Lair bosses are just not enjoyable to fight. The echo of Belial that spawns is able to be one-shot, but lair bosses are not. They forcibly do 3 stages, at least the bosses that drop good items. zir and grig are the only bosses worth running because you can 1 shot them and dont have to waste time watching what is essentially a cutscene in the middle of your boss fight.
The wolf boss is a perfect example of TERRIBLE design. What the actual eff are you thinking blizzard??? That fight is WORSE THAN ANDARIEL absolutely mald-inducing. Have a full team on t3, can 1 shot each stage, health gets locked and you’re forced to play around a terribly designed mechanic of launching Ezreal R’s at these portals where the wolf can come (without an indicator) and just 1 shot your entire team. Solo is even worse because you have to fire the ezreal R’s 1 by 1 cant just take out the portals fast.
I appreciate blizz trying to make the bosses more interesting/entertaining but this is just not the way to do it. I wouldnt care if they even gave bosses more HP to extend the fights and actually show their mechanics. But even that isn’t the proper fix to the issue. Not a single ARPG in existence designed in the way D4 has chosen for these new bosses. Even duriel sucks now.
Make your seasonal theme revolve ENTIRELY around spamming bosses and in the same breath make bosses absolutely MISERABLE to do. Comedy.
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Well maybe in Season of the Bosses reborn
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You’ve definitely touched on a topic that I think will be a much bigger pain for players than boring seasonal activity.
I’ve been annoyed by Andariel for a long time, who simply can’t be one-shotted because she has to hide. She was the only boss with a forced mechanic that she has to do regardless of how much life she has (well, maybe apart from Lilith, who has to produce those damn bubbles in the second phase and has to cut the room even when she has 1 hp left), and now it’s even worse.
Currently, in season 8, even Lilith has forced stages in her first phase, and so much so that if you take “too much” of her hp, it still goes back to where the game says it “should be”.
And the fact that they’ve brought back the mechanic where the boss can shoot the player down with a hit is just stupid.
Lilith had such a mechanic in both phases for the first seasons, but back then it even made sense. Not only because she was a challenge, but because just like she could one-shot the player, the player could hit her only once with good/broken build.
I think they abandoned it in the fourth season (just like they abandoned the “kill Lilith” journal objective shortly after), and now what? We’re bringing it back? And on top of that we’re adding a one-shot mechanic for ALL bosses?
I clear T2 without a problem, I’m getting ready to enter T3 and fighting bosses like Lilith or the aforementioned wolf on TORMENT 1 is literally a torment. I understand bosses should be stronger than dungeon bosses like Tomb Lord, but this is probably going too far.
I think LE handles this well. The bosses get a shield/ward buff at certain thresholds. It slows down the fight just enough to keep them going a few seconds longer.
The drawn out, forced mechanics in d4 boss fights don’t feel good. When you pass a certain power threshold it’s just tap, wait, tap, wait.
The bosses shouldn’t be 1 shot kills, but players shouldn’t be punished with tedious mechanics.
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Agreed, while LE doesn’t hold my attention nearly as long as other ARPGs, they did boss phases right. I don’t think anyone likes invuln phases on bosses. I’d always rather be doing less damage than no damage.
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Kids with ADHD at it again.