Let's say it out loud - Kitava boss fight is garbage

"

Arzhulmand wrote:

Sounds like OP doesn't understand surviving power. I play hardcore and Kitava was tough, but not impossible. I think that players need to approach the game in a manner that have surviving power. Of course you are going to get one shot in an encounter that is level 65-70ish with a character that doesn't understand the concept of tanking. But eh, what do I know....I am just a hardcore player lol.

I played heerdkooore before you were even born, kid. :-V
I do understand concepts of survivability (that is the word you were looking for). I have zero problems outleveling the Kitava fight, getting twink gear and cheesing it as it never existed.

But if you take your head out of your ass for a moment, you'll notice that it being hard isn't my point. I don't have much of a problem with Shaper, Hydra, Chimera or Phoenix (I do have a little bit of problem with Minotaur, tho, as it shares the clusterfucky nature of Kitava, but I digress).
My point is that the fight is simply poorly designed. It is clusterfucky, too much stuff is going on and the graphical design is just... poor. :V
Sure, I can outlevel it, take Vaal Pact and just face-tank everything. But then again, does the fact that you can do it with borderline-broken builds means that the fight is ok? No.

That said, I don't have much of a a problem that such builds exist. What I have problem with (aside from Kitava fight being what it is) are people who use them and then think that all of the content should be balanced around such power (only to complain later that there are so few viable builds around... eh).

EDIT:

Read the post that the hardcore quote is coming from:

"

Arzhulmand wrote:

LOL Vaal Pact is the only viable option? Are you off your meds? Armor and life regen are a huge part of surviving. If you can mix evasion, armor, and life gen you are even better or just goin full evasion with Iron Reflexes. Sounds like you are just a noob OP. A very salty noob.

Have you fought Shaper yet, son? Also, how do you approach Necromancer summoner build with your armor and life regen kind of attitude? Or Shadow trapper build?
I mean, you are very keen on jumping on people and calling them noobs, but it seems to me that you have little experience yourself. Not that it is a bad thing, but I'd be a little more careful when addressing other people. That said: read my signature.

go check this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp-8SnkZHvw (kitava act 10 guide)

it looks easy. right?

so what is the problem? simple: if your build cannot kill minions quickly enough youll drown in gfx vomit


this is what makes fight easy or not: if you can fight Kitava alone - he is easy, well tuned and mechanical. if you struggle with minions - youll die and have to zerg him

thats it - there is very little ground. all the 'game and fight knowledge' means jack sh.. when you fight 10 mobs instead of one.

boss fights should be FIGHTS not BRAWLS

Main problems with kitava outlined many times before:

1. additional monsters too fat and strong
2. ground effect stacking (mainly black sludge) makes visibility terrible and makes very little clear space u can safely stand in especially after considering...
3. too many adds!

I think the fight is too one dimensional in terms of viable defences. ES is like worthless unless in a party since its never going to recharge with all the stuff to tap you for 100 damage, so having no es and a terrible life pool is like waiting to be one/twoshot, and also super stun prone with all the heralds jumping at you and shooting balls. Evasion too hard to handle spike damage sometimes. Only a few elemental damage sources and most are super telegraphed. Maybe the ball shooting the floor (is it even lightning?) can be relevant for resists if you are forced to dodge under it due to the incoming damage spam.

Basically seems only armour (predictably tank some adds) and life flask/regen (counter the sludge pool so minimal risk of 1 shot even if you screw up) are of any value. Evasion and blind is only really nice when your damage is too shit to kill heart phase monsters quickly and you really need the additional defences to sustain in there...

I personally hate doing this fight on any char without any decent armour and evasion mix in heart phases if I dont have good damage... and then i still hate doing the fight in general.

My last time doing kitava was at lvl 68 on a cyclone slayer, just facetanking the sludge with endless hunger leech (basically 43%/s) with about 3.8k life. Using a granite and a stibnite for heart phases and facetanking those too. I'm about to make a CI char without an es hat and i am already dreading the fight... having a shitty life pool and almost no defences...

on a side note,
Kitava act 10 is the only act boss I have died to while leveling in my 4+ years of path of exile aside from one time with cruel vaal oversoul he desynced and his slam came out earlier than the animation on my screen. Even when I was a total noob at the game dying to stuff like dischargers in the sewers, stuff like surrounded by flicker strikers, I never died to act bosses...

And i possibly would have died more if not for my friend playing high dps builds (gc mine, dark pact totems) to trivialize most of the fight when we leveled together.

Also excluding one time I basically killed myself with coruscating elixir while fighting voll (not an act boss though) ... lol

"

Perq wrote:

"

Arzhulmand wrote:

Sounds like OP doesn't understand surviving power. I play hardcore and Kitava was tough, but not impossible. I think that players need to approach the game in a manner that have surviving power. Of course you are going to get one shot in an encounter that is level 65-70ish with a character that doesn't understand the concept of tanking. But eh, what do I know....I am just a hardcore player lol.

I played heerdkooore before you were even born, kid. :-V
I do understand concepts of survivability (that is the word you were looking for). I have zero problems outleveling the Kitava fight, getting twink gear and cheesing it as it never existed.

But if you take your head out of your ass for a moment, you'll notice that it being hard isn't my point. I don't have much of a problem with Shaper, Hydra, Chimera or Phoenix (I do have a little bit of problem with Minotaur, tho, as it shares the clusterfucky nature of Kitava, but I digress).
My point is that the fight is simply poorly designed. It is clusterfucky, too much stuff is going on and the graphical design is just... poor. :V
Sure, I can outlevel it, take Vaal Pact and just face-tank everything. But then again, does the fact that you can do it with borderline-broken builds means that the fight is ok? No.

That said, I don't have much of a a problem that such builds exist. What I have problem with (aside from Kitava fight being what it is) are people who use them and then think that all of the content should be balanced around such power (only to complain later that there are so few viable builds around... eh).

EDIT:

Read the post that the hardcore quote is coming from:

"

Arzhulmand wrote:

LOL Vaal Pact is the only viable option? Are you off your meds? Armor and life regen are a huge part of surviving. If you can mix evasion, armor, and life gen you are even better or just goin full evasion with Iron Reflexes. Sounds like you are just a noob OP. A very salty noob.

Have you fought Shaper yet, son? Also, how do you approach Necromancer summoner build with your armor and life regen kind of attitude? Or Shadow trapper build?
I mean, you are very keen on jumping on people and calling them noobs, but it seems to me that you have little experience yourself. Not that it is a bad thing, but I'd be a little more careful when addressing other people. That said: read my signature.

Quite simple really. I mainly only play shadow and it is VERY viable like I said. You just have to know how to navigate the tree and be a decently good theory crafter when it comes to builds....something I am guessing you are not, judging by your attitude and misguided understandings of the game. Apparent misguided understandings.

"

Arzhulmand wrote:

"

Perq wrote:

"

Arzhulmand wrote:

Sounds like OP doesn't understand surviving power. I play hardcore and Kitava was tough, but not impossible. I think that players need to approach the game in a manner that have surviving power. Of course you are going to get one shot in an encounter that is level 65-70ish with a character that doesn't understand the concept of tanking. But eh, what do I know....I am just a hardcore player lol.

I played heerdkooore before you were even born, kid. :-V
I do understand concepts of survivability (that is the word you were looking for). I have zero problems outleveling the Kitava fight, getting twink gear and cheesing it as it never existed.

But if you take your head out of your ass for a moment, you'll notice that it being hard isn't my point. I don't have much of a problem with Shaper, Hydra, Chimera or Phoenix (I do have a little bit of problem with Minotaur, tho, as it shares the clusterfucky nature of Kitava, but I digress).
My point is that the fight is simply poorly designed. It is clusterfucky, too much stuff is going on and the graphical design is just... poor. :V
Sure, I can outlevel it, take Vaal Pact and just face-tank everything. But then again, does the fact that you can do it with borderline-broken builds means that the fight is ok? No.

That said, I don't have much of a a problem that such builds exist. What I have problem with (aside from Kitava fight being what it is) are people who use them and then think that all of the content should be balanced around such power (only to complain later that there are so few viable builds around... eh).

EDIT:

Read the post that the hardcore quote is coming from:

"

Arzhulmand wrote:

LOL Vaal Pact is the only viable option? Are you off your meds? Armor and life regen are a huge part of surviving. If you can mix evasion, armor, and life gen you are even better or just goin full evasion with Iron Reflexes. Sounds like you are just a noob OP. A very salty noob.

Have you fought Shaper yet, son? Also, how do you approach Necromancer summoner build with your armor and life regen kind of attitude? Or Shadow trapper build?
I mean, you are very keen on jumping on people and calling them noobs, but it seems to me that you have little experience yourself. Not that it is a bad thing, but I'd be a little more careful when addressing other people. That said: read my signature.

Quite simple really. I mainly only play shadow and it is VERY viable like I said. You just have to know how to navigate the tree and be a decently good theory crafter when it comes to builds....something I am guessing you are not, judging by your attitude and misguided understandings of the game. Apparent misguided understandings.

Also, your signature is wrong. It should state "I'm a douchenozzle". That would be more accurate.

"

Perq wrote:

My point is that the fight is simply poorly designed. It is clusterfucky, too much stuff is going on and the graphical design is just... poor. :V
Sure, I can outlevel it, take Vaal Pact and just face-tank everything. But then again, does the fact that you can do it with borderline-broken builds means that the fight is ok? No.

I think other players - including myself - mentioned HC is because you in your original post mentioned how 'zerged' him. I am assuming this refers to players dying over and over again but eventually deal enough damage to kill him. This is obviously not a viable strategy in HC so people point out that it's actually possible and not that hard to learn the fight and kill in him without dying.

Anyways as you wrote your main point has little to do with if the fight is hard or not and more to do with design.

Yes. The Kitava fight is messy but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. To me an important part of the fight is knowing when to dodge a boss ability and when to take a hit. It's very possible to dodge one of Kitavas abilities - for instance his sweep - but in doing so you position yourself in a much worse spot.

If there isn't a lot of stuff going on at the same time the fight would be much, much easier and honestly there wouldn't be much of a fight left. To me the most important part of the fight is dodging a few key abilities (Fire and Smash). And Kitava is basically trying to "trick" you into making mistakes through all the less important mechanics.

I don't think that's bad design since it "forces" players to keep calm during a hectic situation. The "clusterfuck" is an important part of that design.

In short: I agree with you that the design of the fight is hectic but I disagree with you that it is a bad thing.

"

Frankenberry wrote:

I don't think that's bad design since it "forces" players to keep calm during a hectic situation. The "clusterfuck" is an important part of that design.

It takes a lot more than one fight to teach people that, it's really too much to expect.

Anyway, If you play something that can move all the time you're fine, you can watch for the cues or just do circles and be careful not to step into anything. If you don't the fight becomes a check, you need to have high sustain and deal enough damage in heart phase not to get overrun or nothing will save you (except for the resident cheese combo).

The thing is, if you're playing a build that's straightforward and has a proper growth curve the check isn't really hard to pass, simpler builds can meet it without much trouble. Then we hit the main issue, and that's latebloomer builds which are typically in the deepest slump right around that point and are fucked well and proper unless they have a really good levelling setup up to the teeth in twink gear.

That's more or less it, the fight isn't a real problem for HC because the build choices you make there are typically safer but it does counter a specific way of playing the game. It's a valid design otherwise, just in the wrong place at the exactly wrong time for some builds, so we should probably just take the cue from GGG and avoid playing wonky crap until the boss undergoes a few stealth nerf cycles.

"

Frankenberry wrote:

...

I don't think that's bad design since it "forces" players to keep calm during a hectic situation. The "clusterfuck" is an important part of that design.

In short: I agree with you that the design of the fight is hectic but I disagree with you that it is a bad thing.

On general principle, I agree with you. Visually busy and rapidly paced boss fights aren't always bad boss fights. In fact, they can be a lot of fun.

Two issues that I see here are as follows:

1. The frequency with which GGG relies on visual clutter to make a boss fight challenging
2. Visual and audio cues that are hard to distinguish

Visual cues that you can't really see are an oxymoron. Or, at least they should be. And, with Kitava the color palettes and the camera angle / distance is set such that often you can't see important visual indicators of what Kitava is doing. A slightly smaller model of Kitava and/or panning the camera out would make the fight much easier to manage, along with better differentiation in colors that mark the different moves Kitava makes.

More generally, I find that GGG makes visually busy fights that, underneath, generally rely on the same formula for making the fight challenging. That's not necessarily inherent to the genre, as there are plenty of boss fights in other ARPGs (Grim Dawn, Torchlight 2, even Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem in its alpha state) that have more varied and more interesting mechanics. Niers Automata has the advantage of 3D with which to work, but even allowing for tech differences boss fights are so much more dynamic than for POE.

It's odd, in a way, because there are many good things about POE and a lot of creativity. But, boss fights are one area in which they seem oddly narrow in the way they try to make them challenging.

"

鬼殺し wrote:
I suspect a lot of my issues with PoE would be assuaged if only I could bring myself to embrace the phallic power of totems like apparently everyone else.

I think a lot of the appeal with totem builds is that they are cheap league starters, comparatively. If you want one that can do end game content, you gotta invest more, obviously.

First totem character I've made in a long time was my league starter character in Harbinger. No problem with Kitava. Her problem was she could not do high end maps. Deleted her ass due to boredom and disinclination to spend the currency to make her end game viable.

I'm not seeing all that many totem builds now.