Remember I shared I went pure defensive lifestealing Marauder? (after getting sick of pure DPS Ranger that was scared of its own shadow)
I purposely wanted to see if I could survive Vaal's big donkey punch. I was amazed to see I lived with 20% hp, taking that head-on. That was normal.
Also I lived again with 15%~ at Merciless.
Good to know. I guess it's just annoying because it's a several hour time investment to get to Vaal, so in hardcore the "testing" process and seeing if you can survive a hit or not is very time consuming.
Also, you have to be asking for it to get hit by Vaal's melee. It has a very slow & predictable wind-up.
Maybe, but my point was that as a ranged you never had to worry about anything like this. For example, Vaal's lightning shot needs to hit you 3 times in a row to really do the dangerous sort of damage that could kill you in one hit, and even then I don't think it will if you have resists. Throughout most of the game you can make a mistake and live. This is nearly the only place I have ever died in a single attack*.
And when I died, it was after vaal disappeared and re-emerged, it sure didn't seem like there was much time to move away. Afterwards I've heard that he will always do a crush immediately following the emerge, and you just need to hang back until then, but I didn't know it at the time.
*Although, there was one other similar instant-death case. A summoner witch I was building (not my main though) with a bit less hp than usual died instantly. There are mobs in the aqueducts which gain power charges and can discharge them all at once for massive damage when a significant number are stacked. That itself is annoying, but they ALSO have blink strike. A rare version of that mob type used blink strike on my witch and instantly discharged with no time to react and I was dead.
However, I didn't feel as cheated in that case, because I figured it was my fault for running around with low resists and low max hp/energy shield. And most importantly, the attack was something that would hurt melee and ranged the same. The annoying part of vaal is that I've killed him dozens of times and never had a problem as ranged, yet as melee there is this extra thing to worry about.