Cloudrest bug or changes?

CivilDisobedienceVII

During +3 we are noticing that the orbs/spears seem to do more damage or a different type of damage (oblivion maybe?) than say a week or two ago. We are also noticing that there seem to be more of them spawning. Some have noticed that there may be double horfrosts and and double flares. Also that the orbs/spears are not just spawning on edges but right in the groups where the boss is or nearer to the portal.

Were these changes deliberate or are they bugs.

erlewine

they've always been "special" damage. they arent quite the shield-bypassing, percent-health pseudo-oblivion damage like hoarfrost/roaring flame/voltaic, but they do seem to do more damage against people with higher max health. Same deal with the ground bombs during execute phase. It's not the same oblivion-esque damage though, as those can both be shielded. I did test this a bit but not enough to draw any definitive conclusions though, except that there is some scaling involved. I'd recommend testing it with different armor levels, CP setups, and buffs like minor protection. You'll be surprised (disappointed) with the results. It may even be bugged, but that's a pandoras box I'm gonna stay away from personally. I do hope someone more reputable goes in and tests some things out and makes a detailed post someday, though. If I had to wager a guess, almost all of the damage on that fight scales to health so that its not trivialized as easily. Well, that was their intention, anyways. An orb hitting the main tank is risky, it can easily result in death if comboed with a heavy attack or whatnot, since it hits a tank for around 5-7k per tick. An orb hitting a caster does less and can be absorbed by a Harness or 2 to eat the dot. (directly, I mean... obviously the explosion can hit others nearby). Seems like they wanted it to pose a threat to everyone, but for different reasons. If it was a baby dot on tanks, it'd be mostly trivial. If it was a massive dot on casters and/or couldnt be shielded, it'd be guaranteed ripperoni. If it was unavoidable unblockable aoe stun spawning on top of you, it'd be a nightmare for healers. If it was purgable it'd be a speed bump. So instead they made it scale a bit.

They used similar design on other aspects of that fight. You can tell that they were certainly concerned about people stacking health to "cheese" the hardmode, and tinkering with the idea of ability damage scaling. They didn't want another vAS, I guess... so much for that ^^

and yeah, the orb spawn points were definitely changed (edit: in my opinion, judging from my personal recordings). presumably because they were almost a non-factor when they always spawned at the edges. groups were just fighting the minibosses on top of the portal and the only risk from orbs was one spawning on top of the main tank pretty much. I've reviewed all my recorded fights and never saw them spawning in as close as they do now. They can spawn basically directly on top of the portal now, and INSIDE of the Shade during execute.. My testing showed that they are inactive for a few seconds after spawning though (or until someone attacks it). Step away a tad before attacking.

As far as I'm concerned, taking the damage scaling into account along with the mechanics of Baneful Mark, I think it was pretty poorly thought out, and just as exploitable as vAS was. Now we've just got other goofy stuff like swapping food buffs to make it easier to heal out Baneful, and certain supposedly tanky CP/stats actually causing you to take MORE damage, and so on. It's not easy to design a challenging raid encounter though, for sure.

code65536

We haven't really noticed anything different.

A few things to note: When an orb dies, it shoots out Malicious Strike projectiles in its death throes. (These are different than the stunning Sinister Beads that are released if it collides with a player or with another orb.) The number of targets hit by Malicious Strike scales with the difficulty. In +3, each orb will shoot 4 projectiles when it dies. So up to 12 people--the entire raid--can be hit by Malicious Strike when a set of 3 orbs are destroyed, though, in practice, it's usually not the full 12-person team, since the Malicious Strike targets random players, so some players will get hit by more than one Malicious Strike, leaving some players to be spared from being hit. (It is possible, if all three orbs are killed at the same time, for someone to get hit by three Malicious Strikes at the same time, which will kill them if they are not shielded; this is why it's a good idea to maintain shields when killing orbs.)

The important thing about Malicious Strike is that it applies a DoT called Dark Drain. Since you need to destroy the orbs and there really isn't a way to avoid Malicious Strike and the subsequent Dark Drain, this simply represents a source of ambient damage that must be healed through. It's a bit of a healer check that scales with difficulty (12 Malicious Strike projectiles per wave of orbs in +3, and this number decreases as you step down in difficulty.)

As for Oblivion damage, Baneful Burst and Baneful Barb both apply Oblivion damage that takes you down to a certain health %. The Roaring Flare explosion does 50-60% of your health in Oblivion Damage (which is why being hit with other damage while stacked for Flare is so risky; although the Flare cannot be shielded, it's still a good idea to shield for it so that you are not eating other damage at the same time as the Flare). I don't think any of the other damage upstairs is Oblivion.

erlewine

code65536 wrote: »

The important thing about Malicious Strike is that it applies a DoT called Dark Drain. Since you need to destroy the orbs and there really isn't a way to avoid Malicious Strike and the subsequent Dark Drain, this simply represents a source of ambient damage that must be healed through.

That's interesting... just wondering Code, do you know if the Dark Drain is supposed to be unavoidable? I definitely don't doubt that you are more knowledgeable about this fight than me, but I was just curious if you've tested this much? I haven't tested this in awhile, but when messing around a few weeks ago, I was able to reliably avoid the DoT, and tank vet ZMaja on a Mag Warden dps with 27k health, with no outside assistance. As with quite a few things on that fight though, I have a hard time telling whats a bug and whats not.

in my experience from my testing a few weeks back, dark drain is avoidable under the right repeatable circumstances. Code is one of the best tanks I've ever grouped with though and far more experienced than me, so I could be wrong or ran into a bug. I spent a decent chunk of time testing various aspects of the fight and not always in an ideal environment. I haven't tanked it at all in a few months, I only heal or dps it now.

Interesting that your Sphere spawn placement data doesn't match up with mine either. I edited my above post to reflect that. I suppose it could've just been strange luck, but I had never seen a Sphere spawn within melee distance of the portal prior to a few weeks ago, and now it's not uncommon to see all three spawn within melee range of it. Even beyond that, I never used to see two spawn in the same quadrant. They seemed to have only around a dozen or so spawn points back then. I actually reset the fight a few dozen times and saw an orb spawn in the exact same spots reliably. Their behavior seems slightly altered now, as well. I can say with certainty that my testing showed that they "react" faster upon spawning now, even if no one is nearby to it's spawn point, and their damage was altered a bit. Prior to the change, you could see a sphere get stuck and never go into "heat seeking" mode like they normally do if they stay alive for twenty seconds or so, until someone either attacked it or got too close to it, then it'd become active again. Again, just saying that my testing showed that, not that it's a sure thing. Could be anomaly, etc.

code65536

erlewine wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

The important thing about Malicious Strike is that it applies a DoT called Dark Drain. Since you need to destroy the orbs and there really isn't a way to avoid Malicious Strike and the subsequent Dark Drain, this simply represents a source of ambient damage that must be healed through.

That's interesting... just wondering Code, do you know if the Dark Drain is supposed to be unavoidable? I definitely don't doubt that you are more knowledgeable about this fight than me, but I was just curious if you've tested this much? I haven't tested this in awhile, but when messing around a few weeks ago, I was able to reliably avoid the DoT, and tank vet ZMaja on a Mag Warden dps with 27k health, with no outside assistance. As with quite a few things on that fight though, I have a hard time telling whats a bug and whats not.

in my experience from my testing a few weeks back, dark drain is avoidable under the right repeatable circumstances. Code is one of the best tanks I've ever grouped with though and far more experienced than me, so I could be wrong or ran into a bug. I spent a decent chunk of time testing various aspects of the fight and not always in an ideal environment. I haven't tanked it at all in a few months, I only heal or dps it now.

I should say then, "AFAIK, it's not avoidable." If there is a way to avoid it, I'm not aware of it, but I do not claim that my knowledge is complete. It is random, and the number of targets affected increases with the fight configuration, which is why we didn't really notice Dark Drain when we first did +0, and why it was showing up on a lot of recaps in +3.

CivilDisobedienceVII

Let me add in here some specifics behind my post. We had been clearing +3 with not really much issue at all. But the last few times we've suddenly seen this dark drain wiping several of us (who had previously not had any issue with it). Our healers for two of the instances where this happened are vet trial level healers who have healed us through this very trial (+3) many times before. So we were wondering if there was a ninja buff to dark drain or if it was bugged because we've not had this problem before. I think it also seemed like we were having them spawn much closer to us or right in the group - near the portal as someone mentioned seems like on of the spawning closer versions but also right in the middle of the group on boss' tail or just to the side of her (which may count as the edge because she is on the perimeter of the arena.

It's just that to suddenly have 15x dark drain applied (death recap) when we had not had this problem before seems a bit odd.

Edited to add - Erlewine's observations about changes to the orbs seem to match with our recent experiences.

SilverWF

Let's be honest: CR is the most fast and easy trial in the game.
Damn it so fast, that a half of vanilla (not even talking about DLC) dungeons are longer!

So I wouldn't wonder if ZOS trying to actually make it harder.

erlewine

I should say then, "AFAIK, it's not avoidable." If there is a way to avoid it, I'm not aware of it, but I do not claim that my knowledge is complete. It is random, and the number of targets affected increases with the fight configuration, which is why we didn't really notice Dark Drain when we first did +0, and why it was showing up on a lot of recaps in +3.

Gotcha. Yeah, one day I'd love to see a comprehensive thread about this fight. It's so strange and unique and I have a lot of... questions. Fun fight for theorycrafting and messing around testing otherwise rarely-used stuff, though.

erlewine

CivilDisobedienceVII wrote: »

So we were wondering if there was a ninja buff to dark drain or if it was bugged because we've not had this problem before. I think it also seemed like we were having them spawn much closer to us or right in the group - near the portal as someone mentioned seems like on of the spawning closer versions but also right in the middle of the group on boss' tail or just to the side of her (which may count as the edge because she is on the perimeter of the arena.

Yeah, I believe they spawn X distance from random players now. Prior, I believe they used to spawn one each in one of three quadrants - similar to how the safety spheres on Fang Lair hardmode work. I didn't do any hard scientific data though - I just reset it over and over and tallied the locations, and cross referenced with some other guilds videos. A certain well known raider posted his kill video awhile back and I noticed he would turn and check certain spots every sphere set, and everything lined up as expected. Then later I just reset the fight a bunch solo or with a friend and saw the spawn points. There wasn't a lot - basically one right near every possible Zmaja portal spot, about 3 or 4 potential spots to a batch.

as for dark drain, I just tested on normal real quick and can confirm you can still avoid the DoT. If you want more detail just toss me a PM - I don't want to be too presumptive. Anyhow, I'm curious to see if top guilds move towards having a hybrid dps/tank maintank Zmaja, and you never really NEEDED a tank at all for the minis, shade, or baby velidreths, its just more convenient. Shimmering shield, absorb magic, dampen magic, dodge rolling, triple infused potion glyphs and all the rest of the bag of tricks seems like it may end up easier and more reliable than a true high-health tank, with the way things are shaping up. The heavy attack is the only one that doesn't scale up in damage based on max health, and you can survive it with still relatively low health. On a big health tank, leeching shadows, dark drain, and baneful just equals a whole lot of health to be healed - on a half-caster, its covered by shields and all the incidental forms of healing that dont require a dedicated character ^^. I'm not entirely sure what ZOS's goal is. /rambling

I suspect we may see this killed with 0 healers and 0 traditional tanks sometime soon. Would be funny, anyway