Harrowstorms are an unfun step backwards: a couple months later

Tapio75

I often find HS a fun event with larger number of players..

That said, the problem with HS for me is that there are so much going on.. The red effects are nice, but they do hide many AoE indicators that are red as well. There are minibosses running around, spiririts running around, wolves running around, players running around, flashes booms and bangs and whatnot.

There are far too much gping on at the same time and that makes everyone running around like crazy rabbits dodging and jumping and wjhatnot... Some stand still... It is pain to heal anyone there.. Tried few times healing them but most people just run away from my AoE heals by instinct because they see damage coming from everywhere and end up dead and trying to keep people alive gets me killed because those minibosses and all sorts of stuff plus AoE gets thrown at me and i OOM at some point eventually no matter how hard i try.


Then there are those new vampires using the new frenzy toggle what eats their health and draws the "Most wounded" heals to them away fro those who actually do some tanking.


Doing HS as a damage dealer is mpore fun, but the constant dodging and blocking is irritating and i can understand newbies getting tired of that pretty fast especially with repair bills coming later and running out of gems to resurrect themselves and trying to resurrect them is easy way to get killed as a damage dealer.

As a tanky character, i feel like nobody is ever healing me exept my own heals.

HS feels like its designed to discourage helping others while encouraging players to run around like rabbits. They are overland content meant for all but they are best done with coordinated group with voice comms. Not a success in my opinion.

Lord-Otto

Rudrani wrote: »

[Quoted post was removed]

Say that again when you're trying to solo a storm since nobody's there.

JTD

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Rudrani wrote: »

[Quoted post was removed]

Say that again when you're trying to solo a storm since nobody's there.

But isn't that the point? They are not supposed to be done solo? It's an open world group incentive event? Tbf, the incentive is lacking but still....

renne

Magdalina wrote: »

Shrikes...they do hit hard and while I'm struggling to tell the mechs with so many people, they probably do have some sort of tell as well (for starters, don't be in their way for one of their deadly attacks).

They can instakill you with an aoe that barely shows up before you're dead (if it even does) when they're on the opposite side of the storm, facing away fighting someone. If anyone has tips how to survive that I'm all ears.

Lord-Otto

JTD wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Rudrani wrote: »

[Quoted post was removed]

Say that again when you're trying to solo a storm since nobody's there.

But isn't that the point? They are not supposed to be done solo? It's an open world group incentive event? Tbf, the incentive is lacking but still....

And that is the problem. No point in doing them now, so most people won't. And thus, the few wanting to do them are screwed.

TwinLamps

its just a mess.
mindless zergfest

Ryuvain

renne wrote: »

Magdalina wrote: »

Shrikes...they do hit hard and while I'm struggling to tell the mechs with so many people, they probably do have some sort of tell as well (for starters, don't be in their way for one of their deadly attacks).

They can instakill you with an aoe that barely shows up before you're dead (if it even does) when they're on the opposite side of the storm, facing away fighting someone. If anyone has tips how to survive that I'm all ears.

They throw out a LOT of autoaimed death aoe attacks. When they do a roar pose one of them. That abyss move that everyone hates. A homing giant aoe that throws aoe pools at nearby player positions. All instant death.

The other is when they fly high up and rain down aoe, it auto targets most nearby player positions again and is also an instant kill.

I've hated them enough to learn their moves but you can't dodge all of them with everything going on. To the point that I think they added an extra zero in their damage by mistake or something.

I remember killing the titan boss with a shrike still around. That shrike wiped more people than the true boss lol.

Made a bug report on their damage and nothing happened. Thread is still there.

Grianasteri

Wing wrote: »

these fights are the most terrible designed group / world fights we have ever had:
-they in no way whatsoever scale, no future proofing for when people move on.
-too many mechanics going on at the same time. kill the adds, kill the mini bosses running around, kill the spirits, kill the tentacles, get out of ALL THE RED.
-SO MUCH RED (insert your aoe color here) huge aoe, small aoe, aoe that moves, aoe that is spammed, aoe that does 10k a pop in super rapid succession.

^ Awesome! More of the same please Zos. I loved the Dragons for instance and I remember seeing similar complaints about them... "too many mechanics, too many different types of mechanic, too difficult, too much health, not scaling".

These are huge, group events. You should not be able to solo them with ease.

That said, of course nothing is perfect and there are very annoying aspects & I can see how frustrating these will be for some, including me at times.

Sinolai

Think Harrowstorms are one of the best group events since you actually want to have a group to do them. Main problem is that the rewards are garbage... The problematic AoE you mention is the "well" created by the Wraith of Crows thing and I agree it is annoying. It forces you to run as far from it as you can and stay in movement (the damage recieved depends on how close to the well you are). If it spawns next to you, you are probably dead before you notice it has spawned.
The rest of the mechanics there however are pretty well telegraphed and while dodging them is not always easy, it is easy to see where they are landing and when something is about to maul you to the ground.
The world bosses and events really dont have a "boss" feeling to me since it doesnt punish you for failing. You can just resurrect on spot and get back to fight. I would like them more if self-resurrection was not possible during the fight so people should actually help each others to take the boss down instead of just running circles and spamming light attacks.

doomette

So I agreed earlier about all the red making it difficult to see AoE indicators, and even though mine is set to fuschia, it still wasn’t enough. Well I set that sucker to yellow and now I can see all the indicators, even that shady shrike. Now I just need to retrain myself. Yellow bad!

One more minor quibble: the AoEs after the storm is done, when I’m trying to loot it: so obnoxious it feels spiteful. No real danger, just, well, obnoxious.

Kolzki

doomette wrote: »

So I agreed earlier about all the red making it difficult to see AoE indicators, and even though mine is set to fuschia, it still wasn’t enough. Well I set that sucker to yellow and now I can see all the indicators, even that shady shrike. Now I just need to retrain myself. Yellow bad!

One more minor quibble: the AoEs after the storm is done, when I’m trying to loot it: so obnoxious it feels spiteful. No real danger, just, well, obnoxious.

Wait two or three seconds before looting and the aoes won’t interrupt you. It’s faster than being interrupted.

Starlight_Whisper

They need map icons

doomette

Kolzki wrote: »

doomette wrote: »

So I agreed earlier about all the red making it difficult to see AoE indicators, and even though mine is set to fuschia, it still wasn’t enough. Well I set that sucker to yellow and now I can see all the indicators, even that shady shrike. Now I just need to retrain myself. Yellow bad!

One more minor quibble: the AoEs after the storm is done, when I’m trying to loot it: so obnoxious it feels spiteful. No real danger, just, well, obnoxious.

Wait two or three seconds before looting and the aoes won’t interrupt you. It’s faster than being interrupted.

I know, I know, I do wait. Doesn’t make it any less obnoxious when I misjudge the timing.

Ratinira

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

- As mentioned above, the Harrowstorm loot does include valuable Vile Coagulant or Vampire Furnishing Plans (RNG of course). Some players may not be interested in those items ... but that doesn't mean there is an across the board nothing of value.

1.Last time I spent 2 hours grinding HS. The amount of Firnishing Plans = 0.
But I have full pockets of trash, ash and edicts. Very useless 2 hours.
2.I have been doing at least 3 HS each day for several weeks. The amount of FP from them directly = 1 plan 10k worth.
Absolutely not worth time spended...
3.Since Greymoor launched I have 2 vamp. beds and 2 curtains from HS. But I haven't farmed them intentionally. Intentional farming was on launch week (1 bed) and abovementioned 2 hours.
Imho, spending that time on farming resources to buy plans will give more plans then direct HS farming...

So the only more-less costly thing is VC which drop is RNG based too, but if the amount of people doing HS will drop to the level of people farming geysers...

Smitch_59

Harrowstorms suck. Cheap one-shots and garbage rewards.

Eormenric

For Harrowstorms, I think they could do with enveloping the battle area in a red-ish windstorm, swirling in a circle. You know, like an actual storm. Tone down or remove the red permeating the entire area and just have it create a circular arena. Better yet, why not have the whole storm actually move, forcing the character to move with it--maybe blocking/making invisible the pillar things we have to attack when they are outside of the storm. That gives priority to a target and helps makes things interesting by constantly being on the move.

Also, as a new Greymoor player, I didn't know what I should be targetting. I don't think it's so obvious. Really, the excessive red confused me on what was actually happening and I do not currently enjoy my time spent in Harrowstorms.

Right now, Harrowstorms are like Dark Anchors but with more things to attack. They need to be more unique than that.

pleximus

Tapio75 wrote: »

I often find HS a fun event with larger number of players..

That said, the problem with HS for me is that there are so much going on.. The red effects are nice, but they do hide many AoE indicators that are red as well. There are minibosses running around, spiririts running around, wolves running around, players running around, flashes booms and bangs and whatnot.

There are far too much gping on at the same time and that makes everyone running around like crazy rabbits dodging and jumping and wjhatnot... Some stand still... It is pain to heal anyone there.. Tried few times healing them but most people just run away from my AoE heals by instinct because they see damage coming from everywhere and end up dead and trying to keep people alive gets me killed because those minibosses and all sorts of stuff plus AoE gets thrown at me and i OOM at some point eventually no matter how hard i try.


Then there are those new vampires using the new frenzy toggle what eats their health and draws the "Most wounded" heals to them away fro those who actually do some tanking.


Doing HS as a damage dealer is mpore fun, but the constant dodging and blocking is irritating and i can understand newbies getting tired of that pretty fast especially with repair bills coming later and running out of gems to resurrect themselves and trying to resurrect them is easy way to get killed as a damage dealer.

As a tanky character, i feel like nobody is ever healing me exept my own heals.

HS feels like its designed to discourage helping others while encouraging players to run around like rabbits. They are overland content meant for all but they are best done with coordinated group with voice comms. Not a success in my opinion.

The carnage is what makes it fun!! It's pure chaos and I LOVE IT!! When shrike is up, I always focus on it and let everyone else deal with the pikes. They don't need the hassle from it and I can deal with it on my own.

Harrowstorms are pure chaos of fun!!! LEAVE THEM ALONE!!

pleximus

Ratinira wrote: »

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

- As mentioned above, the Harrowstorm loot does include valuable Vile Coagulant or Vampire Furnishing Plans (RNG of course). Some players may not be interested in those items ... but that doesn't mean there is an across the board nothing of value.

1.Last time I spent 2 hours grinding HS. The amount of Firnishing Plans = 0.
But I have full pockets of trash, ash and edicts. Very useless 2 hours.
2.I have been doing at least 3 HS each day for several weeks. The amount of FP from them directly = 1 plan 10k worth.
Absolutely not worth time spended...
3.Since Greymoor launched I have 2 vamp. beds and 2 curtains from HS. But I haven't farmed them intentionally. Intentional farming was on launch week (1 bed) and abovementioned 2 hours.
Imho, spending that time on farming resources to buy plans will give more plans then direct HS farming...

So the only more-less costly thing is VC which drop is RNG based too, but if the amount of people doing HS will drop to the level of people farming geysers...

I agree about the rewards, there should be much better drops. But they have to leave the Harrowstorm difficulty alone.

Ratinira

pleximus wrote: »

LEAVE THEM ALONE!!

I am shure they will be left alone. By players...

Jaraal

Ratinira wrote: »

pleximus wrote: »

LEAVE THEM ALONE!!

I am shure they will be left alone. By players...

Yeah I went back the day after the event to finish out an armor set for my lowbie alt, and we couldn't get enough people to take down a single storm. After a few wipes and resets, everybody just left.

SgtNuttzmeg

Overland content is already too easy. Surely it isn't too much to ask to have a few things be difficult. If you really want to grind Harrowstorms or Dragons take the ten to fifteen minutes to form a group. If people aren't interested find a guild that is. If you find yourself dying to the same mechanics over and over again look at your build, look at your CP. Make sure the build you run is actually viable for the role you play and if you are a low level, take some time to level up. There is a huge difference in the survivability of somebody with 160 CP and somebody with 500 CP.

Lord-Otto

SgtNuttzmeg wrote: »

Overland content is already too easy. Surely it isn't too much to ask to have a few things be difficult. If you really want to grind TRIALS take the ten to fifteen minutes to form a group. If people aren't interested find a guild that is. If you find yourself dying to the same mechanics over and over again look at your build, look at your CP. Make sure the build you run is actually viable for the role you play and if you are a low level, take some time to level up. There is a huge difference in the survivability of somebody with 160 CP and somebody with 500 CP.

Makes sense now.

SgtNuttzmeg

Lord-Otto wrote: »

SgtNuttzmeg wrote: »

Overland content is already too easy. Surely it isn't too much to ask to have a few things be difficult. If you really want to grind TRIALS take the ten to fifteen minutes to form a group. If people aren't interested find a guild that is. If you find yourself dying to the same mechanics over and over again look at your build, look at your CP. Make sure the build you run is actually viable for the role you play and if you are a low level, take some time to level up. There is a huge difference in the survivability of somebody with 160 CP and somebody with 500 CP.

Makes sense now.

lol!

And to the people arguing that nobody does this; have any of you tried to clear the world bosses in Wrothgar. Those aren't as hard but they are hard enough that newer players would likely need to group to beat them. But people run groups for them all the time. Despite this content having been created several years ago. And these are just regular run of the mill World Bosses too.

ForeverJenn

I dunno. I find HS a good place to learn to tank. It's not like there's a malstrom arena or target dummy to practice on before the jump from being pretty much un-needed in normal and non DLC dungeons to "Better know what you're doing" DLC vets. Lol

Jaraal

SgtNuttzmeg wrote: »

Overland content is already too easy. Surely it isn't too much to ask to have a few things be difficult. If you really want to grind Harrowstorms or Dragons take the ten to fifteen minutes to form a group. If people aren't interested find a guild that is. If you find yourself dying to the same mechanics over and over again look at your build, look at your CP. Make sure the build you run is actually viable for the role you play and if you are a low level, take some time to level up. There is a huge difference in the survivability of somebody with 160 CP and somebody with 500 CP.

Go see how many people are doing harrowstorms right now. Then go to Northern Elsweyr and see how many are doing dragons. And finally, go to Alik'r and see how many folks are doing dolmens.

If hard content is more fun, then why aren't more people doing it than are doing easy content? And sure, soloing dolmens may be easy for most of us, but I guarantee you there are players out there trying to solo them and dying as we speak. So "easy" is relative. Scaling (both dificulty and rewards) is the most player friendly solution. If they made the loot scale in quality as they do the difficulty, then the Geysers in Summerset would be busy 24/7.

ForeverJenn

renne wrote: »

Magdalina wrote: »

Shrikes...they do hit hard and while I'm struggling to tell the mechs with so many people, they probably do have some sort of tell as well (for starters, don't be in their way for one of their deadly attacks).

They can instakill you with an aoe that barely shows up before you're dead (if it even does) when they're on the opposite side of the storm, facing away fighting someone. If anyone has tips how to survive that I'm all ears.

You can change the color and opacity of aoe in the options. Maybe that can help.

renne

ForeverJenn wrote: »

renne wrote: »

Magdalina wrote: »

Shrikes...they do hit hard and while I'm struggling to tell the mechs with so many people, they probably do have some sort of tell as well (for starters, don't be in their way for one of their deadly attacks).

They can instakill you with an aoe that barely shows up before you're dead (if it even does) when they're on the opposite side of the storm, facing away fighting someone. If anyone has tips how to survive that I'm all ears.

You can change the color and opacity of aoe in the options. Maybe that can help.

I have it set to fluorescent pink and the brightness up as high as it can be. It doesn't help.

MeltyLotus

They need to have more double loot events across maps. switch it around week by week. This way low play zones will even theirs at some point.

Right now without an event if you don't play at the mainstream time, there aren't enough people to do these events.

doomette

renne wrote: »

ForeverJenn wrote: »

renne wrote: »

Magdalina wrote: »

Shrikes...they do hit hard and while I'm struggling to tell the mechs with so many people, they probably do have some sort of tell as well (for starters, don't be in their way for one of their deadly attacks).

They can instakill you with an aoe that barely shows up before you're dead (if it even does) when they're on the opposite side of the storm, facing away fighting someone. If anyone has tips how to survive that I'm all ears.

You can change the color and opacity of aoe in the options. Maybe that can help.

I have it set to fluorescent pink and the brightness up as high as it can be. It doesn't help.

I had the same issue, with the same color, so I changed it to yellow. I can definitely see the AoEs now.

Magdalina

Lord-Otto wrote: »

Magdalina wrote: »

Cloudtrader wrote: »

The major problem with the Harrowstorms, to my mind, is that the mechanics of how they work are just not intuitive AT ALL. The ghosts getting to the pikes is what causes the bosses to spawn, but people don't seem to know that.

It wasn't fun, but I did a HS with 4 people once. Have a Templar control the ghosts at two pikes with their knockback, running back and forth between the two while the others kill the 1st pike and make sure the ghosts never get to it with AOE. That way, those stupid bosses never spawn at all.

Tbh, people choosing to ignore mechanics is not ZOS fault. I'd rather we get more interesting mechanics than never get any just because someone can't be bothered to figure them out. This logic is also present everywhere on the game - WB, geysers, dragons, (vet) dungeons, trials...if you want fancy stuff, you gotta follow the mechs. If you choose to ignore the mechs/don't even bother figuring them out (ghosts are pretty intuitive. I mean...a monster is consistently and deliberately trying to do something, in this case - reach the pike. 10/10 things monsters try to do are meant to be bad for you and should be stopped (unless it's an easy fight where it can just be ignored, but that's clearly not the case for HS) ) - you're gonna die.

Likewise, I've seen groups of 5+ people wipe on Ri'Atahrashi due to not following mechanics (sometimes even after I told them said mechanics, buy they just chose to ignore that), or multitudes of people die/wipe to easily avoidable dragon mechs. Just because not following mechs gets you killed, it doesn't mean it's broken, in fact I'd say it's the opposite - that's exactly how it should be.

HS certainly have their issues, but people ignoring mechs is a people issue, not a HS one.

There are no interesting mechanics in harrowstorms. It's just ZOS' old trick of spamming AoE oneshots.

That's your opinion - based either on not fully figuring the mechs out or on not enjoying said mechs. Personally, I don't mind the ghost mech, I do like how they can be cc'd (not sure if it's a bug or intended, I feel it's a cool trick and should stay though). I like how you can be targeted by flying things and there's no op obvious tell for that - that's cool, gotta be careful and watch out. Final boss mechs seem easy enough and look super awesome (there're some easily avoidable one-shots here and there). Shrikes... shrikes, and a few other things, perhaps, I still need to figure out, I admit that. And I'm looking forward to figuring it out! At least 85% of deaths at HS occur due to people not following mechanics. All these 'but I was hit by 7k, then 7k again, then 75k' mostly mean you missed something. Watch out

Also, for some reason, everyone is going off the assumption that you need like 35 people to do a HS. You don't. You can do them perfectly fine with 4, you can probably do with 2 as well - one person with CC can keep all the ghosts away from all the pikes so there are no minibosses, all you'd need is some dps on pikes in the meanwhile.