All this is my personal feeling and opinion. I don’t think it is “the truth”, because I don’t think there is one only truth on that domain.
Fighting Julra does not feel good and is not fun.
I love boss fights in Last Epoch. I love the need to observe and adapt. They are usually very dynamic and interesting (with the exception of the Abomination).
Bosses have special abilities that they use, and when they’re going to use one we are warned a bit before. Gaspar has his spinning with beams, Rahyeh has the huge circle slaps, and so on.
Julra has a set of interesting abilities, but their combination makes me feel like I am in a 3D labyrinth, trying to find the right place for me. I don’t feel like I am fighting a boss, I really feel like I am in a 3D Tetris game. I don’t really understand her beams (beams split in two halves, what is the logic behind?), they seem to be designed exactly for what I said: transforming the fight in a positioning game.
I’m not speaking of T4 Julra, but or all tiers. I tried T4 only once for now, I failed, but I don’t really expect to defeat a “modern” Last Epoch boss on the first try, so no problem. Even if I’m a bit doubtful about a 3400 HP Void Knight going from full HP to death in less than one second.
It’s not a matter of difficulty, it’s really a matter of design. Julra is not a boss fight like the other boss fights in the game, it’s only a positioning game with no fun.
As I said in the beginning, it’s a personal opinion, but I’m curious to know if I’m the only one.
You are not the only one in this camp. I really don’t enjoy Julra at all. Like you I haven’t beat here on T4 yet but that may be because I’ve only tried 2 times with different characters and don’t really enjoy the fight enough to pursue it at this time.
Its very different when compared to other fights thats for sure…
what concerns me about Julra is not so much the design of the fight but the fact that I feel that it favours certain builds/playstyle far more than previous bosses…
For example, the argument about the Emperor of Corpses was that you couldnt get out of range of the AoE attacks without movement abilities/speed and that favoured movement skills, or faster boots or ranged builds… Yes, those builds have it easier, but you can still defeat the boss with a slower melee character and a little anticipation… at one stage you could even facetank him with some builds.
I dont find this with Julra - the mechanics favour a specific combination of skills/build and the fight is MUCH more difficult if you dont have a build that favours this playstyle… even with the “D” era swapping to dodge the main room AoE and the obligatory void pool tick…
Thats what concerns me more than anything else… I loathe bosses that are overly skewed into being laughably easy in one build and impossible/very hard in another… Thats the realm of MMORPG/MMO bosses and I dont like that in an ARPG as it motivates skill swapping / gear changing / build respecing just for a single encounter…
I completely agree. It just seems to me, and I could be completely wrong, that Julra is more of a PoE boss than an LE one.
The whole positioning, learning a choreograph routine, not so good for non meta builds type boss is not really something that the other bosses in LE have in common. I too have learned to appreciate the other mono bosses. There are some that I curse, but I always know that if I die, it’s normally because I made a mistake. Julra seems to shift that power balance. I now no longer know I have made a tangible mistake when I die to her, the pools that remain for the whole fight, these are things “not really LE”. The fact that people are trying to find a “soft exploit” to beat her by not spawning pools from a certain era when shifting at a certain time for 1 second etc etc seems too much like the type of thing that happens in PoE.
When people say “it’s easy” as long as you know how to “soft exploit” the fight, that’s a problem imho. You shouldn’t need to abuse the intended mechanics to win a boss fight.
I appreciate that, in theory, Julra is the “best boss” in terms of drops & access to legendaries but you could make the fight harder without resorting to PoE type “lazy mechanics”. The pools should have a shortish timer on them for example, maybe have at least a temporary spawning object you could shelter behind for the spinning beams (like the rocks in the Icy boss). You can make the damage higher and the fight harder, but for each new mechanic introduced there needs to be a counter mechanic that players “could” use to mitigate or avoid that. The other bosses in LE seem to do this wonderfully well, but Julra does not.
Beams or pool hard? Switch time - ok. Switching time leaves a permanent puddle of death, removes switching time as a viable option. Maybe if the puddles had a 3-5 second timer on them, then ok.
idk, as I said there’s just something about Julra that doesn’t seem to mesh with the other boss parts of LE. It’s almost like the other bosses were designed by an old team, and there’s a new guy fresh in from PoE who designed Julra. I highly doubt that’s the case, but it’s just how it feels. I really hope they look again at this fight and introduce some more mitigating opportunities & add a timer for the “pools of death”.
I wholly agree. This seems to be a large part of the problem is mechanics like this. There shouldn’t be a mechanic that prevents what you’ve been given to beat the boss.
The whole time-shift ability is one of the reasons it’s given is (from my understanding) is to be able to deal with some of her abilities. With the pools it’s nearly negating that positive.
Yup. There might even be a timer on those pools, idk? I either kill her or die before it expires anyway. IF there is a timer, it is way out of synch with the whole fight.
I feel I should point out that I have no issue with the punitive pools themselves appearing as a cost for switching, just the fact that they never go away. People shouldn’t have to look for an exploit to avoid the very mechanic that is supposed to help you.
I find it curious that you like Gaspar’s spinning beams (which require positioning to not get hit) but don’t like Julra’s spinning beams (which require positioning to not get hit).
For that specific thing, it’s because I see and understand the logic of Gaspar’s.
For Julra, it looks like "let’s use something equivalent to Gaspar - oh no, because of Julra’s position we can’t do it the same way, let’s just add a space so that the player can avoid the beam but must stay in a tiny zone). It feels like they wanted to use the same theme, could not adapt it to Julra’s fight and so added a compensatory artificial twist.
You meet Julra in the Ruined era. She immediately casts the big nuke so you swap to Devine era. When she ports to you, it creates the pool in the Devine era. Make sure you place it on the edges of the arena. Now you can avoid all additional pools. When she casts the big nuke again, you wait to the very end and port to the Ruined era. Here you wait for a few seconds to let the nuke in the Devine era get off. Then you port back to the Devine era before Julra comes to the Ruined era. As she doesn’t port, she also doesn’t create a pool.
This tactic doesn’t help my Necromancer, though. My minions die in the beams very fast (t3 Julra on lvl 94 Necro). And dealing with the beams, avoiding the cold cone and micromanaging my minions/resummon isn’t going well for me. Micromanagement doesn’t work because my minions would re-engage immediately whenever I pull them out of trouble.
I’m curious if there are many Necros that have beaten her t4 and what defensive stats minions need to tank the damage. I’m aware that an Abomination can tank the damage if build properly. But my Skeleton build with Rogues and Death Knights can’t. They easily tank all the nukes from every other boss in the game and are able to sustain with their health leech (Rogues not as good as the DKs, though). But they are just erased by Julras Beams. Although they tank Julras nuke, too.
I also have to admit that I personally have a problem to identify the save zones in Julras beams. Because the beam is not directly on the ground, but floating at half the height of the character model, the perspective fools me. I can clearly see the aoe borders of Rayehs -attack. But Julras spinning beams trick my eyes.
Despite being spinning beams, they require very different play. When Gaspar spins, you just run in circles and you can easily adjust you positioning within the save zone by changing the radius of the circle you run in. The save spot within Julras Beams is much smaller and you have to simultaneously deal damage and avoid additional attacks. Gaspars mechanics are much easier to play.
The first part is something I already do.
The second, I have never tried and am reluctant because it sounds very much like an exploit. I’ve seen it in a YouTube video and it really looks unexpected by the devs. I may be wrong.
Right now I’ve only heard about Abomination being able to defeat her.
Yup, same opinion as I expressed above. Personally disappointed that no tweaks have been made to the “fight”. I only go in there now if I have a legendary that I want to make. Exalt farming is great in there, but if I do farm T4 I usually now just skip the Julra fight on T4 altogether as I find it completely unenjoyable.
No change in my concerns with Julra (i.e. being easier with certain builds/playstyles) but interestingly I have found I dont even bother with the Dungeon at all - I have stocked up a full stash tab of Dungeon keys and just sell the rest I find…
Other than making Legendaries, which are really hard to find worthwhile components for anyway, the Dungeon serves no purpose for me vs farming Empowered Monos at 250-300 corruption. Unlike others, I find dungeon farming specificially for exalts a crap experience loot wise (I get just as many in Monos) and the dungeon itself is about as boring a mouse maze as I have ever experienced…
So… all in all, when I need to make a Legendary, I pick the Tier needed for that legendary craft, speed rush the dungeon and kill Julra on my “best julra build”… Otherwise this dungeon is irrelevant to me.
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he second, I have never tried and am reluctant because it sounds very much like an exploit. I’ve seen it in a YouTube video and it really looks unexpected by the devs. I may be wrong.
If the dev’s didn’t want you to be able to do multiple shifts, they would have put a cooldown on it. Its easy enough to figure that Julra could dampen your time travel abilities with some of her own. I don’t see the double shifting as an exploit, but as a new version of a movement ability, allowing you to dodge things that you might not be able to otherwise dodge. With the amount of things that you have to avoid in this fight, your success is going to hinge on how well you use this ability.
Someone said the devs have confirmed.
I don’t remember who this person is, but I remember it is a safe source.
Nevertheless, I dit not see an official statement myself. Just saw someone reliable who said the devs confirmed.
I think the double shift should be allowed, but still drop a void zone when you come back. That way you couldn’t completely trivialize the mechanic. Of course, I doubt my opinion will sway the developers if they’ve stated they already have a plan lol.
-attack. But Julras spinning beams trick my eyes.