I'm playing a mage on adventurer difficulty, which is supposed to be the "balanced" difficulty. So why am I stuck constantly dodging around the entire battlefield for half an hour while my companions chip away putting almost no damage on the boss? My warrior companion can't hold boss threat, a single hit from the boss chunks out 60-80% of my HP, and I only get 3 health potions, and the bosses are pumping out hits faster than the animation it takes my character to recover from dodging. This feels like it should be nightmare difficulty. Patch one claims it tuned difficulty to "match design intent". It's hard to believe that the design intent is to have players run in a circle for 30 minutes while their companions chip away the bosses sponge healthbar by outputting 5% of the DPS that Rook is capable of on normal difficulty.Devs got so focused on making this feels like a soulslike that they forgot who their audience for this game is. Instead of deep, well thought out dialogue, companion conversations, and fun balanced boss fights, we get campy dialogue, companions who barely acknowledge when we walk into the room, and punishing fights where you can't make a single attack if you play the "wrong" class. Again, on NORMAL mode.I waited 10 years for this game and now I'm not sure I'll even finish it. You took away everything I loved about Dragon Age in favor of making another dark souls clone.

You summed up another issue that I have with the game! Along with boring, or mostly non-existent romances, the combat is way too difficult! Let's take a dragon fight for example... Rook is the ONLY one the dragon ever goes after. You can't get in any hits or plan any lack-luster companion attacks when you are constantly sprinting from danger!Totally unrealistic. Not that gaming is realistic in the least, but with 3 people on the battlefield, there is no way that the opposition only goes after 1 of the 3 targets!Yep - 10 years and how ever many millions they spent on this - I doubt that make it all back.

There are buffs to your dagger and other armour sets (at least with the mage), that automatically shift enemy aggression to other members in your party. Deflection is a great way to turn the tide against dragons as well. Will admit though it can be rather exhausting when they decide to spam the quick multi spits and go right for the slam

All of your points about where to target a dragon, etc., are all obvious and known already. It's not just the dragon - it's all enemies.There is nothing fair about combat in this game when all of the enemies only attack Rook. I have watched as companions are left alone and all of the enemies are facing and heading to me. There are three people on the battlefield for enemies to attack and they only attack one of them - not realistic, even for a game.And, outside of the healing some companions offer, they do little damage to opponents anyway.

I don't play games for the combat usually, I played on Keeper difficulty here and I didn't mind combat for the most part, even had fun with it.But I do agree that it's unpleasant how many attacks from bigger bosses like dragons are solely focused on Rook. And even though it got easier and more survivable on later levels as I got stronger, it still wasn't exactly fun to have to run around dodging 90% of the time. One of the most annoying things was the timing of recovery after getting hit vs the timing of consecutive boss attacks. It happened more than once that I essentially got stunlocked because the boss would aim and already attack again before Rook was fully done with the recovery animations, and there was no time to dodge out of the next aoe before it would hit me. That is way too punishing for an easy mode.

Also first dragon fight at my choice (not forced by story) was at level 30 or 31. If your first dragon fight wasnt until level 30 or 31 then you don't really even know what I am talking about. I got to corius pre lvl 20 (I am focusing on getting companions before exploring, which is the strategy bioware should expect most players to use since so many areas are locked without companion skills). I just barely reached level 20 and there's a dramatically noticeable increase in Rook's strength and survivability. The combat is punishing but it is fair. Too bad there is not enrage timer where the boss will wipe out all team for incompetence (like it is in swtor - operations).All, the combat is not fair when taking a single hit from the boss essentially stunlocks you on NORMAL mode because the basic recovery animation (not the one you can get out of with a button press) is slower than the boss's next attack. On NORMAL mode you should be able to make a couple of mistakes without it being an automatic KO. (Also, enrage timers? Seriously? Maybe on hard mode, but again we are talking about NORMAL mode. GTFO with that gatekeeping **bleep**, games are for PLAY and no one should have to be pro level to enjoy one. Not to mention punishing people for "incompetence" has literally never been what dragon age combat is about.)Genuine question, is this the first game you've played in the series? Dragon age combat has NEVER been this level of intensity. The closest fight to corius from the previous games is the arishok fight in DA2, which up until this game came out was the most hated fight in the series. Super weird decision on the part of the devs to lean into the style of fight that everyone hated. I'll say it again, they alienated their existing base in favor of making combat feel like another soulslike clone (well, diet soulslike, anyway). I'm not the only person saying this. They took away what people loved about dragon age (romances, companion interaction, choices, dialogue, and storytelling) and gave us punishing combat that no one asked for. Punishing combat should be saved for hard mode, because it's fine that it exists in the game and people who want to play that way should be allowed to. But it shouldn't be the normal mode for the game because so much of the fan base just doesn't like to game that way.

Boss fights are WAY overtuned | EA Forums

26 Replies

Jadelitest
Rising Novice
9 months ago
Well yes they meant block, but if want to be technical about it it’s actually called defend
cornerbite
Seasoned Vanguard
9 months ago
Red mage is just me being annoyed at them blatantly ripping off Red Mage in FFXIV. Oh, we have to do something for melee because we killed back-line mages I KNOW LETS USE A RAPIER AND AN ORB!
So original. Really just rubbed me the wrong way that we have to play melee characters in the literal SEAT of mage power. And that they couldn't even be original about it.
diezel78
Newcomer
9 months ago
Ok;
It's not just me.. Boss fights feel like a Soul's game and this should NOT be the case. I don't want to fight a boss for 30+ minutes, my time is valuable to me.
RobinKLocksley
Seasoned Vanguard
9 months ago
It's so frustrating, my idea of fun is not sprinting in a circle for an hour. That's where I am. Happy for people who know how to do this? I don't. By the time I've dodged one red circle up pops another one and another one. Don't dodge that? Well there goes 80% of your health! By the end of the boss fight I have run out of health potions at this point and it's kind of just demoralising. Like if the enemies attacked your crew too at least it'd be a case of "time attacks well" but I can't do that because if I stop running for a second I get pummelled. I'm level 23 facing this champion boss in the wetlands and it feels like this thing is levelled to high for me or something but I was told to go here... so at this point I don't know what to do?
JassperK
Seasoned Rookie
7 months ago
I have to agree with a lot of what is said on both sides, gear and equipment combinations help. However every time I find a good combo that works great on general fights, I still find myself running in circles until my companions are ready for combos during boss fights. The boss fights just seem to be damage sponges and take in upwards of 20 to 30 minutes to take out the boss, especially the Revenants. It gets redundant. I'm on my 3rd play through on difficult level so when I face a boss fight I drop it to Story teller just to get it over with. I know I can beat them, I just don't want to spend that kind of time. I very seldom see any encounter focus on a companion. they will always aggress on Rook, I assume because Rook is the biggest threat as the companions do little damage and can't die. I've given up using the staff with the mage because I just can't keep a distance to use it effectively, so Orb and blade it is.
Personally, I would much rather fight wave after wave of somewhat easy to kill mobs while fighting a much less hit point boss. Something like that to add difficulty but not take forever to kill. In my opinion would be more fun. One of my favorite fights is the undead that keeps getting raised until you get the whisp so you can take out the main undead guy (don't remember his name). Also some of the darkspawn fights where you have to find and destroy the boils or they just keep coming. If you control the fight, you can rack up some XP.
And just to put it out there, Rook can only take 2 maybe 3 hits from any boss and it's light out - regardless of how many HPs Rook has. So be sure to have a companion that can heal or stack up the Potions. It also helps to select one companion that can heal and one that you can combo with so you can save the one that heals, just to heal and do combos whit the other.
Basic fights are fun, the boss fights are annoying.
elajt_1
Rising Traveler
7 months ago
I agree that bosses are such a significant step up in difficulty compared to everything else that it's ridiculous. What I did was switch to custom settings: I kept resistances at Normal but set the enemies to be the MOST aggressive while giving them the LEAST amount of health. This way, bosses remain somewhat challenging, but the game feels more realistic and smoother overall since enemies aren't complete damage sponges.

Oh, and as someone already mentioned, having a healer definitely helps. Another major factor is the type of gear you use—like fire-resistant gear against a fire-breathing dragon—or ensuring your weapon deals a damage type the enemy isn’t highly resistant to, or is even vulnerable against. It’s also crucial to make the most of your and your companions’ special attacks during tougher fights.
You might also consider adjusting the timing of the dodge mechanic to create a larger window for dodging effectively.

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Boss fights are WAY overtuned

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