OK, now that I have solo'd Balzak's Flame twice by myself, I figured that I would reiterate how much I like that Boss Lair. It is totally doable as a solo mage.

The Balzak fight is tough, and can be frustrating. Both times I had to deal with multiple poison portals as I couldn't get them down quick enough. I spent too much time getting knocked on my rear and had trouble trying to target the mobs I wanted. With the sheer enormity of Balzack and the ever increasing number of mobs, it is hard to get the right mob targeted. Especially after using a skill (like ring of fire or a Shadow Damage self-buff) that takes the focus of your current target and then you get knocked down and have to try and re-target. It's tough and can prolong the fight as more and more mobs join in. I thought it would never end. But with enough patience and plenty of pots, you can do it.

The first time I did the fights as a fire mage with +385 fire dmg (not great gear, but OK) and then the 2nd time as my usual shadow mage (+445 shadow dmg). My preference is definitely the shadow mage as the shadow lightning had the portal in the first 4 fights already down to 1/2 health by the time the healer was down, as well as most of the fodder mobs. The first 4 fights were well under minute each.

Now Balzack was a different case altogether. That is a tough fight, since he is soooooo darn big and there are so many mobs after they start coming out of the portal, I had a lot of difficulty trying to target the mobs (healer and portal) I wanted. Thus, the fight goes on and on. The shadow lightning helped here as well, as I knocked out many of the fodder mobs while attacking the healer, then portal.

Both time, it was a tough long fight. I died twice as a fire mage, but survived the whole episode as a shadow mage. Each time I went through around 40-50 pots on the boss fight, none on the 1st 4 fights.

I kept track of how things went the last time I did it, and here's how it stacked up. It took 12 minutes for the whole lair (4 small fights, Balzack fight, and 2 trips to sell loot). Between gold and loot (ylw+), I made 208k in gold.

My assessment, this will be the best boss to farm hands down (solo or group).

SmokinHotLady (SHL)

What difficulty did you do him on?

Just on Normal. I didn't try on anything higher. I would expect the 4 fights leading up to Balzack wouldn't be much trouble, but the Balzack fight would be too difficult for me on anything higher than Normal with my current gear until I figure out some better tricks to get the healer and portal targeting down better.

just did this fight on insane with 2 other lvl 100s, that is 3 lvl 100s. 2 mages and a fighter. We were trying different strategies and it probably took us 20 minutes, but that was our first time doing it on insane. Some things i did come across.

1. I agree with what ripper has said about this encounter. Targeting is a HUGE issue with portals, and losing target with skill bar is a pita. However, I believe its only for skill bar 1-4 and not 5-8 but I will have to comfirm that.

2. There also seems to be a bug in movement, when there is a bunch of mobs. Naturally you can't run through the mobs at full speed anmymore but once you get free you get a super speed for 3 steps, which usually brings you right into an obstacle.

3. Shadow bolt also is not working properly either when there is a large amount of monsters. They go poof in the air, with no dmg or resist showing. This has happened multiple times with the monster standing right in front of me.

4. Monsters shouldnt be allowed to stand inside portal so you cant damage the portal, even though the portal is targeted. This also goes for shadow lightning as it will hit the monster and skip the portal.

5. Limit the number of monsters namely heroes/champions that a portal can spit out. I can see this getting exploited as a good group could kill everything in room, leave the portal by itself, and just sit there waiting for champions/heroes. I know myself would exploit this while farming for low lvl toons.

6. Also dont understand why the portals that are ice are so resistant to fire. To me that just doesnt make any sense at all.

All in all it was a blast and a nice change. However, just like Rasputin and Shadow Queen I dont see this having a staying power as the new high lvl boss. Our loot in over 3 hours goes something like this... Gold=great, Rbws=fair, Purples=good/fair, Yellow=good..... I see this being popular for the first week for lvl 100s, then its back to abby to find the new rbws faster.

I love the new boss. The loot is nice. The difficulty is right except for the poison portals when you actally fight Balzack. Is there anyway you could limit the number to say 2 per instance?

I want to reiterate that, while I think the Balzack fight needs to be tuned, I also think it's a blast! I just defeated Balzack with at least two healers and 3 portals. Everytime a new portal would get summoned, I'd kite away, drop Monster Bait then sprint back to take out the portal. It was a long, tough battle, but tons of fun and fun is what it's all about, IMO!

I agree ripper for the most part. I love the challenge. That being said..The reason I still play DR is because of the low time requirements. I play for loot and pvp...and I think that is what the majority of remaining 100s play for. maybe some dont pvp but at least the loot.
I wish they would take another small part from D2 and have standard uniques as well as random rares. That way you were always searching for that uber loot.

Good point, Jay. As long as the gathering of loot is fun, I'm good:)