Controversial Opinion: Boss Design is a weak Point of Path of Exile 2

Before you say hes an idiot boss design is great. Please hear me out.

Many Bosses are great. Yama for example is fantastic. Well telegraphed skills visually pleasing and monkey! Draven and Asinia are also really great. Them calling for each other and the skills telegraphing is really good.

But when i look beyond the good examples the Boss design cracks. Lets start with Badly Telegraphed skills. A well telegraphed skill cant be mistaken for another one. You need to know what skill the boss will do during animation and that not always easy with some bosses. Chimera is such an example.

Then we have the way to counter a lot of Boss Attacks in the game. Very often the best and sometimes only counter is to simply roll behind the boss. Its not a sophisticated boss design its not very complex. There are more complex bosses than others, but its nowhere near very complex. The Labyrinth with the King in the mist seems to be a try to do that, but its not well executed.

Another issue with the Bosses in POE2 is the Phasing. Bosses Phase when they reach a certain HP threshhold which is fine, but in POE2 the bosses will continue attacking the palyer even tho they go immortal for phasing. That is very apparent on Geonor, Doryani, Arbiter and the King of the Mist. This leads to several Problems. Player have unnecessary deaths and players get thrown out of immersion. Also its just a bad presentation for the boss.
Some bosses in the game are way better. Tavakai, Crowbell, Diamora (even tho shes untargettable way too long), Ignagduk.

It feels like that the people making the bosses didnt talk to each other. Overall some bosses are good, some are just boring, other have multiple issues. Overall the Boss design is lacking some actual depth. I played a lot of MMORPGs and some of the boss design there can be transferred over to an ARPG. One thing i didnt see POE2 do a lot is actually changing the arena. Viper does that to some degree, but its just reducing the arena size. Benedictus is the only boss i actually see doing this. Changing location is pretty common tho. POE2 is missing out on a lot of potential. I cant compare it to other ARPGs i didnt play any other arpg.


All of this also leads to an imbalance between Range and Melee or High Damage and Low Damage. Because Bosses can one shot you pretty easily its just better to deal high amounts of damage and one shot them or simply stay at range and shoot at them or both. Bosses are not hard/can be hard because they are mechanically challenging, they can get hard because they get stupid amounts of damage or extra effect (azmeri/delirium/abyssal) and those extra effects dont add complex mechanics. Its mostly just more visual clutter. If you design bosses you should take inspiration from games like Final Fantasy 14 or Lost Ark. They have great boss fights.

I think the bosses are quite good. You have some valid points though. Overall I think they've done a pretty good job with them. The bosses that were added in Merc league POE1 would be an example of bosses that aren't great, where there are some other bosses in POE1 that are much better.

Someone pointed out in another thread that sometimes the dual bosses can be kited away from each other too easily, which probably shouldn't be possible.

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Belegur85#5784 wrote:

I think the bosses are quite good. You have some valid points though. Overall I think they've done a pretty good job with them. The bosses that were added in Merc league POE1 would be an example of bosses that aren't great, where there are some other bosses in POE1 that are much better.

Someone pointed out in another thread that sometimes the dual bosses can be kited away from each other too easily, which probably shouldn't be possible.

I wouldnt compare POE2 Boss Design to POE1. Its pretty different especially with the Dodgeroll in POE2. I never played POE1 past level 20 or so. If they add wasd to POE1 i probably play it longer.

I compare it to games i played FF14, Lost Ark,DnD Neverwinter and a couple single Player games. The issue for me is the simnplicity of several bosses. The Act4 bosses are actually way better. Which is good, but many in 1-3 arent so good.

What you can do to make bosses more interesting. Is conditional Adds. What that means is if you dont dona certain thing, then adds spawn and maybe pummel you tondeath.
Or the boss gwts stronger/a buff if you dont do a certain thing. One boss in act 4 has that for example. But its actually a bit finnicky how it works.
Chimera has that vise versa you have to do a certain thing to weaken the boss.

But then you have bosses like Rathbreaker which is bad in every aspect. Or you have Blackjaw. You can do so much more. Its a really old Ruin. So why not let it crumble a bit during the fight. And you can hide behind the rubble during his fire attacks. Then Blackjaw is also extremely essy to counter by just rolling behind it. There is much more things you can do.

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I wouldnt compare POE2 Boss Design to POE1. Its pretty different especially with the Dodgeroll in POE2. I never played POE1 past level 20 or so. If they add wasd to POE1 i probably play it longer.

I compare it to games i played FF14, Lost Ark,DnD Neverwinter and a couple single Player games. The issue for me is the simnplicity of several bosses. The Act4 bosses are actually way better. Which is good, but many in 1-3 arent so good.

What you can do to make bosses more interesting. Is conditional Adds. What that means is if you dont dona certain thing, then adds spawn and maybe pummel you tondeath.
Or the boss gwts stronger/a buff if you dont do a certain thing. One boss in act 4 has that for example. But its actually a bit finnicky how it works.
Chimera has that vise versa you have to do a certain thing to weaken the boss.

But then you have bosses like Rathbreaker which is bad in every aspect. Or you have Blackjaw. You can do so much more. Its a really old Ruin. So why not let it crumble a bit during the fight. And you can hide behind the rubble during his fire attacks. Then Blackjaw is also extremely essy to counter by just rolling behind it. There is much more things you can do.

They are literally the same game written off the same code. it's why both games feel equally dated and overly flooded with complications as "illusion of complexity"

The muse is dead and this studio is going to shove this half baked game through the door as is with just more junk piled on top.

In general I don't think bossing in loot based ARPG are a huge focus, because they are in a sense non-static content, in regards that the player power level changes, and can make many different builds, which make boss design a lot harder to cover off. The boss itself may be static, but the encounter can be quite different on different builds and power levels. For example, the difference playing through act one on league launch, versus rolling characters once you have gear. It is still very important for making a good game.

I think in general, both POE games have done a pretty well at this. There has been effort in POE2 to make the game based more off player mechanics, such as dodge roll. I think it is a work in progress, and is a very tough thing to do, when a game has increasing levels of build build diversity, which is a very important aspect of ARPG's.

Overall, in POE2 I think they have made a good variety of bosses, and a pretty good balance of both difficulty and fairness of mechanics. Things can always be improved, but I think it is far from a weakness in the game, particularly within the genre. The difference with the games you have mentioned, which I am somewhat speculating, as I have not played them, is I think those games have less scope with what can be done with building the character, in particular with the character tree, and probably the item customization. With more control over the character and power level, boss design becomes more difficult, because it needs to cater for a wider range of power. If the bossing is better in those game, and it can translate to better bosses in POE, it should be considered.

This can be seen even in the difference with POE1 and POE2. Currently POE2 is far more restrictive on what you can achieve with the character. However it does mean that the bosses can be created with that in mind, and some mechanics can be used that would not be otherwise. They have been trying a lot of different things with boss mechanics in POE, some of it has worked, some of it hasn't. Part of games like POE is the ability to make builds that potentially trivialize the game, including bosses, which may be less of a focus in less loot based games, where items may make your character a certain percentage stronger, rather than magnitudes stronger. It is a bit of a trade off.

I think a better comparison would be with games that are less in the MMO direction and more loot based, such as Diablo games, Last epoch etc. Though if it is being done better in any other games, I think it is a good picture of what is possible, just it may be harder to implement in a game like POE. For everyone that is on the forum saying the bosses are trivial, there are other players who think they may be too difficult. It often comes down to balancing builds, and sometimes a trivial boss on one archetype, can be difficult for another, as different bosses are meant to test different aspects of the game.

Which are some of the bosses in acts 1-3 that you think need improvement? In my opinion, it is not a bad thing if the early bosses are not the most difficult, and they build up during the campaign, rather than the other way around. I'm not sure I completely agree though, and it is hard to know before we have the complete acts. I agree that standing behind the boss on a lot of fights is the best defensive strategy, which is something that could be improved in the design.

One more addition to telegraphing.

Many attacks in POE2 have bad visual/audio cues to attacks that deal massive amounts of damage. If that leads to a death that leads to frustration. Especially when you have no revives.
To me it seems that Bosses ae mostly made with a POE1 kind of Playstyle and Player Power in mind while.
Alos several attacks of bosses can be mistaken for other attacks.

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Belegur85#5784 wrote:

Too long

Yes they did a decent job on the bosses. I dont paly any other ARPG, i dont have any comparison. I cant compare it to those games. I compare it to MMOS/MMORPGS and why shouldnt i? Comparing it to game sthat do it worse isnt the way to improve something. You look at games that do it better.

About the Campaign:
The campaign is really easy to do. Because you can instantly revive without an issue. The issues appear more while mapping. All of the bosses also scale with modifiers which increases everything, from damage to cast speed to movement speed etc. in the Campaign bosses are pretty okay, some are good some are bad. More about that later. In maps that is not the case. The bosses are desiogned to work good in Campaign, and not good in maps. A decently telegraphed skill in campaign can go to horribly telegraphed in maps because of cast and attack speed increases or a skill that wont kill you in the campaign kills you in maps. That also means the experience you gained when fighting a boss in the campaign only partly help you in maps.

What bosses in Acts i think are bad:
- Geonor: The phasing issue is insane and some badly telegraphed stuff (no audio or visual cues)

- Rathbreaker: badly overall, nothing about rathbreaker is actually good

- Chimera: distinction between skills, not really a phasing issue, but same reason. If its on a pillar it will finsih the attack its currently doing before dropping to the ground.

- Doryani: Phasing issue

- Lachlann: has especially the issue i explained above. During Campaign his Slam is telegraphed well and cna be dodged, but onc ehe gets attack and cast speed. Its not anymore. Also you can mistake a normal attack for the double slam. Its a pretty similar animation. Lachlann is especially annoying to fight as an evasion or Evasion/ES melee character.

- Rudja: i never understood this boss design. Rudja is as fast as you if you dont wear additional movement boots during her wild swing attack. YOU NEED MS BOOTS to outpace her. That is just wild

- Viper: while most of the stuff viper is doing is okay, the issue with viper is the shrinking of the arena. Viper is mostly a damage check. The fight gets several magnitudes harder the longer it takes simply because the arena gets too small.

- Blackjaw: really simplistic best counter is roll behind it. That trivializes the boss.

- Tor Gul, the defile: some skills have issues at this boss. Bell from Quarterstaff for example has problems targetting the boss

- Zalmarath : same as tor gul

- Balbala: The fight is genmerally pretty good, but the amount of people nto realizes what they should do in the poison phase is insane. Its very unclear what to do during that phase. I also dont know how you would even improve that.

- Tornado Bird: For mee the Tornado isnt the issue with the boss its their wind slash attack where the boss rotates in the middle. If you get hit by one of it, then its very likely that you get hit by all of them. Also the way to counter that attack is again roll behind the boss.

- Jamanra: only issue here for me is that one attack that can cover the whole arena. It depends on where his floating spears are located. Oh and his normal attack can be kind of an issue, it feels extremely hard to dodge.

Not everything is relevant in maps or vise versa its all mixed together a bit.

I could write roll behind the boss under so many bosses, because its the easiest way to counter them and that is just very very boring. Overly simplistic. Funny enough the one boss where this hurts you is Lachlann, because of his double slam. Roll behind him during that and you die.

+1 my thoughts exactly, ive made same exact type of posts before and have said same things, audio cues visual everything, + no time and an arena made for ants?

I'm trying to play through campaign on SSF HC currently. I wouldn't describe it as too easy, more like a good challenge. Perhaps that might be something you would be interested in, because reviving isn't an option that can be used. I would say some of the bosses do provide a decent challenge.

I agree that if MMO's are able to do bosses better, it should be examined to see if it will translate to POE. I think they have done that to a certain extent, I just think it is harder to do well in POE because of the character variance.

Your feed back on the specific bosses is valid, hopefully it gets looked at and can help where there may be room for improvement.

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Belegur85#5784 wrote:

I'm trying to play through campaign on SSF HC currently. I wouldn't describe it as too easy, more like a good challenge. Perhaps that might be something you would be interested in, because reviving isn't an option that can be used. I would say some of the bosses do provide a decent challenge.

I agree that if MMO's are able to do bosses better, it should be examined to see if it will translate to POE. I think they have done that to a certain extent, I just think it is harder to do well in POE because of the character variance.

Your feed back on the specific bosses is valid, hopefully it gets looked at and can help where there may be room for improvement.

During the Campaign its okay.
Some bosses can be real nightmares. Especially in the Interlude, but lets not really count that.

The Problem comes in Mapping. Bosses get juiced a lot and Things that dont kill you in the Campaign can kill you there really easily. Unless you simply stack stupid amounts ES.
Combine that with increased Attack and Cast Speed and Critical Hit chance etc. bosses in Maps can be a real nightmare. There isnt any Mechanics involved. The bosses legit can one hit you with a normal attack. Skills of the bosses sure, they should deal high dmg. Even tho they are not well telegraphed sometimes. they really should improve Visual and Audio Cues.

In the End the best solution to Bosses in Maps is more dmg. If you kill iot before it even can attack you, then you are fine. If the Devs wan that to be the solution., then they shouldnt nerf dmg on so many things. While buffing Bosses at the same time.

I kind of agree. The 1-shot bosses - like the silverback gorilla or the giant in act 2 - are not fun. A lot of other bosses feel too tedious or too spammy. Like... they are mechanically too complicated? In the end of the day, do most players want to engage with the boss's rhythm, or do they want to delete the boss as fast as possible? For me, it's the latter.

EDIT: To be fair, this is more me saying I don't like bossing, rather than that boss design is bad. But on the other hand, if I compare the bosses here to the bosses in Titan Quest II or Last Epoch, I think I would take the bosses in those games. Somehow, they don't seem to overstay their welcome?