Ok. I’ve started feeling a bit sorry for this guy now. He gets his little monologue where he seems so excited to be fighting and summons his little homies to the fight. He jumps into the area, gets a bomb or two to the face and then is virtually instantly killed no matter what the party makeup is.
In fact, most patrols last a bit longer than this guy. I feel sorry for him.
F
Now in seriousness, the boss battles are some of the end event’s that are skewed towards easy mode. If we consider Convocation as a tough ending, then Skarrik is probably the easiest ending of the whole lot by a country mile.
I think the problem is he’s largely on his own and is the focus of a world of pain within the first 20 seconds. Maybe have him stay up on his ledge and send in a couple of patrols or something before he jumps down so he’s not immediately going to get an arsenal of black powder to the snout?
I actually consider Nurgloth a good boss battle in everything except the last third of his design, swinging his scythe onto the players.
With the power creep added by the BBB, bosses are only going to feel even weaker, so I hope future content has some kind of look at how monsters and lords are faring - (hint; badly, don’t forget the gatekeeper who is snuffed out in seconds too). Simply damage sponging their health bar or giving them immunity during certain phases seems a bit of a cop out, so what do you think need to be done?
I did skarrik on modded difficulty and there it actually felt like a boss fight, even tho it was more the adds being spawned that made it difficult, but atleast we got multiple waves of adds.
I do agree that end bosses need some kind of tune up.
I didn’t find a good solution yet tho. Either add invincibilty to a boss, add dmg limits, nerf ‘boss’ killers, make them not staggerable. But those all Bring their own set of issues with them, so it’s difficult.
I would say add ‘forced phases’. Where either an objective has to be done by the team, certain adds killed, or certain mechanics engaged in. (Ofcourse not where you kill the adds and stand around looking at the boss for 2 minutes, that would just be boring, more like 'team did x, now 2nd phase starts)
That’s what i thought of too.
You could turn this into a super skaven affair, even. Maybe a bit more than in V1 against Chieftain Krench. (tbh to this day i think that Krench was more powerful than Skarrik, the warpstone fueled abilities he had, that he struck the deal with the Rotbloods, most likely Halescourge, indicates that, for me at least).
My idea would be that he completely get’s out of sight while still talking sh*t to the Ü5 (or 4, doesn’t matter) while sending in underlings. This should be the hardest part of it because: he starts to talk so much stuff to the point that he flat out says that all his underlings are only pawns and the revolt you wanted to start with his death actually starts a bit sooner, and no one shows up the next time he calls for them.
You then go on killing him and on your way out you actually see the Skaven fight over Karak Gnol.
Such a change wouldn’t happen realistically, although FS said they wanted to revisit some of the levels to work out some ruff edges (and i hope that wasn’t done after going over events/reworked spawning behaviour). But it could be a nice twist with a bit of Skaven backstabbing going on.
I would honestly love if they could somehow integrate 2 seperate ‘factions’ (not new ones… maybe later) that could potentially fight against each other. Limited of course, not in a way that a HM just charges through one area and pulls one group into the other for easy walk throughs.
As much as it is hated by some, I think Nurgle bossfight is the best there is amongst it’s kind.
He is a sponge, but different attacks are better or worse against him compared to meta due to his armor type.
He does his gimmick for a couple of phases, then tones down the spam and wave variety and goes personally after you.
Other Bosses are not that deep mechanically, but what they could borrow is the invincibility between phases. Between teleporting away and starting his next phase, Nurgle seems to actually be immune to damage, at least my Piercing Shot unusually kachinks away from his head with little effect.
So like Mattie suggested, but I don’t think you need to go too deep about it. At cheap as it is, just giving invulnerability or insane damage reduction would do.
Bosses already do have waves and other intermediate mechanics. Not sure, maybe Skarrik’s special attacks are tied to his health pool, maybe not. The problem is that you just usually bypass most of the Bossfight that isn’t the sponge you’re supposed to mouse1.
Don’t remember what they’ve done to Burblespit Haleberry, but he lasts for a good while compared to how he used to be, you’ll see occasional zerkers and CWs drop down and do their thing. Not the most intricate design, but you do get to see a lot more of the actual Bossfight now.
Forced phases is not the most intricate solution either, but one that I don’t have a lot of gripes with. If you go deeper, Skarrik seems to be the nimble and relatively skillful, but paper thin. He has some moves that allow him to block damage and whatnot.
So if you want to go a bit deeper, tweaking his abilities and moveset could do the trick.
In the beginning of the fight for the first third of Skarrik’s health the fight will play out as right now. After being damaged enough another Skaven Wannabe-Warlord will appear (due to Lohner’s meddling by providing some information to them on his Lohner ways) and challenge Skarrik because he is weak and allowed the nest to be infiltrated by human thing-thing.
In the next phase the two Skaven Warlord fight each other and have 80 % damage reduction against all hero attacks. The new warlord brought with him his new special Stormvermin pack which keeps the U5 busy. If the players do no attack the warlord in that phase Skarrik will win the battle with about a third of his health left. However, they can keep attacking either one of the Skaven Warlords and decide this way how the “duel” will end. In the case that the heroes dispatch all Stormvermins in a short time the Warlords will note that they have to join force in order to kill the humans.
In the third phase - depending on the token action in phase 2 - the heroes will either fight Skarrik, the new warlord or both. Remaining special Stormvermin will drop down and join whichever warlord has won.
Yea, that needs some tuning on how to adjust phase 2 and if phase 3 will be different depending on enemy ^^’
Yeah Skarrik needs a buff. Maybe give him a twin so you have to fight 2 at once; or when he stands on the high platform initially or retreats to the corners let him summon specials as well as SV and clanrats - I’d like to see multiple globadiers or suicide bomb rats spawn so that the players have to look outwards while getting mobbed. A bit like convocation of decay but with more visibility and less room to move.
I like this idea. And according to lore the Skaven are notorious cowards. So Skarrick going in first when he can send a bunch of his henchmen in before him makes more sense. And could perhaps also make the fight a bit different from Bödvarr.
Like if Bödvarr is more solo but personally boosted while Skarrick has more henchmen, also from the start, and is given a slight boost to speed, parries and manoverability.
Definitely. It would make a lot of sense if you faced him three times prior in the campaign, but he kept running away. All hail the superior tactical mind of the Skaven!
If you don’t one-shot him, Skarrik already has cool attacks and patterns, albeit quite repetitive : he’ll spam his spin attack in the same way Bödvarr Ribspreader will spam his slam ; but he also switches weapons and has completely different patterns depending on whether he has halberd or dual-wielding.
How interesting would it be if he had a stamina mechanic, i.e. he parries attacks until we break his stamina, and back attacks deal more stamina damage. His special attacks (like the knockback spin attack) would cost him some stamina (like a player push attack) but give him time to recover some, and ranged damage would still damage him but with some good DR.
Without changing him too much, by giving him some immunities that can be overcome (as he’s vulnerable once his stamina is depleted), without it being too spammy (I don’t like boss mechanics that revolve entirely around minions, it removes personality from the boss himself ; but minions are needed otherwise the boss doesn’t feel like a faction leader).
Maybe once his stamina depletes, he can take 1/3 of his health in damage before recovering instantly and switching weapons.
Why not start off phase 1 with his halberd and stamina mechanic ; phase 2 enraging, dual-wielding and behaving more like a plague monk and where he’s immune to stagger and ignores the stamina bit - or rather he doesn’t parry at all ; and finally phase 3 where he senses he’s in trouble and takes out a shield (where he has more stamina) and perhaps calls out more minions to his help.
His minions would all be stormvermin (with some trash rats in between as fodder) ; halberd ones in phase 1 and shield ones in phase 3. Phase 2 could be his ‘solo’ phase, where he’s harder to handle for the team and way more erratic in his aggro, dealing high damage and high stamina damage.
He could be supported by ratlings and globadiers throughout the fight ; I’m picturing 2 ratlings on the heights around where he spawns from and why not scripted globadiers that don’t target a player specifically but quarters of the arena ?
In higher difficulties it would be challenging to add plague monks during phase 2 or 3.
One the biggest issues with skarrik is his damage reduction is despairingly low
lemme put it this way (while this isn’t exact) Skarrik is rocking approx half the damage reduction of regular monsters (Rat Ogres, Chaos Spawns etc.) and that shows pretty quickly if you start concentrating some damage on him. Secondary issues that he and the other non-nurgloth lords have is that they’re very stationary/vulnerable during ad phases. Skarrik and Bodvarr kinda just stand there gawking at you while they summon some armoured units, Halescourge just stands on a platform while getting a prostate exam from the billhook below him, Rasknitt just throws some extremely underwhelming warp lightning and summons some rats while you give him a wedgie in each corner of the arena, gatekeeper nagladfsdfgafgwhateverhisnameis…I think there’s a moment every time he’s stuck transforming while you pound his skull in where he realizes he’s not getting paid enough for this hell.
Nurgloth on the other hand is invulnerable for his big ad phase, relatively hard to damage otherwise and is only available for big damage output at the end of his ring phase. That’s it, you get like 1 pocket of time where you can exact revenge on the eternal before the dance begins again. Whereas other lords can just be given swirlies for pretty much the whole duration of a fight while also having pretty sad damage reduction values compared to ol’ Nurgie
I am personally stumped about the whole damage reduction thing. We’ve been destroying Lords for quite some time now so I doubt that FS somehow didn’t get the memo. I’m guessing that this topic just isn’t high enough on their list of priorities.
The suggestions herin are good. Send in his Bodyguard elite SV 20 man patrol first to use up all the resources the player has, then let him jump down with higher damage reduction.
I think it’s really just the fact he’s the sole target of the world of pain the players bring. Make them use up their bombs and pots first.
