A Pointless Boss Tierlist

Explain Spin Attack and Smoke Bomb for assassin, and explain bash and war scream for Warrior.

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There is one actually, it's near the entrance and the only way you can get damaged in said corner is if the mobs used charge.

 

This is so cool! You definitely put a lot of work into this, props to you. How many words/characters was this entire post? lol. Also, out of curiosity, how would you rank the Clock sort-of-Dungeon bosses? :3

 

Not sure the exact amount, but it's probably somewhere around 100-120k characters (we were joking about it in the discord because it gave me the "you can't post over 80k" warning). Kronos, or whatever the end boss of new clock mystery will be, will for sure be included later, but clock mystery hasn't been fully updated still to my knowledge. If we base it off the old Kronos though, it'd just be a C tier, because he was more or less just a standard projectile mob with three non-existent minions. I appreciated the clock mystery itself, but the actual enemies you fought in it were nothing special.

 

neato, also I forgot to added this also, but what your opinion on all of the TOA bosses, since you put the Hive Bosses anyways. (aka, Alkevö sucks)

 

Like I said, I don't think any of their designs are worth discussing in a single fight because there's nothing really to discuss about them (other than Witch Doctor, because their clone is kind of cool when it actually shows up for once). They simply exist to be Death/Death Metal's minions and filler otherwise. Pretty much all of them would be in C tier, though I agree that if we were to judge Alkevo based purely as a standalone boss he would be D tier. He's just a dps test in that scenario.

 

Ah forgot about those.

Also forgot about that as well.

 

You forgot Yayha Final form, You fool, YOU MORON.

 

Should've been S tier smh

 

Small update, but I'm finally done messing around with the new boss altar (Magmastream Core, i.e. Vulcor Adrenophage). It has been added to the tierlist.


(I do not know why the hat is there)

Spoiler: A Tier Placement

To put it simply, the Magmastream Core is a fast paced fight with what is effectively a glass cannon. The boss has relatively low health for a boss altar at its level, only having a collective total of 100,000 health being spread over three different phases, but also has the damage to rival the gods. To give you an idea of how much damage this thing can dish out, its highest damage combo can deal a whopping ~12,500 damage or more (tested with a 0 defense Assassin with only 1-5 fire/earth defense). That is triple or even quadruple the amount of hp a player will have at this level. The boss is also highly aggressive, gaining more and more walkspeed and faster spell chains as the fight progresses.

Despite this, however, the boss is still well telegraphed and you can react quickly to what it does. Sure, you will have to make some split second decisions, but almost none of the combos feel unfair. They almost all revolve around using charge/heavy charge into other spells (or at the same time as other spells). Since charge itself is quite predictable and goes in a straight direction, you will know where the boss is headed when it goes to use it. The exception is, naturally, its charge stack, which this boss does use that to a comical degree. In fact, it charge stacks so much to the point where it starts flying above you. This is unpredictable because the amount of charges allow it to course-correct itself if you try to get away from it too early, but you will always be able to know when it's getting close to landing on you as long as you look up or hear it descending (or sometimes notice your frames start dropping due to all the particles lmao).

That being said, the one combo I take issue with is this combo: Explode->Flamethrower->Flamethrower->Charge+Explode.
As you can see, there is no telegraph before the explosion. It just comes out instantly with no way to react other than sheer guess work. While yes, this explosion deals by far the lowest damage of any attack in the fight (~500 with the mentioned testing), that damage is still a lot at this level (about 1/6th-1/8th of a player's HP, or even more depending on the player's actual defenses). The rest of the combo is fine, but the explosion's damage should seriously be toned down so it doesn't feel like a cheap shot at the player. Luckily, that combo does not come out often, and thus this isn't a huge deal or anything.

Anyways, the boss would largely remain pretty easy if this was all it had going for it. Sure, it could one tap you at any moment, but you could easily react to all of its attacks. This is where the minions come into play.
The minions have ~8,800 health, which is actually rather high for a minion at this level that is designed like this, and it appears a maximum of seven can be on the field while three will spawn in immediately with the boss. They are even faster than the boss, dish out a similarly large amount of damage, and have heavy charge or flamethrower to constantly barge in and distract you from the fight.

Both of these oppressive mobs in the same room create a fight where breathing room is almost non-existent. They will constantly be going on the offensive and never backing down for even a moment, especially in the first and third phases.

Likewise, that is the exact way you beat this altar: play the offensive at all times. I have not mentioned it until now, but the boss and its minions both are susceptible to knockback and hitstun, as they never have CCI and this will interrupt their charge combos. Because of that, you constantly should be on the move and attempting to apply this CC or punish the boss/minions whenever it is possible to do so. Trying to play slow in this fight will get you killed, or at the very least make this fight exceptionally harder, due to how aggressive these enemies are and the boss's sheer damage to along with it. Along with that, face tanking is non-existent without pumping sp into defense out the wazoo.

Because of that inherent nature, this creates an absolutely adrenaline pumping encounter that actively rewards the above. The fight usually does only last around 1-2 minutes tops, but every single second of it I am on the edge of my seat and actively engaged with everything going on, knowing that I could get absolutely obliterated in a moment's notice if I am not the dominating force. If you enjoy slower and more methodical playstyles, there is a good chance you will hate this boss with every fiber of your being (and this can be especially true for Mage/Warrior, since they are inherently slower), but personally I enjoy using both and will choose whichever I believe is more fit for the fight I am doing. In this case, it is of course that hyper aggressive approach.

If I had to make the comparison to something I have already discussed, I would say that the Magmastream Core is the polar opposite of Rotten Passage. That is a minion heavy fight that rewards patience and punishes aggression heavily (unless you're a Shaman :) ), while the Magmastream Core is a minion heavy fight that actively rewards aggression and punishes passive playstyles. Naturally, neither allows for ridiculous replayability or anything due to that, but for what they are intended to be they are phenomenal fights.

Shameless plug, but you can read here for a more detailed explanation of the boss, if you would like. The above is a summary of my actual opinions on the fight rather than simply trying to explain how to beat it and what not.

 

I also do not know why the hat is there. I assume there was something on the model that changed when new hats were introduced without us noticing but I also like to think that it just has a straw hat for no particular reason.

Also glad to hear you enjoyed the boss- it was kinda waiting in the wings for ages until I could figure out an actual appearance for it- then @Kiocifer came along and made the awesome Phage design.

 

phage with da hat

what will he do

 

Wtf HAT (I genuinely have no idea why it has a hat, it really shouldn't have that saved as part of its model. I might need to look in to see what's causing that)

 

shots the wynndata shaman bovine build is still loading please use wynnbuilder next time thank

 

I am a big fan of arrow storm and I severely regret 1 attempting to kill psychomancer using basically only arrow storm at lvl 80 while having low walkspeed. i hit a few arrows and it tped and i had to run really close to exploit arrow storm gaming but then it tps again and 2
gale while trying to arrow storm spam
.
.
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do not try that it is very painful it has 10x antikb of a ice barrows guardian and just goes zooom when hit by the arrows of arrow storm
I dont have opinions on any other qira hive boss because 1 they didnt have ridiculous antikb 2 I did them all at lvl 100 with full morph and gales force and spammed arrow storm which is actually suprisinly effective i only took like 4 pots to kil qira even though it was my first time doing qira and I had bs idea of how enemy mob spells work

 

there is a chungus among us

 

I just remember, y'all remember the boss of Eye of the Storm, Naragath for pre 1.20? If they didn't remove that boss, I bet ya, that boss is a whole tier of it's own in bad, since Blind + Vanish is bad, and high Health Regen with 2 Phases. Easily worst boss in my opinion and thank goodness it was removed.

 

pretty sure it didn’t have vanish; that was most likely just the enderman mob being buggy

 

to add onto this the "blind" that was mentioned was simply it stunning your retinas with its grace and power and perfection

 

Updated to 1.20.3 Hotfix #1.
tl;dr

With Crowd Control Immunity (CCI) being reworked, there is a decent amount of strategies that are now encouraged/discouraged prior to before. What I mean by that is timing on CC spells rather than reliance on spam is actually encouraged now instead of only being a brick wall. That being said, you can still largely ignore this even now, so I will only be mentioning it if I believe that it actively makes the boss better/worse to a noticeable degree. If you really wish to know all of these, @Selvut283 was kind enough to provide most Crowd Control Immunity/Resistance values on boss mobs that I have put here.

However, Crowd Control Immunity is currently a bit confusing to understand, so you should be aware of the following:
- Resistances only register the first hit on attack before going on cooldown. This renders using tick based CC (requiring multiple hits to get the full effect) rather useless against mobs that resist it. For example, Smoke Bomb's slowness will only apply a very brief 60% slowness before the mob is going full speed again since that one single tick activates the resistance. This makes Spin Attack's 1s stun more effective against that.
- Doing co-op (namely raids/possibly forgery) and trying to reliably proc certain CCs for maximum efficiency is more or less impossible depending on the group. This is namely due what was described above, as you just have to be lucky enough for let's say Ice Snake to proc its slowness over a random Smoke Bomb tick/Bash/etc.
- Knockback Resistance is activated on basically anything that applies hitstun. This includes spells that for sure aren't supposed to, such as Meteor, or even melee attacks/pet damage. This means Aura's Prison is entirely nullified by any knockback resistance ever since Totem tick damage can trigger it, but despite this you can largely still use knockback CC as intended if you're aware of it (bar the above for something like Arrow Storm). This has been confirmed to be a bug, and will hopefully be fixed ASAP.
- Uproot's 1s freeze effect ignores CCI entirely, and it is the only spell that currently does this. If the mob has knockback resistance, there will be a delay between hitting the mob with uproot and the freeze being applied since the mob would normally have the freeze activate upon landing (which is why this freeze effect was largely unknown/irrelevant to begin with, since the mob would then be trapped in aura prison). Make of that what you will.

All that aside, here are the ones that have moved and the explanations as to why.

Spoiler: Corrupted Theorick: UNRAKNED BECAUSE LMAO CIB BUG->B Tier

For the most part, the same stuff said about Theorick applies here. However, due to his additional increase in speed and his burst fire in the second phase, utilizing the Specters and waiting for Theorick to do his thing due to his more frequent usage of Push slip and slide+Slowness if you stick around him too long is a more viable options than the original fight, which is neat. According to @Treebeard68 in a previous reply on this post, Corrupted Theorick has Arrow Storm/Heavy Arrow Storm in these phases as well. I have genuinely never seen him use this move before, even after attempting to sit in the boss room for around 8+ minutes straight, but if it does exist then it most likely can be countered in a similar fashion with the Specters body blocking.

Spoiler: Geyser Pit: F->S Tier

The TERA-Mech is a relatively fast melee boss with slow immunity. The boss has knockback resistance and is susceptible to that, but due to reasons we will get to you should be prioritizing positioning/mobility over anything else in this fight anyways.

It uses Charge as a tell/setup for its entire arsenal, and dodging any of them requires you to recognize all of them. The first is simple, being a single Charge into Push. The second is two Charges followed by a Multihit. The third is three Charges into a Push, followed by a Heavy Charge. The fourth combo is five charges into Heavy Charge+Multihit combo almost instantaneously. Since the Charge and Multihit happen together at the end, you will almost never get hit by it unless you panic and run straight towards the direction the Charge will shortly be heading in. This largely applies to the other combos as well, since Charge is one of the most predictable spells in the game when used in this way.
While you can know what combo is coming since the Charge timing varies between each combo, it is pretty unfeasible to do so. Instead, knowing and anticipating what each set amount of charges will do is far more effective.

The fifth and ultimate combo breaks this trend. It will start with three Charges into a Push followed by Heavy Charge as per usual, but will then do a Push->Heavy Charge two more times after that. This is followed by a Pull->Multihit combo three times as well, and after that another combo of Charge+Push->Pull three times. Finally, the combo ends with a triple Heavy Charge.

Despite how daunting this combo may seem, it is manageable. Unlike the other combos, this one is easily noticeable since the initial three Charges are far slower in comparison to any of the other combos. The Push->Heavy Charge is still manageable by either interrupting the Heavy Charge at a distance or closing the distance between you and the boss so it overshoots you, the Pull->Multihit is possible to avoid by utilizing the aforementioned ranged knockback to keep out of Pull distance, cancelling the momentum of the Pull with a movement spell, or timing a jump for when the Multihit comes out, and the end of the combo can be mitigated with the "cancelling momentum" stated above, though you want to avoid spamming it since this will put you in danger of interrupting/being sniped by the triple Heavy Charge.

The second phase is commonly referred to as a "self-destruct phase", though the technical term for this is "rage state". The boss is practically invincible in this form, and only has one, long spell combo that must be used before transitioning to the next phase via Self-Destruct. This is split into effectively five main segments with similar combos to the first phase. It will start with two Explosions followed by a Charge, then two Heavy Charges into two Push->Heavy Charges, then a repeat of both the Pull->Multihit and Charge+Push->Pull combo from the first phase, then five Heavy Charges, then three Heavy Charges+Explosions, and finally ending with two Explosions+Self-Destruct. The boss is a bit faster in comparison to before, but you can largely avoid all of these the same way you would have in the first phase. The exception is the new Heavy Charge+Explosion combo, which you absolutely must sidestep the Heavy Charge in order to avoid both it and the Explosion that happens while the boss flies.

Bar lag shenanigans, this phase lasts slightly over a minute. The issue that Self-Destruct phases can run into is not being engaging due to obviously not letting the player speed up the progress of the fight and instead just waiting. However, I do not believe this is the case since all of these combos are still quite lethal and require you to counter them effectively.

The third phase is a direct upgrade from the first phase, retaining the same main combos but gaining an Explosion at the end of the double Charge->Multihit and five Charges->Heavy Charge+Multihit comboes respectively. Along with this, it also gains an entirely new combo of four Charges->Pull->Pull->Explosion(*). It also is much faster in comparison walkspeed wise.

The ultimate has also changed and become even longer, though it is a similar pace to it. It will start with three Charges, followed by an Explosion->Push, then a Chargestack+Explosion, then another Explosion->Charge+Flamethrower twice, then an Explosion->Dual Flamethrower->Charge->Dual Flamethrower combo, and end with two Charges (it will use the first while flamethrower is still active, so it will not move) into a Charge+Explode. The Chargestack+Explosion requires you to close the distance between you and the boss as fast as possible, the flamethrower combos require you to put distance between yourself and the boss while accounting for the distance Charge will take them, and the end of the combo requires you to similarly close the distance or opt to go even further away from the boss to avoid the final blow.

All of these combos are entirely fair. They have varying timing that makes them erratic enough that you can't just brute force your way through with muscle memory in the first and third phases, requiring genuine reaction speed to all of them and acknowledging what to do and when. On its own, this boss would be worthy enough of an A tier placement, and that would be entirely fine, to.

But no, we have to go that extra mile.
During the fight, there will be minions that run around in a maze underneath the arena. They will eventually Self-Destruct and deal massive damage to you. To make up for mob pathfinding in Wynn being easily cheesable, i.e. the mobs having no real way to know how to get over to where you are and rely on sheer luck instead while hugging walls, the mobs spawn in roughly 5-6 different locations in the maze to ensure they have access to all of it. Along with this, they spawn in mass amounts and the maze itself has relatively straight forward pathways, despite the overlap. What this means is that they will be able to make it over to your location in mass amounts if you stay in one zone for too long, but have a very hard time catching up if you are constantly on the move.

Furthermore, there are certain safe zones you can stand in to avoid both the boss and the mobs. They are roughly 9*9 blocks surrounded by the maze, and this makes maneuverability on one safe spot difficult but very possible. In the situations where you are required to move out of a safe zone (most notably when the boss goes for Push/Flamethrower combos) you must account for where the largest cluster of these minions are to adjust which direction you will be heading to minimize danger as much as possible. Since the Self-Destruct has a relatively long time between activation and detonation (with a sound cue to go along with it), you can prepare/react to this with sound as well. Due to all of these factors, there is almost never a time where you will unavoidably have to take damage from a minion or the boss.

In turn, this design also prevents super heavy camping strategies while still benefitting you for playing at a decent distance if you are constantly ready or are moving between the safety zones. The boss will screw you over with its Charge/Pull combos if you just try to camp in one corner of the arena for the whole fight. You are safer and actively rewarded for fighting the boss while in these tight safe spots and moving accordingly.

In conclusion, it is the ultimate combination of arena awareness, positioning, dodging, etc. Nothing in this fight feels poorly designed unless you do not respect the rules the fight itself lays out to you in full, which the boss will then punish you accordingly. It is not unfair to various builds/playstyles either, due to the inherent nature of the fight focusing on these factors over the ability to tank, spam cc, so on and so forth.


Ironic, isn't it? Well, I suppose there's no point in dwelling on a bug that no longer exists unless you try hysterically hard to break it. I'm happy to finally give you the recognition and respect you deserve.
Thank you for reminding me why I play this funny block game.

*This combo is probably in the first phase as well, but I have never seen it used there.

Spoiler: Plague Laboratory: D->A Tier

I have said in the past that the Plague Doctor is entirely fair to the player, and that still applies. Every combo is well telegraphed in advance using push, pull, or charge. Push indicates that it is about to release an arrow storm and you should stay away from it as a result (circle strafing at close range with enough walkspeed works fine to), pull indicates that it is about unleash an explosion, and charge indicates it is about to use explosion once it lands (or start up the ultimate, which charges into explode repeatedly before exploding multiple times and pushing you away from it). The only way you would not know if one of these attacks is coming is if you are outside of pull or push range, which is highly unlikely unless you are an Archer.

The boss minions also only have blind CCI, meaning the same utility can still be applied to them as before. Warscream/Bomb Arrow/Arrow Shield to keep them constantly away from the Doctor, Ice Snake to slow them down on their way to the Doctor or kite them away from the Doctor, and Smoke Bomb+Spin Attack slowness to render them near harmless while you focus on the Doctor.

For Shaman, this ends up being a double edged sword. You can render them almost harmless with the aura prison, but then you have a huge clump of them that you can be pulled into by either the doctor himself or the minions. With good positioning for the former and just good reaction speed with haul for the latter, however, this is not an issue, especially since the minions themselves do not do any real relevant damage aside from the self-destruct (yes, some of them have multi-hit, but this is primarily used to disrupt you and does practically no damage outside of hyperglass builds).

So, yeah, I could not be happier with the Virus Doctor getting the spell combos of the Plague Doctor. Even if you are not as big of a fan of Virus Doctor as I am, it is easily a massive improvement compared to the lame 'every ten or so seconds I will teleport and you will be intimidated by this' fight that was the original version.

(They removed all the CCI except blind immune, which is largely irrelevant so I am over the moon)

Spoiler: Aerie of the Recluse: C->A Tier

Adamastor is relatively straight forward as a boss. She only has Heavy Charge/Charge, Meteor, and Push in her main arsenal, which she cycles between using. Due to the frequency of her meteors, it can feel relatively nice dodging them all with sidesteps or the like, but she is otherwise a relatively standard projectile enemy.

This is where Urdar factors into the fight. After being tossed around by Urdar's egg for a few seconds, he will pop out to get his car keys and start acting as a major disrupter to the fight. It is practically impossible to outrun him due to his sheer speed, not mentioning his ability to spam Pull into combos like Multihit/Chargestacking. On the bright side, he does a relatively minor amount of damage unless you have easily exploitable elemental defenses, and it is still feasible to avoid attacks like Multihit due to the brief delay after the Pull/lack of immunity to knockback/slow (though he does have knockback resistance, so it shouldn't be relied on). He also has relatively low health, so whether you keep him alive or not is up to your build. The only builds that are really forced to let Urdar live regardless of what they want to do is an earth damage build, since he is practically immune to earth damage.

However, you have to keep in mind that while you deal with Urdar's pressure, you will also have Adamastor still chilling in the back hurling projectiles at you. You also have to account for Adamastor's ability to reposition herself with semi-frequent usage of Charge, effectively splitting your attention between two places at once and complementing each other quite well.

After you either kill Urdar or let him transition back to his egg on his own, you will get a brief moment of downtime between needing to focus on both of them (~15 seconds). However, you can also lead Adamastor far enough away from Urdar to increase the downtime between when they are both working together, as the Self-Destruct will not go off if you are far enough away. To counter this and not ensure absolute cheese of the fight, Urdar will use Heavy Charge spam to fly around and inevitably lock onto your current location, usually harmlessly sailing by you without you noticing it until you all of a sudden get tugged in a seemingly random direction to be greeted by him. Still, the increase in downtime to ~30s is well worth utilizing this.

Thus, the fight becomes a cycle of attacking Adamastor and dealing with Urdar momentarily until you chip down Adamastor. It makes for a great 2v1 experience that doesn't feel super overbearing or plain due to this "cycling" mechanic.

(They patched the cheese in a way that felt meaningful, for lack of a better term, rather than through arbitrary means)

Spoiler: Your Reflection?: C->B Tier

MIRROR MAN 2.0. has a decent amount of combos it can utilize in its fight. It can utilize close ranged attacks like the Vanish boost into triple Multihit combo, or more projectile based combos like the teleporting Arrow Storm. All of these combos are distinctly telegraphed and can be reacted to accordingly, and have enough variety for the fight to not feel mundane. It also fits the themeing of being able to utilize all class abilities since it is "Your Reflection?", after all. The only issue I have with it is that the Teleport->Meteor combo just seems to be nonexistent for some reason (I have legit only seen it once), though that may just be spell combo RNG being funny. Otherwise, it's a pretty good boss overall now.

Spoiler: Matrojan Idol: C->B Tier

To save character space, it's the same reasoning as the original post. I just like how much faster Matrojan is in comparison to Matryoshka is all.

Spoiler: Warden of Wisdom: B->A Tier

This is in a similar boat with Challenge of the Blades and Psychomancer. It's a comedically chaotic fight but one that does not feel unfair in the slightest. The boss mostly just tp spams everywhere with a lethal attack at the end of it, requiring the player to locate the boss ASAP unless they want to get slapped out of nowhere. However, there are some genuine combos that the player can recognize and prepare for as well (ex. the Wave->Charge repeated three times or the Heavy Charges after the Teleport+Wave combo), and the fight can actively reward both playstyles of aggressive/defensive due to the minions only coming out at certain HP thresholds.

Speaking of which, the minions are great disruptors in the fight. They are relatively harmless in terms of raw power, but they make up for it via overlapping their teleporting with the Warden to ensure you try your absolute best to locate the Warden as fast as possible. The temporary particle effect+hitstun that applies if you kill one is also a minor punishment enough to leave the player disorientated briefly without feeling overly punishing, and still encourages killing them if you can recover from it quick enough. Lastly, the "Upcoming Attacks" requiring quick reactions and positioning while still accounting for all of this going on is just the icing on the cake.

Everybody except for one single boss effectively remained the same or got better :)
However, some of the reasonings are now a bit outdated, so these have been updated in the original post. Below is a brief list on what actually changed.

Redbeard:
- Greatly decreased damage.
- Greatly increased time between attacks (~2.5s -> ~4s).
- No longer has Pull.
- ^Favors usage of Heavy Charge+Wave combos instead.
tl;dr These changes make Redbeard less bs, but he is still a fundamentally bs fight due to the reliance on consistency of charging+using the cannonballs.

Antikythera:
- Got CCI (Slow immune, Blind resistance).

This is the aforementioned "single boss" by the way.

Psychomancer:
- Reworked spell combos that make his fight feel a lot more consistent.

Vulcor Adrenophage:
- Blind immunity (resistance on the minions). Realistically only impacts Mage, but outdated information regardless.

Corrupter of Worlds (and technically Mecho CoW but not as relevant):
- Got CCI (Blind/Slow resistance). My explanation is still valid, but it's worth noting that timing on teleport/snake/smoke/spin matters more now as a result of this.

Quick side note as well, but (allegedly) a decent amount of boss damage has been converted more into elemental damage rather than neutral. They still aren't that noticeable, but hey, they can be somewhat influential depending on the fight and build in question.

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Mission failed successfully.
Also if you lock this due to necroposting I will steal your liver because it actually contributed something.
Also also I will probably update this again when either A. KB resistance isn't hysterical anymore or B. when said altar comes out.

 

I’m not sure about you, but I feel that Geyser Pit has managed to surpass even Genesis Revorse in terms of having the greatest redemption arc possible.