Balancing on some stuff

[Reid]

I feel like some bosses even on Hard are a little too overtuned, the area boss and Kasai, I think is her name, the dragon boss before the area boss for the dragon zone, they are way too tanky and have way too many things going on on Hard imo

[Immortal-OliveTTV]

The dragon area in general is significantly harder than all the other stages, to add to your post on how hard the dragon stage is, I constantly lost as I picked the dragon area as the first stage. After I eventually beat the stage after 8-10 tries on normal, I first tried every stage after that until I completed the game, that's how hard that stage is, specifically the area boss and the fight before that, it feels like this stage would be the second last stage in terms of difficulty in a normal game but to me it feels like it should be the final stage just in terms of difficulty.

Also I want to make a separate post but some items just straight up suck and some are just upgrades to the base abilities. I understand focusing on player skill but some skill upgrades are straight doodoo, items/relics are better. Also later bosses are super tanky so tone that down just a little bit.

[Bramuk]

The dragon area is definitly overtuned in hard 4p if you don't have good movespeed.
And the mini boss just before the dragon is even harder tbh.

[Maxx Saigen]

The issue with dragon area from my experience is 2 things. Players don't understand or ignore mechanics. The other thing is if one person dies, the other 3 players will get hard punished. Same issue in the emerald area as well. Both the areas have pretty clear attack patterns, but since there is so many mechanics that require perfect coordination, if one person doesn't understand the mechanics, everyone else suffers.

[Thalq]

The DPS check on the patrol guard rats (the ones with the pathing hitboxes) on hard difficulty is almost impossible to clear without perfect perks as Assassin. Try it yourself, it's pretty close to being the most difficult thing in the game before Lunar IMO. Also you lose twice the HP per tick if you fail the check.

[hisv]

IMO the dragon and the frog were the hardest on hard difficulty, but the dragon felt unfair, especially the rotating lasers and the pushes.

I think either make the rotating lasers have a better indication for where they're going or just remove the pushes to let you position yourself with more ease on the dragon fight.

On the frog, if at all possible make the timers just a tad more forgiving (like 5~10%) imo. If you don't have good movespeed on this fight, you just won't be able to do some mechanics I think, like if the color spawns on the other side of the growing circle.

[mono]

This[files.catbox.moe] and the visual clutter preceding it is just a little bit too much even for hard mode, considering that each mechanic functions in the same fashion where being out of position - whether it was because you couldn't move quick enough or haven't had enough time to sort out said visual clutter - will pretty much always punish you with a hit. Due to the lingering nature of large beam attacks it also results in a coinflip on whether or not your invuln will save you, it gets frustrating and the fight (especially if it's your first route) feels very, very drawn out since you can't even reliably hit the boss most of the time either.

I think a better way of introducing capstone mechanics that layer different sorts of visual clutter on your screen (expanding AoEs, spinny lines, cardinal lasers) is better executed when they appear on screen one by one rather than all at once. That's sorta how XIV does it, allow the player a little bit of time to follow what's going on. Otherwise it results in strict memorization which imo, is better reserved for lunar and quite the disconnect from the other stages that seem to hit the balance between challenging but fun perfectly on hard.

[RogueVoxel]

Getting to the dragon area really does feel like a you lose scenario right now, its made every other area feel really easy honestly

[neo261]

Originally posted by Thalq:

The DPS check on the patrol guard rats (the ones with the pathing hitboxes) on hard difficulty is almost impossible to clear without perfect perks as Assassin. Try it yourself, it's pretty close to being the most difficult thing in the game before Lunar IMO. Also you lose twice the HP per tick if you fail the check.

Fully agree, without good items or skill upgrades there's barely any margin for error