Guild Wars 2

So with Tequatl getting an awesome revamp in the next patch, my brother and I started thinking of ideas that would make other bosses awesome. Our idea for the Shadow Behemoth is quite simple.

The fight remains largely the same (with obviously more health, more damaging effects, and more Underworld forces).

Differences, aside from HP and damge increase, could go something like this. What if instead of simply auto attacking the portals down when the Behemoth goes immune, we had to split up into 4 separate groups. I mean there’s enough people for it every time SB is up, so why not?

One group could be outside in Tyria fighting off the Underworld forces flowing out of the portals while others have to actually enter the portals. Each portal would take you to a different area of the Underworld to defeat a Reaper of that region of UW (or assisting them similarly to GW1 if that’s how you want to take the lore since the Gods left) in order to close that portal. This would be no easy feat and would be in itself 3 separate boss encounters in order to defeat the Shadow Behemoth.

This could have a similar timer to fail (15 minutes seems right so far from what I’ve seen with Tequatl) and would require groups to coordinate and close these portals within x amount of time of each other in order to progress to being able to damage SB again.

Obviously there can be a ton more minions (stronger ones) to make this more interesting and with these new changes could come more achievements similar to how Tequatl is getting his own achievement tab.

Thanks for reading, would love to see what you guys think about this =)

I think that the tequatl update will probably make alot of people mad when they fail it over and over again. Then guess what happens then, the risk vs. reward will make people not care about even trying to do it anymore.

@ PAX they had three teams trying to defeat the new Teq. and none of them won. The team that was closest to a win still had 30% of his health remaining …Then again is scaling going to be a factor anymore. We will have to wait to see.

Also note that I think the other boss fights are all being looked at for potential updates as well.

Part 1
Currently the battle against him is a joke, because theres absolutely nothing dangerous in the battle. Yes, sure, behe is just a lvl 15 area boss, but let us get real.. we will never ever see again a whole group of lvl 15 geared characters fight against behemoth, where the battle might be perhaps a little kittenallenging …
No, whenever we will see anywhere world bosses, we can be sure, that they will be flooded by countless full max geared players which are fighting them just for loot…

So if we overall all bosses, this should get taken into consideratio,n that among the community are basically absolutely no noobs anymore that could lead to the battles against them to fails ….
The game is full of max geared characters and thus being said, the overhauled bosses should be all designed for battles against huge zergs of full geared characters and not for battles against a buff of lowbie noobs that just started with the game a few days ago and hit lvl 15 after a few hours of gaming their first time …
Thats just the backside of the medal when playing a game with a persistant world, where all are playing in the same world and noobs will always meet on huge zergs of hardcore games in full equip when a world boss appears..

Spo how to change the Behemoth.

The overhauled behemoth should have like 4 different stages

Stage 1:

The Shadow Realm Stage

The Shadow Behemoth is in its current huge form as we know him. He begins the battle by being huge (bigger than now, like 20% bigger, thus also his attacks with his arms having more range)
At the start of the battle the Behemoth is in his kind of unique death shorud style form where his real health bar is invulnerable and where the players have to beat down first his life force bar to bring the behemoth out of stage 1 by ending his death shroudish darkness aura.

This new aura will have auslo some negative effects on all players which occure every few seconds dealing randomous conditions to players like bleeding, torment, poison, burning, cripple, weakness or vulnerability and a new and unique one to the behemoth – apathy which is a different form of fear as it makes you not run away, it stops you from moving like immobilize, but it also removes class specific skilsl by blockign them temporarely off and siphons also endurance off.

Examples
A thief that got apathy, will lose 1 endurance bar, and won’t get new initiative for xx seconds.
An elementalist won’t be able to attune to the elements for xx seconds and loses 1 endurance bar…
A warrior won’t gain new adrenaline for xx seconds ect…
A ranger’s pet under apathy won’t attack ect ..
A guardians virtues can’t be activated under apathy ect…
A necromancer won’t gain life force under apathy ect…
A mesmer can’t create clones under apathy and will lose existing ones under apathy ect…
An engineer can’t use tools under apathy ect..

Under the dark aura of the behemoth, the behemoth will use 5 skills:

1) Summon Underworld Portals
Underworld Portals will quickly spawn lots of adds, if they don’t get destroyed fast.
Among these add will be following enemies:

• Various Gravelings
• Various Aaxt’s
• Shades
  And some more new implemented comeback creates from the GW1 underworld like:
• Obsidian Guardians (popping out of the ground protecting/healing the behemoth with life leeches via their attacks)
• Terrorweb Dryders (for massive Crowd Control and Player Interrupts)
• Banshees (for increased Damage Dealing and Buffs towards the Behemoth as also theyself deal some serious damage and they are very agile and stealthy making them a very dangerous threat on the battle field if too much of them spawn before a portal could be closed)
• Bonehounds (little weaker adds, but with the wolf alike ability to call for help at low health)
• Banished Dream Riders (More crowd controls by knocking players down /away)

The Comebacks will appear out of Portals in a later stage, from Portals in Stage 1 will come out only Gravelings, Shades and Aaxt’s

2) Breath of Darkness.
the behemoth will use his breath of darkness to deal damage to players that stand in a cone like shape in front of him and put some kind of long lasting non curable blindness and cripple onto them that goes away only after a few seconds after moving out of the"darkness" that has be placed all over the field

Part 2

3) Shadow Spheres
The behemoth will let it rain for a few seconds of Shadow Spheres.
Dark Orbs of various changing sizes and effects that will fall down in a randomous pattern all over the place. 3 sizes, 3 different effects once those orbs get in contact with the ground.
Small = fast falling little Explosions that deal vulnability, weakness and bleeding.
Medium: create chill fields that last for a few seconds that also poison players.
Large: create shockwaves that push players into all directions around and daze them as also deal heavier damage to you so nearer a player stood at the shockwave’s epi center

4) Claws of Corruption
The behemoth swings his claws at players.
Players who get hit will reveive torment and confusion stacks.

5) Evil Gaze
A skill, that will turn a targeted player that has boons into stone for a few seconds.
if you had at the moment no boons on you the skill will instantly put a targeted player into downed state or if it kills a player, the killed player will turn for a few seconds unwillingly into an uncontrollable minion that will attack other players and can’t be killed so that you are forced to woth, how your dead body gets just for some time as the behemoth’s evil marionette…
And the behemoth priorizes over downed targets to gaze at them, so it is much likjely that you will see tome dead players turning against other players as controled marionettes until the skill effect wears off and allows players to revive the dead player.

Once the behemoths dark aura got slayed down, stage 2 begins.

The Shadow Ruler Stage

The Behemoth will shrink down by 20% getting smaler and attacks from now on will deal damage to its real health.

Aside from the prvious 5 skills, the behemoth will use now 2 skills more.

6) Pillars of Doom
Dark Shadow Pillars will arise from the ground emitting AoE fields every x seconds, until they get destroyed. But the Behemoth could also grab such a pillar and use them as like a hammer to smack players with them or thrwoing them like spaers at players into the ground sio that you have quickly to dodge, as that attack would instantly kill. as it would practically impale everybody that stands in its way…

7) Nightshade Barriers
A Skill with that the behemoth can either protect himself from ranged attacks or created portals. if he uses it on portals its dangerous, as a Nightshade barrer on Portals will make portals temporarely invulnerable to damage, repair them a bit and gives creatures that come out of them few secs of stealth, regeneration and might, as also retaliation

Once behemoth is down to 75%, Stage 3 begins. it wil lshrink again by 30%

The Shadow Impact Stage
From now on, the comeback creatures will get out of portals too.

Claws and Evil Gaze won’t be used in this stage, instead those skills get replaced with:

8)Soul Siphon
A Skill that drains health from players and turns it into healing for the behemoth or its adds. So more adds there are on the battle field, so more effective will be the Soul Siphon. The behemoth will get from now on for some time a strong boost in toughness whenever one of his adds gets killed, while he uses Soul Siphon)

9) Shadow Flare
A large scaled AoE attack that causes burning to players that can’t be cured and ends only, once the player gets downed.. So best is to avoid being hit by it… Deals no damage, but the uncureable perma burning is just annoying enough for the player to make the situation more dangerous… (think of Amaterasu!)

Once 50% health is raised, the shadow behemoth will protect hisself into a Nightshade Barrier that is special, as it makes it for a short while invulnerable as the shadow behemoth will transform into its true form in stage 4….

Part 3 (final)

The Shadow Enforcer Stage
Now by being only half as big, than before at the start of the battle, the nown changed Shadow Enforcer will be a mobile enemy with a more humanous looking shape of around the size of a giant.

In this stage will stop the portals, but the whole fight againt the enemy becomes alot more agile, as the Shadow Endorcer likes to warp around alot by using stealth skills and getting into quick melee combat with devastating attacks that cause chill effects and steal boons that whenever he steals boons, will heal himself a bit.
In this form he will use a complete different set of skills.

Skills like “Mirrors of Darkness” that lets him warp quickly between multiple dark mirros that can create also Shadow Clones to confuse players which is the real enemy…
Or a Skill like “Fear of this Night” which puts fear onto enemies that get hit by that attack or a skill like “Abysmal Nightmares" which summons for a short duration of time out of the underworld the Four Horsemen of Dhuum to his side which are invulnerable forces with specific effects for a duration of say 2 minutes…

Once the health is down to 25%, the last stage will start and he will shrink again by 25% and become faster than even before

The Shadow Avenger Stage
In the last final form where the Shadow Behemoth shows its true face of evil energy that created that creature, the enemy will shrink down to basically the size of a max full grown norn, slightly bigger.

The Shadow Avenger Stage lets this enemy start on placing all over the place at randomous spots “Shadow Stinger Traps” that cause high stacks of bleedings and cripple, if you run into them as also causing quite some damage too.

He’ll also use now the “Darkness Whip” to pull players around or immobilize them to throw then after them “Hades Grenades” which do less damage, but will cause to player targets all negative conditions at once except immobilization if being hit by them.
—-

Just some brainstorming for a multi state total revamp of the battle against the Shadow Behemoth, where the enemy becomes more and more powerful, so lesser health he has.
As also changing overtime from a huge monster into a small sized enemy that becomes then also very quick, like a shadow should be…

Gummy.4278:

I think that the tequatl update will probably make alot of people mad when they fail it over and over again. Then guess what happens then, the risk vs. reward will make people not care about even trying to do it anymore.

@ PAX they had three teams trying to defeat the new Teq. and none of them won. The team that was closest to a win still had 30% of his health remaining …Then again is scaling going to be a factor anymore. We will have to wait to see.

Also note that I think the other boss fights are all being looked at for potential updates as well.

Yeah I know other bosses are being looked at for updates that’s why I made this suggestion. People failed it at Pax because it’s new and they had no control over their gear, stats, or skills.

Give people time and they’ll eventually find ways to overcome the challenges. You didn’t mention any feedback relating to the suggestion, what are your thoughts?

Orpheal that’s a very interesting idea. The only problem I see with that is that they’d need to completely revamp the model as well as the encounter and that’s a lot of time invested.

Not to say that Reapers or Shades or Terrorwebs (and Underworld itself) would be an easy thing to accomplish (or quickly implemented for that matter) but it could be a nice sneak peak into UW (if we ever do hopefully go back there).

In any case, interesting suggestion. What did you think of mine in the OP?

It would certainly be more fun if they did something with SB to make it interesting. As it stands now they might as well just have people stand in the area for 15 minutes then give them a chest and some loot and forgo all the animations and auto attacking.

I don’t know, it’s in a starter area…

Wolfheart.1938:

I don’t know, it’s in a starter area…

And? 99% of the people who do the events are 80s anyway who are just there for the free loot.

No one else wants to weigh in on this?

Hmm, yeah, nice idea with the going into the portals, but I think actually gettign really into the Underworld is something, that shouldn’t be done with a boss battle.
It should get implemented as a real end content place with a new dungeon, lots of new events ect. that is fully explorable.

Also the thing with splitting up the zerg is interesting, that specific tasks have to be done somewhere else on the map to weaken the boss…
——

My intention with my brainstorming was it just to make the battle far more epic and challenging, than it is now. With Multi Stages of different strategetic behaviours you can reach that, when a boss requires from its battling players to adapt to changing situations and that quickly…. a boss that has quite some amount of different skills, that are really dangerous, because just look at what this bos can do currently ??

Do you think any of its attacks is dangerous ? lol, no the battle is a huge jok,e you can beat this both without ever taking a single hit of him, just standing around for a few minutes. Portals are way too quickly closed, so that basically minions are no threat in the whole battle and if ever somethign gets out of it, the enemies that come out of it aren’t dangerous too.

When you look at the current battle design, you can see everywhere, that this boss is made for a noob audience and not for advanced players with full maxed out characters.
The problem of this game is.. the game barely has any noob audience anymore and if there are any beginner within a zerg, they get scaled up and the zerg basically does the job for the noobs without that the beginning players could harm much the boss anyway before they are already dead.
—-

Revamping the Model of the Shadow Behemoth might take some time, but hey, its not impossible to do that.
The changes within Te’Quatl were also not made within a few days, all the changes to that boss took also quite some time and the added new skills ect. to him which needed to be designed, programmed ect. first before they could have been added to him

This game needs more new permanent enemies, so why not give the game a bit moreGW1 nostalgia by letting a few underworld enemies more, than just only Aaxts come back ??? (I’m asking myself why is there no kill achievement for underworld enemies like aaxts/shades)

The biggest problem i see, why I think many of the big boss battles feel so boring is, because those battles are against static creature,s which don’t move around a bit.. the are just there to eat for several minutes tons of damage. Sadly Anet hasn’t realized that with the new Te’Quatl, hes still just a borign fight agaisnt somethign static, that can’t freely roam in the place…

For that Anet would have to redesign the map and make the map bigger so that the boss has more place to move around … that Anet can make big bosses that move around have they proven with Giganticus Lupus… so why can’t they imprve that wy all big bosses. Fights against static targets are lame and way less challenging, than fights agaisnt mobile targets that move around.

Oh I completely agree with the fact that we should get a proper UW dungeon, but think of this as a tease for it? =)

Ok, I could see the portals staying open the whole fight with stuff pouring out and as long as they are open SB gets stronger and stronger and if you don’t close the portals quick he will pull you into the underworld where you have to battle some champion level to get back though the portal to help with the closing of the portals and pushing SB back into the UW.

Or even Worse instead of pulling you into the Underworld he will use a Shadow flip where you will go into a upside down version of the fight where instead of standing on the water from your current view you would be upside down with your feet attached the the waters surface and everything in this state worked backwards you could still fight but like if you did a dodge roll it might go in the opposite direction. This may be floating(that was a pun)away from SB’s design but honestly the idea of being flipped like that kinda scares me a little as I am claustrophobic. Being trapped under the water in weird way would make me freak a little. Note you would not be swimming you would see the upper world though the surface of the water when you look up to the sky at your feet…..and the mirror reverse of what was under the water would be there..

I don’t know about that flip thing, that sounds more of an annoyance than a mechanic of a fight.

TehPwnerer.7215:

I don’t know about that flip thing, that sounds more of an annoyance than a mechanic of a fight.

In my mind I can see it clearly and if it could be done the way I am seeing (which would be to hard for me explain at this moment)It would be awesome.

Yes it would definitely be a annoyance, kinda the way the Echoing Banishment skill used by Shiro Tagachi in the Imperial Sanctum mission from GW1 works people would be pulled through or should I say violently ripped though the water and start taking a Dot that would slowly eat at the health. If they could navigate back to the portals in the underwater section they could escape out of the mist’s and help continue the fight to drive back SB.

However, I do not think Anet has the skills to pull off the mechanic even with a detailed explanation on how it should look.

I don’t think insulting ArenaNet is the correct way to suggest an overhaul lol

TehPwnerer.7215:

I don’t think insulting ArenaNet is the correct way to suggest an overhaul lol

I don’t know it could be a driving force…except since being lied to by anet, I am loosing interest all together and don’t care if they listen to my advice anymore.