Annihilation is a bad boss

[Dunhill]

Simply, it's a hard fight that's difficult to learn. There's a lot of attacks that can stack differently, there's a bit of nuance to some, phase split makes learning slow, and phase 2 is a visual ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

The orb attack was a ♥♥♥♥♥ to learn. I was playing in a party where I was using the widowmaker and one of the other two members had a melee build. These orbs would spawn in a massive number, would flicker and teleport, and shooting them was both ineffective and a big time investment. Over the many runs with it we had, we'd destroy a varying number of orbs and they'd split among us in various combinations, so learning what to do when it comes to dodging was near impossible. If there were a lot of orbs left and many went after a single player, that player would die because the orbs would not all start to home in on them at the same time, so even if they dodged most with a roll, the rest would hit and kill them. Then we'd have situations where only a few orbs would go for one player, or there were only a few left to begin with and the player could easily dodge them. We'd have these conflicting experiences which made it hard to figure out what to do, that being to equip different weapons and make absolutely sure the orbs are dead.

Still, after some time, we were consistently getting to phase 2. That phase is such a visual overload and is very different from phase 1. We were naturally dying pretty early into it since our resources were mostly depleted from phase 1. So, after 5 minutes of phase 1, we'd get to fight phase 2 for maybe a minute or two, not necessarily with all of us still alive, which reduced the learning speed to a fraction of what it normally would be.

At that, for the first time in both games, we had to stop, start an adventure and level our gear. So yeah, the aforementioned melee build did not work at all in the fight and the friend had to switch to something else entirely and get the materials to do it. Then we went for it again.

Turns out the fight also has audio ques that we just didn't notice through the music and the sound of 3 people firing. Muting the music made a significant improvement. We beat it first try after that. Turns out all we needed was extra 50% dps, different weapons and a few extra relics.

By this point, I've beaten it three times and it was alright the last two times. Still, I think the first time matters by far the most and it just wasn't a good time.

[Sir Tibia The 1th]

if you think anni is a bad boss then you should see remnant 1's final boss

[Dunhill]

Originally posted by Sir Tibia The 1th:

if you think anni is a bad boss then you should see remnant 1's final boss

Nightmare or Harsgaard?
Nightmare was a pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥ boss, but at least it was easy so I didn't have to spend much time with him. It's pretty easy to figure out you're doing something wrong when you're dealing literally no damage to him.

[Kappa]

Annihilator is awesome imo ( you just need to be used to listen to boss sounds and learn its attack patterns. switch is always on the same attacks cleave/blast, so just don't panic and properly dodge ).

Nightmare was chilling no matter the difficulty, but me and friends had issues with Harsgaard apo difficulty ( last phase ) because the boss oneshotted with a single attack ( we even tried with a tank build, but nothing changed. Looking at videos we've seen that in solo any streamer could tank some hits before going down, so idk ).

[Grizzly]

there is a lot of stuff that you can say whatever you want, but as someone who has done many no hit runs... no, attacks dont stack up. its a combo attack that you can avoid in a way, you just havent found it yet.

[Dunhill]

Originally posted by Grizzly:

there is a lot of stuff that you can say whatever you want, but as someone who has done many no hit runs... no, attacks dont stack up. its a combo attack that you can avoid in a way, you just havent found it yet.

Do you consistently doge them when there's 3 players?

[Grizzly]

Originally posted by Dunhill:

Originally posted by Grizzly:

there is a lot of stuff that you can say whatever you want, but as someone who has done many no hit runs... no, attacks dont stack up. its a combo attack that you can avoid in a way, you just havent found it yet.

Do you consistently doge them when there's 3 players?

that doesnt even make a difference on that boss. any AoE attacks are random place or aimed at a single target which can be dodged no matter if you are the target or not

[Dunhill]

Originally posted by Grizzly:

Originally posted by Dunhill:

Do you consistently doge them when there's 3 players?

that doesnt even make a difference on that boss. any AoE attacks are random place or aimed at a single target which can be dodged no matter if you are the target or not

Not when there's three or four sets of orbs which start homing in at you all at a different time. That isn't something that happens on singleplayer as there isn't enough of them, which is why I ask you again if you can do it on multiplayer.

[Grizzly]

Originally posted by Dunhill:

Originally posted by Grizzly:

that doesnt even make a difference on that boss. any AoE attacks are random place or aimed at a single target which can be dodged no matter if you are the target or not

Not when there's three or four sets of orbs which start homing in at you all at a different time. That isn't something that happens on singleplayer as there isn't enough of them, which is why I ask you again if you can do it on multiplayer.

you destroy them before they go off, thats how you deal with them

and yes i can destroy all of them all the time even if id be the only one shooting them in a 3 man lobby. generally speaking, its a lot less difficult to destroy all orbs in time if you are not alone tbh. your team mates must sleep otherwise

also a few corrections, there is two times where he will attack with the red balls, once in the first form and once in the second form. in the first form he will drag his sword back, summon them in line and after a little delay, which is the time you use to destroy them, shoot them at you. in the second one, he will fill the room with balls and other stuff but only the balls are dangerous. this one gives you way more time to make up for the balls being all over the place and sometimes difficult to see with the other stuff. you can even stagger the boss by destroying all of them in time.

they will all start coming at you at the same time, but the difference in distance that they have is what makes them inpact differently on you. if you manage to destroy all but 2 that are close, its still relatively easy to dodge them

[Dunhill]

Originally posted by Grizzly:

Originally posted by Dunhill:

Not when there's three or four sets of orbs which start homing in at you all at a different time. That isn't something that happens on singleplayer as there isn't enough of them, which is why I ask you again if you can do it on multiplayer.

you destroy them before they go off, thats how you deal with them

and yes i can destroy all of them all the time even if id be the only one shooting them in a 3 man lobby. generally speaking, its a lot less difficult to destroy all orbs in time if you are not alone tbh. your team mates must sleep otherwise

also a few corrections, there is two times where he will attack with the red balls, once in the first form and once in the second form. in the first form he will drag his sword back, summon them in line and after a little delay, which is the time you use to destroy them, shoot them at you. in the second one, he will fill the room with balls and other stuff but only the balls are dangerous. this one gives you way more time to make up for the balls being all over the place and sometimes difficult to see with the other stuff. you can even stagger the boss by destroying all of them in time.

they will all start coming at you at the same time, but the difference in distance that they have is what makes them inpact differently on you. if you manage to destroy all but 2 that are close, its still relatively easy to dodge them

Please read before responding. I know how to beat the boss and I know I have to destroy the orbs - I've beaten him three times as of writing the description and I said as much there.

As I said in the description, we were low level and one had a melee build.

[Evil-Striker]

Originally posted by Dunhill:

Originally posted by Grizzly:

that doesnt even make a difference on that boss. any AoE attacks are random place or aimed at a single target which can be dodged no matter if you are the target or not

Not when there's three or four sets of orbs which start homing in at you all at a different time. That isn't something that happens on singleplayer as there isn't enough of them, which is why I ask you again if you can do it on multiplayer.

I know you can avoid the orbs consistently using the Invader's Wormhole skill. I guess the Archon's Reality Rune skill could work, and maybe a mist step build with maxed out evasion distance could work as well, but I've never tried those other methods myself.

The other thing you can do, if you anticipate that you're not going to be able to destroy enough of them, is to brace yourself for impact with things like the Shielded Heart relic or the Medic's Healing Shield skill.

[Dunhill]

Originally posted by Evil-Striker:

Originally posted by Dunhill:

Not when there's three or four sets of orbs which start homing in at you all at a different time. That isn't something that happens on singleplayer as there isn't enough of them, which is why I ask you again if you can do it on multiplayer.

I know you can avoid the orbs consistently using the Invader's Wormhole skill. I guess the Archon's Reality Rune skill could work, and maybe a mist step build with maxed out evasion distance could work as well, but I've never tried those other methods myself.

The other thing you can do, if you anticipate that you're not going to be able to destroy enough of them, is to brace yourself for impact with things like the Shielded Heart relic or the Medic's Healing Shield skill.

You're thinking through the lens of someone with a bajillion hours. Though I appreciate the advice, all I'm saying is that the fight sucks when trying it the first time.

[:Sarce.]

I think everyone understands you just fine but you had the answer yourself in your first post yet still posted a bad take... you need to adapt to certain fights and that's fine, doesn't mean it's a bad boss.
Making it that far I find it hard to believe nobody had any of a number of mods or skills that wouldn't make quick work of the orbs and if nobody was willing to do some quick changes to adapt, well... that doesn't make a boss bad.

[Dunhill]

Originally posted by :Sarce.:

I think everyone understands you just fine but you had the answer yourself in your first post yet still posted a bad take... you need to adapt to certain fights and that's fine, doesn't mean it's a bad boss.
Making it that far I find it hard to believe nobody had any of a number of mods or skills that wouldn't make quick work of the orbs and if nobody was willing to do some quick changes to adapt, well... that doesn't make a boss bad.

There's a big part of my home town where the people have adapted to the smell of raw sewage because there's a massive septic tank that gets pumped out several times a day. They adapted to it, but it's still ♥♥♥♥.

A funny thing about not having played the game for a thousand hours on your first run is that you have only so much equipment. We didn't start an adventure because we already had the materials to simply upgrade another weapon, craft another mod and switch. That same gear was perfectly fine on every other boss.

[Grizzly]

Originally posted by Dunhill:

As I said in the description, we were low level and one had a melee build.

im sorry how is it the games issue if you dont play it right?

[Dunhill]

Originally posted by Grizzly:

Originally posted by Dunhill:

As I said in the description, we were low level and one had a melee build.

im sorry how is it the games issue if you dont play it right?

The game decides how it's right to play it. If this way has been right for every single dungeon, every single boss and every single event thus far for the ~10 hours we've been playing up until that point, then why would it not be right with single 5 minute fight? Because it's bad design.

I'm seeing a lot of elitist mentality here that you see in souls games. It's not a good fight just because it's beatable.