Difficulty tuning of brutal a bit much?

[Poingnant Crazy]

I've come back to this game for the 1.0 release after finishing it when Gloomwood came out and decided to try my luck at the solo brutal difficulty. Things were feeling fine for a good majority of act 1, but I've found myself beaten down at every turn beginning act 2. Tristan felt crazy hard, Vincent barely manageable and I couldn't even stomach dealing with the adds on top of Cristina's own healing and damage.

I skipped to Maja and continuously got her to low health before dying at about 3/4 my own and can only wonder to myself, is this really worth the effort? The new attacks from the bosses are really cool (shoutout to Clive throwing a bomb in my face) but 70% damage bonus on bosses just feels like too large of a wall for me. I've even tried changing my solo run to have increased stat boosts to my gear to offset it but in reality the damage scaling is so high that it changes one mistake into two.

I just want to put the aside a lot of the 'git gud' atmosphere on the board right now and ask, does it feel like brutal is, forgive the whit, maybe too brutal?

[NoX]

Have the exact same experience. Feels like a design flaw rather than skill issue.

[KaMuiReD]

I wish we had another difficulty ABOVE brutal with even more mechanics, ACT II onward bosses have debuff or "HIDDEN mechanics" you wanna play around if you don't play around those mechanics ... you'll absolutely get destroyed MAJA being a good example (if she hits ANY allied entities skeleton musquitos or whatever she will summon adds, if she enters her adds phase WHILE you have allied entities active, for example skeleton she'll summon even more adds, don't get hit by those and the fight become almost trivial)
Many bosses are like this, with "hidden mechanics" like MAJA, POLORA (she usually get brute forced but she actually heal herself if her adds touches any allied entities and all the MAJA's rules apply here as well), VALENCIA
Some have debuff you wanna play around like VINCENT or HENRY

Thing is after ACT II those bosses become way harder to brute force and you actually have to play by those rules otherwise .. you gonna die

Once you know how to deal with those specific scenarios for each fights you'll get there eventually ;)
Good luck ;) (not saying it's not gonna take some tries tho :p)

[Jaggervice]

Not really. I won't say you need to get good, but it's literally the whole point of the difficulty level. It's kind of odd to see people making posts and such about this given that there are easier modes to play on that are not brutal. If you are playing, pick any game, and it has a mode called super hardcore nightmare death and you try it and get wrecked, would you go and complain that the mode is too hard? It's quite literally the point.

Harder modes are for people who want a more challenging experience. Not for people who want a less challenging experience but want to be able to play it on the hardest mode anyway, for? I don't exactly know why. But it means the mode isn't for you, not that it's too hard, because that is exactly how it is intended to be. That's why there are easier difficulties.

As for brutal, it can be challenging sure, but you can learn it like anything else. I'd personally enjoy an even harder difficulty than brutal if they had it.

[Vakula]

Originally posted by Jaggervice:

Not really. I won't say you need to get good, but it's literally the whole point of the difficulty level. It's kind of odd to see people making posts and such about this given that there are easier modes to play on that are not brutal. If you are playing, pick any game, and it has a mode called super hardcore nightmare death and you try it and get wrecked, would you go and complain that the mode is too hard? It's quite literally the point.

Harder modes are for people who want a more challenging experience. Not for people who want a less challenging experience but want to be able to play it on the hardest mode anyway, for? I don't exactly know why. But it means the mode isn't for you, not that it's too hard, because that is exactly how it is intended to be. That's why there are easier difficulties.

As for brutal, it can be challenging sure, but you can learn it like anything else. I'd personally enjoy an even harder difficulty than brutal if they had it.

people are complaining because the challenge has to feel fair, which it currently doesnt a lot of the time, especially at level 47. its not a simple as "huurrrr its called hard, ofc its hard hahaha, me so smart, look at argument, destroyed with facts and logic"

One reason people want to play on a higher difficulty is to see the new boss mechanics, but when the game has no defensive option thats not tied to a cooldown, when your character ms is slow as hell, and enemies constantly spam combos and aoe, spawn minions, and you feel cheated cuz u die in 1-2 mistakes, its not a fun challenge.

[theworld]

Originally posted by KaMuiReD:

MAJA being a good example (if she hits ANY allied entities skeleton musquitos or whatever she will summon adds, if she enters her adds phase WHILE you have allied entities active, for example skeleton she'll summon even more adds, don't get hit by those and the fight become almost trivial)

Bro, she actually got nerfed big time in 1.0

Before, if you dodged Maja's ink bolt, it always resulted in a demon summon, the only choice was to block, lest you eventually get overrun by the summons.

Now you can simply walk sideways from that attack and nothing gets summoned.

[Yumeko]

If you "simply" learn the AI and understand your answers/options for everything they do then you can easily do em taking 0-3 hits. Thats pretty much what brutal is about. It requires finessing the boss AI's where on normal mode you can oonga boonga no problem.

[KaMuiReD]

1 - "people are complaining because the challenge has to feel fair, which it currently doesnt a lot of the time, especially at level 47"

All lvl 47 bosses in brutal are roaming bosses and there is a reason for that is that you can make your life way easier depending on where / when and how you engage them
And it also comes to knowledge lot of people try to brute force them (Christina I've seen A LOT of people calling her healing ability insane ... yeah that's because you have to INTERRUPT IT)
Vincent is too fast ? play with two counters or bait him into Bane or skeleton or whatever will help you

2 - "One reason people want to play on a higher difficulty is to see the new boss mechanics"

If you want to see the bosses brutal mechanic without the difficulty you can set up your health and dmg way higher in the server settings or do some rifts in normal mode as bosses in rifts actually have the brutal pattern (without the scaling)

3 - "the game has no defensive option thats not tied to a cooldown, when your character ms is slow as hell, and enemies constantly spam combos and aoe, spawn minions, and you feel cheated cuz u die in 1-2 mistakes, its not a fun challenge"

Experiment with some builds, use two defensives instead of one, change your armor sets, try different weapons, make sure you have pots etc etc etc

4 - "[...] ofc its hard hahaha, me so smart, look at argument, destroyed with facts and logic"

I mean if someone explain to you what are this bosses rules what you should aim for and what you wanna try to avoid and you don't listen it's like you're playing any game that have bosses with strict rules (WoW, FFXIV, Elden ring , etc)
And you're like NO i'm not gonna do this mechanic, NO i'm not gonna block or dodge on malenia ever

Well then you're gonna die and the reason why is if you don't wanna play by those bosses rules get rekted don't wanna learn then still complain about it being unfair ... well idk what to tell you for real

Good luck i guess :p

Anyway keep trying those bosses are doable and you'll feel a lot of satisfaction when you beat them ;) HF

[KaMuiReD]

Originally posted by theworld:

Originally posted by KaMuiReD:

MAJA being a good example (if she hits ANY allied entities skeleton musquitos or whatever she will summon adds, if she enters her adds phase WHILE you have allied entities active, for example skeleton she'll summon even more adds, don't get hit by those and the fight become almost trivial)

Bro, she actually got nerfed big time in 1.0

Before, if you dodged Maja's ink bolt that always resulted in a demon summon, the only choice was to block, lest you eventually get overrun by the summons.

Now you can simply walk sideways from that attack and nothing gets summoned.

Yeah i remember that then I thought : oh she doesn't do it in NORMAL but .... I was surprise she doesn't do it in BRUTAL either :p

[Storm's End]

I kind of like it. There's no room for error though. You basically have to get appropriate level gear and you have to play well without making mistakes, and know the fights.

But I don't find the fights tedious and they're mostly fair, but very hard. For a game as challenging as this, I've yelled "OH COME ON" surprisingly few times. Maybe getting stuck in the terrain once or twice. I think they're very well designed. But they are definitely very hard.

[[HBM] Cryxalis]

Wait until Adam...

[ZombieNation]

Why people want to play BRUTAL then cry about been hmm you know BRUTAL... if u cant take it lower ur difficulty bro

[Storm's End]

I will say I wish the block ability was a third spell. I refuse to give up offensive spells for a wimpy counter attack (nomatter how good it is) because I am a gamer. I go forward, only forward. I do damage, only damage.

Two spells and a gauranteed block would be perf imo. It feels just too tight having only one spell and borderline being required to take a block for some bosses.

[crazyabe111]

Originally posted by KaMuiReD:

All lvl 47 bosses in brutal are roaming bosses and there is a reason for that is that you can make your life way easier depending on where / when and how you engage them
And it also comes to knowledge lot of people try to brute force them (Christina I've seen A LOT of people calling her healing ability insane ... yeah that's because you have to INTERRUPT IT)

funny thing- you can't interrupt it in Brutal, she just keeps healing until it's done.

[crazyabe111]

Originally posted by Storm's End:

It feels just too tight having only one spell and borderline being required to take a block for some bosses.

Borderline? the meta is currently "take two blocks and a bow or gun".

[VɎ₦]

yep, same. i've played the game with my buddies for many times and brutal was fun until act 2. we've spent HOURS trying to kill Kriig and Maja and it was insane. We had 100% blood and potion buffs, it made no difference. Like, why would you have so much stuff going on and only have 1 dash every 8 seconds. We were so frustrated that nearly quited the game all together. I tuned the boss power to 1.3 and in became somewhat manageble. 70% damage is just ridiculous. when a lot of experienced players hit the bottleneck, it's obviously a design flaw, not just a *skill issue*