I think we’re more talking about a road that lets you kill endgame bosses in 2 minutes instead of 5. I will say, I fought Lagon in 0.7.9a, and it was a total slog. It was enough time to go through all the mechanics 50 times over, to the point that it was just frustrating and tedious to rinse and repeat the same movements and abilities over and over again.
Moreover, I think the issue isn’t the time it takes to kill endgame bosses as an objective metric, i.e. number of seconds. I think it’s more about feeling powerful when a boss that used to take you 10 minutes now takes 5. That sense of progress is the desired goal.
Currently, that goal is underserved. Players are being punished because their builds are “too good,” so the game auto-nerfs any build outperforming what the devs intended. That’s the crux of the problem. Not many players like being punished for getting “too good” at a game.
Definitely feels strange going from 2700 hit numbers to 200 hit numbers. Penetration doesn’t seem to make a difference either from what I can tell as it just adapts to that too. Not a fan of this system at all when higher hp solves the same problem.
The temporary damage resistance system for bosses does not agree with me.
The patch says, “much more subtle” , but I feel this is not enough still.
This system reduce motivation for charactor growth (farmining and leveling) for me.
I argue that reactive resists doesn’t even solve the problem of high dps builds - it only punishes the weaker builds that cannot reliably dps while the powerful builds are barely slowed down at all.
The way the system is currently implemented does the exact opposite. When you deal a high amount of damage in a short time window, the boss will get more damage reduction than dealing low-medium damage over the same or longer time window.
I mean that was the initial goal of the mechanic. Devs wanted to avoid that people could kill the boss within a few seconds to make mechanics relevant, while giving lowdps/bad builds no such big disadvantage.
The mechanic is actually working really well for low dps output builds. I tryed to dabble with some pretty deliberate tanky builds that have absurd low amount of dps. Their damage output is low, but consitent.
Damage output for really high dps builds is really inconsistent. To the point where my main damage skill is doing 1/4 to 1/5 of it’s damage after hitting the boss a few seconds.
With the low dps builds my damage numbers didn’t decreases that much over the same amount of time.
It still is causing a SECONDARY ISSUE - namely it is actually making poison more OP. Cut a flat damage build that can kill in one second by 10 times and it kills in 10 seconds instead, but if you cut poison damage by ten for a 1 second kill build it only takes 4 seconds to kill due to 1+2+3+4=10.
As long as adaptive damage reduction remains in game poison will be the best build possible.
Your example presents its own issue - excessive adaptive damage reduction encourages its own form of broken builds, namely ones that only tank and nothing else to the point that boss mechanics do not need to be engaged with. Because if dps is about the same regardless of build then why not just go tank.
Not entirely sure if you know my general position on this subject, I just wanted to offer an opinion on your statement, which is wrong IMO.
Not sure if you have read all my other previous replies on this subject, but just so you know, i am highly against the current implementation of this mechanic.
While underlying goal was noble from the devs, the implementation is just bad. Too much punishment for good character building. Just feel free to read all my previous replies.
I agree with your sentiment that it is bad. My reasons are different though.
I see making enemies excessively tanky in this way as a “Play poison DoT tank or you will lose out” as the longer the battle lasts the more you will play tank and the more effective poison will be.
I should state of course that high damage builds tend to have lower defences, and thus they tend to get one shot by mob packs, they should not be made bad at the one thing they are good at.
Basically the issue I see is that it is encouraging a very specific type of build and punishing all other ones, using the excuse that they want people to engage with boss mechanics - but tanks do not do that either, they just face tank the big aoe.
Often high dps character sacrifices their defense.
In other words, DPS / Defense are relationship of trade-off, and I feel this is natural.
I feel that this boss resistance system occurs unfair penalty for high DPS character.
Because they already sacrificed their defense.
In addition to it, and Intense penalty of DPS are only increase instability in viability in boss battle.
Of course, all bosses can kill easy by getting use to, so this system does not inhibit gaming progress never.
But seeing much penalty damage with my own eyes is not fun, not comfortable.
If this damage penalty can not remove in this game, at…at least, while bosses reinforce their defense, I wish they have great penalty of their offense / attack / cast speed.
In any case, I feel this system is too unilateral.
It’s a bad step to take to make people weaker in an ARPG. There will be power creep and bonkers numbers on the screen at some point… yes. Right now you are punished for beeing “good” at theorycrafting and grinding and that’s bread and butter of a ARPG. Content should get harder and harder without artificial brik walls in your way.
All the system is implementing right now is the uselessness of dmg builds because you are not that much faster vs the guy who builds tank like a maniac and who a lot saver. This system they implemented is like: “If you have LESS protections you TAKE less dmg but if you have a LOT of protections you TAKE more dmg… just because!”. If they want to make things harder enemys should get more powerfull over time without making players intentionaly weaker.
I’ve yet to hear even a single player say they liked the mechanic.
I get that people worked hard on these boss mechanics, but if you want us to engage them at ALL, present them at a point in the game where we aren’t strong enough yet to face tank and/or one shot the boss, don’t cripple everybody into doing fractions of normal damage. If you want us to engage with that boss mechanic repeatedly, level up the bosses (in monoliths) and make them more rewarding, but everything is supposed to be “conquered” at some point, not repeatedly “engaged” in the same manner at level 55 and 100.
When we get all of our top-leveled gear, we want to go see how much better it is against the bosses like, “Daaaamn it took me 2 minutes at 60, but now with my almost BiS gear and level 80 I hammered this weasel in 20 seconds!”
Not, “ok let’s see how much better my gear got… Hmm I’m doing 100% more DPS but didn’t even come to close to halving my kill time. Wtf.”
Strongly agree with this. The vibe I’m getting is that in this instance the devs are more concerned with their satisfaction at having people fully engage with the boss encounters they’ve crafted than they are with players’ satisfaction at their theorycrafting/grinding paying off.
I know it’s semantics, but they aren’t making the player weaker, they’re making the boss stronger.
With my current buld, I’m spamming Smite, I don’t usually spend much time looking at numbers on the bosses because I’m more focussed on the mechanics, but I’ve never noticed a damage reduction (because I’m not paying attention to the numbers). I cast Smite a few times, then move to deal with the mechanics, then cast it a few more times, etc.
I’m #1 because I’m paying more attention to the mechanics…
Here is my short video about this problem. (20 sec)
Could you check it?
This build is earthquake / avalanche mixed build.
The Aftershock generated by earthquake summon 2x boulders as many as totems.
Then, additional boulder can summon from Avalanche’s node (by crit), so totally 20x boulders generate per 1 earthquake, in theoretically.
At first, boulders could deal about 1,500 damage to Boss dragon, but soon, it downed to few hundreds.
And at last, it became to only 80 damage…
※Now avalanche node has OP bugs, and I reported it.
But it is not important thing. The important thing is nearly or more greater dps builds get same excessive penalty.
How many player can consent this excessive penalty and motivate to make more strong build under this condition ?
Is this really good balance? I do not think so.
I think that increasing DPS is one of most fun things in this kind of game.
I feel this system is robbing it
I think the clear speed is fine and maybe as a few others have stated there are many ways to approach this. Imo it is really just seen the numbers lower that feels bad, everything else is fine. time to kill fight mechanics health and damage could be tuned up a bit more but other than that I love the way the fights go. as OP stated Le is not a game about clear speed. regardless players will find a way for efficiency. I am sure EHG is capable of finding a good solution to the issue at hand and I think they will. They are experimenting since it is still in beta and I think that is awesome. yeah something will hit and miss but I am happy they are trying to push the envelope and do things other games don’t
