Halescourge is feeling a bit...off

[Kerspooky]

Let me preface this by saying two very important things first. One: This will be dedicated to the bossfight of the first Act of the Game (Burblespue Halescourge), not the Halescourge Level itself, which is great in my opinion. Two: This is my opinion based on what i've experienced with this boss myself, and how i see the situation. I am open to discussion, naturally.

Now to the meat of the problem. Burblespue. Fairly doable on Recruit and Veteran, but the issues i have with this battle become blatantly obvious on Champion (I won't even dare attempt Legend on this Bloated Nurgle-Fanboy)
His Movement-Pattern (The Teleports) as well as most of his attacks (The Poison-Duplicates and the Mega-Blightstorm in particular) are essentially on rapid-fire Mode compared to the other bosses. This would not be a particularly bad thing, if it wasn't for the continuous onslaught of Chaos Worshippers of all kinds, this also includes Berserkers, and even the occasional Chaos Warrior. Fighting off these Guys, while also having to watch out for Poison-Projectiles with massive hitboxes and dangerous speed that also leave behind Acid pools on the ground that continuously damage you and your party, if you step in them. This further hinders your already limited mobility in tihs ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of a fight, giving good ol' Burblespue an even easier time blasting you to bits.

In addition to this he has an exceptionally large healthpool, compared to other bosses (Insert obligatory "Bödvarr is too easy" joke here, please) ,making the aforementioned issues even harder to deal with. Even with a fully prepared, fully assembled team with proper communication, this fight can be down to luck or simply really strong gear and Class compositions (In order to kill him faster than he kill you) and not to basic Skill. As that seems to go out of the window, once the fight starts. The only times i actually managed to beat him was by pure Chance when we didnt' have a bunch of Berserkers just storming in our backs through the next free window, with a Chaos warrior joining from the front and Burblespue happily blasting away his Poison-Clones.
The Fight in and of itself is fine. I would consider his set of abilities actually quite fun, even though it is incredibly cruel to put this guy as the "first" Act-Boss of the Game. But it becomes problematic because of the insane Speed and lack of clear telegraphing of attacks in this fight and the almost neverending onslaught of Chaos-Servants is simply the icing on the cake.

By far, i am not the first one to complain about this boss in particular. And while i am aware that he is doable one way or another, i do not think he is quite in touch with the other bosses, where correct Timing, precise Movement and coordinated Combat actually function similarly to the overall loop of the game. Halescourge feels more like a 'Raid-Boss' in terms of difficulty, compared to the other boss battles.

After now having done countless of attempts at this guy yet again i simply wanna say, that i would like to hear other people's experiences with this fight, both good and bad alike and would also be interested to know why the by far hardest of the three main bosses is the first players are supposed to encounter in chronological order :P

[Laef]

Probably gonna get nerfed. He is trivial if you have powerful ranged.

Did it with a slayer, footman, handmaiden and a sienna unchained bot. Revives are in the same room so just revived anyone that went down as handmaiden, but was a pain and took a while.

Did it today with bounty hunter, huntsman krub, and pyro. Was quick and easy.

edit* The acts are all startable from the beginning, they aren't in an order. It's just act 1, or act a, not the first act. It could be act dog, cat, and lizard.

[-]

Basically burblesmeg heckman is either impossibly hard or incredibly easy depending on how many damage dealers your group has, and rng with his attack pattern and adds.

A group with a sienna, an elf and a bounty hunter is mostly going to completely clobber him, while a group thats mostly just good at doing damage to hordes n whatnot is going to get murdered.

Melee is mostly terrible because of the tiny window of attack and his knockback attack, but sometimes you might get lucky and he'll just randomly stay in one spot for an unusually long amount of time or teleport like, one meter and let you just wail on him.

Sometimes he has some kind of epileptic fit and teleports all over the place shooting acid at you over and over (I've had a couple of F U N runs against him where I've been caught in the open and with him hitting me not one, not two, but three whole times, with the acid slowdown barely even wearing off before he hit me with another).

The adds are just, my favorite part of the entire fight, in that they are terrible and go from being a minor nuisance to being a run killer.
The amount of adds that join in is seemingly random, sometimes theres just a small handful, sometimes theres a massive horde.
Sometimes its full of strong enemies and even specials like globadiers and all that, sometimes its just the lowliest of trash.

I've had runs fail and succeed with competent friends in an organized group, and randoms thrown together in quickmatch, and really, all I have to say is that it's basically down to a dice throw half of the time.

In fact most of the time we are like "nah", and quit and start a new game if quickmatch gives us the mission, he is just that cancerous and unpredictable.

He'd honestly be a bit more bearable if he didn't teleport around as often as he does.

[danpaladin]

Originally posted by Replica:

In fact most of the time we are like "nah", and quit and start a new game if quickmatch gives us the mission, he is just that cancerous and unpredictable.

On Champion, I don't even attempt him anymore. There's no risk/reward involved to incentivize fighting him, and the other levels are more enjoyable and fair feeling.

[AccelExhilar]

Failed this with good groups, and completed it with average players. Like someone said, I guess it's just a dice roll fight. My last fight our 2 ranged dps got hit by berserkers immediatly while trying too put some initial damage on the boss. Another time he does this thing were he just teleports constantly around the floor spewing acid in all directions and most people can't even keep up with aiming at him let alone, dodging acid while dealing with the adds when he does this. I guess this has too be some kind of bug.

I'm all for "hard" and "challenging" fights but they have too have some level of standardization and prediction for beating it through skill / practice. The game shouldn't just throw in a gear check DPS fight here and there, and that's exactly what it feels like on the higher difficulties Champ+ a gear check particularly for the ranged DPS. This would maybe make sense if the further boss fights required whatever level of damage and skill sets this boss takes but they don't.

[Laef]

Halescourge is hard because he wasn't in the beta, so no one could cry 'nerf'. The other boss is a copy of a/the boss from the first, so 'nerf' was cried. Thus resulting in a hard experimental boss, and two nerfed "play legendary or its casual" bosses.

[Adelion]

Yea, for melee fighters the boss is a bit annoying. The constant teleporting makes this rather troublesome. If he would just stand still a second longer each sequence it would help already. I like how he has so many different spells as he is a stronger Chaos Mage, so he should have them. But they make life not exactly easier. I mean despite the acid clones he can set a storm in half the room, can teleport, can spin roulette to death (technically acid clones to) and if he thinks you manage to well in staying alive he can even immoblize you for seconds where you can't move or block. Just to make sure that you definetely die.

I would really like some kind of easter egg to make this fight easier. I played with a group once where at the start things seemed to go down. So one of the Players used his brain and threw the stupid Grim away. Some seconds later the boss died although he nearly had full health. Everybody said they didn't do anything so it wasn't some kind of overpowered ability. I tried it again to check if it was a bug or something and it seems so. BUT I think it would make up for a cool idea. You can ease the fight if you are ready to actively throw away the Grim at him. Maybe not outright kill him - especially on legend - but maybe immobilize him for 10 seconds or take away 50 % of his health. So people could decide what is more important to them. Sticking to their unhealthy loot obsession and never gonna drop a grim or easing the fight to increase survival chances. Not sure if such an effect could be explained Lore wise.
Maybe make it the other way around. The more Grims you carry the stronger Halescourge is as they provide him with power. This way new groups would have an easier time as they most likely have not found the Grims in the map. And he would also get an in-game balance as he gets weaker the more he decimates the team.

[Ineptus Mechanicus]

Originally posted by Laef:

Halescourge is hard because he wasn't in the beta, so no one could cry 'nerf'. The other boss is a copy of a/the boss from the first, so 'nerf' was cried. Thus resulting in a hard experimental boss, and two nerfed "play legendary or its casual" bosses.

He's difficult because half his attacks are unblockable, do DoT, have massive hitboxes, or a combo of the three.

[Laef]

Originally posted by Obnoxious_Gamer:

Originally posted by Laef:

Halescourge is hard because he wasn't in the beta, so no one could cry 'nerf'. The other boss is a copy of a/the boss from the first, so 'nerf' was cried. Thus resulting in a hard experimental boss, and two nerfed "play legendary or its casual" bosses.

He's difficult because half his attacks are unblockable, do DoT, have massive hitboxes, or a combo of the three.

Exactly.

[Le Hatch]

*Insert obligatory git gud comment here*

Okay but for real though, I might be a wee bit ♥♥♥♥♥♥, but I actually enjoy this boss a lot, even on champ+ runs.

Its hard, but there are subtle patterns that you can pick up on that make it much straightforward, as well as figuring counters to mechanics. Like using the cover in the corner or the adds that spawn to block the acid clones, for example, and protecting anyone that gets caught by the fly swarms, etc. etc.

However, the biggest concern I've heard, and I completly agree with, is how he pretty much makes all melee characters feel quite useless, with the combination of the teleporting and that you gotta get close to the point you can't really react to the acid, but that's kind of in part of a greater problem the game has on a whole. (*Cough* ranged meta *Cough*)

The number one thing I'd propose, is that if he targets a person in melee range, he smacks them to send them flying away before he does his spell, just so the melee guy can then have a fair chance of dealing with the attack.

[Terrorxfury]

Originally posted by Laef:

Halescourge is hard because he wasn't in the beta, so no one could cry 'nerf'. The other boss is a copy of a/the boss from the first, so 'nerf' was cried. Thus resulting in a hard experimental boss, and two nerfed "play legendary or its casual" bosses.

Your right he is in the Current Beta which is a Live beta this game is very much a retail beta and knowing Fatshark most of the "good" fixes wont come till later glad they sold alot so they can pay the coders to unbork the game

to be clear loved V1 love this game but I really realy wish FS would nail a release for once and not have a steaming pile of bugs and fix things with "Various Adjustment" patches like we all are gonna steal the Kraby pattie formula from them

And if they like how things are then release the mod tools so the community can make this the VT2 we all want

[Hex]

How to do it easy.

Step one, go in pairs. ranged nuker and melee focused career both one per side.
Go to the opposite corners of the room.
One deals with adds, the ranged nukes until out of ammo, in case of sienna that's never.
Win.

Running around the room is daft. I did it with Pyro Sienna and WW Keri in like a minute on Champ.

[FiXXXeR]

He definitely needs nerf. Fight with him is too chaotic and your party needs to be overgeared in order to beat him, thats not right i guess. His phantoms too powerfull - long range, wide radius, hard to avoid(mostly impossible), cant be blocked even by the shield, ticking damage and disrupts reviving. Arena doesnt provide enough cover to hide, deffend or heal. Totaly random teleports - no system in timing and placements. Sometimes fat sorcerers appear midfight making fight more diffucult.

[Jizzney_Princess]

I won't even attempt the map anymore until he's been reevaluated. I like the map proper, mind you, but the boss fight is one of the worst I've experienced this generation. Trying to do it with a melee character is akin to using your ♥♥♥♥ to fell an oak tree.

[Bluesy]

My problem with him isn’t the fight itself it’s that, like others have said, certain comps roflstomp him and for others it’s a slog. Any group can kill it given enough time, but it just isn’t worth.

My last group was me (Bardin), zealot saltz, handmaiden elf, and unchained sienna...we rolled that level and just suicided. Sure, we could have done it, but why put in the effort when you can just reroll a different quickplay map.

[Cheb]

You're not the only one who feels as though he's virtually unwinnable on champion. People quit just as fast when Halescourge pops up as they do when Skittergate shows up. Give 'em time, this game needs a lot of stitching back together.