untelegraphed instakill???

[BlazeMG]

This has happened a few times during the raid on Baladrog.

I was at full health and with a max hp potion still in effect and suddenly my character drops dead.

I am certain that there were no yellow circles on the ground that would indicate baladrog's meteor attack.

There were no red circles/rectangles with a moving red line that would indicate that the area is about to be nuked.

There were no firestorms and those kill slowly anyway.

There wasn't even a huge fireball or firelance to the face that would indicate an attack, just my character dropping dead. From 100+% health to zero for no visible reason.

I know it was some sort of attack but no animation occurred.

So - is it a bug and the attack is supposed to be animated?

If not - is it instakill? Does it matter if the character has high def/magic def/a lot of HP?

If it is instakill - what triggers it? Is it random? Does it occur when Baladrog's hp drops below certain threshold? does it occur every X seconds? Is it like "come unto your maker" from darkest dungeon that triggers when the amount of characters is above certain threshold? Is it "punish the covards" type of attack that specifically hits characters that are trying to stay at a safe distance from Baladrog? Because I am certain that Baladrog wasn't even visible on a screen at that moment. I was healing other characters from distance.

Can it be avoided by any means? For example - will it target a character if this specific character is in PK mode? It would make an interesting mechanic where players should all activate PK mode and avoid hitting each other with AoE skills. Is there a blind spot, like...actually behind Baladrog's back where attack doesn't occur? Should all players summon nibblers to increase the chance that attack will target one of the pets instead? what about hunters and their summons?

And finally - is it supposed to be so boring? It didn't have ANY visual indication. If it has to be instakill, you can at least make it look cool.

The way it is now it was so cheap. The boss just nukes a player without any chance to react.

[Neslin]

Yeah I know what you mean. Really good question. In general Bala is really crazy, have seen already many wiped raids.

[Diablo_Average]

In order not to die from a oneshot, you need to have enough health and physical protection.
Any good tank can easily withstand a meteor strike.
As far as I remember, Baladrog only deals physical damage with auto-attacks and abilities.
It was probably out of sync, so you didn't have time to run out of the meteor attack. (orange zone 2x2)

Edited January 12, 2023 by Diablo_Average

[Ollie]

@BlazeMG Has this happened before or did you start noticing it after the last update?

As far as I remember, we made changes to the animations of the boss - this may be the problem.

But no new punishing attacks or abilities were added to him.

[BlazeMG]

I am not certain when the bug appeared because the New Year update introduced Ember boss and I was busy there. But I am fairly certain that the meteor attack. (orange zone 2x2) mentioned by Diablo_average was not the cause. I specifically wrote that there was no animation. An orange zone before meteor - I would see that and move out of it as always. So it is probably a graphical bug or out-of-sync problem.