Some Thoughts About The Assassin Bosses.

[S.Fayden]

I recently fought all three again, and I'd like to share my thoughts on them.

 

Stalker: 

This guy is in a serious need of an update.

His dispel ability may prevent you from completely ignoring him, but it doesn't change the fact a squad of players will always kill him before he can move. Even playing solo with badly modded weapons, he will still go down in under a minute. This guy is supposed to be terrifying, but he's so weak that all that Tenno-killing talk of his just makes him sound like a whiny emo kid who tries to be the rebellious type but just ends up getting his arse handed to him.

 

Personally I think one of the biggest problems with Stalker is the way he spawns. You can buff the guy all you want, but the fact that he spawns in the middle of the room and gives you a good 5 seconds to prepare will always give the player an advantage over him. He needs to start actually stalking Tenno, as in watching them and waiting for the right time to attack. Like setting up an ambush or traps when you're the most vulnerable rather than spawning out in the open and charging whoever has the death mark. 

 

Harvester:

I only fought this thing once, so my input will be limited. However I was doing a solo run and so I was able to take note of its actions without it being obliterated by squadmates who had already killed it for 20th time.

 

While he took quite a bit longer to kill than stalker, this fight was still pretty damn easy. His primary weapon wasn't very deadly and was easy to avoid. His freezing ability was more of a minor inconvenience than an actual hindrance as I still managed to dodge the main attack while slowed. The harvester seems pretty agile, maybe even more so than the its standard Zanuka counterpart, but all it really did was make it slightly harder to hit as it hopped back and forth like an idiot.

 

I'm guessing the Harvester is supposed to be a big problem if you're fighting off hordes of Corpus at the same time, but if you're not doing a defense, mobile defense, or survival, you can just quickly clear that room out and fight the harvester alone. However since I haven't fought it while up against a significant number of other corpus yet, I can't really say that its not a real threat, but its definitely underwhelming when its by itself.

 

For now my only suggested change for this enemy is to perhaps give it a more devastating primary attack. As it stands now it's basically just moa with higher health/agility with an added freeze ability.

 

The Grustrag Three:

 

I was pleasantly surprised by these guys. The first time I fought them I was carrying low ranked gear, preventing me from tearing through all three without getting a scratch. Initially I ran off to seek a better position to fight them in. I soon noticed that rather than slowly lumbering towards me like any heavy Grineer, they zapped around the room around me at insane speeds preventing me from fleeing. Now I know the other two random encounter bosses can sort of do the same, but their cool movement effects combined with the fact that there's three of them doing it at once, made it way more interesting. I also really liked the variety in their abilities/weapons. It made for a much more unpredictable fight.

Also their dialogue was pretty sweet. Not much to add to that point, I just thought they were fun little characters with quite a bit of personality.

 

In the end they're still weren't particularly hard, but it was certainly a much better fight than the ones against Stalker and the Harvester. I must admit I really had fun fighting these three, and this is coming from a guy who hasn't really had fun playing this game in ages. So for once in a long time, I say good work DE.

I just wish you could make the other two as fun to fight as the Grustrag three.

My only complaint about the three is that I probably won't see them too often since I already have the Brakk, and am a devout Grineer supporter. Sucks for me.

 

Anyways, that's my input/opinion about those three assassin boss fights.

Feel free to share your own thoughts about them.

What do you like or dislike about them? Is there anything you think should be changed about any of them and why or why not?

Edited March 17, 2014 by S.Fayden

[Deaths.Reap3r]

I agree. I think they need to re buff the Stalker even more than what he was before.

Because he drops dread and despair, (2 really good weapons) and the fact that you can kill him in like 3 seconds, and have a chance of getting some really sweet weapons... kinda breaks the game.

We should be  needing to work hard for our dreads or despairs.

[S.Fayden]

I agree. I think they need to re buff the Stalker even more than what he was before.

Because he drops dread and despair, (2 really good weapons) and the fact that you can kill him in like 3 seconds, and have a chance of getting some really sweet weapons... kinda breaks the game.

We should be  needing to work hard for our dreads or despairs.

It'd be nice if he also dropped some more stuff too. Maybe not additional weapon BPs, but some decent mods or a large of resources. I already have multiple of all three of his weapon BPs, so basically I get nothing for fighting him anymore. The Grustrag three on the other hand, drop a hell of a lot more useful stuff than he does. So I don't see why they couldn't improve his drop table to be at least half as good as the Three's.

[Kraosdada]

 In U11. Stalker was BADASS and DEADLY, maybe TOO DEADLY, that is why he was nerfed.

[S.Fayden]

 In U11. Stalker was BADASS and DEADLY, maybe TOO DEADLY, that is why he was nerfed.

I remember him having being really annoying with that bleeding proc, but regardless of whether or not he should have been nerfed, they definitely shouldn't have brought him down to his current position.

[Veridantus]

Personally, I think the Stalker's difficulty should scale with our frame's rank / conclave rating..
Imagine a fully modded stalker that matched our conclave rating (frame & weaponry-wise)
also imagine him appearing in a room with 3 broken lights.. *shudders*..

Never met/seen the Harvester before.. DE need to update it's spawn chance..

As for G3, I think the fight should be a bit harder.. It just doesn't feel right when it's 3 vs 1 & the 1 still has a pretty good chance of winning..
I mean they are the 3 Grineer Elites.. 

Then again, maybe all of their equipments should scale with our conclave rating.. (a total of team conclave rating divided by total number of tennos)
That would make the fight more interesting..

[S.Fayden]

-snip-

They might want to fix how conclave is calculated first. Last time I check Loki has one of the lowest conclave ratings out of all the frames despite being one of the best. Also I don't think their level should be determined by the squad's average conclave ("a total of team conclave rating divided by total number of tennos)" as a squad of Tenno will almost always dominate any small group of enemies regardless of how weak of a squad they are. Calculating the level based on total conclave might be a bit absurd though, So i'm not sure how they should handle that.

[ZephyrAM]

Realize that DE has to be careful with these guys: their spawn chance is 'super' low, and if they kill you, they leave, and you lose all chance to get whatever they might drop. And while they might be easy to kill, they're perfectly capable of killing their target if given half a chance. 

 

If anything, I'd say scale them to their target better, heavily restrict their fast kill ability, and basically make it more of a fight, like against world bosses.

 

Then again, I haven't run into the G3 yet, and the Harvester went down fairly well in a full group... but I've seen the Stalker kill his target and vanish more then once. So maybe it's just him.

[Veridantus]

They might want to fix how conclave is calculated first. Last time I check Loki has one of the lowest conclave ratings out of all the frames despite being one of the best. Also I don't think their level should be determined by the squad's average conclave ("a total of team conclave rating divided by total number of tennos)" as a squad of Tenno will almost always dominate any small group of enemies regardless of how weak of a squad they are. Calculating the level based on total conclave might be a bit absurd though, So i'm not sure how they should handle that.

Conclave rating is calculated by what equipments, frames, & mods you're using.. While I agree it could use some work; a tenno's conclave rating & the tennos eliminating/dominate a squad of enemies has no connection whatsoever.. It's basically a rating of your equipments..

What I meant by this is : 

Suppose a team of 4 has a conclave rating of :

400 + 500 + 600 + 700 = 2200

The G3 team should have a total rating of 2200 as well.. divided by each enemies

which means the enemies should have  733.34 each..

Now, since the stalker & harvester is a single target, they each should 

have 2200 each accordingly..

Which means on a solo play, you are on a pretty much even ground against Stalker/Harvester/G3

btw, I'm not talking about the enemy's level that scale but their equipments/stats/maybe even mods instead..

Edited March 17, 2014 by Veridantus

[Llyssa]

Strange. I personally find the grustrag 3 to be the easiest of them all to fight.

 

I don't think they should be too challenging overall. I mean, having something insanely powerful just pop in and insta-kill you isn't fun. I imagine it's hard to properly balance them in any case, but they are a fair challenge if you're not prepared.

 

I think they're in a pretty good place. There's reasonable arguments to make them scarier, but I don't think the could go much further without making their associated mission types disliked for the association.

[S.Fayden]

Strange. I personally find the grustrag 3 to be the easiest of them all to fight.

 

I don't think they should be too challenging overall. I mean, having something insanely powerful just pop in and insta-kill you isn't fun. I imagine it's hard to properly balance them in any case, but they are a fair challenge if you're not prepared.

 

I think they're in a pretty good place. There's reasonable arguments to make them scarier, but I don't think the could go much further without making their associated mission types disliked for the association.

"The first time I fought them I was carrying low ranked gear, preventing me from tearing through all three without getting a scratch." I didn't say they were tough in a normal situtation, just far more fun to fight than the other two.

 

I agree they shouldn't be super hard, but the fact that anyone who has decent weapons can take them all down without any effort is a bit absurd. Personally though, I'd much rather have a really difficult challenge than no challenge at all. This game is way too easy anyways, so you might as well throw some bits of difficult situations in there.

[Beas7ie]

I find all these guys to be more "annoying" or "cheap" rather than actually difficult.  They can be tough but it's more because they have so many cheap skills or abilities like their lame dispell or how the G3 can move as fast as DBZ characters.  DE needs to find a way to actually buff these guys up where they are challenging without being cheap.  And where you can use your skills one them but not instagib them.  Maybe make an opening or something where they can be vulnerable.

 

I may be comparing Apples to Oranges here but I would say look at the best boss fights from other games.  Such as the Mr. Freeze fight from Arkham City.  It was an awesome and fun fight yet still challenging.   You had full use of you gadgets and skills and the game not only encouraged but REQUIRED to make use of a good variety of them in order to win while at the same time making sure you couldn't spam the same thing over and over again or even use the same technique twice. 

[Etsoree]

Zanuka are "standard" Harvesters? Please.

 

My first and only, personal experience with the G3 was a letdown. Got one to myself in a team of four people ( the other three were attacking the other two in another room ). Level 40. My Gorgon barely scratched it, but my Brakk four-shotted it, one of those shots barely hitting.

 

The mark bosses are sort of a joke, I think... something needs to make them harder, or at least scale with Mastery.

[Utarious]

The stalker is interesting.

He is either one shot insta kill insane hard.

Or he is dead in one shot.

 

Harvester is indeed rather underwhelming even when being attacked by a horde of corpus as corpus die super easy so it is easy to just obliterate the corpus and focus on harvy.

 

G3 Spawned when me and my friend were low level and we had no idea what was happening he got downed in seconds and I survived quite longer but being on my old PC getting 10 FPS I did ultimately die so not a lot of advice from me on these guys except that they seemed to do pretty good damage and seemed to have pretty decent defenses.

 

Edit: Fixed some spelling and word usage that was perturbing me.

Edited March 17, 2014 by Utarious