Curse

Zahr Dalsk · Jan 18, 2010, 08:09 PM // 20:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaleban

Why, after she transforms into "commander" does she not have a third phase where the glowing energy of the god bursts forth, breaking the frail human shell, at which point your party basically has to fight the GW equivalent of the Starcraft Archon?

Because the Archon is almost as tall as those Terran Command Centres and we'd only see the bottom of it :P

Braxton619 · Jan 18, 2010, 09:34 PM // 21:34

How to make a tough boss:

Name: Rurik the Immolated
What he looks like: Rurik with a massive fire body. The head is skull. The other parts are all fire. He is huge and about the size of Dhuum.
Location: Fissure of Woe once all quests are completed. You must kill the boss to spawn the chest. Due to the difficulty of this boss, there is a resurrection shrine. This resurrection shrine can only be activated if all quests are complete.

Boss Skills:
Boss Bonus: You deal double damage since you are a boss. Your skills recharge 20% faster.
Form: Conditions and Hexes last 80% shorter. You are immune to burning, poison, and disease.
1. Banish Enchantments | Monster Skill | R: 20s | C: 1/4s | E: 5 | Target foe loses all enchantments. For each enchantment removed, target foe receives 10% DP.
2. Touch of Lava | Monster Skill | R: 5s | C: 1/4s | E: 5 | Target touched foe takes 150 damage. This damage bypasses all protection.
3. Lava Blast | Monster Skill | R: 15s | C: 1/4s | E: 15 | Target foe receives 25% DP and takes 350 damage.
4. Lava Storm | Monster Skill | R: 25s | C: 1s | E: 25 | You summon a lava storm at target foes location for 10 seconds. Foes in the area take 75 damage per second.
5. Heal of the Torment | Monster Skill | R: 30s | C: 1/4s | E: 5 | You enter rest for 10 seconds. You are immune to skills and damage. You receive 75 health per second.
6. Ruby Army | Monster Skill | R: 2s | C: 1/4s | E: 5 | You summon 3 Ruby Djinn to your location. This skill cannot be used if there is a Ruby Djinn in the area.

Ruby Djinn Skills:
Form: Everytime you receive physicial damage, target foe is burned for 5 seconds.
1. Normal Mode: Mind Blast | This damage is doubled if Rurik is below 50% health.
1. Hard Mode: Searing Flames
2. Flame Djinn's Haste
3. Glowing Gaze
4. Burn Enchantments | Monster Skill | R: 5s | C: 1/4s | E: 10 | Nearby foes loses all monk enchantments.

JimmyNeutron · Jan 19, 2010, 05:29 AM // 05:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Braxton619

How to make a tough boss:

Why all that work? You want to make a tough boss? Here are your options:

a. NPC that can damage you. LOL!!!!!!! Since he/she is a NPC, you can't kill it or hurt it because it's an ally, but he can attack you.

b. SUPER SF - 0 damage from everything including PBAoE, AoE, whatever else.

c. Boss that does 1000000000000000000000K damage in 360 degrees every 1 microsecond and damages goes through everything including walls and Protective Spirits or any other skills that reduces damages against you are ignore.

d. Saved the best for last...a GM. LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What can a GM do? Ban you for life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reverend Dr · Jan 19, 2010, 05:46 AM // 05:46

The problem with a single boss monster in Guild Wars is that they are either going to be pushovers or a terrible gimmick. A single boss monster can easily be wrecked by a mesmer, or is the boss going to be a gimmick and not let any skills be interrupted or disabled. A hammer warrior can easily KD bosses, or is the boss going to gimmick and be immune to KD's. Permanent Blind/Daze is easy to create, or is the boss immune or have huge reductions in durations? There is simply too much that a team of 8 can do to a single target to utterly destroy it, unless the target is a terrible gimmick (e.g. Malyx).

nidy · Jan 19, 2010, 07:22 AM // 07:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Braxton619

How to make a tough boss:

Name: Rurik the Immolated
What he looks like: Rurik with a massive fire body. The head is skull. The other parts are all fire. He is huge and about the size of Dhuum.
Location: Fissure of Woe once all quests are completed. You must kill the boss to spawn the chest. Due to the difficulty of this boss, there is a resurrection shrine. This resurrection shrine can only be activated if all quests are complete.

Boss Skills:
Boss Bonus: You deal double damage since you are a boss. Your skills recharge 20% faster.
Form: Conditions and Hexes last 80% shorter. You are immune to burning, poison, and disease.
1. Banish Enchantments | Monster Skill | R: 20s | C: 1/4s | E: 5 | Target foe loses all enchantments. For each enchantment removed, target foe receives 10% DP.
2. Touch of Lava | Monster Skill | R: 5s | C: 1/4s | E: 5 | Target touched foe takes 150 damage. This damage bypasses all protection.
3. Lava Blast | Monster Skill | R: 15s | C: 1/4s | E: 15 | Target foe receives 25% DP and takes 350 damage.
4. Lava Storm | Monster Skill | R: 25s | C: 1s | E: 25 | You summon a lava storm at target foes location for 10 seconds. Foes in the area take 75 damage per second.
5. Heal of the Torment | Monster Skill | R: 30s | C: 1/4s | E: 5 | You enter rest for 10 seconds. You are immune to skills and damage. You receive 75 health per second.
6. Ruby Army | Monster Skill | R: 2s | C: 1/4s | E: 5 | You summon 3 Ruby Djinn to your location. This skill cannot be used if there is a Ruby Djinn in the area.

Ruby Djinn Skills:
Form: Everytime you receive physicial damage, target foe is burned for 5 seconds.
1. Normal Mode: Mind Blast | This damage is doubled if Rurik is below 50% health.
1. Hard Mode: Searing Flames
2. Flame Djinn's Haste
3. Glowing Gaze
4. Burn Enchantments | Monster Skill | R: 5s | C: 1/4s | E: 10 | Nearby foes loses all monk enchantments.

Wait for lava storm, ball up and pain inverter = ~5000 damage over the course of the 10 seconds. Even if you all die: res, rinse, repeat.

tmakinen · Jan 19, 2010, 08:11 AM // 08:11

A good prototype for a challenging boss would be Chaelse Flameshielder and his mob in Grothmar Wardowns HM. I started with Against the Charr when H+H vanquishing Grothmar Wardowns just to avoid that fight.

Reverend Dr hits the boss on the head

So, there are options to make boss encounters challenging:

balanced boss mobs (e.g., Chaelse Flameshielder)
bosses that summon minions (e.g., Zoldark the Unholy)
bosses that have automatically respawning minions (e.g., Fendi Nin)
bosses that consist of several semi-independent entities (do we have any in GW1?)

The last one is IMHO the most interesting. The closest equivalent in GW1 that I can think of is the Grand Court of Sebelkeh (Mission) if you consider the entire platform a single 'boss'. You must close (kill) all the three rifts at the same time and if you are not fast enough an already closed rift may reopen. I expect to see bosses of this kind in GW2.

glacialphoenix · Jan 19, 2010, 08:16 AM // 08:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by tmakinen

bosses that summon minions (e.g., Zoldark the Unholy)

The problem with Zoldark the Unholy is that in HM, it's far more challenging to get to him than it is to actually defeat him... the latter can be accomplished pretty quickly with Scourge Sacrifice.

Quote:

bosses that consist of several semi-independent entities

This one, I find interesting, and I agree we don't have many, if any at all, of this type in GW1.

MasterSasori · Jan 19, 2010, 09:32 AM // 09:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reverend Dr

The problem with a single boss monster in Guild Wars is that they are either going to be pushovers or a terrible gimmick. A single boss monster can easily be wrecked by a mesmer, or is the boss going to be a gimmick and not let any skills be interrupted or disabled. A hammer warrior can easily KD bosses, or is the boss going to gimmick and be immune to KD's. Permanent Blind/Daze is easy to create, or is the boss immune or have huge reductions in durations? There is simply too much that a team of 8 can do to a single target to utterly destroy it, unless the target is a terrible gimmick (e.g. Malyx).

Then its partially the fault of the player (if any fault can be placed to begin with) for exploiting the boss's weakness and maximizing farming efficiency to such a point that all bosses must be either pushovers or gimmicks.

The only way you can get a team that doesn't hate on a boss without making the boss a gimmick is to make the boss random so no one build can dominate it.

qvtkc · Jan 19, 2010, 11:55 AM // 11:55

Everybody knows that the toughest boss in GW isn't found in PvE. And certainly not the one most fun to fight against, either. I'm talking about the boss of all bosses, the opposing team in a PvP match. A truly hard to beat boss (instead of being a lolgimmick-you-can't-beat-me boss) would be any boss monster supported by a (pseudo)random balanced team with proper, non-stupid AI.

Trader of Secrets · Jan 19, 2010, 06:53 PM // 18:53

still pretty good end-game bosses and dungeon boss but in time develops some ezy build to beat them all pretty fast.

miriforst · Jan 19, 2010, 09:18 PM // 21:18

i recall my first encounter with urgoz (which i did in hard mode splinter barrage ranger with eoe).

i had barely made factions for the first time and was still a kind of noob.

it took about 4 hours and it felt quite epic with the boss fight at the end before you got any effect on eoe, then you watched the beautiful scene as he went for his unrelenting demise after a day of hard work.
that was my first elite mission.

(btw my record for slowest FOW in NM was at least 7 hours)

The Drunkard · Jan 19, 2010, 09:30 PM // 21:30

Another possibility for a boss is one that splits into clones and only takes damage if you hurt the real one (Damn you Gol Dragon!) I would've liked to see more environmental effects that require you to constantly move or click on items to damage the boss (similar to Dragon God from demon's souls.)

Reverend Dr · Jan 19, 2010, 11:34 PM // 23:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by MasterSasori

Then its partially the fault of the player (if any fault can be placed to begin with) for exploiting the boss's weakness and maximizing farming efficiency to such a point that all bosses must be either pushovers or gimmicks.

How is running a good build the fault of the player?

I'm not talking about super gimmicky speed clears. Any halfway decent team of any combination is going to have enough stuff between the 8 players to make any single target become a pushover. There is just no way a boss can keep up with offensive enchant removal, defensive hex/condition removal, and dealing with KD's/interrupts of 8 targets it is some sort of a gimmick.

Morphy · Jan 20, 2010, 05:06 PM // 17:06

I was pretty sure bosses suck in GW.

Shriketalon · Jan 20, 2010, 06:42 PM // 18:42

Based on this thread and some of the excellent comments within, would the following be a helpful list of advice for making bosses in the future....

1) Bend the rules, don't break them. If the boss needs something special, make sure it functions WITH the rules of the game, not simply preventing them. Flat immunity, for example, leads to only certain builds and certain classes being effective at all, and the rest is useless, all for a benefit for the boss which is utterly boring. If you give them special skills, make sure they are fun; things that will throw a wrench in the party's gears, but can still be worked around with proper tactics.

2) Split up the Big Guys. If a monster is a towering hulk, turn it into multiple parts. Rather than have a twenty story colossus attacking a single player, it could have a number of sub-monsters; arms, head, body, etc, using a single life meter. That way, it gets multiple actions to use skills on multiple targets, and it cannot simply be hexed into oblivion. It also allows for cinematic use of bending the rules; crippling an arm might not slow it down, but it will reduce attack speed a bit, dazing the head might throw off its aim, etc. That keeps things like hexes, conditions, and interrupts useful without letting a single PC dominate the monster while his buddies chip away at it.

3) Smarten up the Small Guys. If a boss is on a single-monster scale, he needs his own AI and subroutines specifically crafted for him. A boss should be able to react to being hexed, know what conditions will hamper him (if melee and crippled, for example, he could pull out a tower shield and turtle up, making his AC insanely high while using a healing skill, rather than limping around like an imbecile), and identify threats to himself as well as things preventing his own attacks form working (if he's wailing away at a target that is immune, he should notice, and switch tactics). Bosses should not be stupid, nothing ruins a good climactic fight faster.

4) Jazz up the Swarm Guys. If a monster is a background effect like the Iron Forgeman, make sure the pieces you have to destroy are equally cool and interesting. The Rage Binders worked because they were new, and had their own nifty mechanic. The monoliths of Abaddon did not, because they were dull and ordinary.

5) Numbers aren't enough. High stats don't make good boss fights, interesting battles do. While it certainly helps to have the boss be tough and strong, cranking up numbers without any other adjustments will merely turn it into a longer slugfest. A decent boss should require players to think about tactics, use the environment, change up their normal build style, or simply do something awesome to succeed. Approach each boss like the climax of a film; the battle should be gripping from start to finish, packed with adrenaline, and leave the players with a sense that what just occurred was truly epic.

MasterSasori · Jan 20, 2010, 11:19 PM // 23:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reverend Dr

How is running a good build the fault of the player?

I'm not talking about super gimmicky speed clears. Any halfway decent team of any combination is going to have enough stuff between the 8 players to make any single target become a pushover. There is just no way a boss can keep up with offensive enchant removal, defensive hex/condition removal, and dealing with KD's/interrupts of 8 targets it is some sort of a gimmick.

It isn't. But what I was referring to was the speed clears. Some people enjoy the farming and for them, it's not ruining their gameplay. But if PvE poses no challenge and becomes dull, then what is there to do other than PvP?

About being pushovers, not all halfway decent teams can survive a tough area such as eotn dungeons. There are some areas where a specific type of build is necessary. Of course this depends on the skill level of the player as well.

HM is no longer the challenge it once was and the buffs in PvE are just making the situation worse.

4thVariety · Jan 21, 2010, 03:35 PM // 15:35

At the end of the day, all you have to do to defeat any boss is to find a way so he can no longer kill a party member. Either you throw up the right protection, or you misdirect his attention, or you avoid his attacks, or you do what he demands at punishment of death, or you simply heal the damage he does. Beyond those five options, there aren't any. Period.

Once you are done dying from the boss you can start to smack him down. Again, 10 classes offer a variety of options and whenever a single one of them is invalidated people start to cry foul. Ok, that's fine, but that means the whole game is down to taking X amount of the 64 skills we got on the team to spend on some sort of impenetrable defense and then start chipping away.

It is sad that upon logging in, too many people either formulate insane goals (I want a title that costs 2.000.000 gold), or are not provided with the tools to establish social connectivity bringing people with the same reasonably sized goals together. There isn't really a way I can find another person interested in vanquishing a few random Elona areas. Randomly spam around outposts? Waste of time. I am sure there are a few people at this moment in the game interested in doing whatever you set out to do, but there is no way to connect people of similar interest. When we were all on a linear story progression through the game, it worked fine. But now that people scatter with a ton of different open-ended goals across the map, locating a random human team-member is hard as nails. You really need to accept anything to take that much more longer than the best Hero sertups.

Easy to blame all of that on ArenaNet, but this would also be something the community could organize itself with some smart tool.

Benderama · Jan 21, 2010, 09:35 PM // 21:35

dunno if it's just me but i like bosses that look like bosses not jsut random monsters, for example abaddon, mallyx, the lich lord and kuunavang (and maybe shiro) look more unique. i like fights like the iron forgeman apart from the timing thing thats not great, and the random spawns of torment claws with Abaddon. bosses that involve at least some planning like shiro are good too IMO.

Shadowspawn X · Jan 21, 2010, 09:42 PM // 21:42

I would like to see a boss in FoW now, it is a good area and deserves a boss.