[ZOS Please Read] All Bugs with SO Normal and HM - With Spoilers Hidden!

Sharmony

Hey All,

So first of all I have to congratulate my guild Well-Fitted on the (World First?) clear of Veteran SO after 2hours progression. That statement in itself should worry most of you before I get into the bugs as this updated SO should have been tougher than having a basic knowledge of old SO mechanics combined with a mix of old and new undertuned and overtuned mechanics. Any new parts of SO bugs I will hide in spoilers and leave it up to you, the reader, to choose to read. I will only be briefly covering bugs just so the devs can be notified and if any further information is requested we as a guild can do our best to explore any why's / how's. First of all a brief list of everything they have been unable to fix both old and new in chronological order in which I'll call:

Old Bugs, New SO

When entering the dungeon door that begins the timer, players are often completely rendered useless when they are hit with a loading screen for which they make take up to 10minutes to load out from, or in some instances never load out from and crash their games. This happens to around 1/3 of our raiding group and did used to occur to me when playing on a laptop. Not being technically savvy I can only off the explanation that players with slower computers cannot render the full area of SO when entering the timed part of the instance, something which could be done in the trials lobby by default. This bug has never existed with any other trial to date.

The Mantikora's Black Hole can still be avoided by outrunning it.
The Mantikora's Serpent's Image (In the hole) which for now with DPS I believe we may have to kill again has far too lower health can be solo'ed by 2 people as opposed to the four that it was initially designed to require.
The Mantikora's Spears continue to have an ongoing bug where their telegraph will be shown but they will never land, making what is supposed to be one of the hardest mechanics in the fight extremely unreliable.
The Mantikora, although being a first boss still has little health when compared with MoL's First Boss, a small buff to make their health to make them comparable given their mechanics are of somewhat similar difficulty to me at least seems somewhat reasonable.
The Mantikora's Stomp damage seems incorrectly tuned. We've had players not block it and barely take any damage.

The Troll add's poison can still insta kill a player, having personally received 1 shots with 1 debuff of poison on my character of 50k+ without any form of internet or framerate issues (I can also provide footage).

The Troll adds poison telegraph disappears off the player far too early, and we're talking ridiculously here. A player may receive poison, think they no longer have the telegraph or the visual effect and still be 'contaminated' for a further 5 seconds only visible by your health bar. This means that you have players who look completely fine after 3 seconds of not having anything on their screen running straight into others and poisoning the entire group. Funny, not funny.

The Troll Bosses cleave mechanic *with the ground particles* used to initially one shot players, our group members were barely taking 50% damage to their health pools with 20k health, no minor maim or nova being applied.

Once entering through any of the intractable or lever operated doors found throughout the dungeon their textures can turn into a opaque black wall which persists constantly for all players. These graphical errors affect the entire group but only effect aesthetics and visibility, the latter of which does become a big problem (particularly with the many holes within the dungeon).

Ozara

Ozara, first of all, a great step up in difficulty and the only hard boss in the trial now beyond HM. However, persisting bugs with the synergies on this boss should have never made it to live. Players can interact as much as up to 4 times with the bosses lightning spear synergy and still not be able to 'pick up' players. Even when the player does not try and move early (animation cancel) and let the full synergy play out this bug persists. This completely breaks the fight and anything new you have attempted to achieve with it. A boss that was once nicknamed as the 'walking treasure chest' has now become the 'RnG run ender' due to the potency and problematic nature of this bug.

The Overcharger that now spawns on a regular cycle for this boss, as with all the other mobs can decide to walk backwards through their spawning door and into the wall, say goodbye to any attempt you have just made because you will now just be spammed with lightning to your inevitable death.

The feeding pit is still the most useless inclusion in a dungeon. The mobs grant no points towards your final total so the area is rendered completely useless to try and use content which is supposed to offer replay-ability.

The Serpent

The Serpent Veteran Non-HM changes are few and far between and were cleared by us in 1 attempt in which we pulled hastily before we took a break just to see what new mechanics there were and realistically had no real strategy. The Lamia's have higher health and so do the totems... the end. We touched on HM tonight as I will talk about in a minute but beyond this we couldn't see much change in the HM version either. As stands the 3rd boss is greatly more difficult than the last across all difficulties. Also Rakkhat 80Mil HM, Serpent, Sub 50Mil on normal and on HM less than Rakkhat on normal by nearly 7mil, what?! I thought the concept was to scale this trial from cp 140 to cp160? Forgive me if I am wrong!

THE BIGGEST BUG IN THE ENTIRE DUNGEON
Upon attempting the last boss the doors at the back of the room will close as they did previously... this time though they will be permanently closed. If your fellow player DC's because of his internet or server sturdiness, or someone has to go and you need a replacement the run is over. The door cannot be reopened, walked through, nothing. The door is simply permanently sealed. Needn't I say more about the importance of fixing this.

This being said, I just wished to touch upon a few other very simple things that personally could have been implemented but no thought seemed to have been given. And just before I continue, we did play the trial twice on PTS at the end of two raid evenings only barely going past Manti and report what issues we could see on PTS as well as offering suggestions. So just a few simple suggestions from myself beyond fixing some of evident game breaking bugs occurring in the updated SO:

Make a deathless achievement and any others you think worthwhile, you did it with MoL and that has been an amazing adventure to this date and into the future and gives people something to play repeatedly for.
Last boss is now one of the most disappointing things in the game, anything you can do with this would improve the fight. When you compare Rakkhat to The Serpent, well you can't, they are not even comparable as the closest thing to the number of mechanics and the ease of them on The Serpent can only be compared to S'kinrai and Vashai in MoL. For a final boss and a true staple of an end game baddy that was dominating over the entire craglorn quest chain he is lackluster at best.
You were able to give us a toggle-able HM in Maw of Lorkhaj which was an amazing idea that many gave feedback to you... is it that hard to implement?


Thank you for listening and reading, and as always, here to offer any further testing and help you require to fix these, as long as you actually do fix them.

Sharmony

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom
*Bump*

Excelsiore

GZ guy's.
Nice Progress.

Lyudorashi

Just tossing some of my feedback (spoilers i guess?):
(ignoring bugs, mostly just agreeing with OP)

Mantikora, you should heavily buff downstairs boss, make it so we require second tank and full group for it. No need to buff Mantikora hp, just buff her telegraphed attacks so they are punishing bad group positioning again.

Ogre, fight is fine i guess? It requires some proper group positioning for avoiding death, but lack of DPS checks makes it so you can comeback after having 3/4 of your group killed. Which is fine in my opinion.

Trash is trash, easy to kill, hard to avoid deaths.

Ozara is good, fix bugs and it is golden.

Serpent fight is huge letdown, Manti dies too fast, Serpent HP and damage is too low. Lamias and totems are good, magicka bombs are still killing people, bubble phase works like always. I guess you cant do much to that fight, we are just too used to killing Serpent.


Overall I think the updated dungeon is fine, if you intended for it to be a middle ground between old content and MoL.

EDIT: forgot to mention the sound bug everyone is experiencing on trash and some bosses. Couple seconds after pull ingame sounds just dissapear for everyone in raid till we kill most of the trash.

DschiPeunt

GZ to well-fitted

It's a shame, that there are still so many bugs in SO after all this time and the rework now. Hopefully they address some of them in the future.

On PTS we thought they had forgotten to buff "the boss in the hole". Has anyone checked, if he has more health points now?

Sharmony

DschiPeunt wrote: »

On PTS we thought they had forgotten to buff "the boss in the hole". Has anyone checked, if he has more health points now?

We have been two manning it and still killing it in good time, although I don't have health figures I guarantee they have not increased it's health.

DDuke

So, apparently everyone gets V160 Infallible/Vicious etc from completing normal mode as well (100% drop rates as well).

What's the purpose of doing vet mode at all, if people can get the same loot & rewards by doing normal mode?

@ZOS_Finn , is this intended?

Sharmony

DDuke wrote: »

So, apparently everyone gets V160 Infallible/Vicious etc from completing normal mode as well (100% drop rates as well).

What's the purpose of doing vet mode at all, if people can get the same loot & rewards by doing normal mode?

@ZOS_Finn , is this intended?

Not to mention it is unlikely given provided gear on pts and past SO loot that HM may drop legendary gear as an additional reward in when compared to MoL loot.

ZOS_Finn

As for the bug reports, we will definitely look into those.

For the design questions regarding Sanctum Ophidia, the purpose was not to reinvent the wheel with this Trial. We wanted to provide a challenging experience that scales but not necessarily change the mechanics too much from what players are used to. We think that the challenge level in Veteran has increased a good amount and provides a rewarding experience but is not necessarily at the challenge level of Maw of Lorkhaj.

Cuyler

Gratz @Sharmony and the Well Fitted crew!

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

As for the bug reports, we will definitely look into those.

For the design questions regarding Sanctum Ophidia, the purpose was not to reinvent the wheel with this Trial. We wanted to provide a challenging experience that scales but not necessarily change the mechanics too much from what players are used to. We think that the challenge level in Veteran has increased a good amount and provides a rewarding experience but is not necessarily at the challenge level of Maw of Lorkhaj.

I agree with this. After how long vMOL has been out there are still only maybe 10 groups (if that) that have cleared it? We don't need another trial like it right now.

Rudster

Cuyler wrote: »

Gratz @Sharmony and the Well Fitted crew!

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

As for the bug reports, we will definitely look into those.

For the design questions regarding Sanctum Ophidia, the purpose was not to reinvent the wheel with this Trial. We wanted to provide a challenging experience that scales but not necessarily change the mechanics too much from what players are used to. We think that the challenge level in Veteran has increased a good amount and provides a rewarding experience but is not necessarily at the challenge level of Maw of Lorkhaj.

I agree with this. After how long vMOL has been out there are still only maybe 10 groups (if that) that have cleared it? We don't need another trial like it right now.

This is exactly what I hoped VSO was going to be. Something that was challenging and rewarding, but not so difficult that only a handful of the best players can complete after dedicating huge amounts of time to. I like that there is now some challenging 12 man content, but before VSO there really wasn't any middle ground as far as difficulty.

Destruent

Rudster wrote: »

Cuyler wrote: »

Gratz @Sharmony and the Well Fitted crew!

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

As for the bug reports, we will definitely look into those.

For the design questions regarding Sanctum Ophidia, the purpose was not to reinvent the wheel with this Trial. We wanted to provide a challenging experience that scales but not necessarily change the mechanics too much from what players are used to. We think that the challenge level in Veteran has increased a good amount and provides a rewarding experience but is not necessarily at the challenge level of Maw of Lorkhaj.

I agree with this. After how long vMOL has been out there are still only maybe 10 groups (if that) that have cleared it? We don't need another trial like it right now.

This is exactly what I hoped VSO was going to be. Something that was challenging and rewarding, but not so difficult that only a handful of the best players can complete after dedicating huge amounts of time to. I like that there is now some challenging 12 man content, but before VSO there really wasn't any middle ground as far as difficulty.

It's NOT rewarding. You get exactly the same loot when doing normal mode. So where is the reward for doing vet (besides the cool title )?

code65536

@ZOS_Finn The lamias' deaths no longer do enough damage to destroy the totems in both nSO and vSO. Is this an intended mechanics change?

lolo_01b16_ESO

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

We want Sanctum Ophidia to provide a challenge similar to Maw of Lorkhaj. The mechanics haven't changed drastically so there isn't much of a learning curve in that regard but we would like for the challenge to be similar.

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

For the design questions regarding Sanctum Ophidia, the purpose was not to reinvent the wheel with this Trial. We wanted to provide a challenging experience that scales but not necessarily change the mechanics too much from what players are used to. We think that the challenge level in Veteran has increased a good amount and provides a rewarding experience but is not necessarily at the challenge level of Maw of Lorkhaj.

@ZOS_Finn Why did you lie about your intentions in the thread on pts?
Sure, it's good, to have a trial with a difficulty inbetween vMoL and the old unscaled trials, as I have been in groups that completed old SO but didn't stand a chance against vMoL first boss. But then why didn't you tell us that thats's your intention from the beginning? Noone forced you to do this statement there and if you hadn't said anything, I would have assumed that vSO will be somewhere inbetween vMoL and and the old v14 SO. With what you said during pts you gained nothing and now only disappointed those who were believing you would say the trouth.

lonewolf26

As for bugs, I might add that the troll mobs poison throw disobeys line of sight checks and hits through walls. There's one pull where our tank pulled trolls into an adjacent room. They were still able to hit players in the room fighting other mobs in spite of having two walls between us.

ZOS_Finn

Destruent wrote: »

It's NOT rewarding. You get exactly the same loot when doing normal mode. So where is the reward for doing vet (besides the cool title )?

There is some overlap with items but not all.

Normal for instance has a higher chance to drop Viper’s Sting, Knightmare, Dreugh King Slayer, Shadow Dancer’s Raiment, Elegance and Skirmisher’s Bite (roughly 80% per boss) and a lower chance to drop Eternal Yokeda, Vicious Ophidian, and Infallible Aether (roughly 20% per boss).

For Veteran, these numbers are swapped but Veteran also drops Gold Jewelry which does not drop in Normal.

timidobserver

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

Destruent wrote: »

It's NOT rewarding. You get exactly the same loot when doing normal mode. So where is the reward for doing vet (besides the cool title )?

There is some overlap with items but not all.

Normal for instance has a higher chance to drop Viper’s Sting, Knightmare, Dreugh King Slayer, Shadow Dancer’s Raiment, Elegance and Skirmisher’s Bite (roughly 80% per boss) and a lower chance to drop Eternal Yokeda, Vicious Ophidian, and Infallible Aether (roughly 20% per boss).

For Veteran, these numbers are swapped but Veteran also drops Gold Jewelry which does not drop in Normal.

Still, the rewards are pretty similar compared to the difficulty/time difference. Vet mode needs better incentive.

Excelsiore

Hardmode down.
By Beyond Infinity EU

Destruent

Excelsiore wrote: »

Hardmode down.
By Beyond Infinity EU

gz

GeertKarel

The ozara boss

The ozara boss puts a bolt on a person so basically the person gets a full hit (10k ish) and after that there is a dot the longer you are in the synergy the dots becomes stronger and stronger going from 2k up till a lot more.

So basically what happens is someone removes the bolt with the synergy button but quite often it happens that the synergy won't remove the dot so basically people will get more and more damage until a certain point where if you get another bolt that you just simply die from it.

GeertKarel

Excelsiore wrote: »

Hardmode down.
By Beyond Infinity EU

Good job!

DschiPeunt

I think the rewards are ok. I don't mind, that people get the new sets in normal mode as well. And the hardmode rewards are quite nice

About the lamiae not instant killing the totems: could it be, that they simply forgot to increase the damage the lamiae explosion does? So, the totems have much higher health, but the explosion does the same damage => the totems don't die instantly. Is this an intended new mechanic or will this be changed in the future, @ZOS_Finn ?

code65536

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom why isn't there a "Z" icon next to this thread even though @ZOS_Finn has replied twice in here?

Dromede

Sharmony wrote: »

Hey All,

So first of all I have to congratulate my guild Well-Fitted on the (World First?) clear of Veteran SO after 2hours progression. That statement in itself should worry most of you before I get into the bugs as this updated SO should have been tougher than having a basic knowledge of old SO mechanics combined with a mix of old and new undertuned and overtuned mechanics. Any new parts of SO bugs I will hide in spoilers and leave it up to you, the reader, to choose to read. I will only be briefly covering bugs just so the devs can be notified and if any further information is requested we as a guild can do our best to explore any why's / how's. First of all a brief list of everything they have been unable to fix both old and new in chronological order in which I'll call:

Old Bugs, New SO

When entering the dungeon door that begins the timer, players are often completely rendered useless when they are hit with a loading screen for which they make take up to 10minutes to load out from, or in some instances never load out from and crash their games. This happens to around 1/3 of our raiding group and did used to occur to me when playing on a laptop. Not being technically savvy I can only off the explanation that players with slower computers cannot render the full area of SO when entering the timed part of the instance, something which could be done in the trials lobby by default. This bug has never existed with any other trial to date.

The Mantikora's Black Hole can still be avoided by outrunning it.
The Mantikora's Serpent's Image (In the hole) which for now with DPS I believe we may have to kill again has far too lower health can be solo'ed by 2 people as opposed to the four that it was initially designed to require.
The Mantikora's Spears continue to have an ongoing bug where their telegraph will be shown but they will never land, making what is supposed to be one of the hardest mechanics in the fight extremely unreliable.
The Mantikora, although being a first boss still has little health when compared with MoL's First Boss, a small buff to make their health to make them comparable given their mechanics are of somewhat similar difficulty to me at least seems somewhat reasonable.
The Mantikora's Stomp damage seems incorrectly tuned. We've had players not block it and barely take any damage.

The Troll add's poison can still insta kill a player, having personally received 1 shots with 1 debuff of poison on my character of 50k+ without any form of internet or framerate issues (I can also provide footage).

The Troll adds poison telegraph disappears off the player far too early, and we're talking ridiculously here. A player may receive poison, think they no longer have the telegraph or the visual effect and still be 'contaminated' for a further 5 seconds only visible by your health bar. This means that you have players who look completely fine after 3 seconds of not having anything on their screen running straight into others and poisoning the entire group. Funny, not funny.

The Troll Bosses cleave mechanic *with the ground particles* used to initially one shot players, our group members were barely taking 50% damage to their health pools with 20k health, no minor maim or nova being applied.

Once entering through any of the intractable or lever operated doors found throughout the dungeon their textures can turn into a opaque black wall which persists constantly for all players. These graphical errors affect the entire group but only effect aesthetics and visibility, the latter of which does become a big problem (particularly with the many holes within the dungeon).

Ozara

Ozara, first of all, a great step up in difficulty and the only hard boss in the trial now beyond HM. However, persisting bugs with the synergies on this boss should have never made it to live. Players can interact as much as up to 4 times with the bosses lightning spear synergy and still not be able to 'pick up' players. Even when the player does not try and move early (animation cancel) and let the full synergy play out this bug persists. This completely breaks the fight and anything new you have attempted to achieve with it. A boss that was once nicknamed as the 'walking treasure chest' has now become the 'RnG run ender' due to the potency and problematic nature of this bug.

The Overcharger that now spawns on a regular cycle for this boss, as with all the other mobs can decide to walk backwards through their spawning door and into the wall, say goodbye to any attempt you have just made because you will now just be spammed with lightning to your inevitable death.

The feeding pit is still the most useless inclusion in a dungeon. The mobs grant no points towards your final total so the area is rendered completely useless to try and use content which is supposed to offer replay-ability.

The Serpent

The Serpent Veteran Non-HM changes are few and far between and were cleared by us in 1 attempt in which we pulled hastily before we took a break just to see what new mechanics there were and realistically had no real strategy. The Lamia's have higher health and so do the totems... the end. We touched on HM tonight as I will talk about in a minute but beyond this we couldn't see much change in the HM version either. As stands the 3rd boss is greatly more difficult than the last across all difficulties. Also Rakkhat 80Mil HM, Serpent, Sub 50Mil on normal and on HM less than Rakkhat on normal by nearly 7mil, what?! I thought the concept was to scale this trial from cp 140 to cp160? Forgive me if I am wrong!

THE BIGGEST BUG IN THE ENTIRE DUNGEON
Upon attempting the last boss the doors at the back of the room will close as they did previously... this time though they will be permanently closed. If your fellow player DC's because of his internet or server sturdiness, or someone has to go and you need a replacement the run is over. The door cannot be reopened, walked through, nothing. The door is simply permanently sealed. Needn't I say more about the importance of fixing this.

This being said, I just wished to touch upon a few other very simple things that personally could have been implemented but no thought seemed to have been given. And just before I continue, we did play the trial twice on PTS at the end of two raid evenings only barely going past Manti and report what issues we could see on PTS as well as offering suggestions. So just a few simple suggestions from myself beyond fixing some of evident game breaking bugs occurring in the updated SO:

Make a deathless achievement and any others you think worthwhile, you did it with MoL and that has been an amazing adventure to this date and into the future and gives people something to play repeatedly for.
Last boss is now one of the most disappointing things in the game, anything you can do with this would improve the fight. When you compare Rakkhat to The Serpent, well you can't, they are not even comparable as the closest thing to the number of mechanics and the ease of them on The Serpent can only be compared to S'kinrai and Vashai in MoL. For a final boss and a true staple of an end game baddy that was dominating over the entire craglorn quest chain he is lackluster at best.
You were able to give us a toggle-able HM in Maw of Lorkhaj which was an amazing idea that many gave feedback to you... is it that hard to implement?


Thank you for listening and reading, and as always, here to offer any further testing and help you require to fix these, as long as you actually do fix them.

Wow, that was super insightful and covered most points that I wanted to make.

The poison - oh god, where do I start. We had the whole group poisoned altogether so many times, I guess due to this bug of aoe visibility. One 'clean' person runs into you, and bam - the whole group is covered in it. We actually wiped to poison once, which never happened since very early into trial introduction.

The last boss on normal was confusingly short and easy. I even forgot to slot a magicka damping skill, and never got the bomb, but I saw other people getting it and never dying to it , not sure if it's due to their skill and experience or lesser effect.

Also, I crashed right before the final boss, and after reloagging I ended up right where I crashed instead of teleporting back to the lobby. Thank you very much for that! SO is a mad long dungeon to walk through, and full of scary turns and holes one would hate to fall into while walking on their own. That's a really cool and helpful improvement!

Cuyler

Excelsiore wrote: »

Hardmode down.
By Beyond Infinity EU

Cheers!

Sharmony

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

As for the bug reports, we will definitely look into those.

For the design questions regarding Sanctum Ophidia, the purpose was not to reinvent the wheel with this Trial. We wanted to provide a challenging experience that scales but not necessarily change the mechanics too much from what players are used to. We think that the challenge level in Veteran has increased a good amount and provides a rewarding experience but is not necessarily at the challenge level of Maw of Lorkhaj.

@ZOS_Finn I mean no offense here as I know you guys do work pretty damn hard having had the privilege to speak with you guys. The fact of the matter is that the large majority of the bugs have been around for over a year and have been repeatedly reported. It would take the devs a single run through SO to show most of the bugs and yet none of them were fixed or found in your own testing (which makes me wonder if we are literally the only testers on PTS). I am glad you will look into them but for a company that actually cares about the quality of their content to ignore this for a year and even then when they re-develop the content is greatly disheartening.

s7732425ub17_ESO

OP, are you SURE you weren't running normal mode SO? A lot of the mechanics describes NORMAL mode perfectly, NOT veteran mode.

You complain about the first boss's health. Manti now has 38 million HP on Vet. Compare that to VMOL first boss of 46 million. Roughly the same. If you think the first boss's health is "low", you are not on Vet mode.

The boss in the bottom portal has 1.2 million HP, which is just fine for two DPS to kill. It's about the same as pre-patch.

> The Troll Bosses cleave mechanic *with the ground particles* used to initially one shot players, our group members were barely taking 50% damage to their health pools with 20k health, no minor maim or nova being applied.

The troll boss cleave DOES one-shot everyone if they ARE NOT BLOCKING. If your group was not getting one shot, then you were not on Vet mode.


Or


ZOS messed something up and you got "normal mode" damages from mobs even while you were in vet mode.

Sharmony

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

OP, are you SURE you weren't running normal mode SO? A lot of the mechanics describes NORMAL mode perfectly, NOT veteran mode.

You complain about the first boss's health. Manti now has 38 million HP on Vet. Compare that to VMOL first boss of 46 million. Roughly the same. If you think the first boss's health is "low", you are not on Vet mode.

The boss in the bottom portal has 1.2 million HP, which is just fine for two DPS to kill. It's about the same as pre-patch.

> The Troll Bosses cleave mechanic *with the ground particles* used to initially one shot players, our group members were barely taking 50% damage to their health pools with 20k health, no minor maim or nova being applied.

The troll boss cleave DOES one-shot everyone if they ARE NOT BLOCKING. If your group was not getting one shot, then you were not on Vet mode.


Or


ZOS messed something up and you got "normal mode" damages from mobs even while you were in vet mode.

ZOS has even confirmed that all the information reporting bugs in the original post is true and the fact that we did indeed complete Vet SO first as it showed on the leaderboards highlights this.

Sharmony

I forgot to mention the constant sound issues where players are pretty much doing SO silently for the entire duration as sound at the moment in all trials seems to disappear soon after entering combat. I guess you can add this to the list @ZOS_Finn .

Gilliamtherogue

Just some additional feedback on the instance (Focusing ONLY on Veteran Sanctum here);

Trash mobs with upwards of 3million health is not fun or interesting, it makes trash long and tedious with no real reasoning behind it. Sure we don't want to melt everything, but most non elite groups will find themselves unable to even complete the majority of the instance due to absurd HP values on trash mobs. This becomes a greater issue on fights like the Troll Boss and Ozara. Some adjustments to HP values would make this (and vMoL for that matter) much more accessible and enjoyable.

The amount of mechanics that each mob brings with it is now to the point of absolute outrageous-ness. Each specific mob has anywhere from 2-3 special mechanics that all have the ability to kill players, and is multiplied for the amount of them in any given pull. The bridge with 3 Overchargers + 2 War Priests + 2-3 Trolls + 1-2 Serpent fangs has no good way to go about it anymore, since mob health is so high you can't really nuke these down before they begin stacking mechanics and killing players left and right. Inability to chain and CC has left the ability to control the field out of the question as well. Between lightning AoE's, Spreading Poison, and the Bleed, Poison, and Fire DoT's given by the Warpriests and Fangs, there's just too much going on to keep people alive.

All enemy entity mobs in the Veteran mode have seen a drastic health increase, but not necessarily a damage increase. Lamia's on the Serpent fight have had their HP increased considerably, as well as the Totems that spawn throughout. However an oversight on your side perhaps, Totems can no longer be destroyed by a single Lamia, as their explosions were not scaled to match the increased Totem's health pool. This means you now need 2 Lamia's for a single Totem, while 2 spawn each time. Lamia HP pools are also a bit over the top, as they take far too long to kill to reasonably return to the boss before his poison phase, I see most groups being unable to handle a once manageable mechanic.

The increasing amount of "RNG" or randomness to mechanics is infuriating. Prior to this patch each mechanic triggered in specific ways, that allowed for high tier groups to formulate convoluted strategies that allowed to help reduce the chaoticness of each encounter. Trolls only threw poison to their current target, so if taunted they would go to a tank and you could play around this. This is not exclusive to Veteran SO in particular, as many mechanic changes have been made completely random, while at their release they were controllable. Please STOP making random mechanics, they are not fun and do not offer for strategy making to be implemented, effectively making all PvE a pure random event generator.


Now onto the bugs;

Overcharger's Lightning effects placed on players now persist through death, meaning they will deal damage to anyone attempt to resurrect them. On top of this, they are instantly killed upon resurrection since the damage is constant.

As stated in the OP, Spreading Poison from the trolls persists for 5 seconds AFTER the telegraph (red circle) disappears. This leads to extremely frustrating events where players move thinking it's safe, only to give poison to the entire raid leading to deaths and wasted time. Also, trolls are no longer giving poison to only their aggro'ed target, and instead fling them randomly. This prevents group from choice making and force feeds random events that one cannot build strategy or invoke thought upon countering. Awful change.

On the Ozara fight, her Trapping Bolt mechanic places a small AoE around the affected target, which makes anyone within it take periodic Lightning Damage. Prior to this patch, synergizing this would remove the stun AND the damage over time compontent, but as of live, it only removes the stun. This leaves an invisible area that is permanently desecrated by lightning that deals damage AND STACKS with further Trapping Bolts placed nearby. The only way to remove this is to spam Purge to remove them from the ground, which has proved unreliable in most situations. Invisible mechanics that stack further and instantly kill players is NOT cool.

The Magicka dump mechanic on the Serpent fight given by the blue Totems now explode much quicker, and sometimes with no indicator. It also deals damage per point of Magicka, rather than based on a percantage of remaining Magicka. This means many caster builds will find themselves dying, even when their Magicka is under 20%, while many Stamina based builds can live with over 50% of their Magicka pools. This is offers no real reliability to the mechanic. Either adjust this to deal damage on % of remaining Magicka, or adjust the "cleansed refund" effect to trigger at a higher threshold, or after a certain amount of Magicka has been spent. This would lead to a much more reliable and interactive mechanic, that would allow players to understand what is happening, rather than casting Magicka abilities for 5 seconds at a time and dying, while other players who didn't even cast anything lived.

The locked door after the Serpent fight serves no purpose, and is now bugged so anyone that accidentally wayshrines or dies is permanently locked out after the Serpent has been engaged once, even after a wipe has occured. The Serpent's poison phase actually fills the entire upper part of the instance, so even people that attempted to flee back when the doors did not close would die, and the Serpent would reset upon leaving the area anyways, why close them at all?

DDuke

Another evening wasted due to the locked door bug. Two people crashed and couldn't re-enter anymore.

Any ETA for when this will be fixed?