How to survive Bandit Lord

[netphenix]

Hey folks,

Is it me or is the Bandit Lord encounter entirely overtuned since 1.6.x ? I've tried about a dozen different builds from different classes and I get one shot EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

How do you guys survive him now ? Are we doomed to lose the Merchant just to live another day ?

[cowking]

Well I've only played 1.6 with archmage on nightmare and necro on insane but both were able to handle it on roguelike. I always phase door (or random teleport if my phase is only 1p) to the west wall as my first action and spam aoe / minions in the center on their path to kill/draw the invisible adds. If it gets hairy I teleport away again and keep the fight away from the merchant so I can spam aoe. Having L5 arcane eye / 1p heightened senses obviously helps here (or even floating +3p in senses, keep in mind these count as class talents so don't float class talents if you do this). If you stand and fight next to the merchant you'll eat multiple flurries from stealth which will auto-crit with shadowstrike (don't remember if they actually have it).

If anything it's the poison/silence I'm worried about, eg. on my necro I made sure to have capped nat resist and mental torq already equipped. Oh and I never do it before L20 or something so I avoid the northern part of the map before then.

[Frumple]

Dunno about higher difficulties, but on normal I've been killing them like... well, normal. Go in around level 8-10, murder the stealthed minions to aggro everything, hold back and blow the critter up as per usual. Some sort of extra damage (totems/etc.) or debuff/disengage helps if the lord happens to spike you too hard on the initiate, but outside of the rare case they generate with particularly nasty daggers (less likely if you go in early-ish, so far as I'm aware) you generally walk out without losing a life.

[whitelion]

Bandit Lord is definitely stronger than in 1.5 but not unbeatable IMO.

One thing to watch out for is his Shadow Veil. Once it gets going he is immune to status effects and difficult to escape from. It's great if you can stun him first and have something like a thorny skin totem to soak up some of the damage.

[Tryble]

I usually put off the area until level 15 at the earliest; there's not a whole lot of reason to go in early. Knowing about shadow veil is handy - I usually apply status disables early and save other defenses for when veil triggers. The most danger I've really had from him so far is sometimes his poison ticks get crazy.

[netphenix]

I did not realise he used Shadow Veil now, good to know. I'll have to concentrate on getting escape / damage sponges options on my characters from now on, I guess.

[Zizzo]

Is it me or is the Bandit Lord encounter entirely overtuned since 1.6.x ? I've tried about a dozen different builds from different classes and I get one shot EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

How do you guys survive him now ? Are we doomed to lose the Merchant just to live another day ?

Thank you. No one believed me when I tried to explain this.

(As for how to survive, I'm going with the unorthodox approach, experimenting with addons to try to roll back whatever AI changes in 1.6 caused this — so far to no avail, alas. I'm getting tempted to go the ham-handed route and just slap on a unilateral damage malus…)

[Loco15]

I don't really think he is unbeatable. He, and the dungeon itself, are just harder. I mostly play mage classes, and have lost one of my best (very few) tries with Archmage in there, but not to him but to a bandit randboss uber stealth and more talents than I could bother to count, among them a silence skill.

I have successfully killed the Bandit Lord like three or four times with a vanilla Necromancer, though. I just use my standard I-am-going-to-fiddle-with-something-that-will-probably-get-me-killed tactic, which consists of lying down my debuff AOE talents (Circle of Death and Cold Flames if I have it) near the thing that will presumably kill me, and having all my minions (7.5 talent level preferably) as near me as I can. Preferably in Wisp form, but if not with Surge of Undeath as the last talent used.

With the Bandit Lord, there is also the nifty fact he won't attack until you actually hurt him or talk, so I can also preemptly cast my 5/5 Displacement Shield (Which is Awesome, specially on a Necromancer who has shitty defences.) Which helps a lot with his tendency to appear out of - nowhere and critical and poison you (bane of blindness is a godsend in this case). A 5/5 Chill of the Tomb to nuke the hidden opponents also doesn't hurt, but with the Talent's ludicrous AOE at that level you have to take care of not hitting the merchant.

Also, do not, under any circumstance, visit the northern frozen regions until you hit around lvl 20, preferably more, but if you're 15+ and reasonably confident then you may be able to do it. You may still die, though. It is also of paramount importance that you have either a high level of Heightened Senses or Arcane Eye, though a lantern with Track could also save your life.

Also, on pretty much any mage class, having a high level Phase Door and even a level 1 Teleport importance's cannot be understated. Teleport, specially, has saved my ass in many "whelp, I'm basically dead, might as well try" situations.

I mostly play Nightmare Roguelike, though, so if you're one of those guys that has won the game like 20 times on insane, and actively play on insane or madness, then my advise is probably worth shit. Though I also have the impression that those guys are pretty inflexible, so maybe they just have to try new approaches?

[GlassGo]

He could hit hard sometimes, and you need to be prepared for it, instead of lazily tearing through him.
That's good in my opinion.