Should Megabosses be tweaked ? If yes, how ?

[Elric Galad]

Megabosses have been discussed a lot for being too different from other encounters. And overall a bit tedious.

This is not that they are simply harder, it's that they rely too much on sustainable/renewable builds and often deny a whole bunch of abilities or builds. 
Therefore, they only favor few tactics. 
Many of them are cheesy ones that I nerfed by my balance mod.

I know that Phenomenon (one of the author of Community Patch) wanted to tweak Megabosses for less HP.
After a feedback about my mod, I now wonder the same.
If only a few builds can beat them it might be annoying, especially for Solo runs (people tend to be completionnist you know).

That's why I wanted your opinion about the subject.

If I lower their HP, I might consider buffing them in other ways (More Accuracy, PEN, new effects ?). My goal is to make them more interesting, not simply easier.

Dorudugan might be the most critical case. Not sure there is even a problem with Belranga, Auranic or Hauani O Whe (even if less HP can make them less tedious).

For Dorudugan, I think the following could be nerfed :
1) Less HP
2) Resistant to Perception instead of Immune.
3) Only 32 RES (-66% negative effect duration instead of -75%)
4) Can be interrupted.
But I'm not sure what could be buffed to keep him challenging. Maybe something to counter summons spam more easily ?

What is your opinion about this ?

[thelee]

5 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Can be interrupted

I don't think you should do this. Any single target that can be interrupted is trivially dealt with. The other megabosses have other mechanics that make their interruptibility not debilitating (e.g., auranic has uninterruptible final attacks and a death shield before she releases all the sigils, making it basically required that you deal with all the sigils first; belranga has all the spiders and really high defenses at first; hauane o whe splits and merges so you should be able to interrupt as part of the fight).

 

I think less HP and defenses are fine. If you can survive each of a few of Dorudugan's attacks, then its massive health is mostly just tedious.

Alternatively, keep the health but lower defenses, so that more weapon types and approaches are viable at doing any reasonable amount of damage.

Idea: lower its engagement limit or give it no engagement. More parties become capable of maneuvering around the attacks without being demolished by disengagement.

 

Edited July 12, 2020 by thelee

[thelee]

As for maintaining challenge, you could always reduce the delay before the fireballs and the ground explosions go off.

Edited July 12, 2020 by thelee

[dunehunter]

I think the problem with Dorudugan is 1) it's attacks are easy to dodge because it's a melee boss, with some slow ranged special attacks. And it has no hard CC, interrupt can be countered by wearing that interrupt immune helm or many other methods. 2) hell tons of health pool. It has 16825 hp in total in upscaling PoTD.

So combine the two reason, the best way to kill the boss without cheesing is kiting it but because of the reason 2, the whole process is very tedious. Also reason No.2 is very unfriendly to resource limited classes.

I think a good way to tweak it might be make it more aggressive, and reduce health pool or put some resource refill adra there that can be activate by players.

Edited July 12, 2020 by dunehunter

[dunehunter]

1 hour ago, thelee said:

I don't think you should do this. Any single target that can be interrupted is trivially dealt with. The other megabosses have other mechanics that make their interruptibility not debilitating (e.g., auranic has uninterruptible final attacks and a death shield before she releases all the sigils, making it basically required that you deal with all the sigils first; belranga has all the spiders and really high defenses at first; hauane o whe splits and merges so you should be able to interrupt as part of the fight).

 

I think less HP and defenses are fine. If you can survive each of a few of Dorudugan's attacks, then its massive health is mostly just tedious.

Alternatively, keep the health but lower defenses, so that more weapon types and approaches are viable at doing any reasonable amount of damage.

Idea: lower its engagement limit or give it no engagement. More parties become capable of maneuvering around the attacks without being demolished by disengagement.

 

I don't think you should reduce it's defense, its a mega boss. The problem is it's high resolve and how hostile duration reduction is calculated.

[Boeroer]

If you drop its RES then its Will and Deflection would automatically drop as well. You would have to raise them back manually again (if you want to keep them at the same level as before).

I don't like Megabosses simply because of the bloated HP. If you have a build that can hit them reliably and at the same time survive most attacks then a Megaboss could go down quickly for all I care. 

There is a game called Titan Souls - it only has boss battles and you only have one arrow for each fight. So it's more like puzzles. You have to figure out how to beat a certain boss. If you do it's one hit and it will die. The game's great and the battles are designed really well. I wish Deadfire's Megabosses would be more like that. Most of them already have a puzzle-like approach (except Dorudugan I guess - if you dismiss his fire-healing). Now I don't want them to drop after one hit obviously - but once you figure out how to beat them it's just a grind that heavily favors replenishable resources. That's no fun at all, at least for me. 

16K+ health... I mean wtf?

[Raven Darkholme]

Personally I would reduce both Dorudugan's hp AND his resolve, but keep the immunities.

The immunities make it so lower resolve is not gonna make him too easy all off a sudden, but atm certain classes like ciphers are utterly useless vs him with stuff like borrowed instinct.

Him losing will would be fine, it's bloated anyway. maybe his deflection could be edited back to the original manually?

 

edit: Oh and agree with what others said give hi more movespeed and make his specials go off faster.

Edited July 12, 2020 by Raven Darkholme

[Elric Galad]

For reference, all Megabosses HP (based on Gamedata files, +/-1 because I'm not sure about rounding, but it doesn't matter) :

Dorudugan :

Normal : 13 450
PotD : 16 825

 

Belranga :

Normal : 5 504
PotD : 6 880

 

Auranic :

Normal : 2 457
PotD : 3 072 or 2 572
(Auranic is a Kith who has probably normal HP for a lvl 28 Wizard. She benefits from a status giving her 2 000 additional HP. Since "Tough" ability is coded the same, I assume these 2 000 hp doesn't benefit from CON but I don't know how this interacts with PotD +25% HP.

Sigils :

Normal : 1 250
PotD : 1 563

 

 

Hauani O Whe :

Normal : 7 201
PotD : 9 002

Gigantic Black Ooze :

Normal : 3 746
PotD : 4 682

 

8 hours ago, thelee said:

I don't think you should do this. Any single target that can be interrupted is trivially dealt with. The other megabosses have other mechanics that make their interruptibility not debilitating (e.g., auranic has uninterruptible final attacks and a death shield before she releases all the sigils, making it basically required that you deal with all the sigils first; belranga has all the spiders and really high defenses at first; hauane o whe splits and merges so you should be able to interrupt as part of the fight).

Agreed. This would completely change the nature of the fight. 

8 hours ago, thelee said:

As for maintaining challenge, you could always reduce the delay before the fireballs and the ground explosions go off.

I'm not sure. Dorudugan is already denying many player's ability, and this would deny its ability to react. And it won't be easy to balance.
Still interesting to consider.

[omgFIREBALLS]

22 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

3) Only 32 RES (-66% negative effect duration instead of -75%)

I am entirely in favor of lowering Dorudugan's resolve. I always find him an extremely unsatisfying boss because there's no "cracking him open". Between high defenses, immunities and his resolve it feels hopeless to meaningfully debuff him.

[dunehunter]

35 minutes ago, omgFIREBALLS said:

I am entirely in favor of lowering Dorudugan's resolve. I always find him an extremely unsatisfying boss because there's no "cracking him open". Between high defenses, immunities and his resolve it feels hopeless to meaningfully debuff him.

Well currently there are way to cracking him open, it’s called resonant touch or bleeding cut + blade cascade

But yah, its not fair to other classes.

[Elric Galad]

34 minutes ago, dunehunter said:

Well currently there are way to cracking him open, it’s called resonant touch or bleeding cut + blade cascade

But yah, its not fair to other classes.

Yup. But Community Patch nerfed resonant touch and my mod nerfed SoT + blade cascade.

That's the problem it's a fight that more or less require cheesing to win. So if cheese are nerfed, how to do ?

That's the difference with other megabosses who don't require it. They're grindy but not that much.

[thelee]

8 hours ago, omgFIREBALLS said:

I am entirely in favor of lowering Dorudugan's resolve. I always find him an extremely unsatisfying boss because there's no "cracking him open". Between high defenses, immunities and his resolve it feels hopeless to meaningfully debuff him.

lower resolve doesn't seem like it would matter. dorudugan just has an enormous amount of health, that basically nothing matters except just damage or resource regen simply because the fight is so damn long.

 

and wow, i was going off the wiki which put dorudugan's health at ~6k (~7.4k on potd). no wonder my 200+ stacks of resonance didn't do much on my last attempt... way for the wiki to be off by an order of magnitude.

 

20 hours ago, Boeroer said:

There is a game called Titan Souls - it only has boss battles and you only have one arrow for each fight. So it's more like puzzles. You have to figure out how to beat a certain boss. If you do it's one hit and it will die. The game's great and the battles are designed really well. I wish Deadfire's Megabosses would be more like that. Most of them already have a puzzle-like approach (except Dorudugan I guess - if you dismiss his fire-healing). Now I don't want them to drop after one hit obviously - but once you figure out how to beat them it's just a grind that heavily favors replenishable resources. That's no fun at all, at least for me. 

this is my general opinion on dorudugan. I've never heard Titan Souls, but it sounds about right. The hardest part (and the "trick") of dorudugan is just being able to position your characters appropriately to avoid the fireballs and the ground explosions, and to gear up appropriately to survive the vacuum/fire explosion attack at <bloodied. the fact that dorudugan has so much health just makes it tedious, when most players have already demonstrated that they know how to survive the fight after a few of each attack.

 

maybe dorudugan should have like half the health and slightly lower defenses, but use their abilities more often. players would still need to handle the main "tricks" of the fight, but they wouldn't have to do it over a huuuuugely long play session. with lower health and slightly lower defenses, maybe some buffs and debuffs would actually be useful without needing brilliant backup.

 

edit: as far as the other megabosses go, i dont' think they need much tweaking. my last attempt was slightly more optimized (using a monk and a beckoner) and i could clear hauane, sigilmaster, and belranga rather quickly (wotw with ajumaat's stalking cloak is stupid against hauane). however, even being more optimized for megaboss content, there's just no getting aroudn the fact that i have to set aside like half an hour to an hour just to tackle dorudugan, even though the basic trick of the fight is muscle memory at this point.

Edited July 13, 2020 by thelee

[Boeroer]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

[...] as far as the other megabosses go, i dont' think they need much tweaking.

They might not need much tweaking in the vanilla game (I'd still argue they do), but keep in mind that the original question was: "Do Megabosses need tweaking once you installed @Elric Galad's polishing mod?"

It seems the mod makes fights against Megabosses harder - as a poster who tried that previously reported.

[dunehunter]

Btw is it just me that ajumaat's stalking cloak cannot stun splitted oozie from backstabbing? My accuracy to stun it is like around 100 ( no +25 assassinate bonus for some unknown reason ) which always miss. I'm using it  from Smoke Veil btw.

[Elric Galad]

2 hours ago, Boeroer said:

They might not need much tweaking in the vanilla game (I'd still argue they do), but keep in mind that the original question was: "Do Megabosses need tweaking once you installed @Elric Galad's polishing mod?"

It seems the mod makes fights against Megabosses harder - as a poster who tried that previously reported.

To be more generic, I would say "do they need tweaking to be beatten without cheesing" since most of my mod's nerf are about cheesing. 

I don't think Auranic and Belranga need tweaking. Their HP pool is huge but appropriate for their "puzzle". I wonder about reducing Hauani 2 first form hp by a third and raise their attack. They feel more tedious than dangerous.

[Boeroer]

1 hour ago, dunehunter said:

Btw is it just me that ajumaat's stalking cloak cannot stun splitted oozie from backstabbing? My accuracy to stun it is like around 100 ( no +25 assassinate bonus for some unknown reason ) which always miss. I'm using it  from Smoke Veil btw.

Maybe it only works from stealth as the description says but WotW is an exception somehow?

[Elric Galad]

Now I'm a bit dubious about the HP tweak. The reason is that the initial issue was that my mod made solo megaboss harder. If HP are nerfed, it means that I have to increase some offensive ability. Even if Doru HP are halved, this would only made the battle shorter, not "easier". The possibility to kill a megaboss does not really depend on the duration of the battle. "If it can bleed, it can die". On the other hand increasing offensive ability (including movement speed) would lead builds previously working to not work anymore.

I guess Doru fire damages are non significant for solo since you can itemize against them. Increasing Doru fire damages could be a valid route to follow, but I'm unsure about the consequence on "Party PotD crowd" which is a larger audience than "Solo PotD elite".

Also there are some new builds that works in Solo with my mod even if some builds are out. For example, Single Class non-Ghostheart ranger has Infinite duration Nimble from Vengeful Grief which enabled kitting forever. And Bloodmage can still kite forever too. Fighter may be able to Unbending tank infinitely through Toughened fury (tactician can probably crit itself with a caster Multiclass).

Now I'm wondering if tuning down Doru (and possibly Hauani) HP down WITHOUT other changes could be seen as a measure of public sanity, and could be seem as a compensation for removing most cheeses. Doru is the most cheesable Megaboss anyway due to its unability to dispell or add injuries beyond BDD. Maybe it's not needed to tweak them up.

Edit : the issue is also that I'm a "small indie company" so the changes I make have to be somewhat conservative. I lack testing capability to ensuite a change does not break the game. Simply reducing Megabosses tedious hp can't really break the game. I can include this in the nerf package of my mod since this is meant to compensate cheese purge.

 

Edited July 14, 2020 by Elric Galad

[thelee]

3 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Now I'm a bit dubious about the HP tweak. The reason is that the initial issue was that my mod made solo megaboss harder. If HP are nerfed, it means that I have to increase some offensive ability. Even if Doru HP are halved, this would only made the battle shorter, not "easier". The possibility to kill a megaboss does not really depend on the duration of the battle. "If it can bleed, it can die". On the other hand increasing offensive ability (including movement speed) would lead builds previously working to not work anymore.

Making the battle shorter, does also make it "easier" without trivializing it because it becomes less tedious. This is why I'm going to go back and suggest reducing defenses (AR mostly, but you can also reduce other defenses) more so than reducing HP. The net effect is similar (Dorudugan dies faster), but the "psychological" effect is that more party builds and character setups will be capable of doing a not-frustratingly-low amount of damage with a not-frustratingly-low hit rate. (Maybe for the rare person who plays megabosses on normal difficulty, you can also provide a small HP nerf as well.)

Dorudugan is the megaboss that reminds me most of the classic WoW raid bosses of old, and not in a good way. A huge HP sink and a very minor technical dimension that once you can get down you do ad nauseum with little challenge (in fact, Dorudugan reminds me a lot of a boss like Thaddius in WoW--pay attention to some icon or visual effect on your screen, and then run to a specific location). I'm not sure what you get from having the player do this over 30-45 minutes instead of, say, 20 minutes.

My separate (and slightly related) suggestion of making the special fire attacks and vacuum attack more frequent (in concert with making Dorudugan killable in a fraction of the normal time) is based on the idea that the battle would be much shorter and thus more viable for various parties, but also much more "intense" whereas right now you have fire attacks spread out with a long series of melee attacks which--by necessity by the length of the fight--you have to metagame into being trivialized, which not only limits party viability but also means once you have metagamed it properly it's just a long tedious sequence that is relatively uninteresting.

Edited July 14, 2020 by thelee

[Elric Galad]

 

2 hours ago, thelee said:

This is why I'm going to go back and suggest reducing defenses (AR mostly, but you can also reduce other defenses) more so than reducing HP. The net effect is similar (Dorudugan dies faster), but the "psychological" effect is that more party builds and character setups will be capable of doing a not-frustratingly-low amount of damage with a not-frustratingly-low hit rate. (Maybe for the rare person who plays megabosses on normal difficulty, you can also provide a small HP nerf as well.)

I agree with this. Also makes Doru regen through fire damages less significant.

2 hours ago, thelee said:

My separate (and slightly related) suggestion of making the special fire attacks and vacuum attack more frequent (in concert with making Dorudugan killable in a fraction of the normal time) is based on the idea that the battle would be much shorter and thus more viable for various parties, but also much more "intense" whereas right now you have fire attacks spread out with a long series of melee attacks which--by necessity by the length of the fight--you have to metagame into being trivialized, which not only limits party viability but also means once you have metagamed it properly it's just a long tedious sequence that is relatively uninteresting.

I understand the idea, the problem is that I don't know where the AI behavior is scripted for now. I'm not sure it's feasible.
If anyone knows...

Changing the trigger delay is possible though, I have just checked the files.

[thelee]

25 minutes ago, Elric Galad said:

I understand the idea, the problem is that I don't know where the AI behavior is scripted for now. I'm not sure it's feasible.

ah yeah, i don't know anything about modding deadfire, so i assumed there was just a simple "timeout" parameter somewhere on the abilities, since they come so regularly in that fight. too bad if not.

[Elric Galad]

On 7/14/2020 at 4:55 PM, thelee said:

Making the battle shorter, does also make it "easier" without trivializing it because it becomes less tedious. This is why I'm going to go back and suggest reducing defenses (AR mostly, but you can also reduce other defenses) more so than reducing HP. The net effect is similar (Dorudugan dies faster), but the "psychological" effect is that more party builds and character setups will be capable of doing a not-frustratingly-low amount of damage with a not-frustratingly-low hit rate. (Maybe for the rare person who plays megabosses on normal difficulty, you can also provide a small HP nerf as well.)

OK, so what I plan to do to Dorudugan :

Base HP : 2000->1000 (new total for PotD : 14 075)
Resolve : 35-> 30 : (Will in PotD : 167 -> 157)
Deflection -> -25  (total Deflection in PotD : 142 -> 112)

No change to other megabosses.
Included in the optional "nerf" package, meant to compensate for cheese nerf.

What do you think ?

[thelee]

On 7/18/2020 at 12:39 AM, Elric Galad said:

OK, so what I plan to do to Dorudugan :

Base HP : 2000->1000 (new total for PotD : 14 075)
Resolve : 35-> 30 : (Will in PotD : 167 -> 157)
Deflection -> -25  (total Deflection in PotD : 142 -> 112)

No change to other megabosses.
Included in the optional "nerf" package, meant to compensate for cheese nerf.

What do you think ?

i would personally lean towards a smaller deflection reduction but paired with some across the board AR drops, or at least AR drops for all non-crush, non-shock damage.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

That looks good, but maybe some AR reduction (aside from Crush and Shock) and downgrade Perception Immunity to Resistance as well.

[Elric Galad]

On 7/20/2020 at 5:04 PM, thelee said:

i would personally lean towards a smaller deflection reduction but paired with some across the board AR drops, or at least AR drops for all non-crush, non-shock damage.

Problem I see with AR reduction apart crush and shock is that it won't help that much. In PotD, Doru has base 18 AR. Even a couple of point less won't make penetrating easy. You'll still be better swapping your weapon and use Crush damages. I could add Freeze or Corrode vulnerability but there is no unique weapon using these types of damages (except a freezing mace, that can deal crush damages anyway) and spells aren't very spammable vs Doru anyway. I feel like lowering Pierce or Slash AR won't make sense either.

Don't hesitate to propose a complete AR table for all types if you have some idea, but I can't find something that makes sense and would actually help.

And I think I won't go below -15 Def (total -20 Def with Resolve reduction)

I can also nerf a bit it's self heal, but I'm not confortable at adding a weakness to Per Affliction to what is supposed to be a juggernaut.

Or nerf its mouvement speed (-15%) to make sure You Can kite it forever and basically change the encounter into a shhot em up sequence.

Edited August 4, 2020 by Elric Galad

[thelee]

2 hours ago, Elric Galad said:

Problem I see with AR reduction apart crush and shock is that it won't help that much. In PotD, Doru has base 18 AR. Even a couple of point less won't make penetrating easy. You'll still be better swapping your weapon and use Crush damages.

it seems to me that the diff between 16 and 18 is huge.

with 16, body attunement/shield cracks (+ some other choices) with flanking means legendary weapons can do -25% or full damage with modal or a tier 2 inspiration (and stilettos can do full without either). at 18 you could easily still be stuck at -50% or even irredeemably -75%

crush/shock will still be easier and may even allow for overpenetration in some cases, but right now it strikes me as incredibly dull and obliterating of 20 levels of gameplay choices because as is stands dorudugan effectively says "immunity to anything not crush, shock, or raw"

Edited August 4, 2020 by thelee