Act 10 Kitava fight is absolutely stupid

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Emphasy wrote:

I think something important about Kitava is that he has to settle in. Because he is a lot more complicated than most other encounters. And even though I handily beat him now I'm still not really sure what is happening in the fight.

Does it matter that he grabs Innocence or Sin every once in a while? Will he not do certain attacks while he holds them? Such things will be clearer over time, right now he basically is a big clusterfuck of abilities he throws at you, which is not necessarily bad, but it seems odd considering how little different abilities other bosses use. Even Malachai has a very clear pattern, his Tentacle Portal, the Teleport, the traps and his mortar and that's it. 4 is often the magic number of attacks enemies have. Dominus has 4 (if you are not counting the teleport), Oversoul has 4 and I think Piety also has 4 (except for her two different forms, which both only have a single attack). Kitava easily has twice as many different attacks and that can easily get overwhelming, because you confuse them. For Dominus or also Innocence you know which attacks he does, because he announces them... feels a bit like Pokemon, but Kitava just does thing and visually telegraphing so many different attacks is hard, people will confuse them early on.

Yep, this is pretty much what I mean when I say his abilities are poorly communicated.

The abilities themselves aren't too bad actually, apart from the fact that it's jsut more AoE spam everywhere, but at this point trying to fight GGG on this is like smashing your head against a brick wall. It's just that between all the AoE effects, white mobs, Sin/Innocence, your own effects (CWDT/glove enchants), and Kitava's colossal size, it's next to impossible to tell what the fuck is going on by looking.

We need some better audio cues.

Reading this thread i'm tempted to not try it blind in Hardcore harbringer...

When I first tried and eventually killed kitava with my 69 anc warchief BoR berserker (35k dps) (got lucky with drops) it felt kinda like my first shaper fight in legacy. The only difference were that I seeked the ultimative challenge when attempting shaper. When he killed me, I was always were more clever the next time I tried, because I new what I did wrong and how to avoid my mistakes.
But kitava is a complete different league, ye ofc I killed him but still got one shoted even with 4k life. And most of the time just running around like a crazy headless chicken. But whatever 1 one time is no time, or maybe I was just nooby, because first time. Today, I tried him again in party with a friend. Me lvl 67 TS raider and she lvl 68 spec throw raider. Damage was not the biggest problem but the huge flame breath aoe which covers the whole arena. ~2k life, cap resis and was down in 1sec or less, after that moment I just gave a fuck and zerged him down, took me around 15 deaths, because why dodge when you just get killed either way. My friend survived because of crazy leech of spec throw.
So much for my experience.

What I see here in the thread, is that a lot of people argue just port/log out to dodge aoe, refill whatever. I mean whats the point of doing hard mechanics when the designer had in mind "oh yea they still could port in and out several times". Most of my playstyle consists of avoiding the tactic for to much using tp scrolls in boss fights as cheap mechanic to avoid hard stuff or plain refilling flasks. Also most of the bosses have some kind of easy mobs to refill flasks. Starting with brutus and even shaper, atziri and co offers such mechanics. then why some of the new bosses in the leveling content dont offer such mechanic? and the uniq monster which spawn in the heart phase I wouldnt describe particular easy. To work around such weird game mechanics with tp scrolls is just a nuisance.

Also the whole difficulty curve is completely broken in FoO. While leveling game gets harder and harder leading to the ultimative endboss kitava. And then you come into maps where you can faceroll t1-6maps with the gear you needed to kill kitava. Just to start finding in t12+ maps bosses with the same technical complexity of kitava. Compared to pre 3.0 where the game leads gradually into higher difficulty levels.

Also my own feeling of trying new builds changed rapidly with 3.0. Because it was not uncommon for me to try 5-15 different builds per league. Level fast to map content and then look how the build plays out in endcontent. But nowadays if I find a build appealing, I mostly think twice if I want to go through the pain with kitava and co. Yes the whole 10 acts feels kind of slow, dunno maybe its just my
imagination, but :/
And pls dont come with, lvl builds. I dont want play the 30. char ever for 20h in the same fashion I played the 29 before them, just because I can beat the level process just with the exact right build.

Tl;tr
Kitava is stupid and annoying. Most of the fight consists of running around like a crazy headless chicken or getting huge damage from boss which should not appropriate to the end of level content and the 10x easier maps which are gated away. Also give players a way to reach maps before killing kitava, farming lvl 61 zones is funny as hell, when you know that there are content which is quite more fun, than 1 particular area.

Totally agree, Kitava is just stupid. Tryed it on SSF HC everything until there just melt. Nothing too fancy necro 4k5 life dark pact. Doable until she put her laser shit. one hit and bebye. This game is turning ridiculous

This fight seems to be representative of the fatal flaw of GGG and their game design. I love their game, almost all parts of it, except for every-single-boss mechanic. It seems like they said to themselves, "we have 10 really cool ideas for boss mechanics." And then they went on to say, "so let's put them all in the fight, at the same time, and reduce the room size to that of a small bread plate - that's a great idea, right?"

Why do they keep designing stuff like this? Why do developers get 90% the way to a great game and then just walk all over it with something as childish as boss fights like Kitava and the others?

This is ridiculous. Now, the fight is extremely stupid yes but the real problem is locking the main part of this game (maps) behind a boss like this.

In short, if you are a casual or someone who enjoys to play your own pace and with your own build you are screwed. You will not be able to beat kitava and will not have access to maps.

Low tier maps aren't even better than pre-Kitava zone and most of those map bosses are considerably harder too.

40 minutes of fighting to get Kitava mid life, 65% of level worth of experience lost, 40+ death and rage quit : this fight is just stupid.

Now the details :

I faceroll every mob pack from whites to elites and even some uniques.
i'm at 8k DPS with an elementalist and 2 golems (half of my DPS comes from them). I have 3k life and life regen and good flasks.

1/ There is too much going on an it is absolutely not readable.
None of kitava's mechanics are visible in any way and your are just occupied not dying to see any of her moves.

2/ All mobs summoned in this fight have 4 time the life off mobs in all of Act 10.
Even the boss where you take the staff of purity is a joke (i died one time to a statue : i forgot that they hit like trucks).

3/ How could you suppose that all players would be able to beat the boss without dying a thousand times...
When i encountered Dominus or Malachai for the first time they were hard and due to not knowing their mechanics you die.
But in those fights, each mechanic is readable and can be avoided.
On Kitava, even with a dash, you can't dodge everything, and you finish one shoted by an explosion or burned to death by fire whitch does to much damage.
Speaking of dash, most of the time, even when spamming my keyboard, the skill does not work, interrupted by skill animations or damage from kitava.

This fight could be more interesting if you organize it in phases
with specific mechanics at each stage (i.e. mobs and flames on first phase, second phase with explosions and flame but no mobs etc...)

4/ Kitava has too much health. I know, meta builds have 35k dps with low stuff or whatever else.
I DO NOT PLAY META, i play builds that i like. Some are bad, some are good.
But, when i roll on all mobs from act 1 to 10 i assume that the final boss of act 10 will be doable,
and not requiring me to get end game stuff to beat a story boss...
But...Wait, oh i forgot, you can't have that stuff because you must kill that @#("&-è(é boss before doing maps...

I love this game, but, excuse me for the words : this boss design is f...ing garbage !!!

New content bosses are always over the top... they get balanced down. I remember when Vaal Construct one shot with the beam attack (pre 1.0) when he was the final boss. Then, Piety, both Crematorium and Lunaris versions were highly rippable. Dom was added, again completely over the top. Same for Malachai when 2.0 hit.

I suspect the frequency and damage of Kativas attacks will decrease over time. However, since maps are gated by the fight it does mean the HC community will have a much lower player-base in maps for a while.

TLDR; For me, it was way easier than I expected.

Level 70 Ranger SSF Harbinger.
Shrapnel Shot 4.5K DPS, Siege Ballista 3K DPS (with buffs and auras)
Crappy gear (all self-crafted 5L bow and 5L armor etc.)
2.7K HP, 2.6% life regen
Max cold and lightning resist, 43% fire resist
50% evade, 40% dodge, %30 spell dodge
2% Life leech, +6 life per hit.

Died about 20 times to Act 10 Kitava but it was way easier than I expected.

In pre 3.0 Merciless difficulty, I died about 50 times to Act 4 Piety and couldn't do any visible damage to Malachai in the first encounter so I was forced to skip, level up and revisit with 6L equipment and other high-end gear.