I was pretty hyped to fight Emperor of Corpses (undead dragon) for the first time. Sadly I found it was very easy… the fight was extremely underwhelming. Maybe it was because I had haste up with my warpath but I never felt in danger, ever and on top of that it was boring and repetitive.
The mechanics were like fighting a normal dragon (which I have fought 10000000 times) but now there is adds. I wish there a harder second phase; here are my suggestions:
A telegraphed tail swipe mechanic, forcing you to not be able to stand behind the boss for longer than a couple seconds. Maybe it can simply just be a push that can push you into the outer ring of the fight (forcing you to get aoe damage).
A telegraphed wings flap randomly, if you are standing on the side of the boss this would push you into the outside ring.
Boss slams the ground to have rocks fall on the arena in random locations. If they hit you you get a large amount of physical damage. They stay for a certain amount of time so you will have to be forced to do all the mechanics with the new obstacles in your path. This could add a nice random element and force the player to think on the spot.
After the zombies die (or this could just be one large zombie) they drop aoe(s) so you have to force them to explode in a certain area. Aoe(s) could last a long time so you will have to play it smart and force the add or add to explode in a certain area. This would get players to stop just mindlessly clicking their damage ability but stop and think about what they want to do because it could box them into a corner later.
Before phase two you could get the boss to go immune and have adds spawn which run to empower the boss. If you cannot kill them fast enough they will increase the bosses speed and damage for phase 2.
I hope this boss fight gets an improvement. For a 100 level boss fight I wanted something like Shade of Rahyeh. That boss fight was extremely more satisfying and scary compared to this one. The fight just needs more strategy and thinking instead of a pure tank/spank.
I’m not sure. I see where you’re coming from, IMO, I was a bit disappointed that it was basically a reskinned Primeval Dragon with a tweaked AoE attack & adds. However, I’m not sure if adding more mechanics that take you away from damaging the boss, or punish you for being in melee range is the best idea. Plus they could always add more mechanics to the empowered version.
I also enjoyed the Rahyeh & Argentus fights as they were most interesting with mechanics that hadn’t been put into other fights (despite me constantly going on about wanting the devs to introduce the boss fight mechanics in weaker forms to teach the player).
For me personally, the fight was rinse and repeat. Stand on the side or the back of the boss, hit adds, go to edge, go to middle. I need some else that can happen in the fight other than literally the same mechanics I have experienced over and over again fighting dragons. I spent the whole fight waiting for something else to happen and to my disappointment that was literally the whole fight.
My issue with dragon fights in general you get to fight dragons too many times. From primeval dragon, to lightning dragons, to injured dragon, to undead dragon yet they are almost all exactly the same mechanically with not enough tweaks to be interesting or feeling like you are experiencing something new. I hate knowing exactly to expect going into a fight I never fought, that is a disappointing feeling; especially for “climax” content.
I just feel like dragons look interesting, with wings and tails and huge claws and shit yet all they do is breath and shake/bake. They should be using their whole body to survive; it would makes sense.
I wouldn’t suggest something if I didn’t consider it to be probably the worst boss in the whole monolith.
All of OG Post suggestions are very valid and nice. Any amount in any combination would make the figher more engaging.
Maybe they could also add additional phases. Mabye something where he flies into the air and casts a big shadow on the ground(can look awesome too) and shooting telegraphed aoe o the ground while needing to deal with medium undead dragon adds(soem tougher ads that are not hp sponges).
Anything that makes this a (currently) true “endboss” fight.
This boss looks so awesome, but offers minimal mroe than a Primevil Dragon.
I think if they “just” removed all of the existing mechanics (except the tweaked AoE one, that’s different enough IMO) and added new ones, that would help.
An issue with #5 is that if you’re a melee build, that would be much harder than if you’re ranged. I’d rather see something that punishes ranged builds than melee. Unless the adds came in from one direction at a time perhaps.
If they replaced the current move set (apart from the existing modified AoE) with the above, it would be more interesting. Maybe add a big breath attack that blocks off 1 quadrant of the arena.
Also another thing is forgot to mention. I would much rather have telegraphed warning for abilities than purely relay on “animation reading”. Since the boss is quite big and depending on where you stand you NEED to keep the boss on the screen all the time.
Maybe just a preference thing, but sometiems i find it hard to “read” the inhale/breath animation.
I think if they “just” removed all of the existing mechanics (except the tweaked AoE one, that’s different enough IMO) and added new ones, that would help.
I would agree.
An issue with #5 is that if you’re a melee build, that would be much harder than if you’re ranged. I’d rather see something that punishes ranged builds than melee. Unless the adds came in from one direction at a time perhaps.
My mindset is range struggling less in majority of boss mechanics is never going to change. In every game melee is always going to be for the most part harder to play and worse for boss farming. I think we should keep melee players in mind when designing boss fights but it shouldn’t deter from adding another interesting mechanic. It should for sure though be tested to make sure melee is able to complete able to complete it.
