This question or discussion is pointed more toward ARPG vets, not the casual couch d4 player. More toward POE vets, last epoch vets maybe, D2 vets, etc.
Heres the question:
Where does the launch/current version of lillith (before the upcoming wave changes) rank for you? Including the odd hit boxes, unforgiving one shots, etc… in all honesty, where does she rank?
Its a subjective question, I know. Some people find memorizing wave patterns difficult. Some have faster reflexes than others for certain mechanics. Some people find memory games (Maven, Lost Ark memory mechanics in raids) to be difficult (like a certain streamer haha).
So to each of you vets… where would you say the launch version of lillith lands in terms of other ARPG pinnacle bosses. Compared to the likes of maven, uber elder, shaper, sirius, launch version Diablo in d3, anything in last epoch, etc… I wouldnt compare to Lost Ark raid bosses because thats an MMO, although those mechanics are amazing.
Just a genuine question. Not looking to add fire to the great ARPG wars.
For me personally, shes top 3 in difficulty possibly #1. I didnt spend nearly as much time on any boss in POE, D3, Last Epoch as I did on uber lillith. Maven, uber elder, sirus, etc… a couple of attempts and you learn. Lillith took much more than that.
For me it’s 3/10 because sometimes you can get unlucky with movement during skull phase. Rest D4 bosses are like 1/10 and they are no different than fighting training dummy.
Depends on the class you use to fight her. The wave was easy for the sorcerer with flame shield, it should be hard for the rogue which only has dash and evade.
The second phase skulls also class dependent, if you play Barb you can tank it with Grandfather and doom bringer, is moderate difficult for Sorcerer and should be very hard for necro which does not have many mobility skill.
Oneshot mechanics do not belong in a Diablo game. This have to be entirely removed.
3 Likes
It reminded me of 2 things: Castlevania (where mistakes were heavily punished) and Maven when it was first launched in poe.
D2 Ubers were a joke compared to Uber Lilith.
D3 was too easy or too hard or intentionally impossible throughout it’s history.
In a game meant for casuals, one-shots were on a totally opposite end.
I couldn’t learn the waves, but I’ve always been bad with reflexes, so never beat any Dark Souls game either.
I never beat her pre-changes.
The wave mechanic is such an atypical mechanic when it comes to Blizzard titles. I don’t play a lot of other games, but I can’t remember a mechanic in another game (or in Diablo) that felt even remotely the same. Whoever designed it is literally a genius because it feels so incredibly unnatural with regards to gaming.
I didn’t even bother getting used to the fight, I just did the other seasonal objectives.
It depends which iteration of Uber Lilith we’re talking about. The pre-season version when you likely had to execute all the things properly on the boss? Oof… She was mean. The S1-S3 version where all or most stuff was routinely being skipped? Eh, that ranges from Barb 1 shot world boss to moderate difficulty. The S4 PTR version felt like it was gutted.
All that said, I’ve never liked Uber Lilith. Primarily because it always felt more like a platformer mini-game masquerading as a boss. The crux for 99.9% of it involves very little engagement with Lilith herself. She’s just kind of present for part of it. When she isn’t off exploring the clouds. It’s more about dealing with stuff appearing in the arena.
Toss in an over-reliance on twitch style pseudo one-shots in an online only Diablo game (one shots = fine… these type of one shots, not so much), too many HP thresholds prompting or unlocking boss behavior, forced claustrophobia, bugs over it’s life-time, some other stuff and… yeah. Sorry, not a fan.
It’s also almost entirely a mechanical obstacle. In the pre-season form anyway. DPS requirements were more important for shortening the encounter past the three platform destructions. The moment when she starts pulling out more exotic toys and real estate is quite limited. It was arguably a sorta kinda soft-enrage.
Personally, I’d prefer it if these pinnacle challenges hit a better middle ground between mechanical and numbers based obstacles. A bit of both in the mix. A state where both builds and players get stress tested. Yet, not too much of one or the other.
1 Like
The biggest problem with Lilith in my book is that she was designed in a way that renders potions useless for the vast majority of classes and builds. In ARPGs one of the express purposes why you get gear is to NOT get one-shot by late game content but here comes Lilith and all of a sudden it becomes nothing but a dexterity war of attrition for everybody. If a boss drops a dozen potions but I can’t use any of them (or the ones I started with) because most of a boss’s attacks are an instant death, you’ve robbed me of one of the most fundamental mechanics in the game.
I don’t think there should be any enemy abilities that kill you outright through all your defenses unless they’re highly telegraphed “dummy catchers”. Not moving quickly enough to outrun a flaming skull, having Lilith drop a circle right on top of you that you can’t always run quickly enough from to avoid, or having a spike wave that you have to intentionally evade through early for the evade to work at all, is just not great design, not to mention the earlier iterations where the whole encounter felt like a red platform with red attacks that made visibility awful.
In some games and in some contexts it makes sense, but when you realize that most of the people who have ever beaten Lilith did it by running the highest damage builds possible to essentially skip phase 1, and then dying repeatedly in phase 2 until luck was on their side, it really loses its luster. I beat her but hated the whole darn fight and can’t wait to see her beaten more easily when you can actually avoid being one-shot repeatedly despite a maxed out endgame character. 
2 Likes
it’s the fact that it’s so much different than anything else in the game… like trying to hit a 80mph curveball after a 95mph fastball
I enjoyed the fight in S0/S1 when you had to learn her mechanics and min/max your gear to beat her without a bugged or broken build.