Maven Fight is the peak of bad design.

The Maven fight is especially guilty of GGG's trademark of unique and mystifying garbage boss mechanics that are seen or demonstrated nowhere else in the game.

Nowhere else in the game is there a memory puzzle and most of her attacks are entirely unique. This means that the first encounter with this boss fight is like opening a mystery box and finding a dead crow inside. What am I supposed to do? I figured out it was a memory puzzle but why did I die when attempting to step on the plates? These seeking balls seem to have left a permanent degen on the ground? That's unfortunate, I guess I've bricked the fight now!

It's an awful feeling knowing that the best way to engage such content is to first find someone's video online so you can figure out what eclectic idiocy is actually happening since they didn't take the super duper obvious route of adding these mechanics into other fights one by one so players could learn them to some extent prior to suiciding into an unintuitive trash heap. The invitations would have been great opportunities to weave each of the new mechanics into earlier content.

The second and bigger problem is that the mechanics are incredibly stupid. There are a variety of games with significantly more entertaining and engaging sorts of encounters that could be translated into this game. Bullet hell mechanics where you have to actively dodge attacks, stage changes that are bright and apparent, and consistency. The last point, consistency is both in fight and game wide. With regards to game wide consistency players are punished for attempting to apply knowledge from other fights to this one, for example the elder creates a slowly expanding zone with a safe zone in the center but in the maven fight you are expected to escape from the slowly expanding zone onto a newly opened platform which has never been done before in the game. For in fight consistency the number of blue-ish balls that do different things are way too high, some spiral around before turning purple and chasing you, some go straight then slow down and explode, and some make other blue balls that touch you and leave a degen it's very difficult to pick up on what is what in a new encounter when things are all so similar.

The memory game falls under stupid mechanics but gets its own section because... Why? Nobody in the entire universe wants more and longer invulnerability phases and not a single soul wants a memory game in the middle of a boss fight.

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GGG wont change their boss fight system anytime soon

they see it as it should be or just dont see any alternatives so u will see only more sirus/maven boss mechanics in future

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It's an awful feeling knowing that the best way to engage such content is to first find someone's video online

And what do you think that guy did? Looked up another video? It's not a chicken and egg situation, unironically, git gud.

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DaCurse wrote:

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It's an awful feeling knowing that the best way to engage such content is to first find someone's video online

And what do you think that guy did? Looked up another video? It's not a chicken and egg situation, unironically, git gud.

The guy who made the video gets to fight 20+ Maven encounters per league. I get to fight maybe one. Or two. See the difference?

It is partially a consequence of the "6 portals per boss fight" design. Whether that general design is good or not... I don't know. But looking up a video before an expensive fight (wouldn't matter as much if it was more accessible) is indeed one of the consequences for many players.

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Char1983 wrote:

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DaCurse wrote:

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It's an awful feeling knowing that the best way to engage such content is to first find someone's video online

And what do you think that guy did? Looked up another video? It's not a chicken and egg situation, unironically, git gud.

The guy who made the video gets to fight 20+ Maven encounters per league. I get to fight maybe one. Or two. See the difference?

It is partially a consequence of the "6 portals per boss fight" design. Whether that general design is good or not... I don't know. But looking up a video before an expensive fight (wouldn't matter as much if it was more accessible) is indeed one of the consequences for many players.

Maybe the point is to make you fight her more than once so you learn the mechanics... You can look up the mechanics if you don't wanna brick it on the first time, that's your choice.

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Seriously? This is a game and you’re demanding they fuck with someone’s livelihood because you’re bad at a boss they introduced. This sort of toxic shit is the reason GGG’s direct communication has been dropping a lot.

Every single endgame boss in PoE is designed to take multiple attempts before you really figure out the fight(both mechanically and where your build needs to be to tackle it). I lost two maven writs before beating her and that’s actually better than my average for new endgame bosses. Needing to learn the fight mechanics is what makes endgame boss kills fun and satisfying. She’s not that hard if you pay attention, go in with a build that has adequate damage and defense, and know the fight. Winning is no accomplishment if any half assed build with no experience with the content can just jump in and do it. This is supposed to be one of the ultimate bosses, not some pushover anyone can plow through.

I disagree with most of OP's post but he has at least one valid point.

The memory game really is awful and boring, just about as much as some of the other boring mechanics of boss fights. Why does Sirus need to push me away and I need to wait for a storm to move out the way he's sitting on top of? Why do I need to wait for Shaper/Elder fights where they just sit there invulnerable, spawning trash mobs out of portals? These are the mechanics I hate the most, they just interrupt the flow of the fight and don't really offer anything satisfying.

But being surprised by orbs that hit you and leave degen effects on the ground in the current year is beyond me. This has been a fairly common mechanic ever since Shaper first came out years ago.

As for your complaint about "how am I supposed to know how a boss fight works?" this doesn't make any sense. There are plenty of boss fights in games throughout time that have unique mechanics that are not seen outside of that fight. Figuring out those mechanics and how to overcome them is the best part. The only leeway I might give you is if you were playing a Hardcore character, in which case experimentation can potentially result in the loss of your character.

But on softcore, I always go into everything blind because I don't want to be spoiled out of the fun of figuring something out. That being said, this fight is not even that complicated. I used 4 portals on my first clear, and since then have cleared all the challenges for the fight as well losing only 0-1 portals each time. Uber Elder was a much more challenging fight to figure out, even though we had seen those mechanics before, mastering the dance of balancing both of them was difficult (for my builds at least).

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But being surprised by orbs that hit you and leave degen effects on the ground in the current year is beyond me. This has been a fairly common mechanic ever since Shaper first came out years ago.

I'm not surprised by orbs leaving degens on the ground the problem is that with a bunch of different similar looking orbs trying to discern initially which ones are going to leave a degen behind is absurd and further the degens in mavens fight are significantly more problematic because they can very easily become unavoidable depending on the phase.

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It is partially a consequence of the "6 portals per boss fight" design. Whether that general design is good or not... I don't know. But looking up a video before an expensive fight (wouldn't matter as much if it was more accessible) is indeed one of the consequences for many players.

You get it.

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Seriously? This is a game and you’re demanding they fuck with someone’s livelihood because you’re bad at a boss they introduced. This sort of toxic shit is the reason GGG’s direct communication has been dropping a lot.

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