Buffing Hard Mode Vilya and Both Phasemen fights.

[Own]

1. I don't think in Hard Mode there's much of a change to the Vilya fight, beyond the damage she can do. The most immediate way I can think to slightly increase the difficulty of that fight is incorporating the cheering Teddy and Freddy on the bridge wall into it, in a passive way.

Let Teddy and Freddy both occasionally cast Protection and Haste on Vilya respectively. Protection to diminish the damage she takes, Haste to make her move and attack much faster. Just swipe at Teddy/Freddy to KO them still at 1 HP for about 10-15 seconds and knock out their buff spells, before they get back up on the bridge wall and start cheering / stat buffing again.

2. Phaseman is easy to kill in about 3-5 seconds for anyone who heads left because he is heavily scripted with no HP Activation triggers. He'll sit there and let you carve through him. This heavily favors burst damage people and doesn't favor casters at all.

The easiest way to remedy this, to ensure he at does a full cycle through all his moves, is to make it so that if he takes 20-25% HP damage while at the left or the right side of the room he will immediately stop his bombardment there and warp to the next phase of his attack.

So if you do 25% of his HP while he's on the left, he'll warp right. If you do 25% of his HP while he's on the right, he'll warp to the middle. Maybe even if you do 25% of his HP after he fires his shot at the top he'll warp back to the left.

These wouldn't be regular HP amount triggers like Gigaslime, but location based damage taken. So if he has 60% HP when he's at the right and you knock him down to 35%, he'll immediately transition.

This would make the boss battles a bit more spicy in Hard (for Vilya) and fair in Normal/Hard (for Phaseman), in my opinion. Anyone disagree?

Edit [Arcade] was added to the start of this title... I'm... 99% sure I didn't put it there? I meant these additions for Story Mode. There is no bridge for Teddy and Freddy to perch on in Arcade. Though I would assume the Phaseman additions would work fine in Arcade as well.

 

[GarlicJelly]

Uhhh.... The Phaseman change would crush my speedrunning PB... But other than that I can't say that it's a horrible idea. Personally I think that the Phaseman idea should be added to at least Hard.

 

[Own]

The thing I like about speedruns is that they require you figure out incredibly clever strategies in order to optimize beating down a boss as quickly as possible. Things like absolutely maximizing your DEF in order to save a little time and bypass the ice maze, or getting a little bit lucky and picking up the Iceskating Boots to survive against Winter Hydra.

An ideal speedrun strat would be landing a Perfect Guard vs Phaseman's green orb, which stuns him for a while and would ideally prevent him from warping away as you did more than 20-25% damage to him.

Unfortunatelly, no one who actually knows what they're doing ever gets to the point where Phaseman launches his green orb. So it never gets the chance to be a speedrun strat.

If something can be done easy and done with brute force, there's no satisfication to be had at the end of the day. The difference between running over, pounding down Phaseman in a few seconds and batting his supershot back at him for a brutal pounding is overwhelming. That's why I think something like that ought to be in Normal as well, to at least prevent the Brute Force option.

It's also why I wish The Sentry would gradually move along those blue lines around it's room like a train on a track, getting gradually faster the lower it's HP gets. Prevent the strategy of 'Walk next to it, mash attack as fast as possible until it dies'. Chasing the bugger to get the last extra swipes in and finishing it off would be quite fun. Give me a reason not to just stand there!

 

[GarlicJelly]

The thing I like about speedruns is that they require you figure out incredibly clever strategies in order to optimize beating down a boss as quickly as possible. Things like absolutely maximizing your DEF in order to save a little time and bypass the ice maze, or getting a little bit lucky and picking up the Iceskating Boots to survive against Winter Hydra.

An ideal speedrun strat would be landing a Perfect Guard vs Phaseman's green orb, which stuns him for a while and would ideally prevent him from warping away as you did more than 20-25% damage to him.

Unfortunatelly, no one who actually knows what they're doing ever gets to the point where Phaseman launches his green orb. So it never gets the chance to be a speedrun strat.

If something can be done easy and done with brute force, there's no satisfication to be had at the end of the day. The difference between running over, pounding down Phaseman in a few seconds and batting his supershot back at him for a brutal pounding is overwhelming. That's why I think something like that ought to be in Normal as well, to at least prevent the Brute Force option.

It's also why I wish The Sentry would gradually move along those blue lines around it's room like a train on a track, getting gradually faster the lower it's HP gets. Prevent the strategy of 'Walk next to it, mash attack as fast as possible until it dies'. Chasing the bugger to get the last extra swipes in and finishing it off would be quite fun. Give me a reason not to just stand there!

Ugh, I hate the Sentry Boss. He's the only boss that has required me to stop and go back to farm EXP. I've tried to play through the whole game on Hard (this was before the Winter Area was added) and I simply couldn't beat the Sentry without farming EXP. With minimum killing (only killing the things you have to kill to progress) and only picking up Attack Rings and the Iron Sword I've been fine killing almost all the bosses on Hard (I haven't beaten Winter yet) but the Sentry Boss became my nemesis on Hard and the reason for that is because of the Wisps. The Wisps are the most annoying enemies in the game on Hard and if you combine those with a moving target to DPS race before too many Wisps and blue Crystals spawn and ruin your attempt to kill the boss I would probably rage quit the game.

I'm fine with the balance of most of the bosses but I agree on boosting the difficulty on Phaseman and the Vilya fight. I actually really like the Arcade version of the Vilya fight on floor 3-4 where you fight the whole crew at the same time so unless that's already a planned fight for later in the game then maybe that could be a change for the Hard difficulty. I wouldn't mind if Vilya's presence made here allies stronger so that they could be more active in combat. Right now Teddy and Freddy seem so weak and useless that I don't even understand why she bothers keeping them around.

 

[Teddy]

Giving Phaseman HP% triggers is something I wouldn't object to. It is indeed pretty sad how utterly destroyed he gets by people bull rushing him!

An addition to that change could be to make him start out with firing his green shot, giving the opportunity to do solid (and satisfying) damage right off the bat for speedrunners.

 

[Own]

If he started with his green shot that might be a little too much for people to deal with. Phaseman eases players into the fact that, hey, it's a bullet hell dungeon. Plus if you start a boss off with their super shot, it's all downhill from there.

A better way might be perfect guarding his other shots.

If you perfect guard 10 of his red shots in phase 1, he gets stunned. Perfect guard3 of his purple shots in phase 2, he gets stunned. Perfect guard his 1 greenshot in phase 4, he gets stunned.

 

[GarlicJelly]

A better way might be perfect guarding his other shots.

If you perfect guard 10 of his red shots in phase 1, he gets stunned. Perfect guard3 of his purple shots in phase 2, he gets stunned. Perfect guard his 1 greenshot in phase 4, he gets stunned.

I think that's a horrible idea. Standing in front of Phaseman is horrible if you want to damage him since you would have to constantly keep your shield up which means you spend all that time he's standing still to try to stun him so that he can stand still so you can damage him. Maybe I'm not understanding what you're saying properly but the way I see it is that it's not worth spending time blocking in the fight where you have plenty of space to attack him already. If he was constantly moving around then yeah, having a way to stop him from moving would be great but that's not the case. I also think it sounds a little bit weird that you just taught the player how to Perfect Block once and then you want him to do it over and over again in the boss fight just seconds later? Meh, not a fan of this one.

I'm fine with the idea of Phaseman jumping at %HP triggers since I have a simple little trick to keep attacking him for when he has jumped to the right side but he is never alive long enough for me to actually use that trick which makes me a little bit sad.

 

[Own]

I was meaning that as a speedrunning tactic. Not an actual battle tactic. If someone wanted to pro-speedrun-strat him, I'd say being good enough to bounce a ton of red or purple orbs back at him instead of waiting for him to cycle to green orb would be fine.

You do know that the mechnaic to stun Phaseman is actually already in the game, right? It's actually there but no one ever has to utilize it for any reason. If you knock his Green orb back to him, he collapses to a knee and you have a nice, long time to beat the crap out of him.

Non-speedrunners would probably just knock off 20-25% HP at the left, again at the right, pummel him at the middle andtop and repeat as the battle is intended to go.

 

[GarlicJelly]

I was meaning that as a speedrunning tactic. Not an actual battle tactic. If someone wanted to pro-speedrun-strat him, I'd say being good enough to bounce a ton of red or purple orbs back at him instead of waiting for him to cycle to green orb would be fine.

You do know that the mechnaic to stun Phaseman is actually already in the game, right? It's actually there but no one ever has to utilize it for any reason. If you knock his Green orb back to him, he collapses to a knee and you have a nice, long time to beat the crap out of him.

Non-speedrunners would probably just knock off 20-25% HP at the left, again at the right, pummel him at the middle andtop and repeat as the battle is intended to go.

I've heard about the mechanic to stun him before but I've never felt like it was needed/I've had a reason to use it. I don't do speedruns in Hard atm because I always get stuck on the Sentry so I just stick to Normal where I don't have any problem beating Phaseman before he jumps and if he does it's just a matter of spamming Arrows at him. For it to be worth stunning him by blocking 10 shots back at him you would have to come up with something else than he just stops firing shots and stands still. Maybe if you blocked 10 shots back at him his Phase ability would temporarily break so he would stay in the same spot which means a speedrunner wouldn't have to waste time chasing him across the screen. If you could constantly stop Phaseman from jumping over to the other side of the screen then that would be a cool speedrunning strategy.

 

[Own]

Maybe if you blocked 10 shots back at him his Phase ability would temporarily break so he would stay in the same spot

That's what I was implying when I brought it up to begin with. Stun him to put him out of the ability to phase at HP loss %'s. Something no real player would try to do but speedrunners would. Something I only suggest because people seem to worry about speedrunning him taking longer.

A good speedrunner could bounce back 10 red shots, I imagine. Far more difficult than waiting to get to phase 3 to bounce back the single green shot, but... I'm really hoping for any alternative than just 'give him his green shot in the first attack'. It would be like letting Winter start off with Ice Maze, or letting Gigaslime start off with his spin-attack. You have to ease players into that for the whoa-factor. Lead off with it and everything is downhill from there.

 

[GarlicJelly]

That's what I was implying when I brought it up to begin with. Stun him to put him out of the ability to phase at HP loss %'s. Something no real player would try to do but speedrunners would. Something I only suggest because people seem to worry about speedrunning him taking longer.

A good speedrunner could bounce back 10 red shots, I imagine. Far more difficult than waiting to get to phase 3 to bounce back the single green shot, but... I'm really hoping for any alternative than just 'give him his green shot in the first attack'. It would be like letting Winter start off with Ice Maze, or letting Gigaslime start off with his spin-attack. You have to ease players into that for the whoa-factor. Lead off with it and everything is downhill from there.

Well you just said "stunning him" and stunning to me is just temporarily stopping everything he's doing.
I also agree with not having the most flashy move first. Kind of makes the rest of the fight seem lackluster.

 

[Teddy]

Alright, no starting off with the green shot

Honestly, the only thing that matters in speedrunning is that there can be tactics that makes a difference, not necessarily that the only tactic is to instawipe the enemy.

So, for example, if he HP% triggers on 20 % maxHP lost in a phase, a tactic could be to bullrush him on phase 1 as usual, force him to phase, and then arrow spam him down another 20 %, forcing him to continue his pattern without the player needing to spend time moving.

This makes it take less time until you can greenshot stun him and (most likely) kill him, so I think he will still be "speedrun friendly" as you can heavily affect the time it takes to kill him. It just won't look as braindead as it does now

 

[IHeartPie]

I'm gonna step in and say that if these changes are made, I don't think this mode shouldn't just be hard mode, it should be NG+. Right now, you just get asked whether you want normal or hard; some players really do want to start off on Hard mode instead of normal because they are decent gamers. However, if you make the first couple bosses super hard, you are going to shut those gamers out completely because they dont want to restart a normal character, but these boss fights get ridiculous for anyone who hasn't seen them before. To us who've played the game for a while, yeah, Vilya and Phaseman are easy and the strategy is obvious, but definitely not to new players. It took me ~7-8 times dying to phaseman before finally beating him for the first time. If he's made any harder [~10-15 tries], a lot of people are just going to give up.

Not every fight needs to be Winter level of hard, ya know?

 

[Teddy]

Hey Pie! It's good that you step in to make sure we're not getting out of line

I don't think the Vilya fight is going to see changes in Hard, nor Giga Slime, precisely because the game still needs some semblance of ramping up and our efforts could probably be better used elsewhere.

For the phaseman changes, I don't think you have to worry. The proposed change will not affect people having trouble with him, as those players most certainly haven't got the equipment/knowledge required to just... walk up to him and kill him.

What I see happening in that fight on streams and in LPs is the following things:

A) The player is cautious of Phaseman and gets to see his patterns, dodging bullets and quite possibly dies a few times before beating him. For these people it's an actual battle.

B) The player has a #YOLO playstyle of just running up to everything and smacking it in the face. Phaseman dies. The player goes "huh" and has just been robbed of a boss battle (which is one of our game's selling points IMO)

The changes would apply to both Normal and Hard and are only meant to stop scenario B from happening! (at least the changes I'm talking about )

 

[Own]

I don't think putting in a safemeasure to ensure that Phaseman can't be killed in 5 seconds by a super burstbuilt makes the game super hard, unless you think that allowing a boss to go one full cycle at minimum is hardmode. I genuinely want to see this HP activation % thing in Normal mode because people keep killing Phaseman in under 5-10 seconds and going "Lol, that was it? Lame~".

Phaseman is such a cool boss battle and to see him getting thrashed by people who understand there is no penalty for death and no incentive to hold back is so very sad.

That said, if someone is dying to someone like Phaseman again and again, chances are it's because they've fallen into the trap that many, many people do:

"Lol, spend my money on gear? Do sidequests? Nah I'm good, SOUTH IT IS!"
(20 minutes later in Pumpkin Woods)
"Wow this is really hard, this Helloweed Elite keeps killing me."
(5 minutes later)
"Killed it!" (By a fluke bumrushing it)
(5 minutes later)
"These flying enemies are easy! Crystals that don't attack, bots that get stunned? I'm still good!"
(PHASEMAN)
"Aaaah too hard, too hard! What am I doing wrong?" x10

Which inevitably leads into,

"Wait, I can respec?"
(/respec, all points into Shadowclone)
(30 seconds later)
"OMG [skill I was using] IS TRASH"



They ignore the equipment shops or gear in Evergrind, then brute force Pumpkin Woods and up to Phaseman, Flying Fortress is pretty smooth sailing.

Every two or three consecutive deaths vs a boss (any boss post-Gigaslime, really), a Bag tooltip might need to appear in the upper right hand corner reccomending you Teleport back to Evergrind via your Map to upgrade your gear or do some sidequests.

I don't reccomend these changes because I'm 2legit at the game, I reccomend them because I have seen others play and I know it's too easy for even them.

 

[IHeartPie]

Alright Teddy, I trust ya =P. I just remember the Phaseman fight being awfully hard. Even on my second playthrough [because I was using a 2h sword], it took me ~30min on him, and I've played a lot of arcade mode by then xD. The YOLO style only really applies to a couple specific builds [1h sword/shadowclone and maybe a flamethrower or beserker build]. The other builds really wouldn't have the damage to kill him that quick at all. I'm just scared for those guys xD.

 

[GarlicJelly]

I'm gonna step in and say that if these changes are made, I don't think this mode shouldn't just be hard mode, it should be NG+. Right now, you just get asked whether you want normal or hard; some players really do want to start off on Hard mode instead of normal because they are decent gamers. However, if you make the first couple bosses super hard, you are going to shut those gamers out completely because they dont want to restart a normal character, but these boss fights get ridiculous for anyone who hasn't seen them before. To us who've played the game for a while, yeah, Vilya and Phaseman are easy and the strategy is obvious, but definitely not to new players. It took me ~7-8 times dying to phaseman before finally beating him for the first time. If he's made any harder [~10-15 tries], a lot of people are just going to give up.

Not every fight needs to be Winter level of hard, ya know?

Well you don't really need to start a new character to play on Normal if you started playing on Hard. You can change the difficulty at any time in the menu.

I haven't factored in all the different builds while talking about changing the fight but the different skills/spells aren't all on the same page so I don't know how much you should factor that in. I mean the hardest build to play right now would be Snowbuddy and the Chain Lightning. These two spells are by far the worst spells in the game so building the game around their level of power would probably be just as wrong as building it around Shadow Clone only. I'm soon on my break from school and when I finally get some time off I'll try some different builds to try to beat the game on both Normal and Hard. Let's hope I can provide some proper feedback that's not just Shadow Clone.

Thanks for pointing it out!