THE BASIN |
Grimborn's Guide to Boss ModsA "boss" is a unique monster, frequently with a group of minions. You can always tell a unique monster by hovering your cursor over it: When the monster's name is in gold font, it's a unique. When the font is white, it's a normal monster, and when the font is blue it's a champion. Unique monsters tend to be the deadliest adversaries in the game. They have more hit points and often have higher resistances than other foes, but what makes them truly perilous is the set of modifiers they can spawn with. In Normal, bosses spawn with up to 3 mods. In Nightmare they get another mod, and in Hell they get yet one more. Boss mods come in 5 varieties, and we cover each of them below: Offensive AurasA boss can spawn with any one of seven auras from the paladin Offensive Auras tree. You can see what each one looks like on my Aura Page: The Arreat Summit publishes the skill levels that uniques spawn with for their auras, but players studying the game code report that the AS numbers are wrong. Personally I'd trust the players' figures on this, but both sets of numbers are presented here. First, here's what the Arreat Summit reports:
Note that the numbers for Blessed Aim are obviously incorrect. An mlvl 90 unique in Hell wearing Blessed Aim does not have it at skill level 90, else it would have a radius many screens wide. This is one reason to trust the players' numbers, which are here:
Each aura has its own graphical emanation. Holy Fire, Holy Freeze and Holy Shock appear on the boss, and pulse damage onto players. Conviction appears under the feet of both the boss wearing it and on you (or other party members) when within the aura's range. The other auras appear on the boss and on all other monsters within the aura's radius, but not on you or anyone in your party. All offensive auras stack with one another. So when multiple bosses are in an area, they frequently wear different aura mods and each of their auras is in effect. Those auras may not, however, all be visible at once. A given player/monster displays just one aura at a time. So when multiple auras affect an individual character the server rotates which one is shown at any time on any individual. CursesA boss wearing the "Cursed" mod casts the Amplify Damage curse from the necro Curses tree. The curse displays as a halo in the image of a flame over the head of each player cursed. It looks like this:
The Amp curse increases the amount of physical damage that you take, technically by reducing your resistance to physical damage by 100%. If you have no physical damage resistance, then all hits do double their physical damage. If you have 50% physical resists, then Amp causes you to take triple the physical damage you would sustain without the curse. Although Amp is the only curse that a unique wears as a mod, a total of 8 curses are available to varous monsters in different parts of the game. Six of them are cast by a great many mosters throughout the game and are on the Necro's Curse tree: The final two curses are cast only by monsters in the Succubus family of monsters (and Baal), and are not available to players: All Monster Curses are at skill level 3/6/10 in Normal/Nightmare/Hell except for Amp Damage, which is at the skill level equaling one quarter of the monster's level. Unlike auras, only one curse can affect you at any one time. Whatever curse is cast on a player overwrites any earlier curse. To see how each curse displays, plus statistics for each level of spell, see my Curse Page. Elemental EnchantmentsA boss can spawn with any of three different elemental Enchantments: Cold, Fire, and Lightning. A boss can and frequently does spawn with two of them, but cannot have as many as three. Each one adds different characteristics to the boss's attack. A Cold Enchanted monster has cold damage added to each hit, gets an increased Attack Rating, has 75% extra Cold Resistance, and launches a massive Frost Nova when it dies. Fire Enchanted bosses add fire damage to each hit, get extra AR, have 75% extra Fire Resistance, and inflict significant damage within a 4-yard radius when they die. The death explosion can do massive damage, so melee characters should back well away from a Fire Enchanted boss for a ranged attacker to deliver the killing hits. Especially in Nightmare, FE explosions (such as of Council membersand the Ancients) are often insta-kills to characters, even when their life is boosted by BO or Oak. Extreme caution, especially in hardcore, is advised. Lightning Enchanted bosses add lightning damage to each hit, get extra AR, and have 75% extra Lightning Resistance. LE monsters do not explode or cause damage when they die. Instead, they emit Charged Bolts every time they are hit. Multishot no longer applies to the Charged Bolt emissions of a Lightning Enchanted boss. Bosses with multiple enchantments are bugged, and emit dangerous (and in some cases invisible) elemental explosions. When a Fire Enchanted/Cold Enchanted boss dies it emits two fire and two cold explosions. When a Fire Enchanted/Lightening Enchanted boss (including beetles) goes into hit recovery it emits an invisible fire explosion. When a Cold Enchanted/Lightening Enchanted boss (including beetles) goes into hit recovery it emits an invisible cold explosion. If the boss is locked into hit recovery mode, the invisible explosions continue. When a Cold+Fire+Lightening Enchanted boss (or CE+FE beetle) goes into hit recovery it emits both invisible fire and cold explosions. When it dies it emits two fire and two cold explosions. ImmunitiesBeginning late in Normal and then increasingly in Nightmare and Hell, uniques and other monsters spawn with immunities. Often, immunities result when a resistance modifier combines with the monster's base resistance to create an immunity. A monster wearing 100% resistance or more is considered "immune." There are six different immunities:
EnhancementsIn addition to auras, curses, enchantments and immunities, uniques can spawn with 8 enhancements to their normal skills and characteristics. None of these enhancements displays as an aura or other graphical indicator (beyond the mods listed in the monster's title block). Here they are: Extra StrongThis mod mimics the effect of dramatically increasing the Strength points of a monster. Since the game doesn't attribute character points to monsters, the Extra Strong mod triples the minimum and maximum physical damage in a monster's attack (assuming its attack does physical damage), and increases its To-Hit chance by 25%. Extra FastThis mod increases the velocity of both the boss and its minions, similar to the paladin's Vigor skill though without the graphics of Vigor. An Extra Fast unique also gets a 100% increase to AR, though the boss's minions do not. Mana BurnA boss wearing this mod doubles his To-Hit chance and does quadruple damage against your mana. The mod also adds 20% Magic Resistance (though the Arreat Summit lists it as 75%) to whatever other resists the boss wears. As of 1.10 a mana burn boss's minions also have the mana burn mod. Stone SkinA Stone Skin boss gets +50% physical resistance (though the Arreat Summit lists it as 80%), making it very hard to kill by physical attack. This mod also triples the boss's natural defense rating. Magic ResistantThis mod adds 40% to the fire, lightning, and cold resistances of a boss. This added resistance can give a boss multiple elemental immunities. Spectral HitThis mod doubles a unique's To-Hit chance and grants +20% resists for fire, lightning and cold. It also adds magic and/or elemental damage to the monster's attack, though the mechanics are not universally agreed upon. Arreats Summit claims a boss with this mod adds only one form of magic damage (fire, lightning, cold, poison, or magic) to each hit, but some players believe multiple types of magic damage are added simultaneously, similar to the paladin's Vengeance skill. TeleportA boss with this mod teleports away when its health gets low. This mod also conveys the ability for the boss to rejuvinate substantial amounts of its own life. MultishotA multishot boss takes a missile attack (assuming the boss uses one), and emits multiple missiles with each attack. Reading Boss ModsSurviving and defeating a boss is often a matter of knowing what mods you are facing. Auras and curses can be read from their unique graphical display. Several other mods (like Extra Fast) can be deduced from the behavior of a boss or its minions. But most mods beyond auras and curses can be identified only in the boss's title block, in the small gold font beneath the boss's name that appears as your cursor hovers over the boss. Locating the boss with your cursor and recognizing the mods in the heat of battle is a skill unto itself. Learning that skill can save the lives of your characters and those of your mates many times over. Calling Boss ModsA dead giveaway to supremely skilled players is their ability to call boss mods rapidly. The best hc players in the game will declare "leb" or "pi" or "fana" while you and everyone else in the party are still pushing cursors over the crowd of enemies. Calling out dangerous mods is essential to warning against dangers before anyone gets killed, and to forestall anyone in the party from taking the wrong action (like launching a fire attack against a fire immune leb). Because speed in calling out mods is essential, shorthand references are commmon. Different groups and different realms have differing conventions, but here are some commonly used abbreviations for calling boss mods:
Many thanks to librarian for information included in this June '05 update. |
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