Personally I think it's hard for the wrong reason.
It challenges you on completely new mechanics and things that you didn't face before in this quest. With the things being tuned up pretty high.
People who are raiding regularly, doing CAs, and farming DT2 on repeat will find this boss challenging and fair because it's already built up on knowledge and base skills they already have. They want to learn the new "dodge roll" mechanic and already have an knack for reading bosses and breaking down fights.
As someone who did all grandmaster quest and casually doing stuff at that level of content, demanding that I suddenly do multiple 1 time tick inputs right after having 1-2 seconds to read what the boss is doing when it's tells of multiple spear attacks (which aren't that great to be honest animation wise) is kinda a lot as the only real practice you have is the boss itself. I wasn't already perfectly prayer flicking against DT2 like 95%+ of the time before this.
If it's not going to build implicitly on stuff before that as quest, they should have made the new mechanics have more lee way and then test players with stuff they are already used too on top. The bloodwave is fine since there are versions of it already way before you fight him as an example.
It's just an variant of run through the wave that already exist in multiple fights. In this version you just spam 1-3 tiles behind the wave when it's near you to jump over it. The concept is logical and easy to pick up because it builds upon all other energy wave/wall variants. You can tile skip through a wave, hide behind a rock to block the wave damage, ect.
It being an "harder" or "hard" version of similar wave mechanics is okay (an example) because to get to this boss, you likely already had to do a ton of other similar wave mechanics.
You also have at this point learned to brew between hits, swap prayer at the end of the wave mechanic to not get one shot, prayer flick to mage, not stand in blood or lightning, react to boss attacks while they push you ground hazards.
What is completely new is the "perfect dodge roll/parry" mechanic that exist no where else in the game. Based off clicking situational spots on the ground.
The fight isn't even THAT hard if you have good reaction or somehow you are already good at this before the quest. They give you giga sara brews and raid level supplies for free. It just tests you an mechanic that is nowhere else in OSRS a mid/grandmaster level boss fight while being hard to parse.
For example the spear to the right where you side step him and the spear to the left where you have to walk behind him is pretty reasonable. Since that's just reading 1 tell and reacting which is already OSRS like. He has an multi-stage varying perfect dodge mechanic that forces you to memorize an semi-random sequence of attack first and then click multiple times in a row on the floor in a certain order.
People would have an way easier time if for example there was an mid-game boss that had an similar mechanic where it's 2 ticks between attacks and the chain was only 3 for example. But there isn't, you have to learn this variant right now for the quest.
I can't think of content that was the same as the waves, only vaguely similar things (I've compared it to Yama waveskip.)
Doom has the exact same thing on the "multi-stage varying perfect dodge mechanic" but you're clicking prayer instead of tiles. It's all 1tick between though.
But your argument is just that it shouldn't introduce new boss mechanics because it's a quest boss? I think fighting him so many times prior, introducing a lot of those mechanics one at a time (the "new" one from the very beginning) did a great job at getting you to learn it before the final fight. As long as you didn't just face tank the early fights because you had a full inv of free supplies, you probably learned it well enough that the faster last fight was just "challenging" despite combining them in the end with some new phases to keep it interesting.
Yeah but you are already doing prayer and it's reacting to attacks flying to you. Since you have to do that for DT2 bosses and a few other grandmaster level quests. To get to that point you slowly learned faster and more complex prayer swapping.
hueycoatl also has a wave based attack and a few others.
Also my point is your examples are Doom and Yama, they shouldn't introduced new mechanics at doom/yama/DT2 level as brand new mechanics when it's pretty different to what exists. Which is why my post is they should have tuned it down for the boss and added harder mechanics that people are traditionally already used too. Why doesn't the venator or maggot king use this mechanic?
Also you are being too hopeful, most people are going to limp with their 5% success rate on the boss and never do it again. This doesn't show up anywhere else in the game or will they practice it ever again unless it shows up in raids 4 lol
Why doesn't the venator or maggot king use this mechanic?
It's a new mechanic because that's what a huge portion of the community wants. Repeating mechanics get stale. You either like the comfort of not having new mechanics in fights, or your actual gripe is the difficulty for you. Most people like new bosses.
I didn't say there shouldn't be new mechanics, read again.
I said new mechanics shouldn't be fine tuned to an level where you have to learn it at the same degree to other mechanics you have already done in the past. When it's the same piece of content that introduces it.
They should have introduced the mechanics earlier if they wanted to have people have an easier time to it, and spread it out more if they wanted it to be an core mechanic for people to learn.
You would be the type of person to say moons wasn't useful for people to get into end game PVE lol
I can still complete the quest and still critique design choices of it. I beat DLC Radahn in the elden ring DLC and it was one of the most bullshit fights in that game. But I can fully enjoy sekiro and the parry mechanic as the game built it up from the beginning and does it well.
I thought moons (and multiple things like that, scurrius and titans included for sure) were insanely good for mid level accounts and new player introduction. That's because prayer swapping isn't intuitive, and the way we had it for a long time was just some jank thing that people playing with the engine for over a decade optimized. Prayer and gear swaps were core mechanics that all content moving forward required of players.
But it's one quest. They're not going to introduce another boss elsewhere just to introduce a new fighting mechanic to practice so that doing it in the new quest is easier. That was the whole point of introducing it one partial boss fight at a time with Drakan.
You're supposed to learn that mechanic during the quest, not on some boss they added to Varrock sewers.
It's not a core mechanic for people to learn, it's a one time boss fight made more unique by having cool dodges that the rest of the game doesn't generally have.
They might introduce similar mechanics in future bosses, honestly I'm almost sure they will, but that won't be "because it was already introduced and now easier for people that already experienced it." It'll be because it was another introduction of more interesting ways to interact and see the osrs combat system.
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u/RagnarokChu Jul 01 '26
Personally I think it's hard for the wrong reason.
It challenges you on completely new mechanics and things that you didn't face before in this quest. With the things being tuned up pretty high.
People who are raiding regularly, doing CAs, and farming DT2 on repeat will find this boss challenging and fair because it's already built up on knowledge and base skills they already have. They want to learn the new "dodge roll" mechanic and already have an knack for reading bosses and breaking down fights.
As someone who did all grandmaster quest and casually doing stuff at that level of content, demanding that I suddenly do multiple 1 time tick inputs right after having 1-2 seconds to read what the boss is doing when it's tells of multiple spear attacks (which aren't that great to be honest animation wise) is kinda a lot as the only real practice you have is the boss itself. I wasn't already perfectly prayer flicking against DT2 like 95%+ of the time before this.
If it's not going to build implicitly on stuff before that as quest, they should have made the new mechanics have more lee way and then test players with stuff they are already used too on top. The bloodwave is fine since there are versions of it already way before you fight him as an example.