Bosses are out of control!

PC General Discussion
21

First D4 play through. Played 2 weeks now. The bosses are not difficult skill wise. But as a flurry shadow clone rogue a T4 boss takes me like10 minutes and I’m not doing that again. I’d just like some legends with the stats I need to drop. The very very few 2 and 3 ancestral drops I get are resists and thorns or other stats that no one wants.
I played like 15 hours today and saw maybe four 2+ star items.
I can’t do much except for farm T3 bosses and pray and that is pretty boring with how few 2 and 3 stars drop.

From what I’ve seen you pretty much have to have the end game gear to play 90% of the non meta builds which is discouraging.

22

When all of the dust settles on season 8 I can honestly say that I did not find it that much more challenging than previous seasons.

That said it took my 19 days to fully gear up and plow through the final season objectives as opposed to the 10 days it usually takes me.

Where did I spend that time? Mostly grinding for gear especially for GA gear which was needed to progress into T4 where in previous seasons you could get away with a few suspect pieces with bad affixes. I spent a lot of time farming bosses trying to get keys to Uber Belial because that is where the drips are to be had this season.

That isn’t to say the other bosses don’t drop the same gear, but Belial has boosted chances plus better quality. The main issue is that his keys are purely on an RNG basis. The devs have done a clever job of shifting the need to collect multiple types of keys to do particular bosses to what amounts to fishing for keys to get back those drops you were missing.

Want to know where all your GA drops went for the lesser bosses? They are locked in Belial’s cache which is an added layer of RNG. You have some control once you have the keys, but getting the keys sometimes is a real pain.

23

If you are pulling one of the bosses with an invul phase
For the 87th time
And not rolling your eyes at your inability to finish the fight
Youre a liar

24

I totally agree with you

25

The 1-shot wonders (Varshan, Grogoire, Zir & Beast) should at least get 3 phases and the use of healthpotions should be deactivated for every bossfight in WT4.

If you want more professional solutions making EVERYONE uberhappy please vote me for president or just leave a comment :honeybee:low :heart:

Aaaand don’t you forget to touch my… :monkey:

1 Like
26

I have better idea to maximize “fun and player interaction metrics”.
Every 1 % HP lost, boss enter invul phase and you have to do mechanics. That way you can “enjoy” it 100 times every time. This way Blizz can slap #soulslike on D4 to attract more people. :100:

2 Likes
27

I skip Urivar, Messenger of hate and Andariel completely.
Too many phases, too many mechanics.
Don’t want to have WoW-like bossfights.
Not when running them 30 times in a row.

1 Like
28

Its really a pity how many unused stacks of Andariel Keys are rotting inside our treasure chests. Everytime i open mine i think: Andariellé Keyz y no Beast or Zir Keyz? :see_no_evil:

Or at least i would directly exchange all my Andariel Keys for Duriel Keys :dragon:

Today i will do some pits (yesterday i wanted to do the same but i immediately fell asleep 3 times) and after that i will do two stacks of Duriel Keys… maybe :sleeping:

29

Urivar can be killed before he enters any phase.

2 Likes
30

17-damage druid says: :disappointed_relieved:

3 Likes
31

His death animation is like that of an old school villain, really cool. In comparison, Andariel’s death animation takes too long and is comparable to the average general section commenter here :grinning:

1 Like
32

Yes. The death animation is awesome. I noticed when i do Urivar the first time and my Bloodwave Necro collectred one bloodorb too less then Urivar quickly goes into the first phase. But when i had the change to collect enough blood orbs before the next fight and i do around 50 billions of damge in the first second then he will die instantly :see_no_evil:

Its mostly the same with Varshan, Zir, Beast and Grigoire. 25- 50 Billion damage and they are gone.

33

S tier builds still one-shot tier 1 Bosses and even Belial. They one-shot tier 2 Bosses between transition phases. There is not much added challenge. It just takes more time because they have to wait and is extremely frustrating for some players. Andariel might still require to cross one-shot mechanisms during the fight unless in a Party of 4. Tier 2 bosses seem to be designed to be efficiently run by a 4-player group.

It is a completely different story when you are doing them solo with a low tier build. You actually have to put on a fight not just wait. You have to deal with all the one-shot mechanism while trying to bring the Boss down to the next transition phase. Even if skilled, when the fight is long you sometimes do mistakes and there is no forgiveness. It is great to have a challenge a couple of times but Bosses are a farming activity, not just for Mythics. You first do them for the mandatory Uniques for you build and considering the reduced drop rates, you have to do them many times.

S8 is definitely not a season for Tier B builds, at least not as a main character. Sure, when you already have great gear, Mythics, levelled Glyphs, Masterworking mats, you can run a B-Tier build and some of them can perform decently in T4. You can probably do a T4 Boss with them at cost a long fight. It can even be satisfying but you don’t do the season with them.

2 Likes
34

Do you consider blizzard sorc a low tier build? I also struggled doing them in t4 at first, geared up and went to t4. Harbringer and Andariel are a challenge no matter what “tier” you are btw. in T4.
The key to surviving for every single class is stacking life and damage reduction.

35

I never played twice the same build and tend to follow guides, at least to help choose the appropriate Paragon Boards for the build. Filling the board is not complicated. I usually choose from Maxroll list.

I have been trying SB this season (Stinger and Crushing Hand). Also made it into T4 but just don’t have the damage to efficiently play there. I don’t have enough DPS for Bosses, even simple NMD Bosses take time to kill.

It is not just about being able to unlock T4. The build has to be able to perform decently. Blizzard Sorc seems to have been downgraded to Tier B on Maxroll. Do you consider the build good enough for T4? Did you manage to complete the season with it?

36

My problem are 2 things (well, a bit more than 2 :P)

1 - Post level 45 the “Increased Health” starts growing too much, especially felt in the Pit runs. It’s fine if elites have a lot of HP (albeit a bit/tad too much), the problem is “regular” mobs with Increased HP… WHY ? :person_shrugging:

2 - Post level 45 the game loses its “soul”… You no longer care if you fight bears or vampires or flies or khazra - they’re all the same… Actually the only difference is Fallen and that difference comes from Fallen Shamans resurecting stuff all the time… I know people don’t want to hear this but - the mobs are too harmless now

3 - Never before have I had runs in the Pit where 4 minutes is NOT ENOUGH to kill the boss… Like, 4 minutes 1v1 vs a Boss that can’t even pierce barrier yet alone HP and still - woh woh woh wooooh with the Timer, like, come on

SO ?, the solution:

1 - Buff monsters back, not damage necessarily but at least give a few of them some CC, make it different to when we fight knights, vampires, bears, e.t.c., make that difference be felt again
2 - Reduce scaling, remove or at least rework “Increased Health” augmentations of individual mobs, try replace with something different and more interesting for a change
3 - Stop scaling at a certain point, say that be at pit 80, add more and more of those augmentations instead
4 - Nerf the heck out of DPS, nothing should do more than 7 figures… It’s gonna be harder to balance unless the “range of operation” becomes within 1 digits of a factor, let strategy take over, not scaling or DPS increase beat it all
5 - Experiment some more, open pit from lvl30 or 35 and rework the Paragon to make it possible to “hide” some weakness of a build, for example Stun duration reduced, or Poison duration reduced, e.t.c.

In other words and TLDR ? - make the game work, not allow the scaling or DPS increases completely take over, let the game, work. Heck, consider even having 2 paragon boards, one with all offensive nodes and one with all defensive ones :thinking:

And then nerf boss HP some more to more comparable numbers, don’t make the game completely worthless and requiring one-shots except boss fights which can take a lot longer

3 Likes
37

I think that was sort of on track to happen before Belial materials became readily available to anyone willing to either pay gold, real money or trade items for them vs. attain them how they are technically supposed to be attained, luck and farming the other bosses.

Then there’s the irony or hypocrisy in and of itself (depending on how you look at it?) that is Belial, who can be defeated quite easily without forced phases and gives the loot from any of the bosses choses in addition to better luck at mythics.

Personally, I enjoy the game currently - but I don’t understand how they work sometimes.

38

It’s darned if they do, darned if they don’t. You have a part of the player base saying that boss one shotting is too easy and makes the game too easy, so they play for a few weeks and then peace out to PoE 2 or LE, then another part saying the forced mechanics are terrible (due to being super busy and unavoidable), so they complain, then another part being OK with how it is.

Personally speaking, I agree with all of it. The issue is that I don’t know they can possibly make everyone happy. Making one camp happy upsets the others (or drives them off after a few weeks).

So my question to or for you would be, what to you suggest, how would you remedy this without making everything a one shot again? How’d you make that camp that likes to puzzle dance or as some people here put it “use a few brain cells to play” happy?

39

Reduce DPS, HP growth, Boss HP growth, cap scaling and make mobs interesting again (I even suggested to start Paragon earlier and have 2 boards, one with Offensive Magic/Rare/Legendary affixes and one with Defensive ones)

In simpler words - make the GAME work, not the scaling and DPS multiplying, the game itself… Make the difference be felt again based on the mob type we fight, right now nothing really matters or feels different, all mobs are the same (except Fallen Shamans with the rapid resurrections)

And keep boss fights within reasonable ranges of HP and duration (2 minutes for strong boss builds, 5 for weaker/waveclear ones)

That super high boss HP and DPS scaling is not a problem to fix, it’s a problem to prevent, always was

And at the end of days the “season journey” requirements can be lowered instead of completely trivializing the game itself for the sake of these questlines overall

1 Like
40

If i’m understanding your post correctly are you saying you want the game to have the players be forced to used all the tools they have instead of just one and mastering it to beyond?

I’ll admit, I been having a hard time understanding what you are suggesting this game should be from all the post you made on the game. I can’t tell if you want a minecraft-like experience (a game for the sake of being a game no real end goal) or a zelda-like one ( where you need to use every item you get at least once to progress).

I think that why you don’t get alot of responses to you suggestion post which is too bad cause you have really nice ideas Vic1ous. it’ll be nice if more people can chime in on them.

1 Like