With Season 8, Blizzard has significantly increased the difficulty of the Torment levels in Diablo 4. The endgame bosses no longer fall easily and deal substantial damage at the same time. One boss is particularly frustrating the community right now.
What are these “new” bosses? The “new” bosses are not only the three that were newly introduced with Season 8 – namely Belial, the Envoy of Hatred, and Urivar – but also the already known Hideout bosses, which have now become much tougher and nastier. The novelty lies in the tougher challenge they now present.
In the past, players could easily oneshot the bosses even on Torment 4 – provided that the build was strong enough. But those days are gone: New, powerful bosses have joined, and the old ones now additionally annoy with their sometimes frustrating mechanics. Especially Andariel is quite a tough opponent.
“The opposite of fun – feels more like work”
Which bosses frustrate the players? In a Reddit post, players discuss the Hideout bosses in the game. The post creator shares a screenshot of the boss fight against Andariel, including various attacks. He writes: “The fight against Andariel summarized.”
His player character and those of his teammates died in the fight, as the image shows:
After the buffs for the bosses, one can now notice how terrible the oneshot mechanics are, comments CatraGirl under the image. She summarizes her thoughts as follows:
Every boss has tons of stuff to dodge – often barely visible amidst all the effect chaos on the screen – and if you’re too slow, you’re instantly dead. How is that fun? It’s the opposite of fun, feels more like work. 90% of the time, I’m just running away, and if I miss a barely noticeable signal, I have to restart the entire fight.
Also, cazivit is tired of “this stupid show with lousy attacks.” The boss materials are already piling up for him. At least: Since Season 8, you no longer need materials to summon the bosses – so you can challenge them without any cost. After defeating the respective boss, a chest awaits that you can open with the materials.
dethsightly says he likes the fights against Andariel and Duriel even less this season. In his opinion, a boss should also fall if you deal enough damage. He finds the immunity phases particularly annoying – moments when the boss is completely untargetable.
For sdawsey, the fights basically consist only of dodging and running away until the boss reappears. There’s nothing to learn, nothing to master, no complexity. To him, the new boss philosophy looks like this:
– Incorporate immunity phases to extend the fight duration.
– Flood the screen with oneshot mechanics to make it “harder.”
More about the new Hideout bosses and the boss powers that represent the seasonal feature can be found here:
“If you don’t play an S-tier build, you have to put in more effort”
What do other players say? In another Reddit post, the community also discusses the Hideout bosses. The post creator states that Andariel and the new bosses are among the worst. However, some even praise Belial in the comments for having mechanics that are easy to dodge.
StrikingSpare100 is more relaxed and believes that one simply needs to invest more optimization in their character and gear – especially if one isn’t using an “absolute S-tier build.” And Griplokz310 thinks the bosses are “super well done.”
DualDier believes: “This is [Blizzard’s] answer to complaints about the bosses after the launch of Path of Exile 2. And now that the bosses are actually a challenge, people are upset again.” However, he also finds oneshot mechanics terrible. After all, bosses can kill characters with one hit, but the other way around isn’t possible anymore – at least on higher torment levels.
Some users remind in the comments that both Andariel and Duriel are among the targets of the seasonal journey. So you have to defeat them at some point if you want to progress in the seasonal chapters. At least Blizzard has listened to criticism and moved the best reward to chapter 6 – it was originally behind the toughest difficulty.
