. That gives 12-24 EXTRA cold damage to the crossbow that automatically chains with no damage reduction for doing so (just 1 chain from the support halves the damage you do). This clears act one as any class easier than any class can clear act one except the ranger with snipe and the ice arrow spell.

Snipe can just about 1 shot all the bosses in act 1 lol....so yeah...that is hard to beat, but even using lightning arrow with scattershot and faster attack speed, you STILL won't kill random packs of mobs through act 1 faster than the xbow with the above setup.

Anyway if I ever run up any more chars (Don't have a second monk yet so i'll have to some year, plus I really want additional merc/sorcs to try intreresting builds like chrono with monk staff/skills.....I will pretty much just use that uber xbow. Just make sure if you buy one (mine dropped) get one with 2 chains as it's random, and you really don't want a 1 chain xbow.