One shots, long fights and overall Bossing design thoughts
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So I was wondering - what is the best Boss fight in Poe2.
For me It is Jamanra during 1st campaign run of given league, slightly undergeared. Why? Because it is challenging. It takes good few minutes. It doesn't one shot unless i make a mistake of walking into double field (1st phase). Yet it is a demanding fight that usually leaves me with no potions. That kind of fights are the best - Sweaty of dodging I emptied my defenses, but succeeded! Now, why it is an issue to make it happen for the endgame? 1. Players sustain is never ending, so the only risk for the player that devs can apply is a one-shot. 2. Bosses that one-shot are making glass-cannon builds less risky, because Boss dies faster, and that makes one-shot risk less probable. Summarizing the outcomes: 1. Player can go full offense for the fastest bossing and clear. Advantage of the clear speed is neutralizing the risks such build should struggle with - dying often. 2. Player can go full defense to be one-shot-proof. We've seen it is possible, but if game currently doesn't have broken damaging mechanic that has barely any investment, player pays the sturdyness in speed. Atm we have Atalui and other deviations that gives so much power, you can just go tank and still make it happen. 3. The balanced character - you invested into both, damage and defensives, like you "should". Now you die to one shots and have a long boss fight. It's the worst option. How do we balance it out? I would nerf players sustain and boss one-shots (so it one-shots only squishy and/or when player makes a mistake), also I would make Bosses tankier. Maybe add "potion reservation" for systems that have sustain elsewhere, so they don't overlap. Broken damaging systems out too obviously. I know many of you wont like it, as for you the fun lies in epileptic zooming with no buttons and no dying. But I enjoy leaving sweaty after a boss fight. Последняя редакция: Evergrey#7535. Время: 24 нояб. 2025 г., 09:51:17 Last bumped24 нояб. 2025 г., 19:36:59
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bump
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I like it.
But we have stuff like "leech is instant" , that regenerates your health every second. Or stuff like 104% recoup, sometimes as all three: mana/life/es. 15k energy shield with undisrupted recharge. And so on. And this broken crap got copy-pasted from POE1. I do not see them removing it. Even thou this should not have been moved to POE2 at first place. Последняя редакция: Skellymancer#5263. Время: 24 нояб. 2025 г., 10:04:57
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Players will always go for one shot builds, because the game rewards fast pacing and punishes deaths REALLY HARD, why i should risk my map, my xp, and itens with a build that is slow when its better to just one shot? i farm more with less risk of dying.
They want the game to be "hard" but the punishment for dying is overwhelming, look at dark souls, the game is hard but you can try over and over again, but not in POE2, you die once and your map is gone together with 2h of xp |
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" True. GGG and we, players too, should hold on for a second, considering all the issues and correlations of current design, and think about what exactly we would like to have and how to align current environment for it to fit in there. Identity issues is what it is. Too much stockpiled stuff |
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Backward brah.
Because you have ground effects that do 800 dps is why. Because you have Soul Eater, Void Walker ....... they shoot themselves in the foot every time. |
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" Hi Evergrey, nice to see you again :D I completely agree with virtually all points in your post. So I don't have much to add. Player sustain is likely one of the biggest culprits in the direction of the gameplay. If a player's sustain is high enough, their life pool becomes an effective 'single hit threshold' that must be overcome to kill them. A little bit™ of sustain can be fine. But it's dangerous balance territory, and they have to be very careful about all of the ways which it can be scaled. Последняя редакция: WhisperSlade#0532. Время: 24 нояб. 2025 г., 17:27:08
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" this, or the developers are implementing a throw shit at the wall and see what sticks strategy during EA. pov: i'm not a poe1 player. my impression and what drew me to the game was the marketing pre-0.1.0, i though poe2 was going to be a fast paced dark souls, i guess i was wrong (-‿-"). i'm totally fine with xp loss albeit it needs to be reworked, what i'm not fine with are limited tries. i think the campaign should be balanced around new players, i'll leave it to the developers to decided whatever that means. the endgame i would like to play in the following manner: 1. map tiers must matter, the final form of endgame (t17) should be a nightmare (for every build), we talking one shots left and right, proximal tangibility on the map it self, etc. 2. i'd love portals to work like they do in poe1. 3. make possible and incentivize ssf and ssf-hc for poe2 only players in conjunction with poe1 leagues, for example ssf/ssf-hc re-color of the "season pass" armour packs. Последняя редакция: allanballan6ix9ine#1114. Время: 1 дек. 2025 г., 20:59:33
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SSF
This issue is just balance. Yes, its a lot of things within balance, but overall- its simply balance. Damage is overtuned, so defenses aren't enough, leaving the best option mostly glass cannon. So, you tune down enemy damage, tune down our damage to match, defense naturally will become better, and you have a game. Now, its obviously not that simple due to some defenses that are broken in the game, as mentioned by other posters. Still a balance issue, balance those out and we're good. Overall this isn't THAT crazy to fix... but it all depends on how the code is setup. Are there central constants defined for enemy damage? So they can change one constant and then everything else is designed to scale? If so, you just twist a knob a bit and the whole game can ratio as needed. Since its such an old game... and I doubt they refactored the code base... its likely not like that. If its not like that, well then balance is a hodgepodge nightmare where they will be constantly missing things- it'll be a unending mess. It would also be a development nightmare to work on. Which means everytime the game is touched, the development cost is extremely high. Since they've been developing one game for so long, I certainly hope they have everything optimally setup like this... but I doubt it. Right now the game is pretty good. Bosses feel fine in their normal state, the only things I have issue with are the striders of the pit. I don't see any complaints about them, when they are obviously massively overtuned. So I'm guessing that most players have so much damage that they just delete them, and never run into the issue. Последняя редакция: kazajhodo#6457. Время: 24 нояб. 2025 г., 18:40:06
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You're all cookin' in here. :O
Good stuff. I think we need to draw attention to this specific idea from prolific content creators, who get the chance to communicate it to the devs with their interview questions. I'm going to work on this. If you want them to pay attention to it, you can as well. I would like to know how much thought they've put into this specific concept based on how much detail they use in addressing it, and to follow up with responses to their explanation. Последняя редакция: WhisperSlade#0532. Время: 24 нояб. 2025 г., 19:39:10
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