Bosses too hard in solo?

[Neonetik]

I'm fairly new to KF2 after about 500 hours in KF1, and I'm having a lot of trouble with the bosses. I'm the kind of person who loves to play games like this solo (playing on hard with appropriately leveled perks), but it seems to be a lot harder than it was in KF1.

Hans in particular feel incredibly tough with his ****ing non-stop melee attacks. Like, what the hell am I supposed to do with most of the perks? No matter how fast I run away, he just catches up to me and OWNS me with a couple of smacks followed by another couple of smacks followed by shooting me as I desperately try to run away. And if I somehow do manage to take him down to half health, he just runs and me and I can't seem to do anything to stop him from healing himself. In fact, the patriarch is kind of the same. Maybe it's just my faulty memory, but I recall the Patty in KF1 being quite a bit easier to kill before he healed himself, where as here, it seems like you can't stop him from healing himself every single time. If I could DODGE the attacks it would be nice, but most of the time it's impossible. He is just TOO ****ING FAST.

Plus, both bosses feel like crazy bullet sponges compared to KF1. I recall that as a level 6, you could beat the patty on low difficulty with literally one or two shots with your classes most powerful weapons, where as here it seems like bosses can take 10 times as much damage, while also being able to heal themselves a million times easier.

Maybe I'm just bad, but this feels off.

[Earth Burger®Fishless Sandwich™]

Boss melee is savage and difficult to avoid if you're not one of the perks with run speed. You've already told us that, though, so what I'd suggest is taking up a melee weapon and becoming proficient with parrying if you aren't already. The katana is a good pick for this because of its light weight and reasonable price. It will reduce damage on a successful parry by half. The pulverizer is more expensive, but can do good damage to fleshpounds and knock down crowds of weaker zeds off-perk, making it a good weapon to clear a mob off you, while also parrying more damage than the katana with 60% reduction.

You don't need to be a zerker to parry. It might be enough to get him off you long enough to return fire or dose yourself with the med syringe while gaining some distance or causing him to change to a non-melee behaviour.

Hope this helps.

[MrSuneko]

I'd buy a Kitana if enough space in the inventory. Parrying his frenzy attacks will reduce the damage greatly even if his glowing attacks are unblockable.

[Neonetik]

So, a knife can't parry him, but a katana and up can?

Just trying to be clear on this.

[BardzBeast]

Originally posted by NeonAbomination:

So, a knife can't parry him, but a katana and up can?

Just trying to be clear on this.

Knife can parry, just not as effective as katana. Honestly most perks shouldnt be a problem, though it depends on what level you are. Playing as support, ss, gunslinger, demo or zerk. the bosses are realy easy to kill solo. Playing as medic, mando, swat or firebug is a bit more difficult because they deal much less damage. But even then. I think 2-3 scar mags gets through a phase of hans, and it shouldnt be too hard to break his shield as a mando/swat solo if you aim for the head. I think firebug/medic might be the only 2 that are really hard to solo the boss with

[jong]

Originally posted by NeonAbomination:

So, a knife can't parry him, but a katana and up can?

Just trying to be clear on this.

all melee weapons can parry any melee attacks, there's just very little damage mitigation with a knife and if the strength of the weapon is low, your guard will break and you will get hit by the subsequent attacks. Knife will parry for 30% damage but it will not stumble anything above a clot, so a hit from a gorefast will just break your guard (but 30% less damage for that hit) andyou will take full damage from the two or three swing hit combo it does after that since it isn't stumbled.
same as glowing attacks, scs/fps continue the glowing attack combo as you cannot stumble them, however if there was a melee weapon that could parry quickly enough again after the attack, every hit would be mitigated. This is not the case though as glow attacks are usually 3+ hits so you can parry 2 hits but take full damage from one, UNLESS you get knocked back far enough from the first parry (happens a lot with SCs glow attack combo) that you will be able to take only two hits and parry both of them (again mainly SCs but can happen with Hans as well).

[<color=#CD3210>Lunatic]

As a general rule i always play either Support, Gunslinger or Medic when the boss wave is coming.

Because you need one of two things, movement speed, or stumble.

Hans is super fast, Patriarch is really strong.

As Support i can stumble both bosses giving me a split second of time needed to run or reload or heal, Support also has crazy high damage especially with the aa12 so you can usually whittle down an entire health gauge with a 25 support aa12 even on hoe. When they get close switch to the hunting shotgun for 2 reasons, the first is that a full close double blast will always result in the boss stumbling back for 0.5 to 1.5 secs and the second reason is if you jump and double blast at the boss during the jump you'll be pushed back far enough to avoid their melee attempt.

For Gunslinger, you can kite around the map pulling off precise headshots from afar with both a pair of dual .500s and deagles, thus you can take time learning the bosses move roation, generally both bosses will attempt to engage in melee if you stop shooting at them for too long, giving them too long a window without supressing fire they will close in on you, occasionally i can make the bosses trip over and fall down by shooting their legs with the .500s.

Finally for Medic, using the medic shotgun and hunting shotgun, neither boss can ever hurt me much, even on hoe, the auto stumble effect occurs once ever 3-5 shots from the medic shotgun, and if they close in i use the hunting shotgun and movement speed to get a very broad gap, stumbling them and then forcing them to either shoot/nade/rocket rather then try to continue melee.

[Earth Burger®Fishless Sandwich™]

All weapons are indeed capable of parrying, but the starting knife only mitigates 20% damage whether parrying or blocking and will not stagger anything above a clot. The crovel will stagger specimens below Scrake level and the katana and above will stagger everything. Glowing attacks still have their damage reduced both by parrying and blocking, but a stagger will not occur regardless of the weapon used in that instance.

[spearten.com]

I always find the parry answer not that helpful because Hans will continue to attack forever with melee and eventually do a massive damage lunge. If you try to get away or around a corner by unblocking and healing, he'll always catch up.

HOWEVER...

A firebug making use of groundfires can keep Hans aways from the team, using groundfires and removing a crap ton of damage.

But, since you play a lot of solo, then yeah, parrying until his spree lessens is your best bet.

[[SpeC]vanle3]

Originally posted by Cat Stampede:

I always find the parry answer not that helpful because Hans will continue to attack forever with melee and eventually do a massive damage lunge. If you try to get away or around a corner by unblocking and healing, he'll always catch up.

HOWEVER...

A firebug making use of groundfires can keep Hans aways from the team, using groundfires and removing a crap ton of damage.

But, since you play a lot of solo, then yeah, parrying until his spree lessens is your best bet.

Even then it isn't. The best bet against Hans is to rely on damage and speed. The hunting shotgun is one of the most effective guns in the game against him, being able to stumble him out of his melee, allowing you to gain distance. I have recently experimented with using dbs + AA12 on zerker and it has worked rather well on boss waves.

[spearten.com]

Originally posted by SpeCvanle3:

Originally posted by Cat Stampede:

I always find the parry answer not that helpful because Hans will continue to attack forever with melee and eventually do a massive damage lunge. If you try to get away or around a corner by unblocking and healing, he'll always catch up.

HOWEVER...

A firebug making use of groundfires can keep Hans aways from the team, using groundfires and removing a crap ton of damage.

But, since you play a lot of solo, then yeah, parrying until his spree lessens is your best bet.

Even then it isn't. The best bet against Hans is to rely on damage and speed. The hunting shotgun is one of the most effective guns in the game against him, being able to stumble him out of his melee, allowing you to gain distance. I have recently experimented with using dbs + AA12 on zerker and it has worked rather well on boss waves.

Oh yeah, and you can also use the DB crazy recoil to launch you back and avoid his attacks.

[Tetsu]

If you want to play a class that isn't zerk, medic, slinger or support for boss wave, you NEED to carry a DBS. It makes boss wave way more bearable as a slower class, letting you blast yourself away from the boss while dealing a good chunk of damage at the same time. It also has such high stumble power that it can be used reliably for stumbling the boss/scrake killing on any perk. Plus it's much better to take 0 damage and deal some back than it is to take some pretty heavy chip damage from katana parrying (Parrying also puts you at risk for another melee attack if you didn't get pushed back far enough). You can also infinitely kite Hans' hyper-aggressive last phase with the DBS, as long as you have ammo of course (which isn't a problem with the current ammo box spawn rate during boss wave).

[JimmyIowa]

Originally posted by Z.E.T. BardzBeast:

Playing as support, ss, gunslinger, demo or zerk. the bosses are realy easy to kill solo. Playing as medic, mando, swat or firebug is a bit more difficult because they deal much less damage.

Um, what? Weird how vastly different our experiences can be. Medic is very VERY easy to solo Hans with on HoE, due to his super fast healing. And his damage is not all that bad. But gunslinger is nearly impossible to solo HoE Hans with (not just my opinion, I know several pretty good player who say this). Gunslinger is fragile and, on HoE dies pretty much always on the the second melee combo hans does, because syringe recharge just isn't fast enough to keep him alive.

[<color=#CD3210>Lunatic]

Originally posted by Tetsu:

If you want to play a class that isn't zerk, medic, slinger or support for boss wave, you NEED to carry a DBS. It makes boss wave way more bearable as a slower class, letting you blast yourself away from the boss while dealing a good chunk of damage at the same time. It also has such high stumble power that it can be used reliably for stumbling the boss/scrake killing on any perk. Plus it's much better to take 0 damage and deal some back than it is to take some pretty heavy chip damage from katana parrying (Parrying also puts you at risk for another melee attack if you didn't get pushed back far enough). You can also infinitely kite Hans' hyper-aggressive last phase with the DBS, as long as you have ammo of course (which isn't a problem with the current ammo box spawn rate during boss wave).

That's basically what i already said.

[lPaladinl]

I don't find any issue with Pat for soloing, but Hans really frustrates me with his grabbing mechanic.

I don't like that we have to cheese the game with techniques like abusing recoil from the double barrel to keep him away, or using specific classes just to have an advantage in speed or stun power. I don't consider it a good thing when the game is unbalanced for solo play in such a way that cheesing tactics become required to even have a hope of surviving.

[abugaj]

Zerk, Medic,and Gunslinger are easy to solo the boss with. Especially zerk with its OP regen health skill. This game is for casuals rather than survival horror fans. Still fun though.