Blackheart Haven - can it be soloed (without WW)? YES IT CAN! Even on Vet!

StytchFingal

@Major_Lag

Great stuff. I have some comments and suggestions/observations, but won't have time to organize and input them until tonight at work, or tomorrow.

Major_Lag

Thanks, looking forward to it.

BTW, I've noticed something very interesting.
Tried nFG2 and got quite strange results with the execute mechanic on Gamyne Bandu.

With my ~21k HP, Bandu's execute mechanic is listed as doing exactly 100% of my HP in the death recap. So far, nothing strange, working as intended.

But a few times I've managed to somehow survive the execution (!) with only a sliver of health remaining; once I managed to heal back up after that and then did not survive the 2nd round.

The strange thing here is... the execution is taking me to 0% health... so there's something that is healing me when I'm supposed to be already dead.
In other words, the mystery healing effect takes priority over dying. WTF?

SirLeeMinion

Not sure about the healing from death mechanic; I wouldn't rule out lag. But, I've also seen some pretty similar bugs when soloing group content. In vet Banished cells 1, I experienced pets giving a death cry and disappearing while I was still alive, pets attacking for a while after I was dead, and even the miraculous resurrection: gray screen, you're dead with 0 HP for an instant, and then... somehow alive again and the boss hasn't reset. Note that I've never seen this stuff when grouped, only when solo in group instances.

For soloing Gamyne Bandu, consider using the Atronach ulti as the torture phase approaches. Oddly, you can command pets to attack a target, including the atronach, while paralyzed. It sticks around for a while (so your timing can be off) and does enough damage to kill a torturer and release you, assuming you are somewhat specced into damage. This is on normal. After all the nerfs, I haven't bothered to try it on vet.

Major_Lag

SirLeeMinion wrote: »

Not sure about the healing from death mechanic; I wouldn't rule out lag. But, I've also seen some pretty similar bugs when soloing group content. In vet Banished cells 1, I experienced pets giving a death cry and disappearing while I was still alive, pets attacking for a while after I was dead, (...)

In PvP it's perfectly "normal" to be still running around for up to a few seconds while already dead, because of lag.
You can still move but not use any abilites, usually the magicka and/or stamina bars drain to 0 instantly when that happens.

But this particular case is strange because the execution is supposed to be a guaranteed death, looks like it's hardcoded to do 100% of your character's HP in damage while ignoring all mitigation.
Yet it can be survived somehow, without using any of the "avoid death" proc sets (which have been heavily nerfed anyway).

Commanding pets while CCed - interesting, didn't know it was a thing. It does make sense though, I suppose.

As for Bandu, there's something I don't quite grasp there.
Using Atro ulti (or the damage morph of Negate, or maybe even the lightning destro ulti?) would let you survive the execution by playing the mechanic (kinda) as intended. Ok, I get that, no problem there.
But in my "miraculous survival" attempt, I was locked into the 2nd execution only a couple of seconds after the first one finished.

I haven't attempted timing this, but it did not feel like there would be enough time to burn Bandu before the 2nd execution finishes, even with some pretty impressive DPS.
Neither would there be enough time to build up ulti for a 2nd Atro.

One thing that would be interesting to try would be the good ol' RotH + potion of hindrance & lingering health trick; I'll have to try that on the PTS.
The idea here is that hopefully, the constant RotH proc ticks would be enough to prevent you from falling to 0% HP when the execution ends - and also prevent death from any incoming damage immediately after the execution finishes. (so far, a few times I survived the execution successfully, but died to the next boss hit because I only had a few % HP)
Unfortunately, lingering health has been heavily nerfed on the PTS, IIRC, but there's still the RotH heal - which should do the trick when combined with Surge and constant DoT uptime.

SirLeeMinion

Major_Lag wrote: »

... But in my "miraculous survival" attempt, I was locked into the 2nd execution only a couple of seconds after the first one finished. I haven't attempted timing this, but it did not feel like there would be enough time to burn Bandu before the 2nd execution finishes, even with some pretty impressive DPS.

I haven't attempted this since maybe March or April. At that time, running 2 Pet Sorc you could back up to the wall, drop ele blockade and liq lightning where you thought one of the four would spawn, command your pets to attack whichever of the four had the least health, and usually live through it. The atronach merely guaranteed your survival through the first torture session; I don't recall how long there was between release and the next paralysis / torture session. I'm stretching my memory, but I think it would take me two sessions: atronach (guaranteed survival), session with pets only (likely but not certain survival), boss dies before third, but if not Atronach is up again. At the time, my build, as used to solo the dungeon, pulled something a bit north of 30K on a 6m dummy, so solid but not spectacular.

At the time, WW couldn't do it due to timer expiry and certainly couldn't now due to pack leader nerfs. Pet sorc might struggle now due to pet nerfs, but the DoTs might kill the boss faster, too. I never tried warden, but the bear might pull it off.

There is a guide from someone who solo'd this on vet by running away enough to avoid the torture sessions. I was never able to pull it off and maybe just didn't get what they were describing.

StytchFingal

@Major_Lag

I have found that with the (one-)pet sorc build I prefer to use I have more had success going with BC, Necropotence, and Iceheart. It crits enough without Mother's sorrow that crit surge is the main heal on that setup, with the vfamiliar swapped out for the matriarch when neccessary. I do use structured entropy since the Scalebreaker change to power surge, but before that power surge (and occasional Matriach) were enough for almost everything. I find that Ward is buffed enough by Necro and the extra health from BC that it is preferable to the Necro/Plague Doctor build developed by Mistress of Apocrypha and popularised by Alcast.

Also, I prefer 5L, 1M, 1Heavy, or 5L, 2Heavy with 64 in mag, max tri-stat food, hardened ward ,and frontbar lightning staff for aoe and easier resource return. The damage from 5L (with the option to stack another shield sometimes) is, I think, preferable to the heavy armour resistances, while the extra stam is allows one to block minor damage and roll dodge heavier stuff such as Kra'gh's aoe---though I agree that it is simpler to face-tank and block that with resistances.

I generally prefer to go solo in ESO these days, though I still occasionally group with friends and/or guild mates and always enjoy it. As a soloist, BC/Leeching are my go-tos when I need extra surviveabilty. I find BC can be invaluable for both mag and stam toons. I imagine others besides me must use it as a medium armor body set. Medium BC plus NMG are what I used on stam sorc for the first boss in nFrostvault when I was solo farming the Tzogvin set.

The FGII first boss I have not gotten around to on a mag toon (for a long time I played almost exlusively stam, and still prefer it), but will give it a go. I have done it on normal on a stam sorc with a pure damage setup (Briar and VO, I think is what I used, or VO and TF) easily passes her as long as hurricane and endless hail are kept up constantly. Ensuring this means re-applying them before their durations end, which felt wasteful until she died.


For that spider boss in nCoHII, I used BC and LP on a stam sorc (can't remember which was jewels and weps, and which was body) successfully but couldn't make them keep me alive through Nerien'eth's airpin/sword mechanic thingy. I'll give that another go at some point.

Back to pet sorcs; the targeting mentioned by @SirLeeMinion works during Ibomez the Flesh Sculptor's pin in ICP (I know this from doing it myself on normal, and from seeing a vid of it done on vet by, I believe, a console player named @Vaoh in 2016(?), and whose level of skill I will never approach). On normal, BC can be worn as a comfort set for Ibomez but is not necessary. A pet also makes WGT's The Adjudicator passable as it will keep her engaged long enough to force or pick a lock if you're caged. Again, from personal experience on normal, though the player mentioned above has done it on vet (along with CoS and numerous other vdungeons).


I have slogged through vMA in BC jewels and weps and LP body on a stamblade. Slog is the operative word, though, and I don't recommend it. But combining either of those sets (or Battlefield Acrobat) on stam with VO, NMG, TF, Briar, Hunding's (probably any damage set) is a decent way to learn the place and get a first clear. I used NMG/BA/Stormfist on my alt account stam sorc to get it's first clear at 350cp during the last Orsinium event---to get the Stormfist I masochisticly soloed Tempest in BC/Gloomgraced/Kr'agh.

In short, Bahraha's Curse and Leeching Plate have carried me through a lot of content that I am not quite good enough to do without them.

Major_Lag

@StytchFingal
Thanks, this should help with my experimentation.

I play mag builds exclusively; only have 1 stamina character - a mule alt who's also a mat farmer, because stamina.
It feels really awkward when I take that stamina alt into Cyro for geode grinding, and it doesn't help that he has a lot of unlevelled skills and skill lines, etc. (levelled him as a mag build, so no stam skill lines!)

I know about the Necro/PD 1 bar vMA build, I've tried that on the PTS but didn't quite like how it plays. The huge nerfs to WoE and pets did not help, especially when combined with the recent sustain nerfs to shields.

What I would like is a simple, robust build for soloing most content.

One of my major grievances are the bosses who spam unblockable CC, which also tends to ignore CC immunity. Worse yet, a lot of that CC is unbreakable to boot. Any knockbacks are a prime culprit here.
A highly reactive, PvP-like approach falls flat on its face in those cases, because you are spending a lot of time CCed and unable to do anything.

That also means that spammable-based builds (and HA builds) tend to perform quite poorly in those cases; DoT stacking (combined with AFK pet damage) is IMO a much better choice there.

I solo content mostly to just explore it at my own pace on Normal, do the quest, read books, etc.
For farming it's a lot faster to just PUG it - bringing either a real tank, or a real healer who also off-DPSes, so you can carry bad PUGs through the content either way. Unless they can't handle certain mechanics, but that's another story entirely.

Soloing the soloable vet dungeons... um, ok.
Yeah, it can be done, but it's such a dreadful slog that I would not attempt that again.
It took me almost an hour to solo vFG1, and that's not even counting all the failed attempts on Kra'gh.
As an insult to injury, I got a light Kra'gh helmet out of it, which I have absolutely 0 use for - especially in the Light weight, which AFAIK is the worst possible weight for a monster helm.

Going by the same logic of soloing very hard content, I know that some normal trials bosses are soloable (nAA Atronach is one of them?)... but I have better things to do than trying to solo a ~10 million HP boss with my Sorc tank who does 3-4k DPS.

Of course it's quite satisfying to successfully solo what's supposed to be nonsoloable content.
Out of such content, so far I've only cleared nBH (on PTS).

Direfrost Keep does not count; its only nonsoloable mechanic can be easily bypassed by abusing faulty level geometry to activate a lever through a wall (which is what I did), or by Streaking to the other pressure plate - although when I tried it, Streaking in that room was very bugged and I was just always getting the "rooted in place" Streak bug.

I've also managed to repeatedly survive Wuyuvus' pin mechanic on my magsorc, but could not outDPS his healing before the next pin - although that was on a rather crappy build, which topped out at around 12k DPS on a dummy.

StytchFingal

@Major_Lag

Different strokes for different folks, eh? I am very, very rarely ever in a hurry ingame and so I enjoy puttering quixotely at pointless tasks.

The simplest, most robust build for mag sorc I've tried is Necro/BC/Iceheart (preferably with vma staff on back bar) for which I use two bars and one pet. For other mag classes I replace Necro with Bright-throat or Crafty Alfiq. I don't know what shields were like before the nerfs, because I didn't play mag enough to have an opinion; but if shields were significantly stronger and easier to maintain than they are now, they needed the nerfs. I'm speaking from a pve perspective, of course, because though I do enjoy pvp I don't have a good enough handle on it to even venture an opinion on shields in BGs or Cyro (which are probably where they are most needed, I would think).