My view on AO’s boss fights

Game Discussion
1

TLDR at the end;

As title suggest, I have something to say. The boss fight in this game is ass. Not ass because they teleport, not cuz they deal damage that 3 shot you if you accidently let go of block, nor I want to talk about their absurd attack size. Im cool with all that.

What I’m not cool is them never stop teleporting and stuff. Look, I dont mean they unbeatable and true, they suppose to be hard. However, this doesn’t mean they gotta have inf energy. I swear none of the boss got any cooldown. Jarl Ivar for example. The only time he stop moving is so he can charge up his axe and deal 400+ damage despite block. Not to mention the small arena we fought him in. With that amount of destruction he made, Fenrir should have sunk. Its like putting Allanon inside Calvus throne room. Is it impossible? No but its obnoxious.

However, like I said im cool with that, what im not cool with is they have zero cooldown. Thats it. I fought Allanon for the first time and im surprised on how stupid his flight. Thats not a problem, the problem came when you gave him the same autonomy the player has.

Reasons why Dark Soul boss is hard but almost no one complain bout its design (by design I mean the boss mechanic) where we can dodge them and parry them, and they dont do damage to the whole arena. Ellius is annoying asf when I fought him but he is actual not a bad design, I lose to him a lot cuz skill issue. Argos is somehow easier than Ellius. Carina aint that bad too, she just annoying as hell. Heck, I even defeat Calvus with Flintlock as berserker. It take a long time sure but its doable.

Maria is annoying asf. Allanon literally reset like 10 times during my fight. Like wdym his attack cover whole area? I literally retreat to not get damage. He reset. This is not the worst part, the worst part is him flying here and there none stop. The only time I can pin him down is when he explode himself, even then its hard to see where he is. Jarl is the same. Fcking metal magic in closed area. Yeah funny Vetex. Same here, he only stop when he send produce his ball. Most of his move is pretty easy to dodge tho, but the undodgeable one practically kill you immediately.

This all give me one thing. I dont win the fight because I am stronger than the boss. I won cuz the boss for some reason is not as strong as they should be. For example, lets look at Ultrakill, particular V2 and Minos, prolly Gabriel. How they represent themselves is how they fight us. What I mean here is, they destroy the entire layer with one punch then somehow we beat them because they decided to not use it. This is not primary problem though, just nitpick.

This may seem like crazy guy ramble but, well it probably is. Either way, I suggest Vetex make a little changes toward how boss fight goes. Give them longer cooldown or something and reduce their movement. Like they still move fast but not as stupidly fast as we do now. Looking back at example Ultrakill, the boss dont actually that much movement as player. Sure they can be fast but they cant spam jump and dash here & there. (I forgot if V2 can dash)

TLDR: Bosses need to have some sort of cooldown on their movement. Sure they stop sometime but compared to us, they move a lot more tbh.

11 Likes
2

I agree. Bosses should have a rest period or something that stops them from attacking so you can get some damage in, maybe if you parry them a certain amount of times they’ll get something similar to a pose break? That would be my only suggestion.

5 Likes
3

@Dudeman

4

Screenshot_20260124-010946__01
Screenshot_20260124-010946__01720×133 21.6 KB

5

One could search multiple universes and still wouldn’t manage to find a single Jarl Ivar fan.

2 Likes
6

why is he telling the truth poster with a man and phone

7

He Made A Statement So Good Even His Opps Praised Him Meme - He made a statement so good even his opps praised him - Discover & Share GIFs

1 Like
8

@amaranna youve been summoned as the forums resident jarl ivar fan

9

lol, all i’m worried about is vetex getting scared to add more bosses like that because of complaints. that would be unfortunate

10

I’m actually one😶

11

jarl ivar would be fun to fight if his arena wasnt a cardboard box, his boss does actually feel like a real boss fight where you need to react and parry unlike where every other boss is either a stat check or the kind of boss where they use 2-5 moves then jump to the next point and repeat.

1 Like
12

It deal like 500 damage through block and you either parry one and eat the other, or block everything. I might be wrong cuz I aint fighting that guy again.

13

IMO it’s the complete opposite. Sure his arena is small, but most of his moves have 0 windup and are not telegraphed, specially the 1500 dmg + severe bleeding axe nuke, which he can cast and release just in the time you T jump and blast or whatever. To top it off, it has nowhere near as much cooldown as it should, since he oftenly uses it twice in a single fight which just makes it a damage race even when you try to parry and block.

His 500 dmg grab also comes out super fast and has AOE on impact, so if it hits a wall it can still grab you with no problems

And for some reason vetex gave him (a metal conjurer) the stupid calvus teleport movement , which makes his ai freak the fuck out and spam tp everywhere alongside his AoEs if you hit him too much

If he had a bigger arena I feel like he’d be a boss you would just kite out and avoid interacting with at all costs instead of parrying and blocking

14

This is what I want to suggest. I had him used it like twice in a row. I mean sure prevent you from spamming same move beside energy? but for gameplay purpose this shouldn’t happen. Plus like I said, it either you parry one and eat other or block everything, Its not like we can cancel their move.

15

This is a saterical post, I agree with OP, dont flame me

playing devils advocate…

i mean, since when did YOU stop moving during a battle when youre not casting anything?

yeah, people also relentlessly spam their attacks

you do more damage than that

spam explosions, guarantee hit

it doesnt have a health pool so it cannot die

i first tried allanon on my second file, this is called a skill issue

its like fighting a real player!

cool, different game different mechanics
in dark souls you die immediately upon being hit, in ao you can take some hits before dying

stand at the bow and hold block while using guns/shot/spirit blast/beam

i… dont have anything for this
i agree lol

why you tryna pin him huh?

fight fire with fire

see? some of his attacks are even dodgable! unlike the player’s attacks that hit instantly

16

true

completely false. i was practicing fighting him with only magic m1s to see how well choreographed his moves were, every single one of his moves is clearly telegraphed except the metal slash he does to catch you off guard, and if youre not right on top of him that is dodgeable.

don’t spam t jump and blast. just treat him like an actual bossfight where you look at him and watch his movements. his axe nuke has the longest startup of all his skills and you will always catch it if you’re focused on what he is doing

it can be parried, and even more, it can be blocked. missing a parry against the jarl isnt the end of the world because his normal attacks dont do like 600 damage, even if you mistime a parry, dont release the key to try again, just hold it and eat the damage with a block.

Here is me beating him with just magic m1s, i missed a few parries, but still won because i blocked them instead of just taking the damage.

17

guess I’ll just fight him and whatever cancerous boss comes next with just m1s instead of using the moves I spent hours grinding for :skull:

you say to parry this and watch that, but what can you do when you are casting a move, like a said before? I’m sure vetex didn’t go “lol, after 150 levels of using spells and fancy moves, I’m gonna make a boss that you have to deepwoken to death”. It just does a complete 180 in gameplay and isn’t fun at all

Watching your video, I can see that your gameplay is pretty smooth, something that most people won’t have while playing this game, and you yourself seem to be way above the average, so saying “Lol, just parry” doesn’t magically justify a non-optional boss being this ass to fight. And Keep in mind that this is a boss in the early game of the story

18

no, fighting him with only m1s doesnt make it easier. m1s (especially magic ones) are god awful and one of the most inefficient unreliable ways to deal damage in the game, you can see in the clip half the time my m1s missed him entirely, i only did it to see how well telegraphed his moves were, they are very well telegraphed

the only 180 in gameplay with the jarl is that you can’t comfortably make it by without engaging with the bosses mechanics, and that’s a 180 i like

watch when you cast the move, if you look at my gameplay with me just using m1s and you being able to see everything he’s doing, you can see how many openings this guy has right? for example, during the two metal “shields” that he slams at you from both sides, if you dodge it right or parry it, you have like 2 seconds of him standing still that you can punish. same goes for his grab, if you parry it, block it, or dodge it he has a huge punish window where you can get good damage in. if i was using all my moves, i could have used a fully charged devastate right there. the same thing after his ground slam move he does after he dashes around a bit, he stands completely still for a bit after. since its in a confined area, you can’t treat him like alot of the other bosses in the game where you can just run around and not learn their moves and when to hit back

i can guarantee my 35 fps isn’t the reason i could win that, its just a matter of looking at him and figuring out what he’s doing. this is how basically every boss fight in most games go, you look at his tells, you react to them, you deal damage.

i didn’t say this, in fact i said the opposite:

i really hope the people saying this don’t deter vetex from making more fights like this in the future. he is the second best boss in the game in my opinion and the most fun boss to learn

19

a well telegraphed move would be calvus’ array or his aether pillar, you can tell that something is coming and you can do something about it. Jarl literally just casts his attacks like a player, some of his weaker moves being even faster

what boss mechanics?

from my own experience and from what i’ve seen in your video, all of his “openings” are just the casting time of the spells and him waiting like 0.2 seconds to tp again. Someone playing the game normally through spells and skills would hardly have the positioning and opportunity to use these openings so cleanly, unless they are just walking around and waiting, which could just lead to jarl using an AoE move they’d have to gulp up

in my pc your video is butter-smooth

in your 1 minute fight he used his 1500 damage move three times, and depending on rng, he could fit in a bunch of 500 dmg grabs, by that point, does it even matter if he has a move that deals less damage than that?

keep in mind that in this short and optimized as fuck fight, you took over 2600 impact damage, taking the severe bleeding into account would drive the number up to nearly 3000. You blocked and parried nearly everything, and still barely won with an insanity 2 armor

thats almost literally just you, I’ve seen only 1 dude here that likes his fight and if you open a youtube video about him, everybody will be shitting on the fight in the comments

20

please remind me to never listen to your opinions on anything ever thanks :pray: