The Syndicate Mastermind Bossfight is the worst encounter PoE has had in a long time.

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PREY74 wrote:

After wasting time and trying to kill the boss 5-6 times in vain for some mechanics that are not at all intuitive.
Dummy sentence since apparently this is spoiling stuff for most users.

The Caterina final fight was extremely annoying, repetitive, and possibly the worst bossing experience ive played in PoE in a long time. From watching the experiences of others it seems like im not alone in this. In my opinion GGG have taken a massive step backwards in terms of design with this encounter - reverting to all their old tropes that simply do not feel fun to play with and i thought we'd moved past this point in terms of game design.There are several bossfights in the game that feel very well designed, and are extremely fun to do, while also being quite challenging. All of the Delve bosses, Shaper and Elder/Uber Elder are great examples of how ARPG bosses SHOULD be made. Catarina is the total opposite for me.

Disappointing end to the "first time" betrayal experience, im probably not going to ever do this fight again - even though it should be a pisstake once you get the mechanics. Here's why:

Immunity and Phases.

Neither of these are inherently bad things on their own. Uber Elder has immunity mechanics. Delve bosses (eg Krugal) have phases. These are somewhat required to stop the fight being totally trivialised by having a good enough build. The problem is when these Phases require non-intuitive player input to progress the bossfight (ie, not just kill shit) - AND the boss is not only completely immune to damage but is still DPSing at her maximum potential and will one shot you if you arent careful. This just feels terrible. Its a combination of the two worst crutches in boss design, implemented in just about the worst way possible. It turns the fight into something from a puzzle quest game - with some brief interludes to actually play an ARPG.

Un-intuitive mechanics.

You simply have zero clue what to do in the fight if you've never seen it before. At all. My first portal i did the first 1/8 of her HP bar really quickly, then spent the next 5 minutes wandering around the bossfight arena wondering what on earth im meant to do for her to stop being invulnerable. I thought it was a bug, then i went and watched streamers play it - and universally this seems to be what everyone does their first go. Just wander about aimlessly, with no clue what to do, gradually dying to the fully immune boss. With how much the boss moves and pisses about it took some streamers full minutes and all their flasks to even realise she's immune to begin with.

What takes the cake for me is that what you are meant to do with the totems - let them attach their spooky bond to your character - is not only hard to see through the visual clutter of the general shit on screen, but looks exactly like something that should hurt you. Not the way to progress the fight.

The game does a piss poor job of actually expressing what the central fight mechanic actually even is.

Player communication

The fight in general gives me really bad memories of trying to figure out Atziri for the first time way back when, wondering why sometimes id one-shot her phases and other times id just randomly die for no reason. Its the same shit - other than a minor visual clue that you'd never assume is actually relevant to the fight if you didnt already know about it, there is NO indication of what you are meant to do.

In Uber Elder/Shaper these things are expressed really clearly - when one Shaper does his bullet hell, Zana lets you fucking know. In Uber elder when one dude is immune, there is an obvious visual indication that is inkeeping with the rest of the game. If you followed this logic with this fight - you would assume that the totem in the centre is important - as that is what Caterina's old mechanic used to be centred around. Nope. Shit doesnt do anything in the fight whatsoever. Instead the core mechanic is the scenery in the outside of the area, which can't be interacted with and has no indication that it is in fact the core mechanic. We've taken a massive step backwards it seems, from even content as recent as Delve.

There is no intuitive indication when Cat is or isnt immune, there is no indication of what you are meant to do, and even when you do know what to do the fight is janky as shit and a total clusterfuck. Not hard, just tedious.

Just to show that this isnt just me being dumb - here's Tarke's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7kmAw6G9r0&t=7s first go around with it. At 2 mins he enters the boss. Breezes through the first phase, like i assume any semi-competent build would do. He then spends 2 minutes trying to dps an immune target - realising its not going well assumes its a failing of his build in various ways. Once he figures out she's invulnerable, he tries wandering about, clinking on all the things, even intentionally taking damage to see if that's what triggered the fight progression. After 5 minutes of nothing happening but him slowly dying, he's beginning to think (as i did) that the fight was bugged and that his particular skill was causing a bad interaction, preventing progression. He then spends another 2 and 1/2 minutes arguing with his chat, convincing himself and them the fight is just bugged. Finally - after an eternity in the area with no clue what to do - Tarke decides to Let the boss Kill him intentionally, to see if this fixes the supposed bug. This accidentally triggered the progression. And he didnt even realise how it happened, just that eventually the game decided to let him play again. So he continued to believe that the game was bugged - and it just magically fixed itself - instead of actually working out the mechanic.

I dont blame him. I had an extremely similar first experience, except i didnt accidentally trigger the progression.

GGG: Your experienced, staple players should not be assuming that the game is bugged, and spend nearly 7 minutes in an arena with nothing happening, before they realise the central mechanic to a fight BY ACCIDENT. This is a failure of the design team, the game does not communicate the goal of the fight well enough. Its not fun to have to look up the fight on the Wiki, its doesnt add to the depth or the complexity of the fight to make core mechanics so obscure you either have to look it up or stumble upon them, and it has actively detracted from my enjoyment of Betrayal league to have the final boss be so frustrating and anti-climactic. And i beat the fight eventually - i cant imagine what id feel like if these BS mechanics caused me to fail out of it, and spend another eternity doing safehouses and building my syndicate back up. Or even worse if i had this happen as a new player.

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dachoppa wrote:

can't wait for the next post when he discovers that Sirus exists

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PREY74 wrote:

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dachoppa wrote:

can't wait for the next post when he discovers that Sirus exists

If you don't have valid arguments, avoid wasting time, don't be childish.

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dachoppa wrote:

can't wait for the next post when he discovers that Sirus exists