So, most new Chapter 9 enemies do feel strong and good in the story IMO.
But once you fight them in the context of Arena or High Monolith it becomes more apparent, how unfair some of them are.
In this Thread I would like to compile enemies that do feel too strong or unfair.
If you have a particular mob please name it with some quick and concise description why.
Please don’t write too much wall of text, since I would like to have the mobs being compilied and listed.
Here is my Personal List:
Scarab Rider: “Projectile” is basically instant, no way of evading other than never stop moving, too much damage
Ascendant Embermage: Telegraph is too small for how much damage it does, delay between telegraph and impact too short, mob has too much cast range(sometimes cast from off-screen), appear in too great numbers
Spine Hunter: Simply way too much damage and too much health, even the normal whtie variant ahas so much health you can’t one shot them that easily, after they jump on you and all hit once you are dead, appear in too great numbers
Spine Hunter Alpha: Except when it does the howl, the mob is relentless and just charges at you and deals too much damage to facetank, there is nothing you can do about it.
EDIT:
Crystal Golems (forget their exact name): They do their armlaser, which applies like 5-10 stacks of shock and you can’t do anything about it as soon as they come in range. If you have 3-4 of them you instantly get 20 stacks of shock.
Crystal elemental: Lightning burst too spammy and might be able to shotgun. Too many comes in a pack for the damage it does.
Not that unfair mob but notable:
Gold elemental: Punch tracking and its turn rate is too good. Hard to avoid but damage is manageable. Sometimes spawn in twos.
Lightning elemental: the circle AoE lightning offscreen from 2 screen away. Damage and telegraph is manageable but their chase distance is too high. Annoying mob.
Lightning golem: lightning cannon cast time is too fast. spawn in pack of 2-3. Shock on hit mod is unfair to fasthitting but low damage char.
Embermages - mainly because of the offscreen “where the hell did that come from issue” but also the speed of the attack limiting “active defence moves”… a pack of them in an Arena scenario is pretty much an “Oh ####” moment as you cannot even run out of range.
Diamond Matron - am with @QuietForMe on this… Fine on their own, multiples can get crazy fast…
Gorgons - Their tornados overlapping can get exciting… as a mob they are unimpressive but multiple of them dropping tornados is potentially an issue.
Never really had an issue with the Crystal mobs - they can be hard hitting, but I feel that their hp is sufficiently low as to not be a problem… Same with the spine hunters - never really had an issue with them even at empowered monolith level - they tend to take a few more hits to deal with but seem ok…
I think the new mobs also suffer from the same problem that certain other mobs have caused - i.e. exponential difficulty that arises from certain combinations of mobs… - individually, the mobs are ok, but when matched in very specific groups where the mobs compliment each other, the difficulty can be exponentially higher than when facing the mobs in other situations…
My experience with these guys is based on ShieldThrower Paladin, Regifter Paladin, Low Life Ward Spellblade, Manifest Armour Forge Guard and various varieties of VK… All 80+ level and all 100% CA & maxed res.
No any problems except for embermage and rogues (whene there are 3 or more in aren), scarab hunter is anoying but not dangerous i never got 1 shoted and im playing glass canon
My biggest issue currently are enemies that can hit you with projectiles far away from offscreen (such as the scarab riders and ember mages). I personally find it incredibly cheap and some of them can deal stupid amounts of damage. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal if the camera could be zoomed out more, but unfortunately, you can’t and getting one shotted by enemies you can’t see is NOT fun .
OP monsters
Scalebane rogues
Emerald Naga
Scarab Riders
Crystal elementals
Spine hunters (why do we even have porcupines)
Osprix zealot (reduce charge cooldown please!)
Rest are fine at the high arena however embermage might need cast speed slowed down but high dmg should be fine
Diamond matron is in a weird place I kinda like it as is but maybe have it not spawn with “less damage from distant enemies”
Embermages - they all open with the meteorite when aggroed, it really sucks seeing 4 meteorites appear out of nowhere and hit so fast on the strike that you cannot react. If all 4 hit then you’re either dead or you are going to die from another source of damage. If there were some kind of variable timing mechanic on when they cast meteorite it might not be so bad, but something needs to be done.
Diamond Matron - Just one isn’t too bad, but when more than one spawn several issues happen to me, and that seems to happen more often than not. One is their beam attacks is high damage and tracks your movement. Trying to dodge 2+ of them can be difficult. Two is that the “Twinned” seems to be a common modifier on them and I have run into multiple diamond matrons with that modifier and it just becomes a mess. Particularly when trying to dodge 4 beams that are following me from different angles
Scarab Riders - They seem pretty spongey with high single target damaging shots that are nearly instantaneous. 2-3 can be an issue as they just hit so dang hard.
Scalebane Rogue - Attack speed can be ridiculous when 3+ spawn on you.
Crystal Elementals - The shock stacking and the amount that spawn in a mob is really rough
I fundamentally don’t like this mobs because they explode instantly on death. It represents a departure from other other mobs where damage is reasonably dodgable
Overall, I think most mobs are fine, though I don’t do arenas mostly, just empowered monos. I’m playing a pretty tanky build, though, right now, and I can see how melee or squishier builds would really struggle against a lot of them, particularly the matrons and spine hunters and scarab riders. Here’s my list, and the why’s.
Ember mage - same reason as everyone else. Non-descript mob, no real visible telegraph (I know it’s there, but it might as well not be, it needs to be more visible) and fires from off screen. Honestly, I think that all they need to do to fix them is make the telegraph more visible (like the other caster birdy, forget what they’re called) and halve the projectile speed so you have time to dodge it. Honestly, they kind of feel redundant though? Now there are two “call-down” projectile bird casters.
Spine Hunter Alpha - Just one of them, or two, not really an issue, but I’ve had mono maps that spawn them like regular mobs, and I’ve at one point had 7 or them chasing me. Yes, I can kite and kill them, but damn it was hairy, and their stacking bleeds are brutal.
Arm blast golems - Mostly the electric ones that mass stack shock on you. I feel that their animation on the attack is too fast, and can’t really be dodged effectively. It kind of breaks a lot of the spirit of the game design, focused on skilled play to allow for evasion.
Crystal Elementals - They aren’t an issue with just one or 2, but their spawn needs to be adjusted so they don’t spawn en-masse. Plus some spawn exclusions would be a dream… having Crystal, Lighting and Ice elementals all spawn on one map is just tedious. It just turns into a bullet hell twinstick at that point.
Diamond Matrons - I was doing an “arena” map on an empowered mono, and was fighting 6 or 7 of them at once, kiting them in a circle for several minutes with them chain healing each other. I think the issue is that yes, only 1 or 2 might spawn at a time, but they heal and take so long to kill that additional waves spawn in and keep adding to their number, plus then there’s twinning on top of that, along with spam healing too. I honestly feel for melee builds in those situations.
That’s my 2 cents. I haven’t played any melee or squishier builds, so I can’t really say for the emerald nagas and such, they never really reach me.
The ambushing snake women who poison you. I’ve seen them apply a 40 stack of poison in a group without any counterplay. That’s crazy.
Also the diamond? elementals completely wreck in packs and have a habit of offscreening, as do lightning elementals. Osprix lightmages offscreen too. I’m not sure those are C9.
If anything, whatever the new mobs are doing is still not enough if it’s still possible to pull out 1k+ waves by kite clownfiesta.
The mobs which I did like in particular are the instagib scarab riders and those charging fat megascarabs and anything that gets you offscreen instantly is very welcome
There is one recurent issue: long delays in Arena.
When you’re in an Arena echo sometimes it can take long to clear a specific wave, and the next wave will start spawning. Depending on the mob types you have, it can become very tough.
Having to deal with a Matron or two is OK. But having to deal with eight cumulated waves of Matrons can be far less OK.
The issue here is more in the spawn rate than in the mob choice.
The only problem I once had in an echo with a group of Gorgons (at least 5) spammed their tornados which filled the entire sceene. Not sure exactly how many there were because I died very quick.
If you could avoid having more than, say 3, in the same place that would be less frustrating.
Reviving this thread. The diamond matron still need a nerf. Either in HP or her allies takes MUCH lesser damage aura.
I just encountered a map in lv90mono with diamon matron, covenant of dominion, the nagasa captain arjani, packs of embermages and gold elementals. I am playing VK echo warpath so I survive by kiting, but I have no idea how other builds can survive that. Stop for a moment to cast/attack and you get either stunned by gold elementals, nuked by meteors, slammed by fire slash, grinded by satellited beam or AoE DoT to death.
And they takes forever to kill because of the stupid aura since kiting attracts more of the matron and they reinforce each other. Just a note that my build kills crystal lotus in less than 10sec but I need 3 minutes of battle to kill them all. the mono defensive mod is only 30% more hp and 30% endurance
EDIT: I am at empowered and juiced up empowered is actually less threathening to me than that enemy combination in normal mono.
I think this is just another example of the exponential difficulty that comes into effect with certain mob combinations and I dont think that the game engine has any “mechanism” to check for this…
To be sure, in certain instances, when done on purpose to increase difficulty this is fine, but not in the random mob nature of monos where the combination can propel the difficulty far higher than what it should be at… E.g. a level 90 mono can all of a sudden feel like a level 150 corruption lvl 100 mono
Hi again. Posting here again as I just got ridiculously slammed to death by Ruby Captain Arjani (echo boss version) that is hiding behind a rampant rime giant. I don’t even know what kills me until I read the death cause. His slam damage is too high for untelegraphed, fast, almost unavoidable large AOE attack. It is like the wengari slam without the delay and the ground indicator and the fire slam damage might even be higher. Furthermore, it is actually possible to encounter more than 1 of them in close proximity to each other.
Also, the density of large rare mob in Lakeside Trail map need a relook. This is a narrow long map and I have seen diamond matrons spaced not even 2 screen away from each other.
Maybe I should play a character as a “glass cannon” too, maybe that will be different.
In addition, I think that people who play in high arena levels or even empowered monoliths per corruption level nicely drive up should have a whole series of “fear opponents”.
The character I use is a ward build that can go up to 2000 ward in crowded fight. And instant 700-1000ish ward generation via skills. Not quite glass cannon. My playstyle is to generate those instant ward on dangerous situation before the start of battle such as seeing Arjani. If I did not recognize a dangerous situation, that is on me. However, if the Arjani is covered by a rampant enemies and slammed me there to death, I would say that is an unfair situation as per the topic of the thread topic. It will be frustrating if I am playing HC.
Second one on diamond matron. She is designed to be a tanky enemy with ability that requires kiting. Then, at least her appearance density need to be sparing to enable kiting without attracting a whole horde on you (exageration).
