There are three tiers for unique enemies:
- Heroes, marked by a star
- Bosses, marked by a skull
- Superbosses, marked by a skull with red eyes. Only these ones are marked in the minimap.
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thats a good idea actually. Wouldn’t a boss designed to kill the player, not just as a challenge but a literal PvP killer, and amongst them the champion, be a good candidate for nemesis rarity, if not with nemesis-appropriate rewards?
I can agree with rating Rekt or Aldric a tad higher than the average purple Boss but I’m not sure I’d say Nemesis, after all we have Bosses like Rashalga, Sentinel or Kra’Vall that aren’t given that sort of treatment. Especially as he’d be too easy to find and farm for Nemesis-tier rewards. We do have Fabius/Maiden/Zantarin that are also easy to farm but those at least require some effort in grinding rep for them.
If making him summonable like I suggested earlier isn’t doable, another idea I can spitball out would be hinting a notification to anyone entering his pit that they’re in a dangerous area. The same sort of warning you get when you enter Gutworm’s lair or Depraved Sanctuary while underlevelled.
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Just put a gate on the area like @Ceno suggested and be done with it. Thats the best suggestion here. When running Boris bounty, make sure youre properly geared to handle these new guys as well before breaking the gate.
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Hm… after taking him down with Solo Shaman along with Boris, atleast for pet builds, he doesn’t seem like a problem. But I can see how it can take someone by surprise, especially in HC if they are not expecting the fights.
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Do you feel as though a door/gate on the area would fix the issue of surprise?
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Can’t speak about surprise since they are definitely on a league of their own compared to everything else you face upto that point. And only way to know how strong they are to actually fight them.
But perhaps a gate with a prompt asking you if you are brave enough to challenge them or something (along the lines of Callagadra altar prompt for eg), would certainly help new players who might otherwise wander in there.
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Right, the only problem i can see with this is if ranged builds/skills are able to hit them from outside the arena, could just snipe them to death without fear of reprisal. So maybe the gate as an interactable object that would not only open, but also spawn them at that point. Maybe Boris’ chance to spawn could be calculated when the gate is opened?
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He always felt a bit above the rest at around that level and so early,but it never felt ‘‘unfair’’ or ovetuned…
however…today as I was lvling with drain essence ran in to him…on normal (none veteran),with fairly decent gear at lvl 29 and he simply 1 shot me,that deadly aim is an easy 1 shot
died to him like 4 times,until i simply decided to kite him…something that as you can imagine isnt all that easy with drain essence,also that spamable stun is actualy unfair
either way,just be careful with him and he is not a big deal,but he is just a huge surprise to meet something of that caliber on normal and early
The game’s really become too easy.
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Well its suposed to be…on normal non veteran at lvl 29 lol,there are 3 other difficulties after this that can be as hard as they want,but puting a 1 shoting boss at the lowest difficulty at lvl 29 that is just outdoors and can randomly attack you,is clearly either not intended or a flaw in their design intent
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If you’re in Softcore then if he kills you once, just skip the encounter. If you’re in hardcore, and it’s your very first playthrough…then, well, lots of things will likely kill you at some point if you’re not fast enough with the pause button. My first time back playing again a couple of months ago, I ran into acedan on a hardcore lvl 100 character and almost died, mainly due to shock (yeah I went there) at such a difficult opponent next to boris. However, if you’re leveling, then typically after your first character in HC or SC you’ll have either lokarr’s or at least traveler’s set and shouldn’t have much issue.
So, again, compared with some of the really tough encounters we’ve seen over the years, I’d rate this about a 3. Fun, but hardly overtuned.
Oh man, you missed the link above with the old loxmere didn’t you? One shots from off screen in ultimate. That video was posted about 10 days before the game went live with the first “official” build (v31 I think?), though many people played it for years before that in beta.
As evil baka linked above:
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What I find so funny about that is it looks like Loxmere is super protective over the food ration, and then hastily returns to it after murdering the pc 
. Would be cool to have a boss that does this, and the food ration rewards a skill point if you can claim it 
, the lore of Asterkarn makes it a good location for something like that on Ultimate difficulty.
I really don’t see any problem with the pit as it is now though, they are on the hard side, but they are not the only ones.
Besides ones that are harder to find like you mentioned with Rashalga (and Sentinel), Kra’Vall is also a big one that can kill unprepared players. Granted, there’s a lore note just before that does hint you in what is coming up.
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I agree. This boss is dumb. I was working on an alt and had the Devil’s Crossing bounty to kill Boris, so I proceeded to visit the pit area and died three times with no chance of survival.
The 1st time, I hadn’t even realized he had been added–I haven’t been playing as much or really even paying attention due to life–I died before I could even move between his super long stun lock and Boris.
The 2nd and 3rd time, I attempted to separate him and Boris but was unsuccessful.
So I restarted with the idea perhaps he was a new rare spawn or something and proceeded to the pit again. Nope. Still there.
Since there is no way to drop a quest and there’s no way to accept a new bounty until completion of the last one you accepted, I suppose I have to reach level 100 and cap several resists to farm reputation for gear I will no longer need at that point?
What a ridiculously stupid oversight.
I suppose the justification then would be to just farm elites in the mines, without doing bounties at all, and spending 2-3 times longer than it should otherwise take to farm Devil’s Crossing reputation. Sure. That seems like a reasonable compromise to justify the existence/placement of an otherwise pointless boss.
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May be worth noting that it is either Aldric or Rekt that spawn there in addition to Boris, and they are very different bosses, so if you can’t beat one it’s quite possible that you can beat the other - just restart the session and look who spawned in the pit this time.
I assumed as much reading the thread before I posted but hadn’t attempted it until later. I did eventually run into Rekt instead and did not even have close to the same issue with him.
In my experience, Aldric seemed to spawn closer to the entrance, whereas Rekt was further in, with Boris being more or less in the middle.
From what I saw or could tell, Aldric uses Storm Box with Lightning Tether, Stun Jacks, Vindicative Flame, Word of Renewal and he must have a massive critical multiplier. He has 2 (near) constant HoT’s rolling on himself, slows you if you’re close/medium range, and can chain stun you for your entire life bar unless have good stun resistance. Coupled with Boris, he’s basically a full stop for anyone leveling and attempting to kill Boris, or a melee build.
Rekt uses Blade Arc, Charge and Forcewave? So he stuns you for 1 second and slaps a bleed on you. He only seems to be dangerous if you’re attempting to face tank both him and Boris at the same time due to super high bleed damage.
Are these bosses supposed to be balanced about the same? I don’t see it at all.
Regardless, I was able to separate Boris from Rekt and killed Boris my 1st attempt. So problem solved, I guess.
They are relatively perfect replicas of the character builds used to win the PvP tournaments as mentioned earlier in the thread. Acedian had at least a few points in all of the skills you mentioned alongside Deadly Aim and I’m assuming so did RektByProtoss (as I haven’t seen the character build he used or don’t remember).
For that reason, how well they perform against different characters or setups is hard to balance as they are wildly different to each other.
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As Zantai said in a Steam thread on the subject:
" It was our tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement and commemoration of the community driven PVP tournaments that ran over the summer. Both of the winners had their exact builds and equipment added as mini-bosses along with a medal that should make any future PVP endeavors more interesting.
We enjoyed the tournaments and seems the community did too, so this was our way of saying “keep it up!”
The point is, I agree with the OP. I understand what inspired it and think it’s an okay concept, but the actual implementation, balance and placement (especially) is questionable. I have several max level characters but never collected and held onto items suited to my somewhat new Warder. Even so, I would say my gear is quite good for the content or point I am at.
Rekt seems fine. It’s Aldric that seems out of place.
I hadn’t looked him up on Grim Tools but this explains a lot.