Talk:Boss

Shouldn't the Colosso Finalists also be considered as bosses? I mean, they fit all the criteria. Slax01 09:51, January 20, 2010 (UTC)

I don't see why not,but either way, this page is very well done! :) Caasi 13:48, January 20, 2010 (UTC)

The line between an actual boss encounter and a scripted encounter with a stronger-than-typical enemy isn't very clearly defined; the nine levels of mini-bosses in Crossbone Isle, the Djinn, the Mimics, and the Mad Plants are all these kinds of enemies, and might seem close to the actual bosses through various perspectives. I dunno, to me, that seems like the group the Colosso Gladiators would belong in. (It also doesn't seem right to put them in as bosses because they're the only enemies in the series that are fought in the form of one-on-one duels.)

As for the page itself, it's a good idea, but I'm not sure whether it should go as far as to spoil what the final boss of each game is right off the bat. For Fusion Dragon, I think it'd be better if it's just called "Final Boss" and links to the Fusion Dragon article, and instead of the fusion dragon image there's like an image of a question mark or something. Otherwise, if we do the same thing for Golden Sun DS' bosses, we might get criticized for making whatever awesome final boss of that game is be made overly public and "spoiled" in advance. Erik Jensen ^{(Appreciate me here!)} 18:36, January 20, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that's why I put spoiler tags up, but questionmarking it is even better, good catch (though once DS is released, I reckon we've got bigger problems than just picture spoilers... Like fantranslations, but that's a conversation for another day XD). As for the colosso guys, I personally would only count Navampa as a boss, the rest, as you say, would just be unique scripted encounters rather than bosses per say. Basically, considering that Navampa "drops" the lure cap and has almost double the HP of Satrage, I view him as an "optional" boss. Slax01 21:47, January 20, 2010 (UTC)

Put up a TLA table, but some things to note: I have not triple-checked the data, so I may have made typos. There were some pieces of information missing (or I'm just blind, one of the two, hahaha) I put that into the relevant talk pages on the articles. And finally, it doesn't look very pretty, especially since it doesn't have a contents bar at the top. I don't know how to fix that though, so it'll have to stay as-is for now. Slax01 09:32, January 23, 2010 (UTC)

The TBS Table had at least 2 typos and forgot that Isaac regains 4 PP per round in the final battle. I haven't checked the other table, but I think this could use multiple go-arounds to check against data we have already. Marandahir 15:50, June 27, 2010 (UTC)

Shorten the page?

Two ideas have recently been suggested:

• Shrink the images so that the article isn't as long.
• Simplify the article by cutting out many of the stat columns.

These ideas aren't mutually exclusive; We can both shrink the images and remove some columns. The question is whether or not we should. I'm undecided on the picture size issue, but I agree that, since this is just a summary of bosses, we don't need to list all of their stats. As for what we should keep, I think:

• Icon, name, and location, obviously.
• HP, which should serve as a decent indicator of a boss' overall strength (maybe Attack, too, but I suspect HP would work well enough on its own).
• Elemental Power and Resistance, that way you know what elemental attacks to suspect, which to use, and which to avoid using. At the very minimum, a boss' strongest and weakest Resistance.
• Maybe item drops, but this one's debatable since only a few drops are all that notable. Experience points and coins we can probably drop.
• The "Notes" section, which lists things like multi-attackers and HP/PP regen.

P.S. Once we've decided what to keep/drop, we should also start adding Dark Dawn bosses. The World's Hungriest Paperweight 22:58, 21 March 2012 (CDT)

I would argue against including the Elemental Power in your list because that's ultimately a minor modifier to what would be a lot more considerable, the boss' abilities themselves, and since we aren't listing boss abilities in these charts... Erik the Appreciator 00:26, 22 March 2012 (CDT)

I guess I can see the logic in that, although my original reasoning was so that players would know what elements to expect, not how strong they'd be. What do you think about item drops, though? The World's Hungriest Paperweight 15:04, 22 March 2012 (CDT)

But there's also the issue of how the whole elemental interaction thing is just so minor in these games that expecting certain elements barely affects how much less damage you can take. Besides, all the resistance-boosting effects in the game you can perform, from Ward and Resist to certain Djinn, boost ALL resistances together rather than focusing on certain resistances. In this regard, the game itself places more importance on how high your "resistance" is, not how high certain resistances on certain elements are on certain Adepts. So listing what elements that each boss' abilities encompass is ultimately minor-enough trivia that it should be exclusive to the boss pages themselves.

On a different note, it might be good to have a Turns column instead, since that is a huge determiner in what bosses can do to you, and most of the enemies in the game that take multiple actions per turn are bosses - it's almost like a boss trademark. Bosses can range anywhere from 1 to 4 turns, so that would be much more useful information to bring up front in this chart.

As for item drops, I'm not so sure about that either. It would probably be better to detail why you need to beat this boss and what you get for beating it. But instead of random item drop rates, it could tell you in a more informal style how beating Killer Ape gets you the Douse Drop and allows you to take Mogall Forest's exit into the next part of the game where Xian is, and how beating Valukar gets you the Daedalus summon tablet. Erik the Appreciator 15:23, 22 March 2012 (CDT)

Well, I'm willing to drop Power, since it was never as important as Resistances. Also, I took a quick tally, and it looks like one-third of the GS bosses and only half of the TLA bosses can take more than one action each turn. While making a Turns column is an option, I'm not sure if this is enough to justify it. Also, I'm a bit confused as to your last suggestion. Are you proposing a "Reason to Defeat" column? The World's Hungriest Paperweight 12:33, 23 March 2012 (CDT)

Right, I'm basically implying that -if- we consider any way to try to represent what the boss "does" in battle, the number of actions per turn it takes in battle would easily be the best choice because that's one of the first things a player notes when fighting a boss - that it's moving twice a turn while each of your characters can only move once. The fact various bosses do have different numbers of actions per turn, as you said, would only make charting the turns more meaningful in this basic-summary-chart page. But that's if we decide on including a column that paints the boss' battle threat value in some way.

Hmm, it's kind of hard to determine the best way to go about battle rewards. For now I'm going to propose merging rewards/reason to defeat into the Notes section. The Notes section for Tempest Lizard, for example, would probably read "Optional boss that is fought when you cast Douse on its pink tornado. Is the only boss battle in Golden Sun that can be fought repeatedly. Each time it is defeated, it drops a Potion. Instead of battling it, its tornado can instead be ridden to Crossbone Isle, and then ridden back to Suhalla." The Notes section for Briggs would probably read "Fights alongside one Sea Fighter, and can summon three more because of having exclusive access to three items called Signal Whistles. Drops a Vial. Winning updates Madra." If this is what we're doing, that also leads to the question of whether the Location column should be kept separate or merged into the Notes column as well. ...And whether Notes should be just "General Description" or something. Erik the Appreciator 15:07, 23 March 2012 (CDT)

Ah. I hadn't considered using the number of actions as an indicator of strength. In that respect, I can see where you're coming from now. I'm still not sure if it's the best idea, but I don't think I'd object. As for the Notes/Description section, the examples you provided seem a bit too elaborate for me. How about something like this, instead?

• Tempest Lizard: "Optional, repeatable boss. Encountered when Douse is cast in a pink tornado. Its tornado can instead be ridden to Crossbone Isle, then back to Suhalla."
• Briggs: "Fights alongside one Sea Fighter, and can summon three more."

In both cases, their item drops aren't really worth mentioning, or at least not when compared to things like the Douse Drop or summon tablets. Also, I'd vote for keeping the Locations column, partly because it allows people to quickly see where a boss is located without having to rummage through descriptions, and partly because I can't imagine many occasions where we'd need to include the location in the Description. The World's Hungriest Paperweight 16:00, 23 March 2012 (CDT)

That all sounds good. Erik the Appreciator 16:02, 23 March 2012 (CDT)

P.S. To clarify, the main reason I wanted to keep item drops is because of the more notable items, like the Bandit's Sword and Demon Mail, Psynergy-granting items, and summons. Things like consumable items, which you can find elsewhere in unlimited quantities, aren't nearly as important by comparison. Although, now that I think about it, it may be okay to mention the drops of repeatable bosses like the Tempest Lizard and Dim Dragon Plus. The World's Hungriest Paperweight 16:08, 23 March 2012 (CDT)

If we're setting things up like in the example below (and I'm a fan of it, personally), then number of actions could probably be mentioned in the notes for just the bosses that have varying numbers. TheOthin 21:29, 23 March 2012 (CDT)

I'm willing to go either way, so I'll let you talk that out with others. The World's Hungriest Paperweight 20:50, 27 March 2012 (CDT)

I am actually bugged by the images on the page (just because the sizing is so different... which unfortunately can't be helped) But I think a potential option would be to do this page in the manner which bulbapedia does many pages which list things. See this link bulbapedia:Pokeball#Introduced_in_Generation_II They make use of the show hide functionality a lot in their listings, which I could see being used here. Just an idea, and I'm not sure if I like it or not. ~ dkpat 00:37, 22 March 2012 (CDT)

Hoo, man, I was actually all for the different sizes conveying each boss' size in relation to each other. Although, the benefits I perceived for that only really applied back when the series was strictly on GBA and all the sprites and camera angles were consistent onscreen - Dark Dawn boss images and the different camera angles and distances the game forces you into viewing them make them not really usable for showing how big or small they are. I can only suggest putting all the images into caption-free thumbnails in their cells, even all the ones that don't need to be resized, but I'm definitely not into the hiding-showing thing on this page. Erik the Appreciator 01:17, 22 March 2012 (CDT)

I don't know if a collapsable table would be the best idea, but I'll admit that it's a possibility. One major difference that I'd like to point out, though: With the Pokeball example you provided, the Pokeballs are not given their own articles, so that page is where all pertinent information would go. Our bosses, on the other hand, do get their own articles, so the list on this page is more of a brief overview than an extensive infodump. The World's Hungriest Paperweight 15:04, 22 March 2012 (CDT)

By the way, wouldn't part of the problem be how the current boss images are all bunched to the left and cause the larger images to stick out a lot more to the right? It might simply be more appealing to just center all the images in the image column. Erik the Appreciator 16:11, 23 March 2012 (CDT)

Revised table draft

Icon	Name	Location	HP	Resistances	Actions per turn	Notes
	Bandit	Vault	244	72 72 72 72	1	Fights alongside two "Thief" enemies. Drops the Bandit's Sword.
	Tret	Kolima Forest	710	175 100 72 25	1
	Saturos	Mercury Lighthouse	1200	175 127 100 72	1	Mia will regenerate 4 PP per turn during this battle.

Above is a preview I slapped together based on what we've discussed so far, including Erik's suggestion that we center the images. I haven't worked with these kinds of tables in a while, so there's probably some other formatting that needs to be done. Still, for a prototype, how does it look? The World's Hungriest Paperweight 16:39, 23 March 2012 (CDT)

I like it, though you might try making it a "wikitable" by adding in the code for the first declaration ' class ="wikitable" ' just see how it looks, I think I'll be happier with it. ~ dkpat 16:57, 23 March 2012 (CDT)

Do you mean like this?

Icon	Name	Location	HP	Resistances	Actions per turn	Notes
	Bandit	Vault	244	72 72 72 72	1	Fights alongside two "Thief" enemies. Drops the Bandit's Sword.
	Tret	Kolima Forest	710	175 100 72 25	1
	Saturos	Mercury Lighthouse	1200	175 127 100 72	1	Mia will regenerate 4 PP per turn during this battle.

Because, if not, maybe you should try it yourself ^_^; Although I'll admit, this is probably more effective. Is there any way to scale the size of the columns with the width of the browser? The World's Hungriest Paperweight 21:10, 27 March 2012 (CDT)

There might be a way to make it scale properly, but I feel like even if it doesn't it's still a great improvement. I'll look into it (it probably is possible) ~ dkpat 08:58, 28 March 2012 (CDT)

I just edited the table above, it's scaling now. 09:04, 28 March 2012 (CDT)

Dark Dawn

It's been a while, shouldn't the bosses for Dark Dawn be listed? I see (most of) the information is already on the pages for the specific bosses, I could probably build a table when I have time. Dragonite (talk) 23:03, 17 November 2013 (CST)

Hm, I sort of forgot about this page. You can certainly feel free to start it, and you might as well keep it in the style of the other two game's tables already on the page, since it doesn't look like we ever decided to change the table's style to something like the grayish version tested just above. Erik the Appreciator (talk) 01:42, 18 November 2013 (CST)

Fair enough, I'll try to get that done. Dragonite (talk) 15:27, 18 November 2013 (CST)