*Spoiler* Bossfight is too easy

[Nymph]

I am running a lv 25 Shadow Clone/Static Touch build with the focus on Atk/MAtk/ASpd on my equipment with no regard to my defense. (4 Defense Points) I also play on hard mode.
I usually invest a significant amount of hours to kill hard bosses such as Winter (8 hours), the double earthworm bossfight in Tai Ming (5 hours), because I like the punishing aspect of the game, where I have to be good enough to avoid dieing. I am not sure if it is because I am very practiced in this, but the Zhamla boss feels really easy and it took me maybe 30 minutes to an hour to beat. The reason for that is, that if you damage him enough he will start taking some time to heal himself. If you just do it enough, you will delay his energy ball patterns from 50% to like 75%, where he only will have 1-2 attacks left to use before the fight ends.
I did not equip any defensive gear and just used my normal gear and just keeped attacking him when I noticed that he used his time to heal rather than attack and it made the fight easier as he pauses through critical moments (For example, at the end of his elemental attacks, where he would dash at you, but uses heal instead.)
I feel the damage is also a bit too low for hard mode.

 

[Own]

I just tested this, and it's possible to stunlock Zhamla the entire battle with him being unable to do anything but self-heal. Even bypassing his Amalet phase entirely. I'm not sure that's how that's supposed to work. Maybe Zhamla needs an anti-cheese breakaway or something, @Teddy?

You're not really supposed to be fighting him, though. Dodging every attack and surviving is the intended strategy. If you want the game to be challenging, shadowclone is currently completely unbalanced for story mode to the point of making every encounter a joke, which is why you can get by with 4 defense. If you want hard mode bosses to be hard you may want to try different skills or wait until shadowclone gets rebalanced.

 

[Teddy]

I think nothing except Shadow Clone comes even close to being able to stunlock him permanently like that due to everything else requiring energy! So when Shadow Clone gets nerfed and is unable to do it, it won't be an issue anymore.

 

[The G-Meister]

An alternative change could be him healing every 5000 damage or something, especially if he currently heals as soon as he takes damage. That way you go at least some way to eliminating the issue of "fastest hit rate wins because it does lots of small bits of damage rather than one big bit".

 

[Own]

I think nothing except Shadow Clone comes even close to being able to stunlock him permanently like that due to everything else requiring energy! So when Shadow Clone gets nerfed and is unable to do it, it won't be an issue anymore.

Oh, I was thinking more about future-proofing it against NewGame+, assuming that NG+ characters would maybe actually have the gear/damage to stunlock him and make the fight a bit of a joke.

But maybe that bridge is better dealt with when it's time to cross it. I'm not even sure if endgame our damage will be too much higher than it is now.

 

[res7less]

My thoughts on the bossfight were that the elemental attacks he does should be more punishing if not dodged. It might not help to make him more difficult for those, who already know the patters, but it might make the first encounters more devastating.

It would also make the attacks more consistent. I'm talking about his lightning and ice attacks. His meteors leave fire you can walk through and get burn damage - that's fine. His earth attack leaves obstacles. But the other attacks only do damage so far. They should also have their respective school's punish, like being frozen by his ice attack (similar to Yeti breath), which would make it impossible to dodge his next sword charge (unless you wiggle out to escape faster, if you know it's possible). His lightning attack could stun if hit. That would ensure that those hit would be either guaranteed hit by two of those if not dodged (not sure if the immunity time after hit ends faster than the time between the lightnings), or if hit by the last one, it would be again impossible to dodge the next sword attack.

For hard mode the first thing I think of are his sword attacks going diagonally to make dodging harder. As far as I remember, before he attacks a small thin line appears, that marks the path he will take. Usually you don't have to pay attention to it by just running vertically as he will never hit. But if he would attack diagonally in hard mode, you'd need to pay closer attention to those "attack path indicators" to know what direction you're supposed to run away in.

 

[The G-Meister]

It would also make the attacks more consistent.

That sounds like your describing persistency rather than consistency

For hard mode the first thing I think of are his sword attacks going diagonally to make dodging harder.

This would be cool, but dodging the attacks is generally more difficult than perfect guarding them on Hard already, and a diagonal strike would push you more in that direction. Whether that's a good thing or not is a different matter, but I think at the moment it strikes a nice balance.

Either way, a perfect dodge will still make it a piece of cake

 

[res7less]

That sounds like your describing persistency rather than consistency

I mean the consistency of all four elemental attacks having individual school-specific effects, instead of only the meteors and the earth spikes. Why should two have them and two only deal damage, know what I mean?

Either way, a perfect dodge will still make it a piece of cake

I'm not that much into hard mode, but knowing your quadrillion hours of game time, I'll take your word for it

Edit: Well, technically the ice attack leaves the slippery floor, but it does that no matter if you get hit or not. Having the player frozen if he lets himself hit by it requires a decent punish considering the attack is very easily avoided.

 

[Thursagan]

I felt the boss was too easy overall, just for how much buildup he had, i was expecting something very hard (not that I have done it on hard mode yet, doing that next). I didn't even know him healing was a thing, I had assumed he was just immune to damage...actually, why isn't he?

 

[KoBeWi]

I had assumed he was just immune to damage...actually, why isn't he?

Because... he is not immortal?