10 Gaming Boss Fight Tropes That Need To Die

It is perhaps a safe assumption that few things infuriate gamers more than bosses healing mid-battle.

Bosses, by their very nature, tend to possess more hit points than the regular grunts by orders of magnitude, and many a player has woken in a cold sweat at the thought of one boss or other with hundreds of thousands of HP that they just could not defeat.

Imagine, then, the white-hot fury which cascades over the player when the boss they have been chipping away at for what seems like hours (it probably was), finally getting their HP down to manageable levels at the expense of every potion and tincture in their inventory, suddenly pops a magic juice and heals back up to full (or near full) health.

Examples of this treachery are everywhere, from the Dark Jedi in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the dreaded Haderax in Borderlands 2, to every trainer and their Mothers throwing healing potions into the mix during a climactic Pokemon battle.

The thing with boss healing, though, is that it isn't strictly unfair - if the player has healing spells or potions to use during combat, then shouldn't the boss, too?

No. No, they shouldn't.