Baal, Lord of the Cheese?

[AtomicKitKat]

What can I say, I was trying to rush a character through Normal just for the hell of it, and I think 3 characters(excluding the rushed one) died a total of FIFTEEN times between them while facing Baal. Am I doing something wrong? How the heck do you Hardcore players survive this cheese-puff?

That Ice Wedge is pure cheese. The knockback factor is greater than anything I've ever seen. Easily three times the distance my Paladin's Smite can go. And it seems to hit multiple times too!

Festering Appendages. LIMIT THEM! I've had characters die from the sheer lag of Baal throwing up about 20 of these suckers. Usually the only reason they die is because I have Thorns on. A good fix would be to limit him to no more than four at a time(or one per player) Anytime he throws up a new one(above the limit), an old one should die. Besides which this power was ripped off from Mephisto...

Mana Burn Nova/Inferno: Lame, mostly irritating to spell-casting characters, as if they weren't suffering enough from Mana-Maiden.

Clone: The fact that the clone is allowed to do exactly the same amount of damage as well as all the abilities is bad enough in and of itself. He should at least take SOME(maybe 1/4 of the damage suffered?) damage when the clone is hit(psychic backlash and all that) Getting caught between 2 Ice Wedges is just plain unfair.

**End Baal Rant**

Firewall: I'd much rather have longer-lasting firewalls that did less damage per second. How exactly is a level 20- character with only 100-200 hitpoints supposed to survive even a couple of seconds if level 1 Firewall does 60++ damage per second? And the Summoner does at least level 3 I think(based on the length of the firewall) I've lost count of how many characters I've lost to that death-trap staircase just because some idiot at Buzzard decided to ramp up the damage to compensate for the spell-timer(Sorceresses have Masteries for a reason, you know?!)

**End Ranty Post**

[Noodles666]

Wellll i actually have never had much problem with Baal in HC. I play single player and have gotten to kill him with a fireball/hydra fire only sorceressand a summoner only necromancer who forgot his TP scrolls.... so there he was with his fire golem 6 health potions and 6 full rejuv potions vs baal... i was scared...

PS one of the fact of the day at diabloii.net says how to distinguish fake baal from real baal

[AtomicKitKat]

I have no problem DISTINGUISHING the 2 Baals. Heck, once I find the real one I usually do target-lock(pin down the mouse button), the real problem is actually GETTING to him with the attack. If you're a mage he screws with your mana, either removing it or using it against you(mana-maiden) If you're an attacker, he fires off so much crap that you're lucky if you're not sent flying 2 screens away by his ice wedge. See, you've got me started again. What I wanted to know was whether anyone agreed with me that Baal was rather poorly thought out balance-wise.

[yangman]

He's the "final boss" -- he's supposed to be hard. :P

Hey, at least he isn't "hard" in the sense that you just can't deal damage to him (like Diablo and his insane block rate, at least for melee characters).

I've never had problem with Baal with the characters that I have brought up solo against him. Time confusming, yes, but never a situation where I just couldn't touch him.

[AtomicKitKat]

I've actually taken less fire facing down 20 demon imps. O_o

[Archon_Wing]

He's not really hard, but really cheesy. As in some characters push him over while with others, it seems impossible :P

And yes timered spells with excessive damage are evil

[AssA]

Sounds like you need resistances :P

Also, if Festering Appendages cause major lag, your system is majorly outdated <_<

[WarBlade]

Look for Magic Damage Reduced items. They're often underestimated when it comes to Baal. MDR can save your character some hurt when eating the puke missile and it's an invaluable asset against the multiple hit nastiness of the cold wedge.

Resistances are nice too.

Fast Run and some decent Vitality investments will fix the Festering Appendages. High Vit will also take care of that pesky Blood Mana Curse.

When meleeing, use fast attacks and Slows Target against him if possible. You can actually put Baal into a kind of ad hoc stunlock because your attacks will abort his summoning and teleport spells in mid-cast. :lol:

[AtomicKitKat]

Lol. My Paladin relies on Smite and Thorns to do the damage(well, rather I smite bosses to SORT of interrupt attacks so I can drink potions! :P) and well, Baal seems to use like 5% melee attacks... O_o

My brother's Necro on the other hand, relies on Bone Spirit and Poison Nova, and even with fairly good resistances all around on both characters(75 fire and 75 lightning for me, and 75 fire/poison 59 cold and 68 lightning for my brother), we have trouble taking him down in a solo game, and only moderately less trouble with a 2 on 1. His Summoning Druid has it worse, since his summons disintegrate in a single hit(although I attribute this to my brother's incompetence of having 25 skill points lying around and being undecided as to where he wants them put)

I can't for the life of me imagine what to do when my assassin(poison bow, shadow master soon and some traps) gets around to facing him. Probably fire an arrow and then hide behind a corner. But GAWD I HATE THOSE APPENDAGES! I WANNA RIP THEM UP AND STUFF THEM DOWN THE THROAT OF THE PROGRAMMER WHO THOUGHT THEM UP!

MDR is kinda low on the list of affixes I have on armour. Mostly my armours are +resist and +X% chance to cast Y when hit.

And NAY to over-powered damage on timered spells. Seriously, does a level 18 Sorceress NEED to do 100++ points of damage per second to be "effective"? Especially since most Sorcs nowadays are, by the artificial "necessity" caused by the emergence of immunities, forced to invest in at least one other tree, and most would vote for Glacial Spike/Frozen Orb to freeze/chill monsters so that they stay longer in the flames anyway. I would have preferred them to let the firewalls last longer with higher skill(keeping the timer), and do less damage per second.

Edit: More stuff I forgot and remembered only AFTER hitting "Post"

Oh yes, and you consider a brand new 1700 AMD(actually 1800 but I don't need THAT much speed), with an Inno 3dD Tornado GeForce 4 MX graphics card and 256MB RAM SLOW? Even on THAT computer I can lag when Lister and company loads, which leads me to wonder, why not pre-load all the graphics when summoning Colenzo? I find it very unlikely that any reasonably well-equipped player can die against Colenzo due to lag, but then again... Or at least pre-load the graphics SOMEWHERE(like with Duriel), so that players wouldn't keep getting killed by the lag. Some days the lag on B.Net is sp bad that I move in 2 steps to trigger Lister, my computer freezes, and 1/2 a minute later, I find myself 3 screens away, dead(or at least severely dizzy)

[WarBlade]

Lister's easy. The activation threshold for the monster packs is a couple of steps in from the entryway and the awareness threshold for the monsters themselves is even further inside (you can actually hug that back wall without spawning new monster packs). As soon as you slay Ventar just head back to a point a couple of steps into the room and wait. Lister won't move until you go further in and retrieve him.

[Az3ar]

>Firewall: I'd much rather have longer-lasting firewalls that did less damage per second. How exactly is a level 20- character with only 100-200 hitpoints supposed to survive even a couple of seconds if level 1 Firewall does 60++ damage per second?<

Take note, you are RUSHING, the game wasn't designed nor balanced to fit for rushing chars, it was designed for the normal pase chars who get to a decent level by the time they reach baal and can easily kill him.... well, not that EASILY, but they wouldnt have such a big problem.

The rant of it being hard when rushing is not that legitimate as the game wasnt designed for you to be at such a low level when facing baal, when you rush, you can die pretty fast, but it's certainly not a reason to nerf baal or his abilities.......

[AtomicKitKat]

A Level 35/40 Necro/Pala is RUSHING?! God man, you mean level 5 Poison Nova/Bone Spirit is SUPPOSED to have next to ZERO effect on Lister?(Took off maybe 5% of Lister's life per Bone Spirit, and these are doing 150 damage per hit)

And I do not consider a level 20+ dying to a Firewall in 3 hits to be a matter of "rushing is the problem" Firewall being a level 18 spell, it should NOT be killing level 20 characters in a matter of a few hits. I've actually had low vit characters collapse in ONE hit from firewalls. And even 50 vit characters at level 20 have trouble getting past the firewalls.

I feel that some of you are misconstruing what I am trying to say just because I mentioned "rushing" a character past Baal. The issue here is not so much the fact that Baal can kill a level 10- character in 2 hits. That is a given. But level FORTY? Not exactly 2 "hits" of course, else my Thorns Paladin would have dropped him by 6000 HP before dying. But 1 Ice Wedge alone doing close to 200 damage? What the?

[Wapptor]

No offense to all, but I actually like fighting baal, considering so much of this game comes easily. I also do not find him that difficult anymore, but it is a strategic fight. The thing about baal is that you just cannot fight him directly but must attempt hit and run tactics, and only hold to him if you have him "locked". If however, you note the layout of his chamber you should see where strategy comes into play. The pillars that are across from the bridge block all of baals attacks, a player can hide behind these while getting fairly close to baal. If you can move out, attack and then hide when and if a nasty attack is coming, the fight should go in your favor eventually.

-Wapptor

[Noodles666]

Hehe i feal funny saying this but my lvl 52ish druid just killed baal in about six hits... in nightmare... i ran up to him with ribcracker and smacked him a few times and he died... i find baal pretty easy its just a matter of trying to dodge his spells

[Deadlyman]

Yeah I find Baal to be pretty easy. Rating the difficulty of the 3 Prime Evils to beat, I rank Baal in the middle. Mephisto is too easy. When I fight him, I feel like Neo from "Matrix" in the last scene with Agent Smith. Its like ho-hum, no problem
Baal is similar, but he has much more deadlier attacks and moves faster.
Diablo, however is just a big pain in the a$$. He is by far the hardest. The only character that had a easy time with him, was my assassin and that was because of setting zillions of traps that confused the heck out of Diablo.
I did have trouble with Baal, when fighting him with my Paladin. I think it because he doesnt do much melee fighting, its all spells. I use Thorns big time with my Paladin

[WarBlade]

The issue here is not so much the fact that Baal can kill a level 10- character in 2 hits. That is a given. But level FORTY? Not exactly 2 "hits" of course, else my Thorns Paladin would have dropped him by 6000 HP before dying. But 1 Ice Wedge alone doing close to 200 damage? What the?

Like I said before: M D R

End of problem. :P

[AtomicKitKat]

Lol. Trust me to make things harder for myself. Thorns Pally versus Baal, I lose big time. But when I play brother's PN/BS Necro, Baal is a walkover. Been doing Baal runs today, and after 5 level ups and 10 kills, He's dropped:

Griswold's Edge
SkyStrike(and almost a Skystrike Clone in the same drop! A Long Battle Bow with +1 to Ama skills and some Lightning damage)

I decided to finish off my night's killing with a "Brothers run" after killing Baal for the last time tonight(nothing special dropped).

Mephisto:
Angelic Mantle(Completes enough of the set that my brother can now use the Angelic Ring on his MF WarCry Barb)

Diablo:
Hsaru's Iron Heel
Isenhart's Lightbrand
25000++ Gnarled Staff

All in all, a good night, and should help my brother replace all the money he lost rushing my Pala. :P

And leads me to conclude that Baal is only easy IF:

1) You have/are a tank with supreme slowing abilities.
2) You have a guided missile attack(GA/BS/Hydra/TS)
3) You're a tank who can do over-powering amounts of damage(Extra-skilled Vengeance with a good weapon for example)
4) Any combination of the above. :P

But damn, my brother's Summoner Druid is supremely screwed. It's next to IMPOSSIBLE to kill Baal on Summons alone(unless you have a Spirit of Barbs and your minions can actually live past one hit...)

[Noodles666]

Well here's my take on prime evils....

Mephisto:easy no matter what

Diablo: hard if you are melee easy is you are caster

Baal: Opposite of diablo

[FenrisWulf]

It's true, killing Baal with Summons is well nigh impossible. It happened that my Pure Summoner is a Hunter, and so I simply killed Baal using my Bow. :P An Elemental Summoner could probably manage pretty well, too, using mainly Volcano and just keeping a few Wolves around as shields. As a PURE Pure Summoner (no attacks besides Summons)...there isn't much you can do, really. SoB with Spirit Wolf cycling could perhaps help (are you sure that they need to be able to live past 1 hit? Doesn't work that way in PvP). Ravens and Poison Creeper can also add a minimal amount of damage. Beyond that...throwing potions all the way, baby. :D

[Thecla]

I could be wrong, but Baal as he is now is really toned down from the way I remember him in the LoD beta.

I imported a CD2 bowazon for the beta (she was around lvl 75 when she got to Baal on hell diff) and had an incredibly hard time killing Baal (I found him harder to kill than the ancients). The worst part of it for me on hell difficulty was the festering appendages: it seemed like they were everywhere in Baal's dungeon (except the edges) all of the time. Either they did a lot more damage in the beta, or my zon's 400-odd life was too low (she was an old-style high dex build), but the appendages stunlocked my zon continually, so there was no way to get an attack off. Add to that the fact that Baal's orange breath was a one hit kill (I think it did a lot more damage in the beta), and that he would often teleport right next to you to breath it on you...

I must have tried 30 times to kill him, with ga's, melee with javelins, with everything I could think of. In the end, I was only able to do it by using multishot from an extreme edge of the dungeon to penetrate through the appendages. Now maybe some of this is the exaggeration of memory, and some is that I just didn't know the right tactics then; but in other ways it's too bad if they really did tone down Baal a lot, because now he's clearly much more of a wimp than either Diablo or the Ancients.

Difficulty is also very class dependent: with a high-lvl bowazon, easier though he seems, I still find Baal more annoying than any of his minions, and many builds may face more difficulties with Baal than bowazons; though I'm sure it's the other way round for many other classes.