Will bosses recover if you die or retreat?

Just curious if Bosses will heal if you retreat from battle for a length of time or die. A big problem I had with D2 is that bosses were just time sinks where dying or retreating to down simply paused the battle, allowing you to return at full strength while the boss was still injured.

As of now, no, the bosses will not recover. The only exceptions are monsters with the life regeneration mod.

If you use a town portal in the middle of a fight with Brutus, his health will be exactly the same as when you return provided that you return before the instance closes.

Adding to this, the only instances where bosses recover health would be in the cases of the 3 bandit leaders in Act 2.

Eh, yes and no.

For brutus, merviel, and many rare monsters, they don't regen back to full if you take a break or died.

However, the three bandits uses a different mechanism, and if you die or go back to town in mid battle, the boss will instantly be back to full hp. (assuming you're soloing)

I really hope they will implement this to make bosses require strategy and skill as opposed to simple time and persistance. It seems dumb that the heroes can run away and heal at anytime while the major bosses aren't afforded the same luxury... It seems only fair if the player dies or retreats from the battle to recover that major bosses should do the same. Otherwise boss difficulty never becomes about challenge as it does about tedium. I really want to see this; it has been implemented in TL2 and Diablo 3

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YoMicky wrote:

Adding to this, the only instances where bosses recover health would be in the cases of the 3 bandit leaders in Act 2.

I totally forgot about this, but the Bandits still have another difference. If you kill the bandit leader's followers then portal out and go back, the leader will be at full health but the followers will still be dead. This makes a solo fight much easier.

A system where the game constantly checks you for gear progression by making bosses a 'challenge' is not the optimal system, Soulmancer. You'll find that the challenges in this game are plentiful and do not need another addition to their mix in the form of boss hp regeneration.

If you played D3, you would find that this system was a disaster because of how frustrating it is to the player to die from a boss, have death penalties applied, then have to walk all the way back as quickly as possible only to find the boss who had maybe 10% hp fully healed within seconds of the fight.

While I agree that it's "unfair" to the monsters, I actually prefer that in this genre. ARPGs, to me, are all about feeling very powerful, not about making it fair for the randomly-named zombie, Whitesucker the Black. I'll take fun for players and less time wasted over fairness for npcs any day in a game like this, thanks.

And thank you guys for clarifying on the bandit leaders :)

I just see it as a built in cheat/exploit mechanic that removes all challenge from the bosses unless you're playing hardcore. I want bosses to feel intense with the actual risk of being defeated. Rather than "oh I'm out of potions, time to town portal or run away" or "oh I died...whatever who cares" This isn't some blockade or gear checking mechanic, it simply makes it so you need to apply more thought, strategy and preparation when confronting bosses rather then them just being treated as another casual enemy.

I fail to see how this is frustrating in Diablo 3 considering how easy all of the bosses are... The only boss in Diablo 3 where this was a bit of a pain was Belial because it was a three phase battle. But overall I much prefer this system rather that knowing 100% certainty I am going to take down any boss without any skill or strategy.

Agreed with Soulmancer totally, the freedom of getting your flasks fulled by portalling to town nd continue fight where you left is hardly a "challenge" regardless the might of that monster ever be.

All bosses should be done like bandits' fight, additionally every boss should be spawned with Regenerates Life mod stickied to them, that's higher than the norm. values.

Rather than spending forever composing a larger post to counter your arguments, I will instead shorten it to 4 things.

-First and foremost, if you don't approve of this "exploit" then simply don't use it. Finding an exploit in a game is actually a lot of fun for some players because it lets them think they can choose how they want to play a game, and that's exactly what this is - a choice.

-ARPG's are not about the following; logic, balance, skill, strategy.
Instead, they are about the following; fun, loot, power, control, creativity(which can result in choosing your own strategies, i.e. planning builds), replayability.
Telling people how they should and shouldn't play any game, particularly in this genre, results in a disaster.

-Dieing is a significant and frustrating penalty past Cruel and these fights would serve as gear checks. Don't believe me? Here's an example. Level a character through Act 1 Normal without twinking it, then try and kill Merveil without any cold resist gear. See how that functions? Now imagine that with a Regenerate Life mod on her and when you come back from dying, she's at full health.
I hope that you have fun with that if that's how you would prefer to play, but personally I don't think a lot of people would choose that path. If that's how you so desire, then be a hard ass. Run all the way back to her from a wp, and if the instance wasn't already reset, simply Ctrl + click Cavern of Anger and reset Merveil. Done!

-If you've ever fought a rare monster with Regenerate Life, then you'll know how much of an even larger gear check that is. They regen a percentage of their life every second, forcing you to have to put out a ton of dps in order to compensate. Bosses, in comparison to rare monsters(Oak, Brutus, Oak), have huge health pools and 1% of their life being regenerated per second could mean 50% or even 100% damage reduction for some players. If they choose to take the hard way and slowly chip away at these bosses, then let them spend their currency scrolls doing so.

I hope GGG does not add this feature into the game. It is a huge reason why we're receiving so many people from certain other games. If you don't think D3 fights were frustrating, perhaps the hundreds of people in Normal Global Chat would be more than happy to inform you of how strongly they disagree. They may even already be talking about it before you bring up the topic if you're lucky.

Edit - I realized after posting this that this feature will most likely be available through purchasing and customizing your own league in the future. I strongly disagree with implementing this idea in Default League, but I strongly encourage you to design a league with this in mind. If this currently isn't in the design plan for private leagues then suggesting it as an option would be a good idea.

Edit 2 - If you'll remember back to D2 where you're in the middle of fighting Andy and her poison is about to kill you. People would tp and run back to Akara, buy more pots and go back in for the kill. This is why this mechanic is in the game. If you don't like it, no one is forcing you to use it and apparently kill the fun for yourself. I think you're in the wrong genre of games, personally.