The objectives in the monolith echos that constantly bombard you with high damage AOEs really bring down the level of enjoyment i have with running echoes.
I don’t want to be rushed to kill them before clearing more of the echo, i don’t want high damage/low visibility AOEs targeting me the whole echo, and im tired of it annihilating my minions with oppressive damage that my minions will not dodge and that i cannot see early enough to command my minions to dodge manually.
This isn’t fun, this isn’t beneficial to the gameplay loop, and it never will be. Please remove them from the game.
There is a place in the game for long range, high damage AOE enemy abilities. You hit the sweet spot with the siege golems. I see their massive ability marker and i KNOW there is a huge and deadly threat somewhere within about a screen and half that i MUST react to in order to carry on relatively unmolested. The breathing room between golems as well as the extreme visibility of their ability is really important.
The golems are a good way to keep players on their toes because they can be responded to reasonable quickly(within about 30 seconds). The towers and spires however cannot be dealt with quickly making them feel like they only exist to make your day, and your game experience, worse.
TBH, this is probably mostly a strategy/build problem. Your minions should not be getting annihilated by towers. You need to be investing in minion survivability - health, regen, leech. It doesn’t take very much. I do it mostly as an afterthought or pathing to other nodes and see nearly zero minion destruction to spires, even in empowered monos.
That being said, it’s not entirely a strategy problem, because it is true that:
Poison spires have absolutely atrocious visibility on both their telegraph and lingering ground effect, and on some tilesets they’re totally invisible. I’m sure this will get addressed.
Wengari spires seem to be extreme outliers in the damage they deal. No other spire comes close to dealing equivalent damage, in my observation. I’m certain they’re overtuned.
Finally, you may not have realized it yet, but you can cheese spire echoes hilariously easy if you get any reflect on your minions, especially from a reflect shrine. Just stand them in the AOE a few times, the spires will kill themselves.
them only firing in combat doesn’t change anything because in order to get to them you will be in combat alot.
my minions do have a significant amount of survivability. max health, regen, leech, armor, resistances; they have it all. it doesn’t matter because its still two to three hits and they die because all that survivability isn’t enough.
Finally, i don’t want to cheese them i want the game to be better, for both myself and others.
The solution being “Build better and suffer through.” does not make the unfun mechanic less unfun because you are still suffering the unfun mechanic.
I have to agree that spire missions are my least favorite as well. They would probably feel better if they worked like stationary golems instead of global cannons. I wouldn’t even care if it was clusters of towers per objective at that point. Visibility is also a major concern. Most AOEs from the spires just melt into the packs once pack size is upped in Monos. It may not look as fancy, but bright solid colors would be far more readable.
The fire tower could also use looking into specifically not for visibility but for it actual land time. The first explosion is basically right on top of you when the marker appears. I feel like the explosion was sped up to accommodate the secondary explosion to match the fall time of the other towers, but that tower does way to much damage for the speed at which the first explosion lands.
You’re still describing a gameplay and strategy problem. If you’re building and controlling them properly, your minions should not be taking hits so often, back to back, without any chance to leech/regen their life back that they are “getting annihilated”.
Understand that I’m a minion player first and foremost. I had the same problems when they were introduced. The problems you’re having come from being unfamiliar with the mechanic, not because the mechanic itself is inherently “unfun”. It’s a challenge you are not used to, which requires you to play in ways you do not normally play. That’s it.
I’m not suffering it at all. I barely notice spires.
since you barely notice the spires, perhaps you can explain the benefits of the mechanic staying in the game and why it doesn’t reduce the fun or perhaps any ways it actually increases your enjoyment? if you don’t notice them how does it make your experience better by existing?
I think spires make the game better for exactly the reason you’re so angry about them - You can’t play the same way in a Spire echo as you can in a non-Spire echo. You have to pay more attention, and pay attention to different things.
I barely notice them because I took the time to learn how to play around the mechanic until it wasn’t a big deal anymore. That seemed like a better option to me than just getting mad that it was different.
When playing with my minion-based character, after entering a monolith, sometimes they just go ahead and attack enemies cancelling my 15-invulneability window even I’m not even moving yet and it’s much worse if the mono run I have is a destroy-spire type. And I see this a problem because this shouldn’t happen. And I doubt you can even get out of combat once you moved at the very beginning of the monolith run, the spires will continue to attack you no matter what until you end the run.
-Poison spires have absolutely atrocious visibility on both their telegraph and lingering ground effect, and on some tilesets they’re totally invisible. I’m sure this will get addressed.
-Wengari spires seem to be extreme outliers in the damage they deal. No other spire comes close to dealing equivalent damage, in my observation. I’m certain they’re overtuned.
ABSOLUTELY. I totally agree with this one. Wengari spires on a snowy area is just impossible to see. How many times I’ve died on this one already…
Finally, you may not have realized it yet, but you can cheese spire echoes hilariously easy if you get any reflect on your minions, especially from a reflect shrine. Just stand them in the AOE a few times, the spires will kill themselves.
I didn’t know this. While this might be hilarious, I don’t think this should happen. It’s like sending the reflected damage wirelessly lol.
i refuse to believe that a mechanic that acts like a tax that you must pay to ignore is a net positive. You said yourself that you don’t notice them. So it sounds like you actually don’t play differently when you’re in a spire map. You paid a tax to get back to neutral and once you did you no longer pay attention to them. Unlike the siege golems which act as a similar threat they aren’t interactive. There has to be a better mechanic than spires and I want the developers to find it.
Even if i do these maps with a 0% MS Warpath sentinel I have 0 issues to snail pace out of the AoE zone not to speak of other toons with far more MS. I think it’s an experience and a " get used to" problem rather then a design problem.
The objectives in the monolith echos that constantly bombard you with high damage AOEs really bring UP the level of enjoyment I have with running echoes. Kinda like that.
You can refuse to believe whatever you like. But the likelihood of this mechanic going away is pretty small, so your energy is better spent on learning how to play your minion build effectively in spire maps, as everyone else has already done.
You’re grasping at straws because you’d rather be mad than understand. Of course I play differently. For one, I know I have to pay attention to my minions positioning more and sometimes move them out of harms way. The change is just seamless because I’m used to doing it.
You not wanting to interact with them in the way they need to be interacted with does not mean they are not interactive. You want to run around forgetting that your minions have health bars and only paying attention to where your own character is because that’s how minion builds are played 99% of the time, but spires don’t let you get away with that as often.
You have a dedicated keybind that makes your minions move. You have every tool you need to not have your minions die constantly to highly telegraphed AOE attacks. If you don’t want to do that, well, that’s simply not a design problem.
All you need to do is not use any skills for 4s and the game considers you “out of combat” and hhe spires stop. Whether you can get tour minions to do that is another kettle of fish.
discussing an alternative with someone who refuses to even consider an alternative to the current circumstances is a waste of energy. you don’t care at all about improving the game only proving your mastery of it.
Yes, it has been rather fruitless trying to explain to you that the only reason you’re having problems with spires is your refusal to play any differently, hasn’t it?
Friend, the only thing you’re doing here is complaining that a novel mechanic doesn’t allow you to ignore the existence of your minions and treat them as immortal mobile turrets. That absolutely does not reflect a desire to improve the game on your part. It’s just bullheadedness.
Spires are fine. You just play against them poorly, on purpose. Sorry.
If minions had ANY worthwhile AI, I would agree. Having recently had the pleasure of fighting the 1st boss in the armory, and being reminded of how lackluster minion AI is in this game, I can say that micromanaging minion positioning is beyond annoying;
Me: “minion, move here out of the AOE” click Minion(s): “but, there’s something over there in the AOE I want to hit” moves back into AOE Me: “NO! I said move out of the goddamn AOE!!!” click Minion(s): “fuck off, I want to go hit that bad thing standing in the AOE!” moves back into AOE
Sometimes it takes some cajoling (more than one press on Attack/Move) to get them to go where they need to go, and I agree that’s not great and should be improved. That’s a problem with minion AI that applies across the board though, and not a problem with spires.
OP’s claim isn’t about the AI - it’s that spires don’t telegraph well enough in advance to force move minions out of them at all, and that is objectively false.
I hate spires too. They are so anoooooooooooying.
Especially when you want to check loot on the ground.
Its stressing me too much.
Every time i had spires, i just leave the echo and re-enter
