The Infinite Hunger

I genuinely hope that whomever designed The Infinite Hunger, and whomever decided to ship it both understand that they created arguably the worst boss ever conceived, in any ARPG, period. Assuming you aren't just massively overgeared and can't just kill him before drowning phase, he is absolutely infuriating.

A balanced boss fight has clear, fair, consistent windows of avoid and burst. You get to back and forth. This is not the case on The Infinite Hunger. There's what 20-30 seconds between drowning phases and he can burrow multiple times between drowning phases? I legitimately just had him go Burrow--> Charge---> burrow. Absolutely stupid. It's completely unfair to give a boss an ability that makes them invulnerable, that they can cast multiple times in a short window, when you're also requiring the player optimize their uptime by having something like the Seething Chyme swamp escape mechanic.



To anyone whose going to post build advice, etc etc: Go away. Don't even bother typing. I completely understand the fight, I've done it countless times on every character I've played. We're talking boss design in this thread and nothing else, and The Infinite Hunger is a maddening boss that genuinely detracts from the game just by existing.

obviously you don't understand him, and preemptively refusing advice and "claiming" you do......is frankly ridiculous.

Out of all the boss mechanics in the entire game, short of the original non-uber shaper, you are having a problem with the easiest boss ever created in PoE. In fact, its so easy that there have practically NEVER been forum posts like yours on this boss. Sirus? Tons. Eater and Exarch? Tons (although not nearly as much as the others). Maven? Tons. Infinite Hunger? lol

Take your own advice, go away from the forums, and learn the fight. Or learn how to create a build that lives.

I have no problem with him but I find his mechanics annoying. Gladly you only have to do his tutorial version once and then you can chose fight him never again.
But I find Exarch more annoying while still on Z-DPS. Sometimes he goes out of the bullet hell phase and directly back in >_>

The fight is just poorly designed, there's not much more to it.
I agree that it's probably the worst designed fight in PoE overall.

Phase 1 is ok, even tho his submerge mechanic is clunky as hell, but the intermission phase is so bad. U need specific movement skills to even have a chance on completing it in time and then u stack up a debuff that never goes away. So if ur build is slow or u're taking the wrong direction for a bit or heaven forbit u don't have a shit ton of damage and have to do that intermission phase more than once, u're royally screwed.
(the debuff even persists when u die)

I don't know why they didn't change the fight over the years, but I guess they just didn't see any reason for it. It's a one and done thing and u'll only come back to him if u're way overpowered to farm him in seconds.

When playing Gauntlet, that Boss gives me nightmares everytime. Not Eater or Exarch, nah this sloppy designed mini boss.

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Sadaukar#2191 wrote:

The fight is just poorly designed, there's not much more to it.
I agree that it's probably the worst designed fight in PoE overall.

Phase 1 is ok, even tho his submerge mechanic is clunky as hell, but the intermission phase is so bad. U need specific movement skills to even have a chance on completing it in time and then u stack up a debuff that never goes away. So if ur build is slow or u're taking the wrong direction for a bit or heaven forbit u don't have a shit ton of damage and have to do that intermission phase more than once, u're royally screwed.
(the debuff even persists when u die)

I don't know why they didn't change the fight over the years, but I guess they just didn't see any reason for it. It's a one and done thing and u'll only come back to him if u're way overpowered to farm him in seconds.

When playing Gauntlet, that Boss gives me nightmares everytime. Not Eater or Exarch, nah this sloppy designed mini boss.

and a well-spelled out.....non-understanding of how the mechanic works.

It's not "poor design" if it requires you to do something special to complete it well. That is what's known as "design". Not everything is just "stand and right click". Clunky or poor design are things that are unintentionally impossible to avoid (incorrect hit boxes) or just plain visually a mess (Sirus). But actually LEARNING a special mechanic isn't inherently clunky or bad.....it just requires the TINIEST bit of effort on your part.

Having a movement skill greatly helps, but it isn't necessary.

What IS necessary is understanding that you:
1) follow the flow
2) kill the mobs
3) utilize the islands to NOT stack the debuff
4) and yes....realize that a movement skill really helps with this phase. But that's true of literally EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of PoE.

It is NOT THAT HARD. Jesus people....You might die the first few times, but you should be OBSERVING and LEARNING and ADJUSTING. And then.....you never have a problem again.

I cannot believe this is a serious thread

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

"

Sadaukar#2191 wrote:

The fight is just poorly designed, there's not much more to it.
I agree that it's probably the worst designed fight in PoE overall.

Phase 1 is ok, even tho his submerge mechanic is clunky as hell, but the intermission phase is so bad. U need specific movement skills to even have a chance on completing it in time and then u stack up a debuff that never goes away. So if ur build is slow or u're taking the wrong direction for a bit or heaven forbit u don't have a shit ton of damage and have to do that intermission phase more than once, u're royally screwed.
(the debuff even persists when u die)

I don't know why they didn't change the fight over the years, but I guess they just didn't see any reason for it. It's a one and done thing and u'll only come back to him if u're way overpowered to farm him in seconds.

When playing Gauntlet, that Boss gives me nightmares everytime. Not Eater or Exarch, nah this sloppy designed mini boss.

and a well-spelled out.....non-understanding of how the mechanic works.

It's not "poor design" if it requires you to do something special to complete it well. That is what's known as "design". Not everything is just "stand and right click". Clunky or poor design are things that are unintentionally impossible to avoid (incorrect hit boxes) or just plain visually a mess (Sirus). But actually LEARNING a special mechanic isn't inherently clunky or bad.....it just requires the TINIEST bit of effort on your part.

Having a movement skill greatly helps, but it isn't necessary.

What IS necessary is understanding that you:
1) follow the flow
2) kill the mobs
3) utilize the islands to NOT stack the debuff
4) and yes....realize that a movement skill really helps with this phase. But that's true of literally EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of PoE.

It is NOT THAT HARD. Jesus people....You might die the first few times, but you should be OBSERVING and LEARNING and ADJUSTING. And then.....you never have a problem again.

I cannot believe this is a serious thread

I don't want to argue with u, because u seem to like the mechanic. I don't and obviously the OP doesn't aswell.

I know all of ur points, I don't need to learn them. I'm way over that kind of content, with killing ubers every league, even in SSF. (without meta one shot builds mind u)
So if u want to tell me "git gud", I might aswell stop the conversation right there.

Comparing that boss to all the others in PoE, yes I think it's poorly designed.

Btw. the reason why u might not see as many threads about it is, because like I said in the last post, it's just not a major issue. Most people probably buy a carry once and don't ever think about the fight, where as for the other bosses they have to revisit them more often and thus it's a bigger point of friction imo.

Anyway, have a good one.

i also do think that all bosses in poe should be able to be killed with just strafing and moving back and forth.

(just joking)

ggg already streamlined the boss fights in poe 2 to a boring level so they can be handled with a joystick.
and i really hope that's not the reason the master boss designer hrishi left ggg.

"

Sadaukar#2191 wrote:

I don't want to argue with u, because u seem to like the mechanic. I don't and obviously the OP doesn't aswell.

Here's the crux of your problem (and the OPs) in one concise sentence. I don't "like" or "dislike" ANY boss mechanic. Like and Dislike are NOT (I repeat....NOT) synonmyous with bad design or clunkiness.

You and the OP might not LIKE the boss mechanics. That's completely irrelevant. The "design flaws" you are trying to mention in tandem with that "like/dislike"....don't exist. There are ways around them. Those are unique problems to someone who either doesn't know how to deal with them, or simply can't be bothered and would rather complain. Your gamer laziness doesn't constitute bad design.

THAT is my problem with this conversation, and with your addition to it.


You can DISLIKE whatever you want. For example, I HATE delve. You can't pay me to delve. I think everything about it is stupid and anti-fun. I felt the same about ToTA.
BUT where I personally draw the line is when someone tries to equate bad DESIGN (and complain about it with all the uppity-ness of the OP) with something they simply don't like doing.

It ISN'T bad design: its visually clear, easy to deal with, room for near-total avoidance with minimal effort, and the boss itself just doesn't really hit all that hard. There simply isn't anything within this boss fight that doesn't just "work". The ONLY complaint is the classic invulnerability phase (part of the burrow) to draw out the fight. But that's a complaint across all PoE bosses. It's not unique to THIS one.

Also, for the record, I highly doubt people are buying carries for Infinite Hunger in any sort of mass. It's too easy. It's a sub-boss, easier than many of the regular Atlas Map Bosses. People get carries for Sirus/Maven/etc FAR MORE and yet those fights get complained about constantly on the forums. So.....very bad take right there.

I'll give you a perfect example of why this is so stupid...

Let's take a Breachstone as a hypothetical similar example:
This conversation is akin to complaining that the timer is poor design and runs out too fast. You KNOW it requires clearspeed and movement speed, but you ultimately decide.....nah the design is the problem. You should be able to do it slowly, otherwise "design flaw".

Or fighting Sirus without bleed mitigation. Same thing.


Back to Hunger:

You KNOW that a movement skill helps the second phase GREATLY. Is it clunkier when you attempt the boss without one? Sure.....but that's YOUR fault, not the design.

You KNOW that you can almost completely avoid the debuffs by hopping from island to island and not trying to face-tank the swamp and rush. Nah can't be bothered to use strategy, definitely a design issue.

And of course.....you KNOW that bosses in general are easier when you have more damage. You attempt him on a low dps build, or under-leveled / under-geared and have a hard time? Definitely a design flaw. If your build has low dps, all the more reason why YOU need to play carefully and pay attention to all the safety nets built into the fight.


As the OP wrote, word for word:
"A balanced boss fight has clear, fair, consistent windows of avoid and burst. You get to back and forth."

I don't totally agree with that (not all bosses have to burst at all for example, and it certainly doesn't need to be FAIR *cough* 1hkos), but out of all the PoE bosses, this one is one of the BEST examples of clear AND fair windows of avoidance and burst, packaged in a pretty low hp, low damage requirement boss.

I agree with OP, the fight is horrible. With Exarch, Uber Sirus, Katarina and the likes existing i am not confident in saying he is the worst there is but he is easily top 5. And for the same reasons as with the other bosses.

Visibility on the intermission phase is horrible, it's really hard to tell sometimes in which direction you need to go. Not to mention that it's very unintuitive. There is basically no way for you to know what you need to do the first time you are thrown into that unless you already knew about it.

The stacks utterly disable certain builds at some point by removing all armor/evasion and there is no counterplay to it. The only away to not get any is to kill him super fast which pushes people to play high dps glass cannons. And the boss doing that was made by the same people who advocate meaningful combat, sounds reasonable

And last but not least, the fight mechanics mean you spend a considerable amount of time during the fight NOT fighting at all. You can't engage with him while he is borrowed and you obviously can't engage during the intermission phase.

To me these things are clearly bad design. A well designed boss to me is a boss with intuitive mechanics that provides an interactive fight where the player has to respect the bosses mechanics but the mechanics have counterplay, there is a solution to them. And last but not least, the boss should be fun to fight. The latter is highly subjective of course but i don't think anyone who fought the guy with low dps and had to go through multiple intermission phases would call this fun. So yeah, the fight utterly fails to deliver on anything that i'd consider good design.

Well, at the end he is just another example why GGGs statement from years ago "We are great at making boss fights" is just a meme at this point.