Guild Wars 2

Reposted from the (now deceased) suggestions forum. Not quite sure where to put this because a lot of things in the game has bosses.

Design a boss encounter. You can do whatever you want as long as the fight is actually possible to beat by humans. It can be a dungeon boss, a fractal boss, a world boss encounter or for the sadists out there, make a ‘boss’ JP!

Give your boss a name, tell us the mechanics involved and maybe inject a bit of life into it with some lore.

Also free feel to comment on other people’s creations.

Maybe Anet will even take some ideas from here

Kanis, Banisher of Light

Stage: a 2000 radius circular arena

Persistent throughout the encounter apart from final phase

Passive abilities
-Defiance (we all know what this does)
-Cannot be knocked back. Can be crippled.

Skills
-Swipe: 200 range frontal melee attack, does moderate damage, cleaves
-Shadowbolt: moderate damage single projectile aimed at random player
-Dark Crash: multiple AoE circles appear around the arena, exploding 1.5 seconds in a shadow pillar, dealing high damage to anyone caught within
-Shadow Lance: 8000 range column attack aimed at random player, leaves a 3 second persisting AoE behind
-Gives self 30s protection and retaliation
-Gives 25 stacks of confusion unto random target, 25 sec CD and cannot target the same player twice. (Audio cue ‘The shadows warp your mind!’)

-Into the Void (audio cue ‘Be consumed by the darkness!’): shadowsteps into the middle of the arena and starts a 6 second stationary channel. Gains unpurgable 1 stack of the ‘Void Calling’ boon every second, removes all buffs and debuffs from all players and enemies at 3 stacks, casts Into the Void at 6 stacks.

Pillars of divine light appears around the arena, step into one to consume it and gain 5 second Aegis.

2400 radius single hit PBAoE, unblockable by normal means, cannot be evaded, can only be blocked by Aegis.

-Shadow Surge (audio cue ‘Burn to ashes!’): infinite stationary channel, effects of Defiance not active during channel. Targets 1 random player and channels a low-moderate damage channeled attack at target until target is dead.

Phase 1

Passives
-Dark Aegis: invulnerable to all damage unless the target has 15 more more stacks of vulnerability.

Skills
-Summons a small number shades from sides of arena. Gives boss a stack of ‘End of Days’ boon if allowed to reach boss. Kills all players at 30 stacks.
-Randomly switches the positions of 2 players
-Life-ending Light: boss will aim the attack, shown by a faint ray of light and fire it after 1 second. A 3 second continuous beam which does moderate damage to anyone it hits, boss will rotate beam in either direction and keep rotating in that direction throughout cast. Can only cast and will keep casting during Shadow Beam.

-Gives all players a 10 second uncleansible Shadowflame condition, causing a slow-moving 300 radius AoE to follow the player. AoE will do heavy damage on all players it touches, disappears on removal of condition.

-Shadow Beam (audio cue ‘Embrace the corruption!’, casted 2 times during phase1): shadowsteps into the middle of the arena at start of each cast. Shadow Beam links boss to a player with a beam, does heavy damage to anyone hit by the beam, cannot be evaded. Players will not receive damage from own beam but will be damaged by other players’ beams. Kills all shades at the beginning of cast. Laser lasts for 12 seconds.

1st cast: gives 3 random players 1 stack of the uncleansible Targeted condition every second. Channels Shadow Beam at 5 stacks.

Players with 5 stacks of Targeted takes constant moderate damage if within 1700 range of the boss. Also leaves behind trails of darkness, doing heavy damage to anyone stepping on them.

2nd cast: places a 300 radius PBAoE peristing throughout the cash. Stacks players with either Targeted or Linked conditions. Both conditions have same effects as above except that Linked takes damage if outside of 800 range instead.

Phase 2 (audio cue ‘Your kind swims in the darkness. See? Your own shadow haunts you!’)

Passive abilities and skills
-Slowed: movement speed reduced by 50%
-Spewing Filth: leaves behind trails of moderate damage filth. Filth puddles last 10 seconds.
-Shadow Barrier: prevents all damage. Removed for 10 seconds when boss hits a light well.
-Boss can gain a purgable boon which gives him 50% more speed.

(continued next post)

Mechanics

At the start of the phase, boss will lose all stacks of ‘End of Days’ and summon a Shadow Stalker on top of every player, and aggro the remaining player, aggro on remaining player will persist throughout the phase until that player is dead. If targeted player downs, the boss will target another player (that player’s Shadow Stalker dies).

A single light well will appear in a random spot in the room, and will be consumed by boss when boss touches it, reappearing in another spot.

Shadow Stalkers have 10m HP and moves at 50% speed. Each stalker will target a player and aggro them until they are downed, at which point the stalker will suicide. Will respawn on top of a player if a player resurrects. Gains 1 stack of unpurgable Entropy boon per second on spawn.

Both boss and stalkers will have the Spewing Filth passive. Boss will have Entropy as well, starting to gain stacks at beginning of phase transition.

At 5 stacks of Entropy, boss/stalker will do an instant cast 200 radius PBAoE which instantly downs any player hit if any player approaches this range.

If the target goes outside of 900 range of stalkers, stalker will pull player into melee range (and cast Entropy).

Final Phase (starts at 20k HP)

Will start by shadowstepping into the middle of the arena, loses Dark Aegis and start to chanting audio cue:

‘Eternal darkness, I call upon thee. Infinite shadows, gather to me. Endless void, infuse me with your strength!’

After chant ends, boss will start to gain 1 stack of End of Days every second. Boss will have a One with the Darkness passive which makes him undamaged by any normal attack.

Bow of Light environmental weapon will drop at player’s feet. Bow of Light has 2 skills:

1. does a fixed 400 damage per hit to boss. Damage not affected by any boons or conditions.
2. applies user with 20 second Aegis (coodown 7 seconds)

Boss will cast a lot of Dark Crashes around the Arena, and will cast Into the Void every 10 seconds. Void Calling will now remove all boons/conditions at 1 stack and cast at 3 stacks. Boss will not cast any other skill.

Edit: changed stuff based on suggestions and because stupid.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512

(I can’t quote from archived threads….. bah)

I want to point out a few things that I think are problematic about this boss design, and things I like:

Xae Isareth.1364:
Passive abilities
-Defiance (we all know what this does)
I would like to see boss designs that start with something to replace Defiance. It is a terrible mechanic. But I see you’ve added a point where defiance disappears naturally in the battle. That is actually an interesting take on it.
Xae Isareth.1364:
-Stability
If the boss already has Defiance, he doesn’t really need stability. I think the boss would be better, if the boss had stability instead of defiance, so you can strip the boon off of him. But again, I also like the idea of the boss having moves where Defiance is always down.
Xae Isareth.1364:
-Gives 25 stacks of confusion unto random target, 25 sec CD and cannot target the same player twice
Why the max amount of stacks? Why not make it a targeted aoe, that adds more stacks of confusion if the player stays in the aoe? 25 seems a bit harsh, and not much fun.
Xae Isareth.1364:
-Into the Void (audio cue ‘Be consumed by the darkness!’): shadowsteps into the middle of the arena and starts a 5 second stationary channel. Gains unpurgable 1 stack of the ‘Void Calling’ boon every second, removes all buffs and debuffs from all players and enemies at 3 stacks, casts Into the Void at 5 stacks.
It would be interesting if this attack forced the players to either interrupt it, or to get as far away from the boss as possible. Maybe the boss is normally not affected by vulnerability, but during this channel attack he is. That would make it a trade of between abusing this moment of temporary weakness, and avoiding the attack itself. Make the attack deal massive damage on top of that, to encourage the players to do something.
Xae Isareth.1364:
2400 radius single hit PBAoE, unblockable by normal means, cannot be evaded, can only be blocked by Aegis.
This is terrible. Not everyone has Aegis, and it should never be a requirement.
Xae Isareth.1364:
-Shadow Surge (audio cue ‘Burn to ashes!’): infinite stationary channel, effects of Defiance not active during channel. Targets 1 random player and channels a low-moderate damage channeled attack at target until target is dead.
This is a good idea. A moment when Defiance is down, and a clear audio cue.
Xae Isareth.1364:
-Summons shades from sides of arena. Gives boss a stack of ‘End of Days’ boon if allowed to reach boss. Kills all players at 30 stacks.
-Randomly switches the positions of 2 players
I don’t think any attack should be an insta kill, and certainly not a complete wipe.
Xae Isareth.1364:
-Gives all players a 10 second uncleansible Shadowflame condition, causing a slow-moving 300 radius AoE to follow the player. AoE will do heavy damage on all players it touches, disappears on removal of condition.
This would be interesting.
Xae Isareth.1364:
Bow of Light environmental weapon will drop at player’s feet. Bow of Light has 2 skills:
This seems a bit random. Where does this bow come from?
Overall I like how you’ve included clear audio cues for a lot of the moves. This is one of the things missing from GW2’s boss battles right now.

Rash.6514

I like this, I really like this.

While I agree with Mad Queen with some of the problems, I like the innovation on boss battles. I like one-hit-kills but with alternatives to avoid it. I also don’t like forcing players into bringing a compulsory boon into battle like Aegis. It should be something the players need to do, independently of their classes, to avoid the damage. I like player skill. I like players that know how to play their classes, and are good at it. They must all have a chance. Plus, I like the audio cues. Hey, I might even write my own boss battle later.

One more thing, I like contributions, so evolving your idea would be nice.

Rash.6514

Boss name: Ingul, The Crazed (draft)

-> This is mostly a dodge/CC based boss fight. I didn’t want to include too many different mechanics at the same time for this guy. Different bosses, different mechanics.

Main characteristics (these are the same throughout the batlle)

Boss has no Defiant

Each time the boss is controlled (knocked down, feared, immobilized, stunned, blinded, dazed, confused, etc), he gains a stack of “madness”

At 10 stacks of madness he screams (he will perform a long, 1/2 to 1sec, breathing action before that) that applies an unremovable fear for 9 seconds and remove 11% of players max health per second (thus forcing players to heal themselves and avoid any damage before taking the decision to interrupt him the 10th time)

After madness, the boss will be exausted and completely open for attacks (like Jormag) for 7 seconds. (The surviving players will have to decide whether to heal themselves or to hit the boss at this time)

Phase 1 (until 75% HP)

Boss will slash all players in a 180º cone in front of him while walking around the room.
Boss walking speed matches a normal player’s speed.

Every 6 seconds, if a player is within melee range of the boss (this is shorter than the reach of his slashes), the boss will smash the floor down on this player, dealing massive damage and knocking all players in the area down for 5 seconds. The area will cover about 35% of the room.

Additionally, the area affected by the boss’ smash will be damaged making it harder to walk, thus applying a speed reduction to players in that area (this is not Cripple, so it can’t be removed with condition removals, the speed reduction is for players within the area only). The area will remain damaged for 30 seconds.

Phase 2 (until 40% HP)

Boss will not walk anymore, he will choose a preferred attacking location.

Every 5 seconds, the boss will stomp his foot on the ground twice, creating two shockwaves that are exactly two dodge rolls apart. Each shockwave will hit players for 50% HP and can be dodged, blocked, protected and retaliated. The shockwave will knock players down for 2 seconds and players with stability can avoid only the knockdown.

Every third shockwave attack (essentially every 15 seconds), the boss will stomp the ground 3 times, creating 3 shockwaves. Each shockwave will still be 1 dodge roll apart.
Concerning conditions (such as blind) and boons, the entire sockwave attack is one channeled action.

The boss will also randomly (i.e, no fixed time) charge in a random player’s direction, preferably in a direction where the boss can hit the most amount of players. This action will be audio cued with a deeper breath or a growl. The players hit by the boss will be knocked down for 5 seconds and take a 30% HP damage. This attack can also be blocked, protected, evaded, etc. The boss will return to his preferred attack location before resuming the slashing and shockwave attacks.

If the boss does not hit any player with his charge, he will crash into the room’s wall making a rock fall from the ceiling on a random’s player head.

The player will have 1 ¼ seconds between the circled red line indication and the rock hit. The area of effect is exactly 1 dodge roll centered on the player.

If the player is hit by the rock, he will receive a substantial damage, be knocked down for 7 seconds and confused and dazed for 15 seconds.

Phase 3 (last phase)

The boss will perform all previous attacks in random order, with no fixed times between them.

The boss will walk around the room again.

Players will get a tip whether it is the 3 or 2 shockwave attacks by looking at the boss’ effects.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512

Boss name:

Scourge of the Depths

A massive drake boss that rampages through various areas of an explorable, as part of an event chain. The players must protect the villages around a lake, and slow the boss down. The boss attacks 4 villages in a set order, and tries to deal as much damage to it as possible. It also summons minions, one of which (the enchanter) gives it a powerful stack of boons. The boss cannot be pulled too far from its target village, or he will head back and attack one of the buildings instead.

Basic concept

To have a boss battle that progresses to new areas, and gives boon removal and control skills a purpose.

Basic Attacks

Bite – Moderate single damage.

Tail swipe – Moderate damage cleave attack.

Flame Gust – Fast, short range, single target burning attack.
Special Abilities:

Drake Skin (Boon) – Grants the boss massive damage reduction and regeneration. Stacks, and can be removed with boon removal, or by killing the enchanter.

Anger (Monster buff) – Irremovable buff, that builds as the boss is hit by control skills. The boss slowly loses stacks naturally, or after doing a special attack. At 10 stacks, he does the following attack:

Maelstrom Spin – Control skills raise the anger level of the boss. At 10 stacks, he does this attack. The boss swirls around with energy around him, rendering him immune to control skills. Any launch/pull attacks now actually knock the users down, and pull them to him. And immobilize skills reflect back on the users. He follows this up with the following attack:

Maelstrom Swipe (Special Attack) – The boss swipes it’s tale around him, and everyone in close proximity to them suffers massive damage, and is knocked away. This always follows Maelstrom Spin. The boss loses all his anger after this attack.

Fire Breath – After a windup move, the boss breaths fire in a large cone in front of him, targeted at the player that dealt the most damage to him. Does massive damage, sets them on fire, and sets buildings on fire. Players can extinguish the fire with nearby water buckets to limit damage to the buildings.

Fire Burst – The boss spits fire 360 degrees around him. Does moderate damage, sets players on fire, along with buildings.

Roar – Fears enemies in close proximity, and summons smaller drake minions, including an enchanter. The enchanter enemy grants the boss massive damage reduction in the form of 25 stacks of the Drake Skin buff, while the enchanter runs away from the players. Killing him removes the buff, as does boon removal.

Phase 2 abilities (less than 50% HP)

Drake Charge – At less than 50% health, the boss gains the ability to do a powerful charge attack at a far away target. Much like the Flesh Golem charge, this attack knocks away any foes in it’s path, and it ends with a powerful bite attack. The boss is immune to control skills during this attack.

Blood Lust (Special Attack) – At 10 stacks of anger, the boss can also do this attack. The player that has dealt the most damage, gains a red skull above his/her head. The boss will now chase this player, and do a powerful shred attack if he catches the player. Control skills work to hold the boss back. The boss loses all his anger after this attack.
Burning Rage (Monster buff) – Sporadically at 50% or less health, the boss can shroud itself in 25 stacks of the Magical Flames buff (less so with lower numbers of players), which also gives him a speed boost. He starts chasing players, setting anyone nearby on fire. And the magical flames grant him a powerful form of retaliation. Players must cool him down with nearby items and weapons, since directly attacking him while he is shrouded in these flames, is very deadly. Any water buckets or water canons, along with boon removal and cold attacks, reduce his stacks and cool him down.

Phase 3 abilities (10% HP or less)

Fireball – Ranged attack. The boss gains the ability to occasionally fire a large ranged aoe attack that sets fire to a large distant area, and explodes on impact. Causes burning to players and buildings, and knocks players down.

Player abilities

During this battle, there are several items and placed weapons that the player can use, depending on how well they did earlier pre-events. Some catapults might be destroyed, or in one piece, depending on how well the pre-event went.
Buckets of water can be used to extinguish burning buildings, and cool down the boss during his Burning Rage phase.

Water canons can also be used to extinguish buildings, knock back the boss, or cool him down.

Frost Catapults can be used to freeze the boss, slowing and cooling him down. They can also be used to put out fires on buildings.

Saving a village

At various health stages, the boss moves on to the next village, regardless of how much damage he did to it. Players are awarded points based on how many buildings were saved from the flames.

^ I think we’d have a Wipe-a-thon for 90% of GW2 playerbase before the phase 2 starts lol ;p
But I like the concept, I’d like to try it. Cleaving melee boss auto-attacks is what we really need to wipe out all those “stack and zerg” so called pros. And round area without obstacles ensures nothing can be really exploited.

In general, you can take most of WoW expansion raids beginning from Sunwell to MoP, just delete the tank and dedicated healer, add some anti-zerg cleaving attacks and you have strong basic variety of ideas for possible dungeon and worls bosses.
Most of new raids are not designed by typical “heal tank&dps” scheme at all

Relocation complete!

@Mad Queen

Defiance is a kittene to solve. Rash gave a really nice idea for a solution though. My only concern with that is that perhaps some classes have skills which they use on a regular damage rotation which CCs, and since we can’t pick and choose weapon skills, that might be a problem.

Stability (no no KBing) is there really just so that you can’t knock him down or back, as that would majorly mess stuff up in the way that screws players over.

The idea of 25 stacks one one target is to make you watch your attacks (now with an audio cue), and use cleanses. At a maximum occurence of 50s on any one player, all classes should be able to deal with it.

The End of Days autowipe is to make CC a requirement for the boss. The idea is that a few players will need to run CC builds (which has no reason to exist in PvE at the moment) and have the role of dealing with the shades with help from other players. Shades won’t show up like they do on Subject 6 and turn the fight into a frustrating mess.

The final phase’s bows are there because its basically a hard DPS check. It tests a player’s ability to dodge and attack consistently, whilst watching out for the Void casts. The bow is there so that everyone is on equal terms in terms of damage and has 2000 range to be able to hit the boss, and no class is discriminated. Basically like Lupi on constant phase 2 projectile spam with no reflects.

Boss name: Bob

Bob looks like a human and is the size of a skritt. He walks around dropping bombs that deal bout 100 dmg.

Everytime Bob takes bout 10k dmg he grows. he can grow to be bout twice the size of Teq, Shatterer or Claw of Jormag.(Yes I know thats kitten huge) the bombs also deal more damage the bigger he gets so eventually he will be able to down a player with 1 bomb at his largerst size.

Bob can also shrink by having his bombs do 0 damage to all players. So if Bob is huge and left alone by players he will return to skritt size eventually. His health will grow depending on his size. Also at his biggest size he can step on players.

This boss will not be about doing damage because his health will not decrease with player damage. Instead players must use a push or pull skill and push or pull him into his own bombs. (all classes can push or pull already looked into this). Also With his size the number of skills needed to push/pull him to bombs increase. 1 person needed for skritt size all the way up to 20 players needed for largest size.

I like a lot of the mechanics for these bosses. Saving a village rather than simply killing a big dude in a room is nice (Scourge). Using environmental pillars to attain aegis to block specific attacks forces players to move around and not stack (Kanis). And cleave attacks also prevent stacking zerkers.

On the whole, what I like about these boss encounters is that 100% 5-man zerker groups will fail. Rather than broadening our roles, the absence of the trinity has instead pigeon-holed us into zerkers with dodges. These encounters encourage teamwork, coordinated boon removal/cleansing, etc.

Nobody cares about vit/tough in dungeons because boss attacks kill us no matter how much we’ve got. What we need are bosses that have faster attack speeds and lighter hitting attacks, more on the order of what another player would do. WvW is the only place that we have to build for survival, team support, and damage. Quit with the 10,000hp aoes and 7,000hp barrages that insta-kill us and instead make us choose when to block, when to dodge, when to interrupt, when to heal through, and when to take it. As it is, you never just take the hit.

Silvercyclone.1462:

Boss name: Bob

Bob looks like a human and is the size of a skritt. He walks around dropping bombs that deal bout 100 dmg.

Everytime Bob takes bout 10k dmg he grows. he can grow to be bout twice the size of Teq, Shatterer or Claw of Jormag.(Yes I know thats kitten huge) the bombs also deal more damage the bigger he gets so eventually he will be able to down a player with 1 bomb at his largerst size.

Bob can also shrink by having his bombs do 0 damage to all players. So if Bob is huge and left alone by players he will return to skritt size eventually. His health will grow depending on his size. Also at his biggest size he can step on players.

This boss will not be about doing damage because his health will not decrease with player damage. Instead players must use a push or pull skill and push or pull him into his own bombs. (all classes can push or pull already looked into this). Also With his size the number of skills needed to push/pull him to bombs increase. 1 person needed for skritt size all the way up to 20 players needed for largest size.

I like the concept of starting small and getting huge, but this fight is too gimmicky for my taste. It’s Canach all over again. Not to mention the group coordination of 20 people all trying to CC him into a bomb would cause him to bounce around but rarely in the right direction. I’m assuming World Boss due to your description so the number of players constantly CCing him would be utter chaos.

I’m thinking instead a mechanic that will slow/stop/reverse Bob’s growth. If you can use a certain environmental item that temporarily stops the growth, during which time you can burst him down piece by piece, that might work. Or periodically having to stop attacking altogether while players channel 3-6 asura tech gizmo towers that will reverse Bob’s growth by 1 step each time it’s fully channeled and fired.

On my way home, I will think on true contribution to this thread because I like it..

But I’ll leave with this…(a joke) Which arenanet developer would you like to see in game as a boss? What kinds of mechanics would they have? Maybe…like, very big smiles that take up the whole room and if you don’t move out of the way…you die?

Please MR. Developers, light hearted fun! Don’t smite me!!

Whichever dev smites thee, there’s your answer

^ +1

We also need some fun encounters, especially for low-level bosses, champions. I think it’d be fine if some NPCs assisting in a boss fight would just shout at the new players: “It’s about to do X! Hide behind something/Use Y !”

It’s much more fun to not only dodge around, but also play with cool mechanics. As the players progress, slowly raise the difficulty level of bosses, not by just scaling their HP, but also by giving them some stuff.

You see, we need hard content. But we also need fun content when you have to adapt, move yourself.

Cool, I’ve had one stewing for a while now, here goes.

Legion
Meta-event boss, Level 13-7, Plains of Ashford

The event would be split into a chain of two pre-events and one final meta-event.