Kill quickly or die?

I just went into a Baran fight. I did these before numerous times - in earlier leagues. Like all the conquerors, Baran has become a lot harder. Died four times with my Dark Pact Totems build (lvl 95, one that can deal with almost everything) and did the last run with a Max Block Guardian (lvl 93). A little bit of hectic running away from the floor tiles, then dying.

Now I came to realize why I can't win. The reason is very simply that if you do not kill the uber bosses right away (i.e. before they can use any of their attacks) you will die. Plain and simple.

Which leads me to my question:

How stupid is it to construct boss fights that are not meant to be won by strategy and skill over a reasonable period of time but simply by dishing out so much damage in such a short time that you are not actually fighting?

In other words: Most boss fights never actually take place.

Is this really GGG's intention? Why put so much effort into designing uber bosses when their fights are practically circumvented?

What's changed with the conquerors? Didn't realise there were uber versions.

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RandallPOE wrote:

What's changed with the conquerors? Didn't realise there were uber versions.

Sorry, my fault. Perhaps "uber" was not the right word to use. The conqueror's have just become harder. They are not your usual map boss content.

I cannot pinpoint the exact time that changed but some leagues ago they were well doable. Now they are no longer, even though my toons have improved a lot since then.

I can relate so badly. I feel your pain...needed to quit after 6 challenges when i got burned out to the point it starts affecting my body and mind. =/ I think i need a huge break again.

You could have ended your title with a period rather than a question mark. I've felt like that's been true for a very long time. Extreme DPS outperforms extreme defense, and in most cases is a better defense as well. The most effective way to play the game is broken DPS builds, particularly with the actual uber bosses.

There are a few design decisions that I think they should revisit, for instance bullet hell situations should not include one-shots (literal one shots, not hit a million times and die). The ground is lava is such a garbage mechanic too, since half the time you can't see the ground and everything creates some sort of degen to bypass the layers of defense that are hit based.

They're trying too hard to find ways to bypass layers of defense that are not easily avoidable, rather than creating a game that lets the player skill play a significant role in the outcome. That's not to say skill isn't a factor, it just requires such an extreme level skill to come close to matching extreme levels of DPS and high movement.

The game was better when it was slower in so many ways. I'm not saying go back to 1.x, and I doubt they could as it's hard to unring the bell of the sonic zoom zoom game they've moved to, but the current state of the game leaves a bit to be desired from my optic with regards to speed, damage/defense balance and bad mechanics designed to kill you in an irritating way.

Enter Uber Cortex blind with my Omni LS Champ for the first time and Im like "wtf are these degen grounds on the floor?! they are EVERY WHERE man!". Just some tiny "safe" zones to stand on and Im a melee! Yep again, imagine playing melee in 2022, def my fault...

Im really interested in what decision ggg will take in future- keep roughly same speed or hammer more on slowing down game.

I think they need starting making satisfaction elements in slowed down version of poe if they want to continue slowing down. Currently it is only blowing_up/ice_shattering screens?

So Baran has one problem, AoE overlap from his random scatter attack, everything else about him is fixed and you can fight all day without ever really having issue.

OP shouldn't have a hard time with totems, its a real pita for melee but most ranged just move cast move cast and you'll be fine aside from the occasional single aoe from his ranged spread.

Now I agree with OP's general view I just don't think it applies to Baran :p

Keep in mind this is intentional from a development & performance standpoint.

It might seem counterintuitive, but having many weak mobs that die quickly is actually easier to handle than tanker mobs considering of all the complex calculations that are happneing in PoE combat.

This came up during Blight when Chris admitted monsters "living too long" were causing issues on many machines.

So yeah, here were are. Because of the spotty net code, subpar custom engine, insane amount of loot (which non-render has helped), and complex combat mechanics, we are sorta stuck in this speed, mob-popping hellscape.

We really cant have smaller, meaningful, mob interactions on a larger scale without dramatic baseline changes. Maybe PoE2 in a couple years, but for now, this is reality for the game.

Edit: I know this isn't directly tied to the Boss fight in the OP, but is related to the concept overall.

DPS is mostly king for a number of reasons. Defense vs Offense is another consideration of performance due to what I mentioned above. (Mob interactions)

Cast on Death in 3.18: