Act Six: The Brine King Fight

"

elbowfrag wrote:

Tiny battle arena... no room to maneuver.. gets one shot.


/golfclap

Well two shot actually.

It looks like he doesn't notice that he is standing in one of the blue AoE time bombs so first he takes a big chuck of damage from that. Then just after that he gets hit by a what looks like a cleave or maybe an auto attack which you can see from earlier on in the video deals about 30% of his health pool but its enough to finish him off. In this case its poor awareness that kills him.

Granted there is plenty of chunky damage In this fight though so I expect to see some RIPs

RIP and RIP to performance too.

Looks like I'm buying a GTX 1070 this summer.

Someone went into that fight under prepared.
But yeah, the water wall effects look bloody astounding.

i cant wait to try out my glacial hammer build in the new expansion... said no one ever

now post a video of the fight in a 6 man party.

look like something that will rip me several times due to low FPS

Woooooooow, amazing - so excited for Oriath!!!

"

Tyoll wrote:

"

Deadpeng wrote:

Another design by GGG that says 'Die melee die!'

I think it's largely the opposite. This fight literally has a mechanic that forces ranged players to fight in melee range. Melee characters should already have the defences to take a few hits and reposition, whereas the main defensive mechanic of range is avoidance meaning they wont do so well once you force them to take some damage.

Of course this depends on how much damage the boss does. If it can one-shot Melee then the later stages of the fight will incredibly difficult for ranged players also.

First thing i thought of while watching the fight. This fight will be so much harder for melee charcters than ranged due to its mechanics.

Before i give feedback regarding the fight i just wanted to say that it looks awsome! The setting, the water physics, the music - everything feels epic. GGG did a great job.

Now to the mechanics of the fight itself:


- maelstrom bubble:
AoE around the boss that chills you (super anti melee mechanic that can be completly ignored by ranged)


- summon adds:
There are so many adds which clutter the arena (which makes manual evading/dodging and positioning harder which is curcial for melee) Without melee splash or AoE you get overwhelmed quickly. Ranged AoE and multi projectile builds chest step 2 steps back and hold rightclick to clear the adds AND hit the boss at the same time - ranged can attack the boss from any postion in the arena, melee can't.


- heavy fast attacks/swings from the boss you need to dodge manualy
The boss himself has no ranged ability it seems most of the time. As ranged you can step back or use a movement skill to get behind him to avoid his attacks. As melee you have to stay close and tank it; sure you can leap slam behind him from time to time but you won't get much DPS time at all AND are in constant fear of his maelstrom bubble which will chill you unless you are immune.

The swing itself seems to be physical (maybe with a cold portion on top) - if you are EV melee you likly will get oneshot eventually when the boss lands a crit. Heavy armour based melee will likly be able to tank it


- shifting tides/cold storm call phase
Forces ranged characters in point blank range, the boss goes immune but also can't attack with his melee attacks it seems. You just have to dodge the cold based storm calls and wait it out (no real penalty for ranged because no immediate danger from the boss, no free dps phase for melee)


- Enrage phase (super small arena)
Ranged without additional layer of defense gets punished hard if not able to evade/dodge manually. Melee gets no additional penalty - DPS is king here, spam your flasks and kill the boss as quickly as you can.



Other obeservations:

- high curse effect Temporal Chains combined with other slow effects will trivialize this encounter if not nerfed or if the boss isn't immune to those

- if you are somehow able to facetank this boss the fight becomes really boring

- decoy totem or other taunts will trivialize this fight

- builds with a good HP recovery mechanic will be fine, builds without have a big disadvantage.




I don't now anything about the upcoming balance changes but for now it looks like GGG really needs to step up their game in designing boss fights regarding the ranged vs melee problematic.
(just remember D2's Baal fight for example: his behavior changed drasticly if you encountered him at melee range compared to from far away - that was a well balanced fight for melee and ranged characters without trivializing and it for anyone of the two)

That wall of water looks amazing! Surf's up, dude!

super cool fx. I'm hard.

But please dont spoil anymore boss fights, i cant halp myself ;_;