For the longest time, going back to the old days, I found that I really enjoyed Worldstone Keep but absolutely hated the Baal fight itself. Couldn’t quite put it into words. but now that I’ve had time to fight Baal solo in D2R with multiple classes, I think I’ve finally figured it out.
There’s nothing in this fight that actually challenges the player in any way. Literally all of his abilities, without exception, seem to be there for the sole purpose of frustrating the player and prolonging the fight - a fight that’s already too long since he has way more health than he needs.
With Mephisto and Diablo you get the sense that they’re at least trying to win the fight. Hell, even Andariel can occasionally be scary depending on who else is in the room with her. But with Baal it seems like the goal is to just cause the maximum of annoyance without really testing the player in any meaningful way.
I will say this about Baal - it’s at least true to his character as established in the cinematic. Ie, being a massive troll. But I can’t say I’m too impressed as far as boss fight mechanics go. If the goal is to prolong the fight, I always thought a more engaging way was to give the boss some dangerous attacks that force the player to take evasive action, as opposed to literally having the boss keep trying to run away mid-fight. I mean, I can see how that could be a funny gimmick for a mid-game boss, but not for the final boss of the game.
Getting to the Hell Baal Throne room, all waves then Baal Kill can be tough.
There are so many varying monster types in the throne room.
Once fully geared it’s manageable solo.
Try it HC and tell me about how easy it is!
I love the throne room. But that’s kind of my point. The waves and even some of the random enemies can be dangerous even to geared characters. Baal is only dangerous if you’re deliberately going after him under-geared.
I’ve never played PD2, but their Season 4 boss seems to put most D2 bosses to shame.
(time stamp 12:50)
Apparently killing Rathma is a big deal in this game. It even displays a message to the entire server that the player was able to solo him. The work these modders have done on PD2 is very impressive and I think Blizzard should consider collaborating with them.
I’d like to hear veteran player opinions on this topic. What do you think of Rathma compared to Ubers or other bosses?
I mean, you know Baal is a clown, right? Just look at him, especially in the original cinematic, and listen to his laugh. So of course he’s gonna act like a clown. Meanwhile Diablo is like Arnold Schwarzenegger on steroids, and he plays the part by being super buffa nd terrifying, even charging the player on all fours, and slapping them. And of course Mephisto is boney cast spells boi all brittle and frail, that’s why he sucks so much and gets farmed maybe more than anything else in the game besides Pindle.
Just watched that, that was intense. Maybe a bit too intense for D2 (you’ve probably got to be a different kind of gamer to be into that), but it does stand out as what I think is a well-designed boss fight: it’s something that isn’t just fun to play but kinda fun to watch as well.
I have yet to give PD2 a proper go - I think I’ll finally go for it when it’s time to take a break from D2R.
Yeah I think we still have to take MF into consideration for the regular boss fights, so they can’t all be as ridiculously hard as this. But a few could still use some minor buffs.
For example I think Diablo could bone prison more often from any range to make the fight a little more engaging (as seen in the Rathma video).
Agreed, I think there’s definitely room for end game content with boss fights that are mechanically demanding rather than relying on getting full build with life tap. It would be fun to watch people do these kinds of boss fights on Twitch, especially on hardcore.
intense ? looked like a complete joke to beat that modded boss
as for baal being long…come tell me that when he take 2 hours of non-stop fighting to beat while dealing with “dont stand in the fire” mechanics which he has none
Actually one of the few changes I’d could 100% get behind.
In general I’m all for anything that makes d2 harder. I love the game but after 20+ years it does start feeling far too easy. Baal is fairly easily solo’d by every build by level 60. The hardest part of Baal is Souls spawns on the way honestly. Even Ubers are just a Life Tap charge or Dracs, a Grief, a Treachery, and a G-face from death.
I’ve been saying for years now that I wish they’d add a 4th difficulty. Heck call it “Diablo” difficulty. Significantly harder than Hell, areas start at level 85 and scale up. All Uniques/Super Uniques/Bosses get additional abilities. Would be a pretty sweet end game. No endlessly scaling crap like D3 though… no new loot. Just a harder playground with more areas to xp in.
I don’t think a new difficulty would solve the problem if it’s only done like norm/nm/hell.
I think designed bosses you can spawn to challenge yourself like we have seen in PD2 would add more to the endgame. But people would want to have item rewards for it, so we would have more power creep, which is a bad thing. I don’t think a leaderboard on those would be enough.
Thing is I didn’t like PD2 or PoD. I particularly hated the mapping system. For me it was too much a departure from D2, and moving into D3 territory. I greatly disliked D3.
I’d much rather see something consistent with the rest of the game. Which an added difficultly would provide. New items wouldn’t needed, and I don’t think the argument that “people would demand new items” holds much water. People are going to complain no matter if something is changed or not. Also having areas scale from 85 upwards would already expand the places you could farm for the iLvl 87 and above stuff, and the really good small charms. I think “most” people would be happy with something else to do post hell though.
I mean I’d take maps over nothing, but I’d much prefer the added difficulty. Perhaps if the maps were more interesting it could be okay. Heck I’d even be fine if the XP stayed the same. I just want some harder content to test builds against. The closest we have to that currently is single player and /players but that’s not really a solution for Online play.
I understand, maybe just add those bosses to the end of a5 dungeons and increase base monster level to 88 in there. It wouldn’t need an extra difficulty and might still open new farming spots for unused content.
But I guess we are getting already into Mod content. I’d like the base game to stay the same with optional features that don’t make current content irrelevant.
Honestly another thought would be seasonal content. New content that rolls through each ladder season. Nothing huge or requiring lots of dev time. Just an extra area or two, and a boss or something.
I mean currently I don’t even have plans of playing ladder. Don’t feel that it’s worth deleting alts and mules for frankly. Without more character slots I’d much rather just collect 99’s and runes. They’d have to add at least 5 slots per season for me to much care. There is a reason I had a notebook to keep track of account names for D2, and I’m not about to pay $40 a year to keep playing ladder.
I think my biggest disappointment with Diablo 2/3 was that Diablo, the title villain, was no longer the end boss/big baddie.
And, by all appearances, I’m going to be disappointed that to fight Diablo in Diablo 4, I’m probably going to have to buy an expansion. Because heaven forbid they release a full game at once, instead of in 2-3 equally expensive parts.
