Give life back to old bosses!

As someone who has played DD2 since it was a paid alpha (got Wipeageddon skins to prove it) I have seen a lot of content come and go. The original version of Onslaught, for example, vanished without a trace. While I'm not too choked over that, what i AM missing dearly are the large boss fights. I'm talking actual bosses, not minibosses. New content would be great, sure, but with DDA looming on the horizon, why not choose to breathe life into the existing content intead? It was solid content back when it was relevant, and these bosses deserve a new chance at murdalizing us pesky heroes. In particular, we have three large bosses that haven't seen the light of day beyond early game difficulties in literal years.

 

First, we have Betsy. Not only does she have a unique map, but back in the day when she was the toughest challenge in the game, her curse auras were the first time that players were forced to adjust their build and think outside the box. New players get a small taste of this in order to beat the campaign, but from what I've seen about 2/3 of them ask higher leveled players for assistance, meaning that the few times Betsy gets visitors in her cavern, her and her minions are utterly crushed by towers 50 times stronger than what should be there. I mean, she's the game's mascot, and deserves the chance to eat the higher leveled players' faces too.

 

Second, we have The Harbinger. The poor guy just wants to destroy the world by unleashing the ancient evils of the Old Ones. Is that so wrong? But now that he sits in adventure mode, most players dont even bother to visit. How can you do that to the poor guy? I can just see him now, drinking alone at the end of a long night, telling the barkeep stories of when players used to challenge him in hordes. Don't worry, Harbinger, I haven't forgotten you. 

 

Finally, we have the Eye of Cthulhu. "The what?", you might ask... Well, once upon a time, when the Dryad was new content, she brought with her a new resource that could be farmed from the blood moon incursion. You might even see Souls of Night in player shops on occasion. But at the end of that incursion, a guardian lied in wait. An unearthly being that seemed like it belonged in another world, dare I say, another game entirely. Mind you, he had a nasty little habit of instantly destroying the crystal if he went anywhere near it at first, but once that bug was fixed (and the bug that instantly killed him, too) we were left with a fairly awesome boss fight. Unfortunately, with the changes and subsequent locking of incursions to specific difficulties, his time in the spotlight was relatively short, and now there are many players who aren't even aware that there is a giant eldritch eyeball boss in the game.

 

My suggestion is quite simple: please rework these boss waves so that they are not "incursions", but are simply maps that can be selected at will when choosing a chaos map to farm (sorta like how Drakenfrost is), AND instead of having Drakenfrost Keep appear every 10 waves, have the game instead choose randomly between Drakenfrost and these other three forgotten bosses. Seriously, this content is too good to be left to die in obscurity.

 

Thoughts?

Completely agree with all of this, there is nothing wrong with re-enabling old content like the Terraria event or Carnival event. I just really wish there was something to do in DD2 right now apart from farming expeditions and onslaught.

We need all incursion maps to be available on C7 for fun.

Bosses in onslaught could be interesting if balanced correctly as some are scripted to hit the core... but damn the eye of Cthulhu on high onslaught that gives me the nightmares 

On 4/2/2019 at 8:54 AM, MiniTie said:

Completely agree with all of this, there is nothing wrong with re-enabling old content like the Terraria event or Carnival event. I just really wish there was something to do in DD2 right now apart from farming expeditions and onslaught.

Yes, so this. Just doing dailies and logging out. Playing PoE more...sad.

On 4/2/2019 at 10:39 AM, Defenso said:

We need all incursion maps to be available on C7 for fun.

Bosses in onslaught could be interesting if balanced correctly as some are scripted to hit the core... but damn the eye of Cthulhu on high onslaught that gives me the nightmares 

I agree and disagree. The incursions are built around certain enemy types, so just slotting in different chaos tiers will affect how it works. However, the incursions are useless mostly on these lower difficulties, so a way to crank up the difficulty and the rewards is badly needed.

I am curious on Cthulu though. I've only ever played against it in the incursion, which is incredibly easy. How is it a tough boss? It doesn't attack towers or crystals, so it seems to be an easy boss in that regard. 

3 hours ago, Jaws_420 said:

Yes, so this. Just doing dailies and logging out. Playing PoE more...sad.

I agree and disagree. The incursions are built around certain enemy types, so just slotting in different chaos tiers will affect how it works. However, the incursions are useless mostly on these lower difficulties, so a way to crank up the difficulty and the rewards is badly needed.

I am curious on Cthulu though. I've only ever played against it in the incursion, which is incredibly easy. How is it a tough boss? It doesn't attack towers or crystals, so it seems to be an easy boss in that regard. 

His HP is incredibly high for his tier (he has easily 3-4 times what other beefy bosses like Gregory of the same level do), though he flies freely around the map targeting the players at will. Same for the small Floating Eye enemies that spawn during his incursion. He is also immune to status ailments. Much like in Terraria, when his hp drops below half, he kinda bursts open, revealing a huge fanged mouth, and then proceeds to repeatedly charge at players. The final wave ends as soon as he is defeated, but in his final stage he can move considerably fast and do quite a lot of damage to unsuspecting players. I doubt he'd pose too much of a threat, until players started getting into the 150+ range, because his hp would most likely break a billion around then if his health scaling worked the same.

Edited April 4, 2019 by Thorgonator
Added a tiny bit of info

I thought the eye could damage towers and cores.... it's been so long since I fought it so it may be a cake walk now but I am certain if you stood in the wrong place or were respawned while it wanted to attack it could take everything out that was near you at the time.

There is also a built timer and bonus skeleton lanes which may cause additional pain in onslaught depending on the spread of enemies and modifiers ... and loads of fast moving eye balls that go for cores which would probably overwhelm SGT as they are pretty poor in higher onslaught anyway.

 

I'd reckon it would be harder than Betsy or Harbinger in onslaught but who really knows as I have not played that incursion since it launched so I've got much better gear, towers and MODS etc.  As there is no reason to play incursion maps as the rewards are rubbish and most are low tier crush fests. 

8 hours ago, Thorgonator said:

His HP is incredibly high for his tier (he has easily 3-4 times what other beefy bosses like Gregory of the same level do), though he flies freely around the map targeting the players at will. Same for the small Floating Eye enemies that spawn during his incursion. He is also immune to status ailments. Much like in Terraria, when his hp drops below half, he kinda bursts open, revealing a huge fanged mouth, and then proceeds to repeatedly charge at players. The final wave ends as soon as he is defeated, but in his final stage he can move considerably fast and do quite a lot of damage to unsuspecting players. I doubt he'd pose too much of a threat, until players started getting into the 150+ range, because his hp would most likely break a billion around then if his health scaling worked the same.

Thanks! I don't think he splits open anymore though, or i have never seen it. I can validate that currently the Eyes don't attack towers or cores. I did a lot of testing on that incursion when i wrote the wiki page for it. Built towers right next to eye spawns, stood on top of them and crystals with no def firing at them, and never saw any hit anything but me. I can't speak for any past ways they worked though. 

3 hours ago, Jaws_420 said:

Thanks! I don't think he splits open anymore though, or i have never seen it. I can validate that currently the Eyes don't attack towers or cores. I did a lot of testing on that incursion when i wrote the wiki page for it. Built towers right next to eye spawns, stood on top of them and crystals with no def firing at them, and never saw any hit anything but me. I can't speak for any past ways they worked though. 

In the past, the little guys could only ever hit towers or cores if you lead them to it. They always directly came at players, but if you ran past a core while being swarmed, they could hit it while trying to get to you. I'm unsure if the Eye of Cthulhu himself can still damage towers, but I do know he no longer poses a threat to the core.

And his transformation takes a bit, in all honesty he's usually dead long before it activates. Even more so now that he's been relegated to the depths of chaos 3. But they may also have removed it, who can say. 

8 minutes ago, Thorgonator said:

In the past, the little guys could only ever hit towers or cores if you lead them to it. They always directly came at players, but if you ran past a core while being swarmed, they could hit it while trying to get to you. I'm unsure if the Eye of Cthulhu himself can still damage towers, but I do know he no longer poses a threat to the core.

And his transformation takes a bit, in all honesty he's usually dead long before it activates. Even more so now that he's been relegated to the depths of chaos 3. But they may also have removed it, who can say. 

Now i so have to go test this tonight. See if i can get it to transform. If it does, I'll update the wiki on it. 

In my testing, Cthulu only spawns Eyes, and did not attack any towers or crystals. I played this stage A LOT too. Some things are difficult to test on C3 though LOL. 

Going to have a pop at him later... maybe it was the little eye swarms crossing my path that lead them to hit stuff like cores and towers.

Possible that he could destroy cores etc but got patched out the same way as seige roller missile did as I said it's a long time since playing it.

 

He comes from the double lane on the left of the map if I remember and there is core near that so maybe every now and then the core may of been in line with the eye balls if you choose to fight near there so they may get hit that way.

Had a quick look at some old YouTube vids but most are cheese vids lol.

Found one from Juicebags where he mentions building away from cores to avoid the eye going near them so maybe back in 2016 it could hit cores 

https://youtu.be/LP2RskAWiwc

 

Ahh serenity auras and PDT, now that was a great meta 

20 hours ago, Defenso said:

He comes from the double lane on the left of the map if I remember and there is core near that so maybe every now and then the core may of been in line with the eye balls if you choose to fight near there so they may get hit that way.

Haven't taken a crack at that map a for a long time, but I think the eye come out at the other side of the map too. The lanes where the bridge leads.

20 hours ago, Jaws_420 said:

Thanks! I don't think he splits open anymore though, or i have never seen it. I can validate that currently the Eyes don't attack towers or cores. I did a lot of testing on that incursion when i wrote the wiki page for it. Built towers right next to eye spawns, stood on top of them and crystals with no def firing at them, and never saw any hit anything but me. I can't speak for any past ways they worked though. 

Now i so have to go test this tonight. See if i can get it to transform. If it does, I'll update the wiki on it. 

In my testing, Cthulu only spawns Eyes, and did not attack any towers or crystals. I played this stage A LOT too. Some things are difficult to test on C3 though LOL. 

Damn, that incursion has gone into near-oblivion isn't it? They don't affect cores anymore? I'll be surprised if the eye doesn't change into it's second phase though.

Also I do remember that the map do have zombies (basically, mini-treets (regular orc sized)), by the time I think Launch hits, I don't see them anymore.

Edited April 5, 2019 by Paloverde zfogshooterz

On 3/27/2019 at 4:38 PM, Thorgonator said:

My suggestion is quite simple: please rework these boss waves so that they are not "incursions", but are simply maps that can be selected at will when choosing a chaos map to farm (sorta like how Drakenfrost is), AND instead of having Drakenfrost Keep appear every 10 waves, have the game instead choose randomly between Drakenfrost and these other three forgotten bosses. Seriously, this content is too good to be left to die in obscurity.

Thoughts?

I totally would love to fight the bosses at my level indeed! And definitely would support fighting Betsy and The Eye of Cthulhu in Onslaught too! However as for the Harbinger, I definitely would love a mode to have him on too. But not really for Onslaught as most of the fight is focused on the boss like the drakenlord which is something that I didn't really like in Onslaught.

So yeah, that's my thoughts.

On 4/5/2019 at 8:57 AM, Paloverde zfogshooterz said:

I totally would love to fight the bosses at my level indeed! And definitely would support fighting Betsy and The Eye of Cthulhu in Onslaught too! However as for the Harbinger, I definitely would love a mode to have him on too. But not really for Onslaught as most of the fight is focused on the boss like the drakenlord which is something that I didn't really like in Onslaught.

So yeah, that's my thoughts.

My thoughts behind his boss battle being in there is that there are only 3 lanes, and they don't require constant player interactions, unlike Drakenfrost which requires the player to either have a bunch of c8 tenacity relics or to chase after the dragon and constantly relight extinguished torches. It's a much simpler map than Drakenfrost, and wouldn't require the player to do anything beyond focusing on the Harbinger himself, assuming their build pn those three existing lanes is up to snuff. But the map has a generous build cap anyway, even leaving wiggle room for the player to save some DU to point towers at the Harbinger himself.

And as of Prime Incursions, my suggestion has basically been added. Though they aren't present in the game for a few months, I've noticed that the last two Incursions were Betsy and the Blood Moon, so woohoo!

 

Now here's hoping that they're more than just a slight jump above c7. I want to have to TRY to beat them.