Bosses should give way more XP.

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The_Risen wrote:

Now that every boss in the game is as deadly as ever and can take much much more punishment they should reward tons of extra XP, something like 500% of what they give maybe more;

I'd say rather 10000% or even 30000% XP of what it is now. Just watch your XP bar in Death and Taxes (10000% more XP already).

It's outright ludicrous that with the current balance, a map boss accounts for up to 40-50% of the time spent to FULL-CLEAR a map, but only 17.4% of map drops, (usually garbage) 35.8% of unique/loot drops, (almost always garbage) and far less than 10% of the experience. (and mind you, most of my maps are just "alted for packsize;" the way IIR/IIQ works, I'd be getting a higher fraction of my drops outside of bosses if I was actually running all-rare maps)

Let's also not forget that most of the risk lies in bosses, not trash mob packs, too.

It's pretty simple; the balance needs to justify the effort, time, and risk involved with a boss fight. (as well as other time-consuming encounters, like essences, trials, master missions, and others that are frequently skipped)

My original suggestion was to take up to HALF the EXP away from trash packs, and distribute it to bosses and other time-consuming encounters accordingly. This means that the normal "skip anything you can't run-and-slaughter instantly" meta that's stupidly forced today would no longer work, (you'd see a HUGE slash in your EXP/hr, not just EXP-per-map) while rewarding players for trying the differently-paced content.

Some examples; a 2.6.0 (pre-nerf) Shaped Strand (or similarly alted for one packsize mod, like Shaped Racecourse or Shaped Spider Forest) might typically grant around 5 million EXP to a level 90 if you skipped the boss. Under this change, that'd go down to 2.5-3 million, and instead:

• Complete a master mission mission? EXP bonus! (minimal/none for stuff like Zana or Tora dens, modest for okay stuff like Tora packs, Vagan, or Elreon, but a lot more for tedious stuff like Vorici, Haku, and Catarina; could be worth up to 1 million EXP)
  
  
• Bother to claim essences? Experience bonus for each essence dropped (as each one adds yet more HP and danger) Probably up to 300-500k for 3+ T5+ essences, since you could've killed that much in trash mobs in the time to kill that one.
  
  
• Complete a trial? 500k-1 million EXP if you're the first to touch the plaque. (and spawn the offering) These are tedious to where I notice a lot of people giving away UNSOLVED ones, because the payoff (an offering worth a measly 3-4c) just plain isn't worth several minutes of time. If you're farming labyrinth you often get an offering back at the end anyhow...
  
  
• Fight the boss? Probably 1 million, even more EXP for the more elaborate bosses; multi-part bosses have the EXP split. (e.g, 400k each for the two halves of the simpler Strand boss, or even just 200k per for the three parts of the Courtyard Boss, but, say, well over 1 million for something like Plaza, Palace, Dark Forest, or Core)

Obviously, all of the above add up to be more than 5 million, because the average map DOESN'T have all of the above, but usually JUST the boss: so the AVERAGE map would go down, but once you actually do the random stuff (masters, trials, essences, etc.) that comes in, it'll even out. More importantly, your EXP/hr should remain constant and not take a hit if you decide to NOT skip these)

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Orbaal wrote:

Maps might be debatable since bosses do drop several high tier maps once in a while.
But in terms of xp/h and loot you are far better of skipping the boss and thats sad.

I've not had THAT much time to sink into this league so far, but from my current count, I've only gotten more than one map drop from bosses a couple of times, and it's NEVER been more than one high-level map.

From the maps I do see drop from bosses (which is slightly better than 1/4 of the time) only about 38% or so are red-tier, provided the boss was capable of dropping red-tier maps. (mind you, this is with a tier drop bonus that has, from the part I got to T9, been nearing +100%)

I've gotten substantially more red maps from white and blue mob packs than bosses, in spite of bosses still having that ability to drop 2 levels higher. (e.g, I've gotten reds from t9 bosses, when you can't get them from T9 magic or rares, or T10 normals)

plus one

they should give more reward in general with this ridiculous player-hostile buff they were given.

bosses are stupid and entirely skippable. GG, GGG.

+1

Now I think that Diablo 2 Baal runs were an abomination. Each team had one teleporting witch who would skip all content to get to the boss as fast as possible, open a portal and the rest of the team would melt the boss in seconds and hope for one of those great drops. Repeat ad nauseam. What a shit way to spend your time.

But in POE it's the opposite extreme: Killing bosses is absolutely not worth doing. Even the first time I kill them, I've often had bosses drop not a single rare item, never mind uniques or good currency. And they don't give XP, either. At least not XP/hour, which is what counts. You get significantly more XP/hr plowing through trash mobs in the same map.

So, what about fun? Most bosses are quite cool. Unless you have great gear and one of the current league's OP builds, you really do have to learn their mechanics and kite&dance and generally be on your toes. That is awesome and fun. But it stops being fun after about a minute, while for an avg char (not top geared, not fotm build) boss fights can take significantly longer. I have ported out of boss fights simply because I grew bored. The ability to one-shot you if you are unlucky (lag spike, bad visuals due to all the clutter, a sneeze at the wrong time, a few projectiles hitting you in close succession because some invisible clutter on the ground got you stuck for a second, etc...) only adds a certain amount of adrenaline to a fight and then gets old pretty quickly. And in a fight drawn over several minutes, a momentary laps of attention can also be your death and the loss of all the XP you made in the last several maps.

So, either the fights need to be tuned down a little or the rewards must go up by a helluva lot to make bosses have any sane risk vs reward ratio.

Suggestion: Decrease boss health again, but make sure that no ability of a char can take away more than 1/x of a boss' health. That way, even the current fotm build should have to spend 30 sec on the fight, thus requiring the player to interact. And other builds would not suffer as collateral damage when GGG tries to prevent bosses from being simply deleted by parts of the population.

+1
Name of another topic said it well "Bosses are full of shit" literary. Loot is same or worse then from pack of blues or a rogue exile, both by the way die in few secconds. XPs are basically non-existent.
Honestly, it is like the game is encouraging me to NOT do bosses, to avoid them as it is waste of time with zero reward.

Don't worry, they will nerf map drops next so you are forced to waste time on them to sustain.

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ACGIFT wrote:

"

Orbaal wrote:

Maps might be debatable since bosses do drop several high tier maps once in a while.
But in terms of xp/h and loot you are far better of skipping the boss and thats sad.

I've not had THAT much time to sink into this league so far, but from my current count, I've only gotten more than one map drop from bosses a couple of times, and it's NEVER been more than one high-level map.

To clarify:
There is always a slim chance a boss drops several maps.
Its so slim you wont even notice it in the long run.

Should haven taken notes to check how often it actually happens.
Killing 1.1k bosses this league would have been a good enough sample size.
Anyways, from my memory its not worth it hoping for multiple good maps to drop for a bosskill.
Not worth the time, not worth taking risks.

Sadly bosses are in a very bad spot right now.

I think 15% of map xp should be allocated to the boss (dynamically based on 100% map xp potetial - ie. 0 remaining) , it would be affected by density etc.

Agree that bosses should grant more exp, far more. It's a why would I even bother killing the boss if it wasn't for the Atlas? Compared to the map monsters themselves, the boss gives maybe 10-20 times less exp not even including the risk of dying.

My thoughts are that the boss should give an amount of exp comparable to the map itself (maybe 1/3-1/5 of exp from everything but the boss).

I really want to say %s but that would be inaccurate based on level so I'm sticking with something more tangible.