One of the important things people miss is that there is no animation cancelling nor input buffering. All Act bosses are way above the difficulty curve in the progression of the game. Half the time it will feel like you walked into a bullet hell where if you even look at a lightning orb it will kill you. Act 1 boss is pretty brutal for melee builds and its a real struggle to do anything thats not running.

I'm pretty sure this is how many people felt when they played demon souls or dark souls for the first time. Sometimes its really just learning to play the game although there is a wall, players either make it over and continue on to the next challenge or that is were they stop. Its just more apparently for Wolcen where the walls are.

Truly Wolcen is a hit or miss, I'm far more invested into the story and world than I should be but I like it.

You can always turn the game down to Story mode if a boss fight proves to be too tough for you but really, it's largely about learning the boss fights. What seems impossible the first few attempts is achievable if you pay attention to the signaling and learn the mechanics of the fight. This game does a great job at signaling. And I don't think vendor gear is the problem here.

What I don't understand is why this makes you feel bad about buying the game though. It's refreshing to have challenging boss fights in an ARPG imo. It reminds me of how people complained about Belial in Diablo 3 at launch.

Your other frustrations are understandable.

Well i have beaten the Act 1 Boss using Hammer ( Anvil whatsoever)..... without any idea of what i was actually doing.
It was not easy but definitely doable. Did die 2 times but managed to win in the 3rd attempt
But i may not be the typical casual Gamer since i mainly play PoE HC SSF and i do Dark Souls 3 no hit runs....
I also managed to beat Diablo3 Inferno patch 1.03 without RMT when most people said its not possible....

So yeha i am kinda "pretty good " at computer games

Lambach Act 2 was a bit of a struggle in my first 2 attempts.
At this time i did switch to Whirlwind and just specct everything into crit damage
basically i again had no idea what i was doing but almost managed to beat it in my 2nd try.
3rd try i managed to succeed.

Act3 boss again using whirlwind and crit i managed to beat in my second try.

Then i replayed the story using a mage trying ailments for the first time.....
boy every boss died in seconds.... game got super trivial....

From my point of view even without ailments its not that hard once you understand timing, Ground effects and space management in Boss fights.
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From your post its pretty obvious you understand neither of those...
First of all you really did not understand that there is no animation cancelling in this game.

meaning when you press a button in this game all other commands will be disabled untill the animation is completely finished.
Thats why you cant change anything mid animation and thats why you cant drink health potions directly after an attack.
You have to time your actions with some thought in your mind instead of just pressing buttons.

2nd there is invincibility frames in this game !
meaning when you time a roll correctly you wont take damage for a second.
This means that you should make good use of your roll animations and time it so that ground effects and explosions or fire circles do not damage despite hitting you.
In this bossfights when using bad skills its most important to have good arena placement mixed with good i-frame usage.
This avoids all the 1 shots.

hope this helps

Thank for your tips.

I do know about ground effects and timing of abilities and have done my best to avoid these: some attempts are better than others. You're all correct in that I had no idea about the fact there is no animation canceling or multi-tasking (ie. path of exile how you can be performing an ability and still chug a flask), so that's something new I'll have to learn to live with.

I'll also have to learn to use the timing of rolls and other movement abilities to my advantage a well.

What I have more trouble with is the fact that when I have enough of a resource, there's no other action/ability/animation for my character on screen and I press the key for an ability and it doesn't fire... this happens a lot with Sovereign Shout.

When I wrote my post I was venting more than anything. And while I'm sure I have to get more experience with abilities and timing, there's more than a few other issues that need to be worked out.

Thanks again!

I stopped reading when you wrote about the frist boss being hard...

As i said in another post (and this goes for all campaign bosses): It is only HARD if you come to him wearing lv2 pyjamas and holding a butter knife as weapon and a spoon as shield after running past all the previous mobs of the game singing "tralalalala"!

Indeed, QQmoar!

Nope, I came wearing level appropriate gear my friend, but thanks for the condescending reply. It's all good, the other helpful people have pointed out what I missed. I've beaten the Act I boss before, but was running into issues with my first melee character and couldn't figure out what was happening. Now I know it's mostly just animation timing, no animation cancelling, etc.

Less a QQ and more of a vent because I didn't understand they why. Now I do.

Cheers!