Yes that’s true for a lot of builds.
But that difficulty can be handled mostly by good gear and a good build.
While bosses difficulty mainly cannot be decreased heavily by gear.
Of course good gear and a good build can give you slightly more room for mistakes, but only a very small margin.
We don’t know what’s going on in the OP’s head, but from the posts above, they do seem a bit rage-y and requesting that the game change rather than he learn/adapt. I sincerely hope they are just the initial emotional reaction to the sudden spike in difficulty he came across rather than a cold and reasoned response to game difficulty.
Another question that I would hope the devs ask themselves (along with the other one I posed) is, is the increase in difficulty during the game reasonable/what they want? We do occasionally see some posts about spikes in difficulty in certain areas (eg, moving to the divine era), but I don’t think we have for a while. And I’m not sure if that’s due to those spikes being smoothed out or not.
I agree there is a difficulty raise at that moment. And in my opinion it doesn’t feel bad. It’s a real increase, but not a huge one and not unfair. We clearly feel that something has changed and something is coming.
With bosses, things may seem unfair, unless you understand the boss and how he fights. And if you can’t fight again right after failing, it seems even more unfair. I think that’s the main point. I would like to be given three tries before losing timeline progression. This way, I could observe, learn and adapt. I could even take the time to read a guide or watch a video if I’m a player who likes help.
I can’t remember the name of the area – but it has a bunch of the water/lightning orbs and big crabs – the general area is near water? Either way, no matter what build I’m playing, I constantly feel like I get 1 shot (reality is, its probably 2 or 3 hits with one big hit). It feels like the damage in those areas is increased by 2-3x from previous areas in the quest chain. There’s potential this is just a gearing issue on my end though, as I tend to keep on gear that was good previously for me, and disregard gear that’s “worse” (IE, just needs to be crafted to be better).
First time I entered the chapter with the ice I asked myself why I die so quick because everything was going smoothly before. The biggest fault was by myself because I’m pretty sure 0% cold resi isn’t beneficial there but still with 75% the enemys felt a lot harder then the pushovers I met before.
Same goes for the Lagon Island all of the sudden I took dmg again. I have no problem with difficulty increases I realy like them and I like to be tested. I don’t like the ramp up the game does from time to time, you cahnge a map and almost feel (yeah very inaccurate feelings I know) you take 50% more dmg for no reason.
After some hours of experince it’s easier to know when you need to step up your game but I still think it’s undeserved during the story what is nothing else as a prolonged tutorial with a lot of blabla inbetween untill you hit certain breakepoints.
Then again it’s a Beta and I’m pretty sure things will be smoother in the future.
I have the same issue with reaching Lagon’s Isle (the area you’re referring to). The spike has been around for at least 3 - 4 patches.
It’s a game, endgame might not be for everybody. Slashing away after a long day of work without thinking, there’s something in LE. Start a new char and lvl up again mindlessly to slash away again. No problem with that. My intention isn’t to degrade anyone or make myself better than I am.
“Not sure where the OP is coming from”. Maybe he never encountered a video game that requires learning boss patterns. Or not a video game that requires learning 5-10 boss patterns. Others played games where you need to learn a tad more, be reactive and have situational awareness. My personal opinion is that LE is VERY easy, boss mechanics are VERY easy to learn from the visual indicators alone, there are not many mechanics per boss and trying again isn’t too punishing.
If that is offending, not welcoming to new players then yeah, I am fine with it beeing offending.
E: Is the game too hard or specific bosses too hard / feel unfair? Not in my opinion. Toning it down more makes it boring, unrewarding. After leveling a couple chars they are a joke already. Take away a death at your first Lagon and story mode will become an unmemorable zerg fest, hack & slash for glory. Make them a lot harder when multiplayer comes.
I think most of the answers are focusing on the bosses being hard or easy, but if I understand correctly , I feel OP’s problem is more about the bosses as progress stoppers than the bosses as difficult fights.
I think the bosses as progress blockers are poor design. Make us want to do them because we want the challenge, or because we want the rewards, but don’t force us to need to do them just so we can advance.
Doing bosses does not really correlate with being able to do the next content.
An idea I had is just make is do a lot of echoes to unlock the next monlith , but bosses count for 5-10 of them. That way the bosses are a good way to advance if you need , but not mandatory.
Yes, in other ARPG’s bosses are a great way to get loot , and its needed to get more powerful but they are not mandatory to advance like LE.
PoE , I can skip bosses and still advance
D3 , I can get the same loot without bosses (will miss on leveling gems , but I’m not obligated to do them)
Inquisitor Prophet , I can play most of the game without the bosses
I don’t find this statement to be overly accurate (as it’s being framed that GD doesn’t have mandatory bosses in its endgame). Grim Dawn has various Dungeons, the Crucible, or the Shattered Realm as its main endgame modes. Dungeons all have an end boss to defeat to complete the dungeon to access the rewards chests. The Crucible has waves of smaller enemies with increasingly more powerful bosses as the waves increase in order to access the rewards chests. The Shattered Realm has a boss room at the end of each chunk that needs to be completed to progress or get to the rewards chests.
I’m not sure I’d consider Monster Totems, Nemesis bosses, or Super Bosses as “endgame modes”. Though, they are certainly endgame activities and at least two of these can be quite challenging, possibly more so than some of the endgame modes, requiring a significant time investment to overcome.
That’s certainly a large portion of content that has mandatory bosses to defeat in order to progress and receive loot.
Thanks for the correction, I was mostly thinking about dungeons (where skipping bosses mean less loot but not necessarily less progress)
You are right that SR or crucible are a lot more similar to LE system.
I’ll edit the other post , to delete GD as an example
Can you progress your atlas in PoE without killing the boss? You can do delve without touching bosses as long as you’re willing to buy maps (since you aren’t progressing your atlas so its stuck at tier 1) &/or delve scarabs. Betrayal you can continue to do but I’m not sure what progress there would be without killing the boss (or with killing the boss TBH, would you include the safehouses as bosses?), Heist you can do, the one with Alva you can do 12 (?) times.
D3, you won’t be able to progress your greater rifts (I think you’ll be capped at a greater rift level equal to your maximum torment level), or infact get any gear/bloodshards from them so you’ll be capped at t16.
For me having bosses gating content is one of the most fundamental video game principles. I don’t see any reasonable point in changing this.
This still is a video game where you have to earn your rewards. Just paying the price doesn’t mean you should be able to see all the content without effort.
I’m all for discussions about balancing stuff (what not means “nerfing” stuff, necessarily). But the current discussion about skipping bosses or reaching content without successfully completing certain milestones is not in my personal favour. Sorry.
I agree but I think that bosses should be balanced and correctly placed in an area without a huge spike in difficulty.
IMHO the abomination is placed correctly: it’s difficult, but not impossible once you get some resistance.
IMHO Lagon (monolith version) is misplaced: it can easily oneshot chars 10 levels above his area level. It’s also overtuned: it’s a very long battle that you can lose for just a little mistake… and I do little mistakes in a very long battle 
As it stands now I find him frustrating: if I want to play bosses that doesn’t allow mistakes I’ll play a platformer (or Poe :-P)
Only if you try & facetank 1 of his 3 well telegraphed attacks that you’re supposed to avoid (& are easy to avoid) - the moon beam (a big circle aoe), his eye beam (move to one side when his head ducks down) & his sweeping eye beam (move to the other side of the ledge when he leans back & waggles his head). While I’m sure there are some builds that can facetank them, in general, you’re not supposed to and it’s not a failure of your build if you can’t.
I know and I don’t, but as I wrote I do mistakes from time to time and my reflexes are not so good as they were 20 years ago
… and my build is quite good since I can facetank 2 of his attacks. It’s always the moon beam that kills me and I know that it’s my fault since I usually do a mistake towards the end of the battle 
.
For now I just accepted that I won’t have that blessing and skip it, but I still think that it’s overtuned and misplaced for an area that says level 75
I was thinking about Elder , Shaper , Sirus, etc , but still I don’t see why would you think my maps would stay at T1 without killing bosses, I can progress the atlas to T16 if I want without bosses. It would be slow , but doable.
I can delve , heist , betrayal , legion , etc without being obligated to finish the content and do the final boss , because by design they are mostly optional.
Don’t get me wrong I do GR pushing in D3 , I do bosses in PoE , etc but I do them because I want , not because I have to , and thats something I would like to be an option in LE.
I even like most LE bosses fights , and besides dying 2-5 times learning them I have been able to do them , but I don’t feel the need to redo them.
Completely valid , that’s a choice , keep the bosses and their function, but tweak some stuff
About that balancing, how do you feel about having more than 1 try? Its something that have been suggested more than once , but so far I haven’t seen many opinions.
I would be ok with having multiple tries for a boss, maybe 2 or 3?
But with two major conditions:
Fully agreed!