[Suggestion] Stop making Story Bosses Hard (LS4 Spoilers)

[flog.3485]

@Klipso.8653 said:

@flog.3485 said:

@Klipso.8653 said:They aren't hard, but they ARE health sponges that discourage you from playing anything other than full DPS.

Did joko fight with my PvE Condi reaper and it only took a few minutes.

Did the joko fight on my WvW support FB and it was 45 minutes.

What they need to do is stop giving bosses a billion HP and pretending it's a challenge, all it really ends up being is obnoxious to complete on any spec not built for raids

Why would you play a support build in a solo instance ? You make it sound like guardian can’t play DPS.You don’t even need to play a spec built for raids. You wouldn’t even need to have full try hard ascended armor.

And by the way, of course they need to have that sort of health pool, have you seen how generally speaking, we can do a lot more damages due to the elite specs ?

Simply because I have duplicate classes with different builds for different modes.

Unfortunately my 'main' happens to be the support FB, and I make sure he gets full completion in maps and story.

My DPS DH could have done it just as easy as my Condi reaper, but my support scourge would have had a problem as well.

Support FB has legend armor, and my DPS DH, Condi Reaper, Support Scourge, Chrono tank, DPS Holosmith are all full ascended. Swapping gear and builds just became a pain so I made multiples of the same classes for different roles

And so ? You mean that with your support firebrand with leg armor, you can’t switch the stats to grievers and get yourself some Balthazar runes or any other condis ones to no longer be a full support firebrand ?

[AliamRationem.5172]

@Kaynide.5387 said:I am all for the difficulty in these fights, but the HP should be massively cut. In the final PoF fight I retuned my build and got the boss to about 80% with no problems when I realized I could just face roll, kill his minions and just keep face rolling...literally just spamming 1-5 on the keyboard while watching tv...die, repop, face roll. That 20% I got off was fun, challenging even..but it just took so long...it felt like I was playing a game under leveled or geared (full exotic armor/ascended accessories btw).

I was honestly expecting something to happen at maybe 75% to change the fight scene but...nope.

Or you could play a solo PvE build where you kill faster but actually have to pay attention? Isn't that the more reasonable solution to this issue? Stop watching TV and pushing 1 with your support firebrand and start actually playing the game.

[Moonyeti.3296]

@Lucius.2140 said:

@Moonyeti.3296 said:

Caithe is OP.

Ok so I am just a loser then. What is your point, other than just to show off how much better of a player you are then me? I pointed out exactly what my problems with the encounter are, so MAYBE I didn't find her OP.

So I suck and you are awesome. Congrats. You win at the forums.

[Gehenna.3625]

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@Khisanth.2948 said:

@Celsith.2753 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

Further, the compRomise already happened. They made more exciting encounters, but with encounters that don't reset when the hero dies it is virtually impoSsible to fail.

I actually hate this. Last fight of PoF was very annoying to me. I went into it on a completely stupid build on my engy and died alot. I wanted to start over with the changes I knew would make a huge difference but nooooo just respawn over and over with his hp staying at whatever I got him too. I could quit of course but then i'd have to do that entire very long instance all over again.

I'd like challenging fights to stay challenging, but be their own seperate part you can restart without all the tedium of a long instance also needing to be redone.

As a side note, when I started gaming forums were often full of people asking for advice on how to beat a specific encounter. Now they're full of people demanding it's nerfed D:

That doesn't make any sense ...

People have already mentioned that it is a separate instance but even if it wasn't you could have just changed your build after you died

then

respawn. There was no need to quit. Also with the Sohothin you can do that fight with anything including while naked which has been done already.

Oh yeah, Sohothin made that fight the first fight where I actually felt like the hero I was supposed to be all those years. It also made that fight probably the least tedious of all in PoF, at least for me.

This is more aimed at your previous post but what is your DPS? Lengths of fights seem okay to me at long as it is on a character with roughly 5000 DPS. This will vary depending on the boss. Ones that move around a lot will typically end up taking less damage. 5000 is also around the amount that Sohothin provides. This is from my own experience of playing through most(still got 5 more to go through PoF and 12 to go through LS4) of the story content in the game with characters with DPS ranging from 2000 to 9000. The 2000 works but using that in the last PoF fight took around 20 minutes.

I have no idea what my DPS is. In this game I'm a casual player and I avoid fractals, raids and PvP. So I've never parsed it. I do not expect to need parsers either to enjoy the main story.

[Klipso.8653]

@flog.3485 said:

@Klipso.8653 said:

@flog.3485 said:

@Klipso.8653 said:They aren't hard, but they ARE health sponges that discourage you from playing anything other than full DPS.

Did joko fight with my PvE Condi reaper and it only took a few minutes.

Did the joko fight on my WvW support FB and it was 45 minutes.

What they need to do is stop giving bosses a billion HP and pretending it's a challenge, all it really ends up being is obnoxious to complete on any spec not built for raids

Why would you play a support build in a solo instance ? You make it sound like guardian can’t play DPS.You don’t even need to play a spec built for raids. You wouldn’t even need to have full try hard ascended armor.

And by the way, of course they need to have that sort of health pool, have you seen how generally speaking, we can do a lot more damages due to the elite specs ?

Simply because I have duplicate classes with different builds for different modes.

Unfortunately my 'main' happens to be the support FB, and I make sure he gets full completion in maps and story.

My DPS DH could have done it just as easy as my Condi reaper, but my support scourge would have had a problem as well.

Support FB has legend armor, and my DPS DH, Condi Reaper, Support Scourge, Chrono tank, DPS Holosmith are all full ascended. Swapping gear and builds just became a pain so I made multiples of the same classes for different roles

And so ? You mean that with your support firebrand with leg armor, you can’t switch the stats to grievers and get yourself some Balthazar runes or any other condis ones to no longer be a full support firebrand ?

I could, but the whole point of having multiple guardians is that I don't have to

[SunTzu.4513]

If you avoid attacks and play the mechaniks you can do the bosses just with your aa. It would take some time but that's it. I do the bosses with different types of builds because im too lazy to switch the builds if it isn't absolute neccesary. Done all of them with a dps reaper (okay hurr durr reaper meme), chrono boonbot, scrapper bunker, power dragonhunter, power weaver and condi warrior. No problems at all. Scrapper and Chrono seems to take forever but that was my choice.

[Lucius.2140]

@Moonyeti.3296 said:

@Lucius.2140 said:

@Moonyeti.3296 said:

Caithe is OP.

Ok so I am just a loser then. What is your point, other than just to show off how much better of a player you are then me? I pointed out exactly what my problems with the encounter are, so MAYBE I didn't find her OP.

So I suck and you are awesome. Congrats. You win at the forums.

I will miss the rest, my point is that they made the episode had the same level of difficulty because the new skills were overpowered.Was the same with Rytlock sword and such since the start of the game (Caledborn for example- not sure if the name is right).

You can be less skilled with a set of skills, but if they are stronger they compensate (or nearly compensate).

[particlepinata.9865]

I think the biggest problems are some of the sponge massive health bosses who drain (burn out) the player, also burping out massive aoe with bright light effects (most tyring for me personally). And the unwillingness of certain players to ever team up with other friendly players for certain end bosses of the story. It is afterall a multiplayer game where you need to team up once in a while ;-)

[Ayrilana.1396]

I have yet to see any HP sponge bosses. A boss isn’t an HP sponge because a player chooses to wear defensive/supportive stats and hit with a limp noodle.

[Kaynide.5387]

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@Kaynide.5387 said:I am all for the difficulty in these fights, but the HP should be massively cut. In the final PoF fight I retuned my build and got the boss to about 80% with no problems when I realized I could just face roll, kill his minions and just keep face rolling...literally just spamming 1-5 on the keyboard while watching tv...die, repop, face roll. That 20% I got off was fun, challenging even..but it just took so long...it felt like I was playing a game under leveled or geared (full exotic armor/ascended accessories btw).

I was honestly expecting something to happen at maybe 75% to change the fight scene but...nope.

Or you could play a solo PvE build where you kill faster but actually have to pay attention? Isn't that the more reasonable solution to this issue? Stop watching TV and pushing 1 with your support firebrand and start actually playing the game.

Way to put words in my mouth. For the record, I was playing warrior using whatever the current pve full zerker recommended metabuild (axe/axe). My point was, regardless of watching tv or playing hard, the time to clear on warrior was not that different (not firebrand support guardian, btw if it wasn’t obvious already).

[Gehenna.3625]

@Kaynide.5387 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@Kaynide.5387 said:I am all for the difficulty in these fights, but the HP should be massively cut. In the final PoF fight I retuned my build and got the boss to about 80% with no problems when I realized I could just face roll, kill his minions and just keep face rolling...literally just spamming 1-5 on the keyboard while watching tv...die, repop, face roll. That 20% I got off was fun, challenging even..but it just took so long...it felt like I was playing a game under leveled or geared (full exotic armor/ascended accessories btw).

I was honestly expecting something to happen at maybe 75% to change the fight scene but...nope.

Or you could play a solo PvE build where you kill faster but actually have to pay attention? Isn't that the more reasonable solution to this issue? Stop watching TV and pushing 1 with your support firebrand and start actually playing the game.

Way to put words in my mouth. For the record, I was playing warrior using whatever the current pve full zerker recommended metabuild (axe/axe). My point was, regardless of watching tv or playing hard, the time to clear on warrior was not that different (not firebrand support guardian, btw if it wasn’t obvious already).

There seems to be a tendency from some players to see themselves as the lowest common denominator for gamers. When you tell them that they will deny it, but the truth is they are good at gaming, at least the combat side of it, and they see things as so simple that anyone can do what they do. Of course they don't realize that when you think that, it means that they see their ability as baseline. That's what the phrase "if I can do it, anyone can" means. They see themselves as the lowest.

This makes no sense of course because clearly they are good at this game, so they should see themselves as the better players with regards to combat and that should lead to the understanding that what is easy for them, must be harder for many others who are not as good at it. They undermine their own ability in the process.

It's kind of sad really when you think about it, but they really can't seem to figure out that it's easy for them because they are good at this sort of thing and come to this false conclusion that if it's easy for them, anybody can do it also. It's doubly sad that instead of being happy with their abilities, they prefer to focus on misunderstanding that not everybody can do what they can or wants to.

[Kaynide.5387]

Yeah... I thought my first post was clear... the fight is not that hard. My point was that if the fight felt like it was taking forever, me trying harder to make it feel like forever minus 5 minutes was not worth the effort.

[Linken.6345]

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@Kaynide.5387 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@Kaynide.5387 said:I am all for the difficulty in these fights, but the HP should be massively cut. In the final PoF fight I retuned my build and got the boss to about 80% with no problems when I realized I could just face roll, kill his minions and just keep face rolling...literally just spamming 1-5 on the keyboard while watching tv...die, repop, face roll. That 20% I got off was fun, challenging even..but it just took so long...it felt like I was playing a game under leveled or geared (full exotic armor/ascended accessories btw).

I was honestly expecting something to happen at maybe 75% to change the fight scene but...nope.

Or you could play a solo PvE build where you kill faster but actually have to pay attention? Isn't that the more reasonable solution to this issue? Stop watching TV and pushing 1 with your support firebrand and start actually playing the game.

Way to put words in my mouth. For the record, I was playing warrior using whatever the current pve full zerker recommended metabuild (axe/axe). My point was, regardless of watching tv or playing hard, the time to clear on warrior was not that different (not firebrand support guardian, btw if it wasn’t obvious already).

There seems to be a tendency from some players to see themselves as the lowest common denominator for gamers. When you tell them that they will deny it, but the truth is they are good at gaming, at least the combat side of it, and they see things as so simple that anyone can do what they do. Of course they don't realize that when you think that, it means that they see their ability as baseline. That's what the phrase "if I can do it, anyone can" means. They see themselves as the lowest.

This makes no sense of course because clearly they are good at this game, so they should see themselves as the better players with regards to combat and that should lead to the understanding that what is easy for them, must be harder for many others who are not as good at it. They undermine their own ability in the process.

It's kind of sad really when you think about it, but they really can't seem to figure out that it's easy for them because they are good at this sort of thing and come to this false conclusion that if it's easy for them, anybody can do it also. It's doubly sad that instead of being happy with their abilities, they prefer to focus on misunderstanding that not everybody can do what they can or wants to.

And then we got the other side of the coin of people thinking they are gods when they are just plain bad.

[Gehenna.3625]

@Linken.6345 said:

@Gehenna.3625 said:

@Kaynide.5387 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@Kaynide.5387 said:I am all for the difficulty in these fights, but the HP should be massively cut. In the final PoF fight I retuned my build and got the boss to about 80% with no problems when I realized I could just face roll, kill his minions and just keep face rolling...literally just spamming 1-5 on the keyboard while watching tv...die, repop, face roll. That 20% I got off was fun, challenging even..but it just took so long...it felt like I was playing a game under leveled or geared (full exotic armor/ascended accessories btw).

I was honestly expecting something to happen at maybe 75% to change the fight scene but...nope.

Or you could play a solo PvE build where you kill faster but actually have to pay attention? Isn't that the more reasonable solution to this issue? Stop watching TV and pushing 1 with your support firebrand and start actually playing the game.

Way to put words in my mouth. For the record, I was playing warrior using whatever the current pve full zerker recommended metabuild (axe/axe). My point was, regardless of watching tv or playing hard, the time to clear on warrior was not that different (not firebrand support guardian, btw if it wasn’t obvious already).

There seems to be a tendency from some players to see themselves as the lowest common denominator for gamers. When you tell them that they will deny it, but the truth is they are good at gaming, at least the combat side of it, and they see things as so simple that anyone can do what they do. Of course they don't realize that when you think that, it means that they see their ability as baseline. That's what the phrase "if I can do it, anyone can" means. They see themselves as the lowest.

This makes no sense of course because clearly they are good at this game, so they should see themselves as the better players with regards to combat and that should lead to the understanding that what is easy for them, must be harder for many others who are not as good at it. They undermine their own ability in the process.

It's kind of sad really when you think about it, but they really can't seem to figure out that it's easy for them because they are good at this sort of thing and come to this false conclusion that if it's easy for them, anybody can do it also. It's doubly sad that instead of being happy with their abilities, they prefer to focus on misunderstanding that not everybody can do what they can or wants to.

And then we got the other side of the coin of people thinking they are gods when they are just plain bad.

That side exists as well yes lol, though they will likely not complain that the game is too easy but that others are using hacks and the game balance is way off.

[hugo.4705]

I really think that story instances should have difficulty like SAB, an easy mode to progress faster and less sub-events between main parts, normal like the instance is currently with boss fights do-able solo, tribulation where it's a nightmare where you need to bring friends with somes bonuses but higher risk.E.g: Exterminator golem ls4e2:-easy = boss -10% health, -20% attack damage-normal = boss -10% health, normal attack-tribulation = boss +10% health, +20% attack damage(With achievs timer adjusted)

[maddoctor.2738]

@"hugo.4705" said:I really think that story instances should have difficulty like SAB, an easy mode to progress faster and less sub-events between main parts, normal like the instance is currently with boss fights do-able solo, tribulation where it's a nightmare where you need to bring friends with somes bonuses but higher risk.E.g: Exterminator golem ls4e2:-easy = boss -10% health, -20% attack damage-normal = boss -10% health, normal attack-tribulation = boss +10% health, +20% attack damage

The problem is health and damage isn't what makes most recent story bosses easy/hard. It's their mechanics that make them challenging and balancing mechanics isn't as easy as adding percentage modifiers to health and damage. Further, making sure the mechanics are tweaked "properly" for each difficulty means a slower release schedule. I don't think we want that.

Further, adding those difficulty settings isn't a sure way of making players happy. How much would a boss need to be nerfed so the lowest common player finds it easy enough? And the opposite, how much more difficult should an encounter become to make the "I want challenge" crowd happy. Notice how in SAB there is no health/damage difference, all mobs take the exact same amount of hits to die, and they do the same amount of damage. What changes is instant-kill traps only. The rest is all mechanics, clouds to let you -skip- mechanics completely in infantile mode and lots of hidden traps in tribulation mode.

[hugo.4705]

Agreed about the mechanics, they can make a difference, but I'm pretty sure that lowering health/damage can help players to earn timed achievs like X-TER-M1N-8.I almost earned it solo with my holosmith, I only need 30 more seconds on the timer or a little less boss health.

[Kaynide.5387]

For making tiers of difficulty, I would suggest something along the lines of what Final Fantasy XIV does for their boss difficulty modes.

Typically there are 3 difficulties (a Story/Normal "You should be able to clear this blind", a Hard "Probably won't clear first try, but should be good to clear today"and an Extreme "You need a dedicated group, don't expect to clear it until you've got it down to a science")

Each level of difficulty adds more mechanics or phases or special attacks that make each fight very similar, but each layer does add a lot to remember.Best part, regardless of level, most of these fights are in-and-out in maybe 5-10 minutes. (there are exceptions)

*Edit for FFXIV players, yes I am aware "Extreme" fights made at launch are now laughable. My description is referring to how difficult the fights are at their introduction.

[DreamyAbaddon.3265]

@"TheUndefined.1720" said:I made this suggestion back in my HoT review, and I'm going to make it here; Stop making PvE story bosses hard. I'm currently sitting in the active fight with Scruffy 2.0, dead, having died at least a dozens times, and I honestly just want to throw my hands up. The point where you frustrate your player to quitting is bad game design. I understand, as game developers, you want to make the fight epic - oh no! Taimi suffocating! I care and have to hurry, but I have massive amounts of projectiles, burning, aoe's, and a completely incompetent NPC that DOES NOT use his reflect as he should... that means I don't care about Taimi, I just want to get out of the fight.

So here are some suggestions:

• Lower the Bosses HP pool: The boss fight is taking way too long, and it is not enjoyable, take down the HP
• Stop with the rapid fire AoE's AND projectiles: Slow down on the boss's attack
• Relax on the complicated moves: This isn't a raid, it's a story boss, being solo'd, there's no need to make so difficult
• Program a better companion: In every fight I did during LS4 (Sunspears, Corsairs, the rag tag team, Braham) they stopped attacking and just stood there.. seriously during the inquest swarm they all just stood there

I know the automatic response from the forum goers will be "get better," sure, I'm willing to do that, I've tried doing that, but ANet keeps making their story bosses more and more difficult. This isn't fun anymore. Please chill out on the difficulty of the story bosses.

Story bosses are not hard. You need to just learn how to play. I beat them all on almost all the classes. I really don't want them to nerf the game. Please just learn to dodge better and make your own builds that you know how to play to overcome challenges. Not that this game is challenging.

[battledrone.8315]

@DreamyAbaddon.3265 said:

@"TheUndefined.1720" said:I made this suggestion back in my HoT review, and I'm going to make it here; Stop making PvE story bosses hard. I'm currently sitting in the active fight with Scruffy 2.0, dead, having died at least a dozens times, and I honestly just want to throw my hands up. The point where you frustrate your player to quitting is bad game design. I understand, as game developers, you want to make the fight epic - oh no! Taimi suffocating! I care and have to hurry, but I have massive amounts of projectiles, burning, aoe's, and a completely incompetent NPC that DOES NOT use his reflect as he should... that means I don't care about Taimi, I just want to get out of the fight.

So here are some suggestions:

• Lower the Bosses HP pool: The boss fight is taking way too long, and it is not enjoyable, take down the HP
• Stop with the rapid fire AoE's AND projectiles: Slow down on the boss's attack
• Relax on the complicated moves: This isn't a raid, it's a story boss, being solo'd, there's no need to make so difficult
• Program a better companion: In every fight I did during LS4 (Sunspears, Corsairs, the rag tag team, Braham) they stopped attacking and just stood there.. seriously during the inquest swarm they all just stood there

I know the automatic response from the forum goers will be "get better," sure, I'm willing to do that, I've tried doing that, but ANet keeps making their story bosses more and more difficult. This isn't fun anymore. Please chill out on the difficulty of the story bosses.

Story bosses are not hard. You need to just learn how to play. I beat them all on almost all the classes. I really don't want them to nerf the game. Please just learn to dodge better and make your own builds that you know how to play to overcome challenges. Not that this game is challenging.

if they arent hard, why do these threads keep popping up?"you need to overcome challenges.but this game isnt challenging"...what?so a challenge isnt challenging? please explain that one

[Ashantara.8731]

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:You dont even need hard CC.

Never said you did.

@Blocki.4931 said:ALso the BONES that are scattered EVERYWHERE provide a stun that breaks it instantly.

Never picked one up to try, to be honest. See? Learnt something new again, even after doing this mission a good dozen times. ;)

[maddoctor.2738]

@"battledrone.8315" said:if they arent hard, why do these threads keep popping up?"you need to overcome challenges.but this game isnt challenging"...what?so a challenge isnt challenging? please explain that one

The correct way to approach an encounter you find challenging is to ask for advice on how to beat it, either in-game, on these forums, reddit, or search youtube. Defeating story bosses isn't rocket science.

Yet, what we see is someone having trouble with an encounter and instead of asking advice on how to beat it, they make threads like this asking for nerfs instead. This mentality of "I can't do it, so it's obviously over-tuned and needs a nerf" is what ruins games.

I remember that thread where someone was complaining that the first story instance in Path of Fire is too hard for them. Turned out they were using Signets as utility but used Shout traits, even though they had no actual Shouts. To further complicate matters, not every build, or even entire profession, is well balanced around story instances. A Weaver is much harder to play in those than a Dragon-hunter.

Instead of going "I can't beat it, it's too hard", being more specific "I have trouble beating Scruffy 2.0 on my Holosmith, please advice" will result in better feedback. Honestly if LOADS of players can do it, the problem isn't with the content.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:You dont even need hard CC.

Never said you did.

@"Blocki.4931" said:ALso the BONES that are scattered EVERYWHERE provide a stun that breaks it instantly.

Never picked one up to try, to be honest. See? Learnt something new again, even after doing this mission a good dozen times. ;)

Ohh yeah. I was reading it like "You need a CC chain to break the bar" and not "You need 4 cc skills in the last phase for the 4 enemies".

My bad.

[draxynnic.3719]

To put in my own 2c, although I haven't read the thread as a whole...

I recall ArenaNet commenting about the final boss of A Kindness Repaid that they put in the Olmakhan resurrection because the thing wasn't supposed to be the climax of the episode, so they wanted to make it easier. I immediately felt that what they'd actually achieved was to have the worst of both worlds (there's no challenge, because you could really just resurrection-rush it without even having much risk of armour damage to slow you down, but the first time or two you hit it there's still the frustration of being downed over and over again without feeling that there's much you can do to stop it and that you're only getting through because the game is handholding you). The third time I went through I had no problems of note (the trick is to stay in melee range as much as possible - most of its attacks are easier to dodge when in melee, and the most dangerous attack (the bouncing ball attack, which combines high damage, a wide area of effect, and a short telegraph) has a minimum range within which it can't hit you. However, if they want something to be easier, they really should make that happen by toning it down, giving more useful allies, or otherwise actually reduce the difficulty, rather than putting in a mechanic that means you literally can't lose and it's just a matter of how time-consuming and frustrating it is before you inevitably win.

Broadly speaking, though, I'd like to see more boss fights where it actually feels like you're fighting the boss rather than some convoluted mechanics puzzle. If I wanted convoluted mechanics puzzles, I'd raid more.

[Einsof.1457]

You are joking, right? It is literally impossible to lose in the story.