Testing Serpent Trials: Day 2

zbtiqua · August 2014

After identifying the first boss mechanics in the new 12-man Serpent Trials, we have found that with PTS characters we are unable to get the first boss of serpent trials under 85%. This is with a 12 man team of top-notch players. I suspect that either A. The encounter is overtuned -or- B. A boss mechanic is not behaving as intended. The reasons for this are as follows:

1) Before the boss "splits," the tank takes between 1000-1500 damage from the most powerful boss attack.
2) Once the boss "splits" the boss uses a different attack called "Enraged Overpower" that hits the tank (fully geared, while blocking, IN a Veil) for 3500-5000 damage.

The best strategy we can come up with involved kiting the boss during this phase- a strategy which is not possible without either/both of "Retreating Maneuvers" (PVP ability) or "Inner Beast" (Undaunted skill line) Neither of which are available on PTS.

Can devs confirm if the boss is working as intended and is just very difficult, or if there is potentially something bugged?

@ZOS_GinaBruno‌ @ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌

Neptonic · August 2014

It would really help if we had exact copy of our characters from the real server with full gear and skills to test this out.... we really need the inner fire taunt as well.

Anjelicus · August 2014

I have gone the hard route and leveled my undaunted skill line and inner beast manually. -_- it sucked but its worth it.

As far as that boss goes, last night we found that jumping durring his massive AoE in the enrage phase negates the damage, and so does dodge rolling as the telegraph is forming.

However, i agree about not being able to down the boss with this limited gear.

Ifthir_ESO · August 2014

ZB I have a theory on this I will message you in game RE:

ZOS_GinaBruno · August 2014

Hey guys, just want to let you know that we did look into this, and the damage from the Mantikora is working as designed.

zbtiqua · August 2014

Thanks Gina

Caph · August 2014

We were working on trying to get this done today, Baby Face Bananas hosted trial with help from Beyond Infnity.

We tried many times and lots of different tactics and I figured I should everything that we noticed during this fight:

A lot of wild thoughts and ideas, we got him down to 83% at best from what I saw.

1: We never got to try this but take a look at this note that is laying in the start of the trial:

Might be that they made stamina builds valid by simply forcing people with magicka builds not to use it? It can happen that this affects the damage that the tanks get? Basically the boss drains from all magicka users and the hemorrage does dmg accordingly?

2: When the 5 people go down in the black hole, the boss get's stunned. By running away from him and kiting him for a little bit, the damage over time didn't last as long. By using magma armor, I was able to tank and stay a live for quite a long time. We lasted as long as we managed to get the second big aoe. We stacked up in veil of blades, I spammed Green Dragon Blood to heal myself. We later died from the spears that he throws.

3: The spears seems to not affect the boss in any way, no dmg, no slow, no protection for us as it kills us so it might just be damage.

4: Cleanse doesn't work to remove any bleeds, shadow disguse doesn't work. Moving into water doesn't work. Moving into the red pool doesn't work. Standing in veil of blades and spam healing springs when the boss does the enraged AoE seemed to keep us alive. Then we would have to move out of the spears. At this time, the tank took massive damage. One option would be a tank switch. The tank normal tank keeps it up and uses magma armor to survive. When it runs out, second tank grabs and use magma armor. It might also be that this hemmorage only applies/stays on you longer if you keep having aggro so dropping aggro might allow you stay alive. This would however mean that we need 3 tanks for this fight, 1 main, 1 downstairs to tank the guy in the room downstairs, and a 3 to taunt switch.

5: We got it confirmed that there are no reported issues and it suppoveily is nothing to interact with such as the ladder or chain that leads to the cauldron on top of the red pool. We believe that due to the insane amount of damage that the boss does, there should be some sort of mechanic that reduces either his health, defenses or damage.

These are some ideas that we came up with along the way. Alot of thoughts and speculations but something needs to get done. We tried tanking this as both DK and Templar tanking. The hemorage(bleed) dmg along with auto hits just ends up being way too much to handle, even with 3 templars healing + random healing springs. It also lasts a lot longer than magma/corrosive armor.

Our tactics and positioning:

Here is our positioning:

Thingy on the left is the big stone in the room.

Tactics:

So what we did is that we had 1 tank on each group. 1 healer on each group and 1 Nightblade on each group. This way we ensured that always 4 people from the same group would get pulled down. If the 1 group get's pulled down, the tank from group 2 takes aggro.

Downstairs: Tank keeps aggro and they just DPS him down. Sometimes it was a bit weird because not everyone got there at the same time. The guy also has a huge frontal cone so he needs to be faced away from the group. And most importantly, the tank needs to dodge this too because it one shots you even if you are blocking + useing defensive abilities.

Upstairs:
We got a bit closer to the boss, waited for him to throw the spears, he throws two of them. As soon as that had happened, we stacked on top of the boss in a veil of blades. This we healed through then with templar ults and so to survive the bleed damage.

The idea after this was that we will get a new spear soon and then we need to move again. I'm not sure if it is 1 or 2 spears there but after a while, he will do a next explosion and then we need to stack in veil again and do the same thing with templar ult. Seeing. By this time, the bottom group should be done.

This is as far as we got and then we were down to 4 people alive. I survived this all as the tank but it required veil of blades, templar ults and insane healing + magma armor.

Hope this helps anyone in any way, maybe someone can work something out of it? If you get the option however, try to go as many stamina builds as possible and only have the healers have a mana pool. Save your veils for the entire fight and make a veil order.

Good luck all, hope it helps!

Edit: Picture description.

forthewinn2 · August 2014

Caph wrote: »

1: We never got to try this but take a look at this note that is laying in the start of the trial: Might be that they made stamina builds valid by simply forcing people with magicka builds not to use it? It can happen that this affects the damage that the tanks get? Basically the boss drains from all magicka users and the hemorrage does dmg accordingly?

If this is true, it might just be the funniest thing in the game.
Devs:"how do we make stamina builds viable in trials?"
Random guy: "I know lets make boss damage scale with players magicka"
XD.

Just imagine it.
*walks into trials with 10/12 group members as mages*
*boss immediately enrages*
Boss: "look at all these people in skirts!"
Tank: *taunt* *taunt*
Boss: *ignores taunt* *wanders around 1-shotting mages with gleeful look on face*

(The next day)
Every dps on the server: *starts leveling up medium armor*

Genius. Pure genius.

zbtiqua · August 2014

Hey great post Caph! Thanks for the info on your methods. We were using a similar tactic, and didn't get any further. The biggest problem we ran into was the tank being 1 shot, which leads us to consider taunting back and fourth, or possibly kiting. Though, our MT is a templar, and the magma armor obviously would be a big boon dealing with that.

Caph · August 2014

We tried this with both Templar and DK tank and neither helped. I survived with magma armor but as soon as it ran out, I was down to 5-10% for every hit and required instant healing to 100% to survive, while standing in veil of blades + defensive abilities.

What we were told, which I have no clue about if it's facts or trolling is that some people tanking him close to the water on the left side by the waterfall/splashing water and supposively, that should have done something which allowed them to get him down to 40%?

It felt like *** but I really don't know for sure.

Wildly guessing that Zenimax might have done this to ensure that stamina builds will be viable in trials? Or for that matter, maybe everyone needs to be really low on magicka at a certain point? Next time I will try, I will make sure I run completely out of mana both as tanking and as DPS to see if there is any difference.

At a certain point, everyone going stamina builds in medium armor is also something I will try to get going if possible.

Laura · August 2014

Bosses that can't be killed the first couple of days they come out? Awesome. They need to make raids where the vast majority of people are able to complete it in less than a week.

Some epic content is what this game needs

Caph · August 2014

More like, the first boss can not be taken down below 80%. Zos has confirmed that damage is intended. But perhaps with the hidden message: "If you mess it up that badly". :P The boss also has about 1889k hp which is tons and tons of more than any other boss in the trials, including hard mode AA/Hel ra.

jackyd · August 2014

That Bleed reminds me kinda of the Ork General Boss in BT the one that stacked an unpurgeable Bleed which you needed to counter by having 3 tanks rotate using a high dodge setup.

OTOH that note sounds fun and I do want to know more.

Caph · August 2014

That is an option but unless there is another way to mitigate damage. We need 3 tanks during the fight. 1 that get's ported down and 2 or 3 tanks rotation upstairs. We need to dodge the large green circles. We need to stack up perfectly for the big aoe that otherwise kills us all. It is doable, but for a first boss, tactics are ten times harder than the last bosses in AA or Hel ra. I feel like there is something we are all missing that just should be done. It's a matter of what that is. :P

Edit:
Oh and btw:
You can get the undaunted skill line if you do the achievments in the vet dungeons. Just go and do the first part of the undaunted quest to get the skill line.

For retreating manuver, go into PvP, then you do the tutorial and you get it. Then you have to level the skill up though.

Kyoma · August 2014

Kudos to the genius that made that drawing.

Circuitous · August 2014

Caph wrote: »

Or for that matter, maybe everyone needs to be really low on magicka at a certain point?

That note definitely reads like "if you have a lot of magicka, burn it all." You're sitting in a defensive stance getting burned alive, regenerating the magicka that's actually killing you. Seems like you'd take less damage if you spammed spells and emptied out your magicka as quickly as possible during that.

Hardly a buff for Stamina builds, they're actually mandating the use of magicka to avoid dying horribly.

Caph · August 2014

Circuitous wrote: »

Caph wrote: »

Or for that matter, maybe everyone needs to be really low on magicka at a certain point?

That note definitely reads like "if you have a lot of magicka, burn it all." You're sitting in a defensive stance getting burned alive, regenerating the magicka that's actually killing you. Seems like you'd take less damage if you spammed spells and emptied out your magicka as quickly as possible during that.

Hardly a buff for Stamina builds, they're actually mandating the use of magicka to avoid dying horribly.

One possibility, theory or wild guess, yes. Using a stamina build would make it easier to drop to low magicka. Also I was told that there are some stamina builds pulling 2k in the trial? Unsure if it's complete *** though.

Kraen · August 2014

I think its the Bleed effect.

It cannot be dispeled. It cannot be negated. It cannot be Shadow Cloaked. Its a core mechanism of the encounter, and its damage may count from the REMAINING (not total) magicka of the raiders.

REMAINING is important word here. The paper says that casters should spend their magicka if they don´t want to die. At some point, maybe before the AoE, the raiders should spend all of their magicka ("magicka users should deplete their stores" // "those who fail to bring spell into battle"). Then, Bleed damage should be lower, and boss may stop with his enraged 5K blows.

We need to try this.

Robert_Pendragon · August 2014

Reports from Last Prodigies:
1. Dumping magicka does nothing to lessen the bleed damage
2. He seems to repeat his attack pattern after the portal phase, aka a second portal spawns.
3. He gets stunned after the shadow is dead.
4. Roll dodging the big aoe works only sometimes, it is safer to block.

What's wiping us:
1. Random portal locations suck in the wrong people
2. His 'spear shards' stunning & slowing people followed immediately by big aoe.

What we will try tonight:
1. Stacking HP
2. Get purge to counter spear shards
3. Negate rotation on spear shards
4. Different positioning, we have a strong suspicion that the big golden vase might be a key element.
5. Test if the manticore receives extra damage from the stun.

Good luck to everyone, and enjoy serpent as it is by far the most fun trial.

squshy7 · August 2014

Robert_Pendragon wrote: »

Reports from Last Prodigies:
1. Dumping magicka does nothing to lessen the bleed damage
2. He seems to repeat his attack pattern after the portal phase, aka a second portal spawns.
3. He gets stunned after the shadow is dead.
4. Roll dodging the big aoe works only sometimes, it is safer to block.

What's wiping us:
1. Random portal locations suck in the wrong people
2. His 'spear shards' stunning & slowing people followed immediately by big aoe.

What we will try tonight:
1. Stacking HP
2. Get purge to counter spear shards
3. Negate rotation on spear shards
4. Different positioning, we have a strong suspicion that the big golden vase might be a key element.
5. Test if the manticore receives extra damage from the stun.

Good luck to everyone, and enjoy serpent as it is by far the most fun trial.

Curious, did you happen to test if dumping magicka lessened the raid wide aoe damage?

I was running as a guest with Awaken last night, and one (keyword *one* lol) of the major problems we were running into was that the raid wide was too much for some people even at full health and blocking (~2500 hp). However, this was not the case with the *first* raid wide. Only the subsequent ones.