Damage to bosses?

[M3553NG3R]

Hey! First of all, I love this game, but I am not sure what to do when it comes to bosses. I'll be in a run where I'm destroying everything. Then when I get to a boss I do damage but it stops here and there or I don't damage it at all. What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

[Rheetro]

The game has some important core mechanics to get stronger/better gear between your runs - let me try to explain:

First - getting your weapons to Tier 2 and Tier 3 as quickly as possible, is vital for boss damage!

1. Master weapon merging (flat damage): The most important, yet easily missed mechanic, is how weapon merging scales your DPS. Early on, you want to fill all five of your weapon slots, but as you approach a boss, you need to consolidate.

The flat damage transfer: When you merge weapons, the consumed weapon's damage converts into a permanent flat damage bonus for the resulting weapon.

Funneling: Don't try to maintain five equally leveled weapons. Pick 1 or 2 slots for your main damage dealers, then use the remaining slots to build up "donor" weapons, that you continually merge into your main weapons to feed them massive flat damage.

Uppy vs. Mergy: Combining two identical weapons creates a higher-tier version of that same weapon ("Uppy"). Combining two different weapons of the same tier creates a completely new weapon ("Mergy" - like combining a sniper rifle and a magnum to get a laser rifle).

Note: Whenever you sacrifice a weapon during a merge, it loses all of its perks, but its damage is converted into a permanent flat damage bonus for the resulting weapon. So make sure the perk you are already using (with a *), are worth sacrificing.

2. Prioritize armor and lifesteal: Because bosses are too fast to completely avoid, you have to build to trade blows.

Survivability over Dodge: Prioritize lifesteal, HP regen, and armor blessings. Stacking enough armor, can grant you up to 80% damage reduction at higher tiers.

The Crux: During difficult waves and boss fights, stick close to the Crux to take advantage of its localized buffs. Taking upgrades like life drain, HP regen, area range and the projectile resistance shield for the Crux, allows you to tank hits. (you can also get an Epic upgrade, that allows you to pick up the Crux and walk around with it, though a bit slower movement).

3. Focus your elements: Spreading yourself thin across all damage types is a trap - pick one or two elements and stick to them:

Fire: deals damage over time based on your weapon's damage. It essentially allows you to deal damage twice: once on the initial hit, and again as the enemy burns.

Electric: this status effect slows enemies down, the strength of the slow effect scales with the amount of damage you deal, making it excellent for crowd control and keeping fast bosses at bay.

Holy: does not have a lingering status effect, but Holy weapons generally boast faster projectiles and a base critical damage bonus. This element heavily synergizes with critical damage builds, which can easily double your damage output if you push your crit chance high enough.

As you progress, you will find powerful blessings that buff one specific element but penalize another. If you are using every element, these powerful blessings will end up hurting your build.

The elements are designed around how *YOU* want to build your character, as stacking blessings that buff one specific element (while debuffing the others you aren't using) is the most efficient way to scale your damage for the endgame.

4. Manage your upgrade pool: Your loot pool gets diluted the longer the run goes on, making it harder to find what you need. When you find an upgraded prayer or attachment, use the Confessional to remove the base versions so they stop showing up as options. If you see a weapon you need for merging but can't afford it yet, always lock it in the shop so it stays for the next wave.

Good luck!

[A-Space-Turkey]

What weapon are you using? Some weapons like the spinshot curve their projectiles, so moving around a lot help the projectiles to hit the boss more often.

Are you using auto-aim or aim in cone? I've found that aiming in a cone is helpful to focus the damage on the boss. Auto aim randomly chooses a target and the boss isn't always one of them, haha.

[M3553NG3R]

Thanks for the info! Much appreciated!

[Byzantium]

The difference in hit points between the regular enemies and the bosses is also extremely large (you are given the entire wave's timer after all to kill them) so your damage to other enemies isn't always a great indicator of how fast you'll be damaging bosses, and your listed DPS often won't be either depending on how much of your normal output is coming from multiple projectiles, pierces, and bounces (which won't all hit a boss in many circumstances). Because of that, depending on what kind of upgrades you're prioritizing to scale over the course of a crusade you could see the same DPS and regular enemy clear speeds even with the same weapons and have wildly divergent output against a boss enemy.

Generally if you're comfortably clearing out everything inside your weapon's range in one attack animation or close to it, you don't need to take upgrades that are making you better at clearing groups (+projectiles, +explosion chance or range, bounce, etc, it also depends a bit on which weapon what counts here) and can instead emphasize going into boss fights the scaling which is more impactful on a single target, which is primarily base damage and things directly interacting with it so crit/crit damage, +%dam, attack speed, it's absolutely possible to build up enough damage to erase the bosses extremely quickly but it won't just flow automatically from the upgrade choices that tend to feel most impactful just clearing out waves.