Q:
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons
Q:
This is a suggestion for a dungeon boss I would like to see in game, hopefully exemplifying some new ideas. This is meant more as a sub boss than as a final boss.
The boss is fought in a circular platform without anything else inside (no places for players to hide behind, no places to climb, nothing), and once players enter they cannot leave unless the entire group is defeated. The fight is against a humanoid enemy, be it a human or a norn, nothing bigger than that. The boss uses a device, let’s call it a Mists Modulator, against the players.
Phase 01: the enemy activates the Mist Gas mode. The entire room is filled with an environmental effect that creates 100% endurance degeneration per second – in other words, players cannot dodge. This effect covers the entire room and lasts the entire fight. The boss attacks with a strong melee attack that can cleave and that can hit multiple players, if they are stacking in front of the boss (not strong enough to one shot players, but strong enough to be dangerous), and uses a Swiftness effect that lasts 10 seconds, applied each 10 seconds. When the boss is at 75% health, phase 02 begins.
Why: dodging is a crutch. Players are so used to dodging that they don’t see a point in any other kind of defense. This makes support and control basically irrelevant, and allows players to focus purely on damage instead of bothering with any other kind of defense. By removing that crutch, players need to adapt and figure out new strategies. Without dodging, players are going to be forced to do something about the boss’ main attack; due to his swiftness, players will either have to immobilize him, cripple him, find ways to remove his swiftness by using boon removers, or block his attacks. Just stacking on him would lead to a quick death, but using positioning would allow players to win without too many issues.
Phase 02: the enemy overcharges the Mists Modulator, activating Liquid mode. The endurance degeneration continues in effect, and the boss becomes immune to all sources of direct damage. However, he takes double condition damage, with the caveat that whenever a condition is placed on him, the player inflicting it also receives the same condition (removing it from the player doesn’t remove it from the boss). The enemy switches to a ranged attack, and once in a while does a charging animation to launch a bouncing attack; a single hit does little damage, but if players stay close to each other and allow the attack to bounce, it would do a lot of damage. When the boss is at 25% health, phase 03 begins.
Why: today, direct damage is king in Guild Wars 2. By removing it while removing the ability to dodge, players are forced to think of new ways to win. All professions have conditions, so requiring them isn’t much of an issue, and this would help the professions that rely on condition damage, so often neglegected from dungeons. The fact the boss takes double damage from conditions, together with the condition reflection, helps with the 25 cap on conditions – not only less conditions do more damage, but also a single player inflicting 25 stacks of a given condition would likely kill himself. Considering the amount of condition damage required to kill this boss, players would need to suffer more conditions that a single person can remove, requiring the team to coordinate in removing conditions from each other. At the same time, if they just stack on each other to benefit from area of effect condition removals, like Healing Rain, the boss’ bouncing attack would make short work of them.
Phase 03: the Mist Modulator is charged to maximum, and Solid mode begins. The boss becomes immune to all kinds of damage, players still cannot dodge, and the entire room plunges into the Mists, changing its appearance (to look more otherworldy) and losing the walls of the room; it’s now surrounded by the raw emptiness of the Mists. How are players supposed to defeat the boss? By throwing him out of the room, into the void around them. Using any kind of launch effect (be it a knock back, a launch, a push, or whatever) when the boss is near the edge of the room is enough to accomplish this. Meanwhile, the boss alternates between the melee and ranged attacks used in the last two phases, and he still has Defiant, so each missed push requires four more interrupts until the party can try again. Once he boss falls from the room, his health goes from 25% to 0, and players have seen the last of him.
(Or have they?)
Why: to make control relevant, and teach players to deal with Defiant in a situation in which going for raw Berseker gear is useless. It would require some coordination to use the proper interrupt at the proper time to defeat the boss, at the same time it would empower the players by taking a boss from 25% health to zero health so quickly.
The idea with this boss fight is to focus on the aspects of combat neglected in the rest of the game – support, control, condition damage – while avoiding the aspects of the game players currently rely on – direct damage and dodging. At the same time, this boss fight – unlike many of those currently in Guild Wars 2 – don’t rely on an enemy inflicting Fear, stuns, or knock backs (which are effects all bad MMOs rely on to make an enemy challenging). In fact, Stability would be nearly useless in this fight.
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