Aberroth Fight Feedback

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Just wanted to share my opinion on the Aberroth fight as this is the first pinnacle boss and probably the standard for the next upcoming bosses. I really did not like this boss fight and wanted to share my feedback:

  1. DoT: This boss has 10 different DoT (Fire Dot, Cold Dot, auto Void beams, Horizontal void flame ground, projectile circular void ground, phys/void Dot Vortex, phys/void Dot slam after the vortex, two different Void beam attacks in the last phase and the Void DoT that reduces the arena in the last phase). DoT is already overtuned but the sheer amount in this fight is ridiculous(May as well rename him AbeDoT).
    Maybe this is just my opinion but DoT ground is lame and its pretty sad that every boss fight gets some.

  2. Hitboxes: they are wonky, I am pretty sure the horizontal Void ground from his slam attack starts damaging the player before the slam has even happened. When he does the backward leap at the corner of the map, it is very weird(he snaps to another location). His triple Flail slam can hit multiple times if you are in melee range despite the ground indicators showing they are three separate areas.

  3. Return of Boss DR: He clearly has Damage reduction during the phase transitions (when the timeline is changing) but he also has Ward thresholds tooā€¦ I like the change from Boss DR to Ward but having both seems unfair (even though there are still builds that can instaphase him). Also during these phase transitions all DoTs and lingering effects are still there damaging the player while your attacks are wasted cos DR.

  4. Visual clarity: Despite the individual attacks having decent clarity, the fight is a clusterfuck of DoT effects and flashy attacks cluttering the screen and covering each other making it a mess and impossible to see. Very easy to move over a DoT you can tank only to find there is another below it which kills you.

  5. Placement and Mobility: I canā€™t think of a proper way to say this but the movement of the boss is very wonky. He can sit on a bunch of overlapping DoT effects and spam his other attacks at you while you cannot approach him. There isnā€™t really a good way of making him move to a better location by targeting you. Most of his attacks have really high range or are autotracking DoTs so even if you run all the way to the other corner of the battlefield, he does not follow you and simply offscreens you. An example of how this can be unfair is in the final phase where he can stand in a the corner of the arena and fire the beam fully covering the safe zone (which may also be covered by other DoTs). Since most of the attacks/DoTs track the player, this fight is really bad for any build that has to stand still for more than 2 seconds and even worse for melee as thereā€™s no consistent way to make the boss move (meanwhile his charge attack can easily push you into a DoT).

  6. Performance: Dozens of DoT effects and flashy attacks = RIP performance.

  7. Build-up and Atmosphere: This is mixed on one part you do have a decent storyline with the forgotten knight and a hunt for multiple harbingers to reach this boss. But idk it feels flat to me, the story seems more like just exposition as after each generic harbinger kill you just get told about the story progression rather than seeing what happens. You definitely drop Harbinger eyes before killing all 10 harbingers so that just feels like a chore.
    And then thereā€™s the final fight with the big bad, well first you have to complete a boring double harbinger gank with some support from Forgotten knight (finally she helps with the harbinger hunt) Aaand leaves you alone for the final boss(would actually be interesting if she helped out here maybe nullifying the DoT ground with consecrated ground?). He monologues a bit and fights you, the timeline shifting is actually pretty cool. But after the sloppy bossfight, How do you get to kill him tho? Well thatā€™s the neat part, YOU donā€™t. His horse gets tired of the fight, throws him off, kills him and returns to Orobyss. This really lost me, could have made it much more impactful like having the sister finish him to end his suffering or him dying in an explosion of rage while the sister protects you IDK this just felt weak.

Anyway, this is just my thoughts and opinions on the boss fight which feels like the lowest point of the update for me(Even though there are others who seem to enjoy the boss). All my dropped Harbingerā€™s Eyes will go to my highest DPS char to instaphase the fight for the juicy drops. I do not see any point in trying this fight on other chars as it seems a waste of keys which are scarce as it is.

2

This never happened to me. The only thing is, that the actual ground slam before the Void Ground DoT spawns has a wider hitbox than the Void Ground itself. But that is not a problem I think

The boss has 2-3 seconds of phase transitions with dialogs, which essentially is ā€œfree dps alreadyā€. Without that massive DR the boss would be a lot easier and faster to defeat and especially glasscannon builds would delete the boss even easier.

Also the phase transitions which give the boss DR are not lining up with the ward threshold all of the time, which I think is very much intended.

Ward Threshold Points are not necessarily Phase Changes.

Can you eloborate on that? I never had this issue. A lot of the DoT and ground effects are controlable by the player, where they land. So if you layer too much on on place this might become an issue, but generally I think the fight is very clear and clean.

The boss will always run towards you or chage you when you are far enough away. Sometimes thsi gets interupted by him casting other abilities, but he will do soe immediately after he finishes them.

The boss standing in ground effects on in areas that are denied by other mechanics is 99% fault of the player. You are in full control where the boss goes and where the majority of ground effects go that deny a lot of sapce.
Void Pools can be avoided and even if you mess up can be cleansed by the fire.
Fire can be put whereever the player wants.
Lasers are 100% in control of the player.

That is interesting, I never had performance issues in this fight. Did you do a ingame bug report with logs?

She does not leave you alone. Did you follow the dialoge? You are both trying to face him and he throws 2 of his harbigners at you. Then he spawns 4 harbingers to leave for Orentia and teleports YOU out of the arena to HIM.

3

Always happens and confirmed by the death screen it is the ground effect.

Its not really ā€˜free dpsā€™ your damage is heavily nerfed by the DR meanwhile you still have to dodge DoT and lingering attacks such as the cold balls. Its just an annoying waste of time, and is the only time I have felt cheated by the ward threshold change. Removing it would help glass cannons(which donā€™t have much of a problem with it anyway IMO) but keeping it makes the fight a drag for slower builds.
Or they could make it so phase change removes all DoT and lingering skill effects which would still be fair.

Nope he can simply start the fireballs/necro slashes even if you move offscreen. There is no consistent way to make the boss move.

From my perspective, she doesnā€™t do anything throughout the hunt except give you story exposition after every kill. Then she switches to Paladin and follows you for the final fight. During the Harbinger duo she spams a heal every two seconds and has pretty much no other impact on the fight, doing no damage and bad at drawing aggro. Then she comes after the final boss is dead and tells you good job :+1: Just feels REALLY wasted to me.

4

What I meant with ā€œfree dpsā€ is, that without that DR you would have free dps. Withenough damage already skippign half of the phase whiel he does the transition.

I really like the thematic transitiosn with voice lines and giving the boss DR durign that dialoge is totally fair in my opinion.

Fighting the boss in ground effects before was already a mistake by the player, so that should get punished by denying you room for damage the boss. But the hitbox of the boss is pretty big, so you need to do a lot of mistakes to entirely deny yourself beign able to damage the boss.

As I said, sometimes he does other abilities in his regular sequence yes, but between that the boss does consitently and very reliably moves towards you. I really donā€™t know what else to say.

5

Personally, I think being immune would be more fair and more consistent with their DR removal stance.

6

But they didnā€™t remove DR because they feel ā€œDR is badā€. It was just not clearly communicated in game and casued several other compounding issues.

DR during a 2-3 second pahse where the boss does nothing is not even remotely comparable.

I wouldnā€™t mind but damage immunity would make it really punishing if you just want to fill up your health with leech

7

I think eyebinger eye has too low drop rate chance

3 Likes
8

The DoT effects are pretty big too most of them pretty much cover the boss. Itā€™s alright if the fight had 1 DoT effect every 3-5 seconds but the fight has 3-5 DoT effects every second. Especially with the last phase clusterfuck.

9

Its because its the easiest way to communicate to players ā€œdont stand hereā€ and generally isnt an instant kill, yes dot mitigation sucks ass without really good gear, and you generally die in 2-3 ticks. but never in one, letting you go ā€œoh shit that hurtā€ and get the fuck out of the DoT.

The DoTs serve as arena denials that force you to fight in smaller spaces. That being said, I did do this boss with 0 dot mitigation and like 5k ehp. Now my build had really good damage uptime and let me kite(im a dirty minion player)

BUT like stated a lot of the DoTs only exist if you missplace them or get hit. The big void spheres make a void puddle if they hit you, if you dont get hit, you dont get any DoTs.

I think this boss simply is like most ā€œpinnacleā€ content in this genre which is, there is no real way to face tank it, you are expected to dodge most of the mechanics.

I agree 100% here, everyone else is coping. HC players have already talked about it plenty. I dont think its such a bad problem since 99% of players in this game play SC, and HC is a very small minority these days. But it does feel like you need to dodge way before he actually starts bringing his mace down. Because trying to time it well is just going to lead to you getting clipped because some of his attacks the hit registers before his mace hits the ground. and with extremely small barely visable hit notifiers, like his slam into the void dot, ive watched videos frame by frame where they take the hit before the mace makes contact with the ground, and are not in the direct VERY visable hit aoe. BUT there is VERY faint little transparent like best way to describe it is shockwave, that does count as a hitbox. I wouldnt have even known that effect was there if I didnt watch these frame by frame reviews.

I do think the fight is mostly fair, but if we are splitting hairs, then for sure hitboxes dont line up, but thats okay since most people are going to overgear/prep for this fight or they are SC and are just gonna try and no hit it with their SC hp values.

10

Are we playing the same fight?
3-5 DoT effects every second? Ɣ,Ć³
What exactly do you considered a DoT effect?

There are the void beams from the central orb, which spawn where you put them over the course of the fight (the longer the fight takes for you the more important is the placement of these). But if you do it correctly you can essentially ignore them for the most part in the last phase, if you put them at the opposite side of the arena.

The Void Sphere that come across the arena come in burst intervals, but those are usually 3-4 in shot succession. And if you kept yourself enough space with the other mechanics you ahve enough space dodging them.

Fire DoT is not happening in the very last phase. If you have void dot grounds in the second last phase you can stall the phase transition and cleanse them with the fire before moving into the last phase.

Summary: The last phase is not a cluterfuck. It only is, if you didnā€™t handle mechancis properly in the previous phases, like putting void beams everywhere or leaving a lot of void dot grounds in the middle part of the arena.

11

There are more upto 6 beams firing at the same time in the last phase. Sure, you can put them in the opposite side but when he goes for the slam the only free space is this opposite side with the beamsā€¦

The Vortex and Slam are a Phys/Void Damage over time.

He can also still do the Stomp+Horizontal void flame ground this degen always gets covered by the vortex and slam AoE and is pretty hard to see if its covered by the multiple beams or purple lines of the triple slam.

Both his Beam skills are also damage over time which your not supposed to stand in. If he is standing on the outside edge he can cover pretty much the entire shortened arena with his first triangle beam depending on angle.

Finally the void area which reduces the arena in the last phase is also a Damage over time (If they wanna reduce the arena just directly reduce why put a kill zone DoT?).

The last phase is a shitshow IMO and Iā€™m pretty tired of arguing about this trash fight. Maybe its just not for me, I was certainly dissapointed with it and just made my feedback on the parts I donā€™t like.

12

The number of the beams depends on your dps in previous phases. Even with 20+ beams you can have a lot of space.

I repeat myself, you are in full control where these go. Theoretically you can all stack them on top of each otehr and let them deny very very little space.

Pratically this is not possible, but you can put the very close to where you would like them. Depending on where you want to fight the boss in the last phase, put them somewhere, where they donā€™t distrub you much.

With vortex you mean the edge of the arena that shrinks and closes in? (Since you speak about that later I guess not)
You mean the Void Vortex Ground Effects? Those spawn from touching the void spheres that fly across the arena, so they are very avoidable.

The slam is suppsoed to be a lethal mechanic, it doesnā€™t mater what damage it does, if you get caught you should be dead.

I agree that this overlap sometimes can be unfortunate, but you agai nahve full control over where the slam goes. You can always fight the boss in a way that the slam would create a groudn effects that goes towards teh outside/edge of the arena and not denying a lot of space for you.

You can control where the boss is, and both of these abilities will always aim at you. So by controlling where the boss stands and where you stand you can control how much space these abilities will take up of the available free space.

Why though? not making a ā€œhard wallā€ but rather a ā€œklling you zoneā€ makes this way less punishing. Doing a mistake for any of the mechanics and having a short moment to fall back into this zone gives you a lot mroe margin for error, because it will not instantly kill you.

I understand all of your critique and its great to give feedback. But with how severe your feedback is and with me strongly disagreeing with some of the points you made, I have the feeling you simply donā€™t understand some of the mechanics or have not practiced enough.

I absolutely love the last phase and actually think it should last a bit longer. Most builds that have decent Kill Threshold finish this phase way too quick.

It is the apex of the fight in terms of margin for error and how itense it is and I love it.
Every time when I died, it was clearly my fautl and I could have done it better.

Question: Have you have looked at the fight, how other people doing it? Just to get a frame of reference? Maybe you are doing or handlign certain things totally different and it didnā€™t occur to you how you could improve your handling of certain abilities?

13

Iā€™ve tried the fight with multiple DoT mitigation sources as well, tanking the DoTs can be done but too many of them overlap. Its fine for builds that are constantly moving such as Minion builds but this just disincentivizes playing builds that require standing still/ melee.
I mean why would you ever do this fight as for example a Disintegrate Runemaster where by the time you channel to your max tier 2-3 different DoTs have already fallen where you stand.
A tanky melee char with 17% Oracle amulet DR, 15% Titan heart DR, 5K armor (50% to DoT), 15 % nearby DR would still have to run back and forth placing DoTs.

Maybe so, I just think its lame. If this is pinnacle content, maybe its not for me.

14

As someone who does these fights once a season, and thats my fill, thats probably it. They are tiresome to do more then once. When I beat it I do feel good and accomplished, but id never chain farm bosses like this. That would require me to way overgear, or just play out of my mind all the time.

I more of a chill gamer whos favorite part is the ā€œbrainless monosā€ everyone else seems to hate haha.

2 Likes
15

I was a bit unsure about this but instead of calling out immediately I went back and checked it out, he definitely still does Fire DoT in the last phase. If you want proof that we are talking about the same fights here is a pretty good video by Dr3ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvne0p7khFM you can see at 20:06 mark. The cold DoT also still happens and you can see it at the 18:38 mark.

I am talking about the Vortex that covers the screen before the Slam. It obscures all the other DoT effects and even the beams.

I think this is just bad design and I do not like the visual clarity and clutter in this fight.

Well for one a hard wall means thereā€™s no chance the boss can backflip into the ā€˜killing you zoneā€™ which does no damage to him and is real fun for melee/melee range builds.

I have done the final fight multiple times(despite Harbinger Eyes being a pain to farm). Iā€™ve tried it on 6 different characters including melee, ranged, minion builds(3 of whom have killed the boss) and with different defenses/offenses. I have also seen other kill videos as well such as the Dr3ad video which I linked above(IMO the best showcase Iā€™ve seen so far).

In my experience(across the 6 characters), Damage and mobility is the way to go for this fight. Sacrificing damage for defense is a waste since prolonging the battle just means more DoTs spawning and overlapping and a more messy fight especially in the last phase as you said(or well the opposite) kill threshold is really important to have. The 3 characters that killed him have significantly worse defenses than the ones that werenā€™t able to(and much better damage/mobility). I will probably ignore this fight on my other characters unless they have some ridiculous damage to instaphase him.

And I have the feeling you seem to be blindly fangirling and defending this boss fightā€™s flaws and rejecting any critique with ā€˜a lack of understanding mechanics and practiceā€™.

Dude, its great you enjoy the fight. Some people enjoy playing through Dark souls at SL 1 with a basic club, Many donā€™t. Iā€™ve just given my honest feedback on this bossfight since I dislike it and sincerely hope other bosses will not be like this. Maybe severe, but it is what it is.

16

I kinda agree with this. I can ā€˜readā€™ all phases and bring Abberoth HP down to 25% pretty reliably. But the last phase is smth that makes me puzzled. Iā€™ve tried it several times and still donā€™t know exactly what to do. It is poorly telegraphed mess of void beams ,lasers, DoT grounds etc. I just donā€™t know where 's the safe place is to stand on. ANd most often iā€™m killed by his Big Laser wide beam. Canā€™t get out of it fast enough. Even a tiny edge of the beam insta kills me.

1 Like
17

Not supporting or clicking any links from Dr3ad, but yeah that was my mistake, confused it with a previous iteration of the fight.

But it still doesnā€™t does 3-5 DoT effects every second.

I can see what you mean, but I personally never had issues with this.
Before or when this happens you should know where these effects are and should instantly go into the save zone.

I never had the boss jump so far out, that I canvt reach the boss anymore. Also this is in your control, where you fight the boss and how you position yourself relative to the boss.

I am not fangirling nor am I rejecting any of your feedback.
I just have a vastly different experience with this fight.

I especially disagree with rejecting feedback with ā€œa lack of understanding mechanics and practiceā€. Some of the things like the boss jumping out of range or not being able to attack the boss because of ground effects are 100% in control of the player.
You could argue that some the mechanics might not be as beginner friendly or clear from the getfo, but this is pinnacle boss content and not tutorial boss fight.

That comparison doesnā€™t really fit though. Because that is a self inflicted challenge, not one put onto you by the game.

I can see some of your points, even though I disagree with most of them.