Chain Lightning attack on Orphion needs many changes

[open hamlet]

Orphion's Chain Lightning attack is very cool on paper but has a lot of fundamental flaws that make it both boring and uneventful for an attack that has such a massive telegraph. Throughout this post I'll highlight many of its issues and discuss how they could be changed to make the attack more interactive, better, and something players have to respect more.

Note: It's likely that many of these changes could be done only in guild raid, as this raid is already way too hard for level 80s as is.

• Extremely Slow Telegraph

This attack takes multiple seconds to come out. I don't know the exact time, but it's more than 5 seconds. During this time, Orphion will not attack you, and only the little parasite bugs that get smited via light beams will actually shoot anything at you. All they are are small projectiles that merely mess with your movement a bit rather than anything that actually does meaningful damage. Because of this, this makes this attack a ginormous DPS window with the only caveat being that Orphion will very rarely do this attack. On top of this, if Orphion dies during this attack, he won't actually die until the attack is fully over, which is just meaningless stall (though I get if this can't be fixed). The final slam does not do very much damage. The mana debuff is very punishing, but getting hit by it should do a lot more than just eat your mana for a bit given that hitting it is practically a choice. Also why does it give -Attack Speed tiers...?

Continued Below

I would recommend changing what happens when the Parasites get smited by the light beams. Make it proc their Chain Lightning attack preemptively (but don't make it eat your mana), and make it more telegraphed that they're going to be smited via both sound and visuals so that the players have more time to dodge it and see it coming. On top of this, this attack could also be more anti-tank. It could inflict a lot of -Healing Efficiency or maybe make the players take more damage if they get hit by it. Generally this attack needs to be a LOT more respectable rather than just being a giant DPS window...

• Lag & Clutter

This attack is such a massive mess. It loads so many things at the same time that if you have any other archetypes that are particle-heavy you might as well turn off your monitor for the duration of this attack. Generally speaking there should be less parasite bugs, but make each one more impactful (which can be done with some of the changes mentioned previously). The "CHAIN" text on the screen is very helpful though and I would like to see that stay. Overall just less needs to be happening in this attack and it needs to be more coherent, but it can be more punishing to get hit by as a result.

[tropic dirge]

Autosmord can you help me write my essay for my assessment

[open hamlet]

i am a lot more motivated to write things about complete random bullshit in the games i play instead of anything related to school work so we'll have to see

[quick nymph]

the being hit is supposed bo paralysis so negative attack tiers

[open hamlet]

`gotcha

[quick nymph]

fortunately attack tiers are a very sane and scalable metric

[dull gate]

then just make it so that you arent able to do anything for a few seconds

[quick nymph]

that is...

that certainly is a take

the point in it was this attack would either be super fatal or murk your dps if you get hit by it

people don't generally love oneshots so decision fell on the paralysis gimmick

[open hamlet]

it only deletes your dps is the thing, the damage isnt very high

[quick nymph]

i believe it does higher damage than a direct charge

i might be misremembering though

i do agree though, even in original conception

i am not super happy with this attack

it doesn't have a clear or defined simple gameplay as the other attacks

takes a long time and is like a lot of information unloaded on the player for one attack

[open hamlet]

yeah i feel that too. especially for a raid that will very frequently have low level/new players 💀

[quick nymph]

i think the chain lightning gimmick is cool

but if anything, that kinda needs to be its own boss because it has enough gameplay complexity to be

chain lightning happened because we wanted to translate orphion's old ability to channel lightning into a new 2.1 fight

the old lightning was just on a very basic level kinda disinteresting just forcing you to not forget to hold a directional button

so we landed on chain lightning

and the attack "patchworked" itself from there fixing issues in its design by just introducing more things to it

which resulted in... whatever we currently have

i think the attack did its best

but even i must admit, it's kind of just bad

[open hamlet]

the effort is absolutely there yeah

despite that though it's still... yknow... what it is now

[gusty bobcat]

there should be a particle effect when the charge appears

[quick nymph]

i don't think this attack needs more visual effects

[open hamlet]

^^^

[gusty bobcat]

it needs M O R E

[quick nymph]

also because i was unaware

that throughout the nexus the weather is constant thunderstorm

to give the appearance of decay through a dark sky

this attacks actually just cures the nexus of decay because when it ends it ends thunderstorm weather problem solved

i don't know what to make of this attack. I think any improvement of it is just completely redoing/replacing it

[gusty bobcat]

we should disable jumping during the attack, problem solved

[quick nymph]

We've (I've) tried so much to make it work out and be interesting in the way that it is, it just fails

[open hamlet]

bro thumbs upped his own comment

[gusty bobcat]

bro commented on my comment

[soft crow]

this attack is like so so so so so easy to dodge and telegraphed though 😭 like anyone can see the giant text on their screen and think "hm maybe i shouldnt stand here" the fact that this is in the same boss that has a barely telegraphed near oneshot charge attack, and an incredibly difficult QTE (if u wanna count parasite) just makes the boss feel wildly inconsistant difficulty wise and like the difficulty is somewhat RNG based

[gusty bobcat]

the parasite is literally bugged,

[quick nymph]

i think the attack is also too easy to dodge

it was supposed to have mites everywhere that you'd actually need to space yourself in a crevice

[gusty bobcat]

once you complete the first phase, you immeidiatly warped back

[quick nymph]

but that spawned too many as that it would lag out people, it's not meant to be this easy to evade

[open hamlet]

yeah i recommended some stuff to help with that, i think this would work as a cool idea

oh nvm if it spawned too many that's like the opposite of my idea

i can see how that caused lag tho lol

[quick nymph]

I think the attack just kind of fundamentally doesn't work because it needs to spawn the mites as conductors for the lightning

[open hamlet]

could be yeah...

[quick nymph]

And they add so much mental complexity to the attack

[ionic pebble]

I think orphion should have quake instead and he just 1 shots you

[quick nymph]

I think they're a good solution mechanically but they just don't work out psychologocially or logistically

They're super overwhelming if you don't know what they're there to do

[gusty bobcat]

what if we replace orphion with lari, truly the best thing ever said 🙏

[quick nymph]

And they're just too many

I don't know how to save this attack

I've tried a number of things with it in the beta

I've tried many more things with it on our dev servers

It just... doesn't work.

It always either takes too long (immense damage window) and does too much visually

or is bullshit to understand on the fly and nonthreatening

I don't think it can be salvaged.

[gusty bobcat]

what if

[ionic pebble]

it’s such a cool attack tho ;w;

[gusty bobcat]

no

[open hamlet]

… that sucks dont it

hmm

[quick nymph]

This also reminds me

that the lingering light from wildcharge just in all honesty does nothing in the fight

noone really gets cut off by it, it's just entities that stay in the arena

[late shard]

I think the light is fine unless u mean the little stubs after the charge

[quick nymph]

the little stubs yeah

i think the light bursting out and the projectiles are what makes the attack interesting at all

[late shard]

Yeah the stubs might as well not exist

[quick nymph]

the lingering light stubs just don't matter

[fair topaz]

Uhhh it depends

[late shard]

I kinda thought they were just another hitbox didn’t realize they were meant to try to cut you off of parts of the arena

[quick nymph]

well the original concept that i was given for what orphion attacks should be wanted wildcharge to keep cutting off more of the arena with light that lasted a while

this caused a lot of entity spam, didn't look great nor play amazingly

[soft crow]

id really like to see at least the epicenter be a oneshot for dps classes and a brutal cripple for healers and tanks using -heff or + damage vulnerability, even if its too easy to dodge the fact that its also unthreatening to be hit by just feels off for the difficulty level of the raid

[quick nymph]

so the linger time was massively cut

[open hamlet]

they’re fun to dodge but definitely deserve to be a bit more threatening for guild raid

[late shard]

You could just make them not stubby in graid

[quick nymph]

I'm also not entirely sure I'm satisfied with just lightburn as Orphion's graid gimmick

[fair topaz]

You can get paralyzed and like be fine or u get paralyzed and just die and I think it's based on like where u are

If you are like right on orphion when it happens you take a lot of damage but if ur like far away but like on the outer end you get paralyzed but not get deleted

[soft crow]

we were just talking about this, the max hp is really inconsequential as youre either too squishy to tank it or too tanky to care about maxhp

[open hamlet]

omg yes it’s just not impactful or that interesting

[late shard]

Im sure rendering the stubby is just as intensive as rendering the whole thing anyways so i doubt itd affect performance much and would make it a real barrier

[fair topaz]

Yea graid nol feels the same lol

[quick nymph]

I think

[open hamlet]

yeah that’s fair. still i feel like it doesnt do enough

[quick nymph]

its issue is that it jsut regnerates

[ionic pebble]

What if it didnt?

[quick nymph]

I think it already would just be a lot more impactful if the max hp actually stayed gone for 15s or so and that time resets on every time you get lightburned

[open hamlet]

if it were permanent it’d have to have lower rates cuz that’d be so impossible otherwise lol

[fair topaz]

Yea it takes so long that it's like impossible to get hit by unless ur excessively greeding lol

[quick nymph]

I like lightburn for nol because one of the consistent threads throughout nol damage

because it's a low level raid is that the boss tries to not have extremely heavy attacks

[soft crow]

i jsut dont think max hp burn is that cool of a gimmick, tcc volcanos and greg portal and black hole are incredibly visually impressive and make the bosses feell ike a strong version, something that has more gravity to it would be very cool

[quick nymph]

but rather chip you down

[open hamlet]

it does play into that well but if it’s the only mechanic it feels like the fight is unchanged

[soft crow]

yeah, this just makes already existing mechanics slightyl more punishing it doesnt change the fight meaningfully

[quick nymph]

and I think lightburn making mistakes much harder to repair and actually stack up just works, the current implementation jsut ain't it

I do also want at least one more thing to the fight in graid

[ionic pebble]

Make charge curve a bit

[open hamlet]

like another mob that spawns?

[quick nymph]

i think that would probably get overwhelming

personally i'm already inclined to agree nol mobs are a bit much already

[open hamlet]

oh one more thing TO the fight

i misread

[fair topaz]

add back the blood ruin

[open hamlet]

NONONONONONONONONONONONONOONONONONNOON

[fair topaz]

Sentenced to 4x blood ruin

[ionic pebble]

https://tenor.com/view/red-scared-kid-blue-scared-kid-gif-21975696

am i lagging or is that gif just 2 frames

[fair topaz]

I think you are lagging

[quick nymph]

okay so i've been toying with the idea of

• make lightburn actually relevant
• remove lightcross (the attack that summons 4 moving lightbeams) from the active move pool. Orphion instead uses it at the start and after solar shower to summon one light beam per player that tracks them continuously (they disappear for solar shower and the end of the orphion fight)

[ionic pebble]

I feel like it’s be cooler if the beams showed up IN solar shower

[quick nymph]

lightcross also needs a velocity down on the lightbeams i think, they're too fast for their own good right now

[quick nymph]

no. this would be visual overload

and not actually change the regular fight much

the point of these both is that your entire knowledge of the basefight still applies

but 2 additional passive mechanics have to dealt with on top of it

[open hamlet]

sounds neat

[late dust]

So

[quick nymph]

(also obviously, i think players would love it if graid doubled the amount of projectiles in solar shower 😁)

[late dust]

The fact that i can be over the bugs, flying and still be hit is frustrating, at certain heights, the sound que doesnt play so you dont know the range of lightning

[open hamlet]

actually the second one sounds like it'd force walk speed similarly to how tna does...

[quick nymph]

i think it says a lot

about how bad they are right now that you are not aware how easily they can be made to whiff

by pressing a or d

[open hamlet]

i guess i'd have to try it for myself

[quick nymph]

yeah a lot of this would have to get down to fine tuning

i definitely think there's like improvement to be made to orphion boss

but i first wanna get the "easy" improvements on parasite done

some of which you might already get to see soon™️

[open hamlet]

oh neat

[subtle lynx]

Cut all of the attack cooldowns by half fr

[quick nymph]

personal takes on orphion attacks:

• melee and charge: solid, just solid basic attacks
• wildcharge: iconic, but the lightstubs should just go, they're pointless + laggy
• light expulsion: cute and does what it was intended to do. Maybe should happen a bit faster? Is almost too telegraphed. (I also need to rework the FX on the floor of this, they're pretty laggy, but not sure how.)
• solar shower + black hole: i think they're mechanically perfect now, but i feel base solar shower could still use a few more projectiles maybe? maybe that's too harsh though.
• bellowing eclipse: almost... more iconic than wildcharge in my eyes. i think it's almost perfect but a bit polarising. if you get caught off guard, it's kinda goodnight, if you're near orphion it's so easy to dodge
• chain lightning: honestly just needs a complete rework, it just fails on so many levels

[ionic pebble]

bellowing eclipse is def more iconic

[open hamlet]

which is bellowing eclipse again

[ionic pebble]

[quick nymph]

screm

[open hamlet]

oh that yeah

i like the scream a lot especially when he does it directly into a wall affecting approximately 7 blocks in the arena

[quick nymph]

don't shame orphion for his anger management strategies

[subtle lynx]

All of Orphion's attacks have way too much endlag imo. It's probably fine for base pfinder raid but in graid with a functioning party you can just melt it down as it uses an attack

[open hamlet]

my fault

tcc treatment fr

[quick nymph]

with a functioning party = people meta gaming

= boss just dies no matter what i do

we've talked about this previously

[open hamlet]

yeah you kinda gotta balance bosses while disregarding the meta because of how insane it is right now lol

[quick nymph]

wynn's dps range is so fucked, i can't make a boss that regular people can kill and that the high end of wynn dps can engage with

[open hamlet]

yup 😔

[subtle lynx]

Yea that's true

[quick nymph]

i can't service both, so i'll service the vast though quiet majority of wynn players

[subtle lynx]

I just want orphion to get steroids like graid tcc

[fair topaz]

Yea honestly this is so real

[open hamlet]

you ever notice that nobody ever complains that a boss is too hard to kill in this game :P

[quick nymph]

like just for comparison this already happens in midgame

[fair topaz]

Can't imagine having to balance shit in this game when u have people running random items they found in caves and also people who can kill it in 5 seconds

[ionic pebble]

I have 2 sides…

[open hamlet]

well there was that one guy with guild raid tcc but we diagnosed the skill issue quite quickly

[quick nymph]

bane of the great bridge with its 80k hp

[subtle lynx]

Even then it's still gonna be melted down anyway in this dps meta

[quick nymph]

formidable fight against warrior or assassin, plays out exactly how i envisioned it

shaman enters the arena and the bane is dead in 20s flat

wynncraft has such insane variance in builds, it is geniuenely impossible to tweak boss health values to provide a good boss duration to most builds

it just can't happen

so i generally take concerns about raw damage and health values with a grain of salt in all of this

at any rate thanks for y'alls feedback

it has reminded of how many things there remain left to tweak with orphion, i'll have to get on that once parasite is a little less of a pfinder menace and complete joke otherwise

[fair topaz]

Is sticky being adjusted

[quick nymph]

oh fuck yeah i need to update that thanks for reminding me

[open hamlet]

day made

[quick nymph]

ehrmnn ackshually no it is intended that smoke bomb deals 40k damage

🤓

[open hamlet]

EXPLODE!!!

[quick nymph]

i do find it funny that parasite realised smoke bomb is kinda terrible without sticky even before the autosmord thread

[open hamlet]

[late shard]

Parasite smoke should put marks on players

I think this would be balanced

[pastel tinsel]

This attack is so buns 💔

[soft crow]

ths sht so as icl vro..... 🥀🥀🥀

[icy meteor]

Right cus people love crystals 😭

[gilded yoke]

https://tenor.com/view/touhou-just-dodge-yeah-just-dodge-bullet-hell-gif-26068620

[quick nymph]

Is this a good projectile count for graid you think?

[open hamlet]

i love this picture lmfao

[gilded yoke]

I think it needs more

[open hamlet]

i high key wanna try that with just particles off lmao

[quick nymph]

my pc normally can run nol at like 480 fps and this tanked it to like 32

[gilded yoke]

You can see those things with particles off

[fair topaz]

so what ur saying is my pc will explode

[quick nymph]

if not from the amount of rendering then from the amount of hits you will be taking

[open hamlet]

lmfao

[quick nymph]

picture taken moments before disaster btw

[gilded yoke]

[open hamlet]

SO ITS POSSIBLE IS WHAT IM HEARING

[quick nymph]

black hole pulling stacks, additively

[open hamlet]

oh there were multiple suns

[quick nymph]

yeah uh making the sun spawn more projectiles is like a bit of work for me

[gilded yoke]

double suns just to see what it looks like?

[quick nymph]

since i need to define a "semi" random path for them so that we don't end up with pre-re-work sun

i took this picture weeks ago, and i am not sure i want to subject my poor laptop to anything like this

it takes a surprising amount of effort of setting up projectiles to look like they took no effort to setup and just spread out randomly

[open hamlet]

you have a "poor laptop" and it can run nol at 480 fps??

[quick nymph]

no my pc

my laptop can run nol at 83 fps

[open hamlet]

oh ok

[quick nymph]

the bigger problem is my wifi at my parents house on a visit does not enjoy nol

however it already gets very intimidated by the idea of netflix so that might not be saying much

[fair topaz]

lowkey doable if u somehow have frames still

[open hamlet]

yeah i can see the floor so i dont see why this couldnt be dodged

[icy meteor]

Make them spawn higher too

https://tenor.com/view/grimm-gif-26058986

[late shard]

Make them have parasite latch prediction

[amber jetty]

the nol tax

0 fun gameplay 0 short runs 7 frames in boss

[amber jetty]

i love this but one thing

[quick nymph]

I am sad to hear you feel that way about NoL

[amber jetty]

how do you feel about the blue charges that appear in wild charge

[amber jetty]

im a bit silly so dont take it all to heart

[quick nymph]

They're the only reason it's interesting I think

[amber jetty]

ig they are fine if lightstubs get removed

[quick nymph]

They could use a damage up and maybe a moderate speed down

[amber jetty]

their speed makes them kinda weird to dodge yea

but they dont do anything so are more annoying than relevant

[quick nymph]

They lightburn you 😎

[amber jetty]

for bellowing, would you consider making it higher damage, but not span the entire arena?

so instead of cross arenaing you, it only reaches to half or 3/4ths for example

[quick nymph]

I feel like that would just make it always laughable

It's kinda the thing that Orphion sends a part of the arena to hell and you need to be wary of it

[amber jetty]

my main issue with it is that i sometimes get killed by it when i dont even have orphion rendered lmao

[quick nymph]

I can't limit range without the attacking pushing you out of range very quickly

And making the cone smaller makes it hit fuckall

[amber jetty]

ig attacks like it should remain tbf

wouldnt really be a boss without them

[quick nymph]

The attack is already a very easy damage window if you're wary of it

[amber jetty]

yeah thats a cool mechanic

[fair topaz]

any updates on this 👀

[quick nymph]

I've got more parasite changes coming but they didn't all come this time because my laptop is currently being repaired

[icy meteor]

is the walkspeed bug fixed?