Please review the world boss at Echoing Hollow (Murkmire)

Kessra

For month now I do daily quests in multiple DLC zones to complete the collection of motifs and items for the sticker book. Most of the world bosses aren't really an issue. While some may take a bit more time to kill, especially solo, this boss is in a league on its own IMO. Bringing down the boss to 50ish percent just to see that he puts down his 6+ 50k health totems that instantly start to heal him up to full is everything but fun. Even with 3-4 people doing this boss, which often results in 15-20 minutes long fights till this number of players actually joined in, it solely depends on how good those players are and Murkmire seems one of the least favorite zones comparing the number of people that actually do those bosses. This may be partly affected by the position of wayshrines and locations you have to go to for those quest which always feels like an additional hurdle. Only Bok-Xul here is near a wayshrine and thus people often join in on this boss, which actually can be soloed with some movement and situation awareness.

Things that would help to improve the boss in my optionion are:

- Reduce the HP of his totems to 5-10k or allow to interrupt the totems at least
- Ensure that there is enough time between the boss placing his totems and the totems actually start healing him
- Make the boss being affected by taunts

While at first the boss seems to be targetable to taunts, once he burried into the ground he simply ignores it, similar to the dragons that sometimes after landing will ignore any taunts completely for quite some time, and no, there are no other tanks doing the boss or companions involved.

The whole fight becomes so frustrating when the boss puts down his totems that immediately start healing him up. Note however that this is not always the case. Sometimes there is a lot of time between him putting down totems (which often are those fire-ae totems) which he later on converts to healing ones if not killed quick enough. While aoe silences can be used to prevent the totems from healing, neither bash nor interrupts prevent the totems from healing up the boss and all you can do is watch the boss heal up or have enough players on the boss to out-dps him (and/or quickly kill all totems).

Eventually also consider scaling a boss in general to the number of people doing it. I.e. if only one or two players are doing it just spawn 3 totems, if 3-4 players are doing it spawn 5-6 totems and so forth.

joerginger

This has been an issue for two years or so. I think it started with a Murkmire event. The theory back then was that the annoying tokens were buffed for the event and then forgotten to change back to something manageable without having 30 million other players around. There was a thread in the bug forum about this, but that thread must be buried by the sands of time by now.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Seconded! Walks-Like-Thunder is terrible for all the reasons OP mentioned. Murkmire is not busy enough to get enough people to put him down, usually. :'(

Northwold

I'd just assumed that boss was some kind of April Fool's joke.

Iselin

DId it as a 2 man a couple of days ago although we did have to try twice. The first time we just gave up and let him reset and then decided I (960 CP DPS magplar with a couple fo heals slotted and a level 20 Bow DPS Mirri) was just going on full time totem duty while the other player (a CP 1000ish Stamden) held the boss' attention and DPSed him.

When there were no totems I added my damage and dropped my Ice Comet Ulti on him but that was less than 1/4 of my time since he does his totem ability so bloody often - IMO it's not that it's 6 of them but that the timer for that ability is just too quick. We got him down fairly quickly doing it that way, as in under 5 minutes... YMMV.

rauyran

What's ZOS to do when some of the community say overland content is too easy and some say it's too hard?

Kessra

rauyran wrote: »

What's ZOS to do when some of the community say overland content is too easy and some say it's too hard?

There is a difference between challenging and frustrating. Don't get me wrong, this boss isn't really hard but the randomness of how totems work is. Sometimes he places his totems and immediately starts healing other times you have like 30 seconds to kill each totem before he tries to heal. The latter case allows to acutally DPS the boss, in the primer case however there is no wiggle room to even remove some of those. And during those 5-8 seconds the boss drains health from the totems, the boss can actually heal for more than 50% of his total health. Sure, good DPS may only require two people to kill him, but the truth here is, most players doing PvE DLC daily quests are more on the lower to medicre end of the DPS spectrum, especially when you are a PvE tank like me. If bosses are tuned that way in blackwood or deadlands, fine, as enough people are still doing that content. But in a zone where you see over the period of 30-40 minutes just 1-2 people roaming around and no respone in zone chat at all that boss is just "slightly" overtuned.

As mentioned in the last sentence of my original post, a scaling of bosses to the number of players doing them would be highly appreciated. Just look at the recent Clockwork City/Vaardenfell/Morrowind events where especially bosses in CWC were killed by 50+ players instantly. That is just a bad joke IMO. Put 50+ people all spamming their AoE on Walks-Like-Thunder and it will die instantly as well. But the truth is you don't have that many players around in Murkmire any more.

RisenEclipse

Honestly, ESO has such a problem with balancing. You have the stupidly easy overland content like dolmens, that literally nearly everyone can solo. But then you have stupidly difficult content like harrowstrorms. Which I get, that having hard overland content is important for people that want a challenge.

But, they fail to keep in mind that once the DLC is no longer new and shiny the groups needed to take down this hard content is difficult to put together. Less people in the zones, and less people willing to help out. When the Elsweyr event happened, I spent every day killing dragons. Because good luck killing 100 some dragons after the event.

Also, the rewards sometimes do not match the difficulty of the content. Harrowstorms give you absolutely pitiful rewards that do not encourage people to actually do them years after Greymoor release. I did all the HS (and it was painful to do btw) recently in Western Skyrim, just to clear the map. But I'm not touching them again because there's no need. Even Molag Bal in IC gives pitiful rewards. Sure you have a SLIGHT chance of getting a skin, but most of the time it's just 20 gold. If you're lucky enough to be in a large group and even get a drop.

umagon

The trick to dealing with this boss when you only have 2-3 people is for all the players to move in front of the cave door and pull the boss there. This will stack most of the totems into a small area and make it easier to destroy them. Also, it reduces the amount of moving around the boss does.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Kessra wrote: »

Don't get me wrong, this boss isn't really hard but the randomness of how totems work is. Sometimes he places his totems and immediately starts healing other times you have like 30 seconds to kill each totem before he tries to heal.

I don’t think it’s random, I think it’s based on how much health the boss himself has. When his HP is high, they do damage, when it’s low they heal him until it gets high again and then they switch back to damage.

Kessra

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

Kessra wrote: »

Don't get me wrong, this boss isn't really hard but the randomness of how totems work is. Sometimes he places his totems and immediately starts healing other times you have like 30 seconds to kill each totem before he tries to heal.

I don’t think it’s random, I think it’s based on how much health the boss himself has. When his HP is high, they do damage, when it’s low they heal him until it gets high again and then they switch back to damage.

Based on my experience it is random. I have seen him do the healing totems at 90% and I have seen him do the fire totems at 20% which he then healed up from like 20 seconds later (boss turns yellowish shimmering while rasing one of his hands)

Veinblood1965

Agreed, this boss is horrible, I skip that quest most of the time just for that reason. Even with a three man group it's a pain.

spartaxoxo

This boss healing is blatantly overtuned

Danny_Fluke

RisenEclipse wrote: »

Honestly, ESO has such a problem with balancing. You have the stupidly easy overland content like dolmens, that literally nearly everyone can solo. But then you have stupidly difficult content like harrowstrorms. Which I get, that having hard overland content is important for people that want a challenge.

But, they fail to keep in mind that once the DLC is no longer new and shiny the groups needed to take down this hard content is difficult to put together. Less people in the zones, and less people willing to help out. When the Elsweyr event happened, I spent every day killing dragons. Because good luck killing 100 some dragons after the event.

I'd say that it's less because harrowstorms are overtuned that makes them difficult, but rather players don't understand, or choose not to play the mechanics that make it easier.

It would be nice if there was some scaling (eg, slower ghosts respawn rate or movement speed) to the number of players, given that there is typically lesser players in the zone when a new one comes out. That said, you can still clear a HS easily if everyone knows what they're doing, doable by as little as a solo or a duo.

For instance, the ghosts that spawn in a HS heals pikes and a certain number of them spawns in a new boss. Yet you can see players totally ignoring them entirely.

These mechanics aren't immediately obvious, especially in the chaos of an event, and it applies to other content as well (dungeons, dragons eg players don't block the obviously incoming Unrelenting Force shout, etc).

Not that I'm disagreeing there aren't any balance issues, but we should be certain that we're not unknowingly making things harder for ourselves by not playing certain mechanics, rather than crying foul because we're being ripped apart by 3 shrikes and 2 bloodknights spawned into a HS.

spartaxoxo

Danny_Fluke wrote: »

RisenEclipse wrote: »

Honestly, ESO has such a problem with balancing. You have the stupidly easy overland content like dolmens, that literally nearly everyone can solo. But then you have stupidly difficult content like harrowstrorms. Which I get, that having hard overland content is important for people that want a challenge.

But, they fail to keep in mind that once the DLC is no longer new and shiny the groups needed to take down this hard content is difficult to put together. Less people in the zones, and less people willing to help out. When the Elsweyr event happened, I spent every day killing dragons. Because good luck killing 100 some dragons after the event.

I'd say that it's less because harrowstorms are overtuned that makes them difficult, but rather players don't understand, or choose not to play the mechanics that make it easier.

It would be nice if there was some scaling (eg, slower ghosts respawn rate or movement speed) to the number of players, given that there is typically lesser players in the zone when a new one comes out. That said, you can still clear a HS easily if everyone knows what they're doing, doable by as little as a solo or a duo.

For instance, the ghosts that spawn in a HS heals pikes and a certain number of them spawns in a new boss. Yet you can see players totally ignoring them entirely.

These mechanics aren't immediately obvious, especially in the chaos of an event, and it applies to other content as well (dungeons, dragons eg players don't block the obviously incoming Unrelenting Force shout, etc).

Not that I'm disagreeing there aren't any balance issues, but we should be certain that we're not unknowingly making things harder for ourselves by not playing certain mechanics, rather than crying foul because we're being ripped apart by 3 shrikes and 2 bloodknights spawned into a HS.

I would personally just nerf the speed of the ghosts and make them disabled on stun again.

Danny_Fluke

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I would personally just nerf the speed of the ghosts and make them disabled on stun again.

Agreed, that'd make it much easier without the need for scaling for X number of players at any given time.

Then again, I do remember how many people still gripe about how the HS are overtuned, even with the free 40+s free pass you get by stunning the ghosts, because nobody bothers to do the stunning.

spartaxoxo

Danny_Fluke wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I would personally just nerf the speed of the ghosts and make them disabled on stun again.

Agreed, that'd make it much easier without the need for scaling for X number of players at any given time.

Then again, I do remember how many people still gripe about how the HS are overtuned, even with the free 40+s free pass you get by stunning the ghosts, because nobody bothers to do the stunning.

The stunning doesn't work out that well anymore so people just stopped. Has that been fixed. I know I stopped when it lasted like 3 seconds, waste of mana and time if it's not gonna actually help me do the storm.

Necrotech_Master

of the monsters summoned by harrowstorms the shrikes are the most OP

pretty much all versions of the shrikes have that ground dot that does some insane amount of dmg (this applies to other variants such as the crow WB in clockwork city too)

most of the other monsters summoned are still a threat, but much less so than the shrikes, 1 aoe from the shrikes can kill you in less than 2 seconds

i think harrowstorms are a pretty fun challenge to try to do solo, but i also agree the rewards are not entirely worth it either since it only gives the same rewards as a dolmen with the small chance for lead or furnishing blueprint

whitecrow

I used to think the shrikes were the worst, but I think the gargoyles annoy me even more. Between the firewalls and the constant hamstringing from their pounces...

Danny_Fluke

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Danny_Fluke wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I would personally just nerf the speed of the ghosts and make them disabled on stun again.

Agreed, that'd make it much easier without the need for scaling for X number of players at any given time.

Then again, I do remember how many people still gripe about how the HS are overtuned, even with the free 40+s free pass you get by stunning the ghosts, because nobody bothers to do the stunning.

The stunning doesn't work out that well anymore so people just stopped. Has that been fixed. I know I stopped when it lasted like 3 seconds, waste of mana and time if it's not gonna actually help me do the storm.

Yes, they fixed both the stunning, and the lock in place due to companion aggro when companions first launched.

spartaxoxo

Danny_Fluke wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Danny_Fluke wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I would personally just nerf the speed of the ghosts and make them disabled on stun again.

Agreed, that'd make it much easier without the need for scaling for X number of players at any given time.

Then again, I do remember how many people still gripe about how the HS are overtuned, even with the free 40+s free pass you get by stunning the ghosts, because nobody bothers to do the stunning.

The stunning doesn't work out that well anymore so people just stopped. Has that been fixed. I know I stopped when it lasted like 3 seconds, waste of mana and time if it's not gonna actually help me do the storm.

Yes, they fixed both the stunning, and the lock in place due to companion aggro when companions first launched.

Awesome! Think I'll go do some storms later ty!

RisenEclipse

Danny_Fluke wrote: »

RisenEclipse wrote: »

Honestly, ESO has such a problem with balancing. You have the stupidly easy overland content like dolmens, that literally nearly everyone can solo. But then you have stupidly difficult content like harrowstrorms. Which I get, that having hard overland content is important for people that want a challenge.

But, they fail to keep in mind that once the DLC is no longer new and shiny the groups needed to take down this hard content is difficult to put together. Less people in the zones, and less people willing to help out. When the Elsweyr event happened, I spent every day killing dragons. Because good luck killing 100 some dragons after the event.

I'd say that it's less because harrowstorms are overtuned that makes them difficult, but rather players don't understand, or choose not to play the mechanics that make it easier.

It would be nice if there was some scaling (eg, slower ghosts respawn rate or movement speed) to the number of players, given that there is typically lesser players in the zone when a new one comes out. That said, you can still clear a HS easily if everyone knows what they're doing, doable by as little as a solo or a duo.

For instance, the ghosts that spawn in a HS heals pikes and a certain number of them spawns in a new boss. Yet you can see players totally ignoring them entirely.

These mechanics aren't immediately obvious, especially in the chaos of an event, and it applies to other content as well (dungeons, dragons eg players don't block the obviously incoming Unrelenting Force shout, etc).

Not that I'm disagreeing there aren't any balance issues, but we should be certain that we're not unknowingly making things harder for ourselves by not playing certain mechanics, rather than crying foul because we're being ripped apart by 3 shrikes and 2 bloodknights spawned into a HS.

I know full well how they work. Myself and one other person did them and it took us 20 minutes to do each one. It doesnt help that the ghosts will go to other totems thus if you want to use the stun technique, you are literally spending way too much time killing ghosts. I've also seen bosses spawn, and not even two seconds later another one spawns on top of it. I don't know if that was a glitch, or just the HS trolling us. Then I have to deal with ghosts, killing the wood things, and fighting off three bosses at once. It also doesnt help that as a necro I have a sad amount of stuns. I mean sad. The totem of fear I can use has a low area range, takes too long to work (2 second delay), and only works at your feet. So I can't stun ghosts that are not literally on top of me. They take way too long to do, need a group to complete if you want them done in a decent time, and the rewards are basically what I can find in a chest.

Danny_Fluke

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Danny_Fluke wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Danny_Fluke wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

I would personally just nerf the speed of the ghosts and make them disabled on stun again.

Agreed, that'd make it much easier without the need for scaling for X number of players at any given time.

Then again, I do remember how many people still gripe about how the HS are overtuned, even with the free 40+s free pass you get by stunning the ghosts, because nobody bothers to do the stunning.

The stunning doesn't work out that well anymore so people just stopped. Has that been fixed. I know I stopped when it lasted like 3 seconds, waste of mana and time if it's not gonna actually help me do the storm.

Yes, they fixed both the stunning, and the lock in place due to companion aggro when companions first launched.

Awesome! Think I'll go do some storms later ty!

Oh, btw by fix I mean it was removed from the game, at the very least for the companion aggro which was very likely not intended.

The stun seems to work on and off, and I still can't narrow down why, but it's there-ish.

Danny_Fluke

RisenEclipse wrote: »

Danny_Fluke wrote: »

RisenEclipse wrote: »

Honestly, ESO has such a problem with balancing. You have the stupidly easy overland content like dolmens, that literally nearly everyone can solo. But then you have stupidly difficult content like harrowstrorms. Which I get, that having hard overland content is important for people that want a challenge.

But, they fail to keep in mind that once the DLC is no longer new and shiny the groups needed to take down this hard content is difficult to put together. Less people in the zones, and less people willing to help out. When the Elsweyr event happened, I spent every day killing dragons. Because good luck killing 100 some dragons after the event.

I'd say that it's less because harrowstorms are overtuned that makes them difficult, but rather players don't understand, or choose not to play the mechanics that make it easier.

It would be nice if there was some scaling (eg, slower ghosts respawn rate or movement speed) to the number of players, given that there is typically lesser players in the zone when a new one comes out. That said, you can still clear a HS easily if everyone knows what they're doing, doable by as little as a solo or a duo.

For instance, the ghosts that spawn in a HS heals pikes and a certain number of them spawns in a new boss. Yet you can see players totally ignoring them entirely.

These mechanics aren't immediately obvious, especially in the chaos of an event, and it applies to other content as well (dungeons, dragons eg players don't block the obviously incoming Unrelenting Force shout, etc).

Not that I'm disagreeing there aren't any balance issues, but we should be certain that we're not unknowingly making things harder for ourselves by not playing certain mechanics, rather than crying foul because we're being ripped apart by 3 shrikes and 2 bloodknights spawned into a HS.

I know full well how they work. Myself and one other person did them and it took us 20 minutes to do each one. It doesnt help that the ghosts will go to other totems thus if you want to use the stun technique, you are literally spending way too much time killing ghosts. I've also seen bosses spawn, and not even two seconds later another one spawns on top of it. I don't know if that was a glitch, or just the HS trolling us. Then I have to deal with ghosts, killing the wood things, and fighting off three bosses at once. It also doesnt help that as a necro I have a sad amount of stuns. I mean sad. The totem of fear I can use has a low area range, takes too long to work (2 second delay), and only works at your feet. So I can't stun ghosts that are not literally on top of me. They take way too long to do, need a group to complete if you want them done in a decent time, and the rewards are basically what I can find in a chest.

If the next boss spawns in 2 seconds later, then it's a glitch. There's about a 10 second respawn between each wave for a given totem, and it takes about 20 seconds for them to reach.

Given what you mentioned, you've whittled down the ghosts at one pike so it wouldn't get a full charge for 1 wave, and there's also the ongoing bug where it sometimes requires 4 ghosts for a full reliquary charge. It would place it at around 1 minute before you get a new boss in. The only way you would have bosses so quickly is if there was already a boss glitched out by a player running away from aggro range when he bit off more then he could chew, and the bosses typically don't despawn.

Without the old permastun method, to duo someone has to focus a pike+ghosts and the other one has to take another pike+ghosts or juggle the ghosts on the last 2 pikes. Effectively reducing the spawn time on bosses by about a minute and a half at least.

Nerfing the move speed of the ghosts would be a welcome move, admittedly, because even with a 40% snare, the movespeed on the first 2 ghosts of the wave are pretty absurd.

FluffWit

Trick with Walks Like Thunder is to pull him over to the cave door, like as close as you can get him. It prevents like half the toems spawning. Do that and two decent dps can take hi down.

Then hope no one else shows up who doesn't get what you're doing.

Kessra

First and foremost, let's keep the discussion to Walks-like-Thunder at the Echoing Hollow location in Murkmire please.

umagon wrote: »

The trick to dealing with this boss when you only have 2-3 people is for all the players to move in front of the cave door and pull the boss there. This will stack most of the totems into a small area and make it easier to destroy them. Also, it reduces the amount of moving around the boss does.

FluffWit wrote: »

Trick with Walks Like Thunder is to pull him over to the cave door, like as close as you can get him. It prevents like half the toems spawning. Do that and two decent dps can take hi down.

Then hope no one else shows up who doesn't get what you're doing.

I honestly tried to pull him right to the back door multiple times. Problem usually is that he mid way stands still, does his AoE thing and then casts his totems. I have no control how other players act and they usually run around like crazy eventhough when asked to stack up. As the boss is not perma-tauntable he will at some point bury into the ground and target an other player, regardless if I taunt him or not. Hence, while the tip might be worth doing, it is hardly managable in the current form the boss is in, hence I asked for changing the mechanic that he ignores taunts. While this might be intentional for this boss, I don't think it is for the dragons though but I haven't seen any topics here in this forums regarding that issue at all.

He even targets companions at times, if they are alive and companions always seem to have their own mindbogling will. My Mirri loves to stand in the middle of the pit when a dragon does his breath thing while flying regardless if I stand at the outer rim of the pit. She also at times joins me in melee eventhough she has just ranged abilities slotted or if slotted with melee only abilities goes to range. As a tank not using companions though cripples your overly low DPS further. But that is a rant for a different thread.