Bonus Hydraboss thoughts:
Personally I love the grotesque guardians bossfight with its mechanics, length and attention required, though we can all agree that it could a bit more rewarding. The Alchemical hydra promises to be rather rewarding so I am very much excited for a long and throughout fight.
Ranged dominates the game in many places: Vorkath, Raids1, Revenants, Zulrah, Gargoyle boss, Fight caves, Inferno and many others are either primarily fought with ranged, or ranged is is also at least necessary in the fight. Hence I'd be hoping the Hydra would not be killed with ranged. If the bossfight requires 2 styles; melee and mage would be a good and rare combo (unless you'd need all 3 styles).
The hydra could for example just have ridiclously high ranged defence (like thermy) to prevent a ranged meta, but this feels rather artificial. One thing all slayer bosses have in common is a very low defence - which is nice and all but maybe this time the mould could be broken? A high overall defence would make the blowpipe considerably worse at the boss and if for once you'd *need* accuracy boni rather than going for max str setup everywhere, it could be rather interesting.
Also if the hydra was to have a low magic level it would 1) not be twisted bowable 2) naturally weak(er) to the aforementioned style of magic.
11-Oct-2018 07:39:20