What's the best way to handle Undead Ghosts at the Epic Level

[Hammerhead]

This is my first play-through at the Epic level. When I got to Act IV the Lost Soul Warrior/Archer/Sorcerer – Undead Ghosts became a major pain to fight. Finding information on their resistances and attacks is challenging. From what I have gleaned ghosts have 60% resistance to both Physical and Piercing Damage. Since they are ghosts, Bleeding Damage resistance is 100%. And based on my own Poison attacks, unlike the normal Undead they appear to have 100% resistance to Poison.

My character is a Harbinger (Rogue, Hunter) which relies on heavy poison attacks and piercing damage from thrown weapons. I have a spear that hands out 675 physical damage to these Undead ghosts, but it takes anywhere from six to eight hits to kill them unless I use Lethal Strike or Calculated Strike where the fourth hit does outsize damage.

Meanwhile these Undead Ghosts come in groups which include all three types of Undead Ghosts. So while I’m engaged in a melee with one enemy the archers and sorcerers are laying some significant damage on me (around 320 a hit for the archers) despite my 80% pierce and vitality resistance. I’m still trying to get a handle on the different types of the sorcerer attacks used. Despite what looks like a white ball of energy, a twisting beam of energy, or a ray of flame, all damage to me shows up as a pale orange constant number even though I would expect DoT.

This situation led me to look for weapons that would deal high elemental damage. Good luck there! Nothing coming anywhere near the 675 physical damage I can deal with my spear. Most fall into the 50-60 cold damage region.

So, my question is, how do the rest of you deal with these Undead Ghosts? Am I just going to have to methodically pound through them one at a time at a slow pace, or is there a better way staring me in the face that I just haven’t figured out yet?

[chris.ferrantegerard]

Originally posted by Hammerhead:

My character is a Harbinger (Rogue, Hunter) which relies on heavy poison attacks and piercing damage from thrown weapons. I have a spear that hands out 675 physical damage to these Undead ghosts, but it takes anywhere from six to eight hits to kill them unless I use Lethal Strike or Calculated Strike where the fourth hit does outsize damage.

Harbinger is Warfare + Dream. Rogue + Hunter is actually the Brigand.

Shouldn't be too much of an issue. Undead have posion absorb I believe around 70% and can't be reduced to my knowledge. Hunting has one of the best debuffs in the game in Study Prey through. Applies excellent physical / pierce resistance reduction. Just apply Study prey to them and they should die fairly quickly to spear melee hits.

[Salty Nobody]

You can get +50% damage to undead on some charm completion bonus. There are also items that have a similar damage bonus to them as well. In addition to lowering their resistances a straight damage boost from such gear should make very short work of them.

[Hammerhead]

First, thanks for the correction. My character is indeed a Brigand.

Also appreciate both the suggestions and the correction that the undead ghosts have 70% physical and pierce absorption instead of resistance. So, no matter what I do, I’m left working with only 30% of my physical/piercing damage against these guys. Based on tests against static targets in the fields outside Athens that is 30% of 482-1400 (160 - 470/hit) for my Bi Shou thrown weapon (very fast) and 30% of 900-3500 (300-1170/hit) for my spear (very slow) when you throw in Calculated Strike. I would expect this amount to decrease by any additional resistances the undead ghosts have. No wonder these suckers are slow to die.

The use of Study Prey to reduce resistances over the absorption level was intriguing so I decided to try it out. I have four points in the Study Prey skill which should reduce the undead ghost’s physical resistance by 34% and Piercing resistance by 33%. I went to the first cave in Epirus which has an abundance of these undead ghosts. I tried using both my Bi Shou and spear. First without using Study Prey, then with Study Prey turned on. I then wrote down the rough damage per hit for both.

The Bi Shou without using Study Prey caused around 500-700 damage points. Once Study Prey was used, I got 700-2300 damage points. With my spear I totaled about 600-1800 without Study Prey in use. This rose to 1,000 to 3,000 when using Study Prey.
So as Chris.Ferrantegerard suggested Study Prey, even with only four points, yielded an increase in damage even higher than the 33-34% expected. This is most noticeable when Calculated Strike kicked in and yielded a bigger increase. Thank you very much sir, for the idea. Study Prey is a skill I’ve underestimated and failed to use in the past. I plan to change my ways. 😊

I also experimented with The Fifth Archon’s idea of adding a charm to increase damage to undead. It turns out my Bi Shou already had such a charm attached which gave me a +50% damage to the undead. When I looked at the third tab of my character window which shows Monster Race Bonuses, I could see the 50% bonus for undead, but 0% for ghosts. And in testing, I didn’t see the 50% buff on the Bi Shou versus my spear. So apparently, even though these monsters are named “undead ghosts” the undead buffs don’t help out against them. But thank you for the idea. It was worth trying.

Very much appreciate the two of you providing your comments.

[redgreen999]

Use a bow/throw weapon with fire or other elemental damage and study prey as chris.ferrantegerard mentioned.