Avara is really making me mad!!!!!!

I'm finally strong enough to take him on, keeping my defense and resistance way up while I chip away at him with my spear. I also finally got the brilliant idea of luring him to the defender camp so 6 defenders plus my water ellie are all attacking him, that plus imbued potions of health were allowing me to keep my health way up almost maxed.

I tried to take him down 3 times, and all 3 times I got him down to maybe 15% of his starting hit point bar and he did this thing where he seems to explode and do about 500-1000 hp of damage.

What the bleep?!?!?!?!? How is anyone below AL 130 supposed to beat that *($(*$#(?

 

For me it was arrows. Lots and lots of arrows. And my own fire elemental (Water Elemental + Juxtapose) - did not do much damage but it did draw aggro. Seem to recall a fair number of ice fields also. And, of course Air Shield. Note that my Air Shield was only at 80 or so at the time., so it did still let some damage through. Ranged was probably at around 110 at the time.

 

I have the same problem. Also pole arm build. I have been waiting for someone to offer advice or tell me what I am doing wrong. I am at 135 adv level, water spec. I fight the darn thing with about 2000 health, and a build that regularly handles all the dragons, deamons, and high tier scenes. My goal now is to be able to handle with melee, Avara and the Well. I have no ranged capability so must fight nose to nose. Still waiting for advice lol. I do not have any knowledge of how to fight what I assume is a chaos attack from Avara. The deamons are a breeze, but the Avara attack always gets me just as it is just a few health points from defeat.

 

Does he do the enraged thing more than once, or just once he gets down to 15%? You might be able to back off when you see it coming. Use wolf speed and speed buffs to stat away from him until it happens, then re-engage.

 

AS Cora said, those more devastating attacks are when the boss becomes "enraged". Enraged attacks start happening when you get the creature's hit points down below a certain level. Cora mentioned that it is 15% and that sounds about right (I am not sure of the exact % tho). Many creatures exhibit enrage, such as the clockwork dragon, some liches, cabalists, some trolls, etc. I think when they enrage, it shows a little buff icon under their HP bar in the upper left corned of the screen (when you have them targeted), and it may even show what type of enrage buff it is when you hover over it.
As stated before, for the cabalists, the enrage attack hits nearby targets. So, one option is to get all your Damage-over-time attacks on the cabalist just before they enrage (rend, fire, etc....I can't recall if they are susceptible to poison, but if so, it may be worth using), and then move away and use some ranged attacks such as fire arrow, searing ray, etc. The other option is to keep them stunned with skills such as body slam, bludgeon tree, earthquake, etc and just go toe-to-toe with them, and hope they don't manage to get a big hit. When I was finally able to come close to killing a cabalist, i used to stack rends on it before enrage (gets damage over time and reduces their HP regeneration), then at enrage body slam to keep them stunned and spam away at coup-de-grace. Worked sometimes for me.

 

I was just repeating what OP observed; no idea what the actual number is.

 

Shield of air should do the trick for you.
This and use zero DPS skills during the fight, only defensive and CC.

 

CC?

 

Crowd Control.

 

Will Crystal Shield or Shield of Ice work anywhere near as well? I use Strength of Earth, Earth's Embrace, Earthquake and Bulwark of Earth quite a bit and have Air Warding trained up pretty high so not sure Air Shield is going to be an option for me.

Avara is susceptible to poison. I was using spider poison on him to slow his attack speed. Is there a better poison to use on him?

I have Earth's Embrace, Absorb Impact, Bolster Balance and Ice Shield on my defense deck that get cast before the fight, with Glancing Blow, Deflect, Parry, Defensive Stance and Knight's Grace on my offense deck that I try to click as soon as I see them die down.

Any other speed buffs besides Wolf Speed? I can certainly try running away when I see him get enraged. Afraid to try Body Slam because if it doesn't work I'm lunchmeat, but it's just a game in the end.

 

Avara is easy, just stop using focus. Turn auto attack off, do the click charge, apply whatever dots you have available.

 

Sorry I just realized Shield of Air doesn't work with Avara because of the focus damage -> health damage loop caused by his curse.
That being said, Shield of Crystal is the way to go.
I would use Festering Death Poison instead, it's surprisingly useful in long fights.
As @Vesper mentioned, if you don't burn focus you'll have almost full health by the time Avara do the enraged attack. Is it able to one shot you? If so, then you're probably not fit to solo him. If it's just a nasty big hit, I'm sure that chugging health potions and not burning through focus will be enough.

Now I beg to differ from Vesper on the "easy" side of Avara, he's by far the hardest Cabalist and took me a very long time leveling up to reliably beat him solo.

 

Why do you say turn auto attack off? It does not use focus does it?

 

Since you can't use glyphs to attack, you are better off using charged attacks to maximize your damage output.

If you've ever watched my Video on how to clear sieges as a bard, he even took me by surprise with his enraged mode. He seems to blast you with some sort of concussive canticle pre-fix, where he either starts draining focus or just outright damages you, and even full health (2k+) and without any focus consumption prior, he can drop you down in an instant, he can catch you off guard.

Best trick, stay out of his range.

 

Fortunately for me, I never got caught by this attack.

So basically the only way to prevent insta death is to get out of range? This is cheap game design right there.

 

No it isn't, it's just rapid bursts of unexpected damage. Good healing sources like potions would probably do the trick, it's just very out of the blue sudden bursts out of nowhere.

 

Better yet is to send violet in there and stand back while Violet gets all the damage. Then swoop in and loot before Violet does.

I use my Taming Spec and Earth Spec with full plate and a shield plus legendary croc. Stun with the shield bash.

 

I'll be honest, I just charge attack it to death with Haste Potion and some Health Potions in between.
My memory failed me as I thought SoA worked... some time since I wasted my time with Cabalists lol

 

Yeah, I don't recall losing my SoA when fighting Avara either. It's possible I just didn't notice, since I would kite Avara and use charged attacks. I might not have taken enough damage to notice hits getting through.

 

How do you charge your attack without a glyph?