Campaign Bosses are miserable.

For context I would consider myself a moderately experienced POE 1 player. I play most leagues and I consistently make it to the endgame. I have experimented with making my own builds before and I have a pretty decent understanding of how offensive and defensive math works in this game.

Look, I am doing my best to play this game "the way it was intended". I'm going slow. I'm identifying items on the ground. I'm shattering gear for regal shards. I'm using my currency to craft on every relevant base to try and make gear upgrades instead of hording it for endgame. I'm full clearing and exploring edge to edge many of the campaign areas. I'm even repeating some areas to try to farm better loot and get ahead on levels. I'm not rushing to endgame and I'm exploring a variety of skills and combos. I really want to like this game. My favorite moments in POE1 were before I learned to optimize the fun out of it. Before I treated everything pre-t16 as a tutorial to be speedran. I want to enjoy discovering cool skills and combos again. I want to feel satisfied when I beat a boss for a first time.

Having given all this context: every single boss fight is a miserable experience. I hate every moment. I feel no satisfaction when I finally beat a boss, only a feeling of dread as I go "oh gods I'm going to have to deal with more and worse of this garbage in every area of every act aren't I?". I'm not here to prescribe a solution, I'm sure the designers have way more data points than I do, I am just offering my feedback. As it stands right now, I am struggling to convince myself to keep coming back to this. I've never beaten act 3 yet, not because I hit a boss I can't beat, but because I keep struggling to get myself to launch the game because I know I'm going to encounter a boss and I'm going to have to spend 30+ minutes dodging the same 2 abilities 100+ times per fight and if I miss a dodge even once I'll either get one shot or have to eat through a ton of flask charges until I run out of those and then get killed by a basic attack. If I'm the only one feeling this, then whatever, the game is not for me and that's fine, but if I am having this bad of a time I really struggle to see newer players having a better time.

Forgive my question, but did you forget to equip your weapon or something?

What 30+ minutes?

You have never picked a single damage node?

This game is intended to pick everything that says "damage".

Then pick a weapon from the NPC in your current city.

And then do one minute, maybe two fight.

This drag you describe is your own doing.

I am likely not playing a very optimized build, but I am using the best weapon I've bought/found/crafted and I do have a variety of damage nodes speced on the tree. When I say 30+ minutes I am including deaths and resets.

I am providing feedback about my experience to the designers on the feedback forum. Whatever the circumstances by which I reach my conclusions I still reached those conclusions and it is statistically unlikely that I am the only one feeling this. The designers now have one additional data point as well as some insight into some player's mindsets. This post was really not meant for anyone other than the people paid by the company to read feedback.

Circumstances matter.

They increased the value of your feedback by providing additional information.

If you picked your corresponding damage nodes, it must be the skills and support gems.

You have cut them up to current level and places the recommended supports in?
4 links on main damage?

My gems are max available level and I have 3 relevant supports. One of them is currently a leech support, to help address flasks running out, but I was running 3 damage ones earlier. I am confident that we can debug and figure out why my build is not doing much damage, but that is not the point I am making. I am making the subjective point that playing casually, the bosses in the campaign are frustrating and unfun. My build can handle abysses, rares, big swarms all fine. But the bosses currently feel like they have many times more health than even fairly tanky rares. I am giving the subjective feedback that the campaign should be focused on figuring out what skills/play style one enjoys and should not require optimizing supports, farming for a 5-10% better weapon every couple levels, or a perfectly speced tree. Most of the campaign thus far feels fine with a casual approach, while bosses do not (imo).

The problem with your feedback is you're not providing details. You gave one paragraph qualifying your game experience and then another paragraph calling boss encounters garbage. That's it.

Bosses are build checks and skill checks. If your build is bad then you will struggle. If your skill is bad then you will also struggle. If you have a good build and decent skill then the boss encounters are only mildly difficult.

Anyway I do sort of agree that boss encounters aren't fun. Not because they're hard but because they're boring. Even if you have a strong build the whole boss encounter amounts to dodge mechanics and DPS.

I think the only boss fight I really enjoyed was Balbala the Traitor. I liked having to find her while the poison cloud was out. I liked the coin mechanic where you could use her shades to fill up flasks and bait her into a place she can be hit.

Arbiter of Ash was also a fun fight because it required learning his move sets. Once you learn them they're pretty easy to handle but still require good timing on your part.

They are all miserable.
There is only 1 boss in the game.
The one with the one shot skill.

Then make it blue or green or whatever.
Make it say booga booga or Ickie Ickie
Then it does it one attack that kills you.

Clone that 20 times.

Now make it monologue.
Give it immunity frames.
Long periods of disappearing or burrowing or floating.

Same strategy for all, range attack it.

I want nothing to do with any of them.
They drop nothing so are worth nothing which makes them an obstacle.
They are nothing more than a map dispenser that you need to endure playing.
The real boss in this game is the floor.

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TheYegie#7219 wrote:

I am likely not playing a very optimized build

Did you say your class anywhere? Campaign experience is class-dependent. Witch and monk crush it. I last played Sorceress in 0.2, but I found flame underpowered then.

Bosses were fun and challenging, and then they nerfed them massively and people still find them too difficult?

"

Valsacar#0268 wrote:

Bosses were fun and challenging, and then they nerfed them massively and people still find them too difficult?

I was about to say the same. Monkey was the only boss they didn't neft into the ground.

My first char was Tactician in 0.3 and just deleted every boss in 5 seconds. It was stupid.