Are Elite mobs/Mini Bosses overpowered?

Having played Starbound for just over 200hrs, there is one thing that bothers me, and that is the Elite mobs. After threat level 2 planets they get seemingly impossible to defeat. They seem overpowered and are more difficult to defeat than the Bosses. Despite mediocre dodging skills and the best craftable gear for the threat level, 2-3 hits is certain death. Some of them move at twice the speed of other mobs making running away sometimes impossible and they tend to jump on your head with an uncomfortable accuracy.

using a shield and 1h weapon isn't much of an option, the shield slows movement making escape and dodging a complete nightmare. I have found the elite mobs to do decent amounts of damage through a shield and dropping your guard to heal is necessary, leaving you vulnerable to another attack.

Using techs with a gun or bow is a good choice but running out of energy twice as fast leads to a certain death and most of the Elite mobs seem to be able to jump high enough to get hits in even when using pulse jump.

I realize that i could leave the mobs alone and move on but have always tried to play every element in a game and feel like they need to be properly balanced. I'm also aware that this is beta and balancing hasn't really begun yet but this is something that i don't want to be overlooked hence the post.

Do you think Elite/Mini Boss mobs are overpowered?

 

They don't really fee overpowered to me. Sure they are tough as hell sometimes yeah, but I feel thats how it should be. They should present a much greater challenge and make you wonder wether or not you should actually engage them, knowing that if you do the battle will be hard.

Maybe their difficulty should be based more on more complex scripting or tougher abilities and behaviour but I guess that will be covered later on and not just for them so I'm not really worried.

I normally use a 2h weapon if I have a nice tech that allows me good movement control like the butterfly boost or whatever it is called. If I only had dash or pulse jump for instance the shield would be a must. I mean carrying one is almost always a must later on so using it against mini bosses should be mandatory as well unless as I said, if you have a nice dodging tech like I use.

 

I would suggest kiting and judicious use of the dash tech to minimise risk (if you would rather not trap it in a cage and kill it like that).

Edit: That being said, the reward for killing an elite mob is dubious. Typically, you will be able to craft weapons that are better or on par with the loot drop of elite mobs. It needs to be rebalanced quite a bit.

 

I think they are underpowered, as you can just dig a hole and shoot your arrows/bullets at his face.
If it had a special "Destroy blocks" or something, then maybe he is OP.

 

Not only do I think they are fine the way they are but I also think there should be more of them. I also think it would be cool if randomly, even more powerful ones would spawn in dungeons on the planet being explored. The dungeons could have puzzles and epic loot that is being guarded by the Elite boss. I think it would add more of an element to the treasure finding in the game.

 

the flying mini bosses arent all that hard, but the ground ones do move incredibly fast and at times they coming charging and kill me before i can react, after a certain tier they would kill in 1-2 hits and i would have to build a little dirt room and shoot it thru small holes, which does take some of the fun out of fighting them

 

the bosses need to be able to destroy blocks to get to you, or just have better AI when you are able to pump them full of bullets from a 2block hole and they just sit there, taking it. If the AI can't be better, I wouldn't be surprised if they suddenly go back to full health when the game determines you are exploiting their limited movement due to size in some future patch.

 

I don't really think they're OP, but I would prefer if they were passive until the player attacked, after that they'd be hostile and not become passive again.

 

Good idea, at X I just dig holes and obliterate everything, would be much more fun if they could break blocks.

 

Just get a Bonehammer from a lvl 10 planet and you'll annihilate them in 3-4 good hits.

 

Personally I think they need toning down. Every time I encounter one as is I just trap it in a dirt prison and attack it through the wall with a starcleaver sword I mean, two of them at a time + regular mobs on a tier 10 planet are impossible to take on without cheesing the fight. Also they drop crap on tier 10 planets for being 'elites'.

Thing is they can also kill you in 3-4 hits, and they're faster, can come in pairs like above, and regular mobs still mill about. (especially birds...) They need some kind of tweak. Maybe not a nerf, but something. I'd be fine with the difficulty actually if they dropped useful stuff.

 

My main issue with minibosses is just part of them not being balanced for sector X level gameplay, so I'm not sure anything I could say about it would be constructive, given that that tier isn't balanced yet anyway.

 

Personally I don't think Elite monsters are overpowered in comparison to normal ones, because they are basically just bigger, stronger and with more HP. But I do question if the monster in general are well balanced. For me the entirety of fighting in this game is based on not getting hit, because everything does a shitload of damage and healing items don't improve at all with levels. That's why killing a mini-boss is the same as killing a normal mob just takes a lot of time. But for someone who isn't that good a dodging attacks especially if the miniboss is flying and has ranged attacks I see why they can be rightfuly considered overpowered.
What displeases me a lot more is the lack of reward from these mini-bosses, as they have never dropped a single item that would be better then my weapon of the same level as that boss.
But the biggest issue that I have with monsters in general is the fact that every single one of them has to jump around during battle like it's mentally challanged making it both harder to hit and to dodge, unlessyou can predict where they land and position yourself correctly , which is not always possible.

 

With energy dash it is ridiculously easy to kill them without getting hit once, even when there are other mobs/minibosses around. But I do agree that thy whould drop better loot.

And where did you get that awesome hat?

 

I'd say 75% of minibosses I come across are killable with melee weapon and aggressive tactics. The other 25% are mobs that have so much speed that you can't comprehend any defense and have to resort to flying above them and using cheap moves (4 block high tunnel = win). One in particular would use "Grab" on me, and still attack every second while still holding onto me. WIth a shield I take just a few points of damage... but it never lets go. Just death waiting to happen. Another I recently fought had a giant eye and it would shoot out like a spear attack, coupled with its insane jump/movement speed, one of the hardest fights for me. Harder than bosses, which is sad.

Oh, and I've never yet seen one drop a legendary weapon. Just crap on top of crap uncommon melee weapons, never any guns, either. They need to be able to break blocks, but balancing first, sure.

 

Their loot needs to be much better for their worth later on in the game.

The biggest issue like others have said are the ones with light speed movement, and the ones with several dozen thousand health
If you're going to pit us against monsters with like 50k+ health then give us stuff that deal enough damage where I'm not just turning on an auto-clicker and coming back half an hour later

 

dig a hole they can't get in and shoot.

I was actually thinking they needed to be harder, like the other bosses.

 

The problem is that they are made by increasing hp/speed/damage rather than changing the ai and attack patterns, so they wind up just having cheap instant kills rather than actually requiring any level of skill. The ai is so bad you can still just trick them, and you can fly above them while killing them with gravity bubble, or just teleport behind them when they charge with blink. Or trap them, and they can't break out

 

No it isn't (unless they changed it recently.)

 

I agree wholeheartedly that the AI in this game could use some work; even just a small lip on a cliff can trap a monster as it is now.