Patch 4.1.6 - What about the other bugs in March of Sacrifices?

code65536

In this morning's patch notes, the only two fixes for MoS that I see are the hunt-amplified bleed and the nodeath achievement. What about the other bugs that were reported on the PTS (and that ZOS had confirmed as bugs?)

Specifically...

1. Stranglers spawning outside of hunt phases
2. The hunt amplifying the Fiery Remnant DoT (similar to the bleed problem that was listed as fixed in today's notes)
3. The "Environmental Damage" kill zone near the waterfall (that @ZOS_Finn seemed to acknowledge during the stream when he was asked to investigate what's near the waterfall)

@ZOS_GinaBruno All three bugs were still present on Live in 4.1.5. And none of these three bugs are mentioned in the 4.1.6 patch notes. Were any of these issues fixed in 4.1.6 and just missed in the notes? Or will fixes for these issues be forthcoming in the future?

(Additionally, another serious bug--that wasn't reported on the PTS--is the hunt-skip bug, detailed in this thread. It's a bug that even happened during the devs' ESO Live stream, but that the devs either did not notice or did not want to acknowledge.)

Left4Daud

Would definitely like a dev statement on the hunt skipping in hard mode.

It can be both reliably and accidentally triggered and it significantly changes the flow of the fight.

code65536

Also, while not bug fixes, I'm surprised by the lack of adjustments to the difficulty of vMoS HM. I guarantee you that @ZOS_RichLambert's outburst of "f*** you strangler" is something that pretty much everyone has uttered on HM.

So I reiterate my suggestions from the PTS thread: either making it possible to break yourself free of stranglers or reducing the ridiculous range of their strangle will do a lot to make the difficulty of this fight more appropriate.

Qbiken

Would like to get some information if it´s intended for the snare applied by the wolves during the hunt-phase, to ignore snare immunity from skills such as:

* Shuffle
* Forward Momentum
* Reflective Plate

Marabornwingrion

Any word on this? @ZOS_Finn

ZOS_Finn

Thanks for the reports folks. We will be taking a look at the snares in March of Sacrifices as well as the Stranglers spawning outside of the Hunt phase. Fiery Remnant is an avoidable mechanic and it is intended for that damage to be amplified when the Hunt phase happens, which doesn't mean we won't evaluate that decision in the future.

Again, thanks for the reports!

code65536

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

Fiery Remnant is an avoidable mechanic and it is intended for that damage to be amplified when the Hunt phase happens, which doesn't mean we won't evaluate that decision in the future.

@ZOS_Finn Here's the problem: If you have the fire DoT on you and you enter the hunt, you die instantly. In contrast, if you get hit by the fire DoT during the hunt, it hits harder than a fire DoT that you get outside of the hunt, but still doesn't hit as a hard as a pre-existing fire DoT that gets hunt-amplified.

I.e., pre-existing fire DoTs that get hunt-amplified are more painful than fire DoTs that you get during the hunt itself. This can't possibly be intended, can it?

Marabornwingrion

code65536 wrote: »

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

Fiery Remnant is an avoidable mechanic and it is intended for that damage to be amplified when the Hunt phase happens, which doesn't mean we won't evaluate that decision in the future.

@ZOS_Finn Here's the problem: If you have the fire DoT on you and you enter the hunt, you die instantly. In contrast, if you get hit by the fire DoT during the hunt, it hits harder than a fire DoT that you get outside of the hunt, but still doesn't hit as a hard as a pre-existing fire DoT that gets hunt-amplified.

I.e., pre-existing fire DoTs that get hunt-amplified are more painful than fire DoTs that you get during the hunt itself. This can't possibly be intended, can it?

Every time when my team does HM, immediately after hunt phase starts 1,2 or 3 of us are getting one shot for 30-40k flame damage only tank survives.

Halke

code65536 wrote: »

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

Fiery Remnant is an avoidable mechanic and it is intended for that damage to be amplified when the Hunt phase happens, which doesn't mean we won't evaluate that decision in the future.

@ZOS_Finn Here's the problem: If you have the fire DoT on you and you enter the hunt, you die instantly. In contrast, if you get hit by the fire DoT during the hunt, it hits harder than a fire DoT that you get outside of the hunt, but still doesn't hit as a hard as a pre-existing fire DoT that gets hunt-amplified.

I.e., pre-existing fire DoTs that get hunt-amplified are more painful than fire DoTs that you get during the hunt itself. This can't possibly be intended, can it?

I second that. I also have video of it happening to show that yes, you just insta-die via burn dot if you want to see it. While it is pretty hilarious, I would prefer to dungeon be consistent. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/299679436

Also, another boost about the skipping hunt phases. The silence on that is deafening right now. It is the difference between it being some of the hardest content in the game and something that is just an annoyance because you can skip what makes it hard. Surely that isn't intentional? https://www.twitch.tv/videos/299679438

Edit: Oh, also, the kill zone waterfall? It will reset the boss if he runs to it. So be careful with where you face him. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/299679437

Edit 2.0: Included video. Muted because who streams without music.

Knight_Nevarine

Astrid_V wrote: »

Every time when my team does HM, immediately after hunt phase starts 1,2 or 3 of us are getting one shot for 30-40k flame damage only tank survives.

Just always dodge the fire projectile. Boss even tells when he is going to do this mechanic.

Edit: another Bug: Sometimes we got feared into a wall near the entrance when the hunt started.

code65536

Knight_Nevarine wrote: »

Just always dodge the fire projectile. Boss even tells when he is going to do this mechanic.

Of course people should try to dodge the fireballs. There's even an achievement for dodging every one. But people are not perfect. They might mistime a dodge, they might have run out of stam to dodge, they might have been busy rezzing someone and couldn't dodge. Mistakes happen. The question here is, what is the appropriate penalty for that mistake?

You miss a dodge, and you eat a pretty substantial fire DoT. If that missed dodge was during the hunt, that fire DoT can be very dangerous. But if you happen to miss a dodge right before the entrance into a hunt phase, you are 1-shot by a tick that is much larger than the ticks you'd get if you missed a dodge in the hunt.

That's not appropriate.

I have a suspicion that @ZOS_Finn may have misunderstood the problem. Yes, the fire DoT ticks for more during the hunt. This is intended and I have no problems with it. But a pre-existing DoT applied outside of hunt will tick for an extreme amount capable of 1-shotting you if you enter the hunt with that DoT. This can't possibly be intended.

Yes, we are pretty good at avoiding the fire DoT, so this is a problem that we rarely run into. But that's irrelevant: this way this damage behaves upon hunt entrance is inconsistent, unexpected, and inappropriate.

Edit: Is the fear ability at the start of the hunt causing damage to hit harder than it should?

TheMythicDawn

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

...Fiery Remnant is an avoidable mechanic and it is intended for that damage to be amplified when the Hunt phase happens, which doesn't mean we won't evaluate that decision in the future.

sounds pretty clear to me.

it's a completely avoidable mechanic with damage that is intended to be amplified when a hunt phase happens (read: begins)

Halke

I am with Code on this one. We don't have an issue with the amplified damage. In fact I like that it hits harder during the hunt because if forces you to pay attention and be alert.

The issue we have is that the dot will one-shot you going into hunt phase. There is a difference between amplified and insta-kill. And since during the rest of the hunt phase the dot does tick harder, it seems that amplification was the intent.

erlewine

I think the damage amplification might be bugged. It does more damage if it's casted during the shade phase, but if it hits you BEFORE the shade phase and carries over, then it does drastically more damage - ticking for around 30k per tick. I wouldn't be surprised if it's boosting it more than it's supposed to in that situation.

Harrdarrzarr

Might it be the case that the one-hit tick is a stacked dot that maybe shouldn't stack? So you get the normal tick from outside the hunt on top of the tick you would get inside the hunt? A stronger tick should be fine, but a one-shot from a dot is just weird.

code65536

My guess is that the fear is causing people to take increased damage. *shrugs*

Marabornwingrion

code65536 wrote: »

My guess is that the fear is causing people to take increased damage. *shrugs*

The fear at the beginning of the hunt can be blocked, not sure if this is intended

ZOS_Finn

For what it's worth, even though a mechanic may be intended, that does not mean we will not continue to evaluate it. So please, by all means, keep providing feedback on pain points and mechanics that are giving you trouble.

As an example, we are taking a look at the fear that happens at the start of the hunt phase. We are evaluating if that is needed given how the encounter plays out and balancing it against the sense of helplessness when you get feared into a fire trail or lightning water.

And yes, we are also evaluating Fiery Remnant's damage being amplified at the start of the hunt.

Halke

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

For what it's worth, even though a mechanic may be intended, that does not mean we will not continue to evaluate it. So please, by all means, keep providing feedback on pain points and mechanics that are giving you trouble.

As an example, we are taking a look at the fear that happens at the start of the hunt phase. We are evaluating if that is needed given how the encounter plays out and balancing it against the sense of helplessness when you get feared into a fire trail or lightning water.

And yes, we are also evaluating Fiery Remnant's damage being amplified at the start of the hunt.

No comment on skipping hunts?

code65536

Astrid_V wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

My guess is that the fear is causing people to take increased damage. *shrugs*

The fear at the beginning of the hunt can be blocked, not sure if this is intended

We tested that today, and it doesn't look like the fear can be blocked. However, the fear doesn't get applied to every player. Only some players get feared--we think it's only the ones who are initially targeted for the chase, though we didn't test enough to say for sure.

Though if the fear does get removed (which would at least allow players to deal with a lingering fire DoT by throwing up a shield), I guess this would be all moot.

resdayn00

I can’t really decide if it’s a bug or an intented boss mechanic, but sometimes - in HM at least - the fiery slam attack that produces the fire DoT is not preceded by the fiery charge/rush. Also, it happened to me once that after the fiery charge he didn’t slam but started the hunt phase.

Double stranglers are really painful. I suspect it’s connected to stranglers outside the hunt.

Snare during the hunt is too much. The hunt phase in HM is extremely packed as it is: lightning, poison, stranglers, wolves, oneshot attacks, oneshot aoe slams, fiery charges, fire dots, snare, decreased vision, increased boss damage. It is already very easy to run out of stamina, snare + interrupting 2 stranglers proves too difficult.

Skipping the hunt remains a mystery. Whether it’s intended or not, we can’t tell, and partly due to my first mentioned observation, it’s not completely reliable. Going past the threshold works most of the time, but not always.

Our tank friend complained that the bleed bug was still present, can anyone confirm/refute?

We are a formidable group of 4, play together very often, use voice chat, tackled every other DLC dungeon achievement, all of us decent players individually (40k dps both dds, very experienced tank and healer), yet vMoS HM is something we can’t manage, not even one hunt phase after hours of trying. We don’t claim to be the best players/group, not at all, but we see this HM too much overall. Many of my similarly experienced guildies/friends complained about it too.

code65536

resdayn00 wrote: »

I can’t really decide if it’s a bug or an intented boss mechanic, but sometimes - in HM at least - the fiery slam attack that produces the fire DoT is not preceded by the fiery charge/rush.

We think this is normal. It happens on what seems to be a regular cycle--he alternates between charge+slam and lone slams.

resdayn00 wrote: »

Also, it happened to me once that after the fiery charge he didn’t slam but started the hunt phase.

[...]

Skipping the hunt remains a mystery. Whether it’s intended or not, we can’t tell, and partly due to my first mentioned observation, it’s not completely reliable. Going past the threshold works most of the time, but not always.

That's probably because you pushed him into the hunt phase while he was charging, which will start the hunt and cancel the slam.

We've been doing some testing in recent days and we've come to the conclusion that the bug is that the boss's fireball attack cancels the hunt. The bug is triggered if the boss reaches the hunt threshold while he is channeling his fireball slam. If you push him to the hunt threshold before that point--while he is charging--you will instead have the hunt cancelling the fireball attack. You also don't need to "bomb" the boss--simply reaching the hunt threshold during that 2.1-second window will do--if the boss is sufficiently close to the trigger point, you can even trigger the bug using just light attacks, which is exactly what happened at the 67:30 mark of the ESO Live stream. This would also explain why this bug is HM-specific, since his slams in non-HM are not accompanied by fireballs.

resdayn00 wrote: »

not even one hunt phase after hours of trying

That is a bit surprising. Even the woefully uncoordinated dev team (sorry Finn ) managed to stumble their way through a few hunts. The hard part is getting through a hunt with more than one person alive and then getting through hunts consistently enough to do multiple hunts (assuming no skips). Have you seen this guide for surviving the hunts? (I agree, though, that, the hunts feel overtuned.)

serrintine

Completed hm yesterday on tank and can confirm that the bleed no longer kills me. Did not have to magma right before a hunt anymore.

I agree that since fiery remnant is an avoidable mech that it being a oneshot at the beginning of a hunt, whether bugged or not, shouldn't be a big deal. But if it is indeed unintended then of course please fix it.

I personally don't think stranglers need any nerfing except for the double spawns and spawning outside of hunt phases that look to be bugged. On one pull we got double spawns at every single strangler spawn point. The stranglers force the group to stick together so people can interrupt for each other. If you can break free that defeats a large part of the group synergy component of the fight.

resdayn00

Thank you for the reply @code65536 , it really was insightful, you noticed lots of details that we didn’t.

code65536 wrote: »

That is a bit surprising. Even the woefully uncoordinated dev team (sorry Finn ) managed to stumble their way through a few hunts. The hard part is getting through a hunt with more than one person alive and then getting through hunts consistently enough to do multiple hunts (assuming no skips). Have you seen this guide for surviving the hunts? (I agree, though, that, the hunts feel overtuned.)

We didn’t read guides on it, but tried it on our own as we usually do, so I figured we’re missing something crucial. But for the most part I would say it’s the lack of motivation and us getting tired of vMoS HM that made us put it on hold for the time being.

Yngol

code65536 wrote: »

Astrid_V wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

My guess is that the fear is causing people to take increased damage. *shrugs*

The fear at the beginning of the hunt can be blocked, not sure if this is intended

We tested that today, and it doesn't look like the fear can be blocked. However, the fear doesn't get applied to every player. Only some players get feared--we think it's only the ones who are initially targeted for the chase, though we didn't test enough to say for sure.

Though if the fear does get removed (which would at least allow players to deal with a lingering fire DoT by throwing up a shield), I guess this would be all moot.

It's distance-based, code. You can get feared and not targeted and vice versa

Yngol

serrintine wrote: »

Completed hm yesterday on tank and can confirm that the bleed no longer kills me. Did not have to magma right before a hunt anymore.

I agree that since fiery remnant is an avoidable mech that it being a oneshot at the beginning of a hunt, whether bugged or not, shouldn't be a big deal. But if it is indeed unintended then of course please fix it.

I personally don't think stranglers need any nerfing except for the double spawns and spawning outside of hunt phases that look to be bugged. On one pull we got double spawns at every single strangler spawn point. The stranglers force the group to stick together so people can interrupt for each other. If you can break free that defeats a large part of the group synergy component of the fight.

The stranglers only spawn outside of the hunt if someone is stunned, or is near the boss' poison groundslam.

snegurd

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

For what it's worth, even though a mechanic may be intended, that does not mean we will not continue to evaluate it. So please, by all means, keep providing feedback on pain points and mechanics that are giving you trouble.

As an example, we are taking a look at the fear that happens at the start of the hunt phase. We are evaluating if that is needed given how the encounter plays out and balancing it against the sense of helplessness when you get feared into a fire trail or lightning water.

And yes, we are also evaluating Fiery Remnant's damage being amplified at the start of the hunt.

While I don't think this is a well balanced hard-mode (the hunt phase is much, much harder than anything else in the dungeon) there are no individual mechanics that seem unfair. The stranglers are particularly annoying, but force the group to work together to free people (although I have noticed a bug where I am able to break free on my own seemingly at random). The wolves snare means the DPS have to continue doing damage and the environmental damage can be healed through. It's just the combination of everything that makes it very challenging.

That being said, almost everyone I've spoken to who has cleared MoS hm has skipped the first 3 hunt phases using the exploit mentioned above. I think it says something about the lack of balance when the only feasible way of completing the hard mode is through an exploit.

code65536

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

And yes, we are also evaluating Fiery Remnant's damage being amplified at the start of the hunt.

@ZOS_Finn It seems so wacky that this would be intended. Sure, I'm okay with making it tick harder when it enters the hunt--the ticks you get when you get hit during the hunt are larger anyway, and I'm completely fine with that.

Problem 1: It's a 1-shot.

As we've noted, the problem is that the amplification at the start of the hunt is so big that the tick becomes a 1-shot. So your intent is to punish someone who happens to have a fire DoT when the hunt starts with a 1-shot death? I'm okay with punishing people for missing the dodge, but that seems a bit excessive.

Problem 2: It's too rare.

The other thing that makes this a rather wacky mechanic is that the fire DoT is pretty short-lived. Essentially, you're punishing someone with a 1-shot for missing a dodge roll right before the boss is pushed into a hunt. The timing window on this is exceptionally small.

You see, I was trying to demonstrate this thing to someone the other day. So I was purposefully trying to die to an amplified fire DoT. I was going to eat a fireball and then have the group push into a hunt right after the fireballs were launched, and we couldn't do it--by the time the boss got pushed and went through the animations, the DoT had expired. After a couple of attempts, I gave up on trying to purposefully trigger the amplified fire DoT.

So that's my other problem with this: most of the time, people won't even be punished by this amplified fire DoT. I've had it happen to me only twice in all the countless times we've done this fight--once on the PTS when I originally reported it and once on Live--since it happens only if the timings line up just right. I'd be more okay with this 1-shot punishment if it were to be dished out more consistently and evenly, but right now, it's just capricious--we'll punish you with something extreme like a 1-shot if you make a mistake during a very specific alignment of mechanics. Can't you see how ridiculous that is?

TL;DR:

So, to recap, you're saying that it's your intent to 1-shot a player if they just happen to miss a roll dodge during a very narrow and sensitive time window right before the boss gets pushed into a hunt--a window so narrow and sensitive that I failed to get myself killed with an amplified DoT when I was purposefully trying to for the sake of demonstration.

The amplified DoT just makes no sense. Removing it won't make much of a difference since it's so rare to trigger anyway and will simply make for better consistency of damage.

Merlin13KAGL

Non-stam characters don't always have the luxury of having enough stam to dodge the fireball, in the process of dodging stranglers and having 7 dire wolves up your ass. The long running snare if one or more catches up to you is a bit much.

Not to mention, running around like a scared little schoolgirl for the duration just feels wrong. Seems like there should be pauses in between to eventually deal with the adds, imo.

(Any content that requires you to cease performing your assigned role for more than a moment has always felt odd to me.)

TheNightflame

by all means, fix the bugs and unintended things like skipping hunts, but please wait until console players have had a chance to play the dungeons before nerfing them. the console endgame community is undeniably less welcoming than that of the pc, and often if you haven't already ran something, you're not allowed to run it. it has been possible, however, to with a group of friends get the achievemrnts for dungeons and the like, and with the hardmodes getting harder, those achievements finally have meat and credibility to them, making iy easier for capable players to show their ability and transition (read: be allowed in) raid groups. at least 1 incredibly difficult hardmode should be allowed. but PLEASE fix skippable hunts before console release, i don't want it to be like pc where evryone is takingn advantage of unintended mechanics to get achievements. edit to apologize for phone typos

Masel

We had the strangler bug yesterday and it was incredibly annoying.

It makes the fight literally unbeatable when you have two to three stranglers at every spawn point awaiting you during every hunt phase, even if you kill them prior to the hunt phase. Basically all you can do is reset the dungeon.