[Suggestion] For Dungeon 4.

[Jumbo]

Can you please make dungeon 4's bosses really tough? Meaning not only having more than 3 phases, but also taking longer to kill, to really make mana a determing factor. Also to make concentration essential, basically allowing no one but skilled, well geared players to survive the fights.

Furthermore, it would be great if a few of the bosses needed high resistances in the other, partially unused elements; water, lighting etc. This would, in turn, require the players to spend even more time gearing up for certain bosses.

I know that D4 isn't coming out in the near future, but just voicing my opinions about it to start a discussion, before you have already made a polished design for the bosses.

 

[GunZ-]

Yes, Zwiebel already said Bosses on 1.2 will take way longer to kill.

 

[Ihazdialup]

Jumbo, basically everything you suggested, zweib already said hes going to try to do, a lot of the d4bosses will take, zweib said, roughly 5+mins.

 

[_lycan]

The last boss should be Almost impossible to kill, to give some replayability factor, so that only the best of the best will be available to get the last legendary items.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

The problem with balancing bossfights is, that difficulty varies a lot depending on the composition of the group. While a 2 healer setup might have difficulties with dps bosses, other bosses could be a breeze. Some bosses prefer melee heavy setups, other bosses prefer ranged dps.
I'm trying to create challenging encounters for all kinds of groups, but that can't be done with just changing some numbers.

 

[Jumbo]

Jombu wrote: "Meaning not only having more than 3 phases, "

does this mean "just changing some numbers" to you? Anyway, good to hear that you take everything into consideration. Also fair enough that Zwei has stated this before, but not everyone stalks the forums all the time .

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Jombu wrote: "Meaning not only having more than 3 phases, "

does this mean "just changing some numbers" to you?

That's not what I was trying to say.
I was just saying that it's very hard to create challenging, yet fair encounters. I will do my best, of course, but I can't promise everyone will consider them as equally challenging for all setups.

I think the bosses of 1.2A are a good start to this. From the beta games I've played, I felt that those match the desired difficulty I wanted to achieve perfectly - for pre D4 content, that is.
D4 will be a totally different story. I aim for three types of bosses in there, with a general tendency of rising difficulty the later the boss is encountered in the dungeon:
a) gearcheck types of bosses
b) skillcheck types of bosses
c) groupcheck types of bosses*
[and of course all combinations of those]

*means the boss is designed for a balanced party setup. This could mean that a boss requires both physical and magical damage dealers to be beaten. Or has an enrage timer that makes groups with too much healers and to few dpsers unable to beat it. Or it simply requires a minimum of 4 human players to beat it so that two-manning is impossible.

 

[Jumbo]

Thanks for the elaborate answer Zwei. We all have faith in you of course. As I've said before, in my eyes, your 'little' map is better than the game World Of Warcraft, coming from a person who's played Wow since 2005 and doing plenty of end game stuff back then.
When I say better, I mean that every class, every boss fight, and everything in general forces the players to pay attention and not simply Frostbolt x 1000 on Raggy, as a certain class in said game used to be played.

On another note, my point on the difficulty of the new dungeon is simply to not create a boring high inflation system, where everyone has the best items, and therefore the best items and players are nothing (as it partially is with D3 now - though it is not a problem). Also of course to make it a real achievement to kill bosses - not just another farming session. Finally, as I've said before, the longevity of the game depends on how quickly people can beat the hardest content.

Anyway, wish you the best of luck. Can't wait for 1.2a, even though it might be a bad time with exams and all : ).

 

[Last_Wish]

Or it simply requires a minimum of 4 human players to beat it so that two-manning is impossible.

Pls, dont implement it in such a way. It is always fun in winning the fight in small numbers, just because of high skill and party coordination.

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Pls, dont implement it in such a way. It is always fun in winning the fight in small numbers, just because of high skill and party coordination.

That's not the point. I just noticed that there are several encounters present that actually get easier instead of harder if there are less players.
Prominent example is the Blazing Flame boss.