I like the boss design, but lack of cues for single-shot situations makes HC only a bit too rough

For quick context, I played PoE1 HC-only, semi-blind. Semi-blind meaning that I didn't try out bosses first in SC, and I didn't watch videos of boss fights beforehand. I did allow myself to quickly check out any weird one shot mechanics; there wasn't many in PoE1, a couple of occasions of stuff like "the big circle will kill anyone at that level" or "you have to immediately leave the area after killing the boss" or "the boss corpse explodes for gigantic damage".

But while I really love the more complex boss design, it feels like there's tad bit too many situations where playing like this is making process hard with reasonable playing hours.

Few examples of what I mean:

Balbala, the Traitor has the poison mechanics, where they spawn an expanding poison cloud and you must run to them to clear it. Far as I can tell, there's no audio clue of that. The 1st time I got there on my lightning sorceress, I died because of course as a ranged character I didn't feel like what I need to do is to find the boss and run to them. Plus they don't even seem like they are channeling the poison - they just stand idly in the side.

I had to check online what I was supposed to do. Ranged characters would mostly figure this out by accident or repeating the fight multiple times.

Zalmarath.. My minion infernalist wiped there with 1.2k ES+health, to a single hit. It was the diagonal dagger slide. That thing came so fast once it started that there was no way at all to dodge. Again, playing a ranged character, my instinct is to stay clear of the boss. I'd had to try the boss many many times to realize that the dagger, from some mystical reason, does significantly less damage on the first strike, that is, when it hits the platform, than it does when it quickly slides across it. So the tactic is to stand next to the boss and then you can survive the first shot and dodge the follow-up.

Except not always, the slam is also one-shot basically, but anyway.

The sword flame/laser thing I prolly would have figured out right away; if something leaves a solid looking object on the battlegrounds, that almost always means to take cover behind it.

And it's just not reasonable to keep stacking even more ehp. I used several exalteds on the infernalist, I had only +strength from attribute nodes for life, I had pretty much as many +max ES nodes I could take without sacrificing basically all of my damage, resistances at 50%. If I farmed for more exalteds and did some trading, yeah, maybe I could have gotten a few hundred ES more, but would even that have been enough?

If the idea is that players need to practice boss fights in SC, okay, fine. Lots of MMORPGs for example also feature raid bosses where you either have to read a guide, or join an experienced group, or then spend hours in figuring it out and wiping a dozen times as you do so. Blind raid runs is also something I've done and they are a ton of fun, but of course, in those games, character death is meaningless and hardcore mode is not a thing.

If this is as it is intended, I am a little bit disappointed by the design decision. I really liked playing PoE1 by facing bosses the 1st time on HC, without knowing exactly what to expect. The feeling of beating bosses like that was great, even tho PoE1 bosses were easier than here. I sure wiped a lot in PoE1, and it took me about 150 hours before I got into late game mapping the first time - but having done that without following a build 1-to-1, without checking out boss fights beforehand, and playing only HC, felt like an achievement.

I am unsure if 150 hours is enough here honestly, given how many times I've gotten taken from pretty much highest the ehp you can realistically have at that level without significant farming just to buy items that will be outdated in 5 hours of gameplay as you advance the story and get more levels. Those one-shot mechanics are avoidable, but some of them are very unintuitive, and some have basically no cues for them at all.

Yeah GGG are notorious for this and it's an easily solvable problem too. If your going to throw in totally new random mechanics, please somehow explain them before hand.

1. This fight has a coin throwing mechanic you have to run through the coin runes to avoid additional enemies - So why not set this up in the actual map prior to the boss so we understand the mechanic during the boss fight.

2. Poison gas, you have to find the invisible boss during this phase, stay near invisible boss and dodge a slam clears the poison. Again can be telegraphed during the map, have the player encounter non hostile invisible enemies that appear when you stay near them etc.

PoE1 suffered the same problems and there are still some mechanics I just have no idea how they work.

> If the idea is that players need to practice boss fights in SC, okay, fine

Yeah that would be an excuse for bad game design. If the game is well made, a patient and careful player should be able to not die even once in the very first hardcore playthrough. That's what engaging combat is, not some oneshot gotchas.

Hardcore experience sucks right now and oneshots shouldn't exist. Colossus knife attack and Silverfist slam ignores most of the armor and oneshots overgeared characters.

The oneshot on the giant seems like a bug, that attack is way too fast and not telegraphed well to be such insane damage.

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swo0plt#5433 wrote:

> If the idea is that players need to practice boss fights in SC, okay, fine

Yeah that would be an excuse for bad game design. If the game is well made, a patient and careful player should be able to not die even once in the very first hardcore playthrough. That's what engaging combat is, not some oneshot gotchas.

Hardcore experience sucks right now and oneshots shouldn't exist. Colossus knife attack and Silverfist slam ignores most of the armor and oneshots overgeared characters.

The extra mystical thing with the Colossus knife is that it doesn't even one shot - if you are close to the boss. The attack that seems like it's the bigger one, i.e. when the dagger first hits the platform, is actually the less damaging one, and is a reaction check to dodge the follow-up.

Meanwhile, the follow-up is way more damage and it's almost impossible to dodge if you haven't practiced the fight a while and aren't right next to the boss. If you are standing in one of the corners when that attack starts, it's pretty much gg even if you are overgeared. Yet, before that fight, the game teaches you that corners are the safest location.

I'd not go quite as far to say that the HC experience sucks - I've had a ton of fun for my first 40 hours of the game and will continue playing HC - but it definitely feels inconsistent and unnecessarily frustrating at times. Mostly due to these situations where there's just zero way of knowing what to do without practice or checking videos.

In PoE1, when I was playing it through the first times on HC without practicing in SC and without checking videos of boss fights, there was like 2-3 pretty much instant kill mechanics. These were usually quite slow, and at least in theory you could figure them out in time, but they were also easy to pick up from online discussions and such.

When I died in boss fights in PoE1, it was almost always due to an unfortunate combination of positioning. E.g. face tanking one hit, then blinking into the next hit. That sort of stuff is avoidable as you gain skill and stay focused, and feels fairer.

Here, dying to a single hit when they happen so fast it's unrealistic to be able to dodge them on the first time you see them is a bit much. And these mechanics where you have to find an invisible boss and stand next to them to not die etc would really just need a clear indicator in the game. Some sort of a mechanic that teaches you to expect for it.

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tzaeru#0912 wrote:

I'd not go quite as far to say that the HC experience sucks - I've had a ton of fun for my first 40 hours of the game and will continue playing HC - but it definitely feels inconsistent and unnecessarily frustrating at times. Mostly due to these situations where there's just zero way of knowing what to do without practice or checking videos.

I agree that campaign is good. I was saying overall including the oneshot nonsense like Colossus + mapping. If you reached maps or seen video by Kripparian, he explains that it's not really possible to avoid being oneshot in endgame maps.

Not only is the knife drag not telegraphed properly and sometimes has teleport animation, but it also has bugged range. Look at this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbBtoVvYx_w&t=25s

He wasn't supposed to get hit. His positioning was good.

And a few players told me that Arctic Armor makes them survive the forward drag by Colossus. So basically, casters with Arctic Armor are more tanky than melee lol. And some dare say it's not a bug.