Feedback for Sanctum Ophidia Redesign

Nifty2g

So after a little bit of time playing in this trial over the weekend with the guild I run with, there is some feedback we would like to give as a whole.

First of all ZOS, you guys went from Maw of Lorkhaj, something that was so well designed, to something like Sanctum? Maw of Lorkhaj had such great mechanics for everyone, the tanks specifically, we can't control anything in Sanctum Redesign the poison is random, the Stonebreaker is random, the whole trial has been redesigned with randomization through the roof, and a lot of copy and paste added to it too, from other trials, vma etc.

Playing as a Tank in this trial is almost meaningless, what is the point of being a tank is to control damage, and absorb it in this trial now a tank essentially feels useless for the whole thing, they taunt and hold block and afk, there is nothing else to it now, poison is random, lightning is random etc, why remove the tanking role to be something almost pointless in the trial other than afk holding block on the bosses so they dont go around 1 shotting.

I am not saying this trial is difficult, it really isn't but its a step in the complete wrong direction, it's really not too enjoyable to have so much randomization and stacking AoE like crazy that you can't do anything about. In comparison to Maw of Lorkhaj, it just feels like not too much time went into it to completely redesign it.

There are a few interesting things I like added to the trial but overall, there is far too much uncontrollable AoE which makes the tank role completely useless and gives a lot of stacking of ground AoE, and because the trial is so linear and narrow, you can't just throw in anti stack methods with the amount of trash mobs in there, it just results in an uncontrolled mess.

If there are any other plans for redesigns or new trials in the future, please stick to how you guys did with Maw, interesting and engaging mechanics for all roles, controlled damage (for the most part).

Just my feedback on the trial. Overall, thanks for scaling up trials but I hope in future a lot more thought is put into it.

The_Rooster24

Nifty2g wrote: »

So after a little bit of time playing in this trial over the weekend with the guild I run with, there is some feedback we would like to give as a whole.

First of all ZOS, you guys went from Maw of Lorkhaj, something that was so well designed, to something like Sanctum? Maw of Lorkhaj had such great mechanics for everyone, the tanks specifically, we can't control anything in Sanctum Redesign the poison is random, the Stonebreaker is random, the whole trial has been redesigned with randomization through the roof, and a lot of copy and paste added to it too, from other trials, vma etc.

Playing as a Tank in this trial is almost meaningless, what is the point of being a tank is to control damage, and absorb it in this trial now a tank essentially feels useless for the whole thing, they taunt and hold block and afk, there is nothing else to it now, poison is random, lightning is random etc, why remove the tanking role to be something almost pointless in the trial other than afk holding block on the bosses so they dont go around 1 shotting.

I am not saying this trial is difficult, it really isn't but its a step in the complete wrong direction, it's really not too enjoyable to have so much randomization and stacking AoE like crazy that you can't do anything about. In comparison to Maw of Lorkhaj, it just feels like not too much time went into it to completely redesign it.

There are a few interesting things I like added to the trial but overall, there is far too much uncontrollable AoE which makes the tank role completely useless and gives a lot of stacking of ground AoE, and because the trial is so linear and narrow, you can't just throw in anti stack methods with the amount of trash mobs in there, it just results in an uncontrolled mess.

If there are any other plans for redesigns or new trials in the future, please stick to how you guys did with Maw, interesting and engaging mechanics for all roles, controlled damage (for the most part).

Just my feedback on the trial. Overall, thanks for scaling up trials but I hope in future a lot more thought is put into it.

I agree I recencently did a run with a very experienced group and it seemed like the tanks only job was to control I type of add the rest can not be subdued in anyway. It just felt like they did it because they said they would and no real effort or thought was put into it. That being said I think the boss fights are much more mechanically engaging other than Ozara (at least with the method we choose) which is just a straight burn. I really wish ZOS in general would go away from dps checks in general. High dps will still have the best times but to make fights strictly a dps race in my mind is lazy and instead why not use mechanics as a way to test a trials group. Of course there are a lot of mechanics in vet maw but they are also centered around large dps. There is a way to make a trial doable for lower tier groups without making making them to easy for elite groups and impossible for lower dps groups. When sailing AA and HRC in the future I hope you guys reconsider the dps checks and look to add mechanics that engage an entire group. If you take the first boss in vet maw for example you can literally do the same fight without the pillars running out and just give him more hp. That way the group has to constantly be aware you can even let them go down to 1. That way you eliminate the dps race and still have a challenging boss. Just a thought. Thank you Nifty for posting this as of right now vet SO is an rng nightmare, and makes the content unenjoyable and a *** show.

Syntse

Kinda sounds like it would be OPs first run in SO which I highly doubt. They did some tweaks to it but not completely redo the trial just like I thought it would be. Most of the stuff that is in SO have been there from the beginning. SO was already kinda retired trial before the updates to it which maybe blew little bit more fire into it and couple more runs for the hardcore people but will be forgotten by hardcore pve players soon enough.

They made normal mode for more casual people to also experience it. Next they need to include it in the dungeon finder too so that the casuals without guilds can get into groups.

Nifty2g

Syntse wrote: »

Kinda sounds like it would be OPs first run in SO which I highly doubt. They did some tweaks to it but not completely redo the trial just like I thought it would be. Most of the stuff that is in SO have been there from the beginning. SO was already kinda retired trial before the updates to it which maybe blew little bit more fire into it and couple more runs for the hardcore people but will be forgotten by hardcore pve players soon enough.

They made normal mode for more casual people to also experience it. Next they need to include it in the dungeon finder too so that the casuals without guilds can get into groups.

What? In the previous version the tanks could control majority of the ground AoE (Poison), and there wasn't directly copied mobs from VMA

xblackroxe

Totally agree with you nifty. The new SO is just boring. No real tactics needed in there.

RNG poison everywhere stacked with Overcharger AoE. And the worst of all is Ozara. The only you can do there is stack and burn and hope to not have your healers bolted with any other AoE below them. If there wouldn't be loot worth getting (especially since its the first time since before IC that pve people actually have gear to sell) nobody would go through this shithole of a trial.

Nifty2g

I forgot to tag @ZOS_Finn and also apologise we didn't have a lot of time on the PTS to give this feedback, but we hope it's not too late to still go back to the trial and fix some stuff up

DisgracefulMind

At first I was really happy that they scaled and changed up some things for vSO, but that was from a DPS perspective who doesn't see the sheer pain this is for both tanks and healers. Sure, it's bad for a DPS as well, but nothing...NOTHING near what it's like as a support role.

Healing vSO is a nightmare. A complete nightmare.

Not only is almost all the damage completely random, but there are near one-shot spews of poison, lightning, and a whole bunch of other stuff that makes the healers absolutely miserable in there. Random lightning drops on you? Can't bring it into the group, so time to stand back and spam breath just to keep myself alive, but that doesn't help the group out since breath only hits one other person. Which is fine, I can spam combat prayer a bit while I try to live and keep my group alive, it works out if you're a quick thinking player with some skill and experience to an extent. But then you have the chance that BOTH lightning and poison are going to hit you at the same time, and that's a one-shot. I'm fairly certain that almost all the feedback ZoS has gotten in regards to how to raise the difficulty of content has been to NOT MAKE DAMAGE OUT OF CONTROL. That is NOT challenge. Having heavy amounts of damage thrown at you from every direction does not equal well thought out mechanics that make a piece of content challenging and rewarding.

So let's discuss healing vSO step by step:

1. First major trash pack in front of manti: No big deal, spam springs, repent, throw orbs; it's fine, just longer.

2. Mantikora: Glad we have to do the mechanics now. There's really nothing bad about this boss in vSO. It's simple to heal, but requires you to keep alert to avoid dying unnecessarily.

3. Bridge trash: This is where the hell begins. This is where all that RNG damage starts that makes you want to tear your hair out, break your resto staff in two and regret coming into the place. It's manageable, whatever, but a forewarning to the nightmare that is to come.

4. Stonebreaker: Not really all that bad, can be a bit challenging, but, overall, is manageable. the overcharger lightning is extreme though, and hurts, and can be complicated to live through. But the fight isn't terribly long, and as long as everyone knows what they're doing, it's alright.

5. All the trash on the way to Ozara: HELL. Absolute HELL. DPS want some orbs? Oh let me throw out one at a time because if I do more than that you're all going to get one shot by the absolute ridiculous amounts of damage going out from every direction. Fine, fine. ZoS wants the trash to be hard. It's not really "hard" though. It's infuriating because, again, hard does not mean stupid amounts of damage and one-shots.

6. Ozara: Let me just stop here and ask...WHY. WHY WHY WHY. Are you absolutely kidding me with this fight. The fight isn't difficult. It's just so. much. damage. Nonstop. No break from constant damage damage damage. It's heavy damage too. One shots everywhere. One shots are not difficulty, Zenimax. They're really not.

7. Serpent: Same 'ol same 'ol. I haven't done hardmode vSO, so I'm not sure on the specifics of that, but regular Serpent on vSO is just really the same, boring fight.

My overall suggestion to ZoS is to not do this with the other trials. If you ever scale AA or HRC, please, by all means, make them interesting! Don't give us mass amounts of damage to suffer through. Give us cool mechanics to figure out. We want actual difficulty, not a sorry excuse for it. ):

Anyways, just my own personal vent/rant on the changes to vSO.

Meshal

For me, VSO is totally ruined; they made absolutely no effort in changing the trial and now it's ruined. It used to be my favorite trial, I hope they don't do the same with VDSA.

good thing we have Vmol.

Syntse

Nifty2g wrote: »

What? In the previous version the tanks could control majority of the ground AoE (Poison), and there wasn't directly copied mobs from VMA

Guess our tanks have not done their best in controlling aoes as for me they have seemed pretty random even before. Sure there has not been copy mobs from vMSA cause vMSA didn't exist when SO first was. But yes I get your point that they should have made effort of making own mobs to SO instead of copy pasting.

They could have always left SO as it was and not do anything to it. Glad they did at least something. Though it would have been better to get veteran versions of selene, arx, blessed, tempest.

Nifty2g

Syntse wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

What? In the previous version the tanks could control majority of the ground AoE (Poison), and there wasn't directly copied mobs from VMA

Guess our tanks have not done their best in controlling aoes as for me they have seemed pretty random even before. Sure there has not been copy mobs from vMSA cause vMSA didn't exist when SO first was. But yes I get your point that they should have made effort of making own mobs to SO instead of copy pasting.

They could have always left SO as it was and not do anything to it. Glad they did at least something. Though it would have been better to get veteran versions of selene, arx, blessed, tempest.

Are you sure you're remembering the same SO as I have?

They directly copied call lightning from VMSA, They also grabbed the archers from round 7 and placed them into Sanctum + their arrow spray damage over time. They grabbed the reflective light ability from Maw second boss and threw it on the new healers in Sanctum too.
Then they added a new ability to the trolls where they throw 3 poison balls on everyone whether or not the tank has taunt, they used to only throw it on the person that had hatred.

I believe ZOS should have made specific mobs with their own abilities in this remake and followed the path from Maw (its amazing), and focus a lot more on required roles needed. So much randomization it hurts

deleted008293

I'm a tank not the best one but tbh i'm quite dissapointed in nSO.

Manticore is a piece of cake... I think you don't even need heavy armor anymore. No more portals and boss aoe do way too low damage.
End boss again is a piece of cake. Keep boss on you and manticore on you. You don't even need potions or shards anymore here.
Trash mobs at least are oky I think. Taunt big stuff and support.
Hell even feeding trolls was easy. Not even a single death and that was a first run for everyone but me.
Llamia boss was a little tough.

Did quite a few runs, some people didn't block the huge aoe and on the poison spreading part... well... that part was fun but I don't want to think what would happen in vSO.

For vSO I had 2 tries but couldn't get past manticore yet.

SienneYviete

Syntse wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

What? In the previous version the tanks could control majority of the ground AoE (Poison), and there wasn't directly copied mobs from VMA

Guess our tanks have not done their best in controlling aoes as for me they have seemed pretty random even before. Sure there has not been copy mobs from vMSA cause vMSA didn't exist when SO first was. But yes I get your point that they should have made effort of making own mobs to SO instead of copy pasting.

They could have always left SO as it was and not do anything to it. Glad they did at least something. Though it would have been better to get veteran versions of selene, arx, blessed, tempest.

Call lightning is a new NPC skill that wasn't in the original and it's just an utterly stupid attack to have in a trial, the amount of random unavoidable insta gibs from this attack is crazy. Too much damage ZOS! there is just no need for all the constant random damage, it does not equal difficulty just frustration. I actually didn't mind the Ozara fight (felt sorry for the healers tho) just way too much random unavoidable damage.

Syntse

Nifty2g wrote: »

I believe ZOS should have made specific mobs with their own abilities in this remake and followed the path from Maw (its amazing), and focus a lot more on required roles needed. So much randomization it hurts

I'm not denying that they have copied stuff from arenas and trials they have done after SO. For me it seemed random drops of poison etc but that might have been that tank didn't have aggro on all trolls. But could be that they have added randomness, personally I've not noticed it.

The issue is like you say where I quote that you expected it to be remake when it actually was just some tweaks to difficulty. Not sure when ZOS has given information about SO did they use term remake or just difficulty increased or similar. I was always in the impression that they would not change it too much, only increase difficulty a bit for the veteran version. Normal version is really just dulled down version.

DisgracefulMind

Syntse wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

I believe ZOS should have made specific mobs with their own abilities in this remake and followed the path from Maw (its amazing), and focus a lot more on required roles needed. So much randomization it hurts

I'm not denying that they have copied stuff from arenas and trials they have done after SO. For me it seemed random drops of poison etc but that might have been that tank didn't have aggro on all trolls. But could be that they have added randomness, personally I've not noticed it.

The issue is like you say where I quote that you expected it to be remake when it actually was just some tweaks to difficulty. Not sure when ZOS has given information about SO did they use term remake or just difficulty increased or similar. I was always in the impression that they would not change it too much, only increase difficulty a bit for the veteran version. Normal version is really just dulled down version.

The problem is, however, that difficulty does not equal just increasing damage and adding more insane amounts of it. That's not difficulty, that's just frustration and oneshots.

idk

Syntse wrote: »

Kinda sounds like it would be OPs first run in SO which I highly doubt. They did some tweaks to it but not completely redo the trial just like I thought it would be. Most of the stuff that is in SO have been there from the beginning. SO was already kinda retired trial before the updates to it which maybe blew little bit more fire into it and couple more runs for the hardcore people but will be forgotten by hardcore pve players soon enough.

They made normal mode for more casual people to also experience it. Next they need to include it in the dungeon finder too so that the casuals without guilds can get into groups.

My guess is you have yet to see the new vSO update. One will understand the OPs post after experiencing the content. He is on point.

@Nifty2g Good observation and post. Hopefully it receives the attention of Zos.

Alcast

Sanctum is cancer, not going back in there with all those annoying things like Poison RNG

Naslu

Alcast wrote: »

Sanctum is cancer, not going back in there with all those annoying things like Poison RNG

Sanctum is "green love"....

Syntse

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

The problem is, however, that difficulty does not equal just increasing damage and adding more insane amounts of it. That's not difficulty, that's just frustration and oneshots.

True that. Unfortunately seems that is how they like to do it, go the so called easy route. And also this is the difference of redo/remake and tweaking difficulty.

Shalnark

Feedback?
Totally GARBAGE

Latios

Sanctum is a big RNG, buggy mess now. I dare the best group in the game to complete a no-death run there.
Mantikora? Decent fight.
Stonebreaker? Damage everywhere, requires lots of mitigation, but that's all.
Trash packs? Lol. It's a completely mindless fight, very different from vMaw. I remember Zos saying they wanted to remove the "stack and burn" part from content.
So explain to me: In WHAT part of Sanctum trash packs are not stack and burn? You just gather all mobs, stack heals, mits, and try to kill everything before they do the same to you. Big meh.
Ozara? Pray your healers are not pinned at the same, it's the most RNG based fight so far. A test of endurance.
Serpent is same thing as always.

Silver_Strider

Poison didn't seem that bad TBH but my group typically runs with 2 magic NBs that are spamming Funnel like it's going out of season so the added off heals probably made it seem much more manageable than it really was.

Cuyler

Nifty2g wrote: »

...it's really not too enjoyable to have so much randomization and stacking AoE like crazy

This is my only gripe with the new vSO. Having completely random poison (5 secs after tell, bugged?), lightning + lightning (remaining after death, bugged?), and reflective light stack means it's inevitable that it will all select the same person at one time or another and when it does, pray it's not a healer.

We want strategy, counters to mechanics, thought > random one-shot, unavoidable damage.

NewBlacksmurf

Had you played it around the time the cap was vr14?

Nifty2g

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Had you played it around the time the cap was vr14?

Me? Yes, one of the first groups to beat it. Playing with progress groups you tend to notice if you lose agro/hatred on the trolls they throw poison at random people instead of the tank, and taking that away just made the tanking role really useless.