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v278 Dragon Boss on Island now Harder??


SingleSidedPCB

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56 minutes ago, Eldar Seer said:

It also does not change the fact that the dragon was supposed to receive a minor nerf (initial fire damage) in this patch, not a major buff. 

Actually this had me puzzled for quite some time now: did breath even had initial fire damage to begin with? and even if it had it - was it such an issue that it needed "reduction"?

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1 hour ago, SingleSidedPCB said:

I feel like if your going to give strategy advice, you should at least be willing to try it yourself...

Our tribe had no need to do the alpha dragon fight, but we wanted to see how the update effected it. Since we have a newer better theriz line, we didn't need the ones we lost anyway (but 19 120 armor asc saddles sucks to loose). and since we lost so badly, with dinos and a strategy that had won before, i thought i should at least warn others that the fight may be broken.

tribe is bored with it dude. it is beating a dead horse at this point. bosses aint fun, its antique content. when you been beating all the island bosses since well back into legacy nobody cares once you got ur engrams. like i said when i finish my play pretties we might look again, but it is tough enough getting em to get on for re doing tek cave and rockwell for the same reason... just old content now.

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46 minutes ago, DarthaNyan said:

Actually this had me puzzled for quite some time now: did breath even had initial fire damage to begin with? and even if it had it - was it such an issue that it needed "reduction"?

That's the burning question that had me fired up to try the dragon fight since the patch notes were posted. B|

The dinos to die first were always the ones in the front....perhaps they took the "initial damage" and the rest just got the DoT only.

perhaps someone with the dev kit installed can tell us?

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3 hours ago, SingleSidedPCB said:

I feel like if your going to give strategy advice, you should at least be willing to try it yourself...

Exactly. It annoys me greatly when someone like Bigfish comes into a thread like this without reading the original post properly, then talks down everything everyone else has said and offers his own sage opinion having not even had any recent experience in the topic at hand.

The entire point of this post is to highly that the dragon is now MUCH harder than it was BEFORE the V278 update. Tribes like mine that regularly farm dragon MUST be warned of this before they do their next fight, or else they will very likely loose their dinos and all the countless hours of work those dinos have taken to prepare.

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I find it hilarious when people challenge bug reports as if the issue is the player. "Baby dinos aren't eating" "You just need to force feed them noobs"

Although, I am legitimately curious what Wildcard's intended strategy for The Dragon is. It is without question the hardest boss, and everytime someone comes up with a strategy it gets patched out. What strategy is Wildcard waiting for us to find? 

I mean, they added Herbivore Fire Resistance to counter fire arrows and Wyvern Milk as a natural counter to fire damage - and then patched both of these from being effective against The Dragon. They patched using Paracers, despite the fact the Dragon pretty much instakills balistas and minigun turrets anyway (they're enabled on my unofficial server, but they're not useful). They patched dogpiling the Dragon to keep it grounded. The patched using small and nimble dinos that could run between its legs. They patched the Pachyrhino working on boss ads.

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Been reading through every post so far in this thread, and still trying to make up my mind about the changes.
Me and Meshi have agreed that we're going to back up our server and make an attempt at the Alpha Dragon with the Chicken Army of Doom ™ to see what has changed and if there's indeed serious issues with the Alpha Dragon

Sadly, life hasn't let us make this attempt yet, but once the results are in I'll be sure to post all findings here, including video to show any differences.
I'm actually not sure if there was any initial damage from the fire-breath. I'm pretty sure there wasn't any, or it was at least very minimal.
I've taken a breath to the face and survived it, so if there was initial damage it should have killed me most likely.

If they indeed refuse to eat veggie cakes now at the required intervals, or their effects have been nerfed, then the Tickle Chickens will not be a viable approach anymore for alpha dragon.
I'm on the fence about it though. It was amazing to be able to step away from the "Hur dur Rex everything meta", but on the other side these things did insane amounts of damage when properly raised and mutated.

 

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1 hour ago, 3mptylord said:

I find it hilarious when people challenge bug reports as if the issue is the player. "Baby dinos aren't eating" "You just need to force feed them noobs"

Although, I am legitimately curious what Wildcard's intended strategy for The Dragon is. It is without question the hardest boss, and everytime someone comes up with a strategy it gets patched out. What strategy is Wildcard waiting for us to find? 

I mean, they added Herbivore Fire Resistance to counter fire arrows and Wyvern Milk as a natural counter to fire damage - and then patched both of these from being effective against The Dragon. They patched using Paracers, despite the fact the Dragon pretty much instakills balistas and minigun turrets anyway (they're enabled on my unofficial server, but they're not useful). They patched dogpiling the Dragon to keep it grounded. The patched using small and nimble dinos that could run between its legs. They patched the Pachyrhino working on boss ads.

They also made the dragon be able to phase through any obstacles in the arena, and I'm fairly certain they nerfed the healer pig in both how fast it heals and how much food it consumes to heal. Also recently noticed the healer pigs move much slower while healing now :/

36 minutes ago, Olivar said:

Been reading through every post so far in this thread, and still trying to make up my mind about the changes.
Me and Meshi have agreed that we're going to back up our server and make an attempt at the Alpha Dragon with the Chicken Army of Doom ™ to see what has changed and if there's indeed serious issues with the Alpha Dragon

Sadly, life hasn't let us make this attempt yet, but once the results are in I'll be sure to post all findings here, including video to show any differences.
I'm actually not sure if there was any initial damage from the fire-breath. I'm pretty sure there wasn't any, or it was at least very minimal.
I've taken a breath to the face and survived it, so if there was initial damage it should have killed me most likely.

If they indeed refuse to eat veggie cakes now at the required intervals, or their effects have been nerfed, then the Tickle Chickens will not be a viable approach anymore for alpha dragon.
I'm on the fence about it though. It was amazing to be able to step away from the "Hur dur Rex everything meta", but on the other side these things did insane amounts of damage when properly raised and mutated.

 

I'm still not sure if the cakes weren't working right, but the dragon did get a large buff instead of the nerf we were led to believe it would get.

Also, why shouldn't the theriz do an insane amount of damage....it takes an insane amount of time to breed and mutate them after all o.O

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3 minutes ago, SingleSidedPCB said:

I'm still not sure if the cakes weren't working right, but the dragon did get a large buff instead of the nerf we were led to believe it would get.

Also, why shouldn't the theriz do an insane amount of damage....it takes an insane amount of time to breed and mutate them after all o.O

Because in my opinion, the combination of the veggie cakes, with the damage they can do, makes then far more powerful and dangerous then a Rex.
They can heal themselves up in a fight pretty well with the veggie cakes, negating a LOT of the incoming damage.
Something a Rex is unable to do.

Keeping the HP capped at 21K to maximize cake efficiency, means you can reach insane amounts of % melee damage.
Having Chicken monsters hitting for over 1000 per hit, with 19 of them makes short work of almost ANYTHING you can throw at them.
And the bastards keep healing up happily while slashing your opposition to pieces.
 

That's why I am on the fence about the changes.
I'd hate for them to become useless, but on the other side.....a small nerf on them wouldn't be misplaced in my view.

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9 minutes ago, Olivar said:

Because in my opinion, the combination of the veggie cakes, with the damage they can do, makes then far more powerful and dangerous then a Rex.
They can heal themselves up in a fight pretty well with the veggie cakes, negating a LOT of the incoming damage.
Something a Rex is unable to do.

Keeping the HP capped at 21K to maximize cake efficiency, means you can reach insane amounts of % melee damage.
Having Chicken monsters hitting for over 1000 per hit, with 19 of them makes short work of almost ANYTHING you can throw at them.
And the bastards keep healing up happily while slashing your opposition to pieces.
 

That's why I am on the fence about the changes.
I'd hate for them to become useless, but on the other side.....a small nerf on them wouldn't be misplaced in my view.

Wildcard should focus on making more creatures useful rather than nerfing the others - that is to say, make other dinos replace DPS rather than nerf the DPS.

For example, the Yuty and Daeodon became staples in boss parties without having to nerf the rexes.

In my opinion, they should remove the Yuty's Bonus Resistance and move the buff to the Pachyrhino - so you now need both to receive the full suite of buffs. 

They could then add a War Trumpet to the Mammoth that grants Stamina and perhaps Torpor Resistance - allowing you to use low-stamina creatures without worrying about them passing out. This could then allow Wildcard to buff the Broodmother to actually do something other than being a tank (e.g. substantial torpor-infliction).

The Alpha Allosaurus's 'Rend' currently doesn't work on bosses - make it work and you'd see at least 3 allosauruses in every boss fight. It would be better to add a cap to the Rend damage than disable it entirely, if the %health damage is too strong. 

If the Megalosaurus only generated sleep deprivation when in the sun and not just during "day time", they would be viable in the Broodmother's cave and versus the Dragon under the volcanic-ash clouds.

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8 minutes ago, 3mptylord said:

Wildcard should focus on making more creatures useful rather than nerfing the others - that is to say, make other dinos replace DPS rather than nerf the DPS.

They are focusing on making more creatures useful, they've been doing that already in TLC 1 and will continue in TLC 2 etc.

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Definitely can agree that notion.
Really would love to take more things into arena's then the typical setup.

Would be interesting to take Rhino's for example and see how they hold up.
Or something like a bunch of wolves where tactics become more important.
 

but right now all boss fights are nothing but zerg-fests.
The only boss-fight that actually requires you to play different is the Aberration one so far.

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5 minutes ago, GP said:

They are focusing on making more creatures useful, they've been doing that already in TLC 1 and will continue in TLC 2 etc.

You're mistaking boss-useful for having any uses. 

Most of the TLC changes give uses to the creatures - but none of the implemented and announced ones have so far been boss-useful.

If it was possible to break the natural armor of the bosses then the Gigantopithecus and Compound Bows could be useful (e.g. move their natural armor to an invisible saddle with a finite amount of durability that you can break, or maybe even a visible 'saddle' that looks like armor plating and when you break it they boss looks visually weaker). 

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Ah I see. Well yes it would be good to see some creatures have improved abilities for boss fights, but I think the boss fights themselves would need to change first. The way the bosses are designed, particularly the Island bosses leaves nothing to imagination, you basically pin the boss as much as you can and spam the mouse button. Now the Aberration boss actually introduced more of a tactic approach to defeating the boss, it's not simply go in and bite until its dead.

So I feel the boss fights need to change first.

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12 minutes ago, Olivar said:

Because in my opinion, the combination of the veggie cakes, with the damage they can do, makes then far more powerful and dangerous then a Rex.
They can heal themselves up in a fight pretty well with the veggie cakes, negating a LOT of the incoming damage.
Something a Rex is unable to do.

Keeping the HP capped at 21K to maximize cake efficiency, means you can reach insane amounts of % melee damage.
Having Chicken monsters hitting for over 1000 per hit, with 19 of them makes short work of almost ANYTHING you can throw at them.
And the bastards keep healing up happily while slashing your opposition to pieces.
 

That's why I am on the fence about the changes.
I'd hate for them to become useless, but on the other side.....a small nerf on them wouldn't be misplaced in my view.

They also take a substantial amount of more work than rexes. they take megalosaurus kibble, high level ones are more rare on every map, their a more difficult/expensive tame with high torpor drop... They have also been nerfed pretty good once, they only do 1 hit per swing now instead of 2..

My mindset is breeding and mutations were added as a bonus, that if you spent the time to do them the bred dinos could make your gameplay easier. The devs used to always say that breeding was not a required part of the game, but they have since made it absolutely required to do any endgame content. I'd much prefer boss fights that take strategy as well, allowing room for creative unique ways to approach it without the 6+ month grind of breeding and mutation stacking.

Alternatively they could make changes such as remove the wasted points in speed on all dinos, and bump up the chance for stats to transfer and mutations to occur. that would lessen the grind-to-boss-army to a more palatable level. they could also give us something fun to do in the world to gain xp on dinos faster...It feels ridiculous having to get the whole tribe together to mindlessly sit on dinos while someone grinds stone :/

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15 hours ago, LPTF said:

Exactly. It annoys me greatly when someone like Bigfish comes into a thread like this without reading the original post properly, then talks down everything everyone else has said and offers his own sage opinion having not even had any recent experience in the topic at hand.

The entire point of this post is to highly that the dragon is now MUCH harder than it was BEFORE the V278 update. Tribes like mine that regularly farm dragon MUST be warned of this before they do their next fight, or else they will very likely loose their dinos and all the countless hours of work those dinos have taken to prepare.

I actually did offer advice in there.... avoidance instead of "hur dur" tank and spank. %dmg... means you could tank fire breaths with dinos with a lot less hp. i tanked 2 in one fight with a baryonx and you can shoot from the back the entire time. It was also exceptionally useful for getting to the dragon faster and could run circles around it if needed. Like i said we practiced avoidance raid dmg over trying to heal thru it from the beginning and we were able to do it with far weaker rexes than available now. I havent seen one post in strategies hardly about avoidance.... just theri and veggie cakes. I will try to con my tribe into doing it again but it def wont be til after this v day event bc everyone playing with their fun projects. maybe we will take my last gen baryonx for a boss run for kicks, aside from the expensive amount of ammo that would be needed.

Im not saying barrys are the answer im saying think outside the box and think avoidance over tank. I have no reason to find the resolution for you bc i dont need it. I am working on Barry fight with my tribe and my uber barry line i am working on.

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20 minutes ago, SingleSidedPCB said:

They also take a substantial amount of more work than rexes. they take megalosaurus kibble, high level ones are more rare on every map, their a more difficult/expensive tame with high torpor drop... They have also been nerfed pretty good once, they only do 1 hit per swing now instead of 2..

My mindset is breeding and mutations were added as a bonus, that if you spent the time to do them the bred dinos could make your gameplay easier. The devs used to always say that breeding was not a required part of the game, but they have since made it absolutely required to do any endgame content. I'd much prefer boss fights that take strategy as well, allowing room for creative unique ways to approach it without the 6+ month grind of breeding and mutation stacking.

Alternatively they could make changes such as remove the wasted points in speed on all dinos, and bump up the chance for stats to transfer and mutations to occur. that would lessen the grind-to-boss-army to a more palatable level. they could also give us something fun to do in the world to gain xp on dinos faster...It feels ridiculous having to get the whole tribe together to mindlessly sit on dinos while someone grinds stone :/

It is. We actually avoided Alpha dragon until we had finished the entire breed cycle of our chickens.
And on our server with higher rates it still took us months of work to accomplish this.
For something being "optional" it sure was nuts.

I truly hope that Wildcard takes this input to heart, cause every day I'm loosing more interest in the game because of the changes being pushed through.

 

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Allowing us to build in the Boss arenas for cover would go a LONG way to giving strategic options.  Or fliers even.   I'm pretty sure I could juke a dragon while my buddy shoots it from the back of my Tape. 

I agree with the sentiment that it is annoying every good strategy for fighting the dragon almost immediately gets nerfed.  Beating the dragon shouldn't come down to "I did it before it was cool".   It's not the hipster dragon. 

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9 minutes ago, Kayin said:

Allowing us to build in the Boss arenas for cover would go a LONG way to giving strategic options.  Or fliers even.   I'm pretty sure I could juke a dragon while my buddy shoots it from the back of my Tape. 

I agree with the sentiment that it is annoying every good strategy for fighting the dragon almost immediately gets nerfed.  Beating the dragon shouldn't come down to "I did it before it was cool".   It's not the hipster dragon. 

LMAO hipster dragon....that's comedy gold right there :)

I'm sure they don't allow building or even platform dinos in the boss arenas because their afraid someone would find a way to exploit it.

They also don't want to make the bosses too hard(or do they?) or too easy, but seem to struggle to find that balance. what they could do is add a ludicrous boss tier above alpha for the "it's to easy" folks that's not required, and gives a steam achievement or something. maybe a bit more element than alpha.

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28 minutes ago, Kayin said:

Allowing us to build in the Boss arenas for cover would go a LONG way to giving strategic options.  Or fliers even.   I'm pretty sure I could juke a dragon while my buddy shoots it from the back of my Tape. 

I agree with the sentiment that it is annoying every good strategy for fighting the dragon almost immediately gets nerfed.  Beating the dragon shouldn't come down to "I did it before it was cool".   It's not the hipster dragon. 

popus_dragon_by_omegaman20-d7g523f.png

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4 hours ago, SingleSidedPCB said:

They also don't want to make the bosses too hard(or do they?) or too easy, but seem to struggle to find that balance.

You might have just pinpointed one of the key problems right here. The very nature of breeding and mutations means that either bosses require an unacceptable amount of breeding to even be doable, or they end up not challenging at all, or both. There's really no way to avoid it, especially when the battles are pure tank-n-spank. And they will be pure tank-n-spank as long as they're meant for dinos like the Rex and Theri because that's just what these creatures do.

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22 minutes ago, Lockjaw said:

You might have just pinpointed one of the key problems right here. The very nature of breeding and mutations means that either bosses require an unacceptable amount of breeding to even be doable, or they end up not challenging at all, or both. There's really no way to avoid it, especially when the battles are pure tank-n-spank. And they will be pure tank-n-spank as long as they're meant for dinos like the Rex and Theri because that's just what these creatures do.

I think bosses are in a pretty good spot. They don't require an unacceptable amount of breeding anymore. I am not speaking for the current dragon, because i didn't do a fight after the last change to it. But befor i did all bosses beta and brood alpha with unmutated theries. Pretty much just breeding high health and high damage together and you are good to unlock all beta engrams, which are the most important in my opinion plus alpha broodmother.

The part that took more time than the breeding was to find a very good saddle BP. At the end i borrowed one from another tribe.

And i am always doing stupid mistakes on boss fights, because i am nervous. ^^

Like in the case of the video below, i did go in with 18 instead of 19 theries and i used the wrong roar of the yuty at the start. Attack whistle was the correct key, it just didnt worked at the start for some reason. Still won. ^^

 

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26 minutes ago, Lockjaw said:

You might have just pinpointed one of the key problems right here. The very nature of breeding and mutations means that either bosses require an unacceptable amount of breeding to even be doable, or they end up not challenging at all, or both. There's really no way to avoid it, especially when the battles are pure tank-n-spank. And they will be pure tank-n-spank as long as they're meant for dinos like the Rex and Theri because that's just what these creatures do.

There will always be over achievers that push stats well beyond whats needed, so they can then complain that it's too easy. that's why i suggested a ludicrous mode above alpha, just for them ;)

But IMO progression shouldn't be balanced around whats possible at the high end of the spectrum, but rather whats reasonable for an average tribe to do.

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