Under-Utilised Boss Mechanics discussion!
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Hey guys,
Randomly thought about how endgame bosses (nexus bosses, pinnacles, trials etc) are basically being ignored by glass cannons. There are a lot of mechanics used in games that help with this issue without making them super sponges, so I figure i would list them off here and start a discussion on which ones are preferred/disliked and why. 1. Health Gates - Health Gates where a boss loses say 1/4 of their life, then it stops and they do an ability or pattern you have to learn, then every 1/4 after they escalate that attack until they die. 2. Multiple Phases - You empty the health bar, the boss does some form of transition or gains a buff or some event happens in the arena then their health refills and you go for round 2 or even 3. 3. Bound Minions/Totems - Boss summons thing, Boss is immortal until thing is dealt with. When you deal with the thing it can either stun/disable the boss or just make them take damage. 4. Gimmicks - The boss has some kind of gimmick for dealing damage to it, maybe it's dealing a certain damage type at the right time or only damage under a specific condition (eg. Heavy stun, from Behind etc or Standing in a certain spot) 5. Bosses that can Heal. - This one is simple, Bosses that have the ability to recover life at will. It's a lot less effective than the others and wouldn't help the issue, but it is still under-used in PoE2. ALRIGHT - that's it, let's discuss! Last bumped on May 7, 2025, 6:01:24 AM
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bruh, this got drowned out in like 10 minutes by 2 pages of whining
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1. Health Gates
Glass Cannon sill deals with the boss better. You just to it 4 times instead of 1 time. Everything is still ignored. If I was 100-0ing the boss in 3 seconds before the health gate, I'm pushing the boss into the next gate in 1 second. Makes no difference. 2. Multiple Phases Same thing. If I can 100-0 in 3 seconds, I can 100-0 in 3 seconds every phase. I'm still ignoreing mechanics. 3. This counts as mechanics itself. Although again, if I'm 100-0ing the boss before, I'm instantly deleting all the minions and totems anyways. 4. Gimmicks Be careful what you wish for. You don't want to design bosses that can't be killed (or are extremely difficult to kill/need certain build to kill) by certain classes. 5. Boss healing Urm...if I'm 100-0ing the boss before...you get the idea. |
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" you couldnt 100-0 a boss in some you put that reply on... - the health gates would initiate the bosses core mechanic. - multiple phases would have a mechanic between - minions/totems would require you to actually move to them so youd have to engage in some form of gameplay saying you can just 100-0 anything is just not the point of the conversation either. the point is to making the game engage players where they would want some defenses in place occasionally. |
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So basically the boss becomes invulnerable and you have to do the mechanic before the boss enters the next phase when you can damage the boss again?
That's been a proven best practice way to get low reviews and have people leave your game. Invulnerability phases is the worst way to design boss fights because it completely negates all the efforts players put into their build, from passives to skills to gear. |
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use a build that don`t use spear and try to kill the boss. i using monk storm wave and when the boss have 15% of life he start spamming skill like a machinegun, i can't kill t4 boss because ggg want the class to do less damage but don't fix the boss spamming skill every second.
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" oh yeah, it's so much worse than a boss that you don't even see because it disintegrates in 2 seconds. |
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Something like the crowbell boss has the best idea to solve this issue, it simply just gets some damage reduction when hitting thresholds while it does its thing.
Though the specific issue with crowbell is that he has to run a huge distance and doesn't do anything while he has this annoying damage reduction effect. Stalling out a fight is a fine line between making sure people see the fight and not instantly blast through it but also making it so the player's damage matters. I do think that some builds just deal way more damage than what they expect though. Alongside the builds that just have poor damage availability where they might have the damage but can't get it off. Also if poe1 has the memory game poe2 should have DDR as a boss mechanic. Though, I have some specific suggestions of varying amounts of not being shitness, but I'm just gonna kind of just throw them out onto the road to get your brains thinking. - Boss Armour: As the difficulty goes up, this number goes up. If you do more than an allowed damage in an amount of time, it reduces some of it after a threshold. This gimps builds with setup and burst. It would work like this but without placeholder numbers: If you do 5% of the bosses health in 4s, it starts scaling damage reduction from 0% to 100% at say 25% so you're forced to fight the boss for at least 10s. The horror. - Same as the one above, but with harsher numbers and on certain attacks. This would allow for squishier bosses which have attacks where they're protected from being pushed down a staircase when they're not looking. This one is slightly more reasonable. - A gimmick fight where you have to do a certain thing to build additional stun on them, and when they're stunned you can burst otherwise if you do it while they're unstunned you deal less damage, and damage = dopamine so you definitely don't want to do that. |
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It's funny, because I was thinking the same thing the other day, that there has to be some way for the devs to prolong the fights.
I started my first ever Hardcore (in SSF as well) run, and I experienced all the boss mechanics there was in the campaign, and there are so many cool! It's only because I had low dmg in order to have more defenses, that I got to experience them. Like the ACT3 fire god dude, that normal falls over if you just breathe on him. He has all kinds of cool stuff, like dodging fireballs akin to Searing Exarch (sort of). |
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