Very simple things that can be tweaked to make the bossfight less bullshit.
Until he gets some changes im gonna quit every single time this map shows up.
“If its not fun, why bother?”
Mark the area he will teleport next on the ground with vertical Green light.
Make him teleport less by increasing the duration he stays on a spot.
Reduce the speed of his clones by 50%.
The individuel range of each clone of his, is to wide.
Make the Black cloud Blue, it just doesnt stick out enough in the middle of the fight.
Let us shoot the cloud to destroy it. #Edit: you can, info comes from grimmochov
Why the bossfight feels cheap in my opinion.
-He teleports completly random.
(which cant be done anything about or prepared for)
-His cloud cant be seen in the fight.
(which is because of the black colour that gets washed out by its surroundings)
-His clones are simply impossible to dodge.
(which is because of their speed and wide range)
-Even when hiding behind the Wood Pillars they just dash through.
(which just proofs how much BS they are)
-The only way to evade the clones is to stay on the oposite side of the room.
(no one has enough ammo for that.) ALSO (its impossible to tell who he is going to target next so you cant even prepare for that)
-Stunning him doesnt last long enough.
(which is made worse by the fact that the map doesnt have enough bombs around)
I have no problem with the amount of dmg we get or how long his effects last, its just simply impossible to avoid getting dmg that pisses me off.
I think you’re right that he needs some tweaking to bring him more in line with the other bosses (and to make the map a reasonable proposition when it comes up on quickplay). With that said, I think your list is a little too extensive. My short list (drawing on yours) would look like:
Slower blobs that are more effectively blocked by pillars. I think the “try to balance DPS vs. not dying” game for this boss is pretty fun. Most bosses aren’t doing much of the damage themselves, but Burblespew does. I can dodge the blobs about 1/3 of the time but the window for doing so is too small and it requires you to be at range.
The black cloud needs more visibility. I basically play as though it doesn’t exist.
I don’t mind the teleporting, to be honest. As Huntsman, I was able to keep a pretty sustained beating on him with a full quiver from the pre-boss crate.
For me everything evolves around one single question. “Can the Player be in Control in Situation XYZ?”
The Bossfight just sticks out from the others simply because most of his mechanics will boil down to a clear “No” once you apply my question to them. As i already said, i personaly have no issue with his dmg numbers and the duration of his effects. But the fact that im not in control of the situation, simply because his mechanics dont allow it.
I hope that it doesnt seem like i want the boss fight easy because thats not my goal, all i want is the bossfight to be Fair. Which it isnt.
i don’t disagree he’s way too difficult in comparison to the other act bosses but he’s also really hectic in a fun way. what you’re aiming for might be a bit too much and i’d hate to see him be turned into a joke.
they’re not, it just takes some getting used to. biggest issue is that it takes a while to learn and the stamina drain makes it incredibly punishing with the mobs running around.
this i agree with. they only seem to block like half of the shots and it’s very confusing. is it supposed to block his attacks, and just doesn’t work? or is it not supposed to but currently bugs out and does occasionally? needs to be an all or nothing deal because you can’t make many mistakes on him
he looks at the person he’s going to shoot at for a few seconds after he teleports. it can get lost in the confusion when you’re killing the mobs, and i think that’s the part that needs balanced the most. he’s a very chaotic boss and that’s what makes him fun, but if even one person slacks or falls behind/goes down then it spirals out of control insanely quickly. he takes a lot more communication than the average group can put out.
maybe slow down the spawn rate or remove the stamina draining part of his attack, i dunno. otherwise he’s the best boss aside from the final one. skarrik is a straight up brawl, which is really fun and very fitting, but not much else to say about him, and ribspreader is kinda forgettable. halescourge sticks out though and is really exciting, if not frustrating. there’s a masochist part of me that really wants to master the boss.
Btw. you should be able to stagger Halescourge using bombs and Krubers charge… i mean you can Stagger Trolls, Chaos Spawns, Rat Ogres, Ribspredder (iirc)… but not that obnoxious, teleporting Halescourge?..
Yup, the charge staggers everything but Halescourge.
In fact, it almost seems like Halescourge knocks you back a bit if you charge into him. (Might’ve been the knockback from him teleporting away, but I didn’t get the usual animation for that, and he didn’t actually teleport).
Footknight’s only role for this fight seems to be controlling the adds, and maybe slashing Halescourge up a bit if he’s stupid enough to teleport close to you (though you should obviously run away if he looks at you).
Even with a good coordinated team there is always one player who has 0 chance to evade the clones, lets picture the best scenario which is a player for each corner, at one point he is going to teleport to one corner and instantly target the player and since the player is so close its just impossible to evade the clones due to the close distance (unless everyone has a evade/mobility career which shouldnt be a necessity since the map can show up in quicklplay so there is no way of preparing for that) Thats why im for the change that his next spot should always be marked, otherwise its a russian roullete mechanic where one player gets screwed.
Clones are easily dodgable ( from range ) BUT sometimes he shoots several clones at 1 person covering a wider area making it impossible without a movement ability…
Got to love when he teleports RIGHT NEXT TO YOU and then aims at you with his clones attack. Close range not only is it completely unavoidable, you don’t even have time to make it avoidable by moving further away. I’d like to see him have an attack for if people are close to him that gives people chance to move away.
I don’t think the fight is as hard as people are making it out to be, but they’re not learning it because they’re not playing it. It’s a different kind of fight from most in VT, as it’s more about awareness and reactivity than control.
I think the most important strategy is to have a ranged character or two focus Burble, while the rest deal with adds. I know in quickplay you might not always have a dedicated ranged attacker - but usually you will.
There is no learning involved 1 player always gets the short stick no mather what tactic you use. The other bosses all work differently from another as well, but no is complaining about them because they always allow the players to be in control, this one just doesnt.
Minions are also not the issue, the other bosses have them too and no one has a problem with them.
You also cant expect to have a perfect team set up for him to be successfull since this map is in the quickplay rotation.
It also has nothing to do with awarness, in fact everything he does is just based on pure random factors,(exept the cloud) the changes i want actually allow players to be aware of his random pattern.
Even the Move where he is in the middle and pumps out a ton of his clones, all of those are entirely random and People cant learn random mechanics. Thats why he is so frustrating for so many, in fact, i garuantee that you can solo every boss with every career by learning their moves and mechanics on legendary exept this one.
You only couldn’t solo him because of the cloud of flies, which is fine. It needs to be more easily visible, but they want enemies to force teamwork.
I’d say, though, that Burblespue (and Rasknitt) could stand to have their adds tuned down slightly, and the hitboxes on Burble’s clones could be tighter; sometimes it will appear as if you had dodged them, but they still hit you.
In regards of Rasknitt: I think he shouldn’t be such a damage sponge. currently all Bosses are damage sponges and for most of them it fits more or less (especially the Nurgle stuff)… but he’s a Grey Seer, a wizard… AND the fight is a 2 stage fight. First VS the Stormfiend and Rasknitt and theN VS Rasknitt. An erratically teleporting and warplightning firing Rasknitt… with rattling guns, globadiers, Stormvermin and Plaguemonks as support… Imho, he really doesn’t need to be such a damage sponge
And for Halescourge, a change I’d like to see is: You should be able to stagger him with bombs and Krubers charge!
Am I missing something? People keep saying if he is close to you his clones are impossible to dodge, but imo the closer you are the easier it is, you have to cover less distance to get out of the way. Just move sideways and towards him, he shoots in a cone. Correct me if I’m wrong because the fight is so hectic I may have missed it, but he doesn’t rotate to track you once he gets ready to fire, does he?
I think the best way to balance this boss is to have him pick a target and stop tracking during a windup animation.
As it stands melee characters cannot get near him because his tracking and his (now even wider) clone attack is impossible to dodge unless you are at max range. He cannot be staggered even with specials that stagger every other boss in the game. He does a teleport/knockback already which makes closing to melee range that much harder.
This boss is all over the place from a design perspective. He has a teleport designed to counter melee despite the fact that his attacks seem to force melee fighters away. If this is supposed to be a ranged boss encounter why is his HP pool so high that you could not defeat him without using infinite ammo weapons? He can’t be staggered to interrupt and gain a damage window but he has the MOST trash enemy spawns of any boss making it hard to get damage windows and good position already.
This seems like a back to the drawing board encounter. Get together and figure out what the flavor of this encounter is. So far it sounds like a bag of random ideas that came together like a giant ugly sack that is Burblespew.
The bosses in this game need more environmental mechanics to take a chunk out of their health so players don’t have to resort to cheesing it with overpowered equipment, and can instead resort to playing more tactically by drawing a boss towards a location.
Imagine being able to collapse the platforms Burble teleports to in order to chunk him for 5-10% of his health, that’d incentivise more tactical gameplay rather than mindlessly whacking away at a sponge while dancing around and avoiding CW’s.
This recommendation doesn’t come from the fact that I personally have any issues with this boss so much as ending up with teams that just outright die on him constantly because of the obscurity of his mechanics and the apparent randomness of his abilities and when he casts them.
Combine this with the obscenely short presences he has that almost force you to deal with him using ranged weapons a lot of the time makes this a really difficult fight for many people to understand and deal with accordingly. Even when playing the attrition game and reviving the teammates that die, constantly, over and over and over again because of player myths about ways to deal with the poisonous clones. Which again shows how unreadable his mechanics are.