The Celestial Champion is too bland as an endgame boss (with given ideas)

[Kaxzer]

Hello, this is about the new Celestial Champion boss in the beta. I've noticed that this raid boss (it does have a lot of hp) is taking a very different direction from other raid bosses, by having attacks with a greater emphasis on being dodged instead of multiplayer-centric abilities. While this might heavily simplify things for most of us solo players, as a result, this boss lacks the substance of other raid bosses with a lot of multi-tasking involved, primarily Toadstool, Ancient Fuelweaver (the best example), and Crab King (admittedly he fits). As the boss at the end of the long lunar 'quest', it would be pretty disappointing if this ends up as the final product. Furthermore, this fight generally does not utilize much variety with its attacks even with its large health pool, with many of its earlier attacks involving a lot of pointless waiting.

I've seen someone compare this fight with Klaus', in terms of being fun boss fights due to their larger emphasis on pure combat over huge prep. I do enjoy Klaus' boss fight, over the likes of Ancient Guardian for obvious reasons. However, Klaus is much less of a time-waster in terms of its attacks, with about all of its attacks taking place quickly, having a healthy amount of attack windows to beat him down, and having a decent variety of attacks to maintain players' interest in the fight, while having only 15k hp. The Celestial Champion has much more health and wastes time with some easily-avoidable attacks for too long, coupled with short attack windows before you have to wait out its attacks again. I do want to give this fight some credit for trying new things though, it does incorporate some new attacks that don't only involve the usual kiting, and I like Phase 3's laser arsenal that requires you to look at the animation to know which laser pattern it's using, but it could be improved on.

I'll talk about some of the specifics regarding the monotony in the Celestial Champion fight. Phase 1 is a very huge offender of this and it deserves to be skipped through. Its roll attack is a nice departure from purely charging towards the player, and although this is pretty easy to dodge, the main problem about this attack is that it lasts too long, and it could really do with half the number of rolls. To make up for this, each roll could either travel a larger distance, or it could vary its speed just like tumbleweeds. It could also perform additional attacks simultaneously for every time it touches the ground too.

Anyways, after waiting for this attack to end, you now approach the boss to whack it, except it does a normal radius based attack that probably takes 3s-5s, so you're just standing next to it, once again waiting for this attack to end before you finally get another small attack window, then it rolls once more. I feel like this mini ground pound attack is really pointless and is really only there to waste more time. I am not saying that it should have less attacks, but it should have an attack that could still allow you to attack the boss as long as you put in effort to avoid other attacks simultaneously. What I had in mind was an attack that would target 2 opposite directions around the boss for this attack instead of attacking everything in its radius, and for every consecutive attack, these 2 targeted locations would rotate around the boss, thus players would have to dodge while attacking to land more hits, instead of just waiting out the entire attack and wasting time.

In Phase 2, you actually get longer attack windows than Phase 1 for some reason, although it is weird that it traded out its more interesting roll attack for a speed-check spin move, which does decide how long you get to hit the boss in this phase before it spins. Speaking of which, I actually like how scary this move is with the Walking Cane as your only speed boost, especially since it can stun-lock me to death because I still use Maxwell, but it falls flat if you're any faster. I feel like it would be a lot more interesting if it was something like the spinning attack of Snortoises from The Forge, an attack that requires good reflexes to dodge without gating the player's speed. Also, for its alternating spike/gestalt summoning moves, it does not make sense for the casting of the spike move to not hit the player, while the initial casting for the gestalt move attacks the player, despite using the same animation. I also think that its odd to be able to walk past the gestalts before they lunge forward to negate the attack, although I don't mind this too much.

Phase 3 is ok, and I like this more than the other Phases due to its tricky lasers, and how this boss generally can't be lured away from its own Crystal Snares and even tries to kite you into them. However, I find it very counter-productive that this boss destroys its own snares with its lasers. It seems at first that you're supposed to mine those crystals before something bad happens, but they're also very problematic to get rid of whenever their aura is set up. Thankfully, you can just wait for the boss to eventually destroy its own summons on accident, so why even bother dealing with these crystals in the first place? To turn them into credible arena threats, there should be consequences if the boss is the one destroying its crystals rather than anyone else destroying them, such as spawning projectiles or strong gestalt summons that give the player more trouble than those crystals would. This would perhaps add more possible options for the player to bother with these crystals at all, like maybe you would actually feel the need to destroy these crystals by yourself, or you could at least aim to direct the laser attacks of the boss away from the crystals. This could also turn this into an substantial raid boss mechanic, like getting someone to direct lasers away from the crystals while others mine them. If these crystals just feel like nuisances, then why not grant players a buff for mining these crystals? Something as simple as more speed and attack temporarily, or drowsiness immunity, or a huge decrease in the player's Enlightenment, or dealing damage to the boss by mining them, etc. I also feel like its way too late into the boss fight to introduce this attack, I feel that Phase 2 should also have a similar attack, with less of these Crystal Snares spawned and lower severity.

Very minor nitpick, but I am pretty bothered at how there's still just normal gestalts roaming the Lunar Island like nobody's business during the whole event, like, shouldn't they have a reaction or behavioral change because of the return of "Them"? Maybe they should increase their aggression in some way in the presence of their champion?

Lastly but most importantly, this whole boss fight still feels way too simple for the amount of work you put into getting there. I have noticed that Sanity does not play a very important role in this fight, despite being the only boss so far that revolves around the Enlightenment system. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to make this fight a rehash of the Ancient Fuelweaver's Sanity-centric boss fight, but it is a huge waste of potential to not incorporate Sanity into a fight like this. Just like how you probably wouldn't want to be insane while fighting most bosses because of Terrorbeaks, you don't want to be enlightened while fighting the Celestial Champion because of the Gestalts that still roam the Lunar Island, but this is an incredibly basic dynamic, and Gestalts don't even do damage, and drowsiness is remedied partially with Mushcakes.

I really cannot think of anything at the moment, but I think there should be at least some benefit to being Enlightened instead of just staying at low Sanity for the entire fight. Alternatively, Enlightenment could also be made significantly more severe during this boss fight, such as attacks that increase the player's Sanity upon hitting them, stronger gestalts that only target Enlightened players, or higher Sanity causing players to receive much more damage from attacks. This would also tie into what I mentioned earlier about destroying the Crystal Snares in Phase 3 granting the player buffs, like reducing your sanity and sharply reducing your sanity gain from sanity auras for a short period of time, instead of just relying on how many Green Caps you brought, which would still help but would not be nearly as necessary (same goes for whatever sanity reduction methods you'd use like the Bone Helm and Nightmare Amulet).

That's all I have to say. I really do hope that this boss is improved on heavily before release to be memorable enough of a boss fight. I'd be happy if more people stated their ideas for this boss as well.

[Thieverpedia]

I fully agree on all of this. I was disappointed when I saw a video of someone soloing this boss with ease. I really hope that since this is early, Klei will figure out something else for the champion. It really is bland as it is.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

Im agree with the 1st phase being so long. It just need to last less time or have another atack to become less repetitive, i like how it works but get tedious because isnt dangerous enough (which is fine for a 1st phase) but last the same

The 2nd phase is my favourite but the fissures should damage the player, is weird for me to see the boss creating spikes behind me meanwhile i know i wont recieve damage 

The 3rd phase crystals needs something. And, again, im with you that if the boss brokes them something should happend.

[Lavu]

I agree on that, boss is tanky and boring while drop seems to be overpowered it doesn't really fell that good especially for what you have to do in order to summon the boss.

[Cassielu]

Yea i agree that, a battles with the theme of "dodge" is very good and im very exciting for it. but fight with celestial champion is not epic enough compared to AF, it need something new attacks and visual effect. Fulewaver makes me feel like a fierce beast and dark wizard, champion for now just feel like floor mopping robot and magnified science fantasy turret.

It also doesn't fit for multiplayer, in 1st phase, it can only use gestalt attack if three player attack it.

 At last it's a little too easy to cheat...A bunch of beefalo can beat it 3rd phase. Ice flingomatic, telelocator staff and boat are its Nemesis.

[HeatAndRun]

The problem is, unlike fuelweaver, basically you just need a ham bat and a walking cane to fight this boss.

It's definitely easy when you have minus sanity food and weather pains, but they feels more optional and less essential than fuelweaver fight.