Hardmode bosses need mechanics not unfairness

[Ilintar]

I've suggested mechanics several times that people keep outright refusing to address.

 

Okay, I'll try to address them to show you that oftentimes overriding a default mechanism by innovative ones creates more problems than it avoids.

 

Use of one or more of the following mechanics can and will test DPS by the very nature of the fact that you can't sit around and rely on the tanks and healers to make sure no one ever dies:

1) Make bosses have less predictable aggro patterns (less easily tanked)

 

But if the boss is "less easily tanked", then there are two variations of this. In one variation, it's simply an additional task for the healer to switch targets from time to time (and some bosses already have this), in another variation, he switches aggro so much that the tank is relatively worthless.

 

I also fail to see how this actually tests DPS instead of adding a random enrage timer of type "kill boss before he targets healer with his special attack 3 times in a row". Such random event triggers are extremely frustrating because you can't really plan a fight around such a thing - when it randomly happens, you just wipe.

 

2) Spawn adds that cannot be easily tanked (as a function of damage/armor penetration/lifesteal rather than threat), cannot be mezzed, and near-instantly respawn when killed

 

This would at least require a redesign of some classes to give them more options at AOE damage. Classes with AOE damage are much better at mob control (usually, ranged helps too). This might not necessarily be a bad thing in itself (add a further specialization level to the current one of tank/healer/dps, with tank/healer/point dps/aoe dps), but certainly requires a lot of careful planning and a redesign of the entire paradigm.

 

3) Spawn adds that cannot be mezzed, and heal the boss with a lifesteal mechanic based on the amount of max health of their target (tanks tanking them = higher heals on the boss)

 

This is actually a decent solution, but it still doesn't actually weed out bad DPS. You can miss a lot of rotations as long as you can still finally bring the boss down. Still, it does at least implement the gear check.

 

4) Take people out of the fight unexpectedly for a significant amount of time, either through death or a banish mechanic of some sort

 

You mean like Soa does with mind traps / cyclone?

 

This is doable in ops, where there are class redundancies, but not in flashpoints where the team members are pretty specialized. As with point 2, this adds a very annoying element of randomness - how do you survive if your healer is picked twice in a row? To make this work, you have to actually reduce the boss damage so much that he no longer becomes a threat once other team members are taken out - enter Malgus.

[BlazingShadow]

How are enrage timers not challenging? THe enrage timers ARE a challenge

 

the challenge is: How can my group optimize DPS in order to defeat the boss before he enrages, and what is our fallback plan in case the boss DOES enrage? (believe it or not, a shieldtech and a good medic can allow for over 20 seconds of extra time after the enrage kicks off)

[darkonnis]

Enrage timers are a lazy solution. I agree maybe that the final boss of each HM should enrage (as thats the one that drops the columi gear) but each boss before that (who drops tionese/equiv) shouldn't. Solutions would be:

Enrage timer met, thus:

Gains cleave,

spawns adds with masses of HP but not much damage = more adds spawn the longer the fight goes on

Gives a healing debuff on tank

Does an AOE effect, anyone standing outside/inside of a circle around him take damage.

CC's random members of the group for short periods of time, one after the other.

Damage slowly gets higher, like 10% every 10seconds or so

Gains more armour the longer the fight goes on after enrage.

 

Why should only the last boss enrage with damage?

Well, lets face it, no one runs HM's for tionese gear, and if you do. I think you need to reassess your goals. So once you have the columi from that FP, you dont need to go back. Doing it like this means that groups can do the first bosses if they learn the mechanics to get gear, ready to do the final boss when they have more gear.

It also doesn't make the hardmode "easier" because you would still need effective DPS to get the decent gear at the end anyway.

[dustersd]

Enrage timers are a worthless and lazy way to design content in any game. Either I can kill the mob with my group, or I can't. Why should it matter how long it takes me to accomplish my goal? Dead is dead.

 

I'm from EQ2 and that mechanic, while it does exist on some of the higher end content, is used as an obvious timer mechanic and doesn't just wipe you but starts ramping up the difficulty while leaving you a chance if you start executing well.

 

Enrage timers shouldn't exist in any fashion - they aren't fun, they aren't challenging and they bring nothing to the event. Pure Dev Lazy.

 

No that is retarded. Everyone would just bring 4 healers and every fight would be a joke.

[Loendar]

No that is retarded. Everyone would just bring 4 healers and every fight would be a joke.

 

Read the thread. This has been proven untrue over and over. I grow tired of people making statements with no facts as if they are.

 

First off - it is hard to stack tons of healers in a group of 4. We are commenting on the subject as a whole and the fights should be designed to be a challenge without resorting to 'easy mode' of throwing enrage on everything.

 

Really - if you aren't going to read the entire thread (or at least enough to grasp the conversation and both sides of the debate) simply refrain from responding. Your opinion is easy to dismiss when you show ignorance of the subject.

Edited February 13, 2012 by Loendar

[XAubrey]

Wow 41 pages... I only bothered to read the first page

 

The thing I hate worst about the enrage timer is that it forces a certain group composition. You MUST have a tank, two dps, and a healer. Why shouldn't I be able to run a hard mode with three tanks and a healer? Or three tanks and a dps? If we're skillful players, it should be possible. But no, the enrage timer takes skill right out of the equation. It's all about the gear.

 

And that's another thing I don't like about the enrage timer: the gear check. If you're in a PUG, better check out your dps. Are they wearing anything less than level 49 purple? If so, you'll probably have problems if you're anywhere other than Black Talon.

 

In summary:

- enrage timer removes choice by forcing a specific group composition

- enrage timer makes it so equipment is more important than skill

[pahbi]

Enrage timers are just over used and lazy design.

 

Fights get reduced to frantic dps races instead of being more about strategy.

 

I'd rather have a 5 minute fight that is interested and fun, than a 2 minute nuke fest to beat the enrage timer.

 

- P

[crimsonsglory]

Suggestions - boss spawn 2 adds in the first minute of the encounter, and for every min he spawn 2 more. So by the 5th minute you will have 10 adds.

 

Or boss hits progressively harder, every 2mins he does 30% more damage so by the 6th minute , Boss hits almost 100% harder

 

Or healing debuff on tank as time pass. Tank takes xx% less healing as fight goes on.

 

Or as time passes raid take xxx amount of aoe damage.

 

Im all for enrage timer though.

These are suggestions OP could have posted but didnt

[Bludvein]

Enrage timers are a freaking joke in this game for the most part, and if your routinely hitting them...well I feel bad for you. We cleared all the hard modes in leveling gear, and the only one that was even slightly hard for us was sith entity, but even that we managed to down with a good strategy.

 

How is it unfair that dps have to do their job?

 

Also, about the complaint about enrage timers not about strategy. Obviously if your having trouble beating the timer you need to change your game plan to maximize uptime on the boss. That sounds like it has a lot to do with strategy to me.

[EternalFinality]

Enrage timers are the laziest design to add "challenge" that a dev could possibly implement.

 

And Bioware slapped in on EVERYTHING.

[Sir-Phobos]

To me enrage timers have been a lazy design choice made my developers who can't think of ways to make encounters challenging.

 

My first MMO and the one I played the longest was Everquest. I remember old raid encounters, from Naggy and Vox, to Trakanon and Venril Sathir, to Sontalak and others. None of these bosses "enraged", but the expectation was that you needed enough DPS to get them down as quick as humanly possible, otherwise large AOE DDs and AOE fear would completely overwhelm your healers and wipe your party. Other raids had timed adds, and if you couldn't get them down fast enough, your CC teams would start to get overwhelmed and you would probably wipe.

 

My point, in short, is that there are other ways to make content hard other than just saying "if you don't kill the boss in x amount of time, he starts hitting 10 times harder". Not to mention it just doesn't make sense, does the boss just think "this is taking too long, I need to start trying harder and get this over with"?

[Flain]

There needs to be some sort of enrage mechanic imo, because otherwise you could bring a load of healers and fight the boss for the longest time without fear of dying. But to base the whole fight on a tight enrage when you have learned all of the other mechanics I don't like, at all.

[Loendar]

There needs to be some sort of enrage mechanic imo, because otherwise you could bring a load of healers and fight the boss for the longest time without fear of dying. But to base the whole fight on a tight enrage when you have learned all of the other mechanics I don't like, at all.

 

Again...again with this.

 

The mobs need to be designed in manner that doesn't allow you to heal it death. It has been covered ad nasuem in these pages on how that can be done.

 

You have a four man group - you CANNOT 'fill it with healers' and expect to accomplish something.

[Aussiedroid]

I agree, we should be seeing enhanced game play, not simply wether or not we have the DPS in a group to down a boss.

 

Keep current mechanics from standard mode but add more to challenge us. Add more HPs to the boss along with a few new surprises with mechanics we dont see in normal mode. Maybe adds spawn more or quicker, or the adds have additional abilities. Maybe the boss will increase its AOE range or frequency, or add a new weapon to its arsenal.

 

There is so many variations I can think of yet seems there was some blanket design that simply added an enrage after xx mins. Thats no fun.

 

If I am a better player, already mastered the normal versions I want to be challenged further by a more complex boss mechanics. I see some of the great creative ideas in your OPs so far and think the Flashpoints simply got no attention

 

Please update this.

 

Perhaps the enrage is suitable for another mode ... a Speed Flashpoint mode, where the goal is to finish as quickly as possible. Now that would make sense. It may be good for the occasional boss in Hard mode too but NOT every single one!

 

In short, it shouldnt depend on my DPS soley to succeed, it should be my skill and that of the group. Even if it takes 3 times as long to finally kill a boss off due to the additional mechanics or hitpoints ... as a player I would feel more of a sense of accomplishment.

 

Cheers.

[Flain]

Again...again with this.

 

The mobs need to be designed in manner that doesn't allow you to heal it death. It has been covered ad nasuem in these pages on how that can be done.

 

You have a four man group - you CANNOT 'fill it with healers' and expect to accomplish something.

 

I don't see how you can design a boss that doesn't allow you to heal it to death especially in this game where you have many classes with healing abilities. Once you have the mechanics of any boss down you can do it all day and never die. The only other way would be the boss would have so much damage it couldn't be healed anyway, then you'd have healers complaining like they did with Bulwark that it's impossible to heal. It's right to have some kind of enrage mechanic to prevent this, what my point it right now it's ALL ABOUT beating the tight enrage which is lazy programming imo.

[Daovin]

ITT:

 

DPS who don't want to be accounted for groups wiping, wants the blame to be squarely on healers/tanks.

[eNcFireWraith]

Enrage timers ensure you have "skilled" DPS players rather than just skilled tanks and healers. If your DPS is bad, you can't kill the boss, just like you couldn't kill the boss with bad healers or tanks. Taking out enrage timers and putting in other stuff would just stack more importance on the tank and healer roles.

[IThrowRocks]

Again...again with this.

 

The mobs need to be designed in manner that doesn't allow you to heal it death. It has been covered ad nasuem in these pages on how that can be done.

 

You have a four man group - you CANNOT 'fill it with healers' and expect to accomplish something.

 

 

You don’t need to “fill” the group with healers to make encounters stupidly easy. Currently for 8 man content, 2 healers are optimal. If there are no enrage timers then what’s stopping a group from taking 3 and coasting? Simply adding a third healer for content designed for 2 makes things much easier. Is your mob mechanic that requires not heal stacking going to be sophisticated enough to decipher between small differences like this?

[Loendar]

You don’t need to “fill” the group with healers to make encounters stupidly easy. Currently for 8 man content, 2 healers are optimal. If there are no enrage timers then what’s stopping a group from taking 3 and coasting? Simply adding a third healer for content designed for 2 makes things much easier. Is your mob mechanic that requires not heal stacking going to be sophisticated enough to decipher between small differences like this?

 

I know you have been on this thread long enough and read enough to already know the answer to your question and that mechanics suggestions have been made that fit the criteria you are asking about.

 

I've grown tired people wanting the same thing re-hashed over and over because they don't want to understand another way of dong it or feel that it is just easier this way.

 

It is why every time someone comes in with the 'all healers' group argument it is painfully obvious that they haven't taken the time to read the thread and the counter-points to that which haven't really been successfully disputed outside 'well, that is sorta like an enrage timer but harder to code'. That isn't a reason not to do something right.

 

As I know for a fact YOU personally have read those responses and in at least one case even said that you could see how it would work I don't feel any great need to work it all out for you again.

[IThrowRocks]

I personally come back when I have off time at work. I don't shift through the countless responses of people who say that there is a better way to test dps without a timer. Nobody has actually said anything about what this magical mechanic is.

 

Any game that's worth a damn has some form of limiting its boss fight times. I've seen bosses that straight kill a player as part of the mechanic. Healers mana bars have acted like enrage bars. Add overwhelming acts as an enrage timer.

 

Its like you guys want the wheel to be reinvented. There are only so many things that can be done and honestly looking at a lot of the fights I feel that bioware has created a lot of fights that bring what people are asking for.

 

 

I've said this half a dozen times in this thread and none of you timer haters have adressed it because you can't.

 

Enrage timers are not a mechanic they are a standard.

 

If you want to cry about enrage timers being overused and boring then where is the thread saying threat tables and the tank and raid being hit by the boss are overused and unoriginal mechanics?

 

 

This game implements adds that need to be killed. It implements prison mechanics where a node needs to be dpsed. It implements smart dps where two bosses need to be downed in a very short time frame. It has others too but what do you people want? The game implements mechanics to challenge the dps and sets an overall standard for every given fight. The dps letting the fight go to enrage is equivalent to the healers letting the tank drop or the tank losing agro.

 

 

Edit:

 

And Loendar Im not too lazy to read the thread. Im just smart enough not to read "I don't like enrage timers" over and over where the only argument being made is "they can do something better"

Edited February 15, 2012 by IThrowRocks

[Baconmonster]

Enrage timer lets me hold scrubby dps accountable for poor performance. Sorry but I love the enrage timer. DPS can't coast by and simply go through the motions during fights anymore? Great.

 

It's not like any of these fights are difficult anyway. I mean Mentor is the most complex/fun fight in this game to me and it's in a 4 man FP, and while it is well designed it's still not that difficult. Once the fights actually become difficult to even reach the enrage timer then you can complain about tight enrage timers.

 

Don't get me wrong I'm not against new mechanics being introduced before an enrage timer, but with the difficulty of current content, why don't we just add those mechanics in for the entire fight. Sorry, but complaining about the enrage timers on this content is just beyond me. If it is good, technique driven content on the vast majority of ops bosses I wouldn't be on nightmare level content in my third week as 50.

[Zallan]

Enrage timers place a greater importance on executing boss mechanics (as opposed to getting away with sloppy maneuvering) - I think that's a perfectly reasonable system for increasing difficulty.

 

What really needs to be removed are the countless amount of Ops bugs ranging from loot all the way to core mechanics.

[Aluo]

They are not enrage timers people. They are GEAR CHECKS!

 

Those of you crying about enrage timers fail to pull your heads out of your asses for 2 seconds to realize the only reason these timers are there is to GEAR CHECK YOU!.

 

If you could just walk through all the content with random crap gear then what fun would that be.

 

The entire point of the enrage timer is to force you to run content in an orderly fashion so you can overcome the fact your just flat out not that good.

 

Then you have guilds like mine that just flat out wont accept bad players.

 

That is how you get ***** done..... or I guess you could just waltz in here and cry like a little punk! yeah that is right.... I called you a PUNK!

[IThrowRocks]

They are not enrage timers people. They are GEAR CHECKS!

 

Those of you crying about enrage timers fail to pull your heads out of your asses for 2 seconds to realize the only reason these timers are there is to GEAR CHECK YOU!.

 

If you could just walk through all the content with random crap gear then what fun would that be.

 

The entire point of the enrage timer is to force you to run content in an orderly fashion so you can overcome the fact your just flat out not that good.

 

Then you have guilds like mine that just flat out wont accept bad players.

 

That is how you get ***** done..... or I guess you could just waltz in here and cry like a little punk! yeah that is right.... I called you a PUNK!

 

Valid point but too narrow and close minded. Just because you have the gear you should have walking into an encounter doesn't mean the dps can slack and still hit the timer.

[Relith]

To me enrage timers have been a lazy design choice made my developers who can't think of ways to make encounters challenging.

 

My first MMO and the one I played the longest was Everquest. I remember old raid encounters, from Naggy and Vox, to Trakanon and Venril Sathir, to Sontalak and others. None of these bosses "enraged", but the expectation was that you needed enough DPS to get them down as quick as humanly possible, otherwise large AOE DDs and AOE fear would completely overwhelm your healers and wipe your party. Other raids had timed adds, and if you couldn't get them down fast enough, your CC teams would start to get overwhelmed and you would probably wipe.

 

My point, in short, is that there are other ways to make content hard other than just saying "if you don't kill the boss in x amount of time, he starts hitting 10 times harder". Not to mention it just doesn't make sense, does the boss just think "this is taking too long, I need to start trying harder and get this over with"?

 

 

This is one of the few guys here who "gets it".