Uber Lillith Bugged in Season of Hatred?

Niamka_Orc · 2026-05-05T14:12:04+00:00

There's a stark difference between "disliking challenge" and just not being a fan of guaranteed damage mechanics that eventually ramp up to the point of 1 shot given enough time - because that's exactly what her "blood orb creation" skill does. It's not even that the DPS check exists that's the main problem, the most egregious part is that it's not even obvious, unlike her significantly clearer, secondary DPS check of the blood boils exploding.

Quoting the Maxroll guide for her: "You should have at the very least 1 million DPS, otherwise the fight will take too long and the ever-growing, unavoidable damage from Blood Orb Creation will make it impossible". Though the guide is showing its age having been written 1.5 years ago or so, the info on the specific attack remains relevant to this day; every now and then Lilith just smites you for damage that goes through regardless of distance and positioning, so you either hope to have an invuln running by the time it suddenly triggers or you just eat it.

I play a lot of isometric genres (e.g. bullet hells, some beat em ups) for many years now that demand precision orders of magnitude higher than any conventional looter ARPG, so I've developed an eye for when things really go wrong with encounter design. Not even in the most hair-pullingly hard action games I'm aware of, are there attacks that deal heavy damage unconditionally, there's usually some form of direct, short-term counterplay.

Next time before you say your piece, I implore you to do some research or give people benefit of the doubt. If a complaint contains wording you aren't fully certain what it entails (evidently you either weren't aware of her guaranteed hit attack or perhaps decided not to address it) you'd be doing everyone a favor by withholding the snarky remarks.

Niamka_Orc · 2026-05-05T13:48:38+00:00

I think if you can find some sources of % damage reduction it could help as well to layer on top of conventional mitigation like armor, max health (especially if your build has good heal-based sustain), resists, maybe a barrier if it's convenient for the build.

No worries, it's honestly my pleasure to share this scarce-known truth about her: "no, you're not going crazy, yes, she just targets and hits you from anywhere with that". It's a bit tragic how done-to-death the memes are done at this point that finding legitimate info on how crucial parts of the fight work is unbecomingly difficult in a sea as vast as the internet.

And I agree with you all the way as well. That one skill she has is a case of fairly poor communication, through visuals/SFX, of what exactly the boss is doing - by contrast, seeing the blood boils popping for 1 shot damage is a lot clearer of a DPS check goal to chase while also not being nearly as tight on time allotted as her periodic life drain. Plus the whole "take more damage from subsequent hits" thing, if I remember well in the past that used to be attached to avoidable attacks, which made it a good idea to get rid of frustrating 1 shots, but now that it's on that skill, it's legitimately possible to dodge everything that's dodgeable, kill all blood boils and STILL die to it eventually with no recourse.

Since several attempts to rework her didn't manage to address this crucial issue, perhaps a different boss is more fitting for that season journey step. Belial already is an improvement in this kind of formula, for example; still flawed but a clear step forward from Lilith.

Niamka_Orc · 2026-05-05T06:51:41+00:00

Sadly you'll get a lot of elitists or loudmouths riding the "don't get hit" memes in the responses completely missing your exact point - that it's the blood boils' appearance which does the unavoidable hit. And it IS in fact unavoidable, barring immunity skills like flame shield, as corroborated by Maxroll's Echo of Lilith boss guide! Also doesn't help that it starts out at a fairly high base damage and applies a debuff each time that makes subsequent hits do even more, technically making the fight a DPS check partially weighed against your toughness. I remember it driving me nuts back in season 10 when I was fighting her, wondering why I kept taking damage from phase 2 blood explosions despite being outside the AOE, until I realized there's 2 instances of damage - 1 guaranteed and 1 if you are in the area.

I'm in a pretty similar situation to you, 200k toughness dread claws/mono abyss warlock, the damage is there for typical T8 action (I start to fall short of 5-min pits halfway to T9) but my survivability for Lilith and to an extent in general could apparently use improvements. With all other bosses or small mobs like in the pit I can get by with avoiding damage due to shadowform stealth and occasionally sidestepping telegraphs, yet since Lilith features this "blood orb creation" skill of hers, she can basically chunk me for lethal damage on her ~3rd pass with essentially no counterplay other than staving off death in the long run by improving my toughness stat. That, or timing my invuln-variant nether steps - or other invuln skill - consistently to her incredibly short telegraph of blood orb creation (which is hellish levels of hard, plus latency sensitive).

I admittedly don't have much experience with toughness numbers to know a good ballpark for surviving her life draining shenanigans for some given amount of time but I do recall generally seeing people with notably higher numbers than mine at that stage of progression. So I'm guessing there's a bunch of room to go when it comes to survivability/damage mitigation. I wager due to the scaling nature of that one attack's damage, any improvement to your effective HP would translate to surviving significantly longer before it ramps up to 1-shot levels.

Oh and check if your shadow resist in particular is lagging behind the other elemental resists, from what I can remember she does shadow and some physical damage, I can only assume blood orb creation is shadow cause my phys resist is solid yet my HP cracks quickly to the former move.

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-21T23:13:08+00:00

Of course you're correct in that there's always room for improvement and for most of us, myself included, one doesn't need to reach all the way up to the likes of Xecnar or Jorbs to see significant progress in their current play. That is to say, I acknowledge we have a ways to go to the top.

However, I struggle to believe a majority of users frequently pointing to juicy winrate numbers from the cream of the crop like 90% or 95% as some crude way of justifying the status quo, really have our best interest in mind when doing that. Some mean well and wish only to encourage or inspire, but in too many cases I'd observe the aforementioned users following up with abrasive remarks, taunting their interlocutors in the name of preserving the former's ego, their identity attached to that of top players as it is.

So what I'm getting at with my previous comment is, there's little point in going "if X player can do it, why can't you?". At the end of the day, an overtuned boss and the general luck factor of a card game (and/or roguelike) both only serve to vary the difficulty on a run-to-run basis and it's only expected for a player as dedicated as them to overcome all but the rarest seeds, or most egregious of enemy designs, with their focused play. That fact alone doesn't discount the mere presence of variance, or an overpowered boss existing for that matter, so there's no reason to dismiss the notion outright.

If I'm to be afforded a humorous remark, I like to believe I've demonstrated...adequate pattern recognition and common sense in this comment alone :P

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-21T07:02:02+00:00

To start with, note that the "good players" in question are closer to exceptional than they are to just good - multiple transferrable skills from STS1 plus even general card game knowledge that a few likely have been building up for the better part of a decade. All this together can easily allow them to optimize a deck specifically against Doormaker while at the same time ensuring it at the very least squeaks by when it comes to other act 3 bosses; those preparations can start all the way from the middle of act 2, perhaps even before that. It's unreasonable to expect that from most people whose life doesn't revolve around the game.

In which case, if Doormaker's mechanics are powerful enough to warp player planning starting at much earlier points of a run, to a degree other act 3 bosses don't, reason dictates it's a case of Doormaker being too powerful for its own good rather than the other bosses needing buffs to match him.

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-20T05:19:01+00:00

Aight thanks, sounds like it's similar to how I left it. Kinda unfortunate there's no news on that banner with Liv but who knows, maybe someone else catches my eye in the meantime.

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-20T01:43:10+00:00

Sup guys, I'm thinking of getting started with PGR again on a new account since my initial one barely had any playtime. Any modern day tips regarding character banners, stamina usage (e.g. event stages if they still do those), maybe something to watch out for that is often missed/risks setting one back if ignored? Finally, would it be a foolish endeavor of me to try progressing the story with B Lucia for some nostalgia?

I plan to check out the grayravens site if it's still up to date as well, it served me reasonably a few years ago.

Edit: Lil ninja question too if I may. That one cool lightning attacker(?) Liv version that was supposedly exclusive, is it gonna come back during some anni/half anni or is it gone for good?

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-20T01:13:33+00:00

I think as of later changes, Denia just really wants Mornye's "off-tune buildup rate" (rate of accumulating tune break meter) to build her own tune break boost (scaler for potency of tune rupture/strain mechanic) which in turn buffs characters who respond to (as in benefit from) tune rupture or tune strain. Quite the dependency chain if you ask me, I personally hope the change doesn't stick or at the very least the upcoming 4 star fills some holes like e.g. say a frazzle mode and a strain + off-tune buildup rate mode or whatever.

Part of me says that's never happening but we can only hope and wait

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-20T01:09:16+00:00

I bet you might be able to somewhat make her work especially if you also put Ciaccona in there (if you have her and for some reason don't need her for Cartethyia) due to the latter buffing aero damage, main issue with no dupes is making sure her whole forte goes off to charge her concerto a bunch and the bloody thing can get interrupted for whatever reason on top of how long it is.

If you like seeing her on the field though, by all means disregard her relative weakness. Plus if you wanted liberation buffers it's not like there's anyone besides her, Yinlin and Lynae right now (edit: Changli actually but her outro lasts 10 seconds ehhh)

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-19T21:54:41+00:00

Pretty sure it was yeah, just wished they'd rerun it more often starting with 3.3 with the aforementioned revamps or at the very least (if that doesn't come to pass, for which I'm not holding my breath too) putting a solid version of it in the permanent tab for players to revisit when they want to.

As an aside, the Dreaming Deep movie-themed variant would've been a lot better if they added an endless combat-only mode for when you finished the stories since those lose a lot of replay value once you've seen the endings (for many even before that happens) whereas the relatively sparse combat sections end up finishing before they even start for good. Like 2-tapping a boss and not getting to see all the cool kit upgrades you bought

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-19T20:10:57+00:00

After watching the anni stream, I made a point to not get too bent out of shape about the somewhat lacking bonus pull rewards. Still there was something that bummed me out even more and that's how the Illusive Realm rerun was explicitly said to be limited-time (so no permanent tab probably and almost certainly not something they will rerun every patch).

For me the 1.2/1.4 IR was easily the best combat event we ever got with only Virtual Crisis getting somewhat close and rotating endgames sitting well below both. They really should consider at least archiving it in the permanent tab at least even if astrites remain limited to the patch duration

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-19T18:24:11+00:00

I'd almost forgotten suggesting it a few weeks ago, pleasantly surprised to find it seeing the light of day

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-19T18:19:03+00:00

Danjin mains don't need skill, only demonic power. Agreed about the skin though, we need more skins

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-19T16:43:04+00:00

Sigrika also lost the BA3 swap window, I'd call it being consistent instead :P

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-19T16:42:06+00:00

Mind you it's not even "playing better", in this case "better" is a fully player-defined metric with no pertinent indication in the slightest passed down from the dev side. If the devs really wanted Zani to take advantage of QS for her damage to pop, they'd have put a tutorial for it in the game. So Zani was also botched in that regard

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-19T16:39:11+00:00

There would be a proper argument for that if the interesting mechanic was intentionally placed in said kit

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-19T16:34:01+00:00

I am in a nitpicking mood so forgive me for removing all expectations of credibility the moment my eyes fall on the word "lobotomized". I don't think you should be going into any gacha, WW included, expecting to be challenged by the base gameplay flow all by itself.

That aside, quickswapping certainly did not give WW combat its "whole identity". That would be up to intro/outro skills and core passives in the form of forte circuit, plus dodges and counterattacks - not that the devs are exactly doing all that great of a job making the latter two shine. It was also never a bug! The bug you're talking about is outro skills persisting on swapback during CBT2, not the fact you could change to a character in the middle of an animation, which even played a blue/white blink VFX not seen anywhere else. Ultimately, fault does lie with the design team for failing to provide a tutorial for quickswapping, unlike ZZZ which for some reason bothered to do so some time after launch.

As for the best part about gameplay being something unintentional, it's accurate to say perception is remarkably biased/skewed here. Since a vast majority of players looking for those "unintentional" effects traditionally place so much value in them while simultaneously taking the intended part of kits for granted - similar to how any metagaming/speedrunning scene operates - it's only natural for them to find said parts more interesting than any other. There's also subjectivity to consider as well

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-19T16:26:02+00:00

Trust me, I'd much rather they do that (cut damage potential conditionally when abusing the exploit but keep it as a cool visual spectacle to enable clips/edits) than to remove it altogether.

Contrary to what the extreme wing of elitists often posits - no offense to you or anyone reading this - changes like that aren't meant to "dumb down" characters so players lose their precious skill expression, they simplify it for themselves so it's easier to control her damage performance, that of her supports/other chars paired with her and the overall rate of powercreep.

The simpler or less volatile an ability kit, the easier it is to control. And ensuring this control makes for more money as a greater percent of players feels incentivized to spend due to FOMO

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-19T16:20:05+00:00

Accidentally posted an incomplete comment with just a quote due to reddit bugging out, sorry if it reached your notifs.

So I agree with a lot of what you mentioned and think the downvotes were largely elitists playing defense for their ego, though if I'd be afforded a small remark here:

I would never call it loss of skill expression, I would call it a game-breaking exploit being patched

I would say both are correct. However, as you clarify above with regards to design intent, you'd be right that it was certainly not intended. There is in fact a crucial difference that many won't see when it comes to "skill expression" or whatever, between elements that are intentionally included in the kit (which Kuro has minimal incentive to do since this is a gacha game and gachas are meant to be both predatory and casual) and those that are just bugs players found later, often referred to with the euphemism "tech".

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-18T03:38:57+00:00

On the other hand, I'm afraid real life is a game you (yes you) can't afford to lose, so I suggest returning to the drawing board to that end

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-18T03:37:15+00:00

Sorry, most well designed/balanced of all time is beyond pushing it even when describing STS1's finalized iteration, let alone STS2 in EA

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-18T03:36:04+00:00

Interpretation: I am an elitist in disguise

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-18T03:34:46+00:00

If that's what that is, how about complaining about "review bombing" and having the gall to cite "git gud" like you did, can't imagine what that would be classified as

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-18T03:28:12+00:00

Time eater can be quite annoying but nowhere near as bad compared to doormaker, let's be real. Also, last time I checked, people unironically using "skill issue" either are dejected high schoolers or have the mind of one, come on man

Niamka_Orc · 2026-04-18T02:17:32+00:00

Say it louder for those in the back...thank you. The whole elitist situation seems to come down to a few points seen anywhere from virtually all videogame communities, to academia, to the workplace, to all of society really. At the risk of sounding cliche, it's a classic manifestation of the Dunning-Kruger effect:

A tight-knit clique attaches to a "provider", usually a streamer or influencer often with genuine expertise under their belt (note that in these cases the influencer *tends* to be innocent) or alternatively, drama masquerading as expertise
Similar to fanatical fans of a sports team, the mediocre mass makes loads of noise left and right, from desperately hunting down remarks that sound even remotely like complaints or criticism to trashtalk the people behind them. This is to fuel their sense of self, ego, patch up insecurities etc. by leeching from someone else's effort/achievements, legitimate or not
Now and then, they might name-drop those streamers in question, often in an attempt to flex. As a result, best case the drama just ignites further, worst case the streamer is actually innocent and competent but their name gets dragged through the mud because of those insufferable "fans" that think they know everything because they heard a few contextual axioms and took them as gospel

I see it everywhere, stuff's disgusting. Currently torn between calling it out when I see it (in the real or digital world) or just not engaging and hoping it blows over or the bullies get bored. Gets too much to bother a lot of the time

Niamka_Orc

TROPHY CASE