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Let's TheoryRaid #3: Putting Heads Together! (Hydra/Illuyankas - FFXI vs Tiamat - Onigiri)
Azherae
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
I figure if this actually is relevant to the Dev Discussion in a non-disruptive way then it'll get merged and I'll reuse the number, but it'll be less funny unless I use Cerberus instead...
If you are even opening this thread you should care about this thread more! Go actually help Intrepid!
This is just another ranty comparison of game experiences I have and why I like them, but it's not related to either my favorite mechanics or least favorite, these are just two 'middle of the road' bosses that I find decent, and partially Tiamat being described because there don't seem to be any videos of why it isn't just super simple (I can't find a video of anyone fighting it on the hardest 'Mode').
FFXI is a Tab Target game, Onigiri is a heavy softlock Action-Lite game. It can still be considered Tab Target.
The Hydra and Tiamat are both multi-headed Dragon or Dragon-like bosses in their respective game, but they use this very differently. Hydra was an endgame style 'Raid level' boss, a 'High/Hyper Notorious Monster' (18+ player content), whereas Tiamat is 'just' a level 10 Story Mode type boss in Onigiri, basically the first 'wall' in that game (on hard mode, scales to number of players, can be 4-5+ equal number of Companions).
Some of this post is about 'simulation about introducing PvP around these and why it would work' based on their designs with minimal tweaking.
Hydra Fight Overview
I'll take it straight from the wiki page mostly.
Special Attacks
Tiamat Fight Overview
All names and descriptions used here are from me, but you can look for Onigiri Tiamat (not Blitz Tiamat) fight on YT I guess, good luck finding anything that actually fights the strong version.
P V X?
The two Bosses leverage their functions in the same way. Their ability kit and mechanics are primarily 'getting through a defensive puzzle and debuffs'.
In the case of the Hydra, if you were to start fighting it with your main group while watching out for interruptors, three main things make safety possible. The first is that your Secondary Healer and Bard could actually stand fairly close to it (and therefore the Tank) safely, just off to the side to avoid most of the breath attacks, while your Primary Healer was off to one side but further away. That healer is not the one you're counting on to save the Tank, that Healer's job is to help and top off the Melee who either don't avoid an attack due to being not ready, or explicitly were using their own defensive skills to get in and unload some damage.
The second is that with Body Blocking of a specific type in effect, the Tank could then reposition to cause any enemy Rangers' shots (for example) to hit the Hydra instead, even if the Tank was their current Tab Target. Not optimal, but nothing is optimal once a contesting group shows up.
The third is that the fight is primarily about managing statuses (removing Poison, Plague, Paralyze, maybe even Gravity, putting back any necessary protective buffs that are Dispelled), and it is only the failure to do so that eventually builds up to a loss. But if an enemy group attacks, focusing on them means that the players involved are less likely to be in position to have to deal with these statuses, other than the Tank and Secondary Healer.
The key is simply that the Hydra's abilities force you to time your engages and disengages, but if an opponent was able to prevent your disengage, they were probably also in range of whatever they were hoping was hitting you. Similarly, if you were in danger or your defensive skill/buff was not active, you 'should' have been retreating and therefore able to pay attention to an attacker.
In the case of Tiamat, Gatling Breath and Meteor Breath Shower mean that if you are doing your own movement correctly, any attacker needs to be at least as adept, and stopping to focus on each other makes the interaction a dice roll if the game isn't very CC heavy. Also, since it would be possible (not in Onigiri, just overall) to have players fall or crumple when hit by harder CC, Gatling Breath would pass over the head of that player usually, forcing the CC-ing player to time it.
Basically in both cases, the attackers are at around the same level of risk relative to the boss, and cannot easily 'reach' the Tank to disrupt things without suffering. This requires CC to be both skillshot-type and 'shorter range' type as a generality, and for mobility to be somewhat low, in the case of Tiamat. Or, the Ashes approach, where you can't CC the Tank to begin with because they are a NonCombatant.
The Hydra doesn't have those requirements because it isn't ever really doing unmanageable levels of damage at once to begin with, except when of course you forget to set '/blockaid' to prevent outside healing and an 'enemy' Healer stands on the other side of it and spams heals on your Tank until the Hydra turns to them, and the next instance of damage from that Tank triggers Serpentine Tail...
So while you could easily prevent a group from bringing it down by simply taking up all their attention and time while it Regens, the boss itself doesn't shift that much in terms of danger to the Tank unless the people trying to disrupt are in the same area and likely to be hit with the same effects.
Once that is true, when the disrupting group is just as much if not more likely to be affected by the boss' mechanics in a way other than 'HP drops fast', a lot of the 'surprises' and 'randomness' and particularly 'automatic advantage' toward the players attempting to contest the boss, can be removed.
And for Tiamat it's actually the same, in a roundabout way. Tiamat is much more 'Action Game Oriented' where you must always reposition and choose carefully when to attack and risk it, vs playing it safe, based on health. The appearance of a contesting group would become 'nearly never risk it', but by design, Tiamat itself is protecting you from most advancing attackers (it's this part which I wish I had a proper video to demonstrate or reference in more detail).
Conclusion
I doubt I'd find either fight particularly interesting/fair in a PvX game if they were open world without some additional mechanics (anti-zerg stuff, or finding some reasonable way to manipulate Hydra's Regen due to there being contesting groups around that didn't then open up some other abuse) or TP Gauge implementation, but they're fine. The Hydra is a lot better because the TP Gauge makes it very rhythm based. Tiamat is good because of the specifics of movement (slight conservation of momentum, strong attacks being rooted) in Onigiri, but it's still just level 10.
Tiamat has the powered up form Blitz Tiamat, and Hydras are actually a 'mob type' in FFXI, which means they can gain additional abilities from their Class/Archetype/Job/whatever you want to call it, so, for example, there is a certain member of the same 'family' that is stronger because it is a Red Mage and therefore has additional traits, access to magic, different resistances, and Chainspell (instant cast on spells for a duration).
Therefore, technically, both the 'base' Hydra and 'base' Tiamat are introductory content for their type.
If you are even opening this thread you should care about this thread more! Go actually help Intrepid!
This is just another ranty comparison of game experiences I have and why I like them, but it's not related to either my favorite mechanics or least favorite, these are just two 'middle of the road' bosses that I find decent, and partially Tiamat being described because there don't seem to be any videos of why it isn't just super simple (I can't find a video of anyone fighting it on the hardest 'Mode').
FFXI is a Tab Target game, Onigiri is a heavy softlock Action-Lite game. It can still be considered Tab Target.
The Hydra and Tiamat are both multi-headed Dragon or Dragon-like bosses in their respective game, but they use this very differently. Hydra was an endgame style 'Raid level' boss, a 'High/Hyper Notorious Monster' (18+ player content), whereas Tiamat is 'just' a level 10 Story Mode type boss in Onigiri, basically the first 'wall' in that game (on hard mode, scales to number of players, can be 4-5+ equal number of Companions).
Some of this post is about 'simulation about introducing PvP around these and why it would work' based on their designs with minimal tweaking.
Hydra Fight Overview
I'll take it straight from the wiki page mostly.
- Very high regen with all three heads. Regen slows when heads are missing.
- It also appears to have Regain with 2 or 3 heads up. This goes away with only one head.
- 2 of the 3 heads of the Hydra can be killed.
- The Hydra regrows missing heads periodically; however, what exactly causes these heads to regrow is currently unknown.
- One theory is that regrowth can be triggered by weapon skills, elemental magic, or elemental additional effects on weapons.
- The Hydra's extra heads are removed by a specific unknown number of critical hits, including those during a Weapon Skill and those that land for 0 (heads CAN still be removed while Hydra has Physical Shield up).
- The number required seems to increase dramatically when it enters "rage mode" (see below).
- It seems to be resistant to piercing attacks. Sneak Attack is not affected by this resistance.
- It has very high resistance to Stun and Enfeebling magic. Very high resistance or immune to Sleep even with Elemental Seal. This immunity can be avoided with Death Blossom. The higher the TP is before using Death Blossom, the higher the chance of lowering the magic evasion of the target. Will obtain more result if a DNC stack Stutter Step with Death Blossom.
- Similar to Tiamat (OP Note: FFXI Tiamat, not the one being discussed in the post), upon dropping below 25% health it seems to enter something like a rage and this does not go away upon regening over 25%.
Special Attacks
- Trembling: 5' AoE 0-500 DMG Attack with additional effect of Dispel (10' range). Blinkable, wipes shadows. Dispels 2-3 effects.
- Barofield: ~15' AoE 100-200 DMG Wind Attack with additional effect of Gravity (10' range). Not Blinkable, ignores shadows. Damage greatly reduced by Baraera. Appears to be a cone-shaped attack centered around his center head.
- Serpentine Tail: Heavy damage single target or cone attack triggered when someone gets hate from behind.
- Below Two Abilities are used only when second (Hydra's right--our left) head is alive (at least, we think so)
- Polar Blast: Ice-based Breath Attack, Paralyze effect
- Pyric Bulwark: Magical Shield - Not removable by Dispel and related effects
- Below Two Abilities are used only when third (Hydra's left-- our right) head is alive (we think)
- Pyric Blast Fire-based Breath Attack, Plague effect
- Polar Bulwark: Physical Shield - Not removable by Dispel and related effects
- Nerve Gas: 10' AoE Curse, 20hp/tick Poison. Used more frequently when Hydra has less than 25% health. Not Blinkable, wipes shadows.
Tiamat Fight Overview
All names and descriptions used here are from me, but you can look for Onigiri Tiamat (not Blitz Tiamat) fight on YT I guess, good luck finding anything that actually fights the strong version.
- Gatling Breath: Releases 3-4 waves of slow moving quintuple fireballs that deal around 50% of a non-Tanky player's health in damage. Weaving through these is possible but slightly difficult, particularly as you get closer to Tiamat. Spammable.
- Kaiju Walking: Stomps forward. Small AoE on each step. Footsteps explode after a few seconds sometimes so just running straight behind it is unwise. So is trying to heal anyone that got caught by the original stomps right away.
- Meteor Breath Shower: Goes airborne and rains down breath attacks that cause relatively larger AoE explosions. Fairly avoidable but if you were melee, you need to run toward where Tiamat was.
- Touchdown: In the hard version, if I remember right, big damage shockwave when Tiamat lands from Meteor Breath Shower.
- FireTail Mine: If Tiamat stands still for long enough, the area where its tail touches the ground (approximately) becomes empowered to be a larger version of the AoE explosions from Kaiju Walking
- Tail Swing: Not entirely confident because I've only ever seen this attack twice maybe. If Tiamat is attacked from behind as it is recovering from Gatling Breath, a powerful tail attack does lethal or near-lethal damage to the opponent. This seems to have a condition for how much damage it does though.
P V X?
The two Bosses leverage their functions in the same way. Their ability kit and mechanics are primarily 'getting through a defensive puzzle and debuffs'.
In the case of the Hydra, if you were to start fighting it with your main group while watching out for interruptors, three main things make safety possible. The first is that your Secondary Healer and Bard could actually stand fairly close to it (and therefore the Tank) safely, just off to the side to avoid most of the breath attacks, while your Primary Healer was off to one side but further away. That healer is not the one you're counting on to save the Tank, that Healer's job is to help and top off the Melee who either don't avoid an attack due to being not ready, or explicitly were using their own defensive skills to get in and unload some damage.
The second is that with Body Blocking of a specific type in effect, the Tank could then reposition to cause any enemy Rangers' shots (for example) to hit the Hydra instead, even if the Tank was their current Tab Target. Not optimal, but nothing is optimal once a contesting group shows up.
The third is that the fight is primarily about managing statuses (removing Poison, Plague, Paralyze, maybe even Gravity, putting back any necessary protective buffs that are Dispelled), and it is only the failure to do so that eventually builds up to a loss. But if an enemy group attacks, focusing on them means that the players involved are less likely to be in position to have to deal with these statuses, other than the Tank and Secondary Healer.
The key is simply that the Hydra's abilities force you to time your engages and disengages, but if an opponent was able to prevent your disengage, they were probably also in range of whatever they were hoping was hitting you. Similarly, if you were in danger or your defensive skill/buff was not active, you 'should' have been retreating and therefore able to pay attention to an attacker.
In the case of Tiamat, Gatling Breath and Meteor Breath Shower mean that if you are doing your own movement correctly, any attacker needs to be at least as adept, and stopping to focus on each other makes the interaction a dice roll if the game isn't very CC heavy. Also, since it would be possible (not in Onigiri, just overall) to have players fall or crumple when hit by harder CC, Gatling Breath would pass over the head of that player usually, forcing the CC-ing player to time it.
Basically in both cases, the attackers are at around the same level of risk relative to the boss, and cannot easily 'reach' the Tank to disrupt things without suffering. This requires CC to be both skillshot-type and 'shorter range' type as a generality, and for mobility to be somewhat low, in the case of Tiamat. Or, the Ashes approach, where you can't CC the Tank to begin with because they are a NonCombatant.
The Hydra doesn't have those requirements because it isn't ever really doing unmanageable levels of damage at once to begin with, except when of course you forget to set '/blockaid' to prevent outside healing and an 'enemy' Healer stands on the other side of it and spams heals on your Tank until the Hydra turns to them, and the next instance of damage from that Tank triggers Serpentine Tail...
So while you could easily prevent a group from bringing it down by simply taking up all their attention and time while it Regens, the boss itself doesn't shift that much in terms of danger to the Tank unless the people trying to disrupt are in the same area and likely to be hit with the same effects.
Once that is true, when the disrupting group is just as much if not more likely to be affected by the boss' mechanics in a way other than 'HP drops fast', a lot of the 'surprises' and 'randomness' and particularly 'automatic advantage' toward the players attempting to contest the boss, can be removed.
And for Tiamat it's actually the same, in a roundabout way. Tiamat is much more 'Action Game Oriented' where you must always reposition and choose carefully when to attack and risk it, vs playing it safe, based on health. The appearance of a contesting group would become 'nearly never risk it', but by design, Tiamat itself is protecting you from most advancing attackers (it's this part which I wish I had a proper video to demonstrate or reference in more detail).
Conclusion
I doubt I'd find either fight particularly interesting/fair in a PvX game if they were open world without some additional mechanics (anti-zerg stuff, or finding some reasonable way to manipulate Hydra's Regen due to there being contesting groups around that didn't then open up some other abuse) or TP Gauge implementation, but they're fine. The Hydra is a lot better because the TP Gauge makes it very rhythm based. Tiamat is good because of the specifics of movement (slight conservation of momentum, strong attacks being rooted) in Onigiri, but it's still just level 10.
Tiamat has the powered up form Blitz Tiamat, and Hydras are actually a 'mob type' in FFXI, which means they can gain additional abilities from their Class/Archetype/Job/whatever you want to call it, so, for example, there is a certain member of the same 'family' that is stronger because it is a Red Mage and therefore has additional traits, access to magic, different resistances, and Chainspell (instant cast on spells for a duration).
Therefore, technically, both the 'base' Hydra and 'base' Tiamat are introductory content for their type.
Sorry, my native language is Erlang.
1
Comments
In a PvX environment, the dynamism born out of these two mechanics could help you set up situations where attempting to steal the attention of the group fighting the Hydra would make it less threatening as people turn away and not feed TP into it as often, and you could even "lure" it to attack the incoming PvP enemies by knowing the TP rhythm. Without a mechanic similar to the TP gauge, I fear that this enemy type would end up feeling either too random or too predictable.
you kill it faster but splitting drops is harder? things are fine. don't put walls
you might not get every single boss T_Tor maybe they drop diff things that every body needs
sure skilled players might win but that's because of skill. if you put anti zerg mechanics then maybe the skilled players arent winning because of their skills?
also what prevents you from being skilled and having lots of skilled players in ur guild? askilled zerg divided in CP where every1 knows what to do.
also just because a group Is smaller doesn't mean they r skilled
As for having a ton of skilled parties in your guild - that's great and should be the case for any top guild. All of those parties should be used to defend the farm from other guilds or just used during a siege. But the boss itself shouldn't be zergable imo, because that is not skill - that's just a super weak dps check.
Also, if your guild has 2k players, you're most likely farming pretty much every semi-relevant boss. Otherwise your guild's a failure.
most bosses in l2 are beatable by zerging and tank and spank...or just an omega buffed titan or slh =x yet you still enjoyed l2 didn't you?
you can have skilled pvpers fighting the boss and then defending it if other players arrive and skilled pvers doing the boss =x
the best anti zerg mechanic is when people stop making 10 men guilds and complain they cant grab anything and join a bigger guild instead and fight the zerg uwu
there's enough anti zerging already with not being able to teleport anyways, but I guess people will wait for hours for the boss to spawn like the good old times
Like I said, pvp is amazing and people should guild up to have protection for their farm. But that pvp can happen outside of the boss' room/location. Just as epic L2 bosses closed their doors after the start of the farm, I want AoC's bosses to enable their anti-zerg mechanics once the fight starts.
In other words, I don't want the L2's "just fucking his the boss with 200 people" pve, I want something better.
I know it was mentioned above, but FFXI uses a TP gauge... basically the more attacks the boss receives (any mob in fact), the faster it gets to do its special deadly attacks... powerful AoEs, Sleeps, buff wipes, Death gazes etc. Really depends on the species. So if you bring more people... it means more attacks, it means everyone fighting has to deal with more special moves in a shorter timeframe.