Dominus is badly implemented

The only thing "poorly implemented" here is the ability to adjust graphics options to ensure smoother performance on older machines. Which isn't even really a Dominus issue.

The Dominus fight is a work of art from a design perspective, and those who blaspheme its glory are heretics.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The Dominus fight is a work of art from a design perspective, and those who blaspheme its glory are heretics.

Then your Ruler is a heretic.

Figure that one out, zealot.

You remind me of Pope Francis.

But in all seriousness, not all gearchecks are bad design. Nor all flask-checks, for that matter; Staunching can buy you some kiting room, and the rain isn't always pouring. As a ranged character, you're forced to make hard decisions about whether to be in or out of the bubble, with variable answers (depending mostly on miscreation adds) and real consequences — which is what makes the encounter design so admirable.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The only thing "poorly implemented" here is the ability to adjust graphics options to ensure smoother performance on older machines. Which isn't even really a Dominus issue.

The Dominus fight is a work of art from a design perspective, and those who blaspheme its glory are heretics.

There's a sentiment I could totally agree with. If I had any idea wtf you were talking about. All I see from a player perspective are banners with tourettes, monsters with tourettes, a self proclaimed god with tourettes, and a lot of load screen.

;D

But seriously. I'm sure he's a brilliantly rendered gear check. I've heard about it, in chat.

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CanHasPants wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The only thing "poorly implemented" here is the ability to adjust graphics options to ensure smoother performance on older machines. Which isn't even really a Dominus issue.

The Dominus fight is a work of art from a design perspective, and those who blaspheme its glory are heretics.

There's a sentiment I could totally agree with. If I had any idea wtf you were talking about. All I see from a player perspective are banners with tourettes, monsters with tourettes, a self proclaimed god with tourettes, and a lot of load screen.

;D

But seriously. I'm sure he's a brilliantly rendered gear check. I've heard about it, in chat.

The primary beauty of the encounter is meaningful choice in split-second decisions. I'm sure you can understand how thoroughly fun that concept can be, and is, when you manage to overcome connection and video card issues. I can also understand how frustrating it must be when one has connection or video card issues... but those issues, strictly speaking, have nothing to do with the Dominus fight's design itself.

If anything, we need global fixes for desync and particle effects, followed by more Dominus-style fights.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Wow, I should definitely have read this dude's wiki earlier:

"Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bergoglio worked briefly as a chemical technician and nightclub bouncer before entering the seminary."

Badass pope.

Anyway, you sort of missed my point.

This is funny, since I've all but highlighted it and underlined it and bolded it elsewhere. I'll try italics.

Don't be surprised if Cruel and Merciless Sceptre (including Dominus) get a difficulty review in the future.

I hope they look into fixing that blood rain so you are not forced to run leech there, but can actually escape it with skill. Similar to vaal smash etc, that you can dodge.

If someone had not seen the thread about people having performances issues during the Dominus fight :
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/31756/page/1

I'm with Scrotie to an extent (well, let's be honest, he's one of the smartest posters on the forum) - the entire Dominus encounter, including the warmup bosses!) is a master class in boss design. I looked at Piety and Vaal and said, "How you gonna top that?" And then they did, with a fairly well-balanced, if very difficult, boss fight. The problems are largely framerate-related (seriously guys, work on this!), and until I had to abandon my NASA supercomputer and use a slightly more modest laptop, I had no idea what anyone was talking about. Whoops.

Let's examine the fight, shall we? The first boss fight is not truly a gear check. You've got three minibosses that do respectable but not incredible damage, partially physical and partially elemental. You can avoid most of it; the main issue is being able to keep the screen clear. Their attacks are well balanced - it's hard to avoid the sparks, but yo can kill the totems and the damage isn't that high. It's fairly easy to stay out of the way of the fireballs, and getting hit by them is kinda bad. The cycloner is easy to stay away from, but does hurt quite a lot. Any type of character has tools to deal with this fight.

The second boss fight is also not a gear check - but rather than dealing with elemental resists, it deals with armor, evasion, accuracy, and other character traits. You've got the one that you need to burst down or have good chaos res against. You've got the one you can evade easily but who may give armor chars a little trouble. You've got the one who blinds you and who has AOE attacks. It all caters to different styles, with different strategies for dealing with each of them (although realistically, you're just going to dogpile Alal before he poisons you to death while staying out of Kali's firing line - Orcus should get a bit of a damage buff, or use smoke mine more often IMO).

The third fight is Dominus, and this... is not perfect. It does a damn good job of having attacks with a windup and a damn heavy punch, forcing tactical decisions, and generally being well-designed. My sole complaint would be that there should be a little more windup on the lightning beam attack, or that it shouldn't stun. The totems are just awesome design, the lightning ground teleport is great, the slam is, well, a slam (although I honestly could not tell you where the hitbox is - it certainly isn't the whole circle), and the mark of dominus is a great example of tactical room-cleaning being important.

The fourth fight... Not without problems. I feel very disappointed that a huge, gigantic monster doesn't have some kind of high-damage, long-startup attack. On one hand, from a flavor perspective, it is pretty cool how it forces you into close combat, and demands of you that you rush into the boss, blood gleaming off your face, screaming your battle cry. On the other hand, there really should be a little better balance on the blood rain. It's just too much damage, where the only option is to sit there and take it from Dominus. The crowd control is an issue as well (perhaps allowing us to destroy the portals and letting him respawn them would be a good move), but I feel like something is missing. Maybe just rebalance the blood rain so that it hurts but it's not quite as lethal, and make him hit harder? Maybe give him a long-range beam that he only uses against ranged chars, á la Vaal? And a long-windup slam attack? (Christ, Vaal is awesome boss design.)

I dunno. Dominus is great. Not perfect, but what is? It's probably the best boss fight outside of Vaal, and far more ambitious than Vaal was.

I enjoy the Dominus fight, although I think I wouldn't so much in Nemesis. It's certainly one of the most memorable fights, my first time was a blast and a lot of "wtf there are so many bosses and minions, things flying everywhere", etc. My current build is the first that was able to make it through the fight without dying, on Normal. I kind of have to agree with op about the ascendant form though, it is ridiculously hard for a ranged caster (I also went through with a crit wander, my friend essentially carried me through the fight). I don't think I have any framerate issues, I just found it difficult to know what to do inside the blood rain radius, as a non=-tanky character. I imagine there are some attacks I could dodge? It's hard to tell, too much is going on, and the attacks have no clear indication of where they might hit.

i just don't like how inconsistent domi is between character archetypes.


the first two stages don't really count , aside from the annoying shield guy with all the chill effect , the first two stages are largely trivial.

but the final two stages really only have two options .either can you face tank him , or you cannot face tank him.

if you can face tank him the fight is over in almost 30 seconds (including the lengthy final tier transition).

if you cant , it drags on forever.

range characters have to dance around ghost wave spams , or are forced to face tank the blood rain.

on paper that sounds cool , but i means that certain builds are instantly nonviable.

the stun on the ghost wave means builds without stun proof or a high hp are pretty much hard countered.

and the blood rain means any build that is not defensively oriented is immediately invalid.

it turns the boss from an interesting final fight to an exercise in stacking big numbers to counter big numbers.


all this means is that he is trivial for tanks especially block characters that lol stomp him so hard.

all the while he is next to impossible for glass cannon chars.