Game Design The Two Major Problems With Bob's Reincarnation Boss Fight

DISCLAIMER: I have only had experience fighting the new Bob with Shaman, Assassin, and Archer. Anything I say in regards to Warrior and Mage is based off of my previous experience with pre-1.19 Bob and taking an educated guess of how they would fare based on what I already know. This is also in regards to playing solo at level.

The new Bob is a massive improvement from the original Bob fight. Not only does he now tie much more into his lore (because I'm assuming the elemental swords were somewhat trying to represent his lore previously, but elements weren't really brought up much in regards to Bob), but as a direct result of that, the fight has been massively improved via new mechanics. Does that mean I think the fight is perfect? No, but it certainly is leagues ahead of the 170k hp damage sponge that the original boss was.

There are two major problems with this fight, however, that often either feel frustrating or downright throwing my computer out the window.

Spoiler: The Elemental Swords

When there are minions supporting a boss, I expect to be able to kill said minions and have them dead for at least a fair amount of time before I have to dispatch them, if they are killable that is (which they are in this case). So imagine how obnoxious it is to see, say, the water sword spawn almost instantly after I kill it. Perhaps this isn't the best example since the water sword is by far the most dangerous, but you get the idea. The swords do pose a substantial threat regardless of which one they are, with the water sword being able to heal Bob and fire melee projectiles, the fire one spewing flamethrowers out the wazoo, the thunder one having suicide strike, the air one just being sanic in general, and the earth one being the weakest but still being able to debuff you if not killed.

Naturally, the player wants to kill them so they can focus Bob mono v. mono, which is already difficult. But when the minions spawn right after you kill them, there is no longer a sense of strategy for dealing with them. You either got good RNG or you didn't and you have to deal with it.

I wouldn't argue that inconsistency with spawns naturally is a bad mechanic, in fact I would argue that it is good because it judges a players ability to react rather than just muscle memory, but since Bob's swords are quite strong (especially the fire/water ones), it becomes unfair to the player. They are already massively drained of resources after having to deal with whatever sword it may be, and are now at a disadvantage because of something entirely out of their control. This problem also exists with some other bosses as well, most notably the Scarecrows in Bovine Barn.

So, I would just say nerf the power of the swords in regards to their health and damage. The only one that really doesn't need to be nerfed is the earth sword because it already has abysmally low hp for some reason. I couldn't see the swords respawning on a set timer being a practical solution because then that would probably just cause all five swords to spawn at once and completely screw you over even more than when one just spawns at random now.

Spoiler: The Fourth Phase Took Notes From Pre-Nerf Cybel

Do I think the fourth phase should be the hardest phase? Yes. Do I think it should be as hard as it is now? No.

Bob has a lot more health than people, myself included prior to writing this, think. This is because of what I'm assuming many others also refer to as "raw/base hp" and "effective hp". Base HP simply refers to the normal hp a mob has, ignoring all other status effects and the like. Effective HP refers to when you include those other factors like elemental defenses, and since Bob has quite a heavy amount of resistance to every element, his Effective HP is also sky high for his level in any phase.

This Effective HP is not an issue to me, in fact I enjoy longer boss fights as long as they aren't repetitive, but this is a problem specifically in Bob's final phase for two reasons.

The first is HPR. From what I could tell, Bob's fourth phase has a rough hpr of somewhere between 6-8k. Bob has 65k in his final phase. 65 THOUSAND. And that's not even including his elemental defenses for his Effective HP! Why is a boss able to regain nearly a tenth-eighth of his HP by just existing? I don't know if the other phases have this same HPR, but I know for a fact they have much less health than his final phase. It is reasonable that a player can dispatch Bob's other forms in a swift manner because of this, assuming the aforementioned sword RNG doesn't decide your time has come.

This leads to the next problem. Pull spell. I will be blunt with this spell as I always have; it is complete bullshit. The only reason this spell exists is to try and counter Archer's range (sometimes Shaman's aura prison as well), but consequently ends up being the biggest middle finger to a player in the game in almost every scenario. Even in bosses that I consider to be exceptionally well made, like Prison of Souls, there are times where pull spell is the make or break of an ENTIRE FIGHT. There is nothing you can do once pull spell activates other than sit back and relax to see if you'll get cucked.

So imagine my absolute delight when Bob's fourth phase has heavy charge. Alright, cool! Heavy charge itself is actually a really good spell, because you almost have to use spacing to avoid it since interrupting it will almost always end in it hitting you. He also has push spell, which is also balanced in this case because he generally uses it when he spams heavy charge multiple times to fly around, giving you ample time to avoid it.

...oh. Oh no. My PTSD from pre-nerf Cybel is kicking into high gear. Ladies and gentleman, we found another one! It's the one....the only...
TIME TO PULL YOU INTO MY ONESHOT WONDER SPELL THAT YOU WOULD'VE OTHERWISE AVOIDED LUL HOPE YOU SURVIVE!

Seriously, stop giving mobs the ability to pull you into an attack that does this high damage. It is the most arbitrary and RNG based way of making a fight hard simply for the sake of being hard. Bob's charge hits harder than literally anything else you've fought to this point, maybe with exceptions of if you decided to fight Amadel with 0 def and negative elemental defense and Rymek Luke's/the first phase's arrow storm. I would've beaten this boss with so many less deaths than I have if it wasn't for the fact that I actively can't do shit in his fourth phase because I'm dead without even knowing what happened. Oh, and this isn't even mentioning that the sword RNG is still going on as well.

You want to know the worst part about this? You have to fight every single phase of this boss again just to get even a slim chance of victory if he decides not to pull you into a OHKO this time round. The only phase I would even call "easy" in Bob's fight is the third phase, because his Assassin phase relies on the swords to create a sense of chaos when he goes invisible. It is the second worst feeling in the world when fighting a boss to know that you need to do everything again because of something that you did not cause, but the game just decided to do it anyways. The worst is of course you actually cause it upon yourself.

So, either entirely remove his ability to use pull or at least nerf his HPR. Avoiding his heavy charge and still managing to get past his HPR already rewards the player for being good. You do not need pull spell to accomplish this.

tl;dr Nerf the damage and health of the swords (specifically that of the water and fire swords) and delete pull spell off the face of the earth (or at least nerf his HPR in phase 4). Everything else about the boss is great.

 

I agree on the pull into oneshot; that's literally the worst spell combo that doesn't involve teleport or flamethrower (Please remove flamethrower while we're on the topic) and I can't think of a situation where it's okay except maybe in Cow's fight since you're given enough time to escape. I've never had a huge issue with the regen/defenses, but I dislike boss regen in principle because all it does is turn the fight into a dps test.

 

Boss HPR needs to die.

 

That combo...

It's telegraphed with two small Charges, and if you've ever heard my diatribes, you know that those are incapable of dealing damage. Afterwards, he uses Heavy Charge twice, THEN Pull, THEN a third Heavy Charge. This means you're pulled towards him before he lands, and get flung up into the air. The Heavy Charges each deal half of the usual damage, but since it's stacked to three, it's basically a 50% damage boost compared to getting hit with the usual charge...but honestly, I tested it over and over and over again, at least 50 times across every class, and there were a grand total of two instances I got hit by that move.

1) Once on each class intentionally, for damage testing to check survivability. This was actually really, REALLY annoying to do.
2) Once on Shaman accidentally, because he was trapped in Aura's prison.

Aside from that, the move had literally never hit me, because the general plan for Bob's Reincarnation is that you fight him with a group- that's why Bob's Tomb opens the way it does, even if that's a dated design- you're intended to fight Bob with multiple people. I know a lot of people when they do that are "wallhuggers" that get carried by a Lv 100 until the last phase where they deal the 10000 damage they need to in order to get the drop and just hide out in a corner the whole time- that spell is designed to fuck them over so they have to at least try and participate, cause it's designed to carry him across the arena easily, where players clinging to the borders won't get pulled. It happened a couple times during group testing, but even then it IS survivable on tankier builds.

So...not sure what to tell yall.

 

I guess it makes sense in the context of forcing wallhugger participation, but it can be really annoying when you're trying to fight him. Is it possibly to test if there's someone in the arena who isn't doing damage (I'd expect not, but this is the wynncraft devs we're talking about so I have to ask)?

 

Just nerf the water and thunder swords, the water one is unkillable with a water/fire weapon, I had to use a level 30 thunder weapon to take it out, and if it gets to Bob for long enough, he'll quickly get a ton of hp back.

The battle is hard af, but in my opinion it should be. The Mage phase needs some kind of nerf, but other than that the battle is pretty balanced.