The state of Dragonfly. Should there be a rework? Is the fight Fair, Unbalanced, Well designed or cheap?

[chirsg]

Bulletpoints because my shows are on. And by shows, I mean anime. 

-Dragonfly is clearly designed to be tackled with multiple people.

-Enrage mechanic is perhaps a consideration that only one player is taking damage at a time and the triple stomp is something to be avoided at all costs.

-Larvae seem like mobs that are meant to be picked off one by one.

For the solo fight, a lot of these considerations are out the window. Larvae are simply unreasonable to deal with in most cases. Not because of the sheer quantity, but because of the enormous hitbox. You're literally 1.5 tiles away and you get struck by the lunge. 
Pan Flute invalidates enraged, but it's a completely fair mechanic in my book as dealing with enraged dragonfly is simply unreasonable given the amount of damage and conditionally undodgable swipe in most cases.

To me, I truly believe in both ways, for and against, the fight is equally unfair. Both sides must break the rules to win.

 

With the year of the dragonfly coming up, there are a lot of discussions to "Rework" the dragonfly fight.

As much as I criticized the dragonfly fight in the point I made above, I would personally not change the fight at all, towards a more difficult angle or an easier one. Especially if it's easier. I would feel like a barrier was taken away from me.

 

Cheese however is generally something I am ok with. If there is a skill gap a player cannot overcome alone due to ability, disability or mental barriers, I welcome them. I don't much is inherently wrong with cheese if it gives players reason to interact with this side of the game. 

 

I digress. What would you do?

[lenship2]

ice staff method is pretty underrated

[BalkanCockroach]

All of these reworks could be avoided if there was health scaling. But since there isn't im cheesing some of the bosses like d fly and bee queen. Nerfing the raid bosses doesn't make any sense cause they are already super weak for more than 1 player. Maybe just changing their attacks and keeping the balance could work. Or you know ADD HEALTH SCALING LIKE EVERY OTHER GAME DOES BECAYSE IT MAKES SENSE.

[Mike23Ua]

My opinion as a Solo player is that Boss Fights drag on for entirely too long and because of that- it gets boring repeating the same few attacks/dodges/or cheese set up and preparations for a fight that if you bring other players along to help with- won’t last very long at all.

Average time to beat Dragonfly Solo- 40 Minutes. Average time to beat her in a group of Six players- 5 Minutes, average time to beat her in 12+ player server- 30 Seconds.

I’ve been playing a lot of Killing Floor 2 lately and while yes, this is a First person Shooter- the game has 1-6 player coop, and scales the health/damage of bosses as well as the amount of minions/enemies in a round based on how many players are in the server.

Boss Scaling aside: I also find the Dragonfly fight boring.. she should do other cool stuff, like breath fire walls or something!

[Q42]

Enraged dragonfly is a fair challenge and doesn't need any changes imo. The only problem I have with the fight is the amount of blue gems needed to use the ice staff on lavae, and the RNG that goes into that number. After spawning lavae, Dragonfly has a chance to either enrage, or for some reason, spawn more larvae. This makes the amount of ice staffs required to beat dragonfly pretty random, not to mention the player getting overwhelmed by Dragonfly potentially spawning 5 lavae in a row on the same magma pool.

In regards to this, the only changes i present are to lower the ice staff hits it takes to freeze a lavae from 3 to 2, make Dragonfly enrage 100% of the time after a round of spawning lavae, and prevent her from summoning a lavae on the same pool twice or more in a row.

[Guille6785]

the only change I'd make is to make the enraged dfly's punch attack go on cooldown after using the stomp, and maybe also revert the unavoidable damage that it does even when it misses (to make it possible to do the enraged phase damageless without items)

[Yuuko]

I think the Dfly is a good standard for what DST fights should be.  It is very challenging to approach head on, but do-able - and there are multiple ways to tackle her based on how you want to fight it.  The fight lasts long enough to be meaningful but not too long that its mechanics overstay their welcome.  There are plenty of opportunities to get in damage, as well as moments were the boss can overwhelm you.  Multiplayer disarms her quite a bit, but can still party wipe if you don't know the enrage mechanics.  In learning this fight a player really steps up their understanding and skills for the entire game.

Compare this to BQueen who has less health, and who's fight can easily take over twice as long to complete.  Bee Queen's grumbles are ever present making them a pretty monotonous feature of the fight, and giving few opportunities to deal damage.  Unlike dfly which has more direct approaches and a simple wall cheese that maintains most of the fight, in order to reduce the difficulty of BQueen you have to resort to very strong cheese like pan flute spam, an oven, or a whole catapult setup.

I don't think health scaling is the answer to either of them.  Klei is definitely on the right track with their new zombie bosses.  They have tougher, and more varied patterns mixed with ample downtime you can earn through specific interactions giving you the opportunity to drop your dps on them.  The downside of the new zombie fights is they are pretty linear, making them feel very same-ish after a few goes with little room to creatively alter the experience - but I guess that is okay for some bosses.  Cheese is important to a problem-solving, open ended survivor game like DST and we really do NOT need a war on cheese so while I do think the new bosses are great I don't think we want to retro-fit older bosses to all be forced combat-minigames.  Being able to use structures, mobs, and other mechanics to our advantage is a key feature in a game like this.

For now I think most bosses in the game are just fine as they are for both solo and group experiences.  Toad and CC are the only two bosses I would look at for changes.

[BalkanCockroach]

4 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

The fight lasts long enough to be meaningful but not too long that its mechanics overstay their welcome

Me after getting jumped by the 6969tu wave of lavae: :trolldespair:

[Gashzer]

The fact that 95% of the playerbase skips the larve phase using the easy to setup wall cheese proves that the dfly fight is hugely flawed and needs reworked into something more fun and engaging. 

Klei have got alot better with designing boss fights recently, nightmare werepig is so much fun, ancient guardian makes sense now, the new planar bosses look great with so many different mechanics happening.

Dragonfly fight definitely needs updated to catch up with the times. Bee queen and crab king are fine to me. Bee queen encourages you to use followers and engage with a mechanic you wouldnt normally want to try. Crab king forces you to protect your boat but cant really kill your character, wurt has no downsides to losing against crab king which is pretty neat.

[Jakepeng99]

I only see "buff" and "nerf" and no rework to make it fun option.

[Brago-sama]

1 minute ago, Jakepeng99 said:

I only see "buff" and "nerf" and no rework to make it fun option.

Buff: Make the babys break walls

There, no more wall glitch to complain about

[Yuuko]

22 minutes ago, Gashzer said:

The fact that 95% of the playerbase skips the larve phase using the easy to setup wall cheese proves that the dfly fight is hugely flawed and needs reworked into something more fun and engaging. 

Nah, if you're a combat character, in a group of players, or have access to a few blue gems you can easily do the fight without walls.  Walls are just one way to tackle the lavae, not really different then using an ice staff or damage buffs - and really its more variety and creativity in the game.  It would only be flawed if it were unable to be countered except 1 specific way, or none at all - bee queen is a great example of that.  Besides sleeping the grumbles and some specific character perks there aren't any really good ways to tackle them.  They just exist constantly.  In order to affect the fight you have to go all the way to building an oven, catapults, etc which essentially disables the entire fight - imo that is what flawed looks like.  We need ways to tackle the obstacles of the game, and we need multiple viable avenues - that the wall is 1 answer to lavae of several shows its good, lacking options would be a problem.

Sadly that is kinda the problem with the newer bosses.  They have cool attack patterns and interesting interactions but are entirely too linear.  imo it won't take long to get bored of these bosses.

9 minutes ago, Brago-sama said:

Buff: Make the babys break walls

There, no more wall glitch to complain about

til - walls blocking things is a glitch

[Frashaw27]

Dragonfly doesn't really needing anything done to them imo. It's a good simple raid boss that acts as a nice introduction to them both difficulty and drop wise. The difficulty of the fight is rather simple as most of it comes down to skill and knowing when to use the right things. Even the wall method requires some knowledge to know how to not use an obscene amount of them for the fight. The drops are always useful due to the ruins gems she drops as well as giving the player the solution to a problem that most new players struggle with, meaning they have a higher chance of wanting to kill it as well. She's simple, effective, and rewarding. There is no need to change her besides making her larva spawning pattern more consistent.

[Jakepeng99]

1 hour ago, Guille6785 said:

(to make it possible to do the enraged phase damageless without items)

I thought you could do it as Willow.

[chirsg]

39 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

I only see "buff" and "nerf" and no rework to make it fun option.

One way or another, the result will generally be binary no matter how creative a rework you do. Either it's easier or harder.

If you make the entire fight "Fair" that's effectively nerfing the fight. Even if you increased the damage, taking away dragonfly's opportunities to land hits in the first place, as an example is a nerf to the boss. You can vote for what you want and explain why you chose the choice you did.

 

[Sanitar]

An absolute nasty boss. My friend deleted DST because of this stupid boss. 10 minutes of fighting the boss by performing one action is not fun and not interesting. He needs a rework as an Ancient Guardian.

 

Literally ent, but with a huge hit box attack and with hp 27500.

[chirsg]

1 minute ago, Sanitar said:

My friend deleted DST because of this stupid boss.

My heart almost bled for your friend, but I thought back on how much grinding I did to be able to consistently defeat the dragonfly and upon stowing my emotions, I would have to see the point and deem it a tiny bit invalid, with all due respect. There are other ways to combat dragonfly if you choose not to fight head to head clean.

The loot isn't even essential to progress through the game, honestly. I think the starcaller staff is honestly better than the scaled furnace.

 

It's a shame your friend uninstalled the game for the sake a boss who is 100% optional in every sense of the word. It's actually completely unnecessary to undertake the fight for any reason at all.

 

Convince your friend to play again. If your friend declines, I'm guessing there's something else that doesn't click with this game.

It's not for everyone.

[Guille6785]

38 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

I thought you could do it as Willow.

enraged dfly is pretty much guaranteed to do a moving punch after the stomp because they have different cooldowns

[Uedo]

As a solo player also, it's fine.
Nice learning curve to set you up for future bosses and it doesn't take very long to do at all.

[Bird Up]

dragonfly is working just fine. AG was a good example of a boss needing a change. it had basically one attack, and was easily cheesable. Dragonfly always remains a creative boss fight for its different phases, attacks, and summons.

[Auth]

4 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

Average time to beat Dragonfly Solo- 40 Minutes.

what

[Spino43]

3 hours ago, Auth said:

what

The dude spends 5 days to beat dragonfly lol. Even if I use spears only I can still beat dfly way faster than that time.

[Cassielu]

8 hours ago, chirsg said:

-Enrage mechanic is perhaps a consideration that only one player is taking damage at a time and the triple stomp is something to be avoided at all costs.

-Larvae seem like mobs that are meant to be picked off one by one.

No offense, but unlike DS, on DST Dragonfly, Lavae and Enrage are one unit, and it is the true core of DST Dragonfly's entire combat cycle. Admittedly, the fact that wall strategy exists so that players lack the incentive to understand it is a problem. But you need to at least understand what something is before you say "it should be changed."

[chirsg]

2 hours ago, Cassielu said:

No offense, but unlike DS, on DST Dragonfly, Lavae and Enrage are one unit, and it is the true core of DST Dragonfly's entire combat cycle. Admittedly, the fact that wall strategy exists so that players lack the incentive to understand it is a problem. But you need to at least understand what something is before you say "it should be changed."

I never said that it should be changed. I always get misquoted and misrepresented. I actually said that the dragonfly should stay the same.
please read my entire post instead of making up an assumption based on how I ask the community a question.

[Sanitar]

11 hours ago, chirsg said:

It's a shame your friend uninstalled the game for the sake a boss who is 100% optional in every sense of the word. It's actually completely unnecessary to undertake the fight for any reason at all.

According to him, there is nothing to do in this game without killing bosses. And I agree with him, because there is no SW, HAM in the dst, but only ROG. The ocean is boring, building a megabase without killing even though 50% of bosses doesn't make sense, just surviving 100 days, but it's no different from the ROG experience.

Dragonfly, crab king and others only cause a feeling that it is better to delete this game and forget about it forever.