I’d say he is the most difficult boss in the game currently, more difficult than the final boss in Skittergate.
There’s just not a reliable way to avoid his rapid fire aoe acid splashes while not getting killed by trash, and players often end up getting hit by both. Quite often the squishy players just die immediately on the encounter, and the tanks just try to survive until teammates respawn. I’ve even seen people die multiple times during the fight get a few hits in before getting splashed again.
The 3 splash frontal cone is better than it was, but still decent. The tornado aoe is fine. But the aoe acid splash he does is way too fast and feels unfair. It doesn’t just damage you, it slows you and dots you and messes up your screen graphics, so that beserker or chaos warrior is going to wreck you if the acid doesn’t kill you outright.
I don’t like that it is a valid tactic to just cheese Halescourge by exploiting infinite respawns. I’d rather there be no respawns but also have his attacks attacks be avoidable. The fly swarm freezing you just seems like, why does Halescourge have so many more things to wreck me with than the other bosses? The strongest attack in the game is getting disabled next to a beserker or chaos warrior, and Halescourge has several ways to do that while no other boss does.
Spinemanglr feels fair but challenging, Ribspreader too easy, Halescourge too hard, Skittergate Boss 1 way too easy so long as you have stuns, and Final Boss feels pretty good, mostly fair, pretty challenging, a little rng to it.
But after tons of Halescourge runs I’m not learning any tactics to help me improve and I’m not learning anything I’m doing wrong. It cheeses the players and the players can cheese to beat it.
I’d do the following to the Halescourge fight:
Remove player respawns inside the boss room.
No more specials spawn after boss is defeated (beating the boss then dying to 4 specials is still happening: e.g. IMMEDIATELY jumped by assassin after Halescourge dies, then hit with gas bombs from gas rat outside the boss room = keyboard smashed).
Remove slow and dot from acid splash, just make it direct damage and knockback.
Slow the speed of aoe acid splash/increase distance between splashes.
Make Fly Swarm more visible or the audio cue more noticeable when cast
Yeah, he can still be a little bit annoying… I do think special spawnrates can still get a little unfair with him in particular. Here’s a screenshot of a fun Legend run that ended almost as soon as the fight started since, hey, why not spawn 4 chaos warriors.
That said, skittergate is definitely more difficult than ol’ burblinghurlble. The way my team was able to reliably beat him was to hold one corner of the room and just STAY there. Just be patient and let him teleport around; Use ranged attacks against him while he’s far away, and gang up on him when he teleports close. This worked pretty well since his boogerghosts are easier to dodge from long distance, and when he’s up close you can stagger him out of his attacks. At least 1-2 good ranged characters like sienna or BH saltzspyre and a shield-bashing tank is real necessary as well.
It might take a bit longer, but it definitely works unless the game throws a real bad curveball at you. You just gotta be patient with him.
I still get PUGs asking to suicide at the start of this one.
I think most of the time I die to this boss is when he summons a horde, if you are focusing on a Chaos Warrior or three, you aren’t always going to be able to dodge his green goo.
His goo is still the most powerful attack in the game. Often enough to wipe out over half of you health with the DoTs.
I don’t really mind the boss himself, but the constant stream of enemies seems silly. It seems like they are just trying to artificially inflate the difficulty, perhaps the boss is too easy when alone.
My suggestions for this boss:
Make enemies only appear in horde waves (not constantly)
Make Benedict Cumberbatch only come down from his perch (above the players) between the horde waves. - So no goo attacks immediately after he summons help.
This would make him a bit more like the Bosses from act2 and act3.
did the same to us once, though that’s been one of the only times we’ve died to him on legend since he got nerfed. the add spawns are not that frequent and it’s really not that hard for people to clear out a corner as they come down. no idea where this idea that it’s a constant thing as they only come when he’s up top and not really doing anything. save your bombs/pots if you’ve got them for a later bit as the initial spawns always seem weak and get worse as the fight progresses, plus people will probably take some damage. best to have those crutches in a later part.
Absolutely not true. I took the same time I got to finish off Rasknitt to Halescourge and we didn’t last more than thirty seconds. Halescourge is by FAR the hardest boss in the game because his arena is absolutely tiny, his attacks are barely telegraphed and cannot be avoided and he absolutely floods the room with trash.
Spinemanglr suffers from the same tiny arena and masses of swarm problem. Altough Spinemanglr is considerably easier in the fact that his attacks can be avoided I also find him insane to fight. I don’t think the devs realize how hard it is to fight off a horde when there’s also a boss scattering your team around. The number one cause of team wipes, the boss+horde, has the same problem. You cannot fight a large dude who will drain all your stamina and stun you constantly and also clear trash.
That’s why Rasknitt is a lot better. He doesn’t spawn insane amounts, he just spawns a few guys to keep you from focusing him down too easily.
I am going to suggest a different route here. Something which adds flavor to the boss.
First, his big storm stays as it is. It’s fine. It has windup, does some damage and has a nice crowd control effect.
Spawns, stay or if needed are increased. More hordes, regular elites maybe more elites than now. Now here me out before you scream bloody murder…
Remove the damage on his ghosts. Add maybe some attack speed reduction effect to it’s current effects. Oh look, we now have a fairly unique boss, who’s main approach of fighting is calling aid, and doing a support role by himself.
halescourge doesn’t spawn his that often either. it’s when he goes up top and at the very start. put someone in each corner and mow them down as they spawn. stay there, kill them when he spawns more of them and stay in those locations. being spread out like that will give you time to dodge projectiles most the time, and you’re spread out so multiple people aren’t getting hit
I will agree, hordes in the middle of a generic boss fight are often unwinnable due to location & additional specials spawned, but for the most part these ‘unavoidable’ story boss encounter are usually more fair than that. Yeah the game’s buggy as hell and it’ll just churn out chaos warrior or special-ridden encounters that you have no chance of winning (something I hope is patched out eventually), but if that doesn’t happen the story bosses really aren’t that bad if you know what you’re doing.
These strategies work for my group on champion & legend difficulties:
For hurble, The strategy I mentioned in my post works pretty well, though obviously playing with pubs is going to be a lot different than playing with a coordinated team w/ voice chat. Its much easier to avoid his ghosts at a distance, and blocking them reduces their damage significantly. Dealing enough damage to him knocks him out of his attack animation as well, and staying in the corner puts you out of range of his hurricane & messes up his gas attack trajectory. The trash is also easy to kill when you’re together, save for those unfair AI director freakouts where it just decides to kill your team on a whim.
Also Spinemanglr actually has a pretty easy trick to him that not many people realize, and that’s that you just have to ignore him. Yes, he hits hard, but his attacks are easy to avoid and he’ll usually latch onto one guy, repeatedly attacking that person as long as he’s not being attacked by anyone else… have the tankiest guy get his attention, and then the other three go and clear up the trash mobs (IMPORTANTLY, PROTECTING THE GUY DISTRACTING SPINEMANGLR FROM THE HORDE), and then help the 4th person when they’re done. Focusing on the mobs makes the fight way easier, and even the 4th guy can help out since you can disengage spiney when he’s doing that stupid slow chargeup attack.
Unlike ol’ ribeye, these bosses take a lot of team cohesion, and everyone needs to be on point and working together. Y’all need to STICK TOGETHER whenever possible. That can make hrubles and spinemanglr pretty difficult when playing with randoms, as you got people running every which way and not giving a rat’s ass about anyone but themselves.
Personally, i just wish the boss “room”/house ruin was a bit bigger to let people properly space out during his splashes with thicker support beams (since right now its a gamble to try and use one of them to block the projectile as its a coin flip if the exact pixel center of the projectile counts as hitting it or not while the actual acid projection of him phases through it).
