Before I start allow me to don my fireproof underpants

(doning)

Now that that is over with. Am I the only one who finds zerging a boss kind of a buzz kill? Nothing except hammering on your keyboard really seems to be necessary to beat nearly any boss in the game in a group instance. Therefore I propose a respawn timer (this is where the flames start I'm sure). One or two minutes. And if at any point in time everyone is on the timer, the boss heals to full health instantly. Perhaps it will bring a little strategy to the table rather than just running at the boss without worry of even really needing to block. This would also have a side-effect of making resurrection powers actually useful.

The prescribed method for stopping boss zerging that the devs have applied at this point is the lockout. If anyone is in the boss fight at all, everyone outside the boss fight room is locked out until everyone inside has died.

It's an interesting way to fix it. Not necessarily the best way, though :/

I think Viper's Nest has a good mechanic in place: You spawn so far from the battle, that your team is in disarray or wiped by the time you get back. Meanwhile he is on regen.

I also am bothered by the zerg mentality. I will often start to ask folks, "Ok, what's the gameplan?" and by the time I type, "Ok." the battle is underway all willy nilly.

As long as zerg style boss swarms are successful, that's gonna be the main 'strategy'.

I think lockout is only during the Therakiel Lair?

Heres my issue since we are on the subject. I have played a few MMOs in my day and in some MMOs they make the big boss battles very unique or somehow interesting. Hide behind pillars for this, break out special item for that, can only attack the boss during this moment or that moment. Basically, besides the fight there is also something else going on or involved.

In CO, the bosses just kind of seem like big sacks of health that dish out damage. There never seems to be any tactics beyond how the team of heroes will interact.

Like in AoC there is a boss that summons dust cloud demons from a fireplace. He is not that tough, but if you don't equip and use your feather dusters to kill the demons, the fight can turn very ugly. Its a silly premise, but I think ya know what I mean.

Anyway, if fights were not quite so generic and required some form of special tactics, then the bosses wouldn't have to be huge sacks of health and players wouldn't have to zerg so much. imo.

Edit: After thought...We're super heroes. Big Boss Fights could involve them putting citizens in harm's way or something. So besides fighting, you are also saving folks. Big Boss battles should be more then simply slugging it out.

There's a couple bosses where you can't zerg at all (Therakiel's Temple) or where zerging pretty much doesn't work (Kigatilik gains 100k hp every time someone dies near him; Bludhound gains 50k hp every time you miss a block and has to be defeated within 10 minutes) and several bosses where zerging involves running back from a respawn point that's obnoxiously far away (most of the lairs, actually, though Destroyer's Factory is probably the worst because of all the load screens). The most zerg-friendly boss fights are the Super-Brain (respawn point right outside the chamber), Dr Demogaard (spawn point at the edge of the jungle), and most open missions (respawn point is usually nearby).

I've never played WoW, but based on my wife's experience with LotRO, a substantial portion of the "tactics" are predicated on messing with the holy trinity. That Is Not An Option(tm) in CO.

I would really love to see creative tactics and better deathtraps; unfortunately, I don't think the combat AI is nearly good enough to make that happen. (This would be a good point for a developer to comment on the limits of available technology. :-)

Lantern does the lockout too. I'm betting all new lair content will be lockouts.

They should start by adding trash spawns to all end-lair encounters. They already do this in the final solo mission vs Therakiel, at the end of the VB crisis. You should have to clear the trash MOBs regularly so that you dont get overwhelmed.

I don't like the "we don't need a healer" attitude.. The death penalty in this game is a bit meh.


I agree they need to stop zerg boss strats.. it doesn't seem heroic..