Bossing in POE feels bad becouse of PHASEs

i actually dont mind phases IF they're short and dont punish the player.

it can actually give time for players to breath.

normally during fierce battles. players are torn between hitting the enemy AND staying out of damage.

the pirate wave phase to me is a nice little phase that gives the fight flavour.

one contention i have against phases is the "wasted DOT damage". once the boss is invulnerable, all the DOT damage i have inflicted that has yet to resolve is wasted.


another issue i have against invulnerable phases is there can be unintended actions made by the bosses.

for example dominus. i can permafreeze him in his first form. i think everythings fine and dandy as his life is down to zero but he cant do anything until i let him "die" and go to his next phase. but since he's not technically dead, a super delayed touch of god was waiting for me so i fucking died. that is BULLSHIT. in normal circumstance i would have killed the boss and the spell effect would be cancelled.

another is the harvest bosses. sometimes their HP dont go down and they keep attacking me. like wtf is going on. i've reported this a long time ago. sometimes its fine and dandy and they go into their invulnerable phases. sometimes i cant damage them at all but theyre attacking me like normal. i have to stop attacking them and run away until they go into their next phase. or i have to keep attacking them again if they dont for a long time.

Phases that move the fight along make a sort of sense, like switching between shaper and elder.

Phases were the boss goes invincible but still damage you feel terrible. If the boss can go invincible, why doesnt he use that full time? Not enough cooldown reduction on his boss gear?

It also negates builds that rely on leech or LGOH, while rewarding builds that rely on regen. But not for build variation, just... randomly, abstractly, for no purpose.

Its just lazy design.

i think poe has amazing boss fights, i really like them and i think the phases are a good part of what makes them interesting. sirus is the only one i dont like, loads of standing around, he forces you offscreen but then can randomly 1 shot you from off screen, its just red and black on red and black with red and black warnings and a clusters fuck of red and black effects. its just too much of mess for me. but i know whoever designed it, mark or rory or one of the other guys, theyre amazing game designers and 95% of what they put into the game is the best content ever put in an arpg, i dont like that one boss but its whatever.

i think maven is amazing and i like the exarch ball phase, i think exarch is a more fun boss than the eater.

Snorkle you take that back, nobody likes ball phase

I'm confident that Sirus's phases were designed to be a gauntlet to get back to the boss and they just couldn't get it to work quite how they wanted to so we've ended up with this without purpose phase where we run away while he gots on an armchair then we move back and he gets off it again.

It was significantly different when he was brand new, but it was also very buggy and you frequently ended up waiting long periods for a gap in the storms or sometimes you just had to straight log out which caused problems with it being buggy when you re-enter the fight.

The version we have now has it removed, the storms are there but they don't really do anything anymore and the phases are extremely quick you can usually get him back down after one quick jog to the edge and back.

lol



that would make sense with sirus.

i still run him when i have enough sets built up but hes never dropped anything worth more than a few chaos for me in the entire time hes been in the game, i cant say hes had any positive effect on my personal poe experience outside of the character and the voice lines. as a character i think hes really cool and his demented split personality voice lines are up there with the best poe boss yapping.


thats one area where poe is ridiculously far ahead of everyone elsein the arpg sphere. the characters, the voice acting, the scripts they give them. such rich personality.

you can tell when ggg are interviewed theyre actually interesting people with a good sense of humour, i think it stems from that. whenever u see an interview with blizzard theyre such stiff, soulless npc salesmen. they have that shallow tuesday morning corporate facade you expect to encounter from the receptionist at your dentist, a dead smile painted on a vacuum. i cant think of a bad npc in poe off the top of my head and i cant think of a single good one in d3/d4. d3 is the worst tho, im actually embarrassed adults wrote that stuff.




been playing a bit of hades recently, theyve got really good characters in that game.

When a developer puts their heart (collectively or individually) into something you can always tell

I think most of it is a byproduct of GGG allowing their damage and defense system to get so completely scuffed over time. Though they did proclaim themselves good at making bosses.

Such a claim does deserve critique.

I've made many bosses with mechanics and no immune periods or immune phases. One project which lasted 6 years even got a little out of hand with number bloat but the ratios were still on par which is the important part. 10,000 or 1,000 damage doesn't matter when ratios are good.

An important part is the bosses are hard but fair also. I dislike making enemies immune to parts of the damage system just for the sake of them being a boss. It's usually a sign there's something wrong with it. Many MMOs do this and it's generally because CC is too strong.

GGG : next new map mod is "250% more time for cinematic of Map Boss phasing"