As I’ve leveled through the campaign to empowered monoliths I’ve noticed some damage outliers for certain monsters. While combat shouldn’t be a snorefest, some attacks seem to be pushing the limit as far as damage and frequency. I’ll list the attack and the names of monsters that use it, while also giving suggestions on how they could be changed to be less oppressive.
Avalanche - Rime Giant, Wengari Shaman, Alfrig Wolfmaw, etc…
This attack is far too spammy for the damage it does. Alfrig is especially guilty of this. Instead of neutering the damage wholesale, I would just ask that the cooldown between uses be upped. It can be an absolute pain to maintain melee uptime with all of those ice rocks falling on you non-stop.
Frozen Orb - Heorot
The frozen orb Monolith boss Heorot uses is shotgunning. This makes it do far more damage than I believe it should. Not only is it an instant skill with practically no way of dodging at point-blank melee, it also has tremendous tracking ( Heorot will follow you around the world to land it).
To put things in perspective the last time I tested its damage I had a 3300 health sentinel with over 95% cold resistance( so penetration and shred couldn’t provide extra damage), 50% elemental hit damage reduction from armor, and -10% damage reduction from close enemies. The first tick of the orb took me from 3300 to 300. That’s 3k damage through my defenses. No other attack did over 800 damage to me and the ice wind only ticked for around 1000.
I would simply ask that the shotgun mechanic be disabled for this ability.
Explosive Spear - Scalebne Sabetours
These spear toss damage is simply too high and too rapid. Coupled with being hard to see in high-density packs the attack can be a death sentence. I would ask that the spear explosion either gets lowered in damage or the spear gets the Void Prophet treatment where the AOEs are both much easier to see, and take much longer to explode.
Fire Arrow - Solar Archer
These don’t feel like a problem until much higher corruption/arena tiers. However, due to how fast they attack eventually they seem to outscale every other archer enemy. In packs of 3 to 5, they feel manageable. However, once their packs get any bigger their amazing attack speed can overwhelm you before you even close the gap. I would ask that they get a hard limit on pack size or lower base damage to make up for their rapid-fire attacks.
Meteor Strike / Solar Strike - Ascendant Embermage and Osprix Lightmage
Much like the Scalebane Sabetour these mobs do fairly high damage at a rapid pace when grouped. All of which is hard to see when in the thick of fighting. I would suggest promoting them to Elite Rares, just like Seige Golems and Gorgons.
As an elite rare you would seldom get swarmed by multiple deadly projectiles, and they can have their Base model + AOE indicator scaled up. Less to dodge and easier to see would alleviate both of their problems. They already hit like rare mobs they might as well fit the part.
Spire Attacks - Imprisoned Spire and Bone Spire
These spire projectiles for both imprisoned spire and bone spire are almost impossible to see. A large portion of echoes are dark or have a purplish hue. This makes the imprisoned spire blasts practically invisible in a majority of echoes. Bone spires also blend in with a lot of brownish textures along with being super thin. Again this makes the blast zones very hard to see. I would ask that these telegraphs either get enhanced or the spires be removed ( there are already quite a few).