Pinnacle boss designs are questionable

Just being honest the 4 or 5 pinnacle bosses are just weird design wise. Often times they require foreknowledge of their phases to set up the arena in a favorable fashion, like not dropping degen zones in the middle in the shaper fight, or dropping the degen zone in the middle for maven.

A lot of attacks that one shot players aren't telegraphed properly.

I think if players are basically required to read up on all the mechanics, those mechanics are poorly implemented. It feels too esoteric for a trade based arpg. Especially since a lot of writeups for a lot of games are just wrong.

Beyond some of this, the visual design of poe and the texture loading/ performance issues make some boss phases really poorly executed. Most of the time the walls don't spawn when I have to do sirus's metoer maze. The degen areas are larger then they appear for most if not all bosses, the memory game while the rotating lasers sometimes has no indicator. If the servers are chugging then the audio callous get desynced.

The bosses are very similar too. They all have invulnerable talky phases. They all have some sort of degen zone... I think. They all have an insta kill slam. They all have a teleport beam kind if attack. They all have a dodge phase. The fragment holding map bosses feel more special. Easier stat wise, but their patterns are more varied from each other.

I think the design team has some good ideas, but their impletation leaves a lot to be desired. It is difficult to juggle balance choices with a wide variety of builds, and they want a nice challenge to cap off the games story. But this ain't doing it. I would hesitant to call them hard because they are mostly stat checks. But their is nothing beyond them to stat check for. T16 maps aren't locked beyond them and voidstones don't really matter.

Losing an invitation is too much of a cost for players to really go in blind and learn them. It is like asking a build that is worth maybe 200-300 chaos to lose 10 divines of currency. Especially something like maven. The entire system just doesn't work in a way it feels like it should. If players are supposed to gradual learn the bosses, 30 maps is too much, especially if they have any amount of other league mechanics.

Honestly you could remove all the bosses and a lot of people wouldn't even notice. Most players just get a carry for voidstones and never touch them with how poorly designed they are. A lot of bosses expect certain types of setups. Especially since like 99% of the time they drop a 20c unique instead of the 50 div one.

It might be time to do whole pass on these bosses. What was good and cool 7 years ago may not be worth keeping. Especially since you tossed out zana, so a lot of story dialogue just isn't there.

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roundishcap wrote:

Just being honest the 4 or 5 pinnacle bosses are just weird design wise. Often times they require foreknowledge of their phases to set up the arena in a favorable fashion,

You learn it after your first time interacting with them, you have 6 attempts. Dont need "foreknowledge"

Unless you do, which is fine if you want a guide for every boss mechanic before interacting with it. The game is approachable from multiple angles.

It is not required at all though!

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roundishcap wrote:

A lot of attacks that one shot players aren't telegraphed properly.

Cant think of any pinnacle boss one shots that arent telegraphed or not audibly obvious.

Ill be of some help here with some comedic relief;

Shaper: Gaze in to the dont stand infront of me. Embrace my leap slam or dash away after I magically appear on top of you.

Elder: Big circle takes up the whole room outside? small circle inside? Maybe I have to stand in one of these. Tentacle slams, at the end elder is magically appearing above me, I wonder what I am supposed to do when someone teleports above me?

Sirus: A maze? Maybe I should run out of it. Feel the thrill of the directional sound on $10 earbuds tells you where the beam is coming from. (for the squishies)Die! Does this beam kill me if I stand in it? He said die so im conflicted on what I should do here.
(Please dont let me meme on his projection)

Eater: Succumb, oh you blocked or evaded or have suppress, guess that doesnt do anything. Here let me say HUuuuuuuuuNNNggggEERRRR for about 7 seconds and slam the ground, I wonder what happens if you move out of the way of this attack.

Exarch: Inciner-whole room goes a bit darker and the floor lights up, the boss is just kind of charging something up, do I stand under the boss while he does this?

Maven: Death made.... oh you moved during me saying that, well I guess you dont get hit then. Pain will be returned tenfold, theres two side areas that open up? Pain will not be returned tenfold 😢. Do as I say and stand in this big circle in front of me, nothing bad will happen by standing in a big circle in POE.

🤡Cortex🤡: Hey devs! I dont know why I am still considered a pinnacle boss, I have no mechanics and I spawn mobs that do no damage so anyone that has killed the strand map boss can pretty much just kill me and then brag about killing a pinnacle boss.

The clown emojis are not for you its for cortex cause hes a clown, joke of a boss that is in need of a makeover!

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roundishcap wrote:

I think if players are basically required to read up on all the mechanics, those mechanics are poorly implemented. It feels too esoteric for a trade based arpg. Especially since a lot of writeups for a lot of games are just wrong.

This sounds like maybe a personal experience? If you needed to look up a guide before doing these bosses, thats okay! the game is made with everyone in mind!

This is certainly not the case with players I am familiar with though.

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roundishcap wrote:

Beyond some of this, the visual design of poe and the texture loading/ performance issues make some boss phases really poorly executed. Most of the time the walls don't spawn when I have to do sirus's metoer maze. The degen areas are larger then they appear for most if not all bosses, the memory game while the rotating lasers sometimes has no indicator. If the servers are chugging then the audio callous get desynced.

Might wanna try a clean install, these are some odd issues. Maybe report a bug to GGG if it persists.

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roundishcap wrote:

The bosses are very similar too. They all have invulnerable talky phases. They all have some sort of degen zone... I think. They all have an insta kill slam. They all have a teleport beam kind if attack. They all have a dodge phase. The fragment holding map bosses feel more special. Easier stat wise, but their patterns are more varied from each other.

Pretty conflicting opinion here with bosses needing all this pre research,

Simplifying this pretty far down to make it almost.... predictable if they all do the same things. Dont know why anyone would have to look anything up then!

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roundishcap wrote:

I would hesitant to call them hard because they are mostly stat checks. But their is nothing beyond them to stat check for. T16 maps aren't locked beyond them and voidstones don't really matter.

For some players that need the gear sure they are hard stat checks. If you struggle with mechanics, which seems to be your experience as well, which is fine I am not saying that to be mean! Then going in with a bit more power would be the answer for your playstyle!

Ive done maven on a 4 link quil rain personally, seen plenty of zdps get through the pinnacles over the years as well. It comes with just doing them a bunch honestly.

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roundishcap wrote:

Losing an invitation is too much of a cost for players to really go in blind and learn them. It is like asking a build that is worth maybe 200-300 chaos to lose 10 divines of currency.

I am unsure what build is 200-300 chaos or why we are setting this post here but there is no invitation that is worth 10 divines currently or ... at any point in this league.

Odd numbers and hyperbole aside,

this might come a bit down to skill/knowledge as a player can clear a boss on little investment, or in your experience, a bit more investment. Which is fine either way it seems the game is pretty approachable from both sides.

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roundishcap wrote:

Honestly you could remove all the bosses and a lot of people wouldn't even notice. Most players just get a carry for voidstones and never touch them with how poorly designed they are. A lot of bosses expect certain types of setups. Especially since like 99% of the time they drop a 20c unique instead of the 50 div one.

Hard disagree on removing bosses from this game. If anything we are in need of a new one with actual mechanics. They got pretty close with exarch so we'll see.

Keep at it though! You can learn the mechanics pretty well without researching anything before hand. Start limiting yourself and youll get there, best wishes!

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Chickenwink wrote:

🤡Cortex🤡: Hey devs! I dont know why I am still considered a pinnacle boss, I have no mechanics and I spawn mobs that do no damage so anyone that has killed the strand map boss can pretty much just kill me and then brag about killing a pinnacle boss.

The clown emojis are not for you its for cortex cause hes a clown, joke of a boss that is in need of a makeover!

Not just Cortex, the entire synthesis stuff could use a makeover. The 4 smaller unique maps are also a joke and out of touch same as the entire story about synthesis implicits. cause oh yea rerolling an item via beasts has so much in common with the original league mechanic lol

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Pashid wrote:

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Chickenwink wrote:

🤡Cortex🤡: Hey devs! I dont know why I am still considered a pinnacle boss, I have no mechanics and I spawn mobs that do no damage so anyone that has killed the strand map boss can pretty much just kill me and then brag about killing a pinnacle boss.

The clown emojis are not for you its for cortex cause hes a clown, joke of a boss that is in need of a makeover!

Not just Cortex, the entire synthesis stuff could use a makeover. The 4 smaller unique maps are also a joke and out of touch same as the entire story about synthesis implicits. cause oh yea rerolling an item via beasts has so much in common with the original league mechanic lol

Oh yeah, oh synthesis... how its fallen...

I feel like synthesis just might need to have its items moved to something else? Or to say farewell to it?

Ever since eater and exarch, synt implicits on armour, outside of GIGA juiced tri implicits, have just been made obsolete.

Youll have the off chance of some synth jewels and weapons but those are fringe $$$ items that just seem to be for show rather than anything enabling or required.

And of course bottled faith but outside of that? Pshhh, may as well not exist.

Who knows though.

Also the NERF to synthesis implicits post-league kinda killed the top end of power available.

I miss the perma-onslaught boots, or the other REALLY nice unique effects that were available during the league itself.

Synthesis in the game is in such a bad state that I can't even begin to imagine what players who started after synthesis league think it means beyond just yet another implicit-changer...memories what? cortex what? second most powerful crafting league of all time?

It's a shame



As far as bosses go: Idk....I can't remember the last boss I had to look up a guide for. The fights seem incredibly obvious to me at all stages...and I play the game muted, missing half the cues. I don't think I've ever faced a boss in PoE that I haven't beaten before dying 3x. And the next time I fight them, I basically know every attack and every phase they are going to do...after a single fight. Not trying to brag, i consider myself awful at bosses and dodging in general, but just saying the fights themselves are REALLY easy to figure out (the damage type, not as easy). Definitely seems like a personal hangup rather than a design hangup here.

OP you are offering a great deal of criticism without any actual solutions, I already think most of what you've said is wrong but if you explore the ideas thoroughly you will keep arriving at dead ends (like their designers do)

PoE has excellent core boss fights, whats largely missing is nobody engages with them anymore, they buy a carry or invalidate the fight with gear. Ubers made this worse by being not really designed.

The above isn't a criticism btw its just the way we play, I invalidate the bosses now I haven't done a Sirus where I had any chance of dying since Heist league? Somewhere around then.

A lot of this rings quite true, and this is a feedback forum, so I'm not convinced posters have to justify their existence as much as some commenters make out. It's unfriendly to the point of hostile.

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roundishcap wrote:

Often times they require foreknowledge of their phases to set up the arena in a favorable fashion

This is correct for Maven, Shaper, Uber Elder. I've never played a game with tracking projectiles (or offscreen spawns) creating ground degen/debuff puddles before PoE, let alone this number if we add in Sirus, Exarch. They penalise people learning the fights and have little effect on those who've played them for years.

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roundishcap wrote:

A lot of attacks that one shot players aren't telegraphed properly.

This is correct, counting sub-second death as instant and spells as well as attacks. Elder's double-circle and scythe, Cortex's laser cage are visually impenetrable and it's unclear either what they'll do, where you should stand, or when they'll result in damage. Shaper beams, Shaper slams, Cortex's move-it-or-lose-it are telegraphed by your death, but can be avoided or mitigate once you know they're coming through enough practice. And so on. Contrast Maven's "dodge this" fireball and "stand still" rakes, Sirus' "die" and "feel the thrill of...using a portal" beams which are superbly telegraphed.

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roundishcap wrote:

Especially since a lot of writeups for a lot of games are just wrong.

I'd agree entirely that learning PoE mechanics in recent years is very difficult given how much has changed over years and the amount of old information out there. Not sure how much applies to bosses but point taken completely in terms of league mechanics and such.

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roundishcap wrote:

The bosses are very similar too. They all have invulnerable talky phases ... Losing an invitation is too much of a cost for players to really go in blind and learn them.

Definitely feels like an over-reliance on degen, know-it's-coming reactions and plenty of practice, which is at odds with GGG's policy of limiting access to hard content so that people don't rush headlong into it because they saw a streamer do it. Practice attempts are tiresome to accumulate and absolutely necessary. Some people who've played the game for a decade have forgotten how much practice it takes to git gud and how unfriendly the game is to people learning it in this particular respect.

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roundishcap wrote:

Honestly you could remove all the bosses and a lot of people wouldn't even notice.

I hope not, I do really enjoy PoE bossing! Despite the design flaws and practice-gating, beating bosses is what I play for. If I was going to buy a carry for a boss I'd rather buy a carry for the league i.e. not play.

You have to justify something for anyone to think your feedback is worthwhile and when you make points that people can't believe because they are so opposite to how you can even view content let alone actually experience it very quickly makes you question if this is worth reading.

Like I agree with some of your points genstein but you have shaper slam in as a bad telegraph which is absolutely laughable and elders circle is a timing challenge layered with other mechanics.

I'll pose this question to you instead and the OP, I want to challenge you with a piece of boss content but you can't use arena denial mechanics, invul phases, gimmicks or any telegraph not clearly labelled and obvious to the extreme?

You will struggle, and if you don't its because you aren't using enough imagination to put yourself in the shoes of a standard bossing PoE player.

There are absolutely bad telegraphs and sloppily explained mechanics in their bossing content and plenty to improve on but its a mistake to just be like their bosses are shit.

Most of the bad ones for me are bad because they are dull due to lack of mechanical interaction, worst being the infinite hunger IMO.

But Shaper was an absolutely fantastic piece of boss content when it was new, it had crisp balance everything was clearly telegraphed it had slightly different build challenges to exploit and you could buy yourself more (or less) time depending on how lazy/skillful you were at managing the arena.

I think fair enough if anyone reading someone's feedback has counterpoints, but lately there's a lot of slamming new threads, ripping posts apart like someone doing an autopsy with a chainsaw, whilst so very politely casting aspersions on the poster's ability.

Fair point on the Shaper slam, it is well telegraphed once you know what to look for. If that's good enough, so be it. I was thrown off the first time I ran the fight years back as it doesn't look like a slam, it's just a black blob followed by a new black blob elsewhere leading to death, clearly bad news but it's not exactly a legible animation.

Easier access to practice runs would excuse a lot of common difficulty-inducing mechanics. But again, I really enjoy PoE bossing! Just pointing out that there is some validity in here.

When it comes to bosses and mechanic-learning on that level....there is a certain amount of "are you good enough?".

Not everyone has equal gaming ability. Not everyone has the same experience with similar games. Not everyone has the same reflexive responses. Some players can just be "bad" at bosses. Not due to design or anything, just simply worse than another player.

On a personal note, I have very poor fine control over my character. Many of my deaths to bosses, even now, are because of my own inability to do what I know I have to do. But even though I frequently die, the actual "learning" of the fight is incredibly easy. Shaper slam I understood the very first time I ever saw it...I'm not really sure how anyone can describe that as not telegraphed. Maven fight is pretty darn telegraphed across the entire fight. Even Sirus was well telegraphed, he was just really hard to navigate because of my OTHER issues. Infinite Hunger thing took two tries, the first I ran around blind and the second I saw the flow of the floor and it just made logical sense to "follow" the current. Why else would something like that exist?

I have the feeling people "boss" with the same amount of attention that they "map": brainless shoot until everything is dead and movefastmovefast. And then folks don't understand bosses because they keep attempting them in the same mindset/playstyle. If it were me, and I knew I was going up against a big bad boss, I am hyper focused on EVERY tiny little movement he does and far less concerned about actually even "killing" him. Eventually he will die, there are pretty obvious times when they are designed to be vulnerable.