Endgame bosses shouldn't be trivialized. (0.4)

So the league started off a little rough but I think overall the changes to the temple have done a lot to improve it.

I've now done a bunch of boss kills and I would say my main complaint is that a boss as cool as Atziri is too quickly trivialized by character power.

In my view, a pinnacle fight like this should never last less than ~2 minutes (for phase 2), while currently it is very easy to get it down to seconds.

How to fix it:

In my view, there won't be one simple solution. There are multiple goals at odds here.

You want character progression to matter, and you don't want to tune the fight only for the 5 best builds in the game. You also don't want the fight lasting 20 minutes for normal builds.

However, in my view the goal of a more consistent fight duration should still be set.

Some things that could help:

A. The obvious continued work on balance that is already ongoing.

B. Slightly toning down character power progression overall.

C. Having a Pinnacle Boss damage reduction mechanic that clamps down on dps differences to a degree.

Recently a mechanic was introduced that prevents bursting bosses immediately.
In my view, a lighter version of that could also apply when the boss takes extreme damage. In essence, a Pinnacle boss could "adapt" and gain damage reduction when it is taking too much damage too fast. For example, it could clamp down a 10:1 damage difference to something like a 8:1 effect. Meaning if you have 10 times as much damage, you'd only be 8 times stronger vs a Pinnacle.

Obviously a mechanic like this has to be a fairly light touch, otherwise it'll ruin the feeling of progression. And it has to function equally in situations of single huge hits and multiple smaller hits.


Why not just an Uber version?

I don't think this problem should be remedied by simply making an uber version of the same fight with way more hp and damage. I always find those type of solutions a bit of a cop out. When you walk into that room for the first time you want the real fight, not something that falls over instantly if you're playing a certain build.

"Raid Finder" type of versions of a boss ruin immersion and the magical first moment of a hyped up boss character stomping you.

Secondly, an "uber" fight tuned around top builds will by definition exclude most builds.

Anyway, good job GGG on making these fights and the interesting rewards. Hope you guys figure out a good way to solve this issue.

They don't know who they want to satisfy

it's game for casuals with gameplay design for different target group
they are making it more casual and casual patch by patch
0.1 was best in difficulty and now it's just hold one button poe 1 like
it's hard only in first time experience - then it's null trivalized campain and end-game - and entire balance is made not for experienced player but for a casual and first time player or zoomers who want campain skip and so on


i share more here - make it visible if you agree with me
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3893918

The thing is, in poe2, when it comes to end game, everything is about efficiency. How efficient can you farm. If you are not efficient, then you are not progressing. You could argue that this makes the game lost its fun where people only think about how to farm. But this is just hardcoded into the most basic mechanism of this game.

If you want proper boss fights, play other games. I really dont think GGG can pull out a fix for this dichotomy.

Working hard on achieving balance and reduce player power should be their top priority atm imo. The soft boss damage reduction thing, as well as the one they already introduced are just band-aids that will never fix the root issues. Heck I've been albe to burst down bosses through that somehow.

But honestly, even beyond that, the gameplay loop is very trivial and boring. Braindead farming of packs of monsters just isn't exciting at all. And even if you are presented with a challenge, it's usually just some bs rare with too many modifiers and an attack that you can't really properly react to because there's a bunch of stuff happening all at once... and that's not fun.

Yet again I feel like I have no reason to play after I've put together my build.
Just like in PoE1, the only fun part seems to be theorycrafting. I'm honestly not sure how people that just copy builds from others enjoy the game at all.

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TicoCh#7841 wrote:

The thing is, in poe2, when it comes to end game, everything is about efficiency. How efficient can you farm. If you are not efficient, then you are not progressing. You could argue that this makes the game lost its fun where people only think about how to farm. But this is just hardcoded into the most basic mechanism of this game.

If you want proper boss fights, play other games. I really dont think GGG can pull out a fix for this dichotomy.

it's about - if one thing is better and more efficent - other are not an option.
So it's not about bosses and what they wanted to do - but about that most of skills is OP asf.. zooming and all "auto cast" stuff makes all the manual-synergies not efficent.
and game is just balanced around the zooming and low-clarity visual with exploding entire screen and not the core-design of the meaningful methodical combat


people who come here to play meaningful slower combat - are.. tricked.. most of them leaved game as there's no place for it in end-game

it's just game for poe 1 zoomers and nothing what was promised - they lied..
the sad thing is - it's not even for poe 1 zoomers as they still part of the game makes not for them splitting community and still giving us hope to make this game slower and methodical.