A call for better EQ boss fight designs
Since this post got quite long, the tl;dr version of it all is to design the fights where you are first introduced to new champions in a way that allows you to learn them and their abilities, and not just how to play around the nodes they are on.
If you want to read the full post, read on.
One thing that has been nagging at me for quite a while but became very obvious during the Ikaris fight in this month's EQ, is that the introduction of new champions could be much better. Ideally, you'd go up against those new champs six or seven times (or even more if you complete more difficulties), and over the course of all of those fights, you'd eventually learn how they work. However, I feel like the nodes on them have a tendency to change their playstyles so much that you often find yourself learning how to counter the node more than you learn how to counter the new champion, specifically.
Look at Ikaris, for example. The main problem in that fight is the interaction between the nodes on him, rather than Ikaris himself. His ability to become unstoppable and unblockable whenever he gains fury could have been a cool node to have on him if it had worked as a deterrent from activating his own personal fury buffs, but he has no fury buffs of his own. Everything that is difficult regarding this comes from how the various nodes on him interact with themselves, not with him. If he is stunned, he gains a fury from one node which in turn makes him unstoppable and eventually unblockable; another node makes him bleed immune, while a third makes him gain a fury buff whenever he is immune to an effect.
The only interaction with Ikaris, specifically, is if you try to incinerate him since he's immune to incinerate and therefore would gain a fury buff from a node, but otherwise you could easily substitute him for almost any other champion in the game and have the same difficult interaction.
Now, I found the fight pretty fun. That's not the problem I had with the fight. Tigra tore through it and I always have a blast using her, so it was a win-win for me. However, at the end of it, I didn't feel like I really had a grip of how Ikaris himself worked since I had just tried to outmaneuver all of the various nodes on him. Even after half a dozen fights against him, the only thing I had ever really learned was how to fight those specific nodes.
And this is a problem, far beyond this particular fight. I feel like we often see node interactions placed on brand-new champs that fundamentally change how they should be countered instead of just boosting their own current abilities. This isn't a call for a nerf going forward - I'm fine with the difficulty - just a reevaluation of the fight designs when introducing these new champions. There is nothing wrong with this node setup itself but I think it works better when you know the champion already. It would have been just as difficult on a champion such as Hyperion or Medusa, while simultaneously maybe being even more logical since both of them have an incredible ability to build up fury buffs and therefore could utilize the node themselves instead of just passively riding along.
The end result of this is two-fold. Not only do you not learn how to fight them (which is obviously bad), but you also don't learn to appreciate them for who they truly are on their own. This in turn - at least for me - drastically lowers my desire to pull them. I know that I can do basically nothing of what I saw in that fight because I was too preoccupied with dodging the various node interactions that I didn't get to experience Ikaris himself in all of his glory.
On the flip side, I do think the Sersi fight was much better designed and kept her more in line with herself. There was nothing that made her considerably more difficult to fight that wasn't boosting whatever abilities she already had. That's a perfect example of how I think these introductory fights should be designed.
Then, if Kabam wants to make a difficult Ikaris fight down the line, feel free to use this node setup. As I said, there is nothing wrong with it or using it on Ikaris; my problem is just that it overshadows him and his own abilities when he and they should be in the spotlight.
