Monster and Lord Fights Discussion

Bosses on their own are almost laughably easy, with even legend PUG’s having some kind of unspoken agreement that when a boss spawns the first point of call is to destroy the horde and specials while staying alive - the boss is something to be dealt with after the horde and specials are down and whoever has agro just need to not get downed.

Therefore talking about boss fights in isolation will always (IMO) discuss how simple they are with a veteran group.

A higher difficulty will therefore often result in difficulty spikes of longer hordes and more frequent specials than a more challenging boss, as the real problem with boss fights is the fact all kinds of other nasty stuff happens.

As a player who has been here since pre-release-beta I can remember getting SWAMPED with SV and Horde fighting Skarrit and the outcry that some bosses wer stupidly hard. The Troll used to be unkillable in Melee.

As a player base we have moaned about bosses quite a lot;

Boss walls being a pain,
Troll Regen being OP vs a solo,
Chaos spawn hitbox being weird,
180 degree boss spins downing players,
Bosses spawning in stupid areas of closed corridors and hard areas
… and so on.

By acceding to the community and balancing the bosses to stop the outcry, FS have nerfed their own bosses into triviality so that without the added problems of hordes and specials bosses are a little speedbump in a smooth run.

Irrespective of whether I’m with my usual group or a PUG we humiliate a Troll with impunity. The Stormfiend is also fairly comic in that it spends more time hopping up and down things that actually burning someone.

By a bit of a rambling route, I agree with the OP - the boss have become lacklustre because there have been changed so much AND the players have become so much better.

FoW is a marked higher level of difficulty than everything else, and people are completing it within a matter of weeks. I personally think that getting defeated by an immense difficulty spike isn’t something to do with a players (or team) ability overall, but very often it is pure fluke that something gets pulled out of the bag. Winning by overcoming a fluke doesn’t feel so satisfying, in the same way as a dying to a bunch of disablers feels like a cheap loss. For this reason I think adding a tougher difficulty would simply be a minor algorithm to spawn the living tits out of specials and hordes without changing the bosses.

This defeats the point of this discussion.

The Bosses need to be a bit cleverer basically. the Stormfiend needs to hose the area with flame to cause damage to a lot of players, in the same manner as a dumbass IB with a Drakefire Cannon hoses his allies while they’re fighting.

Why don’t bosses block? When they take damage they could block and defend rather than leaping around like some kind of Morris Dancers on Smack.

TL;DR - The bosses are rubbish on their own and need real attention, and an extra difficulty level would simply mean more specials and hordes rather than a rework of the bosses.

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About Difficulty:

Like I stated above I do not particularly like what “Vanguard” and “harder, better, faster, stronger” does. I do not want the highest difficulty to be a dmg-sponge pure elite fest. That’s what these deeds are for.

I do like the idea of a new higher difficulty but I want it to be diverse and there fore I would like the following things from it:

  1. Challenging & interesting Lord fights
  2. Interesting Monster fights
  3. Almost stagger immune Chaos Warriors and less staggerable enemies in general (weapon rebalance)
  4. Disabling the lvl 20 talents to prevent any enemy from becoming health-packs.
  5. Reducing the dodge time window or redoing it as a turn-rate limiter.

I do not want to see 90% elites, I don’t want hordes to be med packs, I don’t want Monsters to die in below 10s or even LORDS.
I wouldn’t increase the Hitpoints of normal enemies too much (no problem with maulers, CWs, Monsters or Lords). Its good that certain weapons like the Rapier on WHC can reach an instant kill on a heavily charged headshot it’s a fun mechanic and balanced.

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