Dungeon Brutus [yes, now it is a rant]

Well it's a 66 map boss, so who cares? I mean, you can make better progress in Lunaris anyway. When I encounter a high level Zana Dungeon map, my group has always opted to just skip Brutus.

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beefnuggy wrote:

Well it's a 66 map boss, so who cares? I mean, you can make better progress in Lunaris anyway. When I encounter a high level Zana Dungeon map, my group has always opted to just skip Brutus.

bosses are there to be beaten, in my opinion.
I have no idea who invented this "skip mechanic", but I do not follow it. and yes, too many times I pay the price. especially in HC.

Brutus as a boss, is just too much. and the reason he's too much, is GGG made him a bastard child of some of the craziest map bosses.
just think of it:

he has a minion-spam almost comparable to Weaver (thank god no rare Flicker-skellies with auras) + an off-screen huge AoE Splash which can probably be as ridiculous as Dominus' Soul Stream in higher levels + a massive AoE "instant damage" skill which puts Merveil's Geysers to shame + he still kept much of his good-old melee range punch damage.

therefore, he needs to be toned the fuck down.

truth be told, old Brutus was indeed getting a bit predictable and needed some more ways to hurt you, but there's a huge difference between "spicing up" a bit, and going full overkill.

Well, they wanted to add components to the fight to make it more interesting, to require movement, positioning and strategy. And they actually succeeded.
Technical issues and lack of balance is where they failed. As usual.

Desync granted Brutus with new ninja moves. Also, once desync starts, it never ends and it's a complete mess.
The overall damage is quite high either.

I don't know what do you expect, John. GGG are traditionally bad on technical performance/stability and balancing. Like it's new, or something.

pcs are dirt cheap 500 bucks gets you a really decent one

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johnKeys wrote:

I have no idea who invented this "skip mechanic"...

Probably the same horrible kind of people who defend the use of alt+f4 (or even worse - log-out macros!) as a legitimate (HC) technique of dealing with their mistakes or unfairly tough content.

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T_Reich wrote:

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johnKeys wrote:

I have no idea who invented this "skip mechanic"...

Probably the same horrible kind of people who defend the use of alt+f4 (or even worse - log-out macros!) as a legitimate (HC) technique of dealing with their mistakes or unfairly tough content.

people ALT+F4 just like they pulled the power/network cords out, back in the old days.
GGG can do absolutely nothing against that. the ladder thing and whatnot, makes people show their competitive side, with both its good parts and bad.

but GGG should not balance the game assuming people ALT+F4. never.
they currently do.
that's why we have all these BS one-shots and overkill bosses.
like Brutus, who apparently not only can do everything including throw the Kitchen Sink at you, all at once - he's also "balanced" as if the game's engine isn't utter crap, and connection and sync issues do not exist.
you know, just to add insult to injury.

it's the icing on the cake, really.
I'm used to one-shots and ridiculous fights requiring pin-point accuracy. god knows how many times I got absolutely wrecked in D2 Median, and still came back for more.
but at least in Median you could trust what your eyes see and what your fingers press.
just imagine if you couldn't. imagine the Cathedral Of Vanity where you pin-point dodge the Crystal Ball and all the immortal baddies guarding it - then suddenly you get a screen freeze or rubber-band back.
*BOOM* you are fucking dead.

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raics wrote:

And he scales aggressively too, if zana gives you a level 75-6 dungeon you usually want to skip the asshole no matter what you're playing. If you're ranged his spikes will make your life miserable, especially if he stuns you long enough to chain his hook onto it, and if you're melee I sure hope you swallowed your gamer pride and are abusing immortal call like hell.

self-cast high level EC+IC+ID (bonus if you have extra ECs) and you take zero damage from entire fight, makes it ridiculously trivial. I did a couple of 76/77 zana twinned overlords brutuses this way.

cheesy ? yes. but also working *shrugs* on toons who utilize ECs anyway its a nobrainer too

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grepman wrote:

cheesy? yes.

Indeed, that's why some players are playing it stubborn and completely ignoring the gem. Which is fine, nowhere in the game manual does it says 'immortal call is required to do all content in the game, any difficulty arising from refusal to comply with this term is entirely self-inflicted and is not the cause for complaint'.

brutus is more of a technology issue than balance issue

i have beefy (and i mean that) rig with more ramdisc than most people have ram (entire poe sits on it..). i run nv 770. and that f.. dungeon fight (esp with ice/fire ground!!) is a cluster f..

it is worse than merveil geysers with twin + haste

what do i do?

skip. i simply know what content is junk technology-wise and adapt.

@JK - just do the same, skip this damn fight. just do yourself a favor - your machine does not match what ggg had tested it with. be cool with that. move on

from the balance point of view this fight is at least 'fair' (opposed to 'the worm' from orchard that is more on the BS side). slam is telegraphed and does almost no damage, spikes are stationary and one movement skill is enough to ignore it for the duration (yay free dps time!) and skeletons make sure that you have 100% flask uptime. just run around and dps him when the 'slam is moving'. youll be fine

the only scary combo is 'twin + zana fleet'. this combo esp with lvl 75 or higher is one of the toughest.

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raics wrote:

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grepman wrote:

cheesy? yes.

Indeed, that's why some players are playing it stubborn and completely ignoring the gem. Which is fine, nowhere in the game manual does it says 'immortal call is required to do all content in the game, any difficulty arising from refusal to comply with this term is entirely self-inflicted and is not the cause for complaint'.

is there a game manual ? :P