Greetings everyone,

This has turned into quite the wall of text, I appreciate it if you read and comment :)

For starters

Today I have spent 5 hours non-stop training Bari's C7 difficulty and I am not happy at all. It is my first Calamity 7 boss I have seriously tried beating.

I like tenacious boss fights, but not when their design has such brutal flaws.

I am on my Main character, a Succession Berserker with 278/280/371 AP/AAP/DP. All Blackstar/ GODR.

The most I have reached in that time, using elixirs or not, was around 45%HP.

For crystals I want to mention I use 4x 1% attack speed (olucas, ah'krad) and with exquisite cron meal I have 5/5 in attack speed, crit and movement speed.

Lacking pocket money for vell's heart yet, I use destruction spirit stones, mainly for their 4%atk speed yet again. Addons with 10%/ 7% attack speed too ofc.

Special mention for all of these as without a lot of attack speed there is just no chance in hell.

For the non-zerkers, I will also mention that my sole 0.3-0.5 sec iframe skill is Shake-Off, which is a short sideways movement and non-pass-through. I consider it quite alright, it is reasonably fast and the stamina it consumes isn't that bad since zerkers do not use much stamina otherwise. There seems to be no cooldown on iframes in the instance, as I have found I can dodge attacks as long as there is stamina, cooldown up or not. It would be utterly impossible to clear even Bari C6 if it weren't for that fact. More on that further down.

Disclaimer

I am prepared for the flak by (probably) sorc mains who will cry about how easy life as a zerker is and how it is all down to skill issues ;)

Jokes aside, this is meant to be a serious input to hopefully make the boss fights more fun. I imagine other classes have similar issues, so be my guest, fellow players and please leave your suggestions, too. Personally, I feel the fine line between challenging and frustrating is really overstepped here.

The issues I found so far

1) THIS IS THE MOST PRESSING ISSUE: THE MAP

Though surely intentionally cluttered with obstacles, it's a bit over the top. It is downright frustrating how you always get stuck at some point while trying to maneuver the absolute MESS that is this boss fight. I am talking exclusively about the map as the hordes of wraiths belong to the challenge imo.

Especially the obstacles right in front of the tree NEED an adjustment. I have tried and tried and tried and yes, sometimes the only way to free myself is to climb. Using W+SPACE. Which will make my character use Lavapiercer unless that skill happens to be on cooldown. So I have to stand still for around half a second, to prevent that. Then climb up. When the clunky animation is finished and I can try to iframe, I am dead in 90% of cases. At C7 you need to be really lucky for neither the red lights, Bari's AoEs, the wraiths' explosions or one of the summons' AoE to thrash you while being a sitting duck. Or even several of those at once. It really kills the fun and frustrates me to no end.

2) Bari's AoEs and how they are displayed

With how random her attack pattern is, it is really annoying that the time between red/ orange/ blue/ whatever colour AoE warnings and their actual impact is far from consistent. This is most frustrating on her pulling AoE when you are supposed to hit the tree. It is no fun either when she has all her summons out, the "light missiles" are flying at you and the "guardian" thing sitting on the tree spams it's AoE at you. All this while evading CC by the ton of wraiths and then you eat her attack to the face because it was not displayed properly. This happens mostly on the "God" summon attack that hits pretty hard and instakills on back attack. As a result, an otherwise very rewarding challenge is simply a big mess right now. To be clear: The attack is quite often NOT displayed at all or only right the moment it is in my face already.

I don't know if this is only my issue. I have tried several different graphics settings, remastered, High/Medium, Slider "Prioritize effects / performance" all the way to "effects". Disabled "remove far away effects". Also a high amount of effect opacity. Anything I could find, basically. To no avail.

3) "Mechanics" and the pull-AoE specifically

I will say this upfront: Her standing so close to the tree that you can not hit it on so many occasions is simply dumb. Frustrating. This fight is messy and very hard as is, why deny the players the single way they have to slow down their elusive opponent as the mech suggests? I don't know if it is intentional or just bugged, but even when I get lucky and she stands far on the mech phase, I still get hit by the eruptions of her circle AoE (or at least the same timing) in many cases. The pull extends past range too and yoinks me away from the tree quite often, which in turn prevents DPS and I can not do the mechanic. Or mostly worse, get pulled into wraith and from there it's CC, then death. Feels great every time. For clarification, Lavapiercer, or even Lavapiercer + Predatory Hunt (fast and long jump) is totally caught by the pulling, sometimes even with CC. Superarmour? Pffft. ONLY Shake-Off (my iFrame) can negate the pull, but it is short-distance, can not pass through mobs and most importantly, does zero damage. Picture me hopping away sideways like a crossbreed of rabbit, crab and ape. Experience will vary by class for sure.

Add this on top of the tree guarding thing that throws AoEs while you hit the tree and have I mentioned tons of wraiths yet? And "light missiles" that deal a TON of damage and will hit you in the back while hitting the trunk? Every time I TRY the mech it is just 90% death chance anyway. Either because of pull crap or because I can not properly move away from the tree after mech as cited in 1).

4) Other annoying stuff

The wraiths' timing when exploding after I approach them is sometimes consistent and sometimes all over the place. Again, this is hard as heck already and it should be, but it gets frustrating with random crap like that. Intentional? At least it does not seem to be.

The random lightning attack that Bari does, especially when she does it with the "God" summon attack above her head is completely unpredictable and it often leads to random, idiotic instant death. This element is utter crap and should be patched out ASAP.

The "light missiles" that seem to always attack when I could actually hit the tree for once. If not then, after the tree mech actually goes through, they hit me when I try to DPS on Bari while she can't move for 10 seconds. This is so annoying because at some point, with her teleporting all the time, summoning tons of wraiths, summoning other bosses who annoy you and throwing big attacks your way herself, you can not hit her enough. And even within the one window that at least chains Bari herself down a short while, those lights regularly prevent even this. Even if I don't die until the end, I will be hard pressed to make it before the time limit wipes me out.

Closing thoughts

I am aware that there are about 8 or 10 zerkers on EU who have done C7 Bari last week (checked on Saturday). Today, there were 2. So yes, it is possible to do it, or so it seems. But the amount of frustration to finally get there is just not worth the rewards. I also hope I am not the only one who thinks "But XYZ beat it" is not an excuse for a lack of quality. This boss fight does not deserve the "challenging" label yet in my opinion. More suitable are "frustrating" and "discouraging" at this point.

I have not mentioned my ping throughout this post yet. It is usually around 25-50 ms when I play any games on EU servers which isn't great but also not terrible. It should be in line with many other people's latency, judging from online games I played before BDO.

Now I am curious what it was like for others. Have you tried or even beat C7 Bari?

PA, please put some more love and good work into the Boss rush, I can imagine Gumiho and Songkashi C7 being hell on earth as well. All these bosses are VERY nice in my opinion and they deserve all the polish they need to be freaking hard to beat but in a rewarding way, not frustrating and randomly punishing. That really saps motivation and it's a shame.

So long,

Sky

EDIT

After trying several more hours (around 6-7 more), the frustration has only solidified.

CCed through Forward Guard, through iframe, random hits while no AoE circle is remotely in reach and no projectile comes flying. Just "Thonk" hit sound and suddenly lose 1.5k HP+ and sometimes that is the hit spelling doom. Overall super annoying, unpredictable, useless.

FIX THIS THING!

And while at it, keep in mind that some classes need to stand still and unprotected to deal damage. Which is nigh impossible to do without dying randomly on this fight.

homie, i feel you <3

i did her as succ zerk too.

Best part is when she announces her tree mechanic but it got delayed by previous mechanics or AOEs so she instantly starts casting the suck aoe...

i found out (for me at least) you can spin on the tree not only you won't get stuck but also won't get back attacked by the red balls. BUT if her clones spawned more red orbs you are ded still or general hits at same time.

But i get her to below 10% where shit is more spammy, so many aoes you hardly have time to clear zombies and then they block your movement (not talking about the arena itself).

What i learned: If you miss tree mechanic 1 time, you (me) won't make it in time.

Boss is so shit, get me enraged every time i die to bullshit!!!

Have you tried bamboo? Have fuuuuuun >:)

Ah yes, truly beautiful, that.

I trained a bit more but it is still impossible for me because even when I manage everything else, then she gets me with the random lightning shit (which stuns and makes me eat all the other crap flying around) and there is nothing I can do. Unless Claws FG is accidentally up right at that time, it's just a random instant death. Leaving aside freeing myself from the tree, that lightning attack and the pull AoE hitting despite being out of reach needs to be fixed and then it will still be hell but at least without random annoyances. Also, don't make her do the pull right ON the tree for heaven's sake.

I haven't come around to Bamboo at high calamity yet. After a break from FEB till 2 weeks ago, I only recently started the shrines and with 5/5 limit per week, there is not much else but to take them one at a time. My completist curse just desperately makes me want to finish her now that I started :S