I just got the Vog set, And even with the speed boost it proved to be no match for the bullets, They were all over the place and when someone revived me and gave me around 12 health, They would 1 hit KO. D:

Well, defeated Vanaduke with only 6 revives today, after the crazy balance patches that made him a true balealgdaagadhbkls.. And we got 3 seals. Wonderful.

But either way, consider what it took us:

-Almost completely full sets of 5star items. My partner, Magnus, had the Vog Cub set, an Omega Shell, Divine Avenger and a Silversix. Myself I used the Grey Feather set and Grey Owlite shield, a Divine Avenger and a Voltech Alchemer MKIII.
-Quite some amount of time. The whole run took about two hours, Vanaduke himself consuming most of that time.
-Incredible player skill. Maybe you'd think I'm just showing off, but to go through the whole Citadel having 10+ HP at all times, and at some areas losing no HP at all, takes quite a lot of skill. Magnus is very skilled, managing to complete the shooting stages without much problem getting hit only a few times. He also survived quite long on the final stage with half a bar of HP, and three trojans around aswell. I doubt most players would manage to do this as easily as Magnus did.

So yeah, this run could have been slightly better set-up and some deaths could be avoided if we didn't get a few lagspikes at times, but I think it's obvious by this that Vanaduke really needs to be rebalanced right now.

Kelgis and I have managed to defeat Vandaduke without any energy revives this time. I fear that it might be too difficult for most people to do without spending far too much, so...

I am very happy with how you have adjusted Vandaduke, Three Rings. A final boss should be difficult, but not impossibly broken. And you got it right in my happy place. But just three seals is still pretty harsh.

It seems Vanaduke has been RE-BROKEN. That's right.

But it's not him, exactly, it's his new obsession with summoning help. He does it so much more often now. Not constantly, but enough that by the time you kill the initial two sets of zombies, he's already spawned more.

Now, adding to that. Slag Knights have gotten a serious boost. How serious? They used to take two slashes from Divine Avenger without any sword buffs. Sounds easy, right? No. You already have to stop moving and coax them into attack, and then circle around them to actually hit them. Still sound easy? Try doing that with a giant firey mace hitting you directly and ceiling ready to fall on you immediately after.

Now, imagine that, but now it takes 15~ swings from a Divine Avenger just to kill it. And now, couple this with the summoning obsession. What do you get?

http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/9489/spiral20110323202147.png

And yes, Vanaduke is dead in that picture. (Don't ask how I managed that, it was a long, unpleasant process.) And notice, all of them are STILL ALIVE.

They were harder than Vanaduke himself, so I just cut an run at that point. Sorry, Biz.

I think what should be adressed is that certain weapons make duke really easy (divine avenger) compared to EVERYTHING ELSE.

The problem isn't that Divine Avenger or whatever makes him really easy; It's that no other weapons are suitable for him.

Guns' damage is truly terrible, offering a DPS about 5x slower than a sword. (and in the best cases, 3x - Or against DA's charges... Yeah) Now imagine dealing with Slag Guards, all of Vanaduke's attacks, and in bullet stages maybe, all the bullets. All this with a weak gun.

Bombs aren't very viable either - While Vanaduke can be affected by several status effects, he's highly resistant and will quickly heal himself from them. And using bombs for DPS would be a ridiculous idea.

Swords and close range? Are you kidding me? If we decide to use swords at close range, we'd need to not only dodge his attacks with a bit more difficulty, but also have to keep dodging his fire balls all the time; It's not possible to concentrate on the fireballs, when they get hidden behind him half of the time, go too fast, and so many other things are going on-screen.

In general, considering Vanaduke's current difficulty, Divine Avenger and guns are pretty much the only viable options for killing him. Any other weapon is not effective enough.

iandawson0:

I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, but it appears this boss is highly over-tuned.

This isn't a hardcore min/max game like older World of Warcraft was. Where you needed extremely specific group compositions, gear setups as well as specs in order to defeat a particular encounter. This game doesn't even have classes (per-se). It's just about going in and beating something up.

Sure, you can require that people be aware of their surroundings (projectile dodging, shielding, dealing with adds, etc, etc) and make a boss have a lot of powerful attacks that you need to know and be able to avoid. But making the boss basically only defeatable with one or two different weapons is an obvious oversight by the devs.

I'm pretty sure they merely intend that you have 5 star gear for him, not that you have a specific piece of 5 star gear. Of course I could be wrong and they think he's perfect, I dunno. The puzzle piece, that is this boss, seems entirely out of place.

But this is beta, so.. fine tuning is expected!

Gran Faust is much better for PvP, because no one's dumb enough to wear anything as horrible and completely useless as Angelic for shadow defense.

And all ranged weapons make Vanaduke easier. Hell, it's even easier with an Argent because you can actually block. It'll take longer, yeah, but guns are even easier than Divine Avenger.

Vanaduke is broken even harder now.

He is now a gun-only boss. Do not use anything that isn't a Storm Driver or Argent Peacemaker in his body stages. Hail Driver may be viable. These are the only slightly usable weapons against him at this point. Swords of Light from the Divine Avenger no longer pass through him, as well as anything that is supposed to pass through him.

To top that off, with the now forced slower movement of shooting and moving, the camera has become an extreme issue. Because the camera is so close, it's completely and totally impossible to see if a fireball is going to fling into you when he's dashing from below the camera's view. While it was possible to walk out of the way fast enough while charging DA, shooting makes you walk that much slower and chances are, you're screwed by one of his fireballs.

And beware, using Stun on him will make him start using his secret weapon, the Invisible Mace. There is no warning that it's coming. And because he attacks twice as often now, it's guaranteed to hit you. And now that his mace does even more damage, prepare to lose half or more of your total life.

At least his spawning isn't as obsessive, but it's bound to happen now that he takes much much longer to kill, thanks to becoming gun-only.

As well as every other attack made to pass through bodies, including his own.

And DA is still god tier. It's just no longer viable on Vanaduke. That changes NOTHING besides meaning there are less weapons to actually use on him.

What? I was never bored of him being too easy. He was at the perfect level of difficulty. Where he would destroy my ass in moments if I were careless, but could avoid dying entirely.

Now, that no longer applies because three quarters of the combat is now chance when you have to move around above him while shooting a gun and moving slowly instead of charging DA, and praying he doesn't dash and hit you with a fireball you couldn't at all see.

And, like I said. ALL attacks that are supposed to go through him don't anymore. Still including his own.

Being the strongest player in the game, I've already gone down to fight Vanaduke (with Biznasty and two other people, Otra and Aeca) and kill him.

1: He now only has five stages. Sounds like that would be better, but no. As you remember from an earlier post, the inability to pierce him with DA bullets has made him a gun only boss. The length of the battle is still pretty long.

2: Large rotating bullets can now block gun bullets, but also can be hit and destroyed by water. Good, yes. No downside here.

3: There are two more waterball pedestals in the back. This is for...

4: His single fireball is now four lavaballs on stage 3. This further pushes the gun-only status. The lavaballs can be killed with waterballs, but respawn. This adds a lot to the guessing game of Vanaduke if you want to even try to melee him, and one lavaball can immediately spawn right on top of you and take away a good half of your health. Another ring of four fireballs, moving the opposite direction, appear in Stage 5. (Meleeing him would take mental retardation at this point.) On top of that, this has perpetuated the guessing game. If you're up on top of the room, and he's on bottom, pray he doesn't dash upwards towards you. Now it's a guarantee that you'll be hit by fireballs and have no way to see it coming.

5: His mace and chunks of ceiling spawn lava blocks at random ONLY on Stage 3. This is quite absurd, as path blocking is hard as one thing, but pathblocking that you can't at all SEE? It's almost impossible to see lava along the walls or directly inside waterball pedestals. Just a little edge poking out of a wall can totally and completely kill you. And along the bottom? You can't even run there anymore on Stage 3 in fear of lava being there. Lava doesn't go away until you water it. This needs to be removed, absolutely, unless you somehow make lava not spawn along walls or the bottom.

6: His fire attack is still broke ever since you turned off the ability to pierce him, since the fire actually needs to pierce himself to get out.

7: Slag Knights have a charging attack now. This is broken as all &$%*. It hits people standing behind them, it bounces players not close enough to be hit by it, and even in Vog Cub, it literally takes nearly half my health. Far, FAR too powerful for Vanaduke, especially when they can charge up from the bottom of the screen just like Vanaduke with his giant spread of fireballs and instant and guaranteed being hit status.

8: His mace does more damage again. It actually broke my Omega Shell. And on Stage 3, his mace can instantly spawn lava right where it pushes you, and practically be an instant kill. Even if you have full health and are blocking, you have a very possible chance of dying instantly. Even with the strongest shield in the game.

In other words, he's over powered again, the battle involves FAR TOO MUCH GUESSING, and the Slag Knights are overpowered. He needs lavablocks removed from Stage 3, there needs to be less lavaballs overall, Slag Knights need to be fixed, and their damage toned down, he needs to be able to be pierced now that lavaballs block bullets, and the camera has ABSOLUTELY got to get fixed so you can actually SEE him.

Because you NEED to see if he's about to charge your ass down with two rings of half total health damaging lava balls coming towards you.

So, knowing what he does now, Biznasty and I took it to Vanaduke again.

1: On stage 5, his mask is still on, but then it magic poffs away.

2: Lava has to be fixed or go. It's appearing on edges and spawned right on top of me.

3: Being a GUN ONLY boss, he took a half hour in time. That's kind of annoying.

4: Everything else said.

Either lower his health, or chop off some fireballs or give a gigantic warning when new fireballs are about to spawn, maybe make it like it his summoning animation.

A note on the Slag Trojans charging:
When we went on our first run, the fifth stage had two couples of Slag Trojans. The first couple used attacks similar to normal Trojans, the second couple did not use any of these, instead, they used that charge attack. I'm guessing you guys, on your second run, did not kill the first couple. In order to have the second couple spawned, you need to kill the first couple.

Remember on our first run, when I kept saying I thought the Slag Trojan summons might be finite? This is why. The second couple was different than the first. Perhaps a glitch, but nonetheless worth investigation.

Also, I forgot about the lava spawning on top of you and inside walls. Half the time I died that was why. My main concerns are now the camera angle and the badly-placed lava. I would also like to be able to use my sword. I could do this on his first stage, but trying on the third was hard, and the fifth was nearly impossible.

I feel the biggest problem with Van is that he's gun only. At the moment, the only plausible way to use swords is if you have someone full time on bubbles throwing them at the balls and lava on the ground, and even that's a major stretch. Besides, you're better off going with one less person than having one person constantly on bubbles in order to allow others to melee in the first place in this extremely difficult scenario. That rather defeats the purpose.

Here's a suggestion: How about instead of fireballs circling his grill, he sometimes activated a thorns-aura type deal where when you meleed him, he'd reflect damage back to you, like 15 bars. You could have the animation for when he pops it on be fast/subtle, and it would switch often. This way, it's possible to melee him, but you have to be intelligent with it, or you kill yourself swinging. You could keep the fireballs that circle around him from a distance, but not the ones right up close. The best part about this is it turn the fight instead of a gun-only boss -- to a gun AND sword boss. A sword-only boss would suck too. This way encourages to have both.

2nd biggest problem is the sometimes impossible to avoid lava. You simply can't see it in some areas; and when it spawns on top of you, that really, really sucks.

My suggestion: Fix it from spawning in tough to see spots and fix it from not spawning on top of you. Because this will naturally make the fight easier (even if it were dumb you take damage in the first place from random/impossible crap), you could balance it out by having the roof cave in more often, way more often if you have to. The fight might be tougher; but you'd die because you screwed up, not because you got killed by luck.

Edit: On second thought, another reasonable fix to the lava spawning on top of you would be if there were a one second delay from when it spawns to start dealing damage. You still take damage if you run into lava, but this completely removes getting luck-burned.

I just want to step in and say that this guy is always on the deepest depth and he's far and away the biggest, most badass creature in the game at the moment.

Doesn't it occur to you that he doesn't need to fair or balanced or a quick kill or any of the other things he might have been during earlier development?

This guy is intended to be horrible and intimidating. You take him on at the heart of his power, as close to the core as you can get. That you kill him at all should be immensely gratifying and due only to a combination of personal ability, squad cohesion and wild chance - let alone in thirty minutes.

Maybe you guys should just roll with the punches.

Personally, I have no problem with him being an extremely difficult boss. I'd rather him be harder in exchange for being able to use a sword effectively and couldn't die from random chance. Dying due to an impossible-to-avoid lava drop is stupid; it's a grotesque way to implement difficulty. I doubt anyone would approve of dice rolls continually going off to the side of the screen: where when you get snake eyes, your character die. That's essentially what happens sometimes with the lava. The No-Swords thing could be intended, but it sure makes the fight less fun.

Dude, it's not about difficulty or his being too hard. The fight being even harder would be fine if it also removed the parts that are clearly stupid. Whatever, this is a great time for the devs to find a sweet spot; they could use the feedback.

Indeed, combat should be based on skill rather than luck, fireballs that spawn need to give prior warning that this is happening, at the very least have them flash for 3 seconds or so when they appear, during which time they can't cause damage.
The only other instance (i can think of) of an attack that hits based on bad luck is those butterfly things that can cause a status effect from their random gases even whilst defending and backing off.

All those whom have fought Vanaduke through all his rounds, whether they eventually beat him or not, may speak opinions on him. I think that's fair enough to ask for? Even as best we try to describe how ridiculous some aspects may be, only those who have actually seen it all can make accurate judgments about the fight. (A cat doesn't teach a dog how to bark.) As far as I know, the only ones who have fought him have been, first off, Magnus and Biznasty (kakelgis), as well as Otrapas and myself. Perhaps the Devs are waiting for more players to get this far, so they get more opinions and can make a generalization out of all of them.

As for my opinion, overalll... I'm usually a patient person, but I believe I speak for the other three when I say this: It's not that Vanaduke is too hard, it's the he is too "unrefined". The new features the Devs added to him are great and exciting, but they have little issues that need touching up. For example, the fire balls that basically disallow melee (swords), the lava blocks that spawn right on top of you, as well as the ones that can spawn in the corners - and trap you there. Anyone who says this does not need adjustment, clearly needs to be adjusted them self. These are only a few things, and that's not to mention the camera view. The arena you fight Vanaduke is too large for the given camera view, and you can never tell when things from "below" the screen are charging at you.

Ran him again, this time doing a mostly flawless run. Until stage 5.

Notes:
-First wave of trojans attacks normally. If you kill those, all next spawns will be using the charging attack, no matter what.
-Lava blocks' spawn rate from his mace attack decreases over overall battle time, and stage time. This can be quite a penalty on "speedy" players, considering lava will be EVERYWHERE on stage 5 and it'll be impossible to manage. I couldn't get an actual screenshot of the whole area (there was waaay more lava - Simply consider the amount of blocks in the screenshot. In total, there was at least 3x more than that), but here's a small example: http://i.imgur.com/Izfeb.png After about twelve minutes, he completely stopped spawning lava.
-Trojans no longer drop any hearts at all. (Except for maybe the first wave)
-Lava blocks can spawn atop the water pedestals. This is depressing and hilarious at the same time: [1] [2]

I also took note of how long each stage took us. In the end, those were the times:

(Normal walking) Stage 1: 3 minutes
(Normal bullet) Stage 2: 1 minute
(Walking, lava stars spawning, four fireballs) Stage 3: 5 minutes
(Slightly harder bullet) Stage 4: 2 minutes
(Walking, lava, trojans, eight fireballs) Stage 5: 16 minutes

So as you see, stage 5 took us way longer than the other stages. This is most likely because on this run we decided to kill the trojans, as to test if their death actually affected spawn of lava - Thus the extremely broken "Slag Knights" spawned. Most of the hits that I took on that stage were from those trojans. And the lava pretty much freaking everywhere got on the way a lot aswell, not to say the fireballs blocking my bullets.

Now, one thing to note is our death count. We died zero times, until stage five. We ended up making quite a mess on stage five, which ended up bringing us down to several deaths and a total of four energy revives. Considering we barely even got hit on the other stages, this is quite a problem.

So yeah. After some practice, it gets easier/faster, however, the whole battle duration/lava relation thing gets on the way for the faster players, and stage 5's difficulty (...it's more random luck than challenge, because of the lava blocks and charging trojans), not to say how he's pretty much immune to swords, it ends up being just too ridiculously unbalanced for the average player (usually, even to above-average), and with guns it's simply a tedious crawl rather than an actual challenge.

Still waiting on the devs' word on this. It's been several weeks, and if anything, Vanaduke simply gets harder every time.

Well, we just completed our first no death run. It took some T2 pills, and magic lava spawning inside of us several times, but we managed.

Fix the lava and slag knights, please, but leave the trojans. <3