After looking at the new Shatters and then doing several o3s, I have begun to realize a few major problems with the Oryx the Exalted God fight. These being that there is far too much leechability and that the fight is too easy once a few phases have been learned. I understand that many new players find o3 to be hard enough already, and that suggesting an increase in difficulty could sound absurd, however the point of this suggestion is not to increase the base difficulty per say but to instead make the fight more engaging.
First off we have the leechability. Over the last two days I completed 3 o3’s on fresh level 20 characters with no armor, no ring, and t0-t2 weapons and abilities, without ever needing to dodge very well. Additionally, I somehow got soulbound without ever really going in for dps beyond the first few staggers and the final death phase. (proof below)
For the final fight of the game, this seems pretty ridiculous. Maybe the best players in the game should be able to do this, but for someone like me this should most definitely be impossible. From what I can tell, there is one main reason for this, which is the fact that the large majority of the fight is taken place right next to Oryx. The only exception to this is the towers, which play a very minimal role in gameplay. Beyond celestial and heavens, if you have Oryx off your screen the entire fight, shots will rarely ever enter your view and it is extremely hard to die. This should not happen. Looking at any of the three new bosses from the Shatters, there are projectiles on your screen at any given moment, and the fight keeps you moving all throughout. This is also the case with Marble Colossus, Void Entity, and pretty much every other exaltation boss fight.
My suggestion to improve on this is to pretty much just add more stuff to the fight. This could involve adding more minions, making the towers shoot more projectiles, or making Oryx affect parts of the arena far away from him. For instance during shield bashes where his attacks only affect players sitting very close to him, he could throw out bombs far away to push people in towards him.
The next topic is how the fight relies on learning phases too much, and that once these are learned o3 becomes a joke. Panic and Scream, Splendor, Cosmos, Outer Rotates, Heavens, and most notably Celestial all become pretty much impossible to get hit from once learned. Players even beg for Celestial, the most notorious phase in the game, to come because of how easy it is compared to the rest of the fight once you learn it. Looking at MBC and Void Entity, the fight always continues to be hard no matter how many times you do it because they never rely on learning phases.
My suggestion to combat this is to randomize existing attacks. For instance during Panic and Scream, instead of shooting at 90 and 45 degree angles, the shots rotations would be completely random. In Splendor, instead of the pattern always being right, left, down, up, it could instead throw out bombs randomly but always ensure there is a safe place to stand. This way, instead of doing the mindlessly ingrained pattern, you would have to carefully watch where the bombs are falling.
Thanks for reading