My thoughts on Burblespue Halescourge

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
1

Bosses are a good idea but in my opinion Burblespue Halescourge is not designed for this game. I will give my thoughts on Burblespue Halescourge here.

First of all let my point out that I have not defeated Burblespue on Legend, only Champion.

The game is about getting from point A to point B and on the way you fight different enemies that have a variety of attacks. You can block attacks and other attacks you have to dodge or push.

For example you can block a Slave Rats attacks but a Heavy Attack from a Chaos Warrior you might want to dodge to the side so you don’t loss all your Stamina. Against Packmasters you want to dodge to the side (back works too but not always) or push it, if you can’t kill it fast enough.
There is a way for you to counter everything in some way (almost, it’s hard for you to snipe a Ratling Gun with a flamethrower and so on). If we for now disregard that the game just spawns stuff on you sometimes so you lose (that is another discussion), the way you lose is when you…

  • are over runned. You decided to fight a Horde in a bad spot or did not cover your flanks. Even when you are ambushed you can get through that with ease if you know when to block, attack, push, use items or abilities. Or if your teamwork is on point.

  • did not pay attention to specials. Everyone is slashing on the Horde and no one is bothered to look out for specials. A Packmaster hiding is the Horde, a Globadier in the distance and so on.

Most of the time when you lose you can stop and think “Ok, I know what we did wrong and what we can do better”. This is not always the case for Burblespue.

Burblespue Halescourge starts off jumping down and shooting green slime around himself, this is by itself hard to dodge because it moves fast and one dodge to either side is not enough to dodge it and if you successfully dodge it there is a big change that another slime will come flying right on the spot you now are standing on. You could stand behind something like a pillar but the hitboxes are not that good so sometimes the slime just go through the pillar and you get hit anyway. On top of that adds spawns straight away so you can’t really focus on Burblespue because then you will be hit by the adds. You could try to position the adds between you and Burblespue so the slime hits the adds but that will not always work because the adds spawn close to the walls so there is not much room to position yourself and if you would succeed the splash from the slime will most likely hit you anyway.

I know one way you can get through this phase without being hit by slime and that is to stand in the left top corner (if you are looking towards Burblespue when you jump down), there is some pillars and lumber in the way so the slime hits that, SOMETIMES. Sometimes it just go straight through it and you get hit anyway.
To improve this part of the fight I think…

  • that Burblespue should first shot his slime and when that phase is done the adds should spawn. This do not mean that there should not be adds on the phase when he targets one hero. It’s when he shots slime around himself I’m talking about.

  • hitboxes on the slime should be better so you can hide behind the pillars and lumber.

  • range attacks should destroy the slime. The trade of would be that you have less ammo to use on Burblespue.

Another part that I think need a change is the black cloud. You can destroy it by shooting it (don’t know if melee attacks works) and if you get hit by it a teammate can hit or shot on you and you will be freed. But if your team is dead or downed adds will just kill you. So I think that…

  • enemy attacks should free you too. The 1-3 attacks the adds will get on you are penalty enough especially on harder difficult (Champion and Legendary).

  • or you can’t take damage and the adds will ignore you until you are free. Personally I don’t like this one that much but it is one way you could do it.

This is my thoughts on this fight and I know that there is ways you can just nuke him down if you have a Pyromancer, Waystalker, Huntsman and Bounty Hunter. But I think that a boss should be designed hard so you can beat it with tactics and skills and not just throw stuff on the players and call it hard.

// Cheers Lucky

3 Likes
2

Having played a lot of Halescourge on Legend recently because it is the last map I am missing I think the mechanics in itself during the fight are fine.
They are just too fast.
Once your whole team focused down the horde you maybe get 2 bow shots on him and not really get much off of his hp bar before the next horde wave crushes in on you.
This frequency also punishes every small mistake. I know you shouldn’t really make mistakes in Legend but just 1 person dying can dumpen your effectiveness in clearing the horde to the point that by the time you clear it the next one spawns immediately not even having time to pick someone back up. Once the horde spawns start overlapping it is lost.
He is also the only boss with a CC which makes him even more dangerous the less survivors or the more bots you have.
Then you have the Chaos Warriors. 1 CW during a horde is fine and a fair challange, but ever so often it bugs out I guess and you get 3 to 5 CWs. This is just straight up murder during the fight.
Now add to that, that the fat caster guy is one of the beefiest bosses and it is the most difficult boss fight in the game.
The guy just needs to give you a bit more breathing room and the fight would be way more managable.
Spinemangler, ie gives you a good amount of time to fight once he goes into his horde summon phase and after gives you a good amount of time to fight him before he spawns the next horde. It’s a pretty clean fight.
Halescourge just needs to chill and have the frequency between everything he does increased slightly.

2 Likes
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Seems like lots of people don’t like the snot-men projectiles he fires, what if you could stop them by slashing them mid flight? Then if you were in a horde maybe your swings would help protect you, and if you were paying attention to him you could destroy them with good timing.

4

It’s actually not that difficult. Now every pug Halescourge I do I tell people to go into the left hand corner after you enter at the start. The one that has a piece of broken wall. I tell people to start there to avoid the initial volley of fart ghosts, and then spread out. The real balance issue after that is that Halescourge, unlike Ratsnick, is simply too hard to stagger out of casting. Ratsnick you can catch with a stray shot or two and then chain melee while the rest of your team clears adds in other corners and you’ll lock him out of casting those deadly spells. Halescourge will just keep casting even if you’re wailing on him, and since you have to be rotating around him non stop to maybe stand a chance at avoiding the fart ghosts he’ll throw at you, you can’t control the direction he’s going to be shooting them so it’s very likely an ally will take some in the back while fighting off enemies.

So just dropping his stability and making him easier to stagger out of casting would fix that fight.

5

Very poorly designed fight. Enough said.

3 Likes
6

He’s an unpleasant fight - and not in a gross Nurgle way.

Bubblebrew Elmbirch is definitely my least favorite boss. They knocked him down a peg or two recently and I still find him exhausting to fight. The DoT, the slow, the spam, the hordes… the entire battle is just chaos (no pun intended). From a lore standpoint he is ON POINT, but a slightly less hectic fight would definitely make it more enjoyable.

7

For me, Halescourge is very okay.

I keep my distance, those clones can never hit.

On legend, if you make a mistake, its really hurts and it sucks.

Those clones are very dodgeable at longest distance between you and halescourge.

My problem is that, like other bosses, you HAVE To play certain characters. I’m fine with that to a degree. However, certain characters cannot do anything to halescourge (ranger, zealot, WHC…).