So about a week ago, FluffyFoxxie, his Bishop gf, I, and a few low level MMs and Snipers from the IronArrows guild in Bera went on a Scarlion run. Some of you may be protesting already: "What the hell? You have no rushers!" But pretty much every single time I've fought Scarlion it's been stuffed completely full of ranged classes, partially due to my BL being composed almost entirely of archers and bishops. What we usually did was to have the Bishop lure the boss to the right when it is Weapon Cancelled, saving the rest of us from being run over. We'd done it before. Between Foxxie and I, I figured we could easily down it in ~30 minutes even without the others. I was expecting it to be a smooth run.
But the run was anything but smooth. Right as the third body was summoned, one of the Snipers died. He got a res. Then our Bishop died. This killed our original plan. This time a Sniper and a MM died as Scarlion made his way over to the left side of the map, leaving only the three of us. I climbed over and Recoiled to the right side, hoping to fight it in a way that I've fought Bigfoot in a party before - attack from both sides, luring it back and forth and keeping it from reaching either edge. For the next 25 minutes, Scarlion angrily stomped back and forth across the map, trying to hit those assholes that kept shooting it in the back. We couldn't simply stand there and tank damage, because we had to be able to climb up to the top platform quickly in case he walked too close. So it was a matter of knowing when to retreat up and when to climb back down and contribute to the fight. More than once I had to Recoil back to the left side of the map to avoid it and also to MW the party. But it worked. Slowly but surely, the fat animatronic cat's health whittled down to about 15% with about 14 minutes left on the clock.
Then I dropped the ball. I had only brought about 500 pots, not expecting the run to take anywhere near as long as it had. I had a backup of 200 Power Elixirs in my inventory but I wasn't paying close enough attention to my supply and didn't react fast enough when my Ales hit 0. Then the other Sniper just flat ran out of pots, leaving only FluffyFoxxie to solo Scarlion as a MM. Let me tell you, this is terrifying as pomegranate. He is impossible to pin without a Rush-like ability when he uses Weapon Cancel so you have to jump over him as he approaches. You have to climb up to the top of the map and jump over him. He's fat and huge, and he jumps up and down repeatedly like the motherpineappleer thinks he's playing basketball. So anyway, there was nothing for the rest of us to do but watch as he shot and puppeted and made that leap of faith. Over and over again. Eventually I got booted by to the 10 minute respawn timer. It wasn't until there was about 1 minute left on the clock when I finally saw in party chat: "Victory!"
I think a lot of people would probably find an experience like that extremely frustrating. Taking twice as long as planned to kill a boss, having to improvise a really inefficient method of killing it, and dying so close to the end. But I had a blast. It was orders of magnitude more exciting than routine Zakum / CWK / Pap runs for money, even if it was a disaster. I really enjoyed the challenge, and the uncertainty that we were going to succeed. It would have been impossible to simply stand in place and blast away as usual. But I know many people enjoy doing scheduled boss runs with a group, though I wouldn't bother at all if there wasn't a fair amount of profit to it. So I'm wondering, do you think it's more fun when you can quickly beat the hell out of a boss and reap the rewards, or when everything goes haywire and you really have to give it your 100% to eke out a victory? Discuss.
With the level of difficulty involved with most bosses in MS, a hard (and not stupidly broken) boss is always fun, not only in MS, but in any game. You get like 10 times the satisfaction when you actually beat it.
My favorite would be a hard boss that doesn't take 30+ minutes to down. I just don't have that sort of time. And really, routines are boring. It is nice to feel a sense of accomplishment, but having everything being so predictable kinda ruins it for me. That's why I don't really seek out to do bosses very often in MS; they are all just routine.
I love it because that's when the game takes skill. Although bosses like that should have a little lower HP because after running around for 30 minutes I really want the thing to be dead (like TehMatt said).
Are there any other bosses with which you can do this kind of thing (aside from just not taking a rusher with you)?
I share the thread starter's feeling, in having plans go wrong and improvising, and enjoying it. However, during the fight, I always find it nerve-wracking and always cant wait for it to end. It certainly makes your average run different and interesting, and I enjoy it. That being said, it does get fustrating when people you depend on dont pull through. Im not sure where I stand on the issue, but I'd say I'm somewhere in between.
It kind of depends on the situation. For example, one time, I was on my TB at zakum, and it was only me and a NL left. Lightning doesn't mix well with the blue summons, and NLs have difficulty at close range, so I had to use sharks and sparks to lure all the summons toward me as I was attacking from the right while the NL attacked from the left. I also didn't have enough hp to take a body bump and had to keep repositioning myself to keep barraging and corkscrew punching through to get MW. On the other hand, at horntail sometimes, a dc hacker disconnects all the bishops partway through then follows up with the rest of us, and I'm usually one of the last to survive (sometimes his hack fails on me for some reason), leaving me no choice but to die or bail.
Specifically, I like the ones that are "botched" in the sense that not everything went to plan, but we still beat it: just slower than expected. Every now and then we get one of those 90 minute HT runs and they're just tons of fun.
I love these types of fight. Though usually in scarlion/targa, if the Rusher dies or DCs, I become the tank. Having to control him with Assassinate hits that usually get his attention, turning him around so he doesn't face long range while they pelt him in the back, and keeping use of disorder to wipe his aggro incase he does can be tough.
[COLOR="Green"]My guild does this all the time. My motto at boss fights is "This is Hakumei, and half of you are going to die."
We even had a CWK run where I became the actual DPS (omgwutloladin) because all that was left was 1 NL with no all cures, a Bucc, a level 100 Outlaw, and me. I got to solo the pomegranate out of Rellik to just keep everyone alive.[/COLOR]
i remember having a cwkpq where every1 died but me and like 2 ppl, a shadower and a BM/MM i believe, and we had to solo Rellik, it was so fun :o, which is why i like non HB/rush cwkpqs just to make it harder =P
I don't know that its extremely "fun" while doing the botched run, but its pretty epic when you pull one off. I had a similar CWK run a week or so ago. For some reason most of the melee died or dc'ed before the Mage died. We had one 12x DrK keeping the bottom bosses pinned and providing HB. By the time the Theif was dead, which we killed second, the only attackers left were myself (151 BM), helokityy (17x NL) and the DrK. Ya, a truly failed run I know.
We duo'ed the Warrior and then when we went to fight the Archer the DrK died, which was OK, we could still win, but then the last bishop died. So we didn't have dispel anymore. At that point I was ready to bail, but we kept going. Kityy and myself each took a side of Rellik so we both wouldn't get stunned or sealed each time he attacked, and that worked for a bit. In fact, that worked really well. Eventually I ran completely out of all cures (I only came with less than 200 not expecting the run to fail like this) and resorted to going into the corner and using my bird and mortal blow to try to distract it to look at me and turn from Kityy. So for the last bit Kityy was soloing the Archer. When the Archer died she had 4 all cures left and we had about 2 min on the clock. That was a cool, epic run.
i go with the flow. I'll stay till i'm near out of pots then i'll go away after. Like today's zakum for example. I used a good 70% of my pots (i usually bring overly necessary amounts of pots for this reason) i stayed until i ran out of MP pots- that's when exsc up enter toook over.
An epic fight that requires skill would indeed be fun - if it's planned. If you're going for a smooth run like Dusk intended, you'll get real pissed. Trust me. Who'd want things to go wrong?
It could be fun at the start then it gets boring. I usually go "Wow this is pretty fun" and if it takes ~15+ minutes after that, I'll be thinking, "WOW, HOLY **** JUST DIE ALREADY."
Nesso Wrote:When CWKPQ came out, my friend ended up having to solo the bowman boss as a BM. He called it boring.
He was a true master.
Respect++;
In addition to runs-gone-wrong, I like additional challenges that people dare me on. First challenge was to kill Scarlion in a party of 6 without rushing it the wrong way, since I was the only person with serious boss control capabilities. Completed it. Second challenge was to kill Scarlion without rush and without anyone dying due to that. Completed it too (LOLPALLY), even though the person that dared me died on a platform >_>
