"Bosses" really suck.

[Jay and Silent Rob]

Making bosses HP sponges is bad game design.
Making bosses hit like trucks is bad game design.
Giving bosses no weaknesses is bad game design.

And yet every boss has the first and second problem, and every 3rd boss had all three problems.

Why would you design a boss that can outrun the player, hit like a truck, and has attacks that trigger big AoEs or drops a lot of damage outside of the main attack area so that even if you dodge the big attack, you still get hit by the AoE or secondary effects of the attack?

I just tried to fight the bear boss and it's faster than me, hits harder than I can heal with a full blood setup, and even if you dodge its big ground pound attack, the area around it gets hit by falling rocks, meaning you not only have to dodge the attack, but then have to keep retreating in the tiny cave as rocks fall. But once you've retreated a little bit, the bear will use a charge attack, often from off-screen, and slam into you.

This single boss just randomly has complete coverage of every battle strategy a player might throw at it. And before the bear, it was the pig-headed necromancer that could shield itself and teleport away from damage and covered the area with AoEs that you had to run through to reach it, and its teleportation often carried into other enemies that would aggro you and raise skeletons to block you. Again: Full coverage defense. You can't run in because of skeletons and lingering AoEs, and when you do make it in, the enemy just shields itself or teleports away or both.

There's no nuance or skill to these battles, so they shouldn't be so impossible. The combat system in the game is far weaker than the likes of a standard ARPG/Diablo-like game, so you can't throw enemies into the game that would be challenging even in an ARPG with great combat and 6 skill slots.

[Ice-Nine]

Originally posted by Jay and Silent Rob:

Originally posted by Kunogi:

All bosses are extremely easy, in truth, i had to increase severely the game difficulty on the server settings to feel the bare minimum challenge. Prob you not used to battlerite combat.

I probably should have mentioned that I started on Hard difficulty, but I don't think it makes a difference. The damage isn't the problem. It's the tedium.

And not one of you actually has any room to talk. I'm laying out design choices that make these fights tedious and boring and all you literal middle school students seem to read is, "waaah game too hard!" I never said these fights were hard. All of my complaints boil down to them being tedious and boring and unfun. They are poorly designed. Any child could beat these bosses in 1-4 attempts. That means they're not hard. They're just poorly designed.

A good boss fight is a dynamic back-and-forth.
A boss that has a high attack rate that gives you few or no openings does not allow for a back-and-forth.
A boss that can't be evaded because it magically floats to track you as you circle around it or teleport to the other side of it does not allow for a back-and-forth.
A boss that punishes even the slightest of greedy hits by taking off 10-30% of your hp does not allow a back-and-forth.
A boss with tons of health that takes so long to kill that you must execute ideal responses for several minutes without making too many mistakes does not allow a back-and-forth.

Fundamentally, this reaches another, deeper problem with the game: Recovery options are weak and nearly non-existent. So every single hit could be the difference between living or dying. That's great for PvP, but that's terrible for PvE because you're expected to fight tons of enemies in a row and health sponge bosses in PvE.

Again: The game is not HARDER because of these poor design choices. Just more boring or tedious than it would be if you could play around these things better. That's why some of these bosses suck.

You spent the whole time complaining about how hard the boss is. Now you want to move the goalposts and pretend he's not hard; he's just tedious. But he's not tedious either. All of your complaints are invalid. It's not a design problem. You just suck.

[AnImperfectRegicide]

I've watched people play Diablo, and i've played many other games with probably more difficult bosses, You inherrently played on "hard mode" my guy. they were supposed to be more difficult, if you didn't want to play elden ring, play on default... like...it was YOUR choice to play on hard...they are buffed up on hard, because you chose to play on hard...i'll be honest of all the comments i've seen you make, this is probably not the argument your strongest at pulling to your side.

[J-loc]

ehh leave bosses as is and allow us to utilize the skills fully and not give them immunity's to slows and stuns thanks

[Senki]

The usual ''if the player needs to use their brain it's bad design''

[R131]

Originally posted by Senki:

The usual ''if the player needs to use their brain it's bad design''

This.

OP is braindead, move along, move along.

[Odium]

spongy till you pop a high purity scholor blood and some magic buffs and watch their bars melt

[Eclion]

Bro you are realy doing something wrong, i'm pretty bad a this game and got no problem with high lvl bosses x) just get the right stuff

[dustin1280]

This is 100% a you problem...

Also counter skills exist, use them and learn to manage your CD properly.

Originally posted by Senki:

The usual ''if the player needs to use their brain it's bad design''

Spot on!

[SoulLessFace86]

Originally posted by Jay and Silent Rob:

Making bosses HP sponges is bad game design.
Making bosses hit like trucks is bad game design.
Giving bosses no weaknesses is bad game design.

And yet every boss has the first and second problem, and every 3rd boss had all three problems.

Why would you design a boss that can outrun the player, hit like a truck, and has attacks that trigger big AoEs or drops a lot of damage outside of the main attack area so that even if you dodge the big attack, you still get hit by the AoE or secondary effects of the attack?

I just tried to fight the bear boss and it's faster than me, hits harder than I can heal with a full blood setup, and even if you dodge its big ground pound attack, the area around it gets hit by falling rocks, meaning you not only have to dodge the attack, but then have to keep retreating in the tiny cave as rocks fall. But once you've retreated a little bit, the bear will use a charge attack, often from off-screen, and slam into you.

This single boss just randomly has complete coverage of every battle strategy a player might throw at it. And before the bear, it was the pig-headed necromancer that could shield itself and teleport away from damage and covered the area with AoEs that you had to run through to reach it, and its teleportation often carried into other enemies that would aggro you and raise skeletons to block you. Again: Full coverage defense. You can't run in because of skeletons and lingering AoEs, and when you do make it in, the enemy just shields itself or teleports away or both.

There's no nuance or skill to these battles, so they shouldn't be so impossible. The combat system in the game is far weaker than the likes of a standard ARPG/Diablo-like game, so you can't throw enemies into the game that would be challenging even in an ARPG with great combat and 6 skill slots.

here's a thought for you change up your weapon(s) per boss fight for instance if a boss has heavy aoe for melee with a secondary follow up use the cross bow(an use your spell attacks) keep moving dont be stationary this applies to almost every boss encounter change up your fighting tactics.

[James]

I just mashed attacks and beat every boss.

[Zizi]

I play a lot of action and survival games with one friend in particular, who seems almost invincible no matter what game we play. When they blow through a boss I was having trouble with, I admit, it often makes me feel pretty inferior instead rather than awe.

In those situations, I have two choices: I can make questionable excuses and pretend it's not my fault, OR I can accept my shortcomings and take smaller steps towards success.

The latter is really hard, but I have to be honest with myself: is it "bad game design" when I die to a boss, or is it that perhaps "the game was designed to be harder than what I'm used to"?

Your first three points have some truth to them; it's certainly "bad game design" to wildly inflate boss HP/damage/capabilities to unreasonable amounts.

But considering how:
- the majority of players don't need like an hour to fully deplete a boss's HP in one attempt
- the bosses don't one-shot players that are reasonably geared
- the bosses take brief pauses between big attacks
...is "bad game design" really what's going on here?

If you've made up your mind to abandon this game, then by all means, none of us have any intent or reason to stop you. But as someone who struggled through almost their entire playthrough, I had an absolute blast tackling each challenge this game threw at me, and if you have any motivation left, I'd wholeheartedly encourage you to get back on your feet and try again.

There's a lot to enjoy and discover, and it'd be a shame to miss out on those other aspects of the game, even if your initial reaction to the combat was sour.

[Jeslis]

Originally posted by Avallac:

What difficulty are you talking about? Game doesn't have a difficulty. You sound like you're Biden.
Play on your own server with reduced boss hp and damage then, call it Retired Elderly PVE den.

When you start the game, you can choose rulesets. One of them is PVE Hard.

It's +25% mob/boss hp and damage.

So when OP is complaining that bosses are HP sponges.. or they can't kill it before it kills them... This is why.

[vXViper]

I found all bosses entertaining and fun to fight. And decent in the difficult scaling as you progress. But thats what I think. Could there be maybe improvements to some aspects, sure but that will never end, allways someone that sucks that want the game to be made in a way so their playstyle works.

[genshin player]

git gud

[Muu]

I found that MOST bosses are okay.

Funnily enough, the worst bosses in the game were some of the final ones. The very last one was almost too easy, the two before it were too tanky and give you no chance of dodging. You WILL take damage fighting them which means you just have to kill them faster.

The only other boss is probably Bandit King. He is the final gear check before the mid-game and I found his fire archers + spin attack is just too much for that gear level. He broke in my game and just stopped moving as well.