Nerf Solar Vanguard in Qira Hive (might be skill issue but its def harder than qira)

So Solar Vanguard in fire division, well well well, this pain of a sucker. i hate him. Solar Vanguard should be nerfed, and this is why. 1. The Boss spawns too many of those magma wind things, i was doin the boss and like 20 of them spawned, Vanguard should do less melee damage, as he shotguns me as archer. He is an extremely chaotic boss, Which i like.. but i think its too chaotic... This is my opinion. Maybe the nerfs could be. reducing his hp by 25-30%... or so. make it so only 5-8 of the wind magma things can spawn at a time. and the vanguard has a speed nerf by 20% in the 2nd phase, 1st phase of the boss i alright, the 2nd phase..... well isnt. Cause. Im a level 104 archer, with 13k hp, and 30k EHP and get 3 tapped by the boss melee. well I AM an air/water damage build so he can do alot of damage to me, but even on my warrior, I still died, because of the damage he does. He also does alot more damage than Qira, Which makes Qira only slightly harder due to having more hp, but other than that qira is a joke... cause of the vanguard doin insanely high damage... well thats it i guess... idk how to end these kind of posts lol

 

i agree he is too strong, i mean he actually already did get nerfed but for me it still seems insane. I know the point of keeping the qira bosses hard is to make the player try again and again and learn their mechanics but with a system like soul points comboed with this? not a good idea. please nerf him (his hp or shotgun) but not too much

 

He was difficult but not unreasonable. As long as you keep your distance you should be more or less fine. Soul points should then change, not the other way around.

 

Agreed. You should be able to attempt a boss more than five times daily.

 

I think they need to reduce the range of his eruptions. They end up covering so much there is basically no room to escape, it took me like 20 attempts on a non mythic shadestepper. Also the fact that he has pull spell adds even more insult to injury. I often more times then not, got pulled into the things he summoned.

Anyways aside from this and the constant world swapping to get soul points back, the bossfight was really cool. It just didn't feel like there was anyway to dodge the inevitable heavy charge or pull spell, due to the huge surface area covered by the eruptions.

 

I think he's fine. The only thing I'd change is removing the pull spell he has

 

Pull is annoying on any mob tbh

 

I think it works very sparingly on some mobs, and in very isolated environments. Eco caves come to mind because they're smaller areas. Longleg Gripper is one of the few mobs that I think really benefits from having the pull spell. The combo of pull and it having reverse kb works together in a way that never really makes it annoying. It also benefits from the fact that the pull spell is pretty infrequent, to a point that not every gripper you encounter with do it.
ON THE OTHER HAND YOU HAVE MARO PEAKS WHICH IS AWFUL.

 

I actually found Solar Vanguard to be fairly easy, compared to the Oceanic Judge and Psychomancer. I think I beat Solar in like 2-3 tries with a janky flameshot hilt shadestepper build.

 

The entire concept of health threshold attacks in Solar Vanguard is terrible and should be scrapped entirely. It actively makes the fight less fun and forces you to approach it in one specific way, neutering all builds that don't follow that standard.

 

maybe its because youve played for much longer than us...

 

I'm pretty sure the gimmick around solar vanguard isn't to kill it as fast as possible, but rather to outlast it. A flameshot hilt build would work quite well as it will not summon five billion geysers at once due to being more ehp orientated, and less focused on damage. It also means heavy charge spell is less of a hassle. Personally, not too big of a fan of this type of gameplay though. Technically speaking this is one of those bosses where paladin actually works as an archetype.

 

Your criticisms seem to be these:
- There's too many AOE attacks covering the arena
- His melees do too much damage
- His spells do too much damage
- His 3rd phase has too much walk speed
- Thematically he shouldn't be as hard as Qira and he is
I think you're decidedly wrong about basically all of these except for the last one.
The AOEs covering the arena is just something you have to get used to, I kind of think of it as the gimmick of the fight. Yes, it's jarring and feels constrictive when you start off but you'll get used to dealing with them. On top of that, you have complete control over hwo many magma wind things he spawns, they spawn when he reaches certain health thresholds so if he's spawning so many that you can't deal with it then attack him less frequently. The final ~20% of hp where you basically only get between half and a quarter of the arena to play in is the most extreme case of this but even then all of his phase 2 attacks are completely dodgeable with the amount of arena you're given (at least from my experience) except for maybe the flamethrower attack but even that one you can outrun.
The gimmick of this boss is that the first phase is almost exclusively centered on positioning and all of the attacks are just various ways of blocking off certain parts of the arena, the magma vortexes and the other ones that cover a quarter of the arena have to be avoided by not walking into them, the heavy flamethrowers you avoid (at least this has been my strategy) by kiting him to one edge of the arena (he charges several times at the beginning of the combo that ends in flamethrower) and then running to the opposite end when he flamethrowers; then the second phase breaks into more of a traditional melee boss but with the AOE gimmick still being present, specifically in the form of the arena attacks which still happen and one of his spell combos ending in a flamethrower.
His melees doing too much damage isn't really a problem... It's basically standard at this point in the game that direct melees from basically any boss will do massive damage. At least from what I've observed 3 shot melees from slower bosses is common as early as level 70 or so. All you really need to do to avoid these is back up while you're attacking the boss and if you have a reasonable amount of walkspeed you won't get hit. Generally melees are only designed to be a threat as the result of the boss distracting you with scarier attacks and in doing so luring you into getting hit by its most basic attack; they have high damage because they are almost always the easiest attack to avoid, you have to physically bump into the boss which isn't too hard to avoid doing outside of bosses like Corrupter of Worlds who's damage is decreased accordingly.
As for his spells doing too much damage, while this contributes to his difficulty, feeding into the point about him being harder than Qira, on its own it doesn't make the boss unfair. All of Solar Vanguard's attacks (I'm assuming we're talking about phase 2, as with one exception I don't think the first phase really has a lot of noteworthy attacks outside of flamethrower, he has a meteor in one of his combos in phase 1 but you'll usually be out of its range from dodging his flamethrowers anyways) are big explosions of one kind or another that all have clear and distinct windups. If this was a really fast boss that spams spells really rapidly then it having the damage numbers of a slow heavy hitting boss would poor balancing for sure, but that's not what Solar Vanguard is. I think part of this complaint may stem from the misconception that Solar Vanguard is meant to be a fast-paced spellspam boss, as you say you find the fight to be really chaotic. That was the impression I got of the fight at first as well, but in actuality it's a fight designed such that in order to get a good handle on the fight you have to take it more slowly and methodically; take the fight slower and I think you'll see what I mean.
As for him having too much walk speed, he does not. His second phase has a pretty normal amount of walk speed for a boss at this level. Compare him to Wybel, Panic Zealot, heck even look at Warden of Wisdom, the second phase of Prison of Souls, Corrupted Hashr's second phase, these are all bosses from as early as level 45 who's walk speed is comparable at least if you factor in the decreased player walkspeed at those levels. If he walked slower attacks like his charge>meteor>charge>meteor>charge->meteor>explode-spam wouldn't really work. If your build has a reasonable amount of mobility for this level you should be at least physically able to dodge everything.

The changes you suggest would completely screw up a lot of his moves and passify him to the point of there being basically no point to the boss existing. He already has pretty low HP at level 100 and a 25-30% decrease would turn him into a joke that you can easily shred and defeat without worrying about any of his moveset when using basically any meta build. A 20% decrease to his walkspeed would make the sections of his fight where he isn't actively casting spells feel boring and would make the parts where he is casting them feel less active. And decreasing the number of magma vortexes he can summon would do basically nothing because like I said the amount of those that he spawns is completely dependent on how aggressive you decide to be. I had very similar criticisms to the ones you have here when I first fought this boss in 2.0, so I understand where you might be coming from, but after fighting him a bit more I've found his fight to be completely fair (with one exception that I'll get to) and incredibly fun, and I think anyone else will if they keep fighting him. I'd regard Solar Vanguard's second phase if considered on it's own to be the best 1v1 fight in the game, with how wynncraft's combat system by its nature forces boss fights to rely quite heavily on minions both for difficulty and to keep the fight engaging I think that title is quite an impressive one. The moveset of phase 2 is really good and it shouldn't get nerfed like this.

As for him being harder than Qira, well, I haven't fought Qira very extensively in 2.0 yet, but I don't think it's necessary that she be the hardest boss. It's made clear that she doesn't take her fight with you particularly seriously, not that she isn't trying, but at least from the occasional snippets of sort-of-canonical lore we get from Selvut's stories and such it would make sense for Solar Vanguard to start fighting pretty hard in his second phase in a way that Qira wouldn't.
But outside of lore, it would make sense for the final boss of something like the hive to be the hardest one, functioning like a final exam for everything the player has learned throughout the hive, right? Well, it doesn't really have to be that way. LI's hardest bosses are typically considered to be Cybel and Death Metal neither of which is the final boss. The final boss will generally be the one that gets the most time spent on designing its mechanics, and thus will often be the most well-regarded one, and I'd consider a boss being well designed to be more important than difficulty when it comes to making sure it isn't underwhelming. Having Qira be the boss that people enjoy the most (which she may be, I don't know because I haven't fought her much yet) would do more to make her feel like a worthwhile and satisfying final boss for the hive than making sure she's harder than, say, Solar Vanguard. However, this is probably just my opinion, I'm not sure I'd be able to make a great objective argument for this objectively being the right way to look at things, and I can see why people would think a boss like Qira needs to be harder.


As for that one "exception" I was going to get to:
I love this fight for the most part which is why I'm so resistant to it being changed, but I do have a pretty big problem with it that I think needs to be resolved and I suppose it would technically be a nerf to the boss. The boss has this one attack in phase one where it spams pull and then explodes while still pullspamming you, this is blatantly a textbook example of an unavoidable attack. The ways I can think of to consistently dodge this attack would be to teleport away on Mage or on Shaman via Blood Connection (which would be absurd to be constantly setting up and preparing for since you have to be far away from your totem); outside of that you might be able to do it with a really well timed escape spell or whirlwind strike or something like that, but I don't think that would work given the fact that he explodes while still pullspamming and in my several times dealing with this on Warrior no amount of chargespamming has been able to counteract it; And that still leaves a bunch of arechetypes with no way at all to avoid the attack. I'm not sure if this existed in 1.20 or was added in 2.0, but either way this attack should not exist. The explosion has done varying amounts of damage in my experience, the lowest damage I've seen it do was about 10% of my health and the most was a oneshot, and for context this is on a warrior build with ~30k ehp. This means that you can occasionally just get hit with an unavoidable oneshot if the boss randomly decides to do this move, which is terrible design, and especially insulting in a boss of this difficulty since soul points will be a scarce resource. At least the move is is gone in phase 2 so it's not like it'll reset massive amounts of progress but it's still infuriating.
It is stupid BS like this that allows arguments like the one in the original post of this thread to look like they have a good point. When one problem like this exists in a bossfight, it shatters the player's confidence in the boss's fairness and leads to players being very understandably suspicious of any mechaincs of the boss that they might be having trouble with, including ones that are in actuality very fun if you give them a chance.
Content team, please do not do what was suggested in the original post, and please do remove this attack from phase 1.

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Ok Dr Zed said this already but by this token a majority of major bosses would have to be nerfed like crazy, basically any fight and harder than Warden of Wisdom. I don't want to imagine what the bosses of Temple of Legends, Reincarnation, or A Hunter's Calling would look like if they were balanced so that any player could learn the fight and beat them in a number of deaths that's reasonable given soul points. Soul points and good boss fights cannot exist in the same game, frankly, and one of them is gonna have to get out.
You seem to be arguing that making the player try things again and again in order to learn their mechanics is a bad thing that shouldn't be part of wynncraft. I'm afraid that's pretty much a basic description of what a video game is, frankly what a game is, and it's especially a hallmark of RPGs, you're supposed to grow in your skill and playstyle.

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You can avoid getting pulled into the AOEs by checking if you there's a geyser between the two of you when he's about to cast a spell and then moving out of the way if there is.
Dealing with his attacks while most of the arena is covered, like at the end of phase 2, is doable, it's just hard. The main problem is going to be dealing with his crazy heavy-charge with midair explosions attack, but you can still dodge it while staying within just a quarter of the arena by dodging behind him instead of to the side. But yeah I do get that it can feel like you're being squashed into a small space when he starts covering up parts of the arena.

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The mobs in Maro Peaks use heavy push, and I actually like it but I'm too tired to write 3 paragraphs defending it right now

 

sorry sir im not particularly intelligent and neither are many people, we dont have a big brain like yours or the time to analyze someones writing and write their own essay.

what i mean is that yeah your probably right and yeah i never think perfectly when replying

 

i hope you DIE...

 

Yes, it means that build variety will be temporarily decreased for this one fight, but it allows the fight to actually be approached in a way that works for this boss. I think there are better ways of doing this, for example the final boss of A Hunter's Calling is designed so that you're more likely to get a certain second phase that will work better with your build based on who you killed first in the first phase, but I don't think this is that bad either. The worst it'll do is make all the classes play more similarly for this one fight which isn't terrible even if build variety is important.
If you fight this boss with a glassier build, you will be at a disadvantage compared to someone with a tankier build, but you will still be able to enjoy some of the fruits of your playstyle; for example if you can get good at dodging behind the boss for his exploding heavy charge attack you will be able to dodge his attacks in closer quarters and thus be able to attack him a bit more aggressively. It just forces players with glassier builds to play to a higher standard if they want to do more damage, damage that tankier builds wouldn't be able to do at all, which is kind of the idea of a glass cannon anyways isn't it?
It'll pretty much always be the case that some bosses favor certain playstyles or archetypes over others. It's not necessarily something we should want but it's not the end of the world, and it's more or less innevitable in a game with lots of build variety.

 

I mean, Solar Vanguard is hard as hell... but that's fine? (Fuck soul points though) I think the Hive bosses, especially the boss of the final division, should be very difficult. The real problem is that Qira is just too easy and needs to be buffed.

 

Qira is the only Hive boss I still haven’t soloed. I got close once but man is she hard on your ass the whole time. Part of it was that I was playing Shaman though, which makes it harder to move.

 

THANK YOU

 

Health thresholds are one of the only consistent ways we have of detecting state changes with script in a way players can easily get. Saying health threshold attacks are no good effectively just means we can't use that anymore, which is just straight-up incorrect and isn't going to happen.