A note about the Torture Chamber map boss

A bit of context: I play softcore, self-found, and I do all my own stunts play my own builds. I avoid following cookie cutter builds or reading in-depth guides, because I prefer to discover and master the game on my own, even if that means dying a lot. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who share this taste.

That said, I just completed my first Torture Chamber map, and couldn't help but notice something. All the other map bosses are copies of existing bosses from the story mode, along with their abilities and mechanics. This boss does things that no boss in the story does, so unless you read up on the fight beforehand, you'll have no idea what to do.

This is an important distinction. When you fight the Dungeon version of Brutus, with his massive AoE physical damage from off screen, you'll have fought him at least 3 times in the story by that point. You learned how to beat him in Normal where there was no XP penalty, then got some more practice in Cruel and Merciless. It's a tougher version of a fight you already know, and you can call upon that knowledge. The same goes for any other map boss (that I know of).

The Torture Chamber fight, on the other hand, is something you have to learn against a 10% XP penalty on death. That's not cool.

Now, I'm not proposing to change the fight in any way, in fact I think it's one of the best fights in the game. But, would it be possible to smuggle it into the story mode, so that players are exposed to it before Merciless?

Agreed. We should see that lighting degen laser beam of death in lots of other places, the least of which is on Amarissa herself that the TC boss is based off of.

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Alternatively, I'd like to go the other way and see every map boss put a meaningful twist on its base copy.

Sallazzang is another example... kinda. The unique chimera in Upper Sceptre certainly devours corpses, but he doesn't raise devourers.

The Orchard Wyrm thing is another. Devourers spit fireballs, but they sure as fuck don't spit slow moving fireballs of doom.

Integrating him into the story seems reasonable. But yes, it is one of the coolest fights in game, and mechanically very interesting.

I'd rather they make the map bosses quite different from their normal-story counterparts. Some more boss variety would be pretty cool!

At the very least, make some of the repeat map bosses different (blacksmith, lord of the bow, piety, dominus, etc...).

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pneuma wrote:

The Orchard Wyrm thing is another. Devourers spit fireballs, but they sure as fuck don't spit slow moving fireballs of doom.

Actually, Tunneltrap is just a carbon copy of the Conqueror Worm, from the hedge maze. Granted, people tend to skip that quest and area so they rarely deal with him, but Orchard boss is exactly like him, just with heavily souped-up damage.

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Shppy wrote:

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pneuma wrote:

The Orchard Wyrm thing is another. Devourers spit fireballs, but they sure as fuck don't spit slow moving fireballs of doom.

Actually, Tunneltrap is just a carbon copy of the Conqueror Worm, from the hedge maze. Granted, people tend to skip that quest and area so they rarely deal with him, but Orchard boss is exactly like him, just with heavily souped-up damage.

Whoa. TIL.

I've done the quest lots of times, but I guess the area he's fought in (around the Plum) is so tiny that I've never noticed his megafireball, to say nothing of how fast he dies.

Laser degens in the Labyrinth maybe? That would work perfectly for the normal/cruel/merciless introduction and ramp up before seeing the lethal map version.

Edit: Labyrinth map is probably going to need to be renamed in Ascendency :0

That's why this game is not HC friendly. First you have to die to every single mechanic of the game to truly understand what to watch out for in the future. I believe community guides should be helping new players, such as this: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1489756