New endgame bosses feedback

Firstly, the visual and audio design are great. Loved the soundtrack, art style. Animations also are a step up from the previous content.

Now, the fights themselves. During the livestream the term "Pinnacle Bosses" was used, which at the very least was also used to refer to The Maven. As such I'm assuming that at least The Searing Exarch and The Eater of Worlds are intended to be at that level of difficulty, with their guardians being roughly at conqueror level.

While the invitations to the fights can be rolled to make them harder, the same can be said about conquerors, as well as shaper and elder guardians. As such I'm not going to account for random difficulty increasing mods.

Short version:
In terms of mechanical complexity: Black Star > Searing Exarch = Infinite Hunger > Eater of Worlds.
In terms of difficulty, I'd say it's roughly the same: Black Star > Searing Exarch > Infinite Hunger > Eater of Worlds. All but Black Star are easier than Shaper, for reference.

More details:

Black Star
The only new boss that can't have most of its attacks avoided by moving at random after hearing a voice line. By far the most complex fight, in part due to clones, in part due to having a perpetual arena wide mechanic. It's nice that players have 2 ways of mitigating damage from The Black Star's special attacks - move to the half of the arena affected by opposite temperature, or hiding behind pillars on the half with the same temperature (or the other way around, for fire damage). Some other, less spectacular moves give little time to avoid them. Fun and decently challenging fight, but clones may be annoying to deal with, depending on build.

Infinite Hunger
Spongy, but not very threatening. Even his durability has a lot to do with forced invulnerability phases. The projectile vomit is probably the most dangerous move he does and it can be avoided by just moving around. Other than that, he's slow and easy to avoid, just chonky for a guardian-level boss. Don't tank the slam, don't stand still when he vomits or becomes a tentacle mass. That's it.
The clue to finding the portal to exit his secret dimension is not clearly presented at all and most people will only find out there is a clue after hearing/reading about it.
More annoying than difficult, but still an ok-ish fight.

Searing Exarch
Really good boss design, but a fairly simple fight.
Exarch only earns 2nd spot in difficulty thanks to his 'rolling rocks' phases. The first time this ability is used, the amount of rock walls is lower. Subsequent casts become more hectic.
This mechanic aside, slam and 'flame tendrils' are both easily avoidable. No other move does enough damage to really be threatening. Massive arena makes dodging that much easier. The 'mines' that gradually fill the arena aren't very noticeable.
If players use totems to cheese the walls, the difficulty of the fight goes down to about on par with the next place on the list. Even without that, he's not hard at all - just harder than 2 of the other new bosses.

Suggestions:
Increase flame walls damage ("Disintegration" audio cue when he summons one, then "Cleansing" when he sends it moving) and make them move faster while leaving lingering burning grounds as they move. This would help create some areas of denial on the otherwise massive arena. Would also help if "Cleansing" didn't require animation or Exarch was still able to move mid animation.
Make his attacks and some spells cover players in ash.
Increase damage of the flame tendrils ("Annihilation").

Eater of Worlds
As with Searing Exarch, I like the design of the area and the boss itself. The fight however...
Eater of Worlds takes the "easiest endgame boss in the game" award, with even conquerors, as well shaper/elder guardians putting up more of a fight than he does. Even some regular map bosses can be more threatening.
Eaters' health pool is all he has going for him. He does slow, well telegraphed moves. Even if his long windup skills hit, all but the squishiest builds may still survive them. The stuff that isn't always easily avoidable (beam) doesn't do enough damage to be threatening unless you're rolling 3k life or have uncapped resistances. Floating blobs were barely an issue during the fight, still not sure what they actually do. The mechanic with orb charging was easy enough to figure out.
Essentially, his high damage moves aren't a threat that needs to be avoided, but a lengthy dps window.
As it is, the only thing he's eating is damage, and he can't even eat it for too long.

Suggestions: speed up the slam ("Hunger") explosion, he chains 2-3 of them all the time and with ~3-4 sec windup each it creates way too much of a dps window. It should also do more damage. The big tentacle slam ("Writhing Mass") seems to have issue hitting players, in addition to also having a windup problem and I'd say it should also be hitting faster while covering a bigger area. Beam ("Perish", "Succumb") does far too little damage for something with an audio cue and delay as long as Sirus's Die beam. The potentially applied shock is a non issue due to how slow Eater is. Make the roaming blobs faster while making them follow players that get too close.

Honestly, neither Searing Exarch nor Eater of Worlds feel like "pinnacle atlas bosses' in terms of their fight complexity. I like the fact that neither makes use of hordes of adds or permanent ground effects, but as it stands those two just don't feel like endgame encounters. They're at most on the level of conquerors and nowhere near the level of Maven or Uber Elder. Even if their invitations can be rolled to make them harder, it won't make the core mechanics more complex - not to mention conquerors, as well as shaper and elder guardians can also be rolled. Even with crafted invitations, they'll still be lower in difficulty compared to conquerors/guardians also modded to make bosses more challenging.

the green version of these fights is easier than even a non rolled version of the tradable ones i think, significantly so? anyone else feel that? its kind of like a a4 sirus vs an a9 sirus or atziri vs uber atziri. the mechanics dont change, sure, but the damage shift between atziri and uber atziri is brutal and imo changes the fight.

i cant be 100% sure but black star, the green version, i just stood in all her damage, facetanked everything and took basically 0 damage. i tried that again on a blue rolled invitation with no damage mods and got obliterated by her hail storm, it went from doing no significant damage in the green version to blasting through 7200 life and killing me almost instantly.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

the green version of these fights is easier than even a non rolled version of the tradable ones i think, significantly so? anyone else feel that?

This is definitely true, as confirmed by (edit: someone at GGG, I think it was Krillson but now I'm doubting myself) in one of the Q&A sessions. GGG wanted to encourage players to roll mods onto the craftable/tradeable versions of the fights to get more loot, so they didn't make the "vanilla" versions of the fights very difficult. And the quest-version is slightly easier as well because that's what players need to get Voidstones, and they didn't want to gate the entire sextant mechanic behind Uber Elder tier content.

I just beat the exarch without him going into his rolling balls phase, which means the bosses can definitely be destroyed by high enough damage. Pushovers IMO

was that the green version or the full version johny?

The full one. But it was a white invitation so he could definitely get stronger

From my experience, dropped 'white' versions are noticeably tougher, but the damage difference isn't significant. With how easy the attacks are to avoid, it really just makes the fight longer (except black star, it's actually threatening).

Edit: by "tougher" I mean that the boss has noticeably more health.