Boss Tactics

Hi Hive!

I'm currently in the process of making a boss fighting map, where there are no tanks included, and so far no healing (though I'm thinking of maybe making some minor healing spell or possibly potions with long cooldown available), and I've already made two bosses that are okay for this, even if I intend to tweak them a bit, to make them harder.

However, now, I've already ran out of ideas, and while I know I will figure out something during the next couple of days, I'll need lots and lots more then 3 bosses, so I thought I'd ask all of you for ideas, opinions, or even a theme or setting for a boss fight.

And, even if I'm quite new to the editor, I'm learning quickly, and if there's something I don't know how to do, I'll ask for help, and I learn new things every time I do, so challenge me a bit if you like, but keep it real and don't go for JASS just yet.

I'm not ready to release my map yet, so sorry you won't get an example of what it's like, but so far I have no abilities on any of the heroes, which leaves a lot of playing room if you have any ideas.

(Edited in) May I also tempt with rep, and maybe even put in credits if it's a really good idea? :p

Thanks in advance, Shadow3

you could make rewards for every player when they complete a boss. such as a talent point used for upgrading their unit.

Originally Posted by shadow3

Hi Hive!

I'm currently in the process of making a boss fighting map, where there are no tanks included, and so far no healing (though I'm thinking of maybe making some minor healing spell or possibly potions with long cooldown available), and I've already made two bosses that are okay for this, even if I intend to tweak them a bit, to make them harder.

However, now, I've already ran out of ideas, and while I know I will figure out something during the next couple of days, I'll need lots and lots more then 3 bosses, so I thought I'd ask all of you for ideas, opinions, or even a theme or setting for a boss fight.

And, even if I'm quite new to the editor, I'm learning quickly, and if there's something I don't know how to do, I'll ask for help, and I learn new things every time I do, so challenge me a bit if you like, but keep it real and don't go for JASS just yet.

I'm not ready to release my map yet, so sorry you won't get an example of what it's like, but so far I have no abilities on any of the heroes, which leaves a lot of playing room if you have any ideas.

Thanks in advance, Shadow3

Well, From what I see bosses are all the same
Summoners/Tanks with lots of damage that you need to watch

So
Splash Boss-Hits in a huge area
Barrage Boss-Attacks Multiple units at once
Ranged Attacker Boss-
Melee Boss-Increased Movement speed/HP/Attack Speed

Summon Boss-Creates Summons that Heal the boss (Are a momentary distraction)

Change Attack Speed/HP/Movement speed per round


If your not having any Tanks or Healing Spells it sounds like your going for mostly Negative Buffs and damage per second.

You can Add in Magic Immunity to bosses, but make sure they are more suseptible to damage (Are melee/Low Health)


Spells that Use casting time and are very predictable also add to the "Cuteness" of a boss.

For example,
-If A Boss has four Healer Summons and is Casting Flamestrike. EVeryone is going to try to get out of the way of the flamestrike, giving the boss a little extra time to be healed.

If the Boss has a projectile that does splash damage, it does the same thing.

However, If you plan to put in Auras, I suggest you make their area of effect small so that people will be more likely to group in tight packs (Since they are stronger that way)

This will make them suseptible to AoE attacks/Spells yet they will have the best chance at winning if they stick close togethor.



1 more thing
Healers are actually a very awesome type of gameplay.
So long as everyone has a heal spell. then everyone can help eachother out.
Holding alt = win.

However, I can understand your perspective I think.

Please make sure that if you die, your revived in the next round...
THat pissed me off in Spellcraft Glad....

Revival system already made, you'll revive back in the little town I've made.

I'll give you one example of a fight (my favorite) a boss has 2 spells, a Fireball spell that kills you, and Flamestrike that kills you if you stand in it for 1 full second (so you have to be fairly near the edge and moving out of it already to survive:P).

The Fireball has homing enabled, so it'll always hit, however, the Fireball missile is moving at less than run speed
The Flamestrike has a 4 second cast time and you can see the black rings or whatever before it goes off.
At 2 edges of the fighting area, theres a shop that sells spell shield runes, that absorb 1 spell.

Originally Posted by shadow3

Revival system already made, you'll revive back in the little town I've made.

I'll give you one example of a fight (my favorite) a boss has 2 spells, a Fireball spell that kills you, and Flamestrike that kills you if you stand in it for 1 full second (so you have to be fairly near the edge and moving out of it already to survive:P).

The Fireball has homing enabled, so it'll always hit, however, the Fireball missile is moving at less than run speed
The Flamestrike has a 4 second cast time and you can see the black rings or whatever before it goes off.
At 2 edges of the fighting area, theres a shop that sells spell shield runes, that absorb 1 spell.

THe spell sheilds sound pretty solid
I'm hoping you made a stacking trigg


If you want general Boss Ideas like that, I don't have much to give

Goop Summoner (desiese/Expanding)
-Creates Mini Goop that have Spirit link Connected to All of them

Pretty Much The Goup acts as a desiese and reproduces itself, and since it all has spirit link, hurting one unit is like hurting the boss
-Trying to get in and attacking the boss is one technique to attack
-finding a way to control some goup so that you have them spawn just to make sure every unit is hit (WOuld need to be early on)

If you let it spread too much
1) You will have less areas to move to and if you don't include blink then they will not be able to
2) THe DpS will be so high that if you are left alone, you will be screwed.


Heavy Sieger
Classic Melee Boss, Pretty much all you need to do is slow them, run away and then attack them again, then slow them. Best if you gave it Mirror image also just to make things more interesting. THat way you'd have to attack each image just to find out which one is the one you must attack (Since mirrors take more damage).

Temptor
Creates Runes that either heal you or hurt you (Items)
WHile having a negative Unholy Aura, and Divine Sheild. You will be forced to try to stay alive as long as possible during his Divine sheild times without healing items except the runes.
THis boss should be able to be killed in 3 cooldowns of Divine Sheild

Micro Managing Master
This Boss would create a bunch of summons with AI to do the following
1) COnstantly creates tanks which he orders to surround enemy heroes so that they will be unable to move

2) if a unit is less then 50% health they are told to run away, then attack to where they ran from in order to get the attacking unit to attack a different unit

3) Creates archers every 5 seconds. They All Focus Fire on one hero At a TIme. If they are attacked, THey are ordered to windwalk and run away then attack the Hero With The Lowest Health

thats all I can do, THe Library I'm typing this at is closing....
Good Luck, this sounds like it might be a VERY interesting project

I like the 3 first ones. The last one also seems interesting, but since the map will be for max 4 players, it'll be hard to control many units.

3rd one, if you wanted him to have healing abilities, then i dont think they would need the runes ?

The healing the heroes can do won't be major, so I'll just tune the boss to do more damage then they can heal without the runes.

well if there are more players, they can heal each other while 1 person gets all the runes, and it would last them much longer with the heals. (much easier that way too)

Now you're talking tactics, that's something else :P

Still want more ideas, the map won't ever be finished if I don't have lots of bosses :P

Al'Kumon
Shadow Lord

Imprisons Players heros into the shadows, keeping them out of the way for the Shadow Lord to finish off weaker Players and sends flying bolts from the shadows to Control Players to Attack other players. His Dark Magic causes units to lose mana over time and makes him almost impossible to hit, but when he depletes his mana, he will become vulnerable to attacks and must channel his energy back.

Basically, this boss will have 100% evasion and a negative mana regeneration aura that affects players while it still has mana. however it has no mana regeneration, and will keep using spells on players.

When the Boss runs out of mana, then he loses his Shadow Energy(100% evasion) and has to stand still to channel his mana back, making him vulnerable for attacking.

Originally Posted by Just_Spectating

Al'Kumon
Shadow Lord

Imprisons Players heros into the shadows, keeping them out of the way for the Shadow Lord to finish off weaker Players and sends flying bolts from the shadows to Control Players to Attack other players. His Dark Magic causes units to lose mana over time and makes him almost impossible to hit, but when he depletes his mana, he will become vulnerable to attacks and must channel his energy back.

Basically, this boss will have 100% evasion and a negative mana regeneration aura that affects players while it still has mana. however it has no mana regeneration, and will keep using spells on players.

When the Boss runs out of mana, then he loses his Shadow Energy(100% evasion) and has to stand still to channel his mana back, making him vulnerable for attacking.

Ahah, im glad to see people interested in boss fights, now I've got to contribute my own knowledge.

I very much like the above Idea, for it is an interesting boss fight with a diffrent approach.l However, lets make it even more difficult. Lets combine Just_Spectating's Idea with

Originally Posted by Formula1

Heavy Sieger
Classic Melee Boss, Pretty much all you need to do is slow them, run away and then attack them again, then slow them.

Formula1's idea. This is how it would go work.
PHASE 1
During this phase, all slowing spells are removed from the players.

The Shadow boss has the 100% evasion, and sends players to the shadows as planned, knocking them out of the fight for a decent amount of time. He also does other things like a shadow AOE effect.

However, in this fight there is also a Heavy Sieger boss. He is slow moving (25-40% of players speed), and has a buff that deals 75% damage back to melee damage dealers, making him only damagable by spell casters. He does extremely heavy damage, 2-4 hits to kill a player. He random targets players, causing that player to run away.

Now, instead of the shadow boss doing shadow bolts that MC a player into attacking their allies, it gives the player a debuff. This debuff reduces the players movment speed by 100%, and causes the Heavy Siege boss to start coming to them. This will cause a death if the player cant move, but there is a way to get out of it. If another player gets near a debuffed player, the debuff splits and jumps to that player. Now, both players have the debuff. However, now, the debuff only reduces movment speed by 50 %. The heavy siege boss will only attack these 2 players. If a third player approaches a 50% player, the debuff splits and jumps yet again, and both players recieve a 25% reduce movment speed Debuff.

When the debuff is active among the players, the Shadow boss no longer sends people to the shadows. He does shadow AOE spells, and other non-debuff shadow bolts.

When the Shadow boss reaches 0 mana, he begins channeling, and a chat message appears saying "10 Seconds untill Phase 2" (The reason for the chat message will make sense later).

PHASE 2
During this phase, slow spells are restored to players.
PART OF THE SHADOW BOSS IN THIS PHASE:
The shadow boss drops his evasion shield and begins channeling and restoring mana. He takes 100% MORE damage from players, but is Magically immune, meaning only Melee damagers can fight him. This is all he does in this phase.

PART OF THE HEAVY SIEGER:
Before the Shadow boss drops his evasion shield, he shoots somthing at the Heavy Sieger(Lets say, a lightning bolt). The Heavy Sieger enrages from this, having 110% Movment speed of the players (So now he can catch up to the players) He also has increased damage killing a player in one hit (2 if it needs to be a bit easier). He also has 100% damage evasion, which means focus on the shadow boss. He still random targets.

In this phase, since spell casters cant damage the shadow boss, their job is to now slow the Heavy sieger, so it does not kill those on the Shadow boss. This phase is pretty straight-foward, as long as everyone is on their Toes, and the melee DPS'ers now when to move out of the way.

When The shadow boss is almost at full mana, a notice comes up that says "10 seconds to phase 1"
Then, it goes back to phase one, and all slow spells are removed again.

Now, this cycle continues untill a Key thing happens.
KEY THING
The bosses have a special in which if one of them reaches 20%, the team must get the other boss down below 20% within a certain amount of time (Lets say 15-20 Seconds) or else the boss who was below 20% resets to 100% health, likely resulting in death. So, it is necessary to get the boss whose phase it is down to 21% or so, and watch the notices. Once the 10 second notice comes up, you DPS the boss down below 20%, let the phase change, and DPS the next boss below 20% before time is up. If both bosses get down below 20%, Phase 3 happens.

PHASE THREE
All casters have their Slow for this phase.

The 2 bosses merge into one, shadowy creature. The boss is a Heavy Sieger type, killing units in one hit. Although, he has 125% movment speed of the player. This is how this phase happens.

The boss has a mana shield up, but has unlimited mana, so the shield cannot be burnt away, and no damage can be done to the boss.

He shoots a shadowbolt, similar to phase one, that gives 100% movment speed reduction, and forces the boss to attack that player. However there are a view variations
-Now the shadow bolt does heavy damage over time, making the timing of the splits vital.
-When the 100% Debuff splits to 50%, the boss now attacks any of the players again, instead of focusing on the 2 players with the Debuff.
-The Players who have the 50% Debuff can move in close to the boss, and spread the Debuff to the BOSS, further reducing the movment speed of the boss. If the Debuff spreads to the boss, it also deactivates his mana shield while he has the debuff, allowing damage to be done.

The Spell casters also want to cast slow on the boss, so he does not kill players.

He also does a pull ability, which pulls a random player near the a boss. There is a 2 second window before the boss reaches that player to move out of the way.

Besides that, Phase 3 is a simple DPS and Avoid until he is dead. Due to the longitivity of this fight, and difficulty, I would say this could be second to last boss, maybe last boss. However, you may want the final boss to be somthing more epic and all around, instead of simply shadow.

~Asomath
"Hope This helped and was enjoyable to read. Feedback please :)"

like a Double Boss Round!

Originally Posted by Just_Spectating

like a Double Boss Round!

yep yep, each boss diffrent in their own way, yet connet with each other. The bosses cover each others weakness. Those are fun, and I believe everything I have said is do-able. Thanks for your first suggestion though, it gave me the perfect base for this fight.
~Asomath