Dreaming General need to be rework.

[Lubrication]

Have to tailor the team fight/skill for 1 mob is stupid. Literally require you to have hit 4 to beat the fight is stupidly design. Not only that the boss still does damage to 2 of your heroes and its does at least 15 damage is dumb.

[The Face]

The preacher in DD1 also had you make a specific team to fight him. Meat boss really wanted you to bring multi hitting dots. Bosses take set ups.

The bosses are hard, and there are 3 of them. I fight the general only when you have the back hitters (and/or MAA's bellow) as well.

[HighLanderPony]

There's a difference between hard and you most likely get killed if you had no prior knowledge heading in. Hindsight prep doesn't count.

[The Face]

Originally posted by HighLanderPony:

There's a difference between hard and you most likely get killed if you had no prior knowledge heading in. Hindsight prep doesn't count.

While true, it is also nothing new to the DD series for bosses

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by Lubrication5690:

Have to tailor the team fight/skill for 1 mob is stupid. Literally require you to have hit 4 to beat the fight is stupidly design. Not only that the boss still does damage to 2 of your heroes and its does at least 15 damage is dumb.

Unfortunately it seems to be that way for some entire Confessions. You want to do the 2nd Confession, you need a very specific party configuration, far more specific than what you need for the Dreaming General.

I wonder which Confessions people play for fun once they've got access to them all. First one doesn't have all the content (only two regions out of five), second one is not doable for most groups, third has an insanely unpleasant boss... and I don't know about fourth of fifth yet.

[Requiem]

I mean, every hero has the ability to hit the 3rd row. There's no damage requirement. You also know when you're approaching a lair so its not a surprise encounter.
If ANYTHING, I think the biggest issue with dreaming general is that it's a time consuming fight. I find it to be the easiest of the Lair bosses.

[Cassilda]

I think the problem with the general is not that its impossibly hard, but more like its not very fun.

Having your party being slowly choked, immobilized and stressed, while you have to sacrifice pretty much half of your damage to deal with the roots make for a long and frustrating encounter.

[Pixel Peeper]

And every time you hit the taproot it takes forever for the vines to react and withdraw.

Makes the fight feel like a slog.

[gonzo]

Personally, the only issue I have with Dreaming General is that Unsettling Whispers will still stress your party when it misses. That is completely unfair.

Having to hit the root in 4th is just a mechanic you need to use for the fight.

Also, technically, with enough DPS, you can just bring combat items to use on the root so you don't waste high DPS turns.

[twitch.tv/GFYE]

Both games had boss gimmicks. The difference is the weighting of that gimmick INCREASES over time in DD1 whereas DD2 just throws it at you.

Stop the carriage before you hit the node and swap skills, which is a lesson taught in the first game. The other option is to avoid General fights and just move onto the next region lair if it isn't the last. You can also try taking a hero in your compositions which hit 3rd and 4th row naturally " PD, Flag stand out."

The other solution is just spend candles for items at Hope and stack the deck ahead of time.

[Divvu]

...can't you just buy a couple stacks of lynseed oil and throw it at the root each turn? That or anything cheap and stackable, like chalk?

[LastSide]

Theres 4 of them and after defeating 3/4 of the Lair Bosses, I just dont find them fun.
Most of the challenge feels like I need to pass a ton of coin tosses mechanics and my input is just a small fart on the wind.

Best recommendation I can give is look up the Lair Bosses on the wiki and exploit whatever dot(damage over time) they are vulnerable. Bosses deal a ton of damage and you will not survive the the AoE/Dot coming your way no matter what.
Game punishes you for playing it blind or first time or not memorizing what Lair Boss is in what Region.

Hindsight is a powerful exploit in this game and it will increase your chance at winning a run.

Look up the Region you are exploring and what Lair Boss is in there.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by LastSide:

memorizing what Lair Boss is in what Region.

Look up the Region you are exploring and what Lair Boss is in there.

Is that really a concern? The guy who burns books is in the city full of burning books, the dead general with vines going through him is in the place full of dead soldiers and dense vegetation, the baby with teeth and rotting meat is in the fields with rotting meat and teeth monsters, and the giant sea monster is in the region with water.

[Ashfelt]

Dreaming general is fine; one of the safest lair bosses to go against when you can just use equipment on the vine or aoe the boss and vine.

[Null Winter]

Originally posted by Pixel Peeper:

And every time you hit the taproot it takes forever for the vines to react and withdraw.

Makes the fight feel like a slog.

Like an actual war of attrition. Realism at the cost of fun!

[BrambleBunny]

Dreaming general is tied with Librarian for the easiest boss fight, and is pretty easy to prepare a team for. Abilities like Plague Grenade or Abyssal Artillery let you hit the tap root and still keep DPS on the General, and it's REALLY not difficult between items and abilities to clear two roots each turn for the duration of the relatively short DPS race.

Harvest Child and Leviathan are far more obnoxious fights and just as gimmicky/demanding of certain setups. If there's a good complaint to levy against the Dreaming General it's the pointless animation/delay on root clears, which makes it feel interminable at times.

While you can blunder into Dreaming General with four characters incapable of hitting rank 4 and just wipe, DD and DD2 delight in this kind of "Whoops, now you know better for next time" encounter design. The third chapter boss exemplifies this design philosophy.