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Can We Tone Down Hans' and Patty's Melee a Bit?

GigaBowserX

Grizzled Veteran
Jun 10, 2019
81
25
Okay, maybe this is just me, but after playing over 1,000 hours on this game, I can safely say that Patriarch and Hans account for approximately 70-80% of my losses that have occurred on Boss Waves. Sure, I've lost to one of the other three plenty of times, but I always breathe a sigh of relief if I see that I'm not stuck with one of those original two boneheads. Getting them as the boss is practically a death sentence.

Yes, I know I need to "git gud" and play around cover and such, and I have spent a good deal of time looking up the various strategies for both bosses. However, the one major thing that stands out to me that makes them feel unfair is their melee damage. I'm fine with having to play around their ranged attacks (although those are still borderline overpowered; Patty's rockets or a direct hit from one or two late-stage Hans greandes can insta-kill you, and getting caught out of cover while they're using the chaingun or rifles means you'll get mowed down in a matter of seconds).

I feel like it's not too much to ask that we shave 30% or so off of their melee damage, and maybe tone down the massive knockback a bit, especially on the Patriarch. With such powerful ranged options at their disposal, it seems unfair for them to also sprint SO fast and have such massive melee damage and knockback. Cover is the primary defense against them, but if they get close enough to lunge at you, the knockback can send you flying so far that you have no hope of reaching another piece of cover before it's too late, not to mention that half of your health or more will be gone. Patty can also shoot you with rockets or the chaingun almost IMMEDIATELY after knocking you 50 feet away from your cover, which is just lame.

Add to that the fact that they are the only two bosses that can actually heal themselves - and THREE TIMES at that - and they seemingly have no weakness. If you manage to stop the Patriarch before he heals, which is a toss-up at best, then it's an easy takedown. But if you're playing solo, that's nearly impossible to do. And while Hans is a piece of cake on solo, I think we can all agree that Hans is one of the most - if not THE most - difficult boss on multiplayer. (Why his health pool is so small on solo and becomes so massive on multiplayer is beyond me.)

I just find that it makes the game feel un-fun and unfair/unbalanced sometimes when Hans and Patriarch can one-shot you at range and STILL hit like a freakin' semi truck at melee distance. It's ridiculous that they can hit just as hard or harder than King FP; I mean, he's supposed to be the KING of melee, but he ends up being so much easier due to his lack of any sort of range apart from his laser (which can be easily avoided by simply crouching). Hans is particularly egregious in this area, as his melee damage during his final "red health" stage seems to just get buffed out the wazoo.

The other three bosses are more fun to play against, because I feel like I usually have at least somewhat of a fair chance against them. This is because they mostly have ONE major strength that you have to learn to play around, rather than the THREE that Hans and Patty have (range, melee, AND healing). With King and Abomination, you know that you need to stay out of melee range at all costs. They still have one or two ranged options (laser, barf, and little green crap-dudes), but they have armor or shielding rather than healing, and it's possible to keep them at bay more easily if you can stay one step ahead. Matriarch is kind of the opposite, where her ranged attacks are the biggest threat. But as long as you can kite her around cover to avoid that, you can be pretty sure that you won't suddenly find yourself rag-dolling on the Defeat screen if she DOES manage to land a couple of melee hits.

This was very long-winded, for which I apologize. But:

TLDR: I feel it's not too much to ask for a reasonable nerf to Hans' and Patty's melee damage - somewhere in the neighborhood of a 30% reduction - and maybe at least a slight reduction in their melee knockback. It would feel refreshing to fight them knowing that they have at least one SLIGHT disadvantage, rather than the dread I feel almost every time they show up.
 
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[Google Translation]i dont no ENG,sorry.


I played KF2 for 2500 hours I disagree with you.if the melee damage of hans and Patriarch weakens, this will make them the simplest boss.The game will also become simpler without too many challenges.Just need a medical soldier in your team, you can complete the game with a simple left mouse button and keyboard S.

Let me guess, when the boss is about to use a melee attack, you did not pull out the combat dagger to dodge.

Although the combat dagger is weak, no matter what the perks dagger, can avoid 20% of the damage.

If the medical soldier treats you, you will gain an additional 30% damage resistance. (Medicine level 20 skills [Coagulant Booster].

Suppose Patriarch uses a melee attack on you. You should have taken 80 damage.but when you dodge with a dagger, You will only take up to 64 damage . if have medical soldiers try to heal you properly. You will only take about 50 damage.

30% or so off of their melee damage?
80x0.7=56
After using the dagger=56x0.8=44
medic coming=56x0.8x0.7=31
31 damage? that it ? a BOSS ?
why not spawn 10FP to instead the hans and Patriarch?


Let me guess again, your teammates did not choose the right class and weapon, which caused hans and Patriarch to use a melee attack, causing your team to die.

Hans: It only takes RPG to kill easily,Because the RPG damage taken by Hans is multiplied by 1.2
Don't hit Hans directly with RPG.
Shoot the floor!
Otherwise Hans will use the jet pack to dodge the RPG

Patriarch: use the Sharpshooter,If Patriarch wants to escape, use Freeze Grenade. You can stop the Patriarch running.Then you have enough time to kill it.

The best solution: buy Hemoclobber
Dodge 40% -50% melee damage
can heal your self 30
Pricing $1100
 
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This is all true. However, I strongly dislike this kind of thing in games where it gets to the point that you pretty much HAVE to use very specific skills/loadouts to survive. What if it's a small team and we don't have a medic? Should someone always be forced to switch to medic for the boss wave, even if they feel like playing a different perk? I want there to be a viable way for all - or at least most - of the perks to handle various situations. I know every perk needs to have its different role, but medic is already the first or second-most OP perk out there, so that's an overall balance issue.

Now, I know how to parry. But for those of us who don't have inhuman split-second reflexes and muscle memory, it's really quite difficult to pull out the knife in the micro-second just before a boss's melee attack AND press the parry button - not to mention that some perks swap weapons more slowly than others. If you're trying to unload all your ammo into the boss, you're going to need to keep your guns out for as long as possible. Of course, you could just carry your knife around all the time, but then you might as well just go Berserker, which is every bit as OP as the Medic.

I love the Hemoclobber. I really do. But I want to use it on the two classes that it was MADE for. It seems silly that I would have to buy the same melee weapon on any perk for EVERY SINGLE BOSS WAVE just in case it's Hans or Patriarch. Aside from that, the two scenarios you gave are definitely ideal...but without using cheat-type console commands to reveal which boss will appear (which totally ruins the aspect of waiting to see which random boss you get), how would any of us know that the boss will be Patriarch, and so we need a Sharpshooter's freeze 'nades? Or Hans, so we need a Demo? We also know that the RPG is basically the most OP thing after Medic and Berserker, so again, that speaks to balance issues in the game as a whole, which would be a lot harder to implement than a simple stat change to a couple of bosses.

In conclusion, I was trying to figure out a very simple way to make these two boss fights a little easier on the more underappreciated perks. I know Berserker+Medic is the "meta," but it's no fun when the entire game becomes "play this exact way or lose." I mean, there are probably all kinds of complicated ways we could discuss of how to change various weapons and perks to help deal with these things, and I've seen many people on forums who LOVE to do that kind of thought-tinkering. But at the end of the day, those kinds of sweeping changes are so difficult to implement that they pretty much never get implemented at all.

But a straight decrease in the melee damage of two bosses? That's do-able. That's something so easy that even Tripwire would be willing to do it (they didn't seem to be this lazy before, but the last several updates have definitely shown a different side to them).

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this would just make these two bosses completely and utterly trivial, as you say. But as someone who likes to play all 10 perks, not just 'serker and Medic, this is how I feel about this topic. I'm just throwing it out there to see if it's even a viable idea.
 
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Hmmm...that's undestandable. However, it is not exactly that way.

Yes, they can heal. But without heal, pat don't really have much of health. I even beat him solo as zerker with battleaxe. Tough but lots of fun.
Hans however...I'm not sure, but I mentioned that all health that he recovers goes away faster that his actual health.

Pat surely is dangerous, but becomes much easier when you find something to run around like van or something. Most of his ranged attacks are easily avoidable.
Hans is also VERY weak now. Do you remember times when his gas dealt much more damage and was, like, everywhere? So now his ranged attacks are his weakest. So he is only dangerous at close range. HE nades? Nah. It is predictable. He throws 2 HEs after first heal attempt and then right after last healing. So run when he heals last time and then every time he throws something.

And I'm really surprised that you think those are hard. Every boss was much more punishing years ago. Especiaclly abomination (the one that farts). And now they are just...slightly challenging.

And I can't remember any perk I haven't killed pat or hans solo on suicidal.
 
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Prepare for a giant wall of text below! 😅 If you don't get through reading it all, that's okay.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm kinda just complaining about my two least-favorite bosses at this point :LOL: And I do win against them sometimes, at least. It's not like I lose to them 70% of the time that they come up; they just make up that 70-80% bulk of my TOTAL losses on any boss. (It's probably somewhere in the neighborhood of a 50-ish percent "loss" rate for me when it comes to wins vs. losses when I face Hans specifically, and maybe a 60-ish percent loss rate for Patty. I wonder if there's any way to pull up actual statistics like this based on your game/match history? Probably not, but it would be awesome if you could.)

I guess I should also mention that when I'm playing solo, it's usually on Suicidal or HoE. For co-op, it's usually Hard or Suicidal. And I haven't played for THAT long - like I said, I'm at a little over 1,000 hours - and I'm trying to prestige all the perks up to maximum, so I rarely ever play with the advantage of having the level 25 skills. This means that 'm usually playing somewhere between level 15 and level 24, depending on the perk and the difficulty. So that might have something to do with it. I could see myself having an easier time with all perks at level 25 every single time.

I do somewhat remember when Hans' gas was quite a bit more lethal (and maybe his HE grenades, as well?). I most CERTAINLY remember when the Abomination was still somewhat of a threat. Now you can knock him down and stumble and slow him so much that he seems more like a glorified giant Bloat than a real boss :LOL: It's just really bad if you get some tiny room like Descent to fight him on, where his little green craps can surround you.

So yeah, you make good points. At the end of the day, I guess nerfing Hans or Patriarch in any substantial way would probably just render them little more than a joke for a competent team with at least one Berserker and a Medic. Like I said, I'm just kinda thinking out loud here, lol.

If I COULD have a nerf, maybe a slight nerf to their sprinting speed would be more reasonable - say, 15% or so? It's just so weird to me that they're SO dang fast. According to the KF2 wiki and spreadsheet numbers, due to the + or - 10% randomization of movement speed, either one of them can easily reach speeds that are just as fast as an enraged King FP! (King has a chance that he could be sliiiiightly faster than them, but only VERY slightly.) This is even MORE of a problem when you consider that you can't just sprint straight away from Hans or Patty in the open like you would with King FP, since they can suddenly switch to ranged attacks (except for when Hans is chasing you to try and heal). In fact, it's pretty much useless to run from Patty at all due to his chaingun and missiles, which is why we all know that pretty much your ONLY option is to kite him around cover to avoid his ranged stuff and pray you don't make one little movement mistake that allows him to catch up to you for a melee attack.

I know that you can slow bosses down, but that depends on your perk, skill, and weapon loadouts, and the slowing effect only lasts for a really short time on bosses and has a very long cooldown.

I still think the fact that Hans and Patty can hit nearly as hard on melee as King Fleshpound does is pretty bogus, though. (Well, unless you mess up and get hit three or four times from one of King FP's spin attacks.) Even worse, their melee RANGE is actually BIGGER than King FP's! That DEFINITELY doesn't make sense.

Meanwhile, poor King FP can't even use his one ranged option - his laser - while he's enraged/sprinting! You can easily exploit this because since you're free to just run straight away from him, so if you have Gunslinger, Medic, or Berserker movement speed boosts, you can often kite an enraged King FP around the map almost indefinitely - and that's not even counting any speed boosts from Medic darts/healing!

I don't know. Maybe, instead of a nerf to anyone, we should just get a BUFF to King FP, and ESPECIALLY Abomination? (Maybe for Matriarch, too, but her current strength level seems to be more up for debate, depending on who you ask.) That way, they at least wouldn't seem so ridiculous compared to these deadlier killers - well, deadlier to me, anyway. :LOL:

And if you happened to make it this far down in the post: Just out of curiosity, which boss(es) do you personally consider the hardest? (I realize it might be different depending on whether you're playing solo or multi.) A lot of people seem to think Matriarch is really hard, but I feel like a big part of that is because they're not nearly as used to her as the older bosses yet. I've only found her troublesome on certain custom maps that have little to no cover or corners to run around. (That's mostly based on solo, of course, but the few times I've faced her on co-op didn't seem so bad, either.) For me, personally, I'd put her about on-par with King FP, or maybe even slightly easier, depending on the map.
 
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