Jamanra the Abomination > Actual Abominations > Things I like and Boss structure

Jamanra the Abomination cutting the Caravan in half to save the antagonist,
Hookay buddy, why does he suddenly make a giant sword appear out of nowhere and slice the entire thing in half?
Can't he just disconnect another cart then be stuck with him on the Caraven?

I'm going to take this moment to express my least favorite boss designs and Boss designs that I like.

Bosses that need to be exterminated from the game permanently-
-Viper Napuatzi
The least abominable in this list, but the frequency of her ability to become invulnerable while her spearmen stab towards the end of the fight is abominable.

-Torvian hand of savior
Only by hovering over his weaknesses to read them during the fight can you discover his weakness, after wondering why he is practically invincible or accidentally stopping it by chance.

-Tovakai the Chieftan
The first two in this list pale in comparison to this boss, I hate his guts profusely. Not only is the multi stage health restart annoying and frustrating, his final form is a literal abomination. Animation overload of every element imaginable.

-Lythara the wayward spear
I though I hated Tovakai the Chieftan until i ran into Lythara, Something about her kit and the map for the boss fight makes me need a dose of Pepto Bismol and Minoxidil.

Zolin Blood Priest and Zelina Blood Priestess
Idk who typed in the programming for the amount of HP they have, but they made a typo and added an extra zero by mistake. I can understand if GGG wants to encourage multiplayer, but imagine facing this boss in solo self mode without trading. If you get unlucky you get Arthritis and Carpel Tunnel syndrome in both hands.

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Boss design mechanics that I like to see
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If a boss is not absolutely massive like a Titan boss, It shouldn't be too tanky and it should summon minions. Minions are important for sustain if people are using mods for chances to gain charges from minions, Minions are also required for necromancy and many Witch mechanics. I read online that a lot of Witch players quit playing when they faced Lythara due to her insane AOE, ability to wipe out minions with no minions herself. For them they shouldn't have insanely high health or resistance, dodging the same ability 3-5 times is plenty enough before killing them.

I like massive bosses like the Titan and for them it makes sense why they would have 1 shot abilities and can be extremely tanky yet slow. Why do some small bosses have insane amounts of resistances and HP? Sometimes they have such a high amount you would only expect that from a massive boss. Just like GGG balances chatacters with give-and take balancing, the same should apply to bosses. IF they are fast and have 1 shot abilities, they should also have lower health.

I saw the absolute final boss in the Endgame Temple, the guy who makes you get into the circle while simultaneously firing a death ray into it, GGG was really trolling with that one. I appreciated watching someone complete it though.

I'll say, I think a lot of the boss fights you've mentioned are there to provide a certain "check" to your characters design/capability, but I agree with your sentiment in a roundabout kind of way.

I too once lamented at the Viper fight being bullshit and now I walk into it in hcssf with the same ice in my veins as I do with The Miller on the beach. You really can get good at the boss fights and it is definitely an appeal for this game for me, and I think that challenge is a large appeal for other people as well.

However, I do agree that it can be very difficult to even understand what is even going on during some boss fights - even if you're making a point to pay attention to learn it, let alone how to deal with those mechanics - especially your first time going into the fights.

Even knowing what damage type (or types) is being done can be a huge deal most of the time. I remember the very very first time I ever fought Geonor and I was a warrior. All throughout the manor what was hurting me was ground degens and physical damage. So I, thinking I was reading into a clue, figured it meant that the boss was going to be doing physical damage maybe with physical degens to look out for and some chaos/fire on the side. I prioritized gear with armour, life, and life regen, and fire res. I even switched out a sapphire ring for a ruby lol.

I died when I got frozen to cold damage. The only other cold damage in the act 1 is the Grelwood witch, and cemetery monsters that lead up to Lachlan - who does cold damage with his moves. It seems apt there! Leading up to Geonor the act has a phys/chaos/fire theme. I felt a bit ambushed by cold damage in the boss fight.

It's a little different than walking into the Digsite boss fight, seeing the lightning-explode maze and taking 0.5 seconds too long to understand what's going on and then instantly dying, but same idea - you feel ambushed and like you weren't given a proper chance lol.

I think a good compromise here would be that there could be some creative ways of "preparing" players for some specific mechanics prior to boss fights, done in a way that makes them less confusing when the mechanic is encountered during a boss fight, especially if it's something that's going to be able to one-shot the player.

Additionally, I don't think encountering significant damage of a certain type should be a surprise. The zones leading up to a boss should contain monster or maybe even zone-hazards that do the same damage types as the boss - and I feel like they do this in some areas and not in others.

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TwitchGLHFsport#2155 a écrit :

Bosses that need to be exterminated from the game permanently

None of the bosses should be exterminated at all. The game should give us possibilities along the way to prep for those fights. Nothing more, nothing less.

Viper is a skill based fight and requires some source of damage.
While she is floating you most often can still hit her and deal damage. If you even get to stun her the whole phase just stops and you can munch on her.

Tavokai is prolly the only annoying fight in all that cause he has 3 or 4 phases in 2 different fight sequences which reset to 0 if you fail in one of them.

The rest is all mechanic based and can be cheesed or sometimes even completely avoided. Like Lythara, where you can hide behind the stone walls, except you are melee which should be an easy encounter there. If not you lack immense damage and struggled with her abilities on the Viper encounter already.

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Boss design mechanics that I like to see

you are aware that you kept complaining rather as telling us which you actually enjoyed?

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I read online that a lot of Witch players quit playing when they faced Lythara due to her insane AOE, ability to wipe out minions with no minions herself.

There did some prolly quit or just start begging in global for help which is understandable, but not a problem cause of the boss and its mechanics but rather a problem of minions at the moment. Cause minions itself are mostly just bad.

Not only cause the basic minions which should come in mass and easy to spawn are bound to a items since 0.2 which is mental at best, but also cause the revive time of them is so punishing and their defenses so bad, that there is no real reason to invest into it, not even heavily cause they will still be one shotted by anything. Especially on higher tier waystones/maps and therefore again, the only answer is damage, which even then minions are bad, since they have a uptime of maybe 1 second on Viper or the upgraded version of hers.

Also a reason why many people didge normal minions completely and go for weird or buggy interactions with other minions. Like weapon swap to refill minion life, protecting them from one shots or making them reform themselves before dying and linking them to DoT based support gems or using them in combination with minion instability.

Sacrifice a skill we would need from level 10 onwoards is available from level 54+, so when the campaign is already done for. If we have no sacrifice we would require desecrate which we had from act 2 in PoE 1, but which we lack still, cause of whatever reasons and which also denies DD completely.

So in the end, we lack content and possibilities to make stuff work, rather than having unfair bosses, since we lack gear and skills to make it work at the current point.

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Ondrugs#1147 a écrit :

None of the bosses should be exterminated at all. The game should give us possibilities along the way to prep for those fights. Nothing more, nothing less.

Viper is a skill based fight and requires some source of damage.
While she is floating you most often can still hit her and deal damage. If you even get to stun her the whole phase just stops and you can munch on her.

Tavokai is prolly the only annoying fight in all that cause he has 3 or 4 phases in 2 different fight sequences which reset to 0 if you fail in one of them.

The rest is all mechanic based and can be cheesed or sometimes even completely avoided. Like Lythara, where you can hide behind the stone walls, except you are melee which should be an easy encounter there. If not you lack immense damage and struggled with her abilities on the Viper encounter already.

Agree.

Campaign Bosses are one of the best qualities of POE2, as most of them adhere to the original "vision"

As a melee user that rely on stun before I dish out barrage of attacks, the fights always feels exciting, engaging as I really need to be aware of my positioning.

Even if some bosses takes awhile, they remain a great fight.

Glass Cannon should never be the approach of POE2, and if Glass Cannon Fails, it's something shouldn't be complained.

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Ondrugs#1147 a écrit :

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Boss design mechanics that I like to see

you are aware that you kept complaining rather as telling us which you actually enjoyed?

xD lmao

its simple, i just like the massive boss designs that's it. If they have a lot of HP they should also have a lot of abilities and be slower in pace. They already did a good job there.

I like the other bosses, these are just the bosses that I like the least, despise even. Bosses that I think have bad mechanics, over the top animations, HP or crowd control.

Some bosses have no respect for build preference, Some 1 shot mechanics might as well do 100% of total HP so its fair 0__0, There is nothing like losing an hour worth of XP gain for a mistake that was a fraction of a second though. IDK how I feel about 1 shot mechanics.