For 2 reasons:
Outside of the ward popping up I didn’t see any substantial difference in how much damage I start with.
And it’s not in the patch notes, so it would be a so called ‘shadow patch’, which would be fairly shitty from EHG and I don’t think they’re doing such stuff.
Or in other words:
I’ve not seen any signs of the HP being actually changed. Which would need to be changed according to the lowest expected range of players (to not affect them after all). That would after all necessitate a substantial reduction to keep ‘the status quo’ in itself.
I already hate myself for what is to follow, just so you all know.
They could give the player a stacking buff based off of how many times they hit the boss ward. That could make the system better for low-dps/high attack-ps builds. Still leaves slow-dps burst-builds out in the cold though. … so maybe give the player a charge bonus while not attacking when the ward is decaying. And then we’ve invented a system that helps the boss kill itself.
And that kind of thinking is endless. Can we stop wasting time on a throw-away system instead of balancing?
I’m also assuming that is the case. Otherwise they probably would have talked about changing monsters HP numbers in the “What’s new” and “Changes” posts they brought up prior to 1.1 launch, and probably also mention it in the patch notes.
Guessing a company like EHG wouldn’t do something like that without clarifying it for us players first.
That visual is already in the game. Just use the ward animation. As well as the mages flame ward.
Dont need new animations/voice acting for this theres none for the new ward system.
Just do the invulnerable phase animations the same way. It just pops right at the break points
Invulnerable phases would be far easier for EHG to add to the game vs balanceing out this new ward system. EHG is just making this new boss system more complicated for themselves than it needs to be.
At each break point just have a 10s invulnerable phase. Using the animations already in the game as i said. This way every build no matter the dps is effected the same way.
The ward system is also nothing but a band-aid fix to the balance of the game.
@Kulze is right A properly balanced game doesn need ward to make players experience the mechanics of boss fight.
What the game needs is far better boss affixes such as regenerate health ect
I 100% agree with @Kulze just give bosses invulnerable phases.
Well, there is one major difference between invulnerable phases and the current ward system that goes counter to what the devs want: in an invulnerable phase the boss isn’t taking damge, but neither is he dealing it. He’s not triggering the fight mechanics.
If EHG wants players to experience them, invulnerable phases do nothing. Because high DPS builds mow down boss health until the invulnerable phase and don’t see any of the mechanics. Then they watch the animation for a few seconds and mow down the second part of the health in 1s, again not giving time for the boss to do anything.
Whereas if you changed the current system to resemble invulnerable phases (like, as an extreme example, giving 1B ward per phase so no one can realistically mow it down), the fight would still go on, and you’d have to avoid them as normal (and you’d still be able to leech).
So there really is a big difference between them for the purpose EHG wants the boss fights to have.
But I do agree that if they managed to get balance right and builds were more tightly in a 300-600c range, then you could do away with DDR, ward or invuln phases and just balance their HP properly.
High dps builds shouldnt be getting slowed down at all in this way. If i have high dps i should be killing things as well as bosses faster. Not have some BS system designed to slow a glass cannon down
That was the problem people had with DDR. What players wanted was for none of this
This souls like and rouge lite style of bosses do not work in the diablo like genre.
If i want fights like that. Ill go play dark souls elden ring. Hades hades 2 ect
This is part of why i havent even played 1.1 much the ward system is garbage
This is just an exageration. These days, if you can’t kill a boss without watching a video on another monitor it’s automatically a “souls like”. It isn’t. Bosses aren’t that hard in LE. They’re heavily mechanic, much like the ones in PoE or D4.
Doing away with ward the way the game currently is just means that high DPS builds kill the boss in 1s and low DPS builds have to struggle. It’s even worse than not having it because everyone will feel like they have to use static orb or shatter strike (even more than they do now).
I doubt we’ll get balance handled properly anytime soon, though.
The biggest difference between bosses in LE and PoE is that EHG wants all builds to be able to do the boss, as opposed to GGG that makes bosses so that only a few builds can kill them (initially at least, eventually power creep trivializes them for all builds). If you want to kill bosses, you specialize your build into boss killing.
LE wants general purpose builds that can do both clear and bosses (especially because in LE you can’t switch characters to kill the boss, other than dungeons and aberoth.
And if you want to watch a video while you kill the bosses without looking at the screen, you currently still can. The aforementioned static orb or shatter strike pretty much one shot every boss in the game, including Aby.
Is the bosses ward mechanic even a Ward mechanic? If I get 50K ward in an instant without getting ward that ward is gone in a few seconds. The boss Ward seems to stay up far to long and to degen not fast enough. Wish my toons keep their ward up that long while eating tens of thousands of dps.
it’s just not my cup of tea and some artifical bullcrap. Give the bosses X ammount more HP then mobs and if people kill them in 0.3sec so be it. Or give them a higher DR then other mobs and be done with it even if they are killed in 0.3sec again.
Making a fight artficaly longer for the sake of making a fight artificaly longer is BS from my point of view. I would be even fine if bosses do their skills and moves at a certain HP breakpoint and if you instagib them then a nuke lands on your head and instagibs you. It’s just not fun to whack a mole a boss for 5 minutes to appreciate the devs work on boss skills when all this does is wasting time.
Why not?
What does the devs hinter to implement that?
They must be really inept if they see no way for that.
Is EHG inept in what they do? I don’t think so code-wise. Design-wise they need to learn a lot but code-wise they’re decent or the game would be in a far worse state.
What?
That’s a non argument.
They want players to experience the mechanics of the boss, invul phase does exactly that, not less not more.
High dps see the mechanics during the invul phase which btw is the entirely failed aspect of the Boss Ward.
Backwards.
Ok… okok… explain.
How does Boss Ward provide what you’re asking for?
Because it is utterly failing with that.
You’re flailing blindly in the dark with your arguments.
Invul doesn’t deny that. Where does that notion come from?
Nonsensical.
Are you really believing that? Is your imagination non-existent for problem solving?
‘Boss takes no ‘actual’ damage, afflicted damage isn’t removed but still counted as leech or trigger or whatever’
Really? That’s the thing you can’t come up with? The first logical direction to go into despite me mentioning it above already?
Nope, you tailor them together in illogical directions currently to make it seem like there might be a reason behind it while everyone else just facepalms.
Agreed.
Also all follow-up comments as well for that.
No.
And the following things are also ‘something’ but in no way/shape or form remotely viable points. The example to PoE is not upholding since years anymore (builds do better/worse but all can with effort do the content available) you’re actively making examples which showcases the viability of your former examples not being possible to uphold (static orb one-shotting bosses and hence Boss Ward being superior to Invul is mutually exclusive) and so on.
It’s a mess.
I’d like you to point out which PoE boss goes into a invulnerable phase while still doing all their mechanics rotation. None does and that’s because players wouldn’t accept having an invulnerable Maven doing all of her attacks for a period of time.
The only thing they accept is a specific attack that makes them invulnerable while doing it.
When bosses go into an invulnerable phase, they’re usually doing some animation, like Sirus, and they’re out of reach. Likewise, they’re not continuing to to pummel you with meteors and beams while invulnerable.
Have you read only part of what I wrote? If you make ward big enough that high DPS builds can’t delete it in 1s, they have to subject themselves to the mechanics because the fight continues as normal.
From PoE. And D4. And pretty much any game that uses invulnerable phases. Because what is almost always implemented is that the bosses don’t take damage while invulnerable.
I’m simply applying your own logic to arguments: if everyone does it that way, then why change? So if you apply invulnerable to LE, you do it in the same way every game does it. And that’s stopping damage, usually while a different animation runs.
How are LE bosses souls like? Do you need to do the fight dozens of times until you pick up all the patterns? Do you need to die hundreds of times until you finally beat them? Or are those patterns simple to learn?
If anything, LE bosses are much closer to platforming bosses than souls ones.
Even before harvest you could make a zombie build and go kill Sirus. It was just so hard that no one did.
Today, it’s likely that all builds can do Sirus, that’s what power creep is for anyway. But when they introduce a new pinnacle boss (like when they introduced Maven), then only a few builds can comfortably do it because most other builds don’t have enough DPS/survivability for a long fight.
I don’t know which is currently the pinnacle boss for PoE, but I highly doubt that all builds could comfortably kill him over and over when it was first introduced. Otherwise, what’s the point?
That is because you’re simply using the scenario that the boss goes invuln but the fight continues as normal. Which, again, no other game does, other than as part of a specific attack.
None, because they’re specifically designed to not do that.
You know, the hierarchy above that? ‘Start specific attack and go invul while doing it’ rather then the lazy ‘just be invul and do whatever you do’ version?
The one which needs more effort? Even if miniscule?
What’s your argument? You’re being utterly ridiculous.
Is it hard-coded in the programming language that a boss has to go invul only when using specific animations?
Do you think a dev can’t do that?
Please bring forward actual arguments rather then wasting time like this… because plainly spoken it’s baffling how you’re not literally ashamed to provide such comments.
And how does that functionally differ from invulnerability? Because just a second ago you used that argument to talk against invul.
I’m trying to infer some logic here.
So… you wanna tell me that you’re too inept to infer possibility in a creative environment simply because nobody else has done it?
A piss easy solution?
Because they went a step further then what the suggestion is… which is a step further then what EHG provided since it’s all so backwards?
Souls-Like bosses are generally built in the direction that you have a limited amount of resources which you need to tightly manage as you’ve got a basically fixed amount of ‘mistakes’ possibly happening. Which causes the majority of Souls-Like games to be slower paced to be able to read the signs and act accordingly still.
Diablo-clone bosses are not based on limited resources but pure positioning and sustaining through the hits. Your task is commonly to avoid the few one-shots (which Souls-Likes use extremely sparingly) while also making sure not to get hit with the other more common attacks, often repeatedly in a short timeframe.
The focus is different.
Since you don’t have the resource management there’s several options for a player in a diablo-clone character to handle it, in a Souls-Like there’s one major one.
Souls like:
You tactically decide between evasion, defense and offense so you reduce your resources not to zero or loose the ability to use a consumable to recover as you don’t naturally do.
Diablo-clone:
-You outtank (or sustain) the boss.
-You evade the mechanics purely on skill.
-You out-DPS the boss so it can’t kill you.
The methods are partially combined but those are the 3 core ones.
Secondly, Souls-Like bosses are a ‘one time only’ experience. Which enforces the developers to design them in a way they can showcase their mechanics, which makes the fights long. Also they developers need to enforce that you’re under danger by designing them so you you have a very tight window of reaction. This is so personal skill is at the forefront and the management of available resources.
Diablo-clones don’t do that. You need to be a bit tanky at the start and show some skill to beat a boss the first time, which is the time it showcases the abilities. The further you progress the more it moves over to being so strong that you don’t even need (but likely will have) the sustain or pure tank to survive it before it’s dead, you transfer over to the out-DPS build by design. Which is the measure of showcasing progression over time for players in this genre. Since we repeat bosses over… and over… and over… it gives us the representation of progress this way.
And @oldschooldiablo had in his comment inferred that using arbitrary mechanics working against the ‘golden trinity’ of diablo-clone boss resolution methods is a net negative (which I agree with) as it deprives people of their well deserved progress. Bosses are designed - obviously, I hope you can see that - different compared to other genres. Each genre has their own method of resolution as well as how the player is challenged or rewarded in terms of boss-fights.
Use the right measure for the right situation.
As for the others:
Maybe, depends on the boss.
Maybe, depends on the boss.
Maybe, depends on the boss.
Sirus in PoE has patterns which are hard to learn, it can easily need dozens of tries.
Yes, you’ll also die a hundred times unless your character is quite strong (not so much anymore but was the case).
And no those patterns aren’t simple to learn from his side since one specifically has a sub 1 second reaction time based on a short flicker of a group of copies of him in a circle and not evading leads to death for most characters.
All you’re telling me is that you don’t know how boss design actually works here, not that something’s odd with bosses.
Minion builds always were boss-killers…
…always were.
Also before Sirus zombies were stronger, they got a nerf when he was implemented.
You got it backwards, they became less of a cheap solution for everything compared to before when conquerors were implemented.
Yes, does that uphold to Aberroth?
No?
Guess EHG messed it up if that’s the case, because the boss himself is not ‘that’ hard, just the journey to reach him is utterly ass, especially at the beginning.
That whole argumentation line though has jack to do with Boss Ward or Invulnerability, you’re going on a massive tangent without providing a point for the topic.
Nobody cares about power-creep, that has nothing to do with the topic in itself as power-creep is a situation every single live-service game faces by design.
Then start turning on your brain finally damnit!
What am I arguing for? Have you not even realized it yet?
I’m saying DR was shit, but less shit.
I’m saying Boss Ward is worse then anything we had.
I’m saying even Invulnerability would be better then Boss Ward.
Which leads you actually to say ‘but no other game does it like that’ despite me saying - and proving mathematically - that it’s superior to Boss Ward.
Are you really so dense?
You’re currently dismantling your own arguments and playing right into my hands without even realizing it!
That’s the damn point damnit!
Since Invul is deemed ‘sub-par’ by other games of the genre they don’t use it in that manner. Which is a superior version to Boss Ward though!
Has the lightbulb finally gone on? I hope so because it becomes fairly sad by now.
If other games abstain from it because it is a inferior solution and EHG provides a inferior solution to this inferior solution… at what level is the design-integration of EHG’s mechanic then?
It’s sub-par. It’s bad. And that has been declared years ago in the whole genre for the whole darn argumentation line I’ve brought up repeatedly by now and some singular people just being too dense to see what the heck is going on.
My argument is simply yours: every single game does it like that for a reason. So why should EHG do it differently?
You’ve used that exact same argument multiple times. Is it not valid anymore for some reason?
More than that, the point is that players know about invulnerable phases. Boss starts doing a different animation, usually with some dialog associated and players can expect that they just watch for a few seconds, usually while they buff up.
Simply making the boss continuing to fight without any change, even if you make a big glowing flashing gold bar or whatever color bar, will simply leave players asking “why tf can’t I damage the boss while he’s damaging me?”.
Which, again, brings us to the whole “Everyone does it this way for a reason.”
Perception. Players still see damage affecting the fight, so they don’t find it as strange that health isn’t going down. It’s a shield.
Whereas invulnerability simply leads to health not changing even though you’re dealing damage and at the same you still taking damage. It would lead to outcries of “unfair”.
Yeah, gonna skip all that. What he said was that LE bosses with ward are souls-like. He specifically said that, even comparing with Dark Souls, Elden Ring and both Hades games.
That is what I said was an exaggeration. Although you, for some reason, disagreed, implying that you also think LE bosses are souls-like.
But everything you said above this indicates the opposite.
I disagree. I’ve never been much of a boss killer in PoE except for one season. And in that season I learned all his patterns very easily and I could evade almost all of them. Same for Uber Elder and Shaper.
They all usually follow the same patterns and usually in the same order, with minor variations. Much like LE’s.
The attacks that have a very small reaction time usually aren’t one-shots.
The one you mention is very very very telegraphed, since he starts following you for quite a few seconds before he fires. As long as you’re moving, you won’t get hit.
What you mean is that some minion builds are boss-killers. When I started playing PoE way more seriously (after playing it on and off for years) in the league before Harvest, most minion builds died most of the time to Sirus because he would simply wipe them.
It does. While most builds can eventually do Aberoth, not many builds can do it comfortably.
You have builds in PoE (and this was true even before the current power creep) that could very reliably kill all the bosses while dying very little as long as you knew the mechanics (and note that this is true from having a weaker build and knowing the mechanics, because those still can lead to many errors and dying more often).
Likewise, you have builds in LE that can comfortably do Aby regularly and rarely die. But most builds don’t fit this. Most minion/companion builds, for example, have a very hard time with this fight.
With the way it’s always done in other games (meaning invulnerable, some animation, doesn’t take damage/no leech, doesn’t do damage/mechanics), if you have a high enough DPS you don’t see any of the mechanics. Because you delete the boss in those phases before he does anything.
With enough boss ward, high DPS builds still have to deal with mechanics.
So enough DPS in PoE, high DPS builds don’t see any boss mechanic.
With enough ward in LE, high DPS builds still see boss mechanics.
That is all I’m saying.
Of course we could make a new invulnerable method different from everything else, but that goes against your favorite argument of “why should you do it differently from other games?”.
You’re the one being dense, honestly.
I’ve already shown you that with enough ward there is no difference at all between your new invulnerable method and the current ward.
I’ve also pointed out that in terms of players perception ward is actually better than a boss simply becoming invulnerable without any reason.
So why should we change a system that you consider is bad with one which ends up being worse.
The major complaint about DDR was about player perception. Players didn’t understand why suddenly they were doing much less damage than before. And you want to make a system where suddenly you do 0 damage without any reason because the fight continues as it did before.
Does the current implementation of Boss Ward work the way the devs want it to? No. Cool, glad we agree. Moving on.
The discussion then became "how could we fix it to fit the devs intentions? Which is what DJ, Llama, and I are answering. We still on the same page? Great. Moving on.
Invulnerability phases could theoretically accomplish the devs intentions except it’s affecting every build equally, which is why the dynamic part of DDR existed. They didn’t want to affect every build equally, they wanted to slow down high dps builds so they can experience the boss mechanics while minimally affecting low dps builds. DDR felt bad because of no visual indicator and it affecting leech.
The devs responded with Boss Ward, which OldSchoolDiablo says “no player wanted.” which is irrelevant, honestly. I, and many others, didn’t want an open world Legend of Zelda game. But the devs wanted to make one. My desires in this aspect of game development are irrelevant. But the devs caved and gave us real dungeons in Tears of the Kingdom instead of the “we have dungeons at home” version of dungeons with the divine beasts and shrines. It’s still open world but they bent their design intent to make the other players happy.
That being said, the way to make boss ward work as intended without a replacement system is to do what DJ and I have been saying. Give a larger burst of ward that decays very quickly to slow down the high dps players while giving low dps players the same boss fight they’d have if the boss just had more HP.
That’s my point… other games don’t do it that way. Their games work with their method… so why doesn’t EHG copy that if they have nothing particular fleshed out?
One option, yes. Or they’re the most dangerous phases possible. PoE uses both for example.
Doesn’t mean it can’t just keep up. It’s inferior… but still better then what we have.
What the heck do you think this here is then?
‘more’ souls-like, not ‘are’ souls-like.
Welcome to literally every game, even Souls-likes… you don’t have 250 different patterns in a boss.
PoE’s bosses are vastly more dynamic then LE’s bosses btw. The timeline bosses keep their exact cycle of ability use up for the majority of the time, very few exceptions. In comparison PoE’s mixed up usage of abilities seems like you’re playing a whole different genre, LE’s bosses are mechanically well done, but AI wise they’re crap.
Much like the earlier PoE bosses were.
That was your build. Zoomancer, spectre, zombie and skeleton builds all were viable against Sirus, even if it was annoying.
You mean barely anyone reaches him.
And low dps players are utterly screwed over. Not only do they have to kill the boss but they have to fully wait out the ward.
And when the ward is so high that only the highest builds can reasonably do anything it is a invul phase for low dps ones… just make it invul and screw off with miniscule ‘perception’ things when you have no clue about that.
Because what feels worse then a clear-cut design telling you ‘you’re powerless now?’. Exactly… one which showcases you could theoretically do something but there’s not even a remotely realistic way to do so.
Which is my special area though… and is actually wrong
It’s worse perception wise for people.
Might seem straightforward but sadly our brain is in the least situations ‘straightforward’.
Then don’t buy into it.
I bought into it before they changed it, welcome to live-service and why live-service in the current state is a customer disaster no matter how you handle things.
So… lemme get this straight.
We don’t want to affect low dps.
We want to affect high dps.
So do as we say by making a mechanic which mathematically in 100% of the cases has at least a miniscule higher effect on low dps characters!
Sounds reasonable! If it comes from someone of the movie depiction of a psychiatric ward at least… otherwise sadly not.
And even less so if we take into consideration that with DR low dps had basically nothing which affected them at all and now they have 3 ward phases to wait out/reduce/go through as extra HP on top of existing one.
It’s plain and simple mathematically wrong.
It’s even perception wise wrong.
And it’s even thematically wrong.
It’s all backwards to no end and you two guys are praising it to high heaven when it’s literally one of the worst ideas EHG has ever brought into the game. It’s a worse mechanic then MG, and MG is really really badly made.
Well, that was my point, wasn’t it? Being able to do it comfortably. If it’s annoying, it’s not comfortable.
No, we can see on youtube many builds reaching him and killing him. It’s just that not all do it comfortably.
Anyway, back to our main point. Let’s take a step back and start at the basics. What does EHG want? They want all builds, even high DPS ones, to experience mechanics. Does DDR fulfill this premise? It does.
So why did they feel like they needed to change it? Because players complained that it wasn’t transparent and they didn’t know what was going on or why the DR happened.
They came up with ward to answer that and they also wanted low DPS builds to not be affected.
So those are our 3 goals: having high DPS builds experience mechanics, being transparent for everyone what is happening and why, and not affecting low DPS builds.
So now let’s examine the various methods:
DDR: high DPS has to experience mechanics it’s not transparent low DPS isn’t affected
Your new invulnerable method: high DPS experience mechanics it’s not transparent (players are expecting the above invulnerable mechanic) affects low DPS builds
Ward as it is: high DPS don’t experience mechanics it’s transparent low DPS is affected
Ward as has been proposed by me, Llama and Scio: high DPS experience mechanics it’s transparent low DPS is affected (even though it’s less affected relatively, but that’s not acceptable to you).
So, where do we go from here? Do we need to make a new mechanic? Or can we do minor adjustments to the current one to make it fulfill all 3 goals? And the answer is that, yes, we can. How?
Simply make a single change to our previous proposal: if a fight takes a certain amount of time, ward doesn’t kick in. You can make it so that each ward breakpoint has a countdown and when it reaches 0 that breakpoint goes away.
So let’s see how well this does: high DPS has to experience mechanics because they still have to mow down the now larger ward it’s transparent. High DPS builds know what is happening and so do low DPS ones when the breakpoint goes away low DPS isn’t affected. Since breakpoints go away, they just have to deal with the base boss HP.
So there. We found a way to make the current system work without having to go for a worse one or doing convoluted things.
Wound threshold - a boss can’t take more than X damage in a given time, maybe set in 5 second portions. While the boss’ HP won’t be reduced from hits until the threshold resets, leech continues to work as if damage were fully dealt.
It’s basically short invulnerability phases, but of dynamic length (the next threshold reset).
By scaling the threshold in % of MaxHP and length in seconds, you can dictate how long this fight lasts at least.
I would introduce a caveat. If the player’s highest corruption is X higher than the currently fought boss… let them one-shot the boss.
It requires enough time to grind for the boss fight anyway.
Just some hot take late at night, might not really be a good idea if I reconsider it fully awake…
This would also happen with my latest revised method. As long as you’re dealing a lot more damage (which you should if you’re a lot higher in corruption) then you can significantly reduce the ward. It would basically work like it does now for high DPS builds, where you do get the ward but you delete it anyway.
I honestly feel like simply letting ward breakpoints “decay” over time would fix everything. Low DPS builds would never deal with the ward because they’re not fast enough to reach the breakpoint before it goes away.
There would be the problem that if you just scratch the DPS required for triggering the ward then the fight could last longer as if you were to deal 2% less damage.
Thanks.
high DPS has to experience mechanics
it’s not transparent
it’s not transparent (players are expecting the above invulnerable mechanic)