Solo Nex QOL update

[fresh glen]

My request is quite simple.

Nex ice phase, when imprisoned, you should be able to break yourself out of the cage if you free yourself from the accompanying stun by anticipating or using freedom.

It makes perfect sense in the mechanical sense of the ability - it feels very counter-intuitive that you have no choice other than to tank the hit/mitigate the damage with an ability, whilst in duo the whole point of the mechanic is that your friend can/should break you out.

[fresh glen]

Ancient post that I wanna bump because I'm doing nex again and it's still so annoying 😢

[mint shell]

You don't have to do anything to survive it, but you can resonance + vit pot and it's completely irrelevant. That, or stalling blood phase so you start ice with a contain can assure she never even casts prison to begin with.

It's kinda like greens at KK. Yes it can suck solo since it was designed for groups, but you can completely counter it with just 1 or 2 abilities

[fresh glen]

I don't have the speedy throughput to skip the ice prison cast consistently personally, and whilst it is easy enough to vit pot etc it just literally feels awful as a boss experience to get locked in this prison and essentially having to resort to tossing a potion on the ground or pop cade or chomp on a shark or something on a boss that is otherwise little more than a target dummy..

KK having similar stuff would just as well IMO fall under the category of "group content that is so old it's become solo thx to powercreep" and should just get adapted to be more solo-friendly..

The point isn't to make the fight(s) inherently easier, They are already very 'easy', but rather adapting mechanics that only serves to be annoying to be more solo-friendly/intuitive on these bosses that have fallen out of realistically being anywhere near end-game group-bosses..

For the more advanced mechanical gameplay, we've already got plenty of modern bosses that are very fun to do because they are far more intuitive and mechanically interesting making you play around with your kit, but on a boss like Nex that for all intents and purposes is a mechanically dead boss today, it just serves as an annoyance.

I hope this might help in better understanding the POV I'm coming from. 🙂

[wild anchor]

also kezalam has an almost identical mechanic, altough with being able to freedom so i dont really see that it would be that hard to implement

[fresh glen]

This was something I reacted to as well when sanctum released. It's for all intents and purposes the same mechanic, only one you can break yourself out and the other not, one feels intuitive and nice and one just feels annoying ^^

I also think the extra layer of annoyance is from the fact that the ability itself isn't inherently designed to be a tanked hit, it's supposed to be something you get broken out of to avoid the hit.
If the case was always that it was a "tankbuster ability" to be caded or something from the very beginning, it wouldn't be nearly as much of a nuisance. Now it just feels like an unfair mechanic.

[fervent egret]

In Nex Aod, you can't break yourself out of the ice. If alone, you just tank it. Just pointing out the theme about nex and freedoms.

[fresh glen]

AoD is however a group boss which keeps that status even today, whereas non-AoD nex has realistically fallen out of that category. Should there come a day where people solo AoD and that boss were to fall out of group category, I would have the exact same argument there.

Nex =/= Nex: AoD, and a 'theme' is quite irrelevant in such a comparison anyways since it's very easy to argue that, as is obvious by the rest of the fight, AoD is significantly more powerful than the non-AoD counterpart.
Her magic could simply have gotten stronger and as a result you can't do it on your own anymore.

[serene cloak]

given the boss is predominantly soloed nowadays (and passing the mechanic by freeing yourself is a lot simpler than your teammate reacting properly), if changes are made IMO it should be an inability to free at all

certainly trivialising the mechanic entirely as proposed in OP is a really bad option

[fresh glen]

Why, though?
I'd be interested to know what value would be brought to the encounter by keeping a mechanic or even making it essentially worse when the entire rest of the fight is nothing but a target dummy...

If they are to restrict the mechanic even more, even in group mode, they may as well redesign/rework the entire boss to actually be a modernized mechanical boss.

I'm not against that, mind you. In fact I'd be all for it!
I doubt they'd ever get the scope or budget for that though, whilst I'm certain that the suggestion I proposed is something I imagine a dev might be able to change with relative ease as a QOL update to an outdated boss.

I'll re-iterate, this is not a plea for making the boss easy, because it isn't difficult as is. I'm not struggling to get kills or anything of the sort,
it's just a very annoying mechanic that makes farming the boss a lot less fun for very little reason.

[noble stone]

wait I thought you can use accel pot and just surge/bladed dive from Ice.

[fervent egret]

No they removed that from aod and yakamaru

[serene cloak]

the mechanic is one of the few remaining interesting things about the boss - it's sufficiently detrimental to receive any number of times that it creates thought-provoking decisions about blood phase phasing in some cases

removing it would be actively terrible

eh blood phase is quite good too I suppose

[fresh glen]

So we're just of differing opinions of what the boss itself is in the modern day RS. You think it is a boss worth keeping 'interesting', whilst I'm of the opinion that the boss is already so far beyond the point of not being interesting anymore, that the mechanic is only serving to be annoying rather than 'thought-provoking'..

It's a fair disagreement.
Personally, I don't like the fact that the boss is walking the line between those two instead of being consistently either a target dummy boss that you farm mindlessly for log/drops, or a mechanically interesting fight with a variety of mechanics that make you 'think'.

The whole reason I find it annoying in the first place is the very fact that the boss isn't mechanically interesting enough in the rest of it's uptime anymore to warrant the 'thought' you have to put in for just the one mechanic in the one phase..

I really want to farm the boss and go for it's massive log, however every time I do the fight I'm just not having a good time because of that one mechanic and the way it works in solo.

I'll say it again, I'm all for them taking the time to re-visit and modernize the normal Nex fight to be more interesting and thought-provoking, but I'm looking at it from the realistic POV where it's a lot more likely that, if they were to do anything, they'd elect to let it become a target dummy boss.
The suggested change would put it firmly in that category.

[serene cloak]

yeah tbh, I just don't want any active but mindless stuff in rs3. OSRS does that infinitely better because it doesn't have the additional player-side complexity of abilities, and so if I'm in the mood for that kind of content I'll just log into that game instead.

[fresh glen]

By all means - but there are those of us that don't play OSRS to where such content in RS3 can be nice sometimes as well ^^ Granted there are alternatives for that, but my main point is that Nex is in a middle-ground of annoyance rather than being one or the other. Sanctum is my favourite PVM in the game and it's extremely mechanical ^^

[austere basalt]

I personally agree with this. I think Nex is a great little time capsule of a boss, and personally don’t think she needs modernized. Even though AoD is a different fight entirely, in my eyes, that fight can be seen as the “modern Nex”.

But as you said, if that is the only mechanic you really gotta think about, why not just simplify it? It made sense back when she was released, but not so much anymore.

For all anyone could know, the simplicity of Nex mechanics could make a great upper-mid to low-high level introduction into other bosses. Not every boss has to be super complex, and that’s the beauty of RuneScape: play how you want.

There’s a fine line between “challenging” and “tedious”.

[fresh glen]

Indeed, and in it's current iteration, the ice prison mechanic falls squarely into the tedious category x)
It would be a neat introduction to other bosses and the concept of having to break yourself out, much like you do on Kezalam, boss #2 in sanctum of rebirth.

Let the mechanic be "freedom/anticipate to avoid being stunned, and then break the ice to avoid the big hit".

[rose atlas]

Trivial to negate with a powerburst of vitality or just skip with a half decent rotation, seems like a pointless change honestly.

[austere basalt]

Unless, of course, this is an ironman who doesn't have access to vitalities yet. Nex is early enough to where I believe it's just not necessary to keep that. You're still rewarded for skipping with a good rotation.

Now granted, that's not what's going on here, I am aware. It's a thought, though.

[wild anchor]

yeah taking a big unavoidable hit is more frustrating than anything, and the mechanic is already trivial so i dont see how rhis would trivialize it

[fresh glen]

Indeed. It is just a nuisance to have to cade it, throw a vit potion or pretty much just eat thru it. That's really not intuitive design, and I feel as though there's little reason to assume this change would have any actual negative impact on... Well, anything. It's simply QOL.

[sharp shell]

Resonance doesn't work. Barricade is the only defensive that works

[tulip jackal]

There’s abilities to circumvent this. Skill issue. It’s part of the fight

[fresh glen]

Not about difficulty because the boss isn't difficult. It's about QOL on a leftover mechanic on an ancient boss that has gone from difficult to just annoying.

If nothing else they could at least let you use abilities to attack nex if you anticipate/freedom the stun, whilst still in the ice prison. Super strange to me how you can attack glacies pretty much freely while in it, but not Nex herself.

I'll say it again since it doesn't seem to get picked up well enough.

It isn't about making a boss fight easier because of it being difficult, it is about giving QOL to an easy boss' outdated mechanic to make it less annoying.

[honest junco]

there has been qol, you can press your vit pot

qol =/= nullifying a mechanic

[fresh glen]

How would the mechanic be nullified when it isn't even something to be 'nullified' to begin with?

The whole point is that because the mechanic is nothing but a nuisance on an otherwise target dummy, it may as well have the annoying part of it be made un-annoying.

[fresh glen]

Bring a hellhound you can just brainlessly soul split the fight, doesn't make it any less annoying to have to sit there for like 8 seconds just waiting for the hit to land so you can actually start hitting again

[honest junco]

if you want the mechanic to not be stun you for time, bring a friend, or do more damage and skip it imo

even if it hits you, as long as you've got nex to 40k, you can still kill the minion, so what's the issue

[tulip jackal]

At that rate why don’t we just remove blood phase healing because the fight isn’t difficult? And let’s remove the protection prayers nex uses as well. Let’s remove everything and just make it a dps check

I guess we should remove frozen key too just make the instance teleport straight into nex for free.

[fresh glen]

You're arguing using fallacies of extremes here, that's never a productive strategy.

The fight is at best a very early boss in the 'middle' tier of bosses unless you actively choose to fight her using T70-80, and even if you do or out of sheer reason of missing levels do end up doing that, it is no excuse for the mechanic to be so counter-intuitive in the first place.

[tulip jackal]

All I’m saying is that it’s a mechanic and doesn’t need to be removed because one person finds it annoying

[fresh glen]

I feel like I've explained like 17 times in this thread at this point all the various reasons as to why the mechanic as it is right now feels counter-intuitive and even out of place from the games' general mechanical design

[fresh glen]

I'm not at all advocating for the mechanic to be removed, simply for the design of the mechanic to work in solo as it does in group, seeing as the boss has fallen out of group boss tier, realistically speaking

Basically Kezalam the mechanic. Break yourself out by anticipating the stun/freedom, then clicking the icicles in this case - fail and you take a big chunk of damage.

Like, the better design of the mechanic literally exists in the game

It would also serve to prepare people better as a bridging boss to go from the mid bosses to the higher bosses through sheer mechanical consistency.

[sharp shell]

To be fair it's like 95% of pvmers that find it annoying not just one person

[rose atlas]

I have literally never heard anyone complain that you can't free yourself from ice solo outside of this thread lmao but sure buddy

back in 2016 this might have actually been an issue and people still didn't complain about it back then

[austere basalt]

Except more than one person feels this way. Do any of these changes make you no longer want to ever fight Nex? I’m all for skill expression, but there’s a difference between that and an outdated chore. I loved the mechanic when Nex was released because Nex was a group boss.

At the end of the day there are going to be people who disagree with this post, and that’s okay. However, if Jagex just slipped this change all of sudden, I personally doubt the majority of the player base would care or even notice, but I could be wrong.

[austere basalt]

I would like to point out that this would mean Ironmen could not do this until 105 herblore for a boss that’s much earlier than that

[sharp shell]

Exactly

[fervent egret]

Since theres achs attached to killspeed, I wouldnt support this but ultimately dont care becuz free ca and a chill way to grind out the massive log. Anyone who can do the pvme rotation for the ca will always skip the ice mechanic. If you just wanna button mash, you should be punished by being stalled out. So really it needs stay as is to keep the reward of fast kills and ca. Otherwise, this boss just becomes a kbd dps dummy or a slayer assignment.

[austere basalt]

But that’s the thing, they’ll still skip it, how is this affecting log fillers? I’m personally arguing for it because it’s a mid level boss that I feel hasn’t been the most up kept for mid level, like with the vitality approach. That’s my opinion on it, though.

[honest junco]

To be clear, solo nex has been done long before vit pots, it only does like 7k damage

You can sit at 8k hp and Res and live every time

[fresh glen]

The only CA I don't have at nex is the 1:21 kill time one, and I'll say this much: if you get this mechanic at all, you're not beating that one, you have to skip it. In other words, a change to the mechanic would in reality have 0 impact on the nex CAs even in their current state.
To say that a mechanic that is decidedly not a difficult one but just unnecessarily annoying needs to stay as is makes no sense to me.
The boss is already just a kbd dps dummy, except she has this one mechanic that is not difficult, doesn't realistically impact the highest difficulty CA on the boss, and only serves as a nuisance. Why would you want to have it stay that way... I've said it before in this thread - I'm all for a full rework of the boss to make it mechanically interesting/difficult again but I don't see that happening anytime soon, so just let it at least not be annoying.

[trail kelp]

while i support the design change for the mechanic, as this thread suggests, i do not agree with the statement at all that nex has evolved to out from a group boss tier

nex is possibly the better designed mid-tier boss in the game, even with current powercreep in combat

back when i first did nex with friends a good few years after eoc came about in 2014, we struggled as much that we had to trio nex with attuned crystal bow and void equipment gear

nex was never designed to not be a group boss, as most of her mechanics (ignoring powercreep over the years that essentially results in mechanic skipping) reflects that quite clearly - especially in ice phase

and i don't think it's right to take her out of that categorisation, just because of powercreep. all the more, i'd even challenge you to take her on as a true t80 player, without all the powercreeps

[trail kelp]

100% true that ice prison is bugged. but i also haven't seen a dev go deep into it to find out what makes this mechanic so buggy

if it required some simple damage check to be dealt with like kezalam, it would definitely be a huge QOL improvement to the mechanic - although i'd wish we could deal with it another more creative way instead?

[fresh glen]

It isn't bugged. It is by design that the player imprisoned can't break themselves out, this is what I want to have changed because of the nature of the boss has honestly changed. It's being kept relevant through the masterwork essences for T92 power armor, but people tend to solo the boss these days and most PvMers will just tell you to go get T85/90 GWD2 stuff before even trying Nex, to get to the point of it being a rather easy solo instead. Hell, even for the Necro gear items, people just ask a friend or stranger to help them with 5 quick kills to move along the process. The only reason why she is 'difficult' in "true T80" is because of her unusually extreme "defence level" and the way damage is calculated today with accuracy since the revamp of combat to remove splashing.

Whether you like it or not, powercreep does have a significant impact on bosses' considered status/difficulty, and to keep it in a category artificially by keeping the one 'forced' group mechanic as is, at the cost of it just being annoying for the generally speaking normalized way of killing the boss in today's age is quite frankly illogical..

Solak, as an example, even had an official solo scaling mode introduced to it, when it was designed as a 2+ boss originally. I believe this was at least partially because powercreep got to the point where people that really wanted to kill the boss, could figure out how to solo the duo scaling with relative ease.. Point being that recategorizing isn't unique. For all intents and purposes, Solak getting a solo mode shifted it from group boss to solo boss with grouping alternatives.

[fresh glen]

I'm also not even suggesting a full redesign - just for them to remove the flag/directional block that prevents the imprisoned player to attempt to destroy the icicles themselves

[trail kelp]

on the solak point, i disagree with the last statement.

solak is a group boss that was made soloable. not the other way around.

why this is an important point, is because it shapes the perspective, narrative, and expectations on a foundational level for this argument.

[trail kelp]

on the nex point.

iirc, nex was updated after EOC with some changes to the mechanics. either way, ice prison is meant to be freed.

while i do see your point that it was (probably) not intended to be self-freed, changing it to be self-freed would be a huge QOL for those who solo the boss or still do it in groups

either way, it does change the mechanic fundamentally in a somewhat good way.

(i currently do not acknowledge any downsides or negative repercussions to this, aside from reduced death rates at this boss)

[trail kelp]

to take other examples, raids and aod was designed as a group boss. but due to powercreep, it made soloing it possible.

that fact does not change, and i doubt it will ever change.

the only way for that to be changed, is if they changed something drastically about the mechanics.

[trail kelp]

ya, that's fine. already agreed this could do with some changes to make it self-freeable.

[fresh glen]

Alright, fair argument, but even if we do call it that instead, it is a precedent of a boss designed originally as a group boss being changed/adapted for soloing.

I looked it up on the wiki, and nex have not had any major mechanical changes since release - just a few balancing changes and bug fixes. Fundamentally though, we are agreeing here - the QoL of self-freeing capability, you are agreeing that it would be a significant QoL update with little negative impact on the boss x)

I understand the parallel drawn with raids and AoD, but the reason I separate them is specifically because Nex is predominantly soloed by default, whilst AoD and Raids, whilst technically possible to solo indeed, are still predominantly done in groups. There may eventually come a day where these bosses too end up predominantly soloed (although I doubt it with yaka) - and come that time, I would argue then too that mechanics they have that are designed to be handled with multiple people should be adapted for soloing. ^^

Just as a bonus note; Nex kill time CA's require you to achieve them solo, which - from my POV - suggests that even Jagex themselves consider the boss to be a solo boss.

[trail kelp]

really? i never knew nex to be predominantly done in solo, even now.

mainly because it is still tiered at a lower level than say, raksha (who is arguably way easier than nex), and the only ones who can solo it, are probably doing sub 2min kills.

[trail kelp]

the CA portion is not indicative of whether a boss is now considered as solo. by that logic applied from CAs, a lot of these would then be classified a lot differently than intended and designed.

anyway, separate topic. but, i would never use any of the CAs that are put up for each boss as an indication that the devs have now considered a boss has shifted to group or solo

however, in most (if not all) cases, it is usually evolving from a "must be done in group" to a "you can solo it"... never the other way around

[trail kelp]

your concept for nex however, can be drawn upon further and applied to other bosses also. can't think of any right now, but i think we've learnt a lot from sanctum's mechanics

[fresh glen]

Nex has essentially been meta to solo before even EGWD existed, let alone necromancy which has trivialized it further.

I'm sorry, but calling Raksha 'arguably way easier' then Nex is extremely disconnected, and soloing Nex is like turning your brain off entirely in comparison.
The only people that might consider raksha easier are those that have a good amount of PvM knowledge and utilize optimal consumables, gear + rotations - and they would think so because with enough DPS, you can skip virtually all of Raksha's mechanics. This, however, is not the norm for the average player that dabbles a little in PvM.
Nex, on the other hand, is quite literally "just soul split and hit the boss" with the one exception of the ice prison attack, which is primarily annoying more than anything else.

I disagree with the notion that the timer CA's being solo-dependent isn't indicative of a boss' considered status. It is generally consistent that on solo bosses where you can play as a group, the timer needs to be done solo, however the criteria for the mechanical CA's are individualized - that's to say, someone might complete a CA to not get hit by X or 'don't move during', whilst another player might fail it during the same kill. The successful player will get the CA, and the one that failed will not. For Group bosses, it is generally indicated that everyone must fulfill the criteria to get the achievement. Either all get it, or no one does.

As for bosses going from group to solo and not the other way around is as obvious as breathing. To go the other way would require bosses to be updated to be significantly more difficult than they previously were, and this is not a practice that is generally done, not only in RuneScape but many other MMO's and games in general. It is rather unusual for devs to actually buff bosses after the fact, unless there is an extremely good reason to do so. If they launch under tuned, it is very often "ah well, we'll try to do better next time, we'd piss off the majority if we go and make it more difficult now".

I do not think that the concept I've proposed for Nex can be applied to a lot of bosses. The only other boss in a similar situation is Kalphite King and his 'green' mechanic, although I can't speak to that, since I've never gotten around to doing much of that boss. I do have plenty of experience with every other mid+ boss in the game though.

The main thing other older bosses would draw upon from sanctum would be the very clear telegraphing of where and when abilities hit, but I don't think that really sits in the same boat as the actual functionality of a mechanic. Bit of a "Form vs Function" comparison.

[austere basalt]

That’s fair, yeah

[trail kelp]

i find it odd that you're using the standards of meta, yet later call it disconnected about the raksha point of reference for difficulty.

as someone with over 4k nex kills since 2014, and barely 600 kills on raksha, i am confident that nex is tougher to solo than raksha who can be afked revo

why? using the same argument of judging by meta, there has not been an afk version for nex. that fact alone stands out clearly that nex is less "turning off brain" than raksha.

[visual tendon]

Imo if you freedom, it should give you the opportunity to attack her while frozen, and if you do enough damage before the hit, you can escape before it hits.

Simple change, makes the mechanic damage focused rather than defensive focused and gives the player more agency and fluidity in executing kills while rewarding dps.

[trail kelp]

kk's bettlejuice is one of the "forced" group kind of mechanic. although tactics have arisen to help in skipping it via usage of stuns and diving.

otherwise, i think there should still be a handful of bosses that provide more value by doing it as intended in a group

solo should be classified as hardmode in that regard, as you're essentially saying you will handle all the possible group mechanics alone

[trail kelp]

yup, that's what i always do back around 2018-2019

[fresh glen]

Sure, I'll clarify, I'll admit 'meta' isn't the best word to describe what I mean without specifications.
What I meant with it is more in the terms of the 'standard approach' for mid-experienced PvMers with good but not the best gear/weapons/consumables/abilities. Think basic/holy OVL, T90 with advanced perk setups.

The only reason Nex can't be 100% fully AFKd is the forced target switching to kill the adds.

Lately, I've been doing a lot of PvMing on mobile using suggested revolution bars from wiki and I have no idea how you mean to say that Raksha is any more AFK than Nex.
Granted that I'm an ironman account without the BiS for any style other than Necro - so if you are referring to methods using different styles with effective BiS everything, that's something I can't speak on, what I do know is that there is 0 chance that I could 'AFK' Raksha relying on Revo alone.

On the contrary to this, with nex, I go in with the exact same gear (if not even a slight downgrade) and all I do is tap Nex and tap minions when I must swap and kill them.

In terms of having there be a handful of effectively solo bosses with retained group mechanics to give incentive to do it as a group, we can agree to disagree. RuneScape is an MMO that stands out because of it's effective 'single player in a multiplayer world' kind of way. There are some content that is clear-cut group content that whilst theoretically soloable isn't really something that people tend to do, then there are things designed to be very solo-friendly.
Now, generally speaking I'm a big fan of the nuanced approach, but in this particular situation, having an interim like that is just a nuisance rather than something that enhances the experience. Am I supposed to be free to do it whenever I want, without a group, or not?
This is a distinct separation from the established dichotomy of solo vs group content, and the only reason Nex and KK is in the weird in-between at all is a direct result of power creep and loose mechanics.
We also have hardmode variations of bosses, in their literal hardmode modes. I think the argument to retain group-requirement for these mechanics as some sort of 'arbitrary hardmode' is weak in that regard.

[fresh glen]

That's a good idea for an adaptation of it for sure. I'm all for something like this - all I'm arguing for is to make the mechanic more solo-friendly and intuitive in whatever way that may be.

Imagine somebody that's never done Nex before that goes in and fights her.

Fumus: Oh, my stats are draining and she pulls and stuns me, ok, stat-restoring potions or overload and freedom at the ready, fair enough.

Umbra: Oh, she said a line and a dark spot appeared under me, and when she's closer to me my game gets darker, that doesn't seem good.

Cruor: She starts siphoning and you notice "Wait, I'm healing her!" With a clear animation to go with it, and for the sacrifice your character literally gets contrasted and red with a chat message telling you to run away.

Glacies: Contain this! She starts running at you, then ice spikes appear and you get stunned. You can hear/see a wave of ice and if it hits you you get chunked - ok, run away from her/anticipate and avoid the ice wave.

Then there's the ice prison. You see the message "Die now, in a prison of ice!" and you get the obvious prison and notice that you've gotten stunned.. ok, so maybe I can deal with the stun by using anticipation when she yells, or freedom after, what's next. Oh, when I hover these ice things they say "attack", ok ok so I destroy them... Wait, why is nothing happening? Hello? Boom 7500 damage taken.
"Why didn't it work, it's clearly meant for you to attack the ice somehow, likely to not take the big hit..."
Next go around: ok so that didn't work, oh well I'll just resonance the hit like on other big hits on bosses and it should be fine. Boom 7500 hit.
"?????? What am I supposed to do to avoid the hit then??"

Of course, after that they might figure out things like vitality potions or to save for barricade or whatever, but the point is that it's very unintuitive and just feels bad, and annoying, for little reason.

[fervent egret]

Just a reminder, i d c what happens. But if freedom should freedom everything, then yakas sand and kks green should be made pointless with a press of a button. At the end of the day, the difference between ice sand and green is just some computer pixels and the dev intended these mechs to be similar in how they respond to freedom.

They kept the ices consistent between aod and babynex to not be freeable by yourself. And like kk, you do have alternative methods that lets you deal with these constrictions while restricting freedom and anticipation. Its there to reward higher skilled players who are better planners, timers, and equipped vs those who just go in doing whatevers and pushing their no cost freedom button.

The timer ca is "gm" of babynex. Getting it proves you can skip and master the nex. The point I made about that ca is that if you trivialize the ice, it makes the timer ca more like a medium ca.

Kk is soloable if you know how to deal with green or you just nuke it from the start. Nex takes longer due to phases but its one hit ko is very weak.

[fresh glen]

Any difference in functionality between "babynex" and AoD is easily explained with "AoD is clearly significantly more powerful"

I told you why the timer CA and its difficulty wouldn't be impacted by the change. If you don't skip the mechanic entirely even now, you're effectively guaranteed to fail the 1:21, meaning that for that particular CA's purposes - the mechanic already 'doesn't exist' at all.

Kk and nex are both soloable and relatively easily so, at least in Nex's case. This has never been a matter of "the fight is too difficult", although it seems a lot of people are misunderstanding that.
This thread isn't about making something "difficult" easier, it's about making something that is already easy less arbitrarily annoying.

[austere basalt]

I respect this, I’d be pretty happy with that

[trail kelp]

i'll take aqworlds as an example, since i started to play that again recently

the devs have tried to make all the bosses throughout the storyline more accessible to solo players (given that most active players have already surpassed the content that was created long ago)

this is good because the game was developed mostly as an MMO, and bosses were designed with groups in mind

(granted, aqworlds bosses are literal dps dummies)

however, i remember not participating in any of the storyline bosses because i was literally stuck at level 45, trying to fight a level 60-70 boss with 200k+++ hp and smacked me for 500-1000 health per hit

with some rescaling, some became more accessible for me

otherwise, i just had to grind to a higher level until i out powercreep on the boss

now, taking this concept to apply to nex, i still strongly believe it is intended for players of t75-t90 range (at least, that was my experience when i first started on nex with attuned crystall bow and void equipment) in groups

i am till date, not someone who brings all BIS gear to pvm (unless its affordable to me), as i still use pernix gear even at endgame bosses

in the example of raksha and nex, i am definitely referring to the strategy used to afk raksha, which requires some BIS gear. but even with the same gear used at afk raksha, you can't apply that to nex - effectively, there's no afk strategy for nex afaiaw

[fresh glen]

Already explained why drawing an absolute parallel like that between Raksha and Nex is 'unfair' at best, because nex's non-afkability is for an entirely arbitrary reasoning... Do you walk at all on this "afk Raksha" kill? I'd love for you to link the video though, so that I can utilize the method myself to 0 brain the boss on mobile and get the missing abilities and pet.

Nex' original design was as a group boss designed for people basically using, what, T70 gear (GWD1) with T80 weapons (Chaotics) at best? Maybe revenant armors existed at the time?
Regardless of these things though, it bears little impact with regards to what the boss actually has become. I can't imagine anyone suggesting someone to go kill Nex with T75 weapons and armor. What they would, or at least should tell you is to go kill the notably less tanky GWD2 bosses that drop even better weapons and technically armour too... There's no real reason for someone to go to Nex with that low tier worth of stuff except for the memes, and even so it would do absolutely no harm to the viability of going at it that way with a simple change to make you able to free yourself.

Aside from this, and this will be anectodal, but still feels like a point worth mentioning. Over the course of doing Nex for like a month straight and AFKing at the waiting room on occasion across a few worlds, Out of all the people that I saw going to do Nex, some 90% of them were going at it solo (I see them enter and later return and enter again a couple of times), even some people with T80 Necro. I saw 2 maybe 3 clear duos going at it.
Sure, maybe these solo players were in a mass and teleported over and over because they needed to restock every 2-3 minutes, but I honestly find that highly improbable. There was one guy who asked me to help him with his 5 kills for Necro (which I did) "so that I can have an easier time soloing it afterwards"... Anecdotal of course, but I combine this personal experience with the way her CA's follow the solo-boss model as opposed to the group boss ones and by that standard make the assumption that the boss is predominantly solo'd these days, and is effectively a solo boss as a result. I mean, I figure that Jagex themselves would have the data for # of soloing vs groups and that that was a crucial decider in whether to have her CA's follow the solo-boss model or not...

[trail kelp]

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=raksha+afk
many videos from search alone, so i won't list them all here, as that wouldn't make sense.

aside from this, please refer to pvme guides as well.

[trail kelp]

anyway, i think we're going off point from your suggestion, so i don't want to continue the debate here. would've done so in design-combat channel when it last existed.

to conclude on my points of argument

• i think it is vital to understand how each boss was originally designed, and note about how its interaction has changed over the course of time due to new content that introduces powercreep and whatnot, and ask if there's a need to change that original design (i.e. from a group-based to solo-based)
• claiming "when this boss was released with only access to t80 gear, it was impossible for me to do solo. now i got access to t95 gear, i can steamroll it, therefore, it should be a soloable boss. if you go with t80 gear, you're memeing" is extremely disconnected for the entire point of your argument, and i think further cements my point of concept i've been driving at

[fresh glen]

Then I will give a final address to those final points in return.

There is value in some tradition, and to keep certain things as they were sometimes. I strongly believe that this is not one such time. We can look at it from the idealistic perspective all we want, but if that PoV is merely historical and not indicative or aligned with the predominant method used in current times, it doesn't really make sense to not adapt with the times.

It would be an 'extremely disconnected' claim yes, if it weren't for the observations of how the boss is predominantly approached these days and the point of CAs heavily suggesting that the boss is seemingly for all intents and purposes even officially declared to be in the solo-boss category nowadays.

I checked out the link you posted and I found a whole lot of 'low effort' or 'budget' guides but only one that said "Afk", and it was immediately apparent that it wasn't afk at all.
At best, it was a whole lot of 'revolution guides', which is most decidedly not what AFK means. All these videos still have plenty of manual input be it for damage or mechanic avoidance. Even to achieve 'pool skips' just barely effectively, you need to do plenty of prep/setup before entering P3, and that's not to mention the gear check for it..

If you want to really see and feel the difference for yourself, I'd suggest you get a loadout and a revo bar, and try each boss on mobile with the same setup. Guarantee you that you'll discover raksha to be way more demanding than Nex is...

Anyways, all in all, whether we agree about the categorization of the boss or not, you're right that we've strayed from the point of the suggestion, a point we've already agreed upon would be a nice change