Premise: Don’t get me wrong. I can understand that, when we are talking about “nerf”, someone may worry that the game would become too easy… but regardless if it’s true or not, the difficulty must derive from “balanced aspects”.
Exactly as every faction must be balanced, with pro and cons, I think the same rule must be applied on bosses… while this doesn’t happen.
Minotaur feels just too strong, in every aspect, compared with the other bosses. Overall I feel that it’s the strongest both as aggresive and defensive power. Its toughness is very high. The damage is high too, with a great attack speed and a moveset that seems to have splash damage. It’s very fast too, it doesn’t let you breathe and it’s the hardest to kite.
Imho it could be a “glass cannon”: the most aggressive boss, but its toughness should be nerfed.
p.s: honestly I don’t understand one thing: its “armor” is really a berserker type? This would be totally silly. Already the “power vs monster” property is pretty weak. If I invest resources to have an high damage vs bosses… I should have it toward every boss.
Minotaurs are no more resistant to damage than other bosses. They have “Berserker-like attacks” but are not actually berserkers. You kite it similarly to a rat ogre/spawn.
The bosses in general seem to use similar profiles. Their timing for their “standard” attacks seems to be identical. Their “special moves” are a little different(E.G. Chaos Spawn grab or Minotaur charge). I think the Minotaur comes off as more aggressive because it hits with a single attack, then a double, then a single for its combo. It also charges players that are too far away so it closes the distance pretty fast and can send a player flying if they don’t dodge/stop it.
The animations for the minotaur also have these very large and wide movements, which gives the impression that it’s much faster than other bosses. It has a very quick recovery time though from attacks(like the Chaos Spawn). This quick recovery time from attacks seems to be the primary reason it can be a relentless boss. Its only “damage through block” attack is the charge, which it won’t use if you’re already close to it.
The following video compares the attack timing of Minotaur, Chaos Spawn, and Rat Ogre.
Boss damage comparisons:
Rat Ogre
42 Combo Dmg
60 Slam Dmg
Chaos Spawn
50 Combo Dmg
60 Slam Dmg
60 Knock Back Dmg
32 Chomp Dmg(3 Chomps for 96 total possible dmg)
Minotaur
50 First Hit Combo Dmg
50/50 Second Double Hit Combo Dmg(100 total possible dmg)
50 Third Hit Combo Dmg
50 Standing Axe Swing Dmg
60 Headbutt Dmg
40 Charge Dmg
Doing testing in response to this, I realized that there is a bug with Minotaur right now. It does a double hit with its rearing headbutt if you’re too close to it. This can cause the regular 60 dmg to be 120 if you aren’t holding block. Or it can break your block and do the 60 dmg as well. This will be reported in a bug thread:
“Problem” with the minotaur as a whole can be brought down to a few things. It’s harder to attack into because it’s harder to predict it’s attack patterns.
Two of it’s attacks share the same windup but one leads into a combo and the other does not.
It’s basic attacks don’t fling enemies all over the place like roger, chaos spawn, or troll swipes do. Doesn’t knock enemies away that are around it during it’s rush like the rat ogre either.
Significantly harder in comparison to every other boss to reliably solo down in a decent amount of time without taking unsafe risks. It’s a rather awful encounter due to these properties.
On this topic in particular
That’s no more true than saying that the Deathrattler is kited in the same way as a Stormfiend.
Rat Ogre does his 3 hit combo which you soak. You then back dodge out of the slam, move forward into slam distance, land an attack or two, then back dash back out of. Repeat until death.
Spawn will do a sweep or an overhead after either of it’s combo attacks if you’re close enough. Kite or block the combo, land an attack before the slow attack while dodging it, land another attack, then go back to blocking and avoiding. Repeat until death.
Minotaur can do 1 slow attack, 2 slow attacks, or 3 slow attacks in a row. It can either do the headbut or the heavy sweep. Both of them require different timings in both can be dodged in different ways with the sweep having to be dodged in one way to avoid taking a hit to your stamina. Then you either have a weapon with the shields necessary to deal with avoid blocking the 3 hit and whatever stragglers attack through it or you don’t and you have to decide where in it’s attack you want to use your CS else you’ll get stuffed. It’s the only boss that can’t be neatly tanked in place and requires a massive (comparatively of course) amount of space for one person to even fight effectively due to it’s large sweeping far reaching attacks.
But heck, what do I know. If that’s their intention than they’ve done a good job making a boss that’s an absolute pain in the rear to deal with when it’s horde comes attacking straight through it.
I think it was Bioshift who had a video up on youtube. I’ll have to see if I can find it. He showed how to dodge every single one of the minatuars attacks without blocking. Side dodging. Which would allow you to constantly attack while take no damage if you’re good enough.
Most likely because it’s new. We’ve had nearly 2 years to learn the other bosses. I remember I use to really struggle with bosses until I watched some videos about dodge dancing and asked for help. Then I jumped on the modded realm and practiced until I got it down.
EDIT: Also, it was Bioshift who first posted about it.
That first vid is surprisingly predictable most of the time. 1 swing, combo, 1 swing, headbutt.
Mino seems intimidating because he is pretty fast, but you can block all of his attacks except the charge. You just have to attack right after he attacks then block and repeat. He doesn’t have any tricky mechanics like hitting through block or spawn’s om noms, Mino’s only mechanic is speed.
Minotaurs can’t use their combo attack multiple times in a row like a spawn/rat ogre, but they don’t give you much breathing room.
Trying this will only get you guard broken and then take damage through his combo, you need to dodge as many attacks as you can (combo hit 4, headbutt, sometimes you can dodge his single axe swing)
I think itʻs just a matter of getting used to them. The only real problem with minotaur is they can charge you off a map with much less time to respond than say, a rat ogre smack.
Their combo does seem like it has little time to attack inbetween, but Iʻve seen success getting one shot in with the 2h axe, so with a faster weapon it should be ezpz.
Though, I do admit that needing near unlimited space to kite them is problematic; they move while attacking quite a bit more than chaos spawn.
this is the main problem of mino boss whatever you do he will use all attack patterns as you can see in Bioshift video and like u say u lose breathing room. u cant manage to hold him in one place like ogre or spawn. and when u get space he charge at you, combine that with horde and specials well, when i play solo and see mino - horde i just quit the game
I haven’t seen a Minotaur do anything that’s really “unfair” compared to the other Bosses (consider a Troll blinding you, or a Spawn grabbing one of the characters), so I think the trouble fighting them is a combination of them not having been out there for long (so we’re unused to them) and their aggression, leaving little room for breathing and thinking - and learning.
The majority of their attacks can be blocked, but that eats up Stamina fast; everything can be dodged (and the charge relatively easily even); and they don’t hit particularly hard. But they keep coming and attacking which leaves little time for counterattacks and requires your dodge game to be pretty sharp. When you’re forced to rely on reflexes like that, it’s also hard to do any thoughtful experiments in-game on how to actually fight them and find the spots and times to strike.
On the other side, they seem to be the best Boss to use for killing other enemies. Watching a Handmaiden run around with a 'Taur and a bunch of Elites was kind of fun yesterday…
But yeah, I don’t think they’re really that much harder than the other Bosses. If their aggressiveness was cut down, they’d lose their uniqueness, and that’s pretty much the only thing I see that makes them difficult to fight.
When I faced mino for few times i was surprised how hard he hits in term of draining stamina. With other bosses you can pretty much block all attacks if you are build for 60bcr 30st.reg. But mino just wrecks your block. And he tend to do very fast turns when few heroes in melee.
Exactly, this is another great problem. Minotaur is the boss that needs more space (a lot of more space)… but we know that the game loves spawn on us hordes and specials and elites during boss. To not talk about some locations where a boss can spawn, like a tight corrridor without escape. We haven’t space.
For this reason I said that he could be a glass cannon: the most aggressive boss with the smallest HP.
I would like tuned down its toughness, not its aggressiveness.
