The Newer Bosses Need a Balance Check

[Proboscis]

Playing with two of my friends, every boss outside of the new ones added in Gloomrot felt perfectly fine, perhaps even better than they were pre-update. The new bosses, though, are rife with frustrating mechanics, stuns, absurd add spam, overlapping projectiles with misleading hitboxes, and more. Playing melee is basically a no-go past Act 2 and even into the later parts of Act 2.

I know the replies are going to be full of "git gud, I beat the whole game with no gear, potions, during the day, frail blood, no spells, blindfolded, handless, earless, after a root canal" but I genuinely feel like the new bosses need a few balance passes before they're in an acceptable state.

[Ice-Nine]

I'm sure you're not going to like hearing it, but all of their attacks can simply be walked out of, just like all the other bosses.

[Proboscis]

Originally posted by Ice-Nine:

I'm sure you're not going to like hearing it, but all of their attacks can simply be walked out of, just like all the other bosses.

Have you fought Mairwyn, dude?

[Ice-Nine]

Originally posted by Proboscis:

Originally posted by Ice-Nine:

I'm sure you're not going to like hearing it, but all of their attacks can simply be walked out of, just like all the other bosses.

Have you fought Mairwyn, dude?

Of course. I've fought all of them. Which attack are you having trouble with?

[Ninisty]

Some of these bosses require you to destroy objects while spamming bullet hell on you. Attacking stops your movement. Martka summons like 5 mosquitos whilethrowing down fissures and aoe spawn pools. All this while trying to dodge mosquitos trying to dash through you and then they randomly explode. Wasting your dash when more are dashing at you and more aoe popping up. It's frustrating.

[Proboscis]

Originally posted by Ice-Nine:

Originally posted by Proboscis:

Have you fought Mairwyn, dude?

Of course. I've fought all of them. Which attack are you having trouble with?

Mairwyn: When she drops the spinning fireball either immediately before or after dropping 3 roaming fireballs that... also shoot fire at nearby people. Usually also while she has her clones up, which fire 3 stunning lightning balls each. You can't reliably melee the clones, because the lightning balls can overlap when they're fired and shotgun you. Before you say anything, yes, we all had fire resistance, and we did complete the fight after a few tries. That doesn't make it any less frustrating to experience though.

Matka: Honestly the entire fight. I either have very little trouble walking around every one of her attacks, or I get destroyed. She has virtually every single one of my above complaints about adds, projectiles, CC, etc. Usually the adds, at least in earlier fights, aren't hard to kill, but her mosquitoes are fast, they hit hard, they're decently tough to kill, and they respawn infinitely. And if you try to melee her, which I was doing for a while with a decent level of success- she can drop 5 fissures on top of you and insta-kill you. Oh, and the polymorph part is just kind of annoying. Overall one of my least favorite new bosses.

Ziva: While we didn't fail once, her fight was probably one of the more annoying new ones. The fight was neat, but it was another one that mostly precluded the use of melee entirely. Not just because of the flamethrower and shotgun, but because of the AOE puddles she really liked to sit inside of. The turrets she spawned could be annoying, but not entirely too bad because they were easy to break.

Cyril: Everything I remember is him spawning weapons that are hard to break, constantly knock you around, throw out attacks that are hard to avoid, etc. I don't remember the fight being too bad, just another annoying example of high damage, tough adds, and another fight that screams for smaller player hitboxes and secondary dash charges.

Baron: Before realising that you're meant to break the barrels instead of dodge them, this guy was a massive pain. Even afterwards, he was still a massive pain. If you ever get hit by a barrel, you're almost guaranteed to get hit by one to three more because of the stun, and how they seem to kind of drag you back even if you dash through them at some angles.

Henry: This ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fight. On top of the projectile spam, counter with LONG CC, misleadingly large projectiles, restrictively small arena, long stuns, and the attack where he constantly knocks you back toward the wall, he inflicts a debuff that makes you take 5% more damage, which stacks. I don't think there was even a single time where I didn't take at least one hit from the electric wall during the knockback attack, even using two dashes and starting from on top of him. If I look back at the fight, it doesn't seem that bad. But then it is that bad.

Haven't fought anyone beyond those. Matka broke our patience. There's simply too much going on in some of these fights at times.

[The Seventh Son]

I might have some tips that could help? I'm playing melee solo.

I'm currently on Baron, which I keep getting close, but it's really hard to avoid the jump attack. Maybe you already know all of this and it's not working for you, but maybe you don't and this helps:

>In general, if you're running melee you have to have a defensive ability. Ability 2 can be a more offensive ability, but it should have a property to help with defense. Skills that apply weak or leech would be good examples.

>If you're good enough you can ignore this: I wouldn't run anything but blood veil for travel skill. The heal on attack is huge, and it takes aggro off you for a moment to reposition. It's just such a big deal for melee, because sometimes you're just going to catch one and that's how it goes. Healing that back every 8 seconds while dodging an attack, and dealing damage back just really can't be beat.

>Choose your weapon based on how it moves you around. There isn't a wrong weapon to use, just the wrong weapon for you. The msot important thign is that the way the weapon moves you around (IE axes step foreward and slash or daggers dash forward and back giving you iframes.) feels good and natural to you.

>Illusion Golem is, imo, the best ult for melee. The illusion hits enemies aroudn it dealing damage, but also gives you a shield ever 1.5 seconds. As it's alive for 7 seconds, that's 4 applications. Can really turn the fight and even be what you need to secure the kill.

Hope something in there is helpful friend!

[Proboscis]

Originally posted by The Seventh Son:

I might have some tips that could help? I'm playing melee solo.

Funny thing, I already do all those things, lol. Aside from illusion golem, maybe I'll try it out. I usually ran blood beam or heart strike.

I don't explicitly run only melee, but my complaints about it are mostly like... they give us 7 melee weapons and 2 ranged, but the ranged options are SO much more viable. It's just the nature of bullet-hell-y games like some of the bosses are, but it's frustrating that melee is generally so bad for bosses but great for everything else.

[Ninisty]

The delay in the crossbow verse the amount of projectiles being thrown at you isn't viable while the pistols themselves don't deal nearly enough damage to reliably kill enemy ads. Trying to be a spellcaster with Scholar Blood is just so frustrating as well. There's no "magic" weapon that scales with spellpower. So when your CDRs and Resets run dry, using melee weapons is just not an option. You don't get the necessary damage buffs from other blood types. Tank builds are just a waste of space. Blocking and Tanking attacks just punch into Wounds and you cease being able to heal. So you're still better off taking no damage despite having like 20-40% damage resistance. Then even with all those resists, you're still dealing subpar damage that doesn't make up for the strikes you do take.

[Alaerth]

My boyfriend and I picked up this game fresh on the new Gloomrot update, prior not knowing anything about the game but having mmo knowledge. We just finished beating the last boss of Act III. I say, it was pretty fun and manageable to take down with the right gear and potions. I took the ranger role (mainly pistols) and he took the melee role (mainly slashers). We did a lot of gear progression and looting. My two builds is either full Illusion or Unholy (Unholy for adds and Illusion single target and shielding in boss fights) and my boyfriend was mix of Blood and Chaos. We died a few times in boss fights (mainly me haha) but we found it fun. We can help with any tips if you need.

[theworld]

Originally posted by Proboscis:

...

Haven't fought anyone beyond those. Matka broke our patience. There's simply too much going on in some of these fights at times.

Most of these sound like IQ issue more than skill issue, but especially Matka.

Mairwyn fireball? Wolf form and run to the other end of the arena, then there will be a wide enough gap between the projectiles to run back in.

Matka? You can trivially avoid most of her attacks if you break her line of sight hiding behind the trees in the arena and pelting her with indirect AoE: Crossbow Q, Bone Explosion, Void, Ungora's Ultimate.

[Proboscis]

Originally posted by theworld:

Most of these sound like IQ issue more than skill issue, but especially Matka.

lol

[Ninisty]

Originally posted by theworld:

Originally posted by Proboscis:

...

Haven't fought anyone beyond those. Matka broke our patience. There's simply too much going on in some of these fights at times.

Most of these sound like IQ issue more than skill issue, but especially Matka.

Mairwyn fireball? Wolf form and run to the other end of the arena, then there will be a wide enough gap between the projectiles to run back in.

Matka? You can trivially avoid most of her attacks if you break her line of sight hiding behind the trees in the arena and pelting her with indirect AoE: Crossbow Q, Bone Explosion, Void, Ungora's Ultimate.

So instead of better balancing, just not fight and cheese? Trying too hard for that jester man.

[theworld]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRmw8oGxg2A&pp=ygUNTWF0a2EgY3JpbXNvbg%3D%3D

[theworld]

What better balancing? The videos on how to do these old bosses at -10 GS and frailed have been out for a while, and some have been updated for Gloomrot. But most of that actually takes skill, and if you or OP don't have that (if he did this thread wouldn't exist in the first place) then you can still beat the bosses if you use your head for more than just eating.

[Proboscis]

Originally posted by theworld:

What better balancing? The videos on how to do these old bosses at -10 GS and frailed have been out for a while, and some have been updated for Gloomrot. But most of that actually takes skill, and if you or OP don't have that (if he did this thread wouldn't exist in the first place) then you can still beat the bosses if you use your head for more than just eating.

I gave you your (You), go away.