The never-ending struggle of ARPG/MMORPGs… balancing encounters around both melee and ranged. You can get away with making sub-bosses harder/easier for one or the other. But you can’t ever really get away with making an end-boss, or gate-keeper boss that way, because you cockblock certain builds simply with game design.
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Ok, did a few more tests on “4”.
With lighter armored characters, I’m more likely to die than make it so far.
Even some characters with much more EHP get some problems [Dead] with the above attacks.
Maybe it’s just a matter of practice, it could be.
And since it’s the current “endgame”, there’s nothing wrong with it.
I think at the moment just hardly that more than 10% of the players will manage this.
Who knows. 
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I believe she does the aoe puddle mechanic when you swap the timeline and she shows up, I’m sure she did one everytime in tier 2 when I did that, I just stood on the edge of the arena then and it made it much easier as melee 
Yes, that’s one of the mechanics.
I think the main problem with this fight with melee is that range of beams during the spinning mechanic prevents you from dealing damage if boss is in the middle (it is extremely hard to not get hit as melee near center). Dungeon clearly favors range and i don’t mind if future dungeons will be created also with melee in mind. I get their philosophy of some classes being better at some dungeons, i just hope not all new dungeons will be melee unfriendly.
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T4 Julra is killable with melee with alot more effort, as compare to a range build.
Yes the “alot more effort” part can be seen as unfair.
But melee always needed more effort, thats why i play one =)
Also for this boss there is a real learning curve, now I can do it almost certainly without dying tiers 4 but that took me like 10 key to really understand what’s going on. Also a little things, that’s not as bad as melee but minions have also some disadvantages here cause they eat all air no matter how good you try to place them. And doing it so with totem and stuff while managing the rest it’s fun!!! But again that’s vreally fine for me cause that the big boss. And a little of topic but I LOVE the audio soundtrack of this donjon, I have it always in mind now 
If everything is hard then players will struggle to even get past the campaign, and then you have PoE where only the top tier builds are even viable.
It is much preferable to make it so that most of the content is clearable by lower tier builds, but have parts of the content that is much harder than the rest. Superbosses and empowered monos for example.
Didnt read through every comment but i initially had the same impression as OP playing as a companion beastmaster. Couldnt keep my companions alive, hard to get time to do my own dps as melee, sucks not having a quick movement ability. I thought wow this fight really sucks for beastmaster. Then I did some T3 Julra and purposly didnt kill her in 2 seconds and actually learned all her stuff. Went back to T4 and got her on the 3rd attempt after learning her moveset AND IT FELT SO GOOD. Now I kill her 90% of the attempts with no change in gear. I thought i wanted it nerfed/changed for melee, or for pets, now im SO GLAD it wasnt cause it was FUN LEARNING IT. I had the same expirience with empowered Heorot when that was instroduced. I still think the 3 fire druids are the worse for melee cause sometimes the other people just stand in the death aoe for several minutes which just sucks. i still want a better movement ability though
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As a former WoW player who’s done a fair amount of mythic+ dungeons (mostly as ranged than melee) I can attest that whenever I tried to do them on melee chars it was much harder and less enjoyable. Groups would always be looking mostly for mages or hunters or boomkins or shadow priests. Warriors, death knights, rogues etc…were less common to see, apart from the tank.
Never tried T4 boss yet in LE as melee so will be interesting to judge how similar it feels for my old WoW melee chars in mythic dungeons.
When a player first fights Julra, there needs to be a much more clear warning, literally flashing text on the screen or something, to tell the player to shift.
The shift mechanic is introduced literally minutes before the fight, and the player is expected to connect the dots immediately in the fight and intuit that they should be shifting when the room fills up, and you have 4 seconds to figure that out.
This isn’t fun. At no point is the player given a chance to understand because in this situation everything happens so fast. I play games hardcore only, and it took me two deaths of trying different things to understand this extremely trivial mechanic that is only hidden by poor timing.
Other than that, the sanctum itself is kind of a slough in general. For example, using shift to circumvent locked doors could instead be circumventing dangerous pools on the ground or something. If the player outplays the situation (by dashing across the puddles for example), they shouldn’t need to shift, because shifting in the temple arbitrary anyway and doesn’t impact the player’s survivability. If the player can’t outplay the situation, then they can shift. This example is absolutely less frustrating than re-pathing your way around the dungeon multiple times on the same floor because of bad RNG door openings (no one wants to backtrack in arpgs).
All constructive I hope. I absolutely love this game.
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T3 and T4 Julra are really not well designed for melees. I struggled alot with Multstrike Smite on t3 and im not even “full melee” but the fact that you don’t even have a movement skill to dodge decently is even more a pain.
The biggest problem about the boss is that the puddles are permanent and there is no way to control it that she will move away from them.
So I have some ideas to make the boss still challenging but more fair for melee:
- The Boss always facetanks you
I think this is the best change you can make with the boss. You get much more control over the battle and you are finally able to deal conistent damage to the boss like ranged do.
placing the puddles correctly will be a crucial part of the fight. like placing them in a circle around the arena so you still have enough space to move the boss around and be punished if your damage is bad because in the end the whole arena is full of puddles.
One problem is, that you need decent movement skill which doesn’t requier a target. Imo lunge should not require a target because mobility is a central component in ARPGs to make the gameplay more skillfull
another options would be:
puddles are not permanent and the materialization of the aoe is a bit delayed to you are not forced to get damage instead you have a short window to dode the skill with a movement ability if your timing is good. Of course the puddle should deal more damage but they should only be on the ground for like 4-5 seconds.
I think this would make the boss much more enjoyable for melees.
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The void puddles are not permanent, their duration scales up with the Tier of the dungeon and makes it more and more important to properly place them.
You as a player are also in 100% control when and where you get them. (The boss will always give you the debuff after she followed you into a different Era, when you used the time shift ability).
A movement skill is not really required even though it makes that part a lot easier.
That is definitely a change that would be great.
Right now you will always get one tick of damage and without a movement skill 2-3.
Making it so, that you have the ability to entirely avoid damage from the void puddles if you are fast enough or have a movement skill would be great.
Don’t like that.
The puddles are one of the most crucial and impactful mechanic and I absolutely love mechanic like this, where the player is in full control, how to deal with it.
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Feel like devs on most current games dont have the ability to challenge ranged styles of play as much as melee, since its much more straightforward.
Every single boss fight I encountered has void zones in melee, aoe-dont-stand-zones in melee or around the boss and most require out of boss time to survive, meanwhile ranged can keep close to full time uptime.
There’re probably infinite possibilities for mechanics and environment effects that can affect ranged:
- Aura that deals damage the FURTHER away you are from the boss;
- Any spawned unit that does cover only boss surroundings or nearby area…make voidzones spawn in the full boss are / make waves cover the full length of range / spawn “bad stuff” from outwards to inwards or in completely random patterns on the boss encounter room…
- Meaningful thorns aura (since melee builds have a tendency to have more sustain, leech and defenses)
- Slow aura. Can also have stronger effect in varying ranges.
- Hard block of ranged abilities, like walls, spawned obstacles, mazes…
- Boss rooms with more stuff going on that requires attention or maneuverability
- Spawned adds or units that requires some tanking or extra CC or AoE damage/control
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I don’t get what the problem is, everyone has to play the lower T1, T2 etc. first anyway. At these levels you can take your time and learn the patterns.
I’m usually a range character player, mainly focused on marksman. With marksman HoA i had no problems beating her because i could focus on her attacks.
Currently i’m organizing a event for the german community where we are hunting for achievements that i put together. One of the achievements is to kill her T4.
I’m playing with a cold dot druid, because our theme is to play with a shapeshift class.
It’s basically the first time i play her melee and i have to agree that melee is WAY harder than range.
All the time i was pretty sure that i understand the fight and know what to do. Cold DoT werebear is good in arena and mono but has not the best single target dmg, so basically the longer the fight lasts, the harder it gets because all the void pools are getting nasty and i have to stay close range for maelstrom dmg.
During the event i was in voice with @XLVI_carpo and he told me a little trick. After i used this trick, the fight was sooo much easier because i didnt have to concentrate on the void pools again and it also helped out 2 other players to beat her t4.
(i dont like selfpromosion but here is the boss fight)
I hope this can help you out, but i also hope this is not an intended mechanic so i want to bring this up for the devs aswell.
The goal is to stay 99% in Divine Era to keep away the lightning pillars. Also by doing the time shift at the right moment you can prevent void pools, which is imo the main fact why i died to her as a melee char. Sure i can facetank some attacks because werebear is tanky, but still…you are not focused on moving all the time.
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I am playing a melee rogue, I have to say the only real problem is the rotating beams + her positioning. Thanks that my build have absolutely no high level legendary upgrades to strive for, so I can safely skip T4 and keep going, but if tomorrow I get something really useful to push my build to the next level, and happens to be a 75+ legendary, I would be in trouble, and forced to make a character that can make this fight so much easier.
The real problem is that there’s a mechanic behind this difficult challenge, if there were alternatives, would be a nice challenge hardly doable for melee and that’s it.
On a more general tone I think this game doesn’t address the risk/reward for melee range properly, is not a sad joke like PoE where you literally cannot stand still to use your abilities, and melee in general is just masochist due to the current state, but still…
You usually get better recovery, and get the some niche benefits like stepping from a shorter range for cone attacks and such, but that is not enough (IMO), there are so many range/minion builds that can do and take just as much damage.
without a movement skill its still only 1 tick of damage as long as you have like 30% movespeed. you just need to be moving the moment its put down. i just run around the outside of the arena and have never taken more than 1 tick of damage.
I’m adding my feedback as the devs have done an amazing job of listening to people. I’m super impressed by the devs.
I’m sure the fight will get better with practice but I’m really not enjoying this fight as a melee character. I’m finding it frustrating and it is making me want to stop as an upgrade is gated behind the tier 4. The spinning beams are frustrating and during that phase I can’t attempt to do any damage. It also feels much different than the other boss fights. I love the Orobyss fights and I’m currently doing them on 350+ corruption.
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