Another potential design decision was to not allow quest (zone) bosses to appear until a new chain. Seems unnecessary, if you can chain straight through the boss the bonus magic find is certainly worthwhile.

Maybe, but I was kind of concerned about this being too powerful. If you can't chain into a boss then that leaves you with +magic find from gear to help against bosses (because horde bonus is also nerfed against bosses). Most people didn't realize this, but in the past you could simply pull monsters when the boss is at 1%, kill the boss for a huge magic find boost, and then run/feign death/kill the rest or simply die since there was no exp penalty back then.

i, too, always thought it would be more fun to be able to chain into bosses.

maybe just daydreaming here, but it would also be cool if chains lasted through portals then =p imagine potentially beating the game in a single chain. lol. could work lore/roleplay wise too -- if, say, you're in the middle of a fight with a pissed off Corpsefire when you jump through the magic portal to Salubrin Forest, why wouldn't Corpsefire follow you through the portal and keep trying to kill you?

I agree with all of this. Its reasonable that chains end at the end of an act as you have to go through a city but the ability to chain an entire act would be amazing.

As far the horde mf bonus, you're absolutely right there, its better with the xp penalty now since run / FD is so unreliable but in reality you could just get rid of the horde bonus against zone (quest) bosses and nobody would complain. We'd much rather be able to chain through it and even better through to the next area.

Chaining through to the next area I imagine isn't as simple a change but maybe with some additional support we might talk you into it.

But isn't the portal only appearing after combat ends? Well in any case, that would be funny to try to chain the entire game lol.

It currently does, yes. But I imagine it wouldn't be difficult to change the trigger to when the quest boss is killed. At that point you can click the portal whenever, and upon arriving in the new area any enemies that were still alive in the previous area would pop up 1-2 seconds later.

That would be pretty awesome imo.

lol, it's doable, but kind of strange... I'll certainly think about this one.

I'd like to try and chain a whole Act, it would be a fun challenge!!
Not the whole game, though - it wouldn't make much sense since you have to go to a new town to get the quest.

Only if it's not too much work...

Do it Mael!!

I feel like the portal *used* to appear whenever relevant, not waiting for end of chain? Am I dreaming? (I know it doesn't now)

Bumping this. I started playing an Enchanter today. I would love to see the option to have Bosses appear in chain even if it was toggleable. For Enchanters to have to give up their charmed pets on taking on a boss is a huge damage loss considering the bosses are often the most difficult mobs in the zone. Being able to bring a mob with us would be extremely helpful for our survivability.

Yeah I deal with this on bard, I just charm the bosses add or pull another mob to charm.

I'm not against allowing this, but it would be a fair amount of work for something kinda low in the priority order. When this happens I would not allow skill chain +magic find to affect the boss's drop rate.