Difficulty of Last Two FG Bosses

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
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Hello Developers,

First let me congratulate you on a wonderful game. I love Grim Dawn and I look forward to my weekends so I can spend hours playing it.

I do have a humble request. I am finding the last two FG bosses (FK and last phase of the Avatar) to be impossibly difficult, I have some suggestions on how to make them less frustrating.

Let’s get this out of the way. If anyone reading this is itching to reply to me with some variation of “get good” or “let me see your build so I can tweak it for you”, “did you overclock your resists?” or “if you only had this super-rare, everything be fine,” please don’t bother replying.

I’ve logged in 1970 hours of playing Grim Dawn, and I have over 25 toons. I’ve taken eight of those toons to Ultimate, but I am finding FK and the Avatar’s last phase extremely, and unnecessarily, difficult for the main campaign. My goal is to finish the main campaign with all my toons. But again, I DREAD these last two bosses, and it takes me at least 1.5 hours to finish them both. I’m asking you to tone them down. Yes, there are some players that want to defeat the super-super bosses. I’m not one of them; I’m just looking to finish the main campaign. I want them to be challenging, but right now I think they’re a bit much.

Here are some suggestions:

FK - I think the gouts of flame from the floor need to be relaxed somehow to make this fight more reasonable. How about making the arena larger (with the gouts only covering 1/3, instead of 1/2, the floor space)? How about greater cooldowns between the gouts?

Final Avatar: What’s frustrating about the final avatar is that the first two versions are the right challenge level. I can get through them with reasonable struggles. The last version seems to be an over-the-top damage sponge. I don’t know what his resistance levels are, but I think they should be reduced a bit. Yes, I know about how to reduce his resists, but it seems like I get a chance to apply that skill, get in maybe one shot/strike, and then I’m back to kiting. I love kiting builds, but it’s extremely frustrating when your kiting:damaging ratio is greater than 3:1.

Both bosses: I realize I’m playing on Ultimate, so the challenge is greater, but another idea would be to tone down how much life these two bosses regain after a player death. FK is especially frustrating with this. I make two missteps, die twice, and he’s back to 80% health. :hot_face:

All in all this is an excellent game, and I salute you for all the hard work you’ve been putting into it after the release. I love this game to death, but I think you need to tone down these last two FG bosses somehow. I know the hardcore fans want super-duper-ultra challenges. I hope they’re finding those in SR. I know I’m not that good, and I’ll never be that good. I simply don’t have the time to devote making my characters all perfect. I just want to finish the main campaign with some challenging, but not this difficult, boss fights.

Thanks for your time and listen to me whine.

Best regards,
Sun Monster

2 Likes
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Super-duper -ultra challenges, - hell yes! Unreasonably random damage spikes and crazy stackable debuffs, - hell NO! So, I partially agree that the fire gouts could be toned down a bit. Though neither Kymon nor Korvaak are a threat or challenge for any of my HC chars.

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I find stating this to be a bit of an oddity. While I agree with the notion that people that are going to act “elitist” for lack of a better term should not post, I do take issue that you’re pretty much asking people that don’t agree with you not to post full stop even if it’s just genuine discussion which is what I would like to do.

With that said, I do agree that Father Kymon and Korvaak are in my opinion a league above Loghorrean and Theodin and thus are harder to adjust to, however I actually think they’re pretty well-designed.

Both fights are difficult at first but like just about any encounter in Grim Dawn become a lot easier when you understand the nuances to them and prepare or play accordingly. For example, I know that Father Kymon lowers your Elemental resistance passively and on several of his attacks lowers your DA. Some attacks to watch out are his stomach burst and leap which can be dodged as you see the animation start and kite.

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Evil Baka,

It’s not a question of agreement, it’s more me trying to head off a in-depth discussion of everything in my builds that could be improved, and how much I suck :grinning:.

What I’m saying is that I have solid builds that can handle the game reasonably well, but I find the difficulty level on the last two bosses to be unreasonably high compared to what comes before. I expect to die more than once during the boss battles. And I freely admit I am not, and never will be, an elite player. I thought the same way you did the first time I finished ultimate - after a few more toons, with different playstyles, these bosses will get easier. Well, I’m on my eight different character, and I’m just as intensely frustrated with these two bosses. I find this confirmation that the last two bosses are OP; maybe it’s not the player, maybe the difficulty level could be reduced a bit. If I was going into the last waves of SR, I should expect intense frustration. But I’m talking about the end of the main campaign - which, IMO, should not be THIS frustrating.

Let me tweak that a little bit, my pet Ritualist had no problems with these two bosses, but pet builds seem to be the easiest in Grim Dawn.

Best,
Sun Monster

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Right. That’s why ignoring his debuffs and doing zero preparation for these fights, what makes it so painful for new players.

But once you have enough resistances and DA / armor to avoid getting rebuffed or crit, the bosses turn into easy pickings.

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I’m not a new player, and I have most of my resistances overcapped. The last time I fought Father Kymon, my fire resistance was overcapped by 50%, and he still curb-stomped me for about 45 minutes. I think that’s unreasonable for an experienced player with pretty good gear for the main campaign. If I’m going into SR, I expect that. I don’t want that frustration, so I don’t go there.

My main complaint is that the the difficulty level of these two are seriously elevated compared to the rest of the game, and I’d like to see that cut down a little, because I’m trying to finish the main campaign (which seems like a modest goal compared to SR and high-level crucible). I don’t want or expect a cakewalk, but after all my tries, nothing’s getting easier, and that suggests to me that maybe the fault’s not entirely with me.

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As much as I hate to suggest it (as it’s the exact thing you indicated you didn’t want to see), I’m gonna recommend you keep playing against both Bosses.

I understand how you feel against both of them as I’ve had similar problems with both Bosses since release. I’ve levelled and fully geared characters and some of them have died to these fights 1-3 times before the kill or require me to be careful to beat, on the other hand some characters can facetank both Bosses with no worry whatsoever.

It really comes down to knowing the fights, knowing what your character can handle in terms of offense/defense and how well you play with regards to avoiding attacks and the best way to improve on all fronts is to play a wide variety of builds (to know what work/won’t work for defense) and learn/improve on the fights (e.g. watching for key attacks, thinking about why you died and what you could do to prevent that the next time).

Edit: Important thing to note as well - you’re gonna get frustrated as you die. This is pretty normal. I’ve had my fair share of ragequits. Don’t let it get you down.

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45 minutes is beyond reasonable. Either these bosses got somehow buffed recently and I missed that, or something is off with your build. Last time I checked, it took me under 10 sec to down Kymon and about 30sec for Korvaak. And that’s hardcore where I’m a chicken and overdo the defensive part beyond logic lol.

So maybe let’s take a look at your build, if you are ok to share it here?

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As a player who played MC for the first time not long ago but since then has explored the game thoroughly, i can say this: both bosses are well designed and reasonably powerful. The problem in fact is different: the knowledge is absolutely everything for the game when it comes to the hardest content, it’s not always apparent and, most importantly, the game itself doesn’t give you that knowledge.

You can die 200 times to Korvaak without a chance to figure out why are you dying. Then you go to grimtools, study the boss for 10 minutes, change the gear accordingly and beat it.

I’m not a fan of throwing stones into the devs garden because the game is indeed wonderful but at times it almost seems they take pride in the fact that getting the proper knowledge to finish and understand the game is a separate game itself which often involves hours of browsing through the third party tool and many more hours of tedious live testing.

The game doesn’t need to be easier. It needs to be more user-friendly.

2 Likes
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So, instead of looking for constructive criticism about what could you be doing wrong and how you can improve your playstyle you decide to directly jump to the conclusion that the game is doing something wrong and there is no room to improvement whatsoever from your side? I’m sorry, but you really need to get good. There is no other answer.

I get that Kymon can be a surprise slap in the face in terms of the difficulty the first time you meet him, but once you fight him a couple of times and learn the fixed pattern of his lava pillars it’s a pretty manageable fight.

The same advice mostly applies with Korvaak. It’s not hard to learn his patterns to take the least amount of damage from his attacks.

I’m really doubting how experienced you are with the game if Kymon is taking you 45 minutes.

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What? You don’t need “proper knowledge” to finish the game nor do you need to consult third party tools to do so. My only Ultimate character, a petmancer Conjurer, hasn’t been changed in any way since I became a playtester back in 2016. He’s done AoM and FG Ultimate during playtesting and finished them both. I have other characters who’ve done the same on Normal and Elite without changing anything specifically to deal with campaign bosses, that’s not how I play the game. Yes, I’ve had a few deaths to the bosses before succeeding in bringing them down, but it’s never taken me long to finish them off.

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I used to fear FK but my last two chars didn’t break a sweat against him so it depends of builds I guess, if you don’t have to kite him he’s quite easy. Korvaak final phase is harsh, but not off the charts imo. Maybe the damage reduction combined to his damage absorption cripples the player a little too much if anything.

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I’d love to see how this sabo (recently adjusted for some 100 more DA and 150 more OA than the previous one) would “adjust gear” for Korvaak. Resists are maxed and overcapped, and there are two semi-GG rares already in the build.

There are some facts, from elite of all places. Korvaak is Level 94 there, and has 742 physique and spirit, 59% extra physical damage and 29% to all magical damage on top of the stat bonuses.

first phase

The cold meteors (purple) can easily one shot said sabo. They do 7296 phys and 9356 after cunning/spirit and innate % bonuses are added, but without any crit bonuses. With 11% phys resist, 80% cold resist even debuffed and an avg 1756 armor, the final tally comes down to 4391 phys and 1871 cold, a “confortable” 6262 health loss. If either you get hit by a different attack, aren’t topped off at 100% (hard to do if you aren’t a leech monster), or get hit by at least two of these projectiles (They have 3 meters radius)

Fourth phase has everyone’s belowed thrones throwing 3 rocks on their head doing 3729.5 physical and 4794.5-7260 fire damage before defenses, for 3 projectiles, with a 3 meter radius for each projectile, 3 times. Total damage after defenses is 2715-3208 per projectile. For fun we’ll even throw in 0.5s stun duration for near-guaranteed death.

Add to that that he can buff his total damage by 10% because why not.

Finally, he has a combo that I can’t figure out which attack in grimtools represents, but the final one dealt some 7-8k damage to me. Go figure.

If that wasn’t enough, instead of “charging”, he instantly teleports to you if you decide you don’t want to be in his combo range, dealing half your health. Then he starts doing his combo anyways.

That doesn’t say a thing. Even my flame skeleton defiler did it without problems. Petmancer conjurer is also one of the strongest defensive classes out of the box. Without devotions you’re already loaded with 23-25% physical resist(depending on patch), easily going up to 35% or more even in an ultra-budget setup when devotions are factored in, plus it has baked in elemental, aether, and pierce resists too. Finally it also sports 16% or more damage absorb, that can be overloaded with 8% more physical resist from mythical overlord’s iron grip. That even comes after the boss gets bored of your pets, which is more likely than not after it is dead.

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Personally I am like people say “filthy casual” but I got to say something that I’ve noticed troughout all types of these posts/topics. First thing is that there are people even with that sort of playtime still expecting to be able to just sit there , take the beating , kill the boss even with casters/two hand builds/dual wield (excluding the fact if you are “smurfing” some gear from other chars anything in the main campaign is a joke to a fully fleshed out build item wise. Second, though I hate the phrase “git gud” in grim dawn it is somewhat applicable. Very very few things in the game are not animation telegraphed and can’t/impossible to be dodged, you just have to take notice of it. I’ve cleared the game on ultimate including FG with 15 chars all different and till I beat it I simply don’t click the stash, and at least for myself I gotta say in my expirience there’s nothing “too hard” in the game even now, and I really can’t imagine how easy it’s gonna get with the new updated faction gear coming up next patch. The only exceptions to this are super bosses/lokarr/ and the everyone’s favorite Grava’thul (god I hate those nullifies…). I hope you don’t get this as am insult or critique , I am just stating my own very personal opinion on the matter. P.S In times of need consumables can be a the edge you need versus anything giving you trouble. Cheers.

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which part of “it ports to you forhalf health and starts his combo immediately” did you find hard to understand?!

on fuckimg elite, after I outleveled him 3 levels! in gear thats the best before endgame sets!

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These can be dodged you know, if you can’t facetank everything then don’t. This is the thing with several of GD’s bosses - they have powerful attacks that can dent or kill the average geared character but many of them can be dodged. It’s a design decision that can be seen all the way back in some of the vanilla Bosses like Lucius, Thall’Nosh or Krieg.

Purely anecdote for me - I have never seen his Rush do much damage at all. The melee combo is weird, sometimes it does nothing, sometimes I get chunked for a 1/3 or half of my health and I’m forced to chug a health potion or back off. Could be he was Fumbled on occasions he did nothing and I didn’t realise :woman_shrugging:

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Your class combo and your personal skills matter. Don’t expand your personal experience on everybody, it’s a small sample.

I’m talking about the difference between knowing the specifics of the boss and not knowing them. It’s very big in GD. Just knowing what dmg type the strongest boss skills have is already crucial.

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You are doing exactly the same with what you say. I haven’t the foggiest idea what damage a boss does when I tackle him/her. I just go in there and bring them down. I will more than likely die once or twice before I succeed, but I will succeed. You make it sound as if the only way to do this is to pour over grimtools for hours on end and that just isn’t the case. It might be useful for some players to check there and if it is that’s fine, but it’s by no means necessary to finish the main campaign.

1 Like
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Dude, i literally kill every boss before i know what they even do and only check the grimtools after killing them several times. Using Grimtools is not crucial in the slightest to know their damage types because 99% of the time they are obvious.

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I’m not doing the same, i dont know what are you reading and what are you making of it. You and Norzan are talking about your personal experience. For other people with other starter classes it may be different. I’m saying about the power the knowledge gives you in GD (in many games it does) and about how unavailable it is to casual players.