Players shouldn't be able to one shot bosses

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Mordgier#6997 wrote:

Both are a problem yes.

Vast majority of 1 shot builds are going to vanish by next 'league' - they were specifically addressed in the interview with Jonathan saying that "we want players to do the mechanics - it's why we spent all this time creating and animating them".

Unfortunately I fear that they will do little about defense - 15% armor buff ain't going to be felt.

I totally agree with everything you are saying....I just think your conclusion that "bosses should be one shottable" is the wrong takeaway. It conflates too many issues into what is essentially unrelated: bosses being able to one-shot you.

Your defenses are pretty much unrelated to boss one-shots. You aren't ever meant to tank them so defenses play no role. You are also not meant to AVOID dealing with them, so one-shots are actively hindering boss development. This was actually a major problem in PoE 1: the "one shot" boss mechanics were almost all able to be cheesed due to overperforming defenses, completely nullifying boss mechanics. At the same time, damage was so extraordinarily high for certain builds that it invalidated boss mechanics from the other side.

Regardless of investment or power, bosses shouldn't ever be TOTALLY nullified: you should be able to tackle them much much quicker with higher investment, but never instantly. Power can nullify other things, like monster swarms or general mapping and such. But well-telegraphed, major boss fights? No.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

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Mordgier#6997 wrote:

Both are a problem yes.

Vast majority of 1 shot builds are going to vanish by next 'league' - they were specifically addressed in the interview with Jonathan saying that "we want players to do the mechanics - it's why we spent all this time creating and animating them".

Unfortunately I fear that they will do little about defense - 15% armor buff ain't going to be felt.

I totally agree with everything you are saying....I just think your conclusion that "bosses should be one shottable" is the wrong takeaway. It conflates too many issues into what is essentially unrelated: bosses being able to one-shot you.

Your defenses are pretty much unrelated to boss one-shots. You aren't ever meant to tank them so defenses play no role. You are also not meant to AVOID dealing with them, so one-shots are actively hindering boss development. This was actually a major problem in PoE 1: the "one shot" boss mechanics were almost all able to be cheesed due to overperforming defenses, completely nullifying boss mechanics. At the same time, damage was so extraordinarily high for certain builds that it invalidated boss mechanics from the other side.

Regardless of investment or power, bosses shouldn't ever be TOTALLY nullified: you should be able to tackle them much much quicker with higher investment, but never instantly.

I think bosses should be 1 shotable as long as we are and as long as we only get 1 shot at the boss.

I know more portals are coming and when those come it's going to be a very different risk for players to tackle a boss.

Right now, if you find an "Audience with the King" - cost of screwing up is 6 div.

To me, that's cost prohibitive - I am going to fully respect before the run into 1 shotting that boss because I can't afford to fail.



What I'm saying is that PoE2 is setting up a substantial series of barriers to bosses, making the mechanics extremely dangerous, and giving players 1 shot at a the boss which makes bypassing the mechanics pretty much a requirement.

Whenever people say they want the bosses to be 'souls like' - I'm all for that - I really enjoyed the bulk of the boss fights in the campaign (No not you Viper Napuatzi) - and I'd love to do more.

Here is the thing though, you know what happened when you failed a boss in the campaign? You were back at the checkpoint, and you tried again. And again. And again and again.


If we could try to kill the Atlas pinacles over and over until we got it right, I'm all for making them mechanically demanding and rippy as all hell.


The way access is gated to them today though, if I cannot 1 shot them - I wont' run them.

^yes, again I agree with nearly everything you are saying...but...

I think you came to the wrong conclusion once more. Bosses should be 1shottabble because access to them is costly and takes time isn't a logical conclusion to make. It can't EVER be acceptable to one shot a boss, no matter what. The true problems and barriers are what need to be addressed.

The problem that needs to be solved there is the access in that particular example. A problem that they already have started to address with the 6 portals on Arbiter. I know you did mention this in your post

I will die on this hill: no boss should EVER be able to be one-shot. Ever. That can't ever be the solution to other design problems. This is especially true of PoE 2 being a new game, with a much heavier emphasis on well-designed boss fights. It simply shouldn't be possible: whether that means they need to add phases to the boss, or that the boss becomes immune to death for x amount of time then so be it.

It is the one type of content that shouldn't be skippable by anyone.


And I think that is precisely the point the OP was trying to make. No matter what the situation is now with bossing, you need to face the actual root problems rather than just allowing a workaround to exist.

I think the problem is in the design itself.

The difficulty in PoE2 seems to come [mostly?] in making sure that the boss' OS mechanics never hit. Obviously the players can't be blamed for making sure the boss never get a chance to TRY to land a OS mechanic.

If instead the game was more about controlling the battlefield, balancing offense & defense, using the environment to your advantage, and winning the battle of attrition then there's a much better CHANCE that you could have a more engaging fight.


Devil's Advocate: If a completed decked out L100 player with B.I.S. gear faced a "basic" [difficulty level 1 of 5?] boss I wouldn't mind that boss going down super fast ... 0-10 seconds lets say. On the flip side I'd like to see that character take 30-60 seconds to beat the hardest boss.

The gotcha is balancing the game in a manner that people can still progress in some meaningful fashion ...

If it really gets that bad, especially for act and major end-game bosses (map bosses I'm inclined to suggest they can stay one-shottable) then they need to do a hard DR until they "phase" like with the Crowbell. Last Epoch been trying to figure out the right way to balance excess damage builds, waiting on the next major update with the next chapter of the story before going back so not sure of the current situation with the ward vs DR (because its end game right now is about as exciting as spamming runs of merciless Piety back in poe1 beta) but there are methods out there to require god tier damage and boss killer builds to engage with mechanics without punishing more modest builds or over complicating the whole thing.

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CPTBRUMBL3Z#3146 wrote:

If it really gets that bad, especially for act and major end-game bosses (map bosses I'm inclined to suggest they can stay one-shottable) then they need to do a hard DR until they "phase" like with the Crowbell. Last Epoch been trying to figure out the right way to balance excess damage builds, waiting on the next major update with the next chapter of the story before going back so not sure of the current situation with the ward vs DR (because its end game right now is about as exciting as spamming runs of merciless Piety back in poe1 beta) but there are methods out there to require god tier damage and boss killer builds to engage with mechanics without punishing more modest builds or over complicating the whole thing.

It's occurred to me that GGG might introduce a mechanic so that bosses can only take so much damage per server tick, per second, per phase, etc.. This would in turn allow the boss to shrug off chills, freezes, or other effects.

I'd rather NOT have a system like this because as soon as a player maxes out their "boss DPS" / "ailment thresholds" then what else is there to play for.

There are times where I wish these problems were easier :)

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

^yes, again I agree with nearly everything you are saying...but...

I think you came to the wrong conclusion once more. Bosses should be 1shottabble because access to them is costly and takes time isn't a logical conclusion to make. It can't EVER be acceptable to one shot a boss, no matter what. The true problems and barriers are what need to be addressed.

The problem that needs to be solved there is the access in that particular example. A problem that they already have started to address with the 6 portals on Arbiter. I know you did mention this in your post

I will die on this hill: no boss should EVER be able to be one-shot. Ever. That can't ever be the solution to other design problems. This is especially true of PoE 2 being a new game, with a much heavier emphasis on well-designed boss fights. It simply shouldn't be possible: whether that means they need to add phases to the boss, or that the boss becomes immune to death for x amount of time then so be it.

It is the one type of content that shouldn't be skippable by anyone.


And I think that is precisely the point the OP was trying to make. No matter what the situation is now with bossing, you need to face the actual root problems rather than just allowing a workaround to exist.

In the recent interview, they said that they intend for the boss fights to be a 2-3 minute engagement.


Frankly I'd rather eat a bucket of glass shards than fight the current bosses for 3 minutes unless their OS abilities are toned down to have more room for error.


Back in the early days of WoW the devs stated that anything that let you bypass content or mechanics was unintended gameplay and an exploit. I think the same is obviously true here - if the boss has mechanics - the expectation is that you must engage with them. If you are able to bypass them through DPS, that is indeed unintended gameplay.

My fear remains that boss oneshot builds will either be nerfed or boss HP pool will be massively multiplied or they will end up spawning with huge defenses that drop over time etc.


In short I'm 100% confident that GGG will go out of their way to make sure players are indeed forced to fight the bosses - but I fear that these fights are going to be really miserable with the currently available defenses.

it bosses can one shot me then i think its fair game. its also fun as well to see that the time and effort put into a build can do something amazing. if the entire game was as slow and slogtastic as the campaign i dont think the game would survive a single league

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Mordgier#6997 wrote:

Players should be able to 1 shot bosses with BIS gear.

That's not where we are today so I do agree with you - right now there are builds that can 1-3 shot bosses with minimal investment.

But that's not the issue by itself.

Lets look at WHY people are building to 1 shot bosses:

1 shotting the boss is the only way to guarantee success

Every pinnacle boss is full of 1 shot abilities and the penalty for failure isn't just respawning at checkpoint like it is in your favorite DS style game.


You're back in hideout and your key is gone. Go back to farming - for days.

Players are naturally going to focus on minimizing risk and leaving as little to chance as possible.

It is impossible to guarantee success through building defenses. It is possible to guarantee success through building offense. So here we are.

Also while you may like "underperforming" - for many of us, this is a power fantasy game and "underperformance" is unacceptable.

No, players should be able to one shot lower tier bosses with bis gear. The highest tiers it shouldn't be the case ever.

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cynic1984#0395 wrote:

it bosses can one shot me then i think its fair game. its also fun as well to see that the time and effort put into a build can do something amazing. if the entire game was as slow and slogtastic as the campaign i dont think the game would survive a single league

People may think otherwise but I at least somewhat agree with this P.o.V. I'd rather battles be closer to a "battle of attrition" as opposed to a contest to see who can CC / OS the other first. Lets say 1-3 minutes and not 20 minutes though :)

If a boss can OS me then let me OS the boss. Of course I'd prefer that nobody can OS [one shot] anyone else so then it becomes an issue of finding the right time to strike to chip off damage while not exposing yourself to damage.


NOTE: It should, at some point, be possible to outgear content. That should be a signal to the DEVs though to introduce new and more challenging content rather than taking the fun out of everything.

Balance is key AND that is what's difficult because my sense of balance and someone else's are likely much different.