So that's it. I've given up on this fight. It's absolutely impossible with this build. Gave up after the 20th or so try. Never, ever in my life have I had to abandon a character like this so early in any ARPG I've ever played. This is a HUGE design flaw.

I'll either toss the character or review new skills. Not sure which; but I've had to quit this character because this boss cannot be done with it.

Details:
Level 22
Consuming Embers L27 (for anger gen)
Feeding Swarm L21 (honestly, utterly useless - these guys do NO damage even with damage runes) - tried damage AND health. No impact.
Hunting Swarm L21 - same thing. Utterly useless. No damage impact. It's quickly obvious to me summoners are not viable as things are.
Livor Mortis L22 - minor distraction. No real damage.
Avenger Autoturret L31 - Mediocre damage.

So there you have it - this type of summoner build is useless against the Act I boss. The DPS isn't there, the summoned guys drop like flies and do NO damage, and the turret just slowly plinks away. The biggest damage comes from my Consuming Embers - and I'm supposed to be a summoner!

VERY disappointed.

Agree, it is much harder than before. Full toughness build with strong 2h weapon and I used all lives on first attempt and was able to beat him with one withstand left on the 2nd.

Yeah, fight is way to hard and frustrating at the moment. I hope it will be changed soon. Can't even progress to chapter 2 at the moment because of this fight.

So I've run some tests and watched streamers; I think we may have a bug somewhere - I compared the damage of my spells and such to other streamers and there's no question the damage coming from my character was less than half of what the others were doing. Additionally, I was constantly 1-shot by nearly every attack by the boss when I had similiar health, resistances, etc. I'm wondering if my character was bugged since it was created right at launch and I was able to play it for an hour before all of the server issues. I've deleted the character and am trying another char.

Regardless, this was a serious issue. The boss was 100% undoable on this character; every attack he did that I was unable to dodge 1-shot the character, and it just didn't add up.

Also note I was playing Normal, not story. I didn't think to try it in Story mode before deleting the character.

Never, ever had to delete a character in a game like this because progress was at a standstill. And the game isn't really designed to go back and re-run areas.

So... I created a new Melee char (cyclone) and got to the Act I boss... I got my ass handed to me AGAIN. Same issues. So, guess what? I switched to Story mode and it was cake (1st time no problem). THIS IS WHAT STREAMERS ARE DOING. They are in Story Mode, which makes the content a LOT easier.

So... the default NORMAL mode is WAY too difficult; the default mode SHOULD be story. Granted all the content up to the Act I boss was not a problem, but at least with Story mode I could easily defeat the boss.

The devs can go to hell on this fight. I literally lost 6 hours of play today (deleting a character and recreating another) just to get around this "default" stupidity. And it doesn't matter how good of a gamer you are. Unless you find the right items and have the perfect build, you're screwed - and the game is defaulting to this.

Compared to beta, all attributes lost a defensive stat (including toughness's all resist), and players have half as much skill points - so it's natural the boss is a bit harder.

@mooginator

Thx for the tip with the difficulty. That helped me a lot.

@Kokomala The boss wasn't just "a bit harder". It was impossible. As an individual with thousands of hours into D3 and PoE I can say the Act I boss on Normal difficulty will be undoable by the vast majority of builds/players as it currently stands. It will drive people away from the game because they'll be stuck with no way to progress to Act II.

I haven't been this outright "angry" with a game for years. To be blocked like I was, and to have my build have NO problem with ANY other content up to the boss and suddenly be useless and throw away - is a design flaw -- a huge one.

The game is great. Play a long time the Beta and it was marvelous. RIght now Edric is broken. I have a Ranger with pistol, turret curse, dodge, speed and critical it. I have farm so mobs because I wasn't able to kill is third phase at level 21. Currently 23 with good gears. and average DPS of 380 on my basic attack and not able to kill him.

First when he is in his third phase, How are you able to dodge that ring of fire and he become Invulnerable? I am now at my 8 attempt to kill him and starting to lose confidence on that boss. He need to be nerf so at least people with different build can go further in the game. Please don't do like PoE and force people to play the Meta in order to advance in the game.

If anybody have advice concerning the Ranger Build, let me know!
Dragoza

@Dragoza so the first thing to do is switch to Story mode. That'll make him 2x easier. It appears your issue is similar to my hybrid Summoner/Turret build - I was only hitting him for around 250-300 per "hit" with my turret and my summoned minions did NO damage to him. The reality is the longer he lives, the higher (and quicker) you die. So if you don't have enough DPS, you won't be able to do him (in normal at least).

What is crazy is my 2H Cyclone Warrior was hitting him for 1200+ at L21, so there's some serious issues in damage based on skills, and summoner seems dead on arrival at launch (summoners need serious changes).

So for now, just switch to normal; but you've got to get your DPS up. The Act II boss is tougher than Act I.

I finally got him in Normal mode and not Story mode.. It took me ten minutes of Hide and seek, Turret placement, roll over and Thx god for Life leech.

I Cannot have good drops in terms of gear in the game. Got two unique sword and nothing for my ranger.

I struggled really hard my first try on Normal on my Time Weaver mage build, using Livor Mortis to tank and Infinity Blades/Annihilation/Anomaly to dps, but in the end I figured out it was because the Faith Leech talent is bugged and causes any damage you deal to instantly deplete your force shield to 0. After re-specing to remove that so I actually had force shield as a mage, he went down easily; each phase died in like 30 seconds after I Broke him and was able to unload with each ability doing upwards of 2k damage per second, and his hits only took 1/3 - 1/2 of my force shield each time I failed to dodge properly, other than the big ring of fire which ate all my shield and half my hp, but Livor Mortis let me run around 'til my shield was back to full so no problem really.

If anything, for my own experience I wanted him to have a lot more health but less damage and/or speed, since beating it so fast was a bit anticlimactic yet dodging the dash attacks he spams every 2 seconds would also be incredibly tedious and unfun if it went on for minutes on end between each Broken stun.

@Abaddon yah the issues I encountered were so horrible, I'm confident some sort of bug was at play with the underlying mechanics.

Aether mage here with around 1000 health & 900 force shield and I've reached a brick wall with this boss. That ring of fire one shots me every time. Pretty annoying tbh, because it really feels like a health pool large enough to tank that fire attack is essential for progressing past act 1, which is obviously going to penalise caster characters. I may be missing a trick here, but with thousands of hours in D1 - D3, POE and Grim Dawn I should really have this kind of thing figured out by now.

Is there a way to switch difficulty to story mode on the fly? If not, I think I'm done with this game as I don't want to be forced into playing a tanky character just to get past a particular boss.

EDIT - found how to switch to story mode & it was an easy win...the key factor being that the ring of fire only drops me to around half health. Pretty sure it would be impossible on Normal difficulty for a glass cannon type character.

That fight was obscenely difficult. I had to level up on old under level content to reach level 26 to beat the level 19 boss. It's insane. You guys think that is difficult just wait for the ACT 2 boss...

I am a long time fan of "hack and slash" games; many years spent playing D2, D3, and POE. Although difficult, it took me 5 tries to beat this boss; which was surprising. I was a level 22 ranger, wielding duel pistols, with a full crit/attack speed build when I met this boss. To defeat him; I quickly learned I needed all 3 "second winds" for his 3rd phase, which we all know hits the hardest; He pretty much one shotted me in his 3rd phase. With my high crit/attack speed I was able to kill him using only standard attacks and my "Deathgazer" Railgun ability at full charge along with using stamina to roll/dodge his attacks. I agree he is very difficult, but not impossible. My stats were as follows; Health 1830 hp, avg dmg 263, attack speed 34%, crit chance 38.8%, and crit damage 240%.

In the long run...Edric is my bitch! Hello ACT 2!!!

Vigor mortis golem is great at tanking, that's it. summoners is really lack luster since barely anything at all scales on the pets and thats just dmg mostly. the golem hp is alright but there is no legit way to buff him into the insane, and the archers is beyond useless. they're a one shot to even the smallest of puny trash. i had to give up summoner near 3rd act finale boss since it was too tedious. but Vigor mortis just as a tank is actually bloody amazing till you lvl up enough to where you aint practically just a one shot from anything.then you can just trade him out later. wouldn't have managed act 1/2 boss without that pet, you just need to think about the aoe shit but no direct hits <3_<3

I have and archer build, but is useless at this point, one shoted a lot of times