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Why are league of legends bosses a failure, how to fix it

The Anivia OTP·9/10/2018, 9:44:36 PM·20 votes·27,542 views

So , a lot of you guys are still playing league of legends a lots, and as a player , i spent a lot of time trying to identify what makes the game annoying.

A few days earlier, someone posted a discussion about adding Nergigante to League as a champion, https://www.eclypsia.com/content/MonsterHunter/World/Monstres/26.png

to that very post i answered that elder drake already looks like the nergigante https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/leagueoflegends/images/b/ba/Elder_Dragon_Ingame.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160427204138

but , then came to my mind 1 question, why does the nergigante feels SOOOO nice when i fight him, but in league , elderdrake sucks so hard

Is it because of controls ? no, wizard of legends have similar control , but still feel good https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NsausUuRTAY/maxresdefault.jpg

is it the set of attacks ? quite possibly but even with more attacks, nashor is still bad

is it the way i play against it ? HELL YEAH

see, when i am fighting a certain monster, the way i am gonna use my spells depends on the monster type, with raptor i prefer to burst the biggest, then use aoe for the rest, https://static1.millenium.org/article_old/images/contenu/actus/LOL/raptors-full.jpg

it sound stupid , but the way we fight a boss change a lot how good it feels to fight.

at the current state, every drake is linear, you come attack it a little smite and BOOM you're good.

but herald on the other hand has this little weakspot that change everything.

you CAN play the traditional way , but that's not the optimal way, being alone is challenging , being 2 makes it just easier.

this is a WAY better designed boss. Because it has PHASES, attackes , weakpoint , counterplay. you INDUCE the multiplayer fight, not force it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqUALRAVOgc that makes it for a way better objective.

Drakes in the other hand are very linear and the only thing that change from one type to another is the auto attack effect.

i think , there should be more about dragon fight, you see, when a player wants to do the drake, he shouldn't ask himself "do i have the necessary stat" but rather "do i have the necessary skill" I think drake should be optimally a 3 man objective,

why you may ask , well reason is simple : jungle buff are 1 heralds is 2 drake is 3 right ?

also , there are 3 people on botlane,

to this, they should ALL have something to do meanwhile (outside from straight forward being watching for enemy or tanking/dps) Here are few ideas :

-Have a shield generator for a drakes (mountain drake for instance) so anyone that want to fight the drake should break all generator so the fight become easier, maybe breaking generator hurt drake so it makes fight easier for only 1 person , but it is not optimal to be alone.

-Having a certain time where drake become easier to take down. for instance, the air drake can be flying around and you have to bring him back some way (maybe hitting his poor eggs) so you can dps him , there , being alone makes the fight longer , but not impossible.

-Use attack zone,places where it is safe, and others where attacking is stronger. depending on your position it decide which zone to use. so you have to bait zones whe you are tanky. (can be neat for a fire drake)

-Spawn another drake, i know it might sound stupid , but it makes sense to have some mob spawning in exchange for less attack. destroying those drake that reduce attack make sit more interesting for a fight.(ocean drake maybe ?)

so you have a destroy armor drake, move along and switch target drake, avoid attacks , and counter attack simply avoid debuffs,

and then, you mixx all that for the elder drake , that should be the ultimate drake, therefore you have : 1 person attacking, 1 person that takes care of the debuff mob 2 person that make sure to lower armor and keeping him in. 1 person tanking his damages and baiting his pattern.

of course you can simply attack , but you won't be rewarded by a faster clear.

so what about nashor ?

well , there was a starting of an idea for him , just that you can simply ignore that almost. there are only 3 attacks.

maybe just make a difference of how much damages you deal to him and how much damages he deals to you depending on your position. so if you are right in his back , you can kill him easily if you go on his back , but so does he (he reduce armor or something like that) so attacking it from up front seems like a good strategy but it depends on what you play , if you play an adc, you seek to survive , so you attack him from the front , so you can avoid his attacks while dealing the maximum damages, if you play a bruiser without sustain , you'd prefer to stay mid distance so you still deal a good amount of damages without taking too much from the attack you might receive.

fight are a little too unresponsive , and seem to be still a little too annoying, this might create good situation where enemy can stop a drake or a nash if the other team is not precocious because you have to use ressources or behave a certain way that make you too predictable. a drake shouldn't be longer than 30 seconds if done properly, a nashor shouldn't be shorter than 1 minute if done perfectly so the better the buff , the harder it is to get.

Lol bosses are a failure because they provide NO variation in term of experience, evaluating the possibility of a drake slaughter should not be "how much dps you have" rather than "how skilled you are+ your stats+you map vision"

35 Comments

ModKnightsKemplar9/15/2018, 4:51:40 AM16 votes

I actually wasn't prepared to agree with you at the start of this post, but you did a good job of backing up your argument here.

I think rift herald is a great example of the right amount of interaction, but I wouldn't want it to get much more interactive than that. Neutral objectives are often interesting because the opponent is around... they aren't necessarily designed to be challenging when you have a 5 man team and can rush it uncontested. But I generally agree that a little more action is needed from drakes and baron.

swiftsnipe9/16/2018, 4:35:42 AM5 votes

Vilemaw on the Twisted Treeline (3v3) is an example of a fantastic boss monster. It has distinct attack patterns that affects how much damage it dishes out and in what sort of an area.

  1. It has a single target ranged web
  2. it has a linear attack that does medium damage to all targets in a line
  3. It has a rampage that deals severe damage to enemies in melee range
  4. It has a Utility pull that draws all enemies to the center of the pit.

On top of that the placement of the boss on the map gives both teams equal access to the pit (Unlike Dragon and Baron).

It is a shame that Riot doesn`t invest any time or energy in Twisted Treeline because with a little tweaking it could become a very interesting game mode for ESports.

JoeAnarchy9/16/2018, 6:36:26 AM4 votes

league isn't meant to be a PVE game tho.. that's why they nerfed baron.. they said "it makes the game feel too PVE"

Kazekiba9/17/2018, 6:30:29 AM3 votes

Air Drake periodically soars, becoming untargetable for 0.15 seconds and gaining a shield. Melee attacks ignore the shield, and upon taking damage the shield rapidly deteriorates (think Yasuo's passive). HOWEVER, Air Drake is not immune to certain CC - Silence, Root, and Taunt - which prevents the Soar. A significant (~1.5-2 second) warning will appear before the Soar activates, allowing junglers or their supports (even some ADCs, like Jhin or Cait) to lock it down to prevent the shield.

Fire Drake surrounds itself with a few rings. After a brief time, the rings burst in a wall of flame persisting for 2(+1 per previous drake slain globally) seconds, dealing massive damage. The rings are not complete, leaving several safe zones to stand in. Contesting Fire Drake is extremely dangerous to justify the reward - Raw stats, benefitting nearly every scaling ability including Support's shields and magnifying Baron buff moderately. Bar champions like Ornn, sejuani, etc. that rely on their alternate scalings like bonus HP or Armor ratios, there is no team comp that isnt much stronger with an Infernal.

Mountain Drake would change the least - the slow, heavy hitting AoE auto attack - but would also gain a melee attack. Melee attack will be used 1.5 seconds after Mountain's last ranged attack, and the drake will roar on the range attack that precedes the melee. Champions hit by the melee attack are stunned for 2 seconds, and take bonus % max health True damage from the Drake's next attack (not related to the stun or reduced by Tenacity/Cleanseitem 3140 )

Ocean Drake - Please Riot, remove the freaking slow on this thing. Instead, at low health the Ocean Drake summons a whirlpool at its feet - It doesn't deal damage, but it drags any champions standing on the whirlpool towards it and % shreds resists gradually. Dashes can only reach the edge of the whirlpool from inside of it (knockdown effect while being dragged)

Dragons need to feel unique, and challenging but not so much that dedicated Solo Monster killers (warwick and Shyvana) cannot solo it early as to not remove the strengths of these champions. Also bring back Jungle Malzahar and Zyra please

Dicerson9/25/2018, 10:20:13 AM2 votes

I think this is an excellent idea, your point about Rift Herald is very well made (and while the rest of the post is filled with grammatical errors, the actual ideas therein are interesting). I think each dragon should have a somewhat unique fight interaction. Like how the Herald has it's eye, and 2 unique attack phases (The wide swing and the charge, in between which it just autos). The dragon should have something that makes 3 people the optimal number, and makes it a meaningful fight without making it so complicated or interactive that you couldn't also reasonably deal with fending off an opposing team whilst doing it (Herald's mechanics are simple and straightforward enough, that they easily do both).

A few ideas-

  1. Dragon should do high damage, making a "tank" somewhat necessary. It shouldn't have to be a raw tank, it just needs to be someone who can "aggro" the dragon and effectively survive it's attacks, like how herald needs someone to focus it's attention while someone else attacks it from behind to get the fastest eye procs. The dragon's attacks, regardless of form, should be low damage when they auto-track, but have unique attack phases that are telegraphed and dodgeable. One phase unique to all the dragons, when it takes to the air initially, and a second wherein it flies around, roaring and stuff, and then does a landing stomp on the aggro'd player, with a unique effect based on the type (Fire could do an explosion, air could knock back, water could slow, mountain could stun, things like that). This way, one player can survive the auto-track abilities, and guide the telegraphed abilities so that they can easily dodge them (but potentially get hit if they aren't paying attention or get caught up in a contest)

  2. There should be some small, extremely simple secondary objective, analogous (but of course, not necessarily identical, or even similar) to the Herald's eye that takes about one person to do (the "third" person in this scenario. With the first and second being the "tank" and the dps respectively). It should be something simple that even a support could do. It might be unique to every dragon, or it might be the same. Maybe it'd be a dragon egg mechanic? You have to destroy it's eggs before a timer or it spawns little welps that will attack your team and make the fight significantly more difficult? Maybe something else, but it should be straightforward, and simple to do. A support should be able to do it, and it shouldn't be so intricate that it couldn't be done if you were caught up in a contest (Like how during a Herald contest you can still sort of throw out an auto every now and then to try and pop the eye)

I think if Riot could pull off the two above ideas, dragon would become a significantly more interesting objective to secure, and that in and of itself can increase it's value, as well as its overall contribution to the game experience.

Furthermore, I think Baron should be similarly constructed. The "Optimal" number for Baron should be 4, with 5 being a nice bonus. I already have an idea for this. Baron should stay pretty much as it is, with two basic attacks that deal high damage, absolutely necessitating some kind of face tank (or a team skilled at damage rotation), its two existent abilities, and in general be as it is now. But with a single, simple addition.

Remember how in the twist of fate cinematic trailer, baron had these three little snakey head things that came up with it? Add those! Make them little mini-enemies that baron comes with (like how the blue and red buffs used to have little minions). They sit there and they attack, maybe they have mini-abilities of their own. They wouldn't be extremely durable, and they wouldn't do a ton of damage, but they'd be just enough of a threat to warrant assigning someone to destroy them. In essence, just like the dragon fight, you need a face tank to aggro baron and survive, DPS to burn the dragon down, and a secondary objective to complete that speeds up the fight (Maybe the little worm things deal some % of baron's max hp when you kill them?), it's just that now you need a 4th person to effectively do the fight in a reasonable timeframe.

Thaumaturge Void9/18/2018, 5:03:04 PM2 votes

I always thought it'd be nice if the jungle (and/or the center of lanes) would slowly get harder to cross/be in because of how long the Baron lived after (re)spawning. Could represent the void corrupted Baron slowly spreading out his influence. Probably wouldn't work though.

PiggyTheAstro9/16/2018, 6:33:17 AM2 votes

Oh come on, I was planning to make the exact same post but you beat me to it...

GJ.

Rekkon10/7/2018, 8:38:22 AM1 votes

While there is already the stress of the enemy team stealing it, outpositioning your team or catching your allies off guard, yes this will make the game much more interactive and improve experience. Having to non-linearly and passively kill the drake solo because you're just outputting a lot of damage doesn't feel great.

ModThe Djinn9/15/2018, 4:03:50 AM1 votes

Approved.

LilxPaprika10/20/2018, 3:19:37 PM1 votes

Visually they are cool, challenging however they are not.

BigFBear9/15/2018, 11:33:49 PM1 votes

actually killing the little raptors first is way better than killing the big one first. At least in early game.

DeathBurst9/17/2018, 3:11:14 AM1 votes

I'm not so convinced.

The problem is, the fun part in League isn't supposed to be battling the neutral monsters. The monsters are just a plot device to incite PvP fight. The fun part is creating the circumstances that allows you to take the neutral objective safely, be it gaining vision on the enemy team, ganking and killing an adjacent lane and then go to the neutral objective with the laner that now has free time, etc. Or not doing that properly, and then having a big fight where you have to balance your attention between the monster and the human opponents.

So I'm not in favor of investing time and resources in a better "boss fight". That's not the point of this game, and I think there are better opportunities elsewhere, to work on systems that are more central to the core gameplay of League.

Additionally, I think you don't realize how Herald/Drakes are typically done. If you know how to orb-walk, it's relatively easy to take Herald alone, and a lot of Jungler can sneakily solo the Drake if they spot the opponent on the other side. Herald isn't really a 2-man fight, and Drake probably shouldn't be a 3-man fight either, because it would kill a lot of options for the Junglers. If you know that the enemy team needs 3 people to do it efficiently, you don't need to maintain vision and be careful about it.

Nevrankroaton9/17/2018, 6:17:04 AM1 votes

I feel you clearly underestimate the amount of pressure the contest of an objective have, a game of league of legends isn't about to have to do micro management on a boss pattern that ALSO hurt you a lot when you have the threat of the ennemy team. It make it also way way too hard to engage, and these objectives are suppose to help the ones doing it having the proper snowball to go further into finishing the game.

Let's say you do a good TF, finish the ennemy team but everyone is low, if Baron is too strong and hard to kill, you have almost no interest in either doing it because it is just too risky and hard. You would need the case of absolutely killing everyone with few retalation to get it (which either show a HUGe missplay OR that you were stomping anyway).

Making dragons being forced to be a team objective change entirely some jungler dynamic. It force botlane to stay a duo lane, it make jungler with strong early clear be less interesting (warwick, shyvana), it hurt shyvana btw, etc.

It isn't a PvE game. Trust me, I would love your thinking for a MMO or a PvE mode, but not in a true PvP mode. Ok to give dragon more pattern or challenge, but don't pigeonhole it.

Doge20209/17/2018, 7:24:30 PM1 votes

For the first part of your post where you mentioned somebody who posted about adding nergegante to the game, for a long time I was thinking about how to add Seregios as a MH and League crossover event like how MHW did with Final Fantasy with the behemoth event for MHW and the Rathalos quest for Final Fantasy 15.

I was thinking about MHW having somebody like Kha’zixs or Cho going to MHW and seregios coming here.

My idea is still being developed more but the main part for his passive was that he has two modes for his scales, one that adds more AD and maybe even a bleed component to melee abilities and AAs and the other was when his scales are “closed” and he gains increased resistances and maybe even reduced damage from DOTs (this idea I just thought of when I wrote this post and, Seregios’ armor in game gives you reduced damage from bleed or completely negates bleeding. Bleed is a special effect granted from Seregios and with MHW Odogaron).

His q would be like a slash effect with both talons like shyvanna’s q.

His e would be like a dash that can be used to pounce on an enemy, it would have a long CD but it is reset when you are knocked airborne. With this idea I was thinking that seregios would have to have a stamina bar, and the e would only reset after being affected by only one airborne effect during the e CD. And the reset version would have to consume a little more stamina then the regular one. This is so it would require the person to think about how they play it, should they waste their reset to try and in vain get to the target, or wait until the enemy champ/group uses all of their airborne CC on you so you won’t get caught in another one during your reset e.

For his w I wasn’t that sure about yet, open to ideas tho.

And for his R would be a huge AOE ability, seregios would swipe across the affected area and knock up anybody that is caught in it (dealing lots of damage of course). It would have a huge cast range, but the time it would take to channel would increase with range. So if you use it right near it would be basically instant, while if you were in midlane and used it on somewhere like bot then it would take a while to get there (because seregios is literally flying over there). I don’t think it would be a casted like rumble ult, it would be more like that you click on a spot and the game would target the nearest group of champions. It would go in the direction of the largest group of champs, so if there were 3-4 champs grouped in drag and one in blue side red buff, (and you clicked on the blast plant imbetween these two places) the game would have seregios go in the direction of the drag pit. And btw once the game chooses a direction it won’t change it. And there would have to be an indicator showing the direction or affected area that seregios will attack so enemies have some counterplay and know how seregios is gonna attack.

Overall I wanted seregios to function as either a fighter or a slightly more mobile juggernaut.

Sorry this isn’t as clean as some champion concepts on these boards but I was so excited and I wanted to get all of my ideas out. And I don’t really know that much about the units in league and all that stuff, I don’t really think about the actual ranges of the abilities I create concepts for them.

zoliking9/18/2018, 6:36:57 PM1 votes

I wouldn't treat neutral objectives the same as bosses. These are shiny things you can pick up as a team to gain a strategic benefit over the other team, not some epic conclusion to a video game saga.

Metal Janna9/26/2018, 5:53:51 PM1 votes

Hey man, off-topic but thanks for bringing up Rift Herald's weakness. I had no idea it had one!