PTS Update 23 - Feedback Thread for Lair of Maarselok

ZOS_GinaBruno

This is the official feedback thread for Lair of Maarselok. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
• How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
• Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?
• Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
• What level and build was the character you used?
• Do you have any other general feedback?

Coldforge

I liked this dungeon very much. The Azure corruption is a gorgeous effect, and the overall look is fantastic. Completed it on normal with a group. The first Maarselok encounter (w/needing to protect Selene) kept resetting even after we'd completed it. We had to wipe and run to the exit to continue. Overall difficulty was negligible on normal.

The final boss fight is a great mini-take of the Sunspire bosses. My favorite feature was needing to cleanse yourselves of the blight, or having an add spawn "through" you. Great touch!

Capped CP group, I was a Warden Tank.

Apherius

Same problem.

Coldforge wrote: »

first Maarselok encounter (w/needing to protect Selene) kept resetting even after we'd completed it. We had to wipe and run to the exit to continue.

Aliyavana

can confirm that the first maarselok encounter is bugged

code65536

Regarding the seed mechanic on Hard Mode: This mechanic is not at all intuitive. It took us a lot of wipes and trial and error to finally figure out how it works. We did eventually figure it out, but compared to past Hard Mode dungeon mechanics, this one was noticeably tougher to discern, and it requires more communication between players than past dungeon Hard Modes. (I imagine it would be a bit unpleasant for groups where there's more than one person without a working mic.)

That said, it's a clever mechanic. I enjoyed the process of figuring it out and it felt rewarding when we finally got it working. I like the mechanic as-is. As our tank put it, "I do appreciate a solid mechanic in the dungeon boss fight.. been a while since we had a really tough one".

But I think some in-game cues would be useful to help better guide players towards the solution. For example, it took us a while to realize that there was a thing that we could walk over to and synergize to get things started, so maybe some on-screen text or an NPC line to nudge people in that direction could be useful? The hint on the death recap pointed us in the right direction, but it was cryptic and not immediately clear what it was talking about (e.g., it took us a number of pulls before we realized what "drawing in the corruption" even meant).

Also, I can't help but notice the nice, useful telegraphs for the wing thrash and the head thrash. Any chance we could see those in Sunspire?

rsantijw13

Can we please fix the guild banking system? Its been 5 years now. if I was to guess based on an average of 300 days during the year actually spent in game I can say I have on average spent 2 hours at least each day because the system is broken, now if you think that I have been here since day 1 that over 5 years i have been here. Sad part is when you do the math the guild banking system has cost me 125 days. You read that right days.

fboostb16_ESO

I did the dungeon with Apherius and my pet was gone halfway through.

The dungeon was fun overall, but I'm not sure about performance on the dragon summit. Also the surrounding mountain area looks weird.

code65536

Boss-specific feedback:

1. Selene

Simple, straightforward fight. Nothing to to say here.


2. Azureblight Lurcher

We were initially confused by the Lurcher regaining its health. Playing back the video, I can now see Selene shoot a green bolt at the dragon when the Lurcher is disabled and the dragon losing a chunk of health. But it was subtle and easily lost in the commotion. So all we saw was the Lurcher regaining health and we assumed that we had done something wrong and were missing a mechanic, which set us off on a brief wild goose chase.

I guess my suggestion here would be to better convey to the player that, yes, this is normal, and yes, they did the right thing. Like maybe have Selene shout a line of dialog to the effect of "Great, let's do that again!".

Aside from that initial confusion, it's pretty straightforward with nothing really worth commenting on.


3. Azureblight Cancroid

Before this fight, we encounter a few lonesome corrupted enemies that have damage shields. We destroyed these damage shields through conventional means and freed them. And we thought, "Ah, they must be teaching us a mechanic for a future boss fight!" Well, okay, that wasn't wrong, since that mechanic does appear in a boss fight, except it's only the final boss fight and only if Hard Mode is activated. Well, as it turns out, the damage shield on the Cancroid is nothing like the damage shields of these earlier enemies.

Aside from that, it's a pretty straightforward fight. Not much to say here.

POSSIBLE BUG: We needed to use the seed to lower the Cancroid's shield the first time. But after the shield was restored, the next time the Cancroid's shield went down, it did so without us bringing the seed to it. In this clip, you can see the shield go down immediately when the Infestor died, before anyone even had a chance to pick up the seed. Not sure if this is an aspect of the mechanic that we didn't understand, or just a bug. My guess is the latter.


4. Defend Selene

It wasn't immediately clear what was going on here. Selene just yells at us about hoarvors, but it was not immediately clear to us that she was spawning spiders to attack the dragon and that we need to kill the stranglers attacking those spiders. The fight felt chaotic and it wasn't clear what the objective was or what the target priority was. We figured it out eventually and then things became easy once we understood, but perhaps some dialog from Selene could be useful here? She yells at us about one part of the mechanic, but why not the other part? If she had yelled, "Kill the stranglers, they are attacking my spiders!" it would make this fight more accessible to first-timers (and dungeon PUGs).

And I know you are already aware of the boss-reset bug on this boss.


5. Maarselok, Hard Mode

As I commented on earlier, I think the seed is a clever mechanic. It's definitely one of the best Hard Mode dungeon mechanics that I've seen. But I have two quibbles with it:

1. Once you understand the mechanic, it's pretty straightforward. But for someone going in blind and figuring it out for the very first time, it is anything but. It took us a good hour to figure out how it worked. After our run, I watched someone on the Stream Team (JDUB) trying Hard Mode, and they just spun around in circles for hours and never figured out how to work the mechanic. I suppose for most people, this is moot, since they can just look up a guide and have it explained to them. But I feel like the clues are just a bit too tenuous for someone who's going in blind.
2. I feel like the timing of the mechanic is just a bit too tight.
   • We initially had a problem where Selene would become re-possessed while we were doing the seed mechanic. For example, we'd figure out which pad is real and who has the seed, and as they are running to the pad, Selene becomes re-possessed and we of course fail the mechanic.
   • So our strategy was to free Selene at the start of the mechanic so that we know she won't be re-possessed at a bad time. Then we'll use the seed to determine the location of the pad and the identity of the victim. And then the victim will then go and cleanse.
   • And this works most of the time. But sometimes, Selene has ported to one side of the room. The seed is on another side of the room. And the real pad is on yet another side of the room. More than once, we've had someone die to the mechanic as they are frantically dashing across the room to the pad.
   • I think just 2 or 3 more seconds would help a lot here.

The anti-rez mechanic on Hard Mode requires that you kill something with 169K health. And if the person who died is a DD, then there's only one DD around to kill it. If both DDs are dead, then recovery becomes extremely difficult because it just takes too much time for supports to chew through that much health, and by the time they do, they've likely been overwhelmed by mechanics. In contrast, Shade of the Fallen in vCR only has 115K health, and that's a trial, where you have far more people around to help kill it off. 169K health seems pretty excessive in that context.

(And for anyone reading this thread who is wondering, yes, we tried the necro ult, and no, that does not work.)

Edit/Update: A video of our clear:
https://youtu.be/TiGZZ3JWf1Y

Finally, people ask this every dungeon DLC, and I'll ask for it here too: Could we please get something for the trifecta other than a measly 50 achievement points? A title would be nice. And make it retroactive for the older DLCs, too. Mountain God would be such a cool title.

andy_s

I enjoyed Hardmode a lot. Sunspire dragons are babies compared to Maarselok + Selene

I think there are some mechanics that need adjustments in this fight, and one video is better than a thousand words to explain:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njaWttpfSCk&feature=youtu.be

For example, at 3:03, I barely had time to get to the platform, and sometimes you need to run even a longer distance. So adding 2 more seconds will help a lot to prevent RNG.

Adds are kinda overwhelming, because they are always everywhere, but maybe it's some punishing mechanic for not avoiding something I don't know about

We've only figured out the synergy mechanic after dying multiple times and finally reading death recap hints, so maybe there should be a more obvious way to understand it, because it's very misleading at first (tho I understand it's intended) and even can make people think it's bugged.

But generally, a very well done fight, and I'm looking forward to try another dungeon when we'll have time.

TheNightflame

maybe it was the lack of voice chat being in the video, but this was the first time I couldn't surmise, confidently, all of the dungeon mechanics by watching a video for the first time

code65536

TheNightflame wrote: »

maybe it was the lack of voice chat being in the video, but this was the first time I couldn't surmise, confidently, all of the dungeon mechanics by watching a video for the first time

Yes, the lack of voice comms in the video means not much about the mechanic is actually revealed. This is a mechanic centered around sharing information between teammates and what each individual person observes means very little without knowing what other players observed.

TheNightflame

code65536 wrote: »

TheNightflame wrote: »

maybe it was the lack of voice chat being in the video, but this was the first time I couldn't surmise, confidently, all of the dungeon mechanics by watching a video for the first time

Yes, the lack of voice comms in the video means not much about the mechanic is actually revealed. This is a mechanic centered around sharing information between teammates and what each individual person observes means very little without knowing what other players observed.

Sounds fun!
I'm excited to try it out when it comes to console (and I'm with you on giving titles to the trifectas, currently the only one that gives anything is vbrp)

edit: oh! also, if you or anyone gets a chance to post up the memento you get, that'd be really cool

TheNightflame

A quick guide to hardmode from watching videos:

Activate hardmode by crushing the seed by the dead lurcher, maarselok will "claim" selene (she'll join the battle as an enemy with a health shield).

minor mechanics:
-aoes appear, stay out of them
-selene will channel an attack like orryn the black, bash her
-the dragon will have similar core mechanics to sunspace ones (wing thrash, bite, breath)
-for sweeping breath, block through it. a purgeable dot will be placed on everyone (purge after it or people will die). upon purging, you'll be hit by backfire (block while purging)
-the dragon will charge an attack on the tank (like beetles in FL), doge roll when it goes off
-the dragon will charge an attack on the tank (a cone this time, which can hit teammates, but you won't see it grow, you'll have to watch when the dragon is about to jut his head forward), doge roll when it goes off (the fus ro da attack) (he'll say fus ro da and then do it soon after)
-the dragon will lunge from one end of the arena to the other, one shooting anyone in its path, this attack is not telegraphed on the ground
-ads will spawn throughout the fight, handle them

core mechanic:
there are 3 dull pads around the arena
sky turns blue and the dragon spits a seed (ball) out onto the ground somewhere.
each person must synergies the ball for one of the dull pads to light up on their screen
3 people will see the same pad light up after they each synergize, one will see a different pad. the person who sees the different pad is "corrupted".
the pad that 3 people see, the corrupted person must go to, or they'll soon be one shotted by the corruption
to be able to cleanse using the pad's synergy, selene's shield must have been destroyed.
-typically the tank does not collect the seed, and if all 3 of the others see the same one, the tank just goes to that pad.
ALL pads will get a synergy, and using the wrong pad WILL kill you
not destroying selene's shield in time will not allow you to cleanse and will kill you

if you die, your body gets covered in vines and a lurcher spawns, kill the spawns (similar to vcr anti rez mechanic)

That's all I gathered from watching, hopefully more people will attempt it and get the clear! Overall, I like the amount of group coordination this hardmode entails.

Likely missing are some tank mechanics****

edit: added spoiler tags

code65536

A few more comments about Hard Mode:

1. Sweeping Breath happens randomly, it seems. In one of our pulls, we got three Sweeping Breaths right after another within the span of just 30 seconds. It's a somewhat stamina-intensive mechanic, because we need stamina to block or dodge the breath. And then we need stamina to block the Backfires from purging the Azure Blaze applied by the breath. And then toss in stamina for handling other mechanics like blocking/bashing Selene's channel, and by the time the third breath hit, I literally had no stamina to survive it, and I was running tri-stat food as a magicka DD. https://youtu.be/sDOsaq12Um0
2. The seed appears as a dark ball with a blueish haze. If it's daytime in-game, this isn't too bad. But if it's nighttime in-game, the dark seed on a dark ground can be a bit hard to see at times. There were times when it took us more than a few seconds just to find where the seed had spawned. Please adjust the seed visuals to make it stand out more. As one person in my group suggested, having it cast off a glowing pillar of light would help immensely during the nighttime.
3. You're pretty much always going to have a pad that's near the boss's wing--the spacing is such that there's really no way to avoid this--and the boss doing a wing thrash right when someone is on the pad cleansing feels a little unfair. Granted, it's a somewhat rare occurrence--most of the time boss doesn't thrash before the cleanse is done. But it does happen now and then.

OmniDo

It was reasonably easy to Solo.
Art was nice, mechanics were interesting.

I look forward to the challenge of Veteran.

code65536

Ran vLoM today as a part of that LFG test.

Boss 3: The ground AoEs seemed off. People were dying to Blighted Ground when they were clearly not in the AoE visuals on my screen. In one of the pulls the Infestor did not spawn a seed at all. This happened only once though, so I don't know how common of an issue it is.

Boss 4: So it's intended to be 4 grounded phases instead of 3? It also feels like I'm spending far more time killing stranglers (it feels like they're spawning faster than before?) before it grounds itself. We killed it, but it was nearly an 11-minute pull. In contrast, our kills last week were in the 3-4 minute range. This is a random Group Finder group, and I have no idea who the tank and the healer are, the third person in the group--the other DD--happened to be someone from my usual PTS group, so I don't think that this being a random group should've had that much impact.

Didn't try boss 5, as I ran out of time and had to leave.

Icy

Feedback about the 3rd boss fight Azureblight Cancroid on Vet

Picking up the seed is fine, but the problem is you have to X synergize to do it. As you've just killed something to make the seed there are usually a bunch of other synergies on the ground at the same place. A few times we "fumbled" the seed pickup as we ended up clicking thru multiple synergies before we could get to the seed.

Is it possible to change the pickup to be a "walkover" or possibly an E activation instead?

Additionally, there were several times for different party members when rezzing failed during the 3rd boss encounter. The "countdown" for rez started, then if the rez was interrupted for any reason you could no longer rez that person at all. Someone else had to come and try (bug reported this).

Contraptions

[*] Did you enjoy this new dungeon?

So so. I didn't manage to get my usual friends on the PTS this time so had to run through this on normal solo to get a rough feel of the dungeon. Overall, the dungeon feels like a slog even on normal. Long distances to run, lots of trash mobs, kinda like how Fang Lair was at first on the PTS but even worse. Mechanically speaking, bosses felt really repetitive and damage spongy in general.

[*] How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?

On normal most boss mechanics were relatively straightforward but really repetitive, damage seemed generally manageable. Health of bosses felt a bit high even on normal, fights felt draggy and uninteresting. While I can't speak for vet (I sincerely hope you guys didn't go overboard with health and damage in vet mode) I can tell that this is going to be one of those dungeons that will be an absolute pain to play if the group has low DPS in general.

[*] Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?

Normal.

[*] Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?

Ironically the first boss was the most bearable, it seemed to go downhill from there. As usual, this was done with Oceanic ping (300+) during the 5.1.0 version of the update.

Trash mobs

Too many groups and too many mobs in general, the section between the second last to last boss seemed especially slow due to the need to backtrack constantly to Selene to cleanse the debuff. Not a fan. Damage from the hive golems was quite high, but suspect having a tank would help there.

The Azureblight humanoid mobs all have shields you have to break, might want to check that they can be crit by us.

Selene

This boss was the most enjoyable for me due to the inclusion of distinct phases; the fight progresses as you defeat her spirits one by one, dps or heals have to interrupt her, the person marked for the cone has to keep still etc. Damage on normal was generally ok. Health seemed a bit high, 800k for phase one alone.

The bear's slam knock up AOE doesn't seem to respect CC immunity, might want to fix that. Damage from Selene's Fangs heavy attack also seems too high.

Azureblight Lurcher

Kill adds, avoid AOEs, dps boss, every time the lurcher gets up more adds spawn, repeat three times. Boring. What's the point of having three almost identical phases, the only difference being more and more adds spawn each time? This fight felt really draggy even on normal, suggest reducing health of the boss overall. Might as well get the fight over with quicker if it's going to be the same throughout anyway.

Azureblight Cancroid

Blight Barrage from the hive golem seemed buggy, the telegraph didn't seem to match the actual area. Was getting hit even though I was no where near the red.

Synergy to pick up and drop the seed seemed hard to activate esp while taking damage from the aura DOT. Would suggest allowing us to drop the seed further from the cancroid given it's hard to get near the thing with the snare and DOT on you.

Vulnerability timing on the main boss needs to be longer in general or coded to allow a minimum amount of damage to be done to the boss before invulnerability activates again. The way the mechanics of this boss are set up mean that lower DPS groups may need may need to do many rounds of the mechanic before taking down the boss, which again makes the fight really repetitive. Didn't notice anything special about later phases, it's just more adds spawning.

Maarselok part 1

I really don't like this boss, it feels like I'm running around playing whack-a-mole with adds while waiting for an invisible meter to fill up before we can actually hit the boss. Stop the hoarvors from hitting Selene, stop the stranglers from killing spiders, kill whatever other adds spawn, block shout, avoid AOE, wait for boss to drop down and then hit it. Over and over and over and over. I don't feel like I'm actually doing anything other than killing stuff while waiting for things to happen.

Again, if DPS is low, you're gonna be stuck on this boss for a VERY long time given how short the vulnerability timing is on the dragon.

Maarselok part 2

Seed mechanic was ok, but time given to cleanse could be longer in general. Can't speak for how well this mechanic is telegraphed since being solo, it was placed on me all the time.

Amount of one-shots seems excessive on vet, fight seems stam intensive on vet at least from vids I've seen. Charge needs split second rolling to avoid one shot. Breath needs to be rolled or blocked to avoid one shot. On HM Selene needs to be interrupted. Often we'll need to sprint to the cleanse pad given how short the time window is - all of these use stam. If you're going to add lots of one shot mechanics in the fight, please at least allow us a way to counter them that doesn't involve rolling or blocking or sprinting. Mag characters can't do those very often given our lower stam pools and regen in general. Maybe put a safe spot in the arena that is shielded from the charge and breath or something to help us mag users out. Alternatively, just make the seed mechanic a one shot while reducing the damage of the charge and breath; there's really no reason to stuff a fight full of one-shots, it just feels cheap and annoying.

[*] What level and build was the character you used?

CP 810 mag sorc.

[*] Do you have any other general feedback?

Way way back in the veteran level days, one of the tougher/ more annoying dungeon bosses was Grobull in DS2. This was due to the fact that the difficulty of the boss was tied directly to your group's DPS in total, less DPS meant more adds would build up, and less DPS would mean the fight would drag on since the group only has a limited time to burn the boss during the brief vulnerability window. As DPS increased over the years the fight became less and less of an issue, but I was hoping that these kinds of mechanics would not return in future. Unfortunately, two of the main bosses in here, Cancroid and Maarelok part 1, follow the exact same design of Grobull. I strongly suggest tying the vulnerability timing to health loss (i.e the boss allows you to take off say 20% at least each time at least).

If this dungeon was released one or two patches ago I wouldn't be as worried about such mechanics. But I am bringing this up now since your colleague Wheeler has recently decided to nerf, at least on the PVE side, all cleave and AOE damage, all outgoing healing overall, while slightly increasing single target DPS and tankiness.

Wheeler has mentioned that he is aware that "some content has been designed around old functionality of abilities that existed beyond our standards and might need some sort of compromise in regards to how you engage with it and/or how we balance it", and his solution is to ask us to run "survival enhancing sets". However, surviving longer does not help us out in fights where needing to burn down adds asap is key, in fact prolonging the fight is often bad since adds keep spawning over time.

An example would be King Narilmor in DOM, his clones are going to take much longer to kill now that cleave is nerfed, Thrayya is going to be harder to keep alive now that outgoing heals are nerfed, which means that players are going to get the mega Maim and Defile more often from Quintus, which means new clones will be even harder to take down, and it just snowballs from there. What about the Dark Orb fight where adds constantly spawn? Or the Undead Menagerie in Fang Lair? Or burn phase of Domihaus? Or Grobull in DS2? Or Mylenne in MHK with the constant stream of one-shot werewolves and wolves?

I sincerely hope your dungeon team has some plan to rebalance older content soon so that it doesn't become overtuned with the current combat changes. Mechanics, damage, health etc. might have to be nerfed. I remember somewhere that the devs mentioned that content was meant to get easier over time from release, and the current changes don't seem to match that vision.