The Boss Fights in PoE2 Feel Exhausting

I find the bosses fun and engaging, and if anything most are a bit easier than id prefer. I'd like to die to a boss ~5 times and conquer it out of skill. 1 shots are annoying but those don't seem to be going anywhere. I say this with all kindness I can, maybe this isn't the game for you. Poe1's Pinnacle content is bosses and they are known for difficulty, poe2 seems to be following in its steps. Not everyone has time to "git gud" but unfortunately a game for everyone is a a game for no one. They are catering to folks like me who enjoy them. There are others who disagree but its the cost of doing business.

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silentshout12#1360 wrote:

The success of the souls game has shifted the culture of gaming to an insufferable circlejerk about how cool you are for playing unnecessarily difficult games with unnecessarily difficult guidelines/restrictions. All of this is intended and exactly what the devs want. The vocal majority who just hates PoE1 and wants to be smarmy about it are going to tell you to shut up. Essentially you are screaming into the void.

Darksouls style games aren't difficult though. So I'm not sure what your argument here is.

They're literally designed to be beat with repetition and practice. Both of which you'll get enormous amounts just playing the game for a few hours.

There's nothing wrong with the game having a dark souls style to it. Infact, it'll probably lead to the game being absolutely amazing. It just needs some polish.

Why are you actually against souls-like games?

Agree 100% I find them tiresome. Visually look great and I like their moves but their damage and hp is too high.

According to Jonathan bosses were the thing people would enjoy the most

You get my opinion here:
- graphic and animation were good, sound ok
- diversity was ok
- some bosses due to text and animation not optimal for farming (no skip button?)
- in examples i didnt like moments in boss-battles .. i remember ultimatum bird or monkey. And some are still a bit suspect to me (titan, sandstorm .. could list more).
- in comparison to poe1 - if poe1 had the same graphic and animation/sound and if i really try to compare... could be on pair with the graphic/sound upgrade. Eventually poe2 has 3-4 telegraphed attacks instead 2-3
- you can finish bosses in poe1 and 2 fairly quickly with dps builds - maybe you have sometimes like me too much defenses instead dps or it is the usual 'it is not a jackpot class/skill combination of that season'.

Its early access.. so far no real concern from me besides:
- i would prefer a unique boss per map completion and get atlas points for defeat.
- act 4-6 should be unique with unique bosses but skippable past initial playthrough -> all acts... maybe add an alternative mode like delve or heist past initial playthrough as an endless random shortcut to maps and onwards once first time done per league. Delve -> clear floors of random selected encounters, heist -> get experience per cleared heist -> not necessarily only per killed mob.


Related to ertain bosses; tl;dr -> sometimes maybe early access but was very individual
Ulti-bird -> tornado caused for me initially unexpected high damage. Not the most fav. Battle. Survived that.
Sanctum/sek trial: floor1 vulcano boss -> for ranged super easy but a kid really hated it in close combat .. took time or required dps. Survived that.
Monkey: got kindof stuck between trees in one example and spinned. Maybe that was exceptional but it started to become unclear in which direction the huge hit from him aims. Like a mouse player who twists the mouse. I survived that.
Sandstorm: almost died twice in hc as concept of protective bubble was not understood. I survived that. Took a moment to find out.
A1 endboss: too much bla bla at end to farm it. Can that be skipped? Maybe i overlooked that -> same as for doryani boss. Skip should be outside group always posdible.. its unfun to see the same text again and again..or get blocked by long animation infront loot in the second or third playthrough.
Titan: i didnt die once in the playthroughs to maps .. not even in ssf hc. However on ps5 but not on xbox -> characters glitched in his right hand attack up to his to shoulder or head ..it was like standing above him. In one battle on pc i stood clearly close left hand but was pushed jittery through the room by his hand followed by high dps right arm animation. I survived that but ive seen alot ppl which got hit in that moment and died in hc. Maybe not accurate
Etc

For my part (also a casual), I enjoy most boss fights but there are certainly a handful that are just frustrating. Bosses should feel challenging and killing them should feel like an accomplishment – but some just feel frustrating, tedious or unfair.

IMO the problem is the combination of large health pools and (near) one-shot mechanics that are NOT well telegraphed. It feels like a chore to chip away at a bosses health and then die instantly and having to do it all again – especially when the rest of the fight is boring / not difficult.

GGG must choose whether they want players to read guides and play meta builds or if they want to encourage experimentation. New players will have suboptimal builds with lower DPS and defenses, yet they must go through several boss fight phases while pro builds often kill bosses before they get all their moves off. I saw several streamers in the early days face tanking a bunch of attacks that I had to dodge yet their builds are just better so they can kill the boss off quickly while my noob ass has to fight them for 5 minutes and deal with their BS.

Example: Doryani.
Most attacks are completely fair, easy to dodge if you pay attention – but that disco ball laser attack simply kills you instantly if you are not on the other side of him. There is almost no windup, so the first few times you see it you will die, and have fun doing the entire fight again.
I mean I like challenges and am fine fighting him again, but this attack just feels unfair. I can hardly see it coming and even then if you're too close you can't do anything about it, aka bad RNG = you must try again. This paired with the fact that it takes forever to kill the boss means you have to spend half an hour on just one boss, doing the same tedious stuff all over, watching for that one stupid move that can end it all. It's just not fun.
Nerf the DPS of that laser move and it's fine. Or make him easier to kill if you want instant death moves on the boss. Either way I don't have to spam the same attack a million times on him, which after a while really makes me want to do something else instead.

To clarify: it's the time investment that sucks. It's okay to die to the boss repeatedly, but it should feel like an engaging fight. Most of Doryani's attacks are way too easy to deal with, but it's boring to have to run circles around him and chip away – in other words: 80% of time is dull, 20% is very hard skill check.
I've since beaten him on Cruel and had a much easier time because I had more DPS. DPS trivializes most fights, to the point where they become TOO easy.

I liked the bosses through the campaign even if it took me 4 hours of retries to kill some, in my opinion they posed a good and balanced checkpoint either for my own timing skills ( can some things be telegraphed a bit more clearly? sure but it's EA ) or for my gear as an overall progress. Also mind you that I'm in general new to the game so it was also making me think of "let me check the tree again I might find something for my build that makes more sense".

And I'm comparing that versus the endgame maps ( that have the same bosses ) where I pretty much 2 tap all of them now like it's nothing.

I was expecting if not the same level of difficulty a pretty similar one within maps so I can see how far I've come in reality ( since acts 4-6 are still somewhat of a placeholder ) and how further I could push my characters. But that went down the drain with the 2taps, it's just the usual walk around the park pretty much atm.

I think what you guys are going for is the sense of satisfaction that one may get from defeating a tough foe. That's not what I get. The feeling I get is, damn, I wasted all that time. I think even having different difficulty levels would be a decent option, like Grim Dawn. Not everyone has 10 hours to play a game, just want to a couple of hours to enjoy our free time.

Please make these guys reasonable. Its not fun. Also just because it takes forever to kill something doesn't make it challenging just makes it a chore and a bore. That's all I got thanks.

why this game can be take as soul-like game?
if you do something for build your character,use market for equipment,I can't see a boss can live over 30 seconds.
I played 2hand hammar,longstaff and minions,never suffered.

I strongly disagree.

Bosses in PoE2 are so much fun and the design is great.

I´m not sure what you mean about feeling like Dark Souls, PoE1 was exactly the same.

Truers, the vision sucks, if I want to play a souls-like I open any from software game, not a fucking arpg.