Should map bosses be able to deal critical hits?

This has always bugged me.

Their damage seems to be oriented and balanced around a non-crit scenario. At least it should be, in order to be lethal and pose a threat to the player.

But then comes a critical hit, going so far above the expected damage value's that they become the sole reason to stack defenses for players.

Or differently, if a player wants to succeed and survive in the end-game, it has to be able to survive not a map boss itself, but a critical hit from a map boss.

If the player can't, it is just a dead waiting to happen, sooner or later a crit will land, wreck whatever defenses you do have and send you either to standard or into depression limbo from that -10% experience.

I think this has quite far reaching consequences.

It forces players into extreme high EHP value's to counter the "worst case scenario's", which ultimately are high-end map bosses critical hits.

At the same time, those extreme EHP value's are redundant for 99% of the play-time.

As a result it attacks the foundation of every defense system presented in the game. It demolishes choice, because one has to attain every single form of defense to counter these spikes.

If the choice is linear, All or NOTHING, it is not really a choice is it?

There should be better ways to make map bosses dangerous. Russian roulette should not be the
key-ingredient, very few people actually enjoy that game and the ones that do end up dead.

Thought's? Musings? Feel free to add or refute stance.

Peace,

-Boem-

edit : after rereading this, another point has to be made, to make apparent what my aim is.

If a player can survive or deal with the critical hits of a map boss in the "level appropriate" content he is dealing with, then nothing else can threaten this player.

Yeah, I hear you, but their base multiplier is already lower than ours and I feel that's as far as rules should be bent in that regard. With just 30% extra damage it shouldn't really be a problem normally, however, monster damage is currently tuned so high that a crit from a powerful monster is able to oneshot a player with zero mitigation (even above zero to be honest). And we're not talking about vaal slams here, just some regular non-telegraphed skills.

So, the fault doesn't really lie with crit, base damage is just a bit too high.

Your obviously correct, but it does make for poorly balanced bosses when your mitigation is "A-OK" until a crit hits you in the pekker.

It's a cheap way to provide danger to players, while in fact every second in a boss room should present an equal level of threat.(to increase tension and stress levels, provoking errors)

Currently it's just "yawn" --> crit happens "resurrect". There is no cross-over from
"yawn" -> "stressing mildly" -> "fuck fuck fuck"

As a result there is also no "player error" involved.

Getting one-shot is not really a player error.

Clarify ->

1) its a player preparation error
2) it's not a skill based error once those preparations are met

And if 2) is attained every other content except for that spike damage is redundant.

1) should be punished, 2) should be stressed out to force skill based errors.

I agree with your base damage assessment as-well. And it is entangled with the core issue i am raising.

- proper balance is a joke with the damage spikes currently presented, and bosses being able to crit play a major part in this fact.
(a KO boss move should kill no mater what, a barrage of normal hits on a prepared player should be dangerous but not become a KO boss move in itself)

- build diversity is being targeted severely in the upper echelons of the game, since it is forcing every player in there to perform the same defensive maneuvers.
(yes more forms of defense where introduced, but if one has to stack all of them, that change is redundant to begin with)

Peace,

-Boem-

"

Vipermagi wrote:

There is no way +30% Damage for one Hit is the difference between "literally no Damage taken" and "literally no chance". Crits are only dangerous if the enemy is innately dangerous.

Also Unyielding, Enfeeble, Belt of the Deceiver. It's not like you have no options to counter Crits.

I was going to respond with a big wall of text, but ill write this instead.

"A-ok" situation or "expected boss damage" =/= "literally no damage taken"

Refer to the part of my text that confuses you or where i type i take absolutely no damage until a crit kills me instantly.

I take damage -> i heal it back up before the next attack. This can be a high amount upwards of 80% of my hp.
That's irrelevant though, it only means my character is able to deal with the boss, up until that Russian roulette comes around the corner for that "one in a million".

Your suggestions just prove my initial point.

Core defenses are meaningless if the out-come is a linear "take it all, forget nothing!".

Peace,

-Boem-

"

Boem wrote:

Core defenses are meaningless if the out-come is a linear "take it all, forget nothing!"

Right, but getting rid of crit won't solve the core issue. The game got too fast, you can usually bail out of most situations or log out if nothing else, getting nailed within a split second is the only way they can kill us and that's the way most deaths happen.

Yawn - blink - dead.

When was the last time you watched your health go down slowly without being able to do anything? Even damage over time needs to be pretty much instant to take us down, otherwise it does squat. If you were a dev behind PoE in a state it is at the moment, what would you do to kill a player?

Since my post specifically aims at bosses i can answer it for that.(mobs critting like you say is a problem because of base scaling forcing everybody into the same defensive measures and is an entirely different problem in my opinion)

All bosses -> boss room locations

in boss rooms -> disable tp until dead and disable log-out

Ground overlay effects that disable

regen/life leech/charges for flasks

(not entirely covering all of the area obviously, and intermittent changing)

Bubbles vs ranged characters that reflect damage dealt and make the boss immune for the duration to projectiles.

In short, forcing players to strategically move and take longer on a boss fight to force stress and mistakes.

In tandem =>

Reduce bosses damage and remove crit from them.

Tl;dr : slow down boss fights drastically to enable "slow" killing in those boss rooms and remove "quick escape" options.

Peace,

-Boem-

They absolutely should, in my opinion. If there were no variance possible in boss damage besides the base damage range, then the game would quickly become dull and predictable, unless you purposely stacked the odds against you. A major part of the thrill of playing hardcore to me is knowing I could quickly lose my character if I'm not adequately prepared for a fight or the worst case scenario.

Because some map bosses are innately dangerous due to their wide base damage range and ability to deal critical hits (e.g. Shrine Piety), this in turn makes rolling map mods such as hexproof, fleet, increased monster damage, increased boss damage and attack speed, increased critical chance, etc. more meaningful. If you remove the possibility of a critical hit out of the equation, then all the multipliers don't seem that threatening anymore. End game map bosses should present a challenge and be respected as such.

As for whether that results in a loss of build diversity at the top because players will tend to build defensively and use defensive curses, I would say it merely illustrates a paradigm of hardcore where defense has almost always priority over offense.

Bosses can crit now can't they? I had a zana map dungeon boss 1 shot me even with LC + flask. It becomes too binary.

I agree with the original statement, but I doubt GGG will actually implement any solid game design behind this. For far too long they've been stuck in the logic loop of: "Statistics show players die = player death is a real and ever-present threat = GAME IS HARDCORE!!!!!!", without ever really considering that there are good player deaths (those attributed to play mistakes or a lack of preparation) and bad player deaths (one in a million BS like when you run into a corrupting blood mob that can drain your health before any human could physically react).


Their high-end discussions are too pre-occupied with making sure 99% of their players don't make it to level 80 in hardcore to care about whether or not this actually makes the game enjoyable or not.