Stonefire Machinations. What the actual hell.

Drej

Been at this for an hour on my nightblade and haven't been able to even come close to killing the three mages doing the ritual.

I start out by trying to stun one of the mages, which works, but the attacks/stuns made by the argonian and the other mage are just too strong for me to even try to plan around. I've switched up my abilities about three times now, and no matter what, I can't seem to get any of them down to half health. Kiting doesn't work because of how strong their attacks are. Being aggressive doesn't work because I just get stunlocked and oneshot. Getting constantly slowed and stuck to walls doesn't help either. I try to quickly take out one of the mages, but that's impossible because the other two throw attacks too fast and too strong to even get one down.

What's even more unfair is that if one of the white enemies nearby gets caught in the crossfire, they join in, too, and they have just as much health as the others, so it's pretty much a lost cause.

What's worse is I can't even get anyone to help because they're phased out whether or not they've finished the quest.

Starting to wonder if Cadwell's Silver is even worth this.

sadownik

@Drej there is not a single quest right now in main game that you should have problems with. Can you post your build?

Drej

i'll have to post it up after maintenance tomorrow for an accurate one. Can't do it justice from memory.

Enodoc

This boss fight pops up repeatedly as being harder than most others in the Alliance storylines, so I would say it's not just you and not just your build.

vonBismarck

I had the phasing issue aswell when I guildmate tried to help, however after he tried a few times one character didn't phase out. By that time I had managed to kill (rather him entering just as the last one were down to 20% health) them so we didn't check his queststatus, but still there is a possibility to go past the phasing issue. I'm pretty sure he had already done it, my guess would be that you need someone of the same alliance. I did this on a magplar and basiclly just went full heals to wear them down every so slow, best thing to bring imo is a way to remove conditions on you. Kite and use los to your advantage. I focused them in the order of how much cc they brought, also helped alot. If you have no qualms about getting a bounty on your head you could start by clearing out a few of the neutrals before you pull to not worry about them while kiting. Or just try to redo it at prime time, shouldn't take to long for someonelse to be on the same quest at the same stage.

vonBismarck

Ohh, and also after that quest you'll be back to the usual breeze through questing so don't get put off by the quest, continue with the Caldwell Silver and gold

Drej

vonBismarck wrote: »

I had the phasing issue aswell when I guildmate tried to help, however after he tried a few times one character didn't phase out. By that time I had managed to kill (rather him entering just as the last one were down to 20% health) them so we didn't check his queststatus, but still there is a possibility to go past the phasing issue. I'm pretty sure he had already done it, my guess would be that you need someone of the same alliance. I did this on a magplar and basiclly just went full heals to wear them down every so slow, best thing to bring imo is a way to remove conditions on you. Kite and use los to your advantage. I focused them in the order of how much cc they brought, also helped alot. If you have no qualms about getting a bounty on your head you could start by clearing out a few of the neutrals before you pull to not worry about them while kiting. Or just try to redo it at prime time, shouldn't take to long for someonelse to be on the same quest at the same stage.

Yeah, you were right - we were going to give up attempting it until we realized a couple people hadn't done the quest yet. They blew through the first part of the chain quickly, and only then were they able to see me and help with the bosses.

Kinda baffles me now that that specific quest ended up taking three people to do while the rest of them are pretty standard as far as quests go. I'd expect that level of difficulty from the last quest in a long chain, but this one seems to be just the first part of the region's story, so it's not even the final boss. What even.

Aca2017

Funny you should mention this...

I attempted the "Ritual" encounter of "Stonefire Machinations" for the first time just the other day, at 32, unsuccessfully. Futile exercise, and frustrating, but learned a few things. Went to work leveling (thank you, continuous Auridon dolmen zerg!), came back the next day at 37, with "safety gear" (regen-oriented armor, all 7 pieces heavy; I used 5-piece Willows Bark and 3- or 4-piece Song of Lamae depending on which weapon slot was active; all of this is easy to make yourself at modest character levels if you are even remotely into crafting), plus the usual consumables (food and potions). I will be saving this gear for use by other toons should they need it.

Step 1: CCed the 2H melee, burned the dual-wield melee, ignored the caster. Step 2: The dual-wield melee went down just as the CC on the 2H broke, so burned the 2H, and continued to ignore the caster. Step 3: burned the caster. Step 4: took a deep breath.

Did all of this at melee range, a short distance from the spawn point. I found no way to pull them individually, nor any way to kite the two melee away from the caster.

Once you are done with this, shortly afterwards you go after the Dark Mane, which is also a difficult fight (but not as hard as the "Ritual" trio, especially once you have adapted gear/abilities/playstyle to deal with the trio).

My toon was a DK, so CC, mitigation (spell/physical resistance), and at least rudimentary self-healing abilities were all available. Classes with shorter/weaker CC would be more problematic. DK "petrify" lasts 20 seconds, which is quite generous. Look at your skill lines carefully. Good self-healing would probably make up for a lack of CC.

Have to watch the heavy attacks from the 2H melee, they hit like a truck (just one attack could take half of my health and even more if it landed), and the AOE from the dual-wield and caster were also very disruptive. Save stamina for blocking/dodging. CC really helped here, being able to ignore that 2H completely while focusing the dual-wield and dodging AOE was a big help.

I can confirm the phasing issue. Tried to get a guildmate in to help me, without success. He was in a different "phase" of the content, and while we could see each other's nameplates, character models were absent and no interaction (such as healing) was possible. So, if you want help my guess is you will need someone on exactly the same step of the quest.

As well, if you die, remain in proximity to the trio spawn point, and rez with a soul gem, otherwise the survivors will despawn and all three will then respawn intact... unhelpful. You could presumably "graveyard zerg" them this way, assuming you can get individual kills before the survivors rub you out.

My conclusions: soloable, but not all classes/builds will have an equally easy (difficult?) time of this. The "safety gear" made a big difference.

Found threads in forums complaining about the difficulty of these "Stonefire Machinations" encounters (both the "Ritual" trio and the Dark Mane). Posts suggested the encounters were going to be nerfed, per dialog with admins. I saw no evidence this had occurred, they remain rather difficult.

As well, on tangential issue, I found the whole Reaper's March main story questline emotionally very dark, actually unpleasant to play. Note to devs: games are supposed to be fun. Escapist entertainment. Capisce "fun"? No? Look it up.

Sugram22

i have different issue with that mission, i kill the 3 bosses (managed somehow after few min running from them, 3 at once i die fast, need to kill them one by one) & nothing happens, the thing behind them what i half to activate isn't there so i can't progress the mission any further

Sugram22

later when some1 appeared i got trough, killed them faster & the think i need to activate also appeared, coincidence? or the problem that u need to kill them fast to progress the mission, or a bug that went away after loading i went to city & came & then i so some1 more fighting them

Sugram22

with sorc its really hard, barely managed to killed them first 3 times when i was alone then second time when i got to final 2 bosses, 2 i got one by one & then 3th came & killed me & then the other 2 spawned back & it became totally impossible to do solo, sorc always dies easy when it comes to bosses, maybe summoning build would help, but my elf isn't summoner, they shouldn't spawn back until final boss is killed, well neither of them should cause at the end it makes it impossible to comp the mission, most annoying are mage bosses, no mater what class & race i play boss mages own me, even dung (group dung with group) are mostly easier then some of the mission bosses & world bosses, wold bosses omg some are like u need 4 ppl for them & when it comes to missions its like they only think of Tanks, only tanks can comp the mission solo, some missions, not meany, mostly if there is more then 1 & there is one or more mage, then its hard even for tank cause spells hit hard & u can't block forever, my gear is what i find, sets are future things, npc boss mages are the most pain, to op even when ur mage urself mages should be easy for mage, more easy hit a mage less, but its same as any other class

Sugram22

fighting against a npc mage boss is huge pain, mostly if he or she has help another mage boss or any kind of second boss helping, the homing missiles are hitting to hard, they need to get nerfed the mages have other hard hitting spells that can be dodged (& some of them hit even harder), but if there are others then player can still screw up & step on the line of fire, so it won't make it to easy, also when they nerf the homing missiles then they can also make so this are used less to make it harder, but its still better cause then u can only blame urself not Bethasta for making it to hard, cause u can dodge this attacks, hard hitting spells u can't dodge make NPC to OP i die a lot before i get lucky, even my restro staff doesn't help enough with so hard hitting bosses (cause i use 2much MP for heal & buffs to keep me alive longer), i can handle melee bosses more easily then mage bosses with any class & spell resistance doesn't matter cause if i am with tank who has more psy resist or with mage i get hit same hard, but die faster cause tank has bit more HP despite that i put point on Stam or magic depends am i magic tank or stam tank or any other class with stam or magic, its like mage bosses ignore all ur resistances, well it feel like that

Sugram22

when it come to factions i would like if game starts with no faction & in game u chose one
they could make this little change

spacepants

I'm having issues with the god damn quest too. This is stupid hard. I've never had an issue with any of the other quests like this. The three mages kill me stupid fast. I actually somehow killed them on one attempt and they IMMEDIATELY respawned! God dammit. I'm totally stuck and for some reason I can't share this quest to get help from people.

StormWylf

Can't you group up for this?

estrong20b14_ESO

As a Templar, somehow the mages take my magika and all I have for combat is my stamina. So I can't heal. This is BS!

corwinvalour_ESO

This quest has me stumped. I'm lv50 Champ 75 Templar and am now wondering if I've leveled myself into a impossible to complete quest thanks to scaling. They hit to hard to for me to keep up damage and healing.

Of all things, these story quests should all be solo-able. No one is doing them for a challenge. That is what PvP is for.

vometia

Anybody got a solution to how to do this quest? Haven't had too much trouble so far with the game considering I've finished the MQ without much difficulty but this is utterly impossible, much worse than even the multiplayer areas I've blundered into. I've yet to survive longer than 10 seconds and even that is optimistic. I have absolutely no idea how to progress.

vometia

Ah, figured it out: stand at a good distance and summon the minions over using a ranged weapon before pwning them, and then deal with the feline dude. Suddenly very much less painful.