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[spacedust]

Is a real work of art... Died a couple of times on ITYTD to it. Uggh... Am I just too lousy a player?

[ZicherCZ]

Is a real work of art... Died a couple of times on ITYTD to it. Uggh... Am I just too lousy a player?

Well, she can take a lot of hits, and will hit back hard, _and_ in plasma damage. Two volleys can take you from 100% health to YASD easily
Precautions: If invulnerability or at least berserk is not available, then be sure to grab some armour with high plasma resist. Blue armour provides 20%, but won't make it itself. I was incredibly lucky to have a plasma shield against her, backed up with berserk. With 95% percent resist, she did no more than 1HP damage per hit, and she missed a lot too, so I simply could stand and BFG her.
Don't forget about cornershooting, running and all those things. You'll get her eventually.

[spacedust]

Does it still have a poor melee attack? I got up close and personal, but the many suits of armor melted off faster than I could shoot. I was busy replacing the sodding armor every other turn (and medpacking) lol.

The rebalance this time round feels like there's a lot of interesting choices (eg blue being useful against plasma).

Edit: I was playing MAD with Berserker. Funny that berserk didn't trigger, though I warrant it's because of the plasma attack (like against arachs).

[Game Hunter]

The only real change to the Spider Mastermind has been that its melee damage was brought up to boss level: this is to prevent the very obvious exploit of simply walking up to her and using your ranged weapons in melee. There's been plenty of work done on an entirely unique AI for the Mastermind, we just lacked the proper testing to make sure it wouldn't be too easy or too hard. It'll almost certainly get into the first beta.

Funny that berserk didn't trigger, though I warrant it's because of the plasma attack (like against arachs).

Berserk's damage trigger requires at least 1/3 of your max HP in a single shot: this means that each individual shot from a volley counts separately, and they do not add up to the total damage taken in the attack.

[Robsoie]

In previous version the major difficulty was to manage to get in melee without being annihilated by plasma at range, get surprised by the boss direction, and in 2 shots your character was dead.
Now that's a complete different story as it can destroy the player as easily at melee or at range, the most funny is that even taking a large medic kit is often not enough to prevent the insta death that follow (you losing a turn to use the medic kit, while the Spider deals plasma/melee death just after).

So now , unless the player is obviously lucky enough to find good plasma-protecting items, the Spider Mastermind is a very hard challenge even at the lowest level of difficulty.

edit : retrying a saved game, it looks like the Trigun (assuming you have maxed every damage bonus dealing traits) + power red armor can beat it , only at melee, and only if you managed to get to melee without having been hit by a plasma (that would then have hit your health and armor level too much to hope anything)
After that, taking large medic kits while shooting+reloading is enough, but it's very close in term of health, the armor got destroyed a turn before the end in melee, the character would have been dead if it had one more turn
So unless lucky enough to find plasma protecting items, it's always going to be solved by how quickly and without being hit you can get to melee.
And even so be sure to have good armor and good damage dealing weapon.

[Matt_S]

I haven't fought the mastermind in this version yet, but if you want to get into melee without getting shot, why not wait around the corner of a pillar?

[Angles of death]

Hey, could someone tell me when I fight each boss? I want to prepare a bit, so I don't get crushed.

[EDIT]Anyway, I'd suggest doing a LOT of cornershooting. I haven't attacked it yet, but it may be one of the only ways to beat it when you have low health.

[EDIT] I am fighting the mastermind right now. What I do is I shoot a rocket at it and run around a pillar until it walks away, then I shoot another rocket. I have a full tactical armor set on, which really helps.

[Robsoie]

On the multiple attempts i did before beating the Spider Mastermind, i noticed that its AI has been changed in a way that makes it completely unpredictable, meaning that corner shooting are not as usefull as they were, and making it so more difficult to get in melee than previous version

Typical spotting :


Expected Spider Mastermind move , leading you to corner shoot :


But more than half the time  instead this is what will happen :


And all of that (unpredictable move, 2 or 3 shots kills) in the lowest level of difficulty, can't even imagine at Hurt me plenty or Ultra-violence.
The Cyberdemon can be difficult, but it's nowhere close to the Spider Mastermind.

That's really the kind of boss fight in which you'd like to have Intuition 2 (unfortunately blocking some other traits) to have corner shooting usefull.

[Klear]

I think I only fought the new mastermind once, and it was with malicious blades, so it wasn't that much of a problem.

[ZicherCZ]

You don't want to get her into melee range nowadays.
I learned the hard way. 50% health down in one melee attack, and where was my AoSg run.

[spacedust]

You don't want to get her into melee range nowadays.
I learned the hard way. 50% health down in one melee attack, and where was my AoSg run.

Now I feel better that it isn't just me lol. She just chews you up when you get into melee. I was all like, eat my twin barrels of buckshot, and she was like, NO WAI, and the armor just melted right off. I mean like foooom it was gone, suit after suit.

[Stormlock]

Is that description it has going to be changed? Telling the player it has a chaingun and not plasma is really cheap when it does, in fact, do plasma damage.

As far as tips, I've had the luck to be able to nuke it so far on my encounters, but intuition 2 should let you corner shoot it to death, (and without that, remember you can use blind shots with a shotgun to listen for the sound of injury as a poorman's version) and berserk + a chainsaw with  a T,B, or P mod should let you win in melee pretty quickly. If both those options are out because of a challenge or whatever, I guess you'll need to hope for the plasma immune armor or plan to gather the guaranteed nuke + invlunv combo.

[Robsoie]

I found what looks like to be a very good anti-Spider Mastermind build :

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Goal : to have some plasma resistance and a weapon dealing lots of damage quickly to avoid staying under fire for too long.
Need : being lucky with finding enough basic mods, but fortunately no need of very rare nano or onyx mods

I decided to go with Technician class, maybe other classes may be better, but i wanted to have that Technical mod guaranteed, as they start with one, and with my goal, Entranchment would be simply marvelous.
2 level of "Whizkids" are required as i needed to max the items with mods.

So i managed to build my required weapon from a Plasma Rifle , by adding 1 Agility and 2 Technical (agility were rather abundant, Technical was rarer , good i had one from the start), into a Hyperblaster.
At "Whizkid" 2, i could add on top of the Hyperblaster a nice Power mod to keep it even more deadly, and oh boy it was, annihilating the strongest monsters rather quickly, even the poor Cyberdemon was standing no chance.
But again, it needs "Whizkid" 2 to be able to unleash such fury, traits points you can't use elsewhere, so that's the price.

Now a Hyperblaster eat plasma ammo, much less than a Plasma Rifle, but still Plasma is not the most common ammo , so it was necessary to have another weapon to spare Plasma when it wasn't needed (corner shots or medium/low level enemies), i went with shotguns, because i just like them.
There i was very lucky to get an Assault Shotgun rather early and 3 Power mods later it was a really great weapon.

Then, i needed to deal lot of damage as i mentionned, so the "Son of a bitch" trait was very important to get extra damage points, i just maxed it to SoB 3

"Trigger Happy" then 2 levels of "Tough as nails" (for the required "Badass") unlocked the Entranchment, that would add 30% of resistance to all damage type if i use the chain fire (SHIFT+F, i didn't found yet how to do with the mouse, shift+right click doing the normal fire).
A fire mode that the Hyperblaster can do, so it was perfect.

That was for offensive power, and Entranchement would make sure that i had at least 30% of resistance against the Spider Mastermind plasma of 2 shots-death.

But it's not enough, i wasn't lucky to find any special item with Plasma resistance (wished i could get Malek armor this time) so i took a Blue armor (that add +20% of plasma resistance) and kept it in my inventory until the end (as they're weak and break easy)
Fortunately, i found some nice mods to improve it, first a Power mod to get it to be as good as a Red armor, then Bulk an Agility that were the last mods i had and got it 200% resistance with a few speed bonus.

And it was on, the Spider Mastermind usually able to 2 or 3 shots the character to death, wasn't that insanely hard this time at range, as with the modified Blue Armor + Entranchment it was 50% of plasma resistance.
And the most excellent Hyperblaster was dealing death , death and death again, ending in the creature defeat.

But to be able to get there, you need to get your character to level 10, so don't avoid the arena and the chained court, you can avoid every other branches as long as you kill nearly everything on every levels.
Though if instead of SoB 3 you go for SoB 2, you can make it at level 9

[IronBeer]

I found what looks like to be a very good anti-Spider Mastermind build :
<snip>

Nice! I haven't yet tried out Entrenchment, but that trait + a humble blue armor grants a respectable 50% plasma resist.

Also, peeps who might be having some trouble: don't forget that BFGs will always hit the targeted tile, even when firing blind. Spidey won't try to demolish the pillars like the Cyberdemon, so if you can get into a good cornershooting position, you can destroy her without ever being under the gun. Try to grab/save a couple Power Batteries just for this fight- each one contains essentially an extra 3 BFG blasts.

Not having tried a melee build yet, I don't know exactly how much more powerful she is, but I'd wager that a dedicated Berserker-based or Malicious Blades build should handle the Mastermind without making too much of a mess.

[Deathwind]

it looks like need to fight JC for any chance at all for a win now...