tl;dr
TA explorable spider final boss needs some dev love.
Background
I think there are too many adds in the final boss fight of Twilight Arbor (explorable). We tried several strategies, but the spider’s attacks were constant, overwhelming and so numerous as to render kiting a lost cause. Despite having a full dps warrior and two elementalists, we could not kill them fast enough to catch a break. Combined with the nightmare tree’s attacks, our party inevitably wiped in seconds.
Currently, there are only two commonly-used methods of beating this boss. First, roll a very specific build and beat the boss on your first try. If you roll another build or wipe once, you generally can’t win. Second, DPS the boss using long range single-target skills, without hitting any spiders at all. Again, if you mess up, restart the dungeon.
Suggestion #1
A simple fix would be slow the respawning of spiders to a trickle, then have numerous amounts of spiders spawn as an effect of a special Nightmare tree attack. The spiders should de-spawn to their starting number if the boss is reset. This would make the spiders a major threat occasionally and a distraction throughout.
Suggestion #2
A more elaborate fix might be to spawn an environmental weapon shield from Leurent to help you deal with the adds. This shield would have special mechanics to make the boss more accessible and interesting to fight. The shield offers special skills:
- (1) Bash: Standard melee attack using the shield.
- (2) Absorb: block projectiles with the shield. You’re mobile while you’re blocking. This chains to another skill, which stops you from blocking and does an arcing AoE in front of you that damages and knocks back foes and starts a short recharge. Every time you block a projectile, you gain a stack of corruption, which works like the hammer in the cliffside fractal (30 stacks = stun, 40 stacks = down). Using this skill will draw aggro from the tree, which has a skill to knock you down, end this ability, and reset Meteor Dash if you don’t avoid it. The corruption stacks go away at a rate of about one per second.
- (3) Meteor Dash (Level 1): charge forward, damaging enemies you move through. If you reach target enemy, slam into them with enough force for AoE damage. This charges up to Meteor Dash (Level 3) depending on how many attacks you blocked.
- (4) Ensorcelling Glimmer: a decent recharge ability that grants 2-3 second stealth to nearby allies – but not you. The idea is you can take the pressure off allies and get spiders to shoot at you.
- (5) Pass: throw the shield with a ground target ability. If you hit an ally, that ally equips the shield and maintains the meteor dash level that you had. If you miss, the shield sits on the ground where the ground target was placed and the Meteor Dash ability resets. In either case, the ground target area damages and knocks back enemies. If the shield lands on the ground a certain radius away from the nightmare tree, it returns to the thrower (to avoid the shield becoming unreachable).
In either case, I think this encounter needs some dev love. Let me know if you like this suggestion!