Suggesting a rework for Kaecilius

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I posted something like this in the event announcement thread but now we've had a chance to play Kaecilius my fears have been confirmed and the lessons of boss rush have well and truly not been learned.

I'm not going to complain (again) about it - I've got a suggestion for how the dynamic could be worked to make a fair but puzzling fight.

Kaecilius still can't take damage
Kaecilius can't do any match damage

He has some special tiles - sure someone who knows the lore better than I could suggest a name - these have to be matched in the same manner as his strike tiles are today to but they are produced by a passive purple on random colours each turn.

His black is (still) an instawin and he can make matches to gather AP as per the current dynamic.

We can therefore bring specialists for the puzzle challenge which would be fantastic without the certain knowledge that with 5* scaling they'll die before he even produces strike tiles - and we can't just match his tiles away we have to worry about him matching black - make his passive that if he matches one of his own tiles he gets some black AP.

You guys really need to get a handle on this 5* scaling - boss rush was an abomination and while the rest of strange sights is good this boss fail leaves a very bitter taste.

broll

I suggested a rework in another thread:

I have some suggestions on how to make this more enjoyable:
1. Make them shield tiles vs daggers. The daggers accumulate too quickly and make it impossible with bosses scale.
2. Make his immunity be based on the presents of these shield tiles.

So how this would work is he would be similar 3* Cage. Start of each round he adds a shield(3) if he doesn't have 3 present. Each shield tile would grant 100% immunity. Without these he is damageable (more on this later). Matching away the special tiles is still the primary way to do damage and abilities that destroy them would not count. However if you manage to destroy all 3 (only possible with moves that destroy or convert the shields) then you get a shot to do real damage on him before he adds 3 more shields on the start of each turn.

This change would do a few things:
1. Guarantee there are always 3 special tiles to match at the start of each turn.
2. Focusing on defense vs offense makes scaling less of a concern and you wouldn't need to rush to burn him down.
3. The ability to briefly do regular match damage if you get rid of all 3 tiles would simulate the exploit a weakness type effect that most video game / comic book bosses have.

Would probably need to do something about that black as well. Soften the damage or bump the AP 25 or 30?

Orion

So why is the boss a fail? Because you can't win? I think it's an interesting challenge and love that they're trying something different.

It makes you really look at your characters and come up with interesting combos to beat the boss. I used Elektra to give the boss cheap strikes that I could match and a way of avoiding his big damage. Other people used Quicksilver black to swap tiles for easy matches. I know it's a cliche, but this boss really makes you think outside the box of regular MPQ fights.

Jam_Adams

I wish you could play him more than once per day.................

broll

Orion wrote:

So why is the boss a fail? Because you can't win? I think it's an interesting challenge and love that they're trying something different.

It makes you really look at your characters and come up with interesting combos to beat the boss. I used Elektra to give the boss cheap strikes that I could match and a way of avoiding his big damage. Other people used Quicksilver black to swap tiles for easy matches. I know it's a cliche, but this boss really makes you think outside the box of regular MPQ fights.

That would be great if it worked like that. My personal experience was the strategy approach failed every time because the boss did damage too quickly if didn't instantly kill every dagger. The way I finally won was random luck with random teams...

broll

Jam_Adams wrote:

I wish you could play him more than once per day.................

You can. I tried easily 20 yesterday before I won.

Polares

Orion wrote:

So why is the boss a fail? Because you can't win? I think it's an interesting challenge and love that they're trying something different.

It makes you really look at your characters and come up with interesting combos to beat the boss. I used Elektra to give the boss cheap strikes that I could match and a way of avoiding his big damage. Other people used Quicksilver black to swap tiles for easy matches. I know it's a cliche, but this boss really makes you think outside the box of regular MPQ fights.

Please, before you answer read carefully, it has nothing to do with what you have said.

It has to do with scaling, and how 5 rosters have a BIG problem with the level of the boss in this fight (like they had in Boss Rush). It has nothing to do with the 'think out of the box'. The scaling of the boss is so high that he can kill any 3 in a couple of turns just with match damage, so you can't use any 3s and not champed 4s in this fight so the possibilities are very limited.

As an example, my boss in this fight is 513, does 3k damage just matching tiles and has around 100k hitpoints. So Quicksilver would die in 3 turns, Elektra in 4. And that is without adding strike tiles (which are also super strong and reduce those times even more).

Daiches

Orion wrote:

So why is the boss a fail? Because you can't win? I think it's an interesting challenge and love that they're trying something different.

It makes you really look at your characters and come up with interesting combos to beat the boss. I used Elektra to give the boss cheap strikes that I could match and a way of avoiding his big damage. Other people used Quicksilver black to swap tiles for easy matches. I know it's a cliche, but this boss really makes you think outside the box of regular MPQ fights.

Because his match damage for 5star players is so high it invalidates these options. You can't bring both Elektra and Qs since then they'll tank the colors you want to match and they die in 1-2 matches. So you can only take one and 2 tanks but that negates the puzzle aspect

Orion

Daiches wrote:

Orion wrote:

So why is the boss a fail? Because you can't win? I think it's an interesting challenge and love that they're trying something different.

It makes you really look at your characters and come up with interesting combos to beat the boss. I used Elektra to give the boss cheap strikes that I could match and a way of avoiding his big damage. Other people used Quicksilver black to swap tiles for easy matches. I know it's a cliche, but this boss really makes you think outside the box of regular MPQ fights.

Because his match damage for 5star players is so high it invalidates these options. You can't bring both Elektra and Qs since then they'll tank the colors you want to match and they die in 1-2 matches. So you can only take one and 2 tanks but that negates the puzzle aspect

Elektra is boosted so that helps a lot. My Kaecilius is level 511 and I beat him first try with OML/SS/Elektra. Maybe I had a lucky board, but it didn't seem overly hard to me.

Jam_Adams

broll wrote:

Jam_Adams wrote:

I wish you could play him more than once per day.................

You can. I tried easily 20 yesterday before I won.

OK let me rephrase:

I wish you could play this match at your leisure after winning, more than once per day..... since the node locks after the victory

TxMoose

I barely made through my first go. if I had to go 20x I might feel differently, but this one is very much a strategy challenge. I've never used patch or Elektra for much of anything in a looooong while. both will get shots at kaec. patch was successful with rulk and witch (if only barely). Elektra gets her shot next. then QS.

bbigler

I am pleased with the Kaecilius boss battle. It is challenging, but still doable. The reward should be a lot better than 1 CP though. I have 5* characters all sitting at level 255, I have a handful of 4* at level 200 and then a bunch of 3* Champs. With that roster, my Kaecilius was level 370, which can kill my guys quick, but I was still able to win. I think the biggest puzzle to solve here is deciding on either characters that can take/heal/protect damage or characters that help you match away his strike tiles. That's the balance you need to discover, and once you figure it out and win, I find that very satisfying. There's also some luck too, but any good game will have an element of luck. If you don't like luck in games, then go play chess or checkers ad nauseum.

Crowl

Orion wrote:

So why is the boss a fail? Because you can't win? I think it's an interesting challenge and love that they're trying something different.

It makes you really look at your characters and come up with interesting combos to beat the boss. I used Elektra to give the boss cheap strikes that I could match and a way of avoiding his big damage. Other people used Quicksilver black to swap tiles for easy matches. I know it's a cliche, but this boss really makes you think outside the box of regular MPQ fights.

While there is a degree of thinking outside the box, what it usually comes down to with these sort of fights is a few gimmicky teams that are the only things that work reliably, which doesn't end up being any more fun than a regular fight most of the time.

As far as the suggestions for improving this fight, they probably go too far, maybe also allow those tiles to be destroyed as this would give a wider range of viable teams that could be used and crucially would include Dr Strange as an option too.

broll

Jam_Adams wrote:

broll wrote:

Jam_Adams wrote:

I wish you could play him more than once per day.................

You can. I tried easily 20 yesterday before I won.

OK let me rephrase:

I wish you could play this match at your leisure after winning, more than once per day..... since the node locks after the victory

Sorry I didn't imagine anyone was that much of a glutton for punishment.

rbdragon

It took me a few tries with different combinations before I beat him. I loved it!

I loved the fact that this was a boss that involved solving a puzzle of some sorts. I loved that I couldn't just bring in my heavy hitters and beat him down with match damage and the same attacks as I always use. I loved that my 3* team was better than my 5* team. I loved the fact that it was a challenge but not instant death.

It's not perfect, but it's fun! And for the record, my Kaecilius is/was scaled to 469 so it's not like I had an easy go of it.

Now the stupid feeder nodes in the sub on the other hand.....

GurlBYE

As long as you have someone who can create strike tiles you can control the match luckily.

El Satanno

I enjoyed this boss as well, and I say this as a 5* player. It was a little disappointing that scaling did indeed force me to use them but that's nothing new in this game. I guess this is as good a place as any to say my piece on the matter.

It was an actual puzzle! I really liked that I had to do something specific besides "hit him as hard and as fast as you can." Kinda like Ultron, who I also like fighting. I also like that it was necessary to match, not destroy, convert or otherwise remove, to win. Required strategy. It wasn't a bad board = instant death scenario like far too many of these things. In fact I had to wait so that Kaecilius would pop out some tiles for me to work with. It was a really refreshing change. Added to that was the risk vs. reward of letting him get strikes out. That's a big reason I would counter broll's suggestion of making them protect tiles, actually: Protect tiles wouldn't make it any more dangerous, just slower. Strikes make it tense. Tense is good.

It was also a decent challenge. Before you go off the rails, I mean that for a three-on-one fight, it's not bad at all. Yes, it can go south quickly, but as I said before it's not like some of the Boss Rush guys that would just wipe you out without even a whiff of a chance. Apart from the black power going off, you can still make it with one or even two characters down with a little luck if those strikes fall the right way. I barely made it out of the second fight just that way. And really, for my team at least, I could have survived black going off once if my team was at full health.

To tweak the difficulty, though, I think it would be more interesting if K's strike tiles were a little weaker and the health you take off him were a little lower each time. I think each of my fights required me to match something like 5 or 6 strikes. Since he was pooping out 2 a turn, it went pretty quickly. Maybe I'm losing it, but I don't want the big boss fight to be that fast.

Overall, though, I think this is the best boss fight since Ultron. I was really quite happy with it, and I hope we can get more interesting stuff like this in the future.