Assassination Targets Need Buffed

Anyone else feel the assassination missions are the easiest?

Buff the bosses.

The ‘stealing ammo’ and hab dreyko are much more difficult and actually feel like what a true finale should.

Other missions that need a harder finale are the refinery where you destroy pathogens, and where you defend a trainyard. Spawn like 5x more snipers at the end.

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assasination missions are just a joke at this point. you can go auric maelstrom mission, have 40 minute session before the “boss battle” to clear him in first 20 seconds of fight that had nothing challenging comparing to your way through the rest of mission location

no. just no. we could have a lots of specials waves at end but not the snipers, they’re already a pain in ass to deal with on train defend when you have a lower visibility modifier, and if you count the fact that this mission has alot of horde spawns and a big chance to encounter one of 3 random bosses (at least on high diff) its going to make this mission a butt-hurt, just because of how chaotic level director AI is now

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they have to add some gimmicks to the captains at the moment it feels like attacking a big horde left click spam and then get pushed away by the shield. rinse and repeat.

The difference between a trash mob and the captain is minimal. The only “dangerous” aspect is if he has the sword but thats it.

Compare this to chaos / beast / plague ogryn have gimmicks

chaos spawn charge / grab / sucky sucky AOE DMG (if everyone stands infront his i presume 120*)

beast puke slow effect / nom nom / and moves and keeps a poop line on the ground AOE effects

Plague Ogryn rush / stompy stompy / AOE dmg (if everyone stands infront his i presume 120*)

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Probably the least fun way of increasing difficulty.
Having a single counter sniper on the team, would completely negate them anyway.
If there is no counter sniper on the team, they would simply be a massive pain in the ass.

If you had suggested to spawn like 2-3x as many trashmobs and a few more specials/elites, i would be on board.

As for the assassination bosses, they could periodically (at certain hp thresholds) jump back up on the balcony or something, and spawn in a bunch of elites and a big horde, then jump back down after 20seconds or so.

It might already be planned, as well as giving more variants for them (Hellgun, Netgun, Bolt Pistol, Frag and Fire grenades)

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See, people ask for way over the top weapons and skills buffs, and then when they get that they figure the content is too easy, so they ask for harder difficulties, and so on and so forth

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The missions themselves need tuned against eachother tho.

Assassination is the easiest, with hab dreyko being much harder.

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I think this is the way to go. Give them more variety, maybe some new mechanics to play around. They’re at a good power level imo, just a bit stale to fight for the nth time.

I’m okay with the Assassination bosses being what they are, I like the fact that they’re generally much shorter than other missions. I wouldn’t complain if the encounters were a bit more complex however, but hard pass on just adding a gazillion snipers.

I think in one sense the assassination target isn’t really a “boss”. It’s a human with a refractor field, not a gibbering mass of warp-mutated flesh or a daemonically possessed combatant, merely a heretical infantry Captain. Something tabletop may treat as broadly equivalent to 3-5 other Guardsmen on their own, certainly less scary than something like a Spawn. As an assassination target, that kind of character makes sense. As a “boss”, they’re not terribly impressive. Having them perhaps orchestrate the waves and other combatants a bit more, actually leading, might make the fight a bit more interesting.

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I like having some missions being harder than others. The hourglass has a couple of spots that can really mess up teams if they’re not on their game.

On the topic of the thread, I agree that this boss can be a bit mediocre after the slog that sometimes leads up to them. The exception is a team full of vets, which always seem to have a hard time with this fight.

I’d like the boss to be more interesting rather than add more waves of specialists. It’s basically a tank and spank with 1 or 2 people on trash duty.

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They did show that one tweet of a new model. I don’t know if that’s actually a hint or just a screenshot from a WIP build.

He seems to have Rinda’s sword so it’s most likely a new wandering boss encounter the way they initially worked. Hopefully, we get some new bosses and a pass-over the assassination targets at the same time.

I think the Magistrate Oubliette assassination is the one that really needs something; more variety in the bosses would be great, but more elite spawns (and not just that one pack of Ragers/Maulers that might spawn) would be one way to go about it. The boss shield breaking seems like a natural enough opportunity for a wave of elites to spawn in, at the very least, and spawn points on either side gives the option of letting them flank players if they’re not wary

Train station assassination has some chaos with regular specialist spawns, so Magistrate Oubliette is eerily quiet by comparison.

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Anime sword lady from Orthus is closer to what I’d imagine a human boss being. She’s also too easy though.

I think more telegraphed one shot charged line attacks you have to dodge would be good.

I agree with this.

I think the train station one is fine since it can be an ad management style boss fight, and have some more guaranteed specials, or elite spawns. It’s quite an open room, and spawning a large gunner troop would spice things up a lot.

The Oubliette on the other hand probably needs a rework.

Faster melee animations (like 25% or so) with an indiCrusher maul would be cool with overhead one shots.

Already has a charge animation I believe using that weapon. Could just make that actually do damage.

He could also chuck some player style grenades like a Krak nade you have to dodge since you could see him winding up his throwing arm in your direction. Would be a pretty easy tell even easier than a sniper so getting one shot by that would be pretty fair.

7m, or so detonation radius with a 3.5 second timer would be fine as well so if you do get stuck you at least back away from everyone.

Making him mostly stagger immune outside of player ults, and just giving him 135k hp would be cool as well. Shield is good for EHP, but not for their ability to really remain aggressive.

I’m all for tougher bosses, but I’d prefer not to have the choreography of some of those VT2 bosses. I don’t really want to be learning fight sequences in an FPS - it was fine in VT2, but for DT I’m happy with just a pit fight.

I would also like to say that I think a lot of levels are unnecessarily long. Obviously some aren’t; anyone who’s done the zealot 20 minute finish penance will know the best to go with, but a lot of levels are easily pushing 30 minutes: 30 minutes then a tough boss fight above the rest of the mission “level” will just add massive frustration.

TBH - that escape at the end of Hab Dreyko … for me it’s a great ending but stuck on the wrong mission. The repair mission could take that ending, but once you’ve done the waves of Hab Dreyko will all that scanning, you just want to finish.

I think the asymmetry is fine.

Having some missions be objectively much harder than others with the current system is more of a feature than bug.

Hab Dreyko pops up in quick play you strap in, and get ready for what could be an interesting game.

You get something like Enclavum, or Archivum you get to kinda chill a bit.

The flip side is that you can actively seek out the harder missions as well through MMT knowing that if you choose an Ascension Riser with maelstrom you are gonna have a cool match.

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You want elites to pour in, when ever players are able to actually damage the boss?
No thank you.

Btw what do you guys think will happen if assassination targets can frequently cause groups to wipe?
People won‘t play assassinations, because they do not like their time being wasted by a 30min mission that causes them to wipe after finishing 95% of it.

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Chasm station used to be pretty tough back in the day
:older_man:

The overarching damage buffs have made the game a lot easier than before too

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The bosses should probably be a bit adaptive (heresy, I know).
I’d love base monstrosities to be a bit stronger if there’s barely any adds around, so they can be a slight challenge no matter the situation.
Likewise, I’d love the occasional “buff grunts around them” Seargeant enemy, and as far as I remember that was planned to be one of the possible side missions.
If that’d be in, the same could be applied to the map end bosses.
Which could also be adaptive: The faster you bring it down, the more dangerous offensive abilities or adds it gets.
Alltogether I agree, though, with the notion that an “Assassination target” can just be hard to reach, not hard to kill.
A mission where that is mentioned and more pronounced would be nice.
Avoiding pratols, taking out waves of enemies, sabotaging equipment, could even include a bit of a chase; then the main target comes out and doesn’t manage to finish his monologue, and then the squad is done. If it feels like that’s the point, it’d be a lot more satisfying.

Given the existing spawn points, they’d take the most of 10 seconds (if I had to estimate) to reach you, so you break shield, burn the boss then address the chaos :sweat_smile:

FS should bring some extras, like dice in V2 so it will be risk-reward.