IDK, it’s always a really easy fight, even without any dedicated bosskillers, because we can just smack him to death during his long transformation sequence. I believe there were some changes to the boss fight to prevent this, but I don’t feel like they’re enough?
Specially since he doesn’t summon any minions, it’s just him, locked up in there with us.
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Enemies do trickle into the fight from around the battlefield but you are correct in saying he doesn’t cause any summons.
At the beginning (ya know, the first time I smashed through Skittergate with 3 jolly lads in a LAN-Party) it was a pretty dramatic shift… we weren’t comfortable dodging the new attacks, yet, so when he started transforming we all ran for the hills because we didn’t know if it was some kinda wind up attack or not. Low and behold, it was a Chaos Spawn, the single scariest monster we’d encountered yet.
Nowadays we all know what’s happening and it’s considerably less dramatic. The first changes to make him not a cheese fight was to make his transformation unstaggerable (staggering him mid transformation made him restart the process of transforming) which was a good start. Making him invulnerable would also be a way to extend the boss fight, but I’d also love to see that transformation time trimmed down…
You could even trim it down based on difficulty if you still wanted that “shock and awe” effect for new players. Imagine if he made the full transformation in less than a second on Cataclysm… that’d be wild.
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It’s fine.
Skittergate is long enough.
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It’s true that Naglfar is pretty weaksauce, but since this is Skittergate anyway, that’s just fine.
You could also give it a knockback effect when it starts up, would discourage the melee gang bang.
No more changes then that though. I mean, Skittergate fails on Rasknitt often enough already, I don’t really want the patch to get to him to be any longer. Honestly, if the map completely blocked hordes from spawning until you pass the gate the first time it would be a welcome way to shorten the run time.
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I’m totally agreed with OP. This boss is already easy enough considering there are no enemies besides him and the arena is comfortable and broad isolated space. Even trolls have damage immunity during their transition from regeneration phase.
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Sorry, but I don’t agree for three reasons:
- this map is already too long;
- this map has already the Lord and his company as “tough boss” (where we can have an spike of difficulty thanks monks);
- add a period of invulnerability is always a bad way to increase the difficulty).
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I’d agree, if it wasn’t because it’d be a period of invulnerability, during a period of inaction.
It’s like complaining the bosses are immune during their pre-battle speeches. It’s the same thing. They can’t harm us, so why can we nuke them down with impunity?
In the state that Gatekeeper Naglfahr currently is, he might as well not exist.
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Naggy is not really the boss, tho, he’s just the halfway point and a sideshow for people to see a Chaos Spawn transformation. The game even dumps tons of supplies immediately after him so you’re geared up for the next boss/pat/horde in the camp.
If he was meant to be a run-breaking challenge he’d be on that absolute BS hill at the beginning of the map.
You say that like there ain’t a speed running community who would celebrate that 
Well, I’m not saying he should be any of these things! I’m just saying he shouldn’t be a complete joke. He basically has less than half of his actual health, because at 75% health he becomes completely still so that the entire team can just whack at him until he’s at 20%, and that’s without dedicated boss killers.
Again, I’m not saying he should be this uber boss that causes fear in the hearts of vermintide veterans, just that he’s kind of anti-climactic, a pushover and too much of a joke considering how much fanfare he has, all because of one transformation sequence that takes too long.
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I’d be down for this if they nerf the end fight. Part of what makes Skitter long and arduous is Rasknitt’s/Deathrattler’s HP. If they cut that down and gave the Gatekeeper a buff so things are slightly more in line, I’d be okay with these changes.
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Well, you could make him resistant to damage when he transforms and regenerate all damage done to him during his transformation phase. On cata you could even spawn like 2 chaos knights and 4 maulers during the transformation, make it a DPS race so you don’t have to deal with them when he’s a spawn.
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I would way, way rather this answer than just a complete invulnerability period. Having other enemies spawn in that you need to burst down so they aren’t wandering around alongside a spawn would be a much better way to stop you from just spamming the boss himself.
Also like exan said, any buffs to him really need to go alongside some reduction to Rasknitts hp, that fight alone makes the map feel super tedious, particularly if you aren’t running BH or something.
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Does it really matter? Gatekeeper is not the focal point of Skittergate… Hes a Chaos warrior with a charge and slightly faster attacks + a Chaos spawn, plus some trash adds if you kill him slowly. Which is plenty for the 1 Loot dice hes worth.
I’m all for Lord fights, if anything I want more Lord fights, but Gatekeeper is not a Lord hes just a garunteed monster, of which his (monster part. aka chaos spawn) can be completely bypassed or mitigated if your team has high damage output (which if you don’t Rasknitt is going to be a long fight anyway)
If you give him invulnerability it just means people know he cant be damaged past a certain health value when he transforms. Which just buys him extra time in chaos spawn mode - which will just be kited and killed anyway, unless his transformation lines up with add spawns a lone chaos spawn in the arena you fight him in is and SHOULD be trivial for anyone who has progressed thru the missions in chapter order and playing Skittergate. As a bounty hunter main it just means ill hold off my headshot refunded 2nd Ult and wait for the transformation to end much like BH’s already do against trolls (who are damage immune while standing up from kneeling)
If you want to make him a notable boss and not just a “garunteed monster - Loot dice” then the best way I see that happening is added garunteed non-trash adds when he transforms based on difficulty setting - This way it becomes a task of “can you fight a chaos spawn with a couple a few adds?” because sadly some people cannot…
Recruit - No special adds, just trash fanatics
Veteran - 2 Maulers + trash spawns
Champion - 2 Chaos warriors + trash spawns
Legend - 2 Chaos warriors + 1 Blight stormer + life leech + trash spawns(mauraders included)
Cata - 4 Chaos warriors + 1 Blight stormer + 1 Life leech + trash spawns(marauders included
They will spawn and come in from the back rafters (the one the players enter from) and jump down and join the fight as soon as Gatekeeper goes into transformation mode. Obviously numbers of adds can be tweaked to find a good balance point
One thing I find a lot of players lacking is teamwork when managing a monster. Too many people tunnel vision a monster and get hit by trash, or completely ignore trash, and you end up with 3 players on the Monster and 1 player fighting a horde and elites at the same time. If Gatekeeper would be changed it should be changed in such a way that teaches groups the PROPER way to manage a monster + adds. Which is Kite the monster with 1 player (other players don’t steal aggro) group clears out the adds, and then kill the monster. Even as a Bounty Hunter main who just plasters Gatekeeper’s brains into the backwall this is what I think the fight SHOULD be about, how to handle a monster with adds.
Any buffs to Gatekeeper I also agree should result in Rasknitt loosing health… Deathrattler is fine hes a Rat-Ogre afterall… but Rasknitt should not be ultra tanky on top of also teleporting constantly if Gatekeeper gets any buffs resulting in Skittergate becomming longer / more difficult.
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I don’t agree at all, Skittergate is already really long and you can have more than one of the random bosses throughout that map, totalling four with Naglfahr and Rasknitt. Making it take longer or making it more complicated would be unnecessary.
On another note, I do want it to change. But not to be harder, just to give it more spirit. He’s a silent chump who transforms into what all Spawns of Chaos look like. I feel like at least a little bit of a different texture, and giving him something to say at the very least, would be welcome.
I mean, the guy turns into a Spawn of Chaos during the fight! Surely that deserves some narration at least?
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I am just gona drop in here to mention the fact that i really like him taking a ton of damage while he is busy transforming.
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To me it never made sense how heroes or villains in various shows can have these ridiculously long transformation scenes complete with teamwide posing afterwards without anyone trying to hit them meanwhile in the middle of a fight :<
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Slightly off topic perhaps, but I had an interesting encounter with Naglfahr the other day.
As he dropped down into the arena I chugged a strength potion and popped the huntsman ult, hit him in the head and he instantly turned into a chaos spawn midair (skipped the transformation).
On topic, I wouldn’t mind a slight nerf to Rasknitt and a buff to the poor Gatekeeper.
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Firing Chaos-Arrows around, I see. Sounds like heresy to me!
You see, though, I don’t really get folks saying “Gatekeeper isn’t the focal point of this level.” He’s absolutely meant to be a focal point of this level; FatShark stuck in a named monster in order to get a hold of the keystaff… that’s pretty exciting.
IDK, wanting to add monsters and guaranteed elites sounds like a difficulty increase… so let’s just nearly remove his transformation window? As said above, trimming it down to 1 second would be both intimidating and, also, fun. It’s so boring just sitting there for 5 seconds smacking the tar out of him… invulnerability would add the same effect, practically, but there’d just be less time waiting.
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I got that batch of arrows from the wutelgi, not sure what she had done to them. Clearly Saltzpyre needs to keep an eye on her.
Agreed. Reducing the transformation time would be nice.
Or maybe making him invulnerable during the transformation and spawning a group of chaos warriors for us to deal with could be fun too.
Not really a difficulty-thing, but giving these chaos warriors a unique look to mark them as the Gatekeeper’s guards or something could add a bit of flare to the encounter.
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What if he were to flail around a bit more and knock back anyone close to him for low/no damage during his transformation? Ranged would still work but melee would have to wait for him to be done.
My original instinct when I first fought him was to stay away while he was transforming because I expected some kind of aoe.
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I think it is reasonable to upgrade this fight by several things like adds, aoe, animation and boss appearance (even more than before he is still helmetless Bödvarr) and maybe some unique attacks. And also nerf the final fight to make this level less time-consuming. Nagfarl is miniboss but this encounter feels like no threat at all. I mean the next part of the level feels more threatening with pat, stormer, horde combo.
P.S. Even reading my post makes me realize that’s just a pipe dream. None of it will be implemented.