Quest Qira Hive bosses

So Qira Hive's division bosses have received quite a few upgrades and touches recently. I've finished a fallen warrior run of the entire game recently and got to experience the new fights, so that's what I will talk about here.

Spoiler: Psychomancer (Thunder)

Ok so let's start by the worst one. (I have good things to say about the rest don't worry this one is just the exception)

Psychomancer is just not a fun fight honestly. I've complained a lot about how flamethrower is kind of impossible to dodge by any means except getting away from the enemy and about the pull and push spells being impossible to counter, but I've been forgetting about the spell that gets on my nerves the most: The teleport spell.

Ok so this boss uses this spell a lot from what I've been able to notice. This is a poblem because this spell cannot be dodged, it blinds you AND deals damage. If it only blinded you or could be dodged, I would be fine with it because at least I know it will only be a debuff and I can act upon it. However, the fact it deals damage makes this spell a literal time limit for the fight. And I'm not a fan. Specially because...

He also has a goddamn shotgun attack. This means, I can't just get into its face mindlessly and tear him to shreds in one or two uppercuts or a few quick arrow storms, because by the time I'm pulling the second arrow storm, he will shoot a barrage of projectiles that will likely one-shot me unless I'm using an extremely bulky build/I win the lottery and agility counters nearly everything.

Pair this with his gimmick (the cool part of the fight) and you get a boss that deals way too much damage, has attacks which are impossible to dodge and you don't even know where it is.

The gimmick is cool but (I'm not fully sure about this, but if it does work the way I think it does, wow I hate this even more) do the clones also teleport? Or does Psychomancer really use teleport that much?

I think the clone gimmick is nice, but the boss is just unbearable no matter what I do. I've only beaten it because I happened to get lucky to get him next to the room's walls and I was able to use the walls as cover for the shotgun, which made the fight a lot easier. But again, that was just one huge stroke of luck.

So to sum up: my problems with this fight are that he uses a shotgun main attack which have always been a crime due to how ridiculous the damage output of these have always been and the extreme frequency of impossible-to-dodge damaging teleports. The first one is the lesser of the two evils but the second one is just as bad if not worse as the pull and push spells I've complained about in a previous thread.

Spoiler: Gale (Air)

Ok so Gale is basically a better version of Psychomancer to me. Does it still hit hard to a degree that makes you question who decided this was a good idea? Yeah, I was using an EFA build and okay, I had no health regen tools but jeez, I had a pretty decent health pool and like, a 50% damage reduction from fire and another 40% chance to reduce the damage further by 90% thanks to agility, and that wasn't enough to tank even a single barrage of the main attack? I'm pretty sure with such defense stats at least one should be a guarantee for a boss that is supposed to be fought at around the late level 80s.

Now, the ridiculous damage output of the boss aside, unlike Psychomancer, it didn't have a stupid damaging teleport spell, so while the damage it deals per hit is super high, it can at least be dodged, so this time it can be called a skill issue on my part, which is why I say this is basically a better Psychomancer.

About the arrow rain (not the arrow storm spell, the ones that fall from the top of the room), it was by far the least threatening of all the gimmick spells the bosses had. I think a good change to this boss would be toning down the damage output in general while buffing a lot the arrow rain gimmick. Make it faster, more common and (perhaps, I haven't been hit by it so I don't know how much damage it does) make it hit harder.

I think this boss is good, it just lacks balancing between its tools. I liked the arrow rain gimmick but I just found it too easy to dodge to even consider it a threat.

Spoiler: The earth dude (Earth)

Forgive me for I do not recall this thing's name.

The last three division bosses were definitely the best ones for me, so let's talk now about the first one.

This boss fight is good. The earthquake gimmick is disruptive enough so that it poses a threat without being an annoying one-shot or guaranteed hit mechanic. Having to think about my positioning before attacking so that the earthquakes don't grant the enemies a chance to attack me was fun, and I recall there being some exploding dirt thingies or something? I recall there was something like that too, and I think it was cool. It was also a lot more irregular than Gale's arrow rain gimmick, which made them a lot more threatening, even though they were still not too big of a deal.

The boss also has a time limit once it is low on health but I think it is generous enough.

And no, this boss wasn't easy either, it also took a lot of concentration from me to beat it since it was quite tanky (or maybe the fact that I was using earth weapons made it seem like it), but unlike Gale and Psychomancer, the earth one didn't feel unfair in any way, so I really like it.

Spoiler: Oceanic Judge (Water)

Similar to the earth dude whose name I do not remember, this guy was cool. The Oceanic Judge didn't hit nearly as hard as Psychomancer or Gale, but this boss' gimmick was actually super threatening, possibly the hardest one of the five.

What this one does is summon four rods that create a tornado (not sure how to call it, but I think you get the idea) of sorts while following a sort of kaleidoscopic spiral pattern. I'm pretty sure these appear depending on how much damage the boss has received, since as his health went down, more seemed to appear. By the end of the fight, there were so many that they were a genuine threat. They were everywhere. And it was great. Unlike the first two bosses' gimmicks, this one was a very relevant threat that made the fight feel unique, just like the earth dude whose name I do not remember.

I really liked this fight just like the previous one. No complaints at all.

Spoiler: Solar Vanguard (Fire)

The final of the division bosses and also the third good one. He is a pretty normal boss except for the fact that the floor is divided in quarters and the quarters can light up occasionally, which makes them deal damage to you. Attacking the Solar Vanguard can also cause eruptions of magma too. One thing I haven't really mentioned yet is that I'm a big fan of how well telegraphed the gimmick spells are. All of them are easy to identify and recognize, and give a pretty good clue of what they are about to do even the first time. For real, I wish all spells were like this. Keep up the good work.

Returning to the fight itself, yeah it is very well telegraphed and the gimmicks, while not overwhelming, are there and spice up the fight a lot. My only issue with this boss is that it has the pull spell, which isn't even a thing exclusive to it.

There isn't much I have to say about to say here

Spoiler: Ranking

After talking about them, I think I would rank them in this order:
1. Oceanic Judge
2. Solar Vanguard
3. The earth dude whose name I do not remember

4. Gale
5. Psychomancer

The gap I left in the middle should separate which bosses I think were a lot of fun and which ones were a pain in the ass. As I stressed through the reviews, Gale and Psychomancer felt too much like normal mobs with extremely annoying basic spell combos and with gimmicks that didn't really do much, while the first three were really cool fights with their own threatening gimmicks and stage hazards. I don't really feel like there is much of a gap between the first three spots honestly, I could swap them around and I would still sort of agree I think. The gap is mostly present between the first three and the bottom two.

Again, this is all from the perspective of a EFA fallen warrior fighting them generally at the level they are supposed to be fought on.

 

The Oceanic Judge is interesting with his unique whirlpool/tornado(?) gimmicks

Btw the earth boss is called Genesis-Revorse

 

idk bro solar vanguard felt really balanced when i fought him right after 2.0 dropped

 

I managed to get past Gale, but for the life of me I can’t figure out why her spells and ONLY her spells caused me so many lag spikes.

 

Nice, now I know. Unfortunately I can't edit the poll so it is gonna stay the way it is

I mean I haven't said anything about him being too easy or too hard, solar vanguard is perfectly fine in my opinion.

I don't recall if Gale was one of them but I'm pretty sure she was one of those bosses who cast like a hundred charges to move around. It would be cool if toggling particles down actually affected the few bosses who do that because the particles have no chill when they do that. It's either I turn them off completely or face them at a reduced amount of FPS.
If you refer to suddenly getting a small frame hiccup when stepping into very specific spots of the arenas, yeah I got no idea why that happens either but it is really annoying and I recall there being a few during the Gale fight, which made it a lot more difficult than it should have been too. It's an issue I've been noticing in more areas of the game and they keep getting worse. It's just that I have no idea if I'm the only one who runs into that issue and if that is just a Minecraft thing or if it is a genuine, playerbase-wide issue that the CT can actually deal with.

 

I made a poll earlier about it and I seemed to be the only one with that issue. It’s refreshing to hear that I wasn’t the only one then.

I was even running Sodium and allocated 8 GB of ram to my client at the time. Maybe it’s because of 1.19? Dunno… I also had particles reduced as well, but I can’t play with particles completely off given how much is telegraphed with them.

As for the rest of the bosses, they were definitely improved from b4. The gimmicks shake things up and make each one feel unique. One critique of mine though is that there isn’t enough room for error, or at least as a EWF Ritualistic Shaman. At the Fire boss, I was just constantly just trying to get away and it felt a bit spammy.

 

(credit to Shots for the tierlist template, unless there's some imposter who also has the username tinkywinky)
it looks like our opinions differ a bit...
Ok then
Oceanic Judge had a well-rounded moveset before 2.0 that was already difficult, now he still has that but he also has these spiral thingies that spin around the arena, which can outrun a player with a fair amount of walkspeed and are quite hard to predict the motion of, and while they are active the guy keeps attacking you, there have been way too many occasions where there was one of those things coming at me in one direction and a wave spell from the judge coming at me from another direction, coming at just the right angle that my only options were to die to the tornado thing or get caught in a wave that would push me into the tornado thing, it's a horrible fight filled with overlapping attacks that were not designed with each other in mind. Also the judge can literally just heavy push you into the things if you get unlucky. Even worse is the fact that the their range extends upward infinitely and will pretty much always oneshot you; there's a reason why the wave spell doesn't extend upward infinitely and as a result the wavespell has many ways of being dodged and is quite fun to engage with in a boss's moveset, this is the wavespell but it's faster, extends upward infinitely, and oneshots you. Also it's not like these come out periodically or at certain health thresholds, instead they come out at 75% health and keep coming out perpetually for the rest of the fight, and he can spam them for the last quarter of the fight which basically covers the whole arena in the things.
Maybe I don't have enough experience with this guy but his difficulty and the way he is difficult is at least inexcusable with soul points and the hive's current runback taken into consideration, he may still be a fair boss after enough attempts but so far my impression of him is terrible. (I've attempted him ~10 times, maybe a little more, and I still haven't found a consistent way to avoid his attacks.)

Genesis Revorse still has it's awesome moveset from before, and most of the additions in 2.0 are good, except for one. Every couple seconds (at random intervals as far as I can tell, and if they aren't random they are way too short) you get lifted into the air and become unable to move, this is kind of a problem since if genesis decides to do a heavy charge or something during the earthquake you have no way to avoid it, it also happens often enough that it's hard to get a window to attack. This was already a very complex boss and now it's just so complicated that you can't really be expected to understand it, especially when soul points only allow you to attempt a boss 5 times before having to afk for like an hour, and when the hive runback is still a good minute of walking even with the new stairs.

I have theoretically the most experience with Solar Vanguard of any of these bosses but in actuality I have no idea what is really going on in the fight; Solar Vanguard does have enough arena attacks that pretty much only 25% of the arena is ever usable at a given time, and sometimes not even that. I've also seen him on multiple occasions to a heavypull->heavypull->explode attack that's too fast to react to, that's the literal textbook definition of BS in a boss fight, and overall the first phase's entire gimmick being that it tries to kill you with heavy flamethrower (which when cast will often take up the remaining 20% or so of the arena you still had access to) is just really annoying. His second phase seems solid though but I don't have enough experience with it. I could see this boss moving up later

Psychomancer is a bullshit boss for all the reasons you mentioned, but he does have redeeming factors that make him occasionally fun, and unlike with genesis revorse (who'd probably be somewhere in S tier without the earthquakes, and who was at the top of A tier in 1.20) the problems with Psychomancer's fight don't make the good things about it unenjoyable. In addition to this, Psychomancer is in a similar situation as Panic Zealot who is ranked pretty much the same (no I'm not a dumbass who thinks the PZ fall damage is BS, I have other reasons for disliking the fight), where canonically and thematically it does make sense for the fight to be BS, but it obviously still screws up the mechanical side of the fight.

Gale was a good fight before (when she didn't get stuck in the ceiling) and is a slightly better fight now (when she doesn't get stuck in the ceiling). Her fight before was deceptively difficult since her charge stacking seemed kind of unpredictable and her margin for error was incredibly small, but once you got the hang of the fight it became pretty easy and if anything a bit boring. Now she has some AOE attacks in addition to her previous moveset which I believe has also been changed, but for the most part she's had an overall improvement.

 

He is definitely a really hard boss yeah, I do remember the spiral things getting a bit out of control when the boss was starting to get really low on health. And I definitely forgot if he had a push/pull spell. I replayed the fight yesterday specifically to verify some things and I do remember him using it once at the start of the fight. He only used it once so it didn't feel major to me but I agree that does subtract some points.

I still think that all this fight needs is a few adjustments and not much else though. I definitely didn't have a bad experience with him, though I do agree with some of your points about some attacks being too hard to deal with or the fact that he does have that cursed pull spell.

They actually happen when the boss takes a certain amount of damage. I do not know how much but I do know that whenever I used a spell on him (my uppercuts could deal like 60k or more so I have no idea how frequently he actually uses it) or hit him with my main attack at high corrupted percents, the earthquake would always trigger.

Yeah I do agree that the earthquakes can get a bit too tough at times, but the fact that they only trigger when the boss takes damage makes it a lot more fair in my opinion. However, you didn't realize that and you claim that the fight has become a bit too chaotic, which does show your point about too many things going on in the fight for it to be understood when you can't get rematches back to back due to soul points. I remember the silverfishes also having the charge spell, which made it very complicated to figure out when it was a good moment to attack and when not to. I guess an easy solution would simply be to tone down the frequency of the charges so that you get a less strict window to attack.

Mhm, I don't recall him using pull and push spells at all. The second phase doesn't change much from what I recall, it is basically the same thing except he moves a bit faster or changes elemental stats perhaps. Maybe I should refight him.

Alright just fought him again, yeah he does, that does bring him down quite a bit. But again, similar situation to Genesis Revorse. Most of its attack trigger only after you deal an specific amount of damage to him, which makes him a lot more doable once you realize it in my opinion. Two quarters of the floor can trigger at once and sometimes they are next to each other though, which I definitely think needs to get touched upon, since it can leave you trapped near the walls.

Over all I still think he is a good boss but I agree on quite a few of those criticisms.

I mean I'm pretty sure I didn't complain about the clones gimmick at all. All I complained about was about how bullshit the moveset is. There are redeemable things about the fight as you said like that gimmick, but the rest of the moveset makes him so unbearable that it overshadows the good things. They don't nullify them but they overshadow them.

Yet another boss I replayed for the sake of this reply. Things definitely change at level 100 though so I didn't get much out of it. Maybe calling her "the better psychomancer" was a bit too harsh, but I do think she still hits a bit too hard through her usual spells for a level ~85 boss and the gimmick spells are too easy to dodge. But yeah perhaps I was a bit too harsh on Gale.

 

The issue here is that it doesn't really matter when pullspam->explode happens, especially when that explode is likely to oneshot you, because of the timing on solar vanguard's version of that attack (the explode happens while you're still being pulled) that attack is basically unavoidable damage and in some cases an unavoidable oneshot that you just have to pray he won't use.
His second phase is quite different, his first phase pretty much just stands still and tries to flamethrower you and occasionally charges (or does that aforementioned BS attack), his second phase is more of an actual fight where he moves around and tries to damage you with heavy charges, meteors, and explosions that happen in spell combos that are usually a lot more fun to engage with than those in the first phase; I don't have as much experience with the second phase (largely since the first one keeps killing me in annoying ways that leave me not wanting to come back) but I have the impression that it's a lot better.

I have the same view, the problems with this fight are the same problems that the fight had in 1.20 and before and in fact all of the new additions are positive in my view, but the moveset itself has redeeming qualities too they're just overshadowed by you getting randomly hit by heavy-teleports you can't avoid as well as his occasional tendency to teleport behind you and immediately shoot you in the back if you get unlucky.

Gale was pretty deceptively difficult in 1.20, she seemed overwhelmingly chaotic when you first started fighting her and her margin for error was very small, but the fight was actually pretty simple if you didn't get overwhelmed by seeing a mob chargestacking the way she did, she kind of just flew around in the air while shooting you like a normal ranged mob and then occasionally tried to land on your head and blow you up. The new Gale still has a very small margin for error (she does lots of damage) and her moveset is deceptively difficult but once you're no longer daunted by how crazy her attacks look she's probably the easiest of the hive bosses.

Not only do the minions have charge and heavy charge, they actually have their own fully-fledged movesets that are more complicated than a lot of full bosses, this complexity is what made the boss so good in 1.20 and 1.19 but the introduction of a new attack where the boss just lifts you into the air and makes you unable to avoid attacks takes it a bit too far, or at least takes it too far if we're factoring soul points and boss runbacks into the equation.
I want to also mention the general jankiness and laziness of the earthquakes both in this fight and in the game as a whole (since they now appear in a bunch of quests, including The Lost which hilariously -or infuriatingly if you're the one doing the quest- triggers the earthquake affect while you're trying to do parkour almost innevitably pushing you off). The earthquakes lift you into the air sometimes but not always and lift you to different elevations each time, if you do a movement spell during the earthquake the spell will work but you'll still be floating and if you're using dash on an assassin it's going to be a nightmare, and also if you're in the air when the earthquake happens you'll still get lifted up (I don't know how an "earthquake" is somehow affecting an acrobat who's close to the ceiling than the ground), it feels like the game can't decide if it want's to cancel your mobility or not. There's a similar situation with the whirlpools Oceanic Judge makes, they aren't necessarily a terrible idea but their execution feels very lazy, it feels like they weren't properly tested and this laziness is especially demonstrated by the Judge still having heavy push, in addition to the degree to which his moveset in general doesn't feel like it was designed to be overlapping with the whirlpools - because it wasn't.