Blackjaw

I didn't mind the difficulty so far, but Blackjaw (Act III Machinarium) is a little problematic. The 0 frame startup shove attack is already a bit of a pain when you're a melee fighter, but the real kicker is the chain-stomp attack. I have to be in melee range, that's my job, but when this move starts I cannot seem to escape.

The dodge roll is slow and covers little ground, not to mention the long recovery, and the stomp hits much farther than the area shows visually (the area of effect seems inconsistent with the visuals, bug?). Not only that but if you take the first hit and survive, you're still stun locked into taking the follow-up no matter what.

Side note, a feedback tool in the game would be great instead of public forum posts.

The game has felt challenging but fair up to this point. Blackjaw is not good though. The timing of the 1, 2, 3 slam is bad given the delays in rolling that you mentioned and the hitbox of almost all of his attacks is much bigger than the visual indications on screen. If it looks like I've successfully dodged on screen, the attack should miss. Anything else is just a really bad experience.

The most effective way I learned to handle blackjaw was by skipping him altogether.

EDIT: Just learned he gives out fire res - will be circling back around this evening.

Yeah, it's been said already. The visual of his triple slam doesn't match the hitbox at all.

Really not sure what the intended solution to this fight at level is meant to be...

The finish of the triple slam is capable of covering the entire length of the room & a width well over anything you could dodge roll. If you try it within melee range the area is large enough that moving/dodging back and forwards through him is exceptionally unreliable (as a tailwind deadeye at 7ms latency).

It feels like the area hit is going up in the later half of the fight, rather than just its damage?

Regardless, the excessive area of his attacks needs attention.

Blackjaw is not readable in any way.

Have minions? where is his 360 0-windup attacks going to target?

Deal Fire Damage? None of his visual tells work.

Don't speak garbage-tongue? none of his audio queues work.

There so many places where this guy goes wrong its actually surprising he rewards something non-trivial.

his health bar blocking his model is especially deadly. the room is oddly shaped for this fight considering the UI.

His slam attack is the exact same as the phys chieftan from TOTA. Look the guy up and you'll see threads talking about how bs he is. Turns out they thought was good and stuck it on this boss.

Anecdotal experience on my end. I run a blood mage w/ Chaos DoT and infinite curses.

I cheesed him by using enfeeble. However, I suspect that using temporal chains would be more effective. Heck, most, if not all, of the act bosses in Cruel kinda get easy when they're super slow or have their damage neutered by 23%.

But I do agree, his wind-ups are kinda ehhh.

Agree, the fight is unfair, broken. I can't escape his tripple slam attack. The third one is simply killing me every damn time. I can't dodge. And he simply turns in a fraction of a second towards me. He hits me perfectly every time. It feels bugged.

The triple attack will whiff if you dodge towards and next to him and continue strafing. This is the trick for basically every melee centric boss. The fire attacks are pretty telegraphed and avoidable. The pillars in the corner soak up his ranged moves including the giant third hit of his slam combo.

The shove he does is mildly annoying since it means hitting him once and instant dodging to avoid it, but it's not something I'd consider a problem unlike the filth queen's roll for example. I honestly don't see an issue with Blackjaw. It seems pretty in line with the difficulty they're going for.