So I've got this now, but what I'm wondering is:
From what I understand the original boss was screwed up when the devs got trolled into making it harder, by removing the ability to debuff it by destroying the statues.

Did that final fight get fixed by the statues being destroyable again, in this version?

I tried reading through the full changelog, but didn't see anything.

a) he is not "the final fight", just final for the part that used to be standalone titan quest without Immortal Throne expansion. With anniversary edition he is roughly in 2/3 of the game
b) they didn't revert the change, he is still insanely lethal to melee characters and the statues can't be interacted with. On legendary difficulty I managed to get him down to half health over few deaths, then my luck ran out and he regenerated to almost full health again (most of it likely drained from MY health to make the insult worse). Luckily they didn't fix his blind spot by the stairs either. Takes a while to take him down with a bow (for non-ranged class) and you have to dodge his poison shot and meteors, but it's manageable. So, if playing melee class, save some bow in your stash that you can wield. And dex boosting accessories. -% to all requirements doesn't hurt either.

The statues are invulnerable but you can use them to block all his abilities except the 2 leech effect and the meteors, so it's not that bad. I won pretty easily on normal just kiting him around statues while attacking during his animations.

What attacks do these statues add, btw?

All right, thank you both.

Sucks to hear they never fixed that crap.

I've always played a summoner or the like and that guy was always impossible without cheesing it by the stairs.
I REALLY hope they fix that crap and make it work like it used to to begin with.

When did you last fight him? I never had any problems with him myself and I've been playing this game since IT came out (where he already was in his current form). Maybe some of the balance changes made him harder again?

If the question was at me, it was the first thing I tried after I launched AE, few hours after release. Logged in at the respawn just before Telkine in Act 3 - I was probably farming him last time I played in a vain hope that I get some drop that lets me survive.

His lightning attack is weak against max lightning resist, but his life drain + energy drain combo always leaves me near dead (and cancel my precious colosus form with it's @#$@% 300 second recharge), and make me very easy target for any of his other attacks or lingering poison, regardless of life drain resist (maxed too). I don't remember if it was the same in original, but I think he was always pain in the behind, and continues to be so in AE.

I've seen videos of the original; that would be totally doable with a summoner, like my favorite character. I just managed to get to him on max difficulty and fought him.

I find your claim rather hard to believe, because no matter what you do, he'll insta drain you to 1 health with his health breath and regens 100 hitpoints for every 1 he drains.
This means that having ANY summons just feeds him health; usually restoring him to max health with one use of his health steal.

He also insta drains all your mana, shutting down all your auras, abilities, etc and then does a SHITLOAD of damage with even his basic lightning attack if you get directly hit; in fact it does a fair chunk even if it flies by without hitting you.
He also has a guarnteed one hit kill ability of calling down meteors on your head; this last one is fairly easy to avoid, but not whil dealing with the aftereffects of his drains.

The drain abilities all have a range more then double what it shows graphically and there is NO mana based delay between his attacks, because unlike EVERYTHING else in the game, he has mana regeneration SO fast that it is effectively unlimited.

This boss is complete shit, objectively, personally, from a gameplay standpoint... it's just shit.
The videos I've seen of the original setup showed him being pretty well made; you start off being oh shit, but after smashing the statues, it was just you vs a HUGE humanoid.
He is now impossible to beat without cheesing it from the stairs, which is in no way fun... but rather a tedious chore.

Well, I haven't fought him since the AE version hit, so I can't say anything about that, but pre-AE I and other people regularly played self-found (i.e. no items from other chars, char uses only what he finds) chars to and through legendary. The only really dangerous attack was the lifedrain, which a well timed potion negated in most cases. Everything else can be dodged quite easily (well, and you really shouldn't hit him with his thorns out...damage reflection kills almost all chars ;))

As I said, maybe some of the balance changes of the AE version skewed the balance of this boss fight... I don't know yet.

That's when I got it too Does thorns work against ranged attacks?
If it does that would explain me thinking I'm getting hit when the lightning flies by.
I usualy shoot, dodge and then look at health; maybe it's the thorns.... thorns should not help against ranged or magic attacks though. o.O

Edit: The mana breath and health breath are NOT dadgeable. Typhon rotates around like a top.
Likewise it's easy for him to hit with fire breath, as it has a massive area; this one seems to lock him down for a few seconds, but with the CONSTANT barrage of attacks, it really doesn't matter.

Yes it does, but with a bow in conqueror's hand, it amounts to only few hp - sllightly more than natural regen. And yes, it's not logical. Well, then I probably just suck. I did notice ha has thorns damage, but only after I gave up on trying to melee him. It would explain some of the deaths I had, but not all. Dodging his life drain is impossible, and one health potion won't fix it, it only refills about 2/3 of my hp. And he can spam the life drain faster than potion cooldown. And forget about survival if you have his poison ticking. It's probably doable with blitz-and-run tactic (sorry, too much GD lately, I forget how blitz is named in TQ), but trying to get more than few hits on him makes death almost certain.

Large part of why he is so obnoxious is that after death you have to run through the whole empty olympus, that makes experimenting with various tactics quite expensive, and unlike other similar games, town portal won't help you because it dies with you (can be fixed with multiplayer, but that's about as cheesy as the stairs exploit). And skills with 300 rl seconds refresh timer which won't reset after death - I should probably respec those points into something actually useful. Aaand... it's turning into a rant, so I better stop here. It's still great game, only few small warts here and there - and this boss fight is one of them.

I agree with your analysis.
My direct combat tries go about the same, since my damage is mostly in my summons and they die, then I die.

Neither health nor mana drain can be outrun because he rotates like a top and they have huge area.

If you want to play a pet class, you'd be better off with spirit mastery since the lich counts as undead and is therefore immune to life/mana drain and poison. I think the outsider is undead too.

I've played a spirit/storm char with Lich + Squall + Lightning who didn't have much trouble with Typhon, even in Legendary.

Thanks for the tip.

I've played a bit of the lich class, but not beyond first few chapters.

When using the Lich make sure to lvl him up to 5 (6?) asap, he gets a new skill that let's him drain hp. His other skills aren't all that great, especially the last one seems to drain his mana like crazy while doing hardly any dmg in return.

Also: You can snapshot skills, especially useful for Minions and Aura skills (use a mastery shrine, summon minions/activate auras, the shrine runs out, but the minions stay the same. Should work with +skill items, too).