Soon done with first triple crown playthrough. I'll skip the superbosses this time but do them next playthrough, what do I need to know about them?

[Ouroboros226]

I don't know if I've found all of them. But the ones I've found that I think are superbosses due to them having an "introduction" sequence but not forcing you into combat, are these.  

  

Big golem in corroded wasteland.  

Big crystal spider.  

Big black ooze.

A "sigilmaster" mage dude in an underwater cavern surrounded by those super annoying debuff stones.

 

Not sure if there are more. The reason I'm asking here instead of watching a youtube video or a game guide. Is because I want to go in partly blind. By that I mean, I don't want to die because the bosses killed me with something I had to die to learn, if that makes sense. But at the same time I want the experience to be challenging with some unknowns. I don't want a recipe for success, I just want a safety net for unavoidable failure if you know what I mean. I just want to know what these bosses have when it comes to mechanics, which can only be learnt by dying. So I don't have to waste an entire playthrough just for "oh I needed X, WELL time to play another 20 hours to correct that one mistake I had no idea of knowing!".  

 

[Haplok]

Uhhh, don't play Ironman during your first encounter/learning the megabosses?

[abot]

I too think first encounter with megabosses blind+ironman = certain restart, anyway here comes:
dorudugan - bathe in fire
auranic - don't fear a crush on her
belranga - wait for adra cannon

 

[Boeroer]

All megabosses - besides having absurd stats - have specific "tricks" and it's very hard (I'd say almost impossible) to kill all of them without figuring out what makes them special. So... without any meta-knowledge you are bound to fail. Even the thing that usually always works as long as there's space (use an Assassin and apply Gouging Strike + True Love's Kiss, then retreat and get a coffee) won't work against all megabosses because of those special things they have/do.

 

[Ouroboros226]

1 hour ago, Boeroer said:

All megabosses - besides having absurd stats - have specific "tricks" and it's very hard (I'd say almost impossible) to kill all of them without figuring out what makes them special. So... without any meta-knowledge you are bound to fail. Even the thing that usually always works as long as there's space (use an Assassin and apply Gouging Strike + True Love's Kiss, then retreat and get a coffee) won't work against all megabosses because of those special things they have/do.

 

Thanks! I'll do a playthrough w/o ironman mode and only on veteran to get a feel for them first then.

One thing that bothers me a bit... I've read you guys stating in some places that infinite resource classes has a clear advantage against mega bosses. How bad is it? Do they have a really strong and unfair advantage, or is it still reasonably manageable with a main character /w finite resource pool? I'm a bit discouraged by the oversight on Obsidian's part to fail at balancing this (unless the advantage is overexaggerated). 

[Boeroer]

2 hours ago, Ouroboros226 said:

One thing that bothers me a bit... I've read you guys stating in some places that infinite resource classes has a clear advantage against mega bosses. How bad is it? Do they have a really strong and unfair advantage, or is it still reasonably manageable with a main character /w finite resource pool? I'm a bit discouraged by the oversight on Obsidian's part to fail at balancing this (unless the advantage is overexaggerated). 

Refreshing resources are huge advantage against megabosses. Monks, Chanters, Tacticians, Bloodmages, Ciphers - that's usually the best picks. Cipher has Disintegration, too - which makes a certain megaboss fight a lot easier.

You can get to refreshing resources even with those classes that usually have fixed resources. You'd need a source of Brilliant then (Cipher's Ancestor's Memory, Shroud of the Phantasm, Least Unstable Coil etc) and stuff like Salvation of Time and/or Wall of Draining. Some of those classes also can refresh resources easily with some tricks - for example a SC Berserker can kill his Chanter buddies summons "accidentally" and will gain Rage from Blood Surge - or a SC Paladin can get Zeal when a summon dies (no matter who kills it). You can easily combine both. Other classes might be able to refund resources often enough - like a dual wielding SC Rogue with enough Guile so that Gambit has a 100% hit-to-crit conversion (do not graze though...). But generally speaking the classes I mentioned first have a clear advantage. 

If you are not against some cheesy tactics you can use the Strand of Favor trick to extend all buffs on you eternally (including Brilliant) which levels this general imbalance. 

[Ouroboros226]

3 minutes ago, Boeroer said:

Refreshing resources are huge advantage against megabosses. Monks, Chanters, Tacticians, Bloodmages, Ciphers - that's usually the best picks. Cipher has Disintegration, too - which makes a certain megaboss fight a lot easier.

You can get to refreshing resources even with those classes that usually have fixed resources. You'd need a source of Brilliant then (Cipher's Ancestor's Memory, Shroud of the Phantasm, Least Unstable Coil etc) and stuff like Salvation of Time and/or Wall of Draining. Some of those classes also can refresh resources easily with some tricks - for example a SC Berserker can kill his Chanter buddies summons "accidentally" and will gain Rage from Blood Surge - or a SC Paladin can get Zeal when a summon dies (no matter who kills it). You can easily combine both. Other classes might be able to refund resources often enough - like a dual wielding SC Rogue with enough Guile so that Gambit has a 100% hit-to-crit conversion (do not graze though...). But generally speaking the classes I mentioned first have a clear advantage. 

If you are not against some cheesy tactics you can use the Strand of Favor trick to extend all buffs on you eternally (including Brilliant) which levels this general imbalance. 

Not what I wanted to hear   But thanks for telling it bluntly as for what it is. I find it kinda... strange that this balancing oversight happened. Because I personally think (feel free to disagree) that the balance of this game is actually good. As a veteran gamer, veteran difficulty felt like normal difficulty. PoTD felt like hard difficulty. And Ironman playthrough PoTD was nerve-wrecking and I failed a few times before making it. So that said - I think the overall balance is pretty good.   

  

As a side note, I think it's funny that trying non-expert mode became more of an annoyance. I tried it once recently and I couldn't handle the colors and unnecessary info being everywhere  I had to go back to expert because not playing expert felt worse, is this normal?

[Haplok]

I disagree. The game is balanced okay with its regular content for party-play and party synergies IMO.

However it is certainly NOT balanced for solo play OR fair combat versus ENTIRELY OPTIONAL "Megaboss" bonus challenges, that weren't even included in the base game - and neither it should be IMO.

Edited September 20, 2021 by Haplok

[abot]

Personally I had a lot of fun trying to find ways around unbalanced ultimate level challenges (e.g. scaled up + all magran fires + megabosses) so as long as you can tail tailor your difficulty as you like why hate against options? it is not that anybody is forcing you to use some difficulty options or to play in a certain way, I find this customization availability one of the greatest things of the game, giving the game much more potential longevity

Edited September 20, 2021 by abot

[thelee]

Just as reference, Dorudugan literally has something like 10,000 health on PotD.

hauane o whe can literally have effectively infinite health if you’re not adequately prepared.

 

i get there’s a certain satisfaction of going in blind and winning, but many players collectively have spared you the headache by figuring out the mega bosses and sharing info about it. You do you, but I don’t think it’s weakness to do your due diligence, in the same vein as planning your character in advance: All my characters/parties since the mega bosses are explicitly planned so they have viable options against all the mega bosses; it’s just a part of my character planning. (As a result, my need to ensure certain debuffs land consistently has over time made perception a king stat, in counter to typical stat advice.)