30+ KC here. Archive guardian is absolutely the biggest pain point of the raid for experienced raiders now. (We finally seem to have collectively figured out Bork, thank god.) Keep in mind, I love the presentation, sounds, and overall direction for the fight. I initially went into the fight day one feeling it was the best fight aside from Ocellus. My opinion has changed quite a bit, and I am feeling this sentiment get shared with high kc-ers as well the more time that is being spent in the raid. I think that overall there is a high degree of variability and on the fly positional asks that other encounters don’t really have (at least for the first boss in a raid). I would argue archive guardian is harder to play perfectly compared to Ocellus P3 and P4. Wish I was joking. There’s of course some nuance there, but so much of the encounter just ends up being feelsbadman tier. Most of my experience is with high KC’ers recently, and I can’t say this felt the same with slower, content respecting groups in the first day or two. Some gripes include: Mushroom spawn timing doesn’t appear to be static or predictable. This means you can get mushroom spawns extremely close to punish phase. (Could be wrong on the exact mechanics here.) Punish phase has a high variability on expected damage dealt. Two downs (to enrage) should be a touch easier to accomplish. Two downs also feels to be the expected standard in high KC groups in terms of fight feel. Punish phase doesn’t feel rewarding to melee without an obligator (even that can giga whiff during punish). Guaranteed hits weighted to expect every player to play somewhat optimally rotating around the guardian would feel better. Ranged options are performing too well here. I’m fine if they increased guardians HP to accommodate, but punish feels bad. Destroying inerts does zero green health damage, (it should still do a token amount, 5% of green hp would even be fine). Again, feels bad, at least something would be nice to help the party keep momentum. Mushroom spawns are too aggressive/random to bait reliability in teams. (Maybe there is some giga tech dd’ing in a corner, but they appear to spawn too unpredictably.) This makes the only viable option (without party hub pings) to run away for 4+ ticks as a team after a hyperbeam + mushroom respawn. (This is fine, but it feels chaotic for the first boss.) Requires a very high degree of control/team awareness of who is tanking to prevent dragging him across the room compared to later fights in the raid (having this is fine, just at the first boss feels like quite a bit.) I would almost prefer it more if the boss stayed stationary, but punished anyone being 11+ tiles away by hitting the entire party harder through prayer if not being tanked in range. Hits EXTREMELY hard off prayer for a first boss. I saw someone get chunked for a 52 once off prayer. I believe prayer projectiles that calculate on-hit have their place, and I still think that belongs here. Dragging the guardian flush with an inert can essentially brick hitting some inerts. This is of course a skill issue, but feels odd to have such awkward boss control for the first boss. I’m not sure if a version of the boss with room wide range that didn’t move would be better thematically, but it might feel better gameplay-wise. I could be wrong, but it’s hard to say for me. There is no visual indicator on who is being targeted for the hyperbeam. You have to read chat, or see if the person is alone/the guardian is turning towards them. Having a visual player tell (monkey room red?) would make a big difference here. Popping mushrooms does not favor the ascension crossbows, which seem to be the intended BIS weapon at this boss. You will always lose a tick popping using a 2t weapon. Causing mushroom pops to award flat bonus damage or a weapon attack delay reduction could be nice. (Some form of reward might feel better here, I get the reward should be clearing the boss with less difficulty, but experienced archive guardian environments are feeling different/trolly now due to the value of doing damage.) There is becoming an increasingly high incentive to play selfishly in the raid, this is one of the biggest overall concerns. if our understanding is correct, damage dealt will influence your purple chance. This means losing ticks to participate in hyperbeam stacks, and less popping. I am seeing many players opt to just tick eat beams solo now, it’s entirely possible this becomes the expectation in maxeff groups. I think the handling of damage on the inerts is the biggest win so far. We don’t have full defensive stats for them, but there is some bonus damage going on here, so they feel great to hit at the start of the fight. Could be wrong on lots of these, so don’t take what I say as gospel, and my opinion could change, but it definitely feels like quite a bit for the first boss. I’m sure there is some intentionality there, but this is the kind of complexity I would expect from a hard mode variant of this boss, not the version we have now. submitted by /u/Dessiato
Originally posted by u/Dessiato on r/2007scape