Archnemesis mods are better fit for a Bossing mechanic, not a Mapping mechanic

I believe that a lot of the frustration around Archnemesis mods comes from their misuse as a mapping mechanic (applied randomly to rares throughout a map) instead of a bossing mechanic (how Archnemesis was implemented last league).

Think back on 3.17: who thought it was a mapping-focused league? For the Atlas passive tree, of course that's mapping focused, and it was fantastic for that. Same with the Atlas passive tree this league. But when it comes to the Archnemesis mods themselves, they excelled as a bossing mechanic.

You added up to 4 Archnemesis mods, created a boss to kill, ranging from weak to very strong, and we get a big loot drop at the end of it. Plenty of the mods are even based on boss encounters: Lunaris-touched, Abberath-touched, Innocence-touched, etc. Same with the loot drop: when we want high-value loot to drop at once, what content do we do? We do high end boss fights, like Maven and Uber Elder.

But imagine instead of a Maven fight, you had a bunch of mini-Mavens all scattered around a map, replacing rares. Each has a very small chance to drop an awakened gem. Would that be fun? Not really; we would much prefer just to have a full Maven boss fight. That would give us a solid chance at a good loot drop (awakened gems, special uniques, etc.) while also being a single challenging, rewarding encounter. The mini-Mavens would make all the maps feel the same, and be more annoying and feel less rewarding.

Imagine we revamped Archnemesis: instead of all rares having Archnemesis mods, we had rares be like 3.17, except after killing some amount of rares (or some other mechanic here), an optional Archnemesis boss encounter would spawn - perhaps after killing the map boss + some percentage of the map's rares. And this Archnemesis boss would have random mods, but each mod would be very rewarding, just like in Archnemesis league. Wouldn't that be more challenging, more exciting, and more rewarding than the current iteration?

Just compare the two in your mind: the current iteration, a map filled with random Archnemesis modded rares, none of which seem to drop anything special even if they're challenging/annoying for your build to kill; you fight through some annoying rares among the trash mobs, you kill the boss, and then you're on to the next map, doing the same thing.

The other being a map with normal rares, so you're back to 3.17 and earlier mapping - looking out for problematic monster types (like porcupines and such) till you kill the map boss, and then you get a random challenge Archnemesis boss to fight! One which may be hyper powered, really difficult, and challenging/rewarding to kill (so you may avoid it if it's too scary!) - or which may be easier and so less rewarding, but still challenging/rewarding enough to kill (maybe it has just one or two harder mods, so you still get some loot drops from it). Since its an optional boss, you can also take a few moments to read the mods and really think about whether you want to fight it or not - kind of like the Eldritch altars, and very much unlike present Archnemesis rares. So it has the best of both worlds.

Which experience sounds better? I'm convinced that Archnemesis as a bossing mechanic simply works better. It's more challenging, the mods are more scary, the rewards are more clear and immediate, and it helps mapping to be more unique again - the challenge won't all just be focused on Archnemesis rares.

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EDIT 8/11/22: Archnemesis rework announced! Honestly, looks like a great improvement to me, addressing the following points:

1. Rare monster encounters are more rare when challenging (like bosses)
2. Mods can significantly aid rewards based on the difficulty of the rare monster
3. The mods aren't as absurd on Magic monsters, so you don't feel like you're fighting a bunch of mini-bosses

Overall, I'm very optimistic about the new implementation of Archnemesis modifiers. Thank you GGG developers for giving this a deep review and rework!

Aren't they already a bossing mechanic since they spawn to boss adds as well. Which is super annoying and unpredictable in some fights where you need to clear quickly in a small space, like Kitava. At least they nerfed them a bit already, but still.

Actually, this is a good idea. Rare monster should not be tougher than bosses. This would fix that problem.

I'm down with this idea, bosses have become a joke honestly. Aslong as some rewards come as a bonus.

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Madhirm wrote:

Aren't they already a bossing mechanic since they spawn to boss adds as well

That's not really a 'bossing' mechanic though; they aren't a boss but are rather part of another boss encounter, they don't have significant drops, and they're still spread out all over the map. To really be a 'bossing' mechanic, they'd be better off having it as a separate fight.

Think Metamorph, for example, or how Archnemesis worked last league. Just this time, once you beat the map boss/kill enough rares/fill a gauge (however they want to implement it), it spawns an optional boss encounter with random Archnemesis mods (with appropriate difficulty/rewards comparable to last league). You could argue it's like Metamorph 2.0, but that's still a lot better than the mapping mechanic implementation we currently have.

OP is 100% on the money and this thread deserves a lot more attention.

I like the idea a lot, but my suggested implementation would be simply that zones have a chance to have one of those Archnemesis statues pre-populated with mods (1-2 during campaign, 3-4 in maps), you hover over it to confirm what the mods are and do, as well as the projected rewards, and then you click to release. Kind of like a variation on how Essence works. Boom, simple-as.

While the archnemesis core integration could be done in several different ways indeed, like a random roaming archnemesis monster per map, or 1-few randomly generated frozen pre-modded startable monsters per map, etc, I feel their intension from start was to replace normal rares in general.

Their pre-balancing and actual deep playtesting failed.
Their instant replacement went really bad, no questions about this.
However, I accepted this, got used to them by now, these are the new rares.
Even if I still have to skip several past league mechanisms which got unplayable by them.

My only problem remaining, that these rares invalidated all bosses, rouge exiles, betrayers, etc.
Rares are way harder than old big guys like map bosses, which is pretty disappointing.

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Mike_84 wrote:

While the archnemesis core integration could be done in several different ways indeed, like a random roaming archnemesis monster per map, or 1-few randomly generated frozen pre-modded startable monsters per map, etc, I feel their intension from start was to replace normal rares in general.

Another suggestion I have is to have Archnemesis mob(s) in a map as a league mechanic, but not in statues. A walking Archnemesis mob with one or more modifiers. After defeating it, it resurrects and gets stronger and now has 1 more mod. Repeat until it has max mods. Each phase drops loot, and each phase change takes few seconds and is properly animated.

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Mike_84 wrote:

While the archnemesis core integration could be done in several different ways indeed, like a random roaming archnemesis monster per map, or 1-few randomly generated frozen pre-modded startable monsters per map, etc, I feel their intension from start was to replace normal rares in general.

Their pre-balancing and actual deep playtesting failed.
Their instant replacement went really bad, no questions about this.
However, I accepted this, got used to them by now, these are the new rares.
Even if I still have to skip several past league mechanisms which got unplayable by them.

My only problem remaining, that these rares invalidated all bosses, rouge exiles, betrayers, etc.
Rares are way harder than old big guys like map bosses, which is pretty disappointing.

I can definitely see that they intended Archnemesis mods to replace rares, but (as anyone who's worked with game design or writing knows) sometimes the intention of a thing and its implementation diverge. As they currently stand, the modifiers are more suited to a bossing mechanic than the mapping mechanic of modifiers on rare monsters.

Why is this? Well, as we can see from many other threads, the modifiers themselves are more boss-oriented: they can give higher resistance against certain elements than Sirus has, for example! They give much higher damage, some especially deadly for certain builds! They even literally give boss abilities from Act bosses (Lunaris-touched, Innocence-touched, etc.). They are best dealt with not by running in blindly but checking the mods to see if any are particularly strong against your build (such as Steel-infused vs. an Armour-based build, Drought Bringer vs. a ward loop build, double fire mods against any fire-based non-crit Inquisitor build, etc.)

These are all bossing concerns. On one hand, they could be modified to be more mapping-centered, but this would require a lot of changes to feel good. On the other hand, simply changing the mods to be a bossing mechanic would be quicker and would feel great, since the Archnemesis mechanic rewards felt great (assuming they add those bossing rewards back in from last league).

Also, great ideas from Kaziglu_Bey and Celd. Any solid bossing implementation will work wonders with these mods, (assuming the rewards are commensurate like last league, of course - really could just use the same system as then).

I feel myself very frustrating. Archnemesis mods not so bad as long as u dont wanna get loot from them. Any juice, encounter (ritual, breach, dilirium) or simple F2-F4 get loot buttons leads to instant oneshot. And Im not sure but I feel like every single elite mob now has micro-stuns, immobilization, roots or something like that. I definetely can't walk as free as i walked before this patch, I always stucking in mobs.