by Darvin on Tue Mar 27, 2012 9:28 pm
Every monster has its weaknesses, and there will always be some approaches that are more effective than others. We would expect a high-damage/low-HP monster to be weak to spellcasting. However, AA's are so over the top that even when loaded out with a character ideal for killing them they're still too difficult to be worth pursuing. And for those that aren't well-equipped for fireball regen fighting, they are so insanely powerful as to completely overshadow the boss in terms of difficulty.
For instance, to knock out 7 layers of death protection on a level 7 animated armor you'll need at least 4 extra fireballs. Accounting for burning damage, a level 1 character's fireball would deal 18 damage (higher level characters would deal even more damage than this). Those 4 extra fireballs are equivalent to 72 extra hit points. In effect, the animated armor has 144 hit points, significantly more than the equal-leveled goblin. In other words, even when exploiting the AA's weaknesses to the fullest extent he's still significantly stronger than the goblin (an above-average monster), who you will kill much sooner using the same strategy. This monster is far and away the most dangerous in the game.
The most egregious example is in Gaan-Telet. The Gaan-Telet forces you to fight through a random assortment of floors that contain level 10 monsters. There is one floor populated by animated armors... it's largely regarded as a game-ender.