Act bosses are weak and amongst the least engaging battles. For Season 4, I urge the developers to consider a modest buff to boss survivability and improved abilities as follows:
Andariel
Level in Hell difficulty increased to 85
Increase projectile speed of Poison Spray
Increase damage of Poison Sting (since it is blockable)
Duriel
Loot table changed to be same as Baal
Will now use Charge attack once again, but movement speed will be slower
Fix issue so character no longer gets attacked during loading screen
Mephisto
Will now cast cold/lightning spells more often and physically attack less often
Flying and not impeded by obstacles. With this change, ensure loot will be dropped to nearest platform area
Diablo
Significantly increase damage of Cold Touch, a melee attack that chills player
Will now cast Bone Prison more often on players trapping victims, but HP of Bone Prison will be nerfed to compensate
Fix diablo on nightmare and hell difficulty red lightning hose not inflicting damage to characters in melee range
Increase his Magic Resistance in Hell difficulty from 0% to 33%. His Magic Resistance in Normal and Nightmare difficulty will remain at 0%
Baal
He is now immune to slow effects (e.g. Decrepify, Holy Freeze, Slows Target, etc.)
Will now cast Festering Appendages and Hoarfrost more often
Clone will not despawn when player goes to town and not distinguishable by “Demon label" being offset
Increase his Magic Resistance in Hell difficulty from 0% to 50%. His Magic Resistance in Normal and Nightmare difficulty will remain at 0%
It’s D2, there aren’t any “engaging battles”. The combat systems aren’t that deep, and it’s one of the game’s strengths. Dragging out act boss kill times will mean that people stop killing them. Sorry that your character in near perfect gear is stomping the game, but you don’t need to go around adding health to things that will also affect everyone else playing the game.
Instead of making Andy tankier, I’d make her single poison missile do a little more damage since it is blockable.
Everything else is justified. Mephisto shouldn’t turn into a walking corpse just because you are in melee range. He should also be able to fly over the river because the moat trick takes away from this games integrity.
I already know the majority of the communitys response to this topic would be negative . But if the devs made a confident design decision for once, in the end the game would be a little more interesting for that ladder season.
From an end game SC perspective sure, congrats you’ve geared a character strong enough to stomp in PvM, make another char or PvP at that point… But from a starting off a new ladder season on HC, naw, their difficulty is pretty appropriate…
If you increase act boss kill times, they’ll be farmed less or possibly not at all. That’s the game you’re dealing with in D2 because clear speed may as well be a core mechanic.
I agree with the point of your thread, but as Guitars pointed out, you are looking at this through end game gear lens.
Instead, make them scale with level, increase in difficulty as you progress and add alot of what you said into the mix. Could be added to the TZ as well.
I agree that both sides of the coin need to be considered. The games longevity comes from the loot grind so they can’t be long drawn out battles, and the player shouldn’t feel frustrated. Though most of the suggestions here are healthy ones in my opinion.
This isn’t really related to this topic, but this is one of the most beautiful boss fights in the game.
Here Uber Baal acts like a true boss. He uses a balance of melee and spells. He teleports up to your face and applies pressure. He casts firewall. He deploys his minions.
No other boss in the game behaves in this way. This is a great boss fight. I’d even imagine this is better than anything we’ll see in Diablo 4.
If I were the devs I would put Uber Baal that spawns randomly in Terror Zones. This would be an exciting boss to unleash on 8 player in TZ.
While that’s more engaging than tossing blizzard on Meph from across the lava moat, it’s not terribly deep, and that’s because this is D2. I play similarly on any of the act bosses to kill them quickly and save myself 50k on my overpaid merc. Maybe you could call the potion chugging a deeper gameplay element. Throw any smiter in there with life tap, and they slap uber baal until he dies. Same with a WW barb. That fight is really only demanding for casters, and specifically sorc builds.
Here’s a Smiter vs Rathma on PD2, which is an excellent boss fight as well.
I’m not saying the loot slot machine bosses need to behave in this way (they shouldn’t). I’m just pointing out that more engaging/balanced fights are possible in this game if the devs truly cared about it.
I already know the die hard D2 players will reject these kind of boss fights. But PD2 proved how much hype is generated around these kinds of fights from both the players and the spectators.
It reminds of doing any D2 boss while undergeared/weaker. That’s not to say that these ideas are bad. When applied to the game that D2 is, it’s like forcing a square peg through the circle hole. There’s only so much available to “engage” the player in the combat.
Aside from bug fixing, I don’t think any changes to the regular act boss difficulty is needed. The experience should be the same for new players as it was for all of the old veterans when they were new. We all started somewhere. And most of us had the “Duriel experience”.
As a veteran, I understand the desire for an increased challenge. I think it’d be great to have a 4th difficulty added, specially designed to make it a royal pain in the donkey to progress solo with a fully kitted character, but more manageable with a good team of players.
There’s also Terror Zones… Sorry, but they don’t really induce any “terror” IMO. I think it’d be great to have an “uber miniboss” that has a 1/8 chance to spawn once ~80% of the monsters in the TZ are cleared. This “uber miniboss” would be significantly stronger than the standard act bosses with a decent amount of health regen, a larger health pool and more damage. They wouldn’t drop anything, but would provide a worthwhile experience bonus when killed.
I’m fine with it, but the real issue you somewhat face is that most of the act bosses aren’t worth farming after a certain point. A random unique pack in the Pit has a better drop table than Diablo.
Agreed, that’s why I suggested to improve Duriel’s loot table to be the same as Baal’s as he is underwhelming for farming. If there are other bosses that are in a similar situation, their loot table could also be improved.
If you were to do this for all bosses (not against it) you’d need to give them a special loot table that not only can drop every item, but gets rid of trash drops from their loot tables, otherwise nobody would ever farm act bosses. When you can pop a unique mob in the pit and get any item in the game, when you can kill any monster in a TZ after a certain level and get any item in the game, then if you were to make act bosses harder they’d have to have some advantage and they simply don’t have that. Diablo + Baal + Nih used to have an advantage in XP, but now with TZ that doesn’t matter. With what you propose it simply wouldn’t be useful ever killing an act boss.
Is static field reduced when in a party? I just think its lame whenever a sorc is able to immediately reduce a bosses HP less than 50%. It always makes party boss fights way too easy. I believe crushing blow is affected by how many people are in the game right? Why the hell wouldn’t static field work that way?
Also I can’t believe Lightning hose in melee range hasn’t been fixed. It makes Uber Diablo look like a joke.
CharlesJT is so high in hopium, come on every season playing dev lol. Anyway s4 is DOA since it’s coming with d4, might want to change title to season 5.
If you want a challenge from this game, play a naked martial arts assassin on hardcore. Bosses are big pinatas that drop loot, once you are well geared. This game is about pulling the slot machine lever, not tactical challenge.
The skill involved is how fast you can clear your routes.