The Mad Wolf of Ogham

Sincere question: What was the design goal for the Count of Ogham boss encounter?

Preamble: I've been trying to get past this boss on a sorceress for a whole evening, and I'm getting nowhere.

As the final boss of Act 1, this is a gateway challenge to harder content.

As such, if you're unable to complete the boss through lack of skill or loadout, you're basically one hundred percent in for a miserable gaming experience, because the only content to "level up" on is trash mobs. In fact the Manor has the highest level mobs, and it's a desolate maze of empty corridors.

I have a plan to reach the next level of node unlocks to I can compete with Geonor, but I need to level up another three times (I'm 17). That's not going to happen, there are better ways to spend my xmas vacation.

I could try different combinations of skills and support ge ... oh, who am I kidding. I have five support gems. I've been farming XP for hours on trash and bosses, and at level 17 I have five support gems. I made poor choices too, but I can't respec them. That's it.


Now, I don't suck at souls games, but they tend to be exquisitely tuned to be fair to the player mechanics and input system.

Adds block and push you around. That circle of frost mist? Does anyone think that's good? Do you really think it makes the encounter enjoyable, to repeatedly force the player to struggle against rigidbodies trying to push them out of the circle, interrupting casting attempts, preventing rolls? Forcing a reset because they just didn't have the right millesecond response time on their controller or they have arthritis? WTF is wrong with this kind of game design thinking? Just because you can doesn't mean it's a good idea. This is the FIRST ACT of the game. You are not FROM Software - don't try to mix wine with milk. The second A in AARPG means something. Action Adventure, not Action Misadventure.

To the falling starts from the sky and the big red spikes from the ground...

So the falling stars are represented by off-screen-height vertical white lines. If you're standing "behind a line" that doesn't mean you're safe, because stars can fall behind stars. It's a 3D thing. Try changing your placement code to not place stars behind stars, it'll make for less cussing.

The big red spikes that come from the ground have HUGE hitboxes. I've not once been able to not die to them, even when not standing anywhere near one. Well I say that but obviously I have scale perception issues - I may have been a small car length away.

Telegraphing:

1. Zoom out. We can't see the visual cues of telegraphing if they're off-screen, and if you get too close, well that strategy isn't for all builds is it.

2. "Listen to the audio cues!" say people who've never designed games. Kind of them to represent all people.

I want to say more, be more constructive, maybe even offer some ideas and such but it's super late and I'm obviously still in a bit of a bummed out mood because, grumpy.


I(t, N) = [G0 * e^( k * (t - T) )] * [F0 + β * N]

t = total hours awake
T = threshold hours after which grumpiness starts to increase
G0 = baseline grumpiness at the threshold
k = grumpiness growth rate constant
N = number of failed attempts or lack of progress in the game
F0 = baseline frustration when starting to fail
β = frustration increase per failed attempt

Try raising your cold res

"

pigeye#3835 wrote:

As such, if you're unable to complete the boss through lack of skill or loadout, you're basically one hundred percent in for a miserable gaming experience, because the only content to "level up" on is trash mobs. In fact the Manor has the highest level mobs, and it's a desolate maze of empty corridors.

So if you are not a good player, dont have a good build, dont have good items, have your monitor turned off, live in the streets and play in a 20x20 computer screen you are supost to clear the game?

People talking so much on how hard it is just have 0 knowledge about the game and instead of searching and improving, they want the game to change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud2nLU6UgBw

Me clearing the "hard" act 1 boss with an ok build, literal 0 cold res having rushed through zones.

SI'm not interested in how awesome you are: more power to you, just in your own space thanks.

"

FearZGamer#6190 wrote:

"

pigeye#3835 wrote:

As such, if you're unable to complete the boss through lack of skill or loadout, you're basically one hundred percent in for a miserable gaming experience, because the only content to "level up" on is trash mobs. In fact the Manor has the highest level mobs, and it's a desolate maze of empty corridors.

So if you are not a good player, dont have a good build, dont have good items, have your monitor turned off, live in the streets and play in a 20x20 computer screen you are supost to clear the game?

People talking so much on how hard it is just have 0 knowledge about the game and instead of searching and improving, they want the game to change.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud2nLU6UgBw

Me clearing the "hard" act 1 boss with an ok build, literal 0 cold res having rushed through zones.

Ahh, so it just takes the combination of high DPS and being able to freeze the mobs and boss, so that you skip all of the deadly mechanics.

For those who can't do that, the fight is a much different story.

I agree with Skillo above, cold res is really important. Both of the chars I've played who struggled with that fight had a much better time with it when I upped my cold res such that I didn't get perma-frozen by the boss's ice spikes and such.

I cleared this fight at level 13, and while I did find it challenging (he took me down once at about 15% health) it is by no means a poorly designed fight. However, depending on your build there are some things that can make it a lot easier.

One of them being to avoid using skills that require you to stand in one place. I had great success with firewall and the stationary fireball, whatever it's name is.

They both work wonders during the eye of the storm phase as well. Pop the fireball in the middle of the circle, then just run around it kiting the mobs while spacebar rolling his charges as they come. Throw up a firewall when you have a second to breathe.

The whole key of the fight seems to be positioning. Keep moving.

I realize my advice might be worthless, I never played the original PoE and there's surely better ways to do it. But that's what worked for me, I never felt threatened during my second attempt.

Hope that you work it out.

Got rekt by my witch!

Add another sorceress that can't kill Graenor in wolf mode. The spikes, rain, etcetera fall and they all one shot me. The wolf charges during the frost phase (two man group) was killing my archer buddy.

In my case there might be a color blind challenge in the fight, but that doesn't explain the many deaths to the archer. Worth nothing he is the luckiest dude when it comes to gear drops (he buys everything available from the mini-shops, so his RNG is much better than mine).

I haven't had this much poor experience in game since being active in one the first guilds to learn the raid fights in WoW (we didn't have Blizz employees in-guild to prepare ourselves for what to expect).

As for cold resist. I've been looking for items with cold resist for days. Seems all I find is fire resist. Still have zero chaos resist items. Finally found something with 8% cold resist; but I have to give up 30% spell damage and 27% fire resist, and 77 energy shield. Somehow the logic of that trade escapes me.

lol. Not complaining, really. More empathizing with the OP.

Must be hard equipping the Cold Charm that you literally get for free. There is even a boss that grants you +10% cold resist.

Did OP just say if you lack skill or you don't have the gear you're in for a bad time? Because yea. No kidding.