So, I don’t like the idea that there is the really useful thing and the situation in which it would be most useful is designed such that the thing isn’t useful at all.
CC and life-reduction are exactly this. They are useful, sure, for trash mobs. However, boss fights could be more interesting if we could actually apply stun and life-reduction dynamics to bosses.
Now, I understand that this could get out-of-whack quickly, so I ask:
What penalty or trade-off could be enforced to make significant stunning and life-reduction of bosses balanced?
It’s trying to answer that particular question that has left me understanding that… maybe we just shouldn’t. Maybe it’s better for bosses to remain effectively immune to both.
I don’t actually mean this idea, but here’s the sort of thing I’d try to suggest as an answer to “what tradeoff should be present?”. So, it seems that more of the successful builds and especially the accessible ones mostly use physique. I know my partner made a basically unplayable character by investing in spirit while getting little payoff. What if spirit improved your chances at landing stun and improved life-reduction damage? Less durable spirit-based chars are precisely those which could probably use some help from stun, right? I don’t know how it would pan out mechanically, but perhaps spirit would give a life-reduction resist reduction as well as a stun resist reduction. Using my partner as an example, that demolitionist would have had much more survivability if stun jacks mattered against bosses.
Now, I don’t think that’s necessarily the best sort of solution, but what ideas can you come up with that allow bosses to be stunned or have their life-reduced?
actually, more generally, since spirit is underpowered (fite me), I might have stumbled on an idea here.
In general, what if spirit provided resistance reduction to the enemy?
Also, if this turns into a general balancing thread - here’s some more bullshit out of my head. What if spirit also increased your non-pierce resistances?
This would buff spirit (necessary) and alleviate the resistance problem (that all end game choices revolve around legendary sets providing big resistance).
Well look at MMOs, bosses that can be stunned and have ridiculous HP and sometimes also damage.
This brings me to something I have always disliked about bosses in GD, they just die way too fast and don’t have many patterns you have to learn.
I understand that this the way the devs want it to be, but it feels much more rewarding to have a long and tough battle where you have to adjust your strategy.
Some small minded individuals will now immediately jump me and say boss X has one attack you really have to watch out for, or a trash build + selffound will take long for bosses but short boss fights are the general trend in GD. And by short I mean < 2 minutes.
Imagine a boss where the key was actually to stun during a particular telegraphed-but-interruptible attack. Otherwise, it’s like 40% of your remaining health bar instantly gone. (It could even be a capped life-reduction attack.) This boss would check your ability to stun. Sure, some folks would just HP regen or heal out of it, but the spirit character could avoid it altogether by being clever. Also, those who actually invest a ton in spirit would be rewarded with actual glass cannon status instead of just plain glass status. they’d be able to take 1/3rd of the HP off of any boss within the first little bit of battle.
They removed armor reduction might want to do the same with life reduction
Freeze, Stun, Confuse, Petrify have some use against tough mobs. Life Reduction is not only uncommon but the skills that have it are seldom considered to be “trash” skills
I mean I’m not going to Doom Bolt a hulk if a pack is approaching us. I’d rather cc them and take them out on my own pace
If I doom bolt then i’d have to run around like headless chicken to doom bolt the other one.
Life reduction feels like a pretty weak stat imo since Blinding bolt is one of the enemy skills that comes to mind and it sucks at doing damage to us. Had it been a normal damage skill then Kiliran might not seem like such a bitch
I would understand if you think life reduction is not very strong but why remove it entirely? It’s pretty handy on stuff like War Cry. It’s also funny when you level up a Cadence build with a sapping rifle (100% chance to pierce through + 500% weapon damage times 10% reduction to health is a good screen cleaner). My examples might be too niche.
not too much tho. The LR doesn’t scale and is a kinda big bonus to the phys res reduction that most soldiers are actually interested about. I do agree that LR doesn’t bring much to the table (can be translated in to %HP based damage, nothing extraordinary), however, it is a big boost for soldiers since comes in a huge AoE that last long enough to unleash a full rotation. If its taken out, should be compensated with some sort of dmg buff.
It would be nice if bosses could be stunned/frozen once every X amount of seconds (somewhere between 10 and 20?) Throwing down a strategic stun or freeze at the right time would help the game feel more dynamic. The people that can DPS bosses in five seconds flat can continue to ignore stuns because they don’t need them, but it would be nice to be able to throw out OFF during a boss fight every once in a while and have it actually be useful.
The number one argument for bosses being immune to CC is that boss fights would be too easy, but when there’s videos on youtube of people soloing the mad queen in five seconds on Ultimate, I don’t see the point.
i think the bosses shouldn’t be inmune to CC, but very resistant to it, with some sort of minimal threshold before becoming affected (inmune to anything below 1 sec, just an example), with telegraphed moves that can (and should) be interrupted in any aviable way. Off course, different bosses should have different strength and weaknesses, so the threshold may vary accordingly.
This way the CC becomes more impactfull in boss figths, while keeping (or even upgrading) the challenge on the bosses resistant to the CC at our disposal. This will make the diversity, not just in builds, but in team composition, more relevant.
Bosses doesn’t “technically” immune to CC they just “highly resistant” to it (sometimes more than 100%) and they even got a buff to it a few patches ago cuz already top tier builds permafroze them abusing a certain amulet.
Thats the problem with universal CC like stun and freeze, is that builds that don’t need it balance wise can use it with (at least) the same efficiency like the ones (eg. ranged builds) that do.
I think a good solution could be is to implement “semi-CC” mechanics like Bone Wall and Bone Prison from D2 which are helping ranged significantly more than melee and has several workaround options from the enemies’ point of view thus keeping them from being OP while being technically irresistable. And might cause another balance issues which i’m not aware of OC :).