Hey all, Saintone here, updating this post as of September 20th, 2016.
- Bosses respawn on a four hour field respawn timer, with the exception of the Dullahan sphere which comes up every two.
- World bosses will spawn on alternating maps and display a message on the screen when they spawn. They incur an eight hour debuff which prevents you from getting world boss loot or contributing logged damage (you can still hurt the boss, it just won’t count for anything) while the debuff is active. The debuff is eight hours, and also counts down while offline.
- It gets buggy sometimes. Sometimes, the boss simply won’t respawn.
- Field bosses are different from world bosses. They spawn with no message, and do not incur a debuff on players (credit to LunarRabbit for discovering this). They always spawn on one map.
- With the exception of Dullahan, whose event spawns him in the center, bosses have static but random spawn points. They can spawn at any one of many given spots.
- After server maintenance every Tuesday early morning, the spawn timers reset. The game acts as if every boss is now dead as soon as the server opens, and most non-message bosses spawn by 9 AM server time. Message bosses will usually display a “The boss will spawn soon” message across your screen within two hours of the servers coming up, which tells you the boss will spawn in that channel and map in two hours. The exception is Dullahan and Kubas, whose events are available as soon as the server opens.
- When a channel has no players in it where a boss would spawn, there’s a high probability that the channel will crash, forcing the timer to reset. You can camp a channel for the duration of the respawn timer to ensure that it will spawn in light of this.
- Sometimes bosses will spawn extraordinarily out of place (whether by channel or time). They will usually have a clover buff on them, indicating they’re a rare spawn.
Because of the debuff system you may run into unpopular field bosses occasionally that no one wants to kill to get the debuff. But valuable non-message bosses such as Canceril for example can still be camped in light of this, since they won’t debuff the player after.
Many low level bosses are sought after by high level players, since they still provide endgame loot. An example of this is Violent Kerberos.
• Loot is distributed to the top six damage dealers. Party DPS is not factored into this. When the boss dies, numbers will appear in speech bubbles similar to dungeons and mission bosses showing who dealt the most damage in ranking order.
• Anybody who is in the party with any of these six players is given loot as well, regardless of how much damage they dealt (they could deal no damage at all if they want, and wait in the corner). If they are debuffed, they will not receive loot.
• If you are currently debuffed by a world boss, any damage you inflict will reduce the boss’ HP without factoring the damage you’ve dealt to anyone accountable. Therefore you cannot win a cube for someone else.
• Reviving in ANY capacity should not immediately reset the amount of damage you’ve done to a boss. THIS IS NOT THE CASE IN DUNGEON MAPS, which actually warp you outside the dungeon. For example, dying in Mage Tower 5/F while fighting Noisy Mineloader revives you in Fedimian Suburbs, which wipes your damage (clarified below).
• Zoning out or logging out will wipe damage contribution up until that point for you personally. The short: in a lengthy encounter it’s not worth it to zone out to re-supply or repair unless it’s the very beginning of the fight.
• September 20th Edit: Skills that wipe aggro (Fade, Cloaking) wipe damage contribution towards a boss. This mechanic is, somehow or another, unique to the boss (dungeon, mission, field, world) ranking system.
For the tanks and CC-focused players out there, I’m going to preface this next segment with, sorry. Tanks are not needed in world bosses right now besides for one at Demon Lords to hold it in one place.
What is needed is strong supports. Players who can bolster the strength of an individual on their team to carry them through the fight. Support comes in a number of ways.
- Making sure the DPS does not die. If they die, you’ve lost your chance at loot. Sometimes accidents happen. Many strong DPS players don’t have high HP pools.
- Providing additional damage. Priest buffs, Thaumaturge buffs. Spirit Chain additional damage provisionals.
- Providing additional stats. Linker C3 is able to unite everyone in the parties’ stats together for a period of time, allocating everybody’s most powerful stat to everyone else (Umbilical Cord/Life Line).
- Reducing cooldowns. Pass (Chronomancer), Statue of Goddess Laima (Dievdirbys) are good here.
What can I do if I’m not a support? If you’re a lower-equipped DPS character and your build is not suited for world bosses, your best odds are joining a party with a strong DPS in it. If you’re a support, advertise that.
If the boss is not Dullahan and is instead one of the other bosses who can spawn in a number of random spots, try to join a party to at least provide an additional set of eyes. Parties typically place one party member in each of the spawn points (which you will learn with time, doing these bosses) so that as soon as the boss spawns in, they can alert the rest of their team to home in on that position. It is almost always beneficial to have more than one strong DPS as a contingency in case your main DPS is too far away from the spawn of the boss** (spread your DPS characters across the map). Better one of them joins the fight from 75% to contribute damage, than only one DPS who joins the fight from 30% and never gets a chance to contribute.
Some players will offer services to help you kill bosses as well. They’ll kill the boss with the debuff active or inactive and the damage you deal, little as it may be, will occupy one of the six spots due to the few people there.
You can also shout via Megaphone if you find a boss to enlist help from the world, but it’s possible others will try to snipe the boss without helping you secure loot. Slightly riskier, but better than the alternative of fighting it alone if you’re underpowered.
I hope this sheds a little bit of light into World Bosses a bit.
