If you are people who loves giant bosses, GW2 gives out one of the best giant bosses in MMORPG. They are beautiful, well thought designed, amazing fighting environments, harsh conditions and etc. However, if you have been fighting World Bosses for quite a while you will notice how boring the entire fight is and end up afk auto-ing majority of the fights. The reason for this boring and lame fight comes from static world boss AI pattern, and the “invulnerability”.
First, if you notice in GW2, how many Giant Bosses actually moves around? I’m not talking about bosses getting flying animation nor attacking animation. Do you ever see Teq, Journag, Shatterer, SB, Triple Wurm, and etc actually move around?
No, They do not move single inch from their spawning spot. (with few exceptions)
I mean, come on Anet, what kind of Dragons or Bosses will just sit in one spot and spam maybe 4~5 skills? Why is World Bosses I’m fighting is much closer to a Sandbag? This fight, no matter how hard the condition to kill the bosses are, is still boring and lame as there are zero action gets involved from the fact that players never needing to actively move around to survive.
Second most boring part is Invulnerable stage. I don’t know what is fun about Invulnerability and I don’t personally find it fun during this stage as for Teq, defending the Batteries doesn’t really excite me in anyway but makes it feel more like a chore.
Same for Journag, breaking down the glacial wall with charzooka and surviving Journag’s condition damage and Fear again feels like a chore than an action.
There are good examples of good Bosses like Modrem Teragriff from Silverwaste and Wyvern from HoT beta. They are obviously not Giant like these world bosses are but their patterns are very active and forces players to move around.
In GW2, Dodging is best defensive mechanic for sure but against Teragriff, your dodging doesn’t matter as lasting knock back hitbox will still hit you if you don’t get out of the way. Teragriff will punish people for not actively moving through his own active movement skills like hops and dash attacks, and also punishes players who likes to melee auto in one spot by adding short range AOE howling that can potentially kill in very short time if not backed out.
Wyvern from HoT, also has very great patterns. lasting fire AOE for players to carefully position, wyvern flying around breathing fire so players can actively move, and dashing toward the players to punish any range auto attackers who are sitting in one place.
They do still have flaws as AI is still not complex enough to create harsher fight and skill patterns are pathetically simple that there is 0 danger to who remembers the simple patterns.
This is my solution to the static boring world boss fights.
Make bosses move around like a real enemy would so people has to chase after. Make dragons fly around like a real dragons and spit fire to punish static players. Make dragon launch and dash toward the group to force players to be active and involved in fights. Make bosses have more diverse skills and have patterns somewhat unpredictable to increase its difficulty.
Through this solution, making a ACTIVE World Bosses, invulnerability period is no longer needed to lengthen the fight as complex pattern will keep players more mindful of DPS-ing all the time, moving bosses will make players to move around along to cut the DPS period, punishing static players will also cut the DPS itself in huge margin.
I’m not asking to make GW2 like monster hunter, dark soul, phantasy star online or god eaters. But why can’t World Boss be more active and action-full fights just like in GW2 PVP? Positioning, Moving, Dodging and Blocking should be used at all time in World Boss too. I don’t want to fight an enemy who would sit still in one spot for the whole fight. I don’t want to sit in one spot to kill an enemy. I want to actively move along with actively moving enemy like a real fight. GW2 WVW and PVP is great for that reason. Moving enemy and moving myself, trading skills and dodging each other’s skill. A full Active Action!!!
I am sure Anet recognize this problem and hope they fix all the world bosses in future patches. HoT Wyvern was great, why can’t world bosses be like it too?
