In the endgame of Diablo 4, you can challenge bosses and relieve them of their loot. However, many players are quite annoyed by the fights in Season 8 because they cannot use a popular mechanic.
In Diablo 4, there are several hideout bosses that you can defeat in the endgame. As a reward, you can expect loot if you have the specific mats ready. To obtain certain items, many players farm the bosses multiple times. The effort is high, and the farming drags on. Moreover, a once “secret weapon” against the tough opponents, which could previously deal damage, suddenly doesn’t work anymore.
What is the popular “secret weapon”? In previous seasons, it was possible to defeat most bosses with just a few hits – or even to “oneshot” them. Since Blizzard adjusted the difficulty levels in Diablo 4 and made the bosses more resilient, that simply isn’t possible anymore. The bosses don’t just have more health; they also have so-called immunity phases.
This means, concretely: Even if you would defeat the boss with just a few hits, it still won’t go down. Instead, it switches to a phase where it is either briefly immune or simply retreats from the map. Andariel, for example, becomes invulnerable until you eliminate her little helpers. Duriel, on the other hand, completely disappears into the ground at times, leaving you with three smaller opponents.
“The A in ARPG stands for Action”
Why does this annoy players? In various posts on Reddit, players complain about the boss fights. The general sentiment is that the fights simply take too long due to the immunity phases. Especially those who engage in several fights to farm items are losing a lot of time because of this.
In a Reddit post, Ropp_Stark summarizes his thoughts as follows:
If one only had to fight a hideout boss once as a challenge, I wouldn’t mind longer fights, demanding mechanics, or immunity phases. The problem is that Blizzard treats these bosses simultaneously as “ultimate endgame content” and as something you should be able to do 50 times in a row.
The mats could be used for more activities, such as crafting uniques or creating certain dungeon seals. You could keep the current functionality for those who like the current version for farming uniques, but I’d rather farm other content and use the bosses as special progress milestones.
Many now perceive the fights as simply unfair. Eldric-Darkfire writes in his Reddit post: “If a hideout boss can take me out with one hit, then let me darn well oneshot it too.”
He also finds the waiting for the loot chest to spawn annoying: “Keep in mind that it’s completely normal to collect hundreds of boss mats […] and then blast them away in a session. That’s when it gets the most boring. Wait, wait, wait… just let me take the thing down.”
Players like Old-Fig-9531, on the other hand, celebrate the somewhat “smaller” hideout bosses like Varshan or Lord Zir. “They die faster, give the best rewards, and have no immunity phases. […] This is an ARPG – the A stands for ACTION. You just want to stomp these demons into the ground. Andariel was already disappointing, Duriel didn’t get any better, and Lilith? Even worse,” he writes on Reddit.
Especially the fight against the Echo of Lilith has sparked discussions since release. Many feel that the boss fight against her is frustrating, not rewarding at all and feels like an “action RPG without action.”
In contrast, many see Belial as a successful endgame boss. The Lord of Lies was newly introduced in Season 8. At the same time, the old bosses were revamped: they no longer crumple immediately but hit back hard. The community is divided on whether this is really a gain for the game, but one boss seems to annoy (almost) everyone: players argue whether the “new” bosses in Diablo 4 are good or bad – only one is really not liked.
