PTS Update 34 - Feedback Thread for Dreadsail Reef Trial

Marcelovski

qcell wrote: »

TL;DR: Dreadsail Reef HM is way too hard. Please make it easier. I have 100% achievements and I don't think I'll ever get this one. I don't think anyone will as it is, in fact.

First of all, thanks for your detailed post stating the problems with the current iteration of Dreadsail Reef. Personally, I also have 100% achievements with planesbreaker done as an offtank in march. And to be honest, that was pretty close to the maximum difficulty I still perceive as fun.

There isn't much I can say other than me completely agreeing with you and the others above. There is only so much time I am capable of investing into raiding. While my main drive in this game is to collect and unlock everything there is, I am not seeing myself as the hardcore raider who would push for things like leaderboard scores. So naturally, a barely possible trifecta is hardly appealing or fun for me.

This doesn't mean I don't want a challenge, but I plead for a reasonable experience. Otherwise, I am afraid a lot of even the best groups will quickly give up and disband. The mechanics are fun - the insane damage and punishing nature of them are not.

WrathOfInnos

I'm a little hesitant to post, since there are still a lot of details in I have not figured out. However the PTS window is closing fast, so here are my thoughts:

The mechanics are great, especially on first and last boss. The Fire/Ice domes and the new take on interrupts is awesome. Deluge and jumping in the water is new and unique, although mildly annoying, I like the idea. The Reef Guardian seems very unpredictable in HM, running across the room instead of sealing the nearest hole, and I'm not sure if that is intended or what the devs had in mind for strats

The difficulty for vet is appropriate, we cleared day 1 with a group of experienced players, and there is the option of getting buffs for anyone who wants to make farm runs easier. Hard mode seems difficult, but I suspect there are things we have not figured out yet (at least I hope so). Incoming damage on tanks should probably be toned down, as well as the Mages on Reef, and punishing a well-timed dodge roll is just cruel (I also disliked Falgravn's rez punishment, reward players for paying attention and reacting please, don't force tanks to helplessly hold block like a robot).

I may be in the minority on this opinion, but I'm glad nobody has cleared hard mode on PTS, and I hope the difficulty remains high enough that nobody does. That's not to say that it should feel hopeless for everyone. I'd like to see the trifecta achievable with a few months of prog to anyone with Godslayer or Planesbreaker, as a natural progression. It doesn't need to have crazy DPS checks (vMoL did not and was challenging), but I don't want it to end up like Kyne's where groups get all the achievements in a few weeks then spend the next 11 months bored and waiting for new content.

Final thought is the reward. The mount definitely needs some refinement. I won't call it a full retexture of the Flame Atro version, because I see there are now barnacles. The problem is that makes it ugly and inferior, where it should have been improved with cool effects. The title "Swashbuckler Supreme" sounds like something you'd order at Cheesybeards. Please make these something desirable to earn, not a meme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=jMcyIcyaMNc

code65536

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

I'm glad nobody has cleared hard mode on PTS, and I hope the difficulty remains high enough that nobody does. That's not to say that it should feel hopeless for everyone. I'd like to see the trifecta achievable with a few months of prog to anyone with Godslayer or Planesbreaker, as a natural progression.

I'm not convinced that your second goal is compatible with your first goal. The thing is that, even amongst the "endgame", there are very wide power gaps. Are you talking about a group that got a 27-minute PB? Or a group that got the world record in 18 minutes? The power and skill gap between those two groups is massive, and I don't think it's possible to achieve that first goal without locking way too many players out of that second goal.

And frankly, the latter kind of group absolutely should be able to clear all three HMs during PTS, and they absolutely should do so with ease. After all, we're just talking about a simple clear here; if the bar for "just a simple HM clear" is set so high that it stumps the kind of group that chases world records, then that bar is set too damn high. (I would argue that it would be set too high if it stumps the former kind of group, too.)

WrathOfInnos

code65536 wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

I hope the difficulty remains high enough that nobody does. That's not to say that it should feel hopeless for everyone. I'd like to see the trifecta achievable with a few months of prog to anyone with Godslayer or Planesbreaker, as a natural progression.

I'm not convinced that your second point is compatible with your first point. The thing is that, even amongst the "endgame", there are very wide power gaps. Are you talking about a group that got a 27-minute PB? Or a group that got the world record in 18 minutes? The power and skill gap between those two groups is massive, and I don't think it's possible to achieve that first goal without locking way too many players out of that second goal.

And frankly, the latter kind of group absolutely should be able to clear all three HMs during PTS, and they absolutely should do so with ease. After all, we're just talking about a simple clear here; if the bar for "just a simple HM clear" is set so high that it stumps the kind of group that chases world records, then that bar is set too damn high. (I would argue that it would be set too high if it stumps the former kind of group, too.)

I should clarify. Balance in vRG was poor, it was hard on tanks and healers, but mechanically very easy for DPS. The DPS checks were too high, but that was their only challenge, and it resulted in a massive divide between groups that could or could not clear it. I'd go as far as to say there was very little difference between a HM clear and a Planesbreaker clear. That is not good.

Contrast that with Sunspire, where there was a massive gap between a HM clear and Godslayer. More steps in the progression, and more accessible as a result. Maybe not a perfect difficulty curve (personally spent about 4 weeks on HM and 9 months on GS), but I certainly enjoyed my time working through vSS.

I want it to be more like vMoL (which it seems to be aiming for). Where everyone has a key role to play, not just tanks and healers. And if group DPS is not absolute top tier it's not a huge issue, it just means more rotations of lunar phase and focus on executing mechanics smoothly. IIRC it was months before anyone cleared vMoL HM on release, and even longer before they were doing it with speed and full vitality.

code65536

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

I should clarify. Balance in vRG was poor, it was hard on tanks and healers, but mechanically very easy for DPS. The DPS checks were too high, but that was their only challenge, and it resulted in a massive divide between groups that could or could not clear it. I'd go as far as to say there was very little difference between a HM clear and a Planesbreaker clear. That is not good.

Contrast that with Sunspire, where there was a massive gap between a HM clear and Godslayer. More steps in the progression, and more accessible as a result. Maybe not a perfect difficulty curve (personally spent about 4 weeks on HM and 9 months on GS), but I certainly enjoyed my time working through vSS.

I agree, and Xalvakka's inaccessibility was one of the feedback points that multiple groups gave--and was ignored. The other widely commented-on point that was also ignored was the overtuning of Bahsei that resulted in everyone using Mist Form (at least ZOS finally did acknowledge that particular mistake, though months later, rather than during the original PTS).

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

IIRC it was months before anyone cleared vMoL HM on release, and even longer before they were doing it with speed and full vitality.

Well, it didn't help matters that Rakkhat HM was bugged for 5 months and was literally impossible until the bug was fixed in Update 11. The world-first HM came a week after that. That was a different era, though: Every trial since then had seen a HM clear on PTS (well, vAS was a bit of a special case, as there were PTS clears of its HM with the original mechanics, but not with the redesign that it underwent late in the PTS).

HatchetHaro

The Crashing Waves telegraph is hard to see. Sure, it was pretty and worked well in Coral Aerie, but copying and pasting it straight into the Taleria fight was a really dumb move.

See, here's the thing: typically, telegraphs are just decals with an additive material, so it can only be brighter than the arena; the Varallion fight in Coral Aerie takes place in an arena that is predominantly dark blue, so the additive bright telegraph for the waves there works fine!

The Taleria fight takes place in a bright blue arena, and the Crashing Waves telegraph is bright blue. Bright blue on top of bright blue; you see the problem here? That mechanic is already hard to notice by itself, but when you are already in the middle of dealing with other mechanics, that telegraph is near invisible. At this point it is just easier to have an addon tell you when to dodge no matter what rather than having to notice it and sidestep it.

The telegraphs on the slams from the Behemoth are nothing more than a thin circular border, which is not enough for something that can oneshot you; the AoE that he leaves behind is bigger than the original slam itself which makes zero sense. The telegraphs for Rising Tide are way too visible and obnoxious for how insignificant they are.

The whole pattern I've been seeing with the telegraph design in recent trials is that those telegraphs seem to be designed/assigned without any thought put into them, and you end up with telegraphs that don't match the damage and impact of mechanics (Taleria Rising Tide and Oaxiltso Magma Sludge) and interfere with the visibility of other mechanics (Bahsei curses inside Abomination slams). Heck, even the whole "additive material" thing with the default telegraphs has its own limitations, since they're always going to be less visible in a bright arena (daytime Lokkestiiz non-HM).

Sometimes, we see some of those telegraphs veer from the already-established player-controlled additive colours through the gameplay menu in favour of something more "bespoke" (Crashing Wave on Taleria, Noxious Puddle on Oaxiltso, Blood Fountain in Kyne's Aegis), and now in addition to players having to pay attention to the bright colour they chose for their telegraphs (and all the same circle designs), they now also have to pay attention to the different non-additive colours on the ground that they have no control over.

Look, just, please put a normal telegraph on Crashing Wave; that's the least you could do.

Nefas

I put my weapons away then swirl around the toilet when I look at Boss 2 Hard Mode.

SeaUnicorn

Lylanar and Turlassil HM
1. Too much visual clutter, so much so, that half of they key mechanics do not even animate. We can't see every other weapon AOE, orbs do not spawn visually and so on. The Ice/Fire vortexes around Atros make it impossible to see anything when you are trying to damage them. Those small tornadoes could just be an aura around the atros.
2. Agree with Qcell - too much punitive RNG. In Rockgrove Oax will never charge if the mini is chaining, and that is very smart because you do not want kiter to get chained and Oax enrage and wipe the group because of the coincidence. Why are there no checks like that for this fight.
3. The fact that both the tanks need to be guarded and run every single defensive passive on their bar to survive is an indication that incoming damage is over-tuned. It is not fun for a healer to be leashed to a tank and not be able to participate in mechanics because you are pocket healing instead. Healing challenges are fun, pocket healing not so much.

Reef Giardian HM
Holy visual clutter, so many adds spawning at faster rate than non HM, all large sized, ground is covered in AOEs, can not see anything.

Tideborn Teleria HM
Swimming for Deluge sheaths your weapons, but right after 1st deluge Maelstrom comes up. As a healer I need to refresh my HOTs before Maelstrom, but instead of casting the skill, my character skips the cast and spends whole GCD unsheathing weapons.
Also agree with the tanks here, incoming damage cranked up to 300% is not healthy.

code65536

Side Areas

I look at the side areas and keep thinking, "Why?!"

• The levers. Why the hell do the levers even exist? Just let us open the doors without having to do this silly lever-opening exercise. What are you trying to accomplish here?
  • What makes them so bad is that there are 3 of them (vs. 2 in Sanctum) and they are not in visual range of each other, so you can't coordinate pulls by just looking at what the others levers are doing. This will be such a pain to coordinate for PUGs running normals out of Craglorn with no voice comms.
• Both side areas together represent a major pacing speed bump. Please make them optional. If a group wants to collect the optional buffs, search for chests, or and/or kill extra enemies for score, they can opt to clear those side areas. But for groups that don't care about any of that, let them just open the door to the second boss without running through the side areas.
• The buffs that they received in week 3 don't make them any more interesting and instead just amplifies their existing annoyance factor. They have more health and zip around even more than before.
  • I want to share an anecdote involving Sail Ripper's "doughnut hole" mechanic. Last week, we had someone who was targeted by it three times in a row, and each time, it spawned on the opposite side of the room. They didn't even have time to make it back to the boss before they had it again. Why does that mechanic happen so frequently? With random positions that could be on the opposite side of a play area this large? And with random target selection with no considerations like perhaps exempting someone who has just had the mechanic? Lack of attention to detail with mechanics like this is why many consider these side bosses to be annoyances, rather than meaningful parts of the trial.
• In short: Please either make the side areas optional, or make them more interesting and less tedious. Bumping up their health and making them more annoying does not make them more interesting.

Boss 2

I'll repeat what I said in my feedback from last week: King Orgnum's Fire is overtuned. A quick refresher: It knocks out 75% of a person's health in unavoidable, unresistible, unshieldable, damage and defiles them by 75% for 20s. It's a bit like Baneful Mark from Cloudrest, but worse in key ways:

• There is no warning. In Cloudrest, tanks can see and can react to a monstrosity who is about to cast Baneful Barb on them. And in execute, there's a clear animation when Baneful Burst is about to happen. There is no warning here.
• There is unavoidable damage in Dreadsail. For example, what if someone is being targeted by a Lightning Strike? The kind that tracks a player is unavoidable. There is literally no counterplay for a scenario where someone gets hit by KOF and Lightning Strike at the same time. And this sort of thing does happen: I've seen someone die because they were hit by lightning 0.3s after being hit by KOF. In contrast, in Cloudrest, Roaring Flare preempts Baneful Burst, to prevent unfair mechanics overlaps, but no such consideration exists here.
• It's really fun* for tanks to suddenly lose 75% of their health and be defiled up the wazoo right when they're being coned by the boss. Gotta love that RNG targeting. (And by fun*, I really mean the exact opposite of fun.) At least Z'Maja was courteous enough to never follow Baneful Burst with a heavy attack. Again, no such consideration of unfair mechanics overlaps exist here.

Alright, clearly, the Incendiary must be a high-priority target, so let's camp their spawn location and kill it as quickly as possible and hope that the few KOF that do go out don't mess us up too much. But, wait, why is the spawn location inconsistent?


Boss 3

8.6M behemoth every 30s. When I wrote that last week, someone messaged me and said that it didn't seem so bad. Well, maybe, if the fight was always static. But it's not. Damage is much lower when people need to run for a Winter Storm because (a) it's hard to do damage while running and (b) positional damage (e.g., ground DoTs) aren't effective. And what if we're talking about the latter phase of the fight (which, admittedly, we haven't seen yet in HM because the earlier parts are nuts), when part of the group is away dealing with a mage in a cave? And what if part of the group is away in a cave and there's a Winter Storm too?

I admit that, as a tank, I had been too preoccupied with the damage that was on me to look closely at the damage on the DDs last week. But this week, I looked, and it's horrifying.

Here is the DTPS of Lokkestiiz HM's Static, which was the most notable "group-heal-check" mechanic from that trial (looking only at non-tanks, at just that specific damage ability, and looking only at the duration of the ability):

Here is the DTPS of Taleria HM's Maelstrom (looking only at non-tanks, at just that specific damage ability, and looking only at the duration of the ability):

Now imagine that damage when combined with the purple (defile) or green (reduced max health) debuffs later in the fight. And for extra bonus fun, let's also throw in the unavoidable ambient Blizzard damage from a Winter Storm.

Hmm. Did I mention earlier that there's been no defensive power creep? Maybe I should mention that again and ask who thought it was a good idea to throw so much incoming-damage creep in a game that has had no defensive power creep to match?

(Why did the healers take more damage than everyone else? Because everyone else threw in some dodge rolls in there, but healers didn't dodge because, well, they need to heal!)

And then there's Deluge. As I mentioned last week, the OT does not get the kind of exemption that the MT does, so a Deluge on the OT will just kill them. But, on top of that, 8 people getting Deluge means that, in the later parts of the fight when you have a couple of people dealing with an add in a cave, you can't have any deaths in the main fight, or else the tanks will get Deluge and die and most likely wipe the group as a result. There's a reason that "no death" is a separate achievement from "just clearing". What's the point of having the former when the bar for the latter is almost as high?


General

Gatekeeping a Hard Mode behind a previous Hard Mode suggests that there is a progression of difficulty. Where the first boss is clearly easier than the second, which in turn is clearly easier than the third. Such a progression of difficulty clearly does not exist here in Dreadsail Reef, and some would even argue that the first boss is harder than the second. Just allow groups to enable any Hard Mode they want (or at least the first two) without prerequisites when the trial hits Live.

Troodon80

code65536 wrote: »

Boss 2

I'll repeat what I said in my feedback from last week: King Orgnum's Fire is overtuned. A quick refresher: It knocks out 75% of a person's health in unavoidable, unresistible, unshieldable, damage and defiles them by 75% for 20s. It's a bit like Baneful Mark from Cloudrest, but worse in key ways:

• There is no warning. In Cloudrest, tanks can see and can react to a monstrosity who is about to cast Baneful Barb on them. And in execute, there's a clear animation when Baneful Burst is about to happen. There is no warning here.
• There is unavoidable damage in Dreadsail. For example, what if someone is being targeted by a Lightning Strike? The kind that tracks a player is unavoidable. There is literally no counterplay for a scenario where someone gets hit by KOF and Lightning Strike at the same time. And this sort of thing does happen: I've seen someone die because they were hit by lightning 0.3s after being hit by KOF. In contrast, in Cloudrest, Baneful Burst preempts Roaring Flare, to prevent unfair mechanics overlaps, but no such consideration exists here.
• It's really fun* for tanks to suddenly lose 75% of their health and be defiled up the wazoo right when they're being coned by the boss. Gotta love that RNG targeting. (And by fun*, I really mean the exact opposite of fun.) At least Z'Maja was courteous enough not to immediately follow Baneful Burst with a heavy attack. Again, no such consideration of unfair mechanics overlaps exist here.

Agreed with just about everything you've said so far, but want to make a couple clarifying points here.

• No Warning: There actually is warning in that there's a fireball projectile (larger than the light attack projectile). BUT you can't see it because of all the visual clutter. Additionally, why even make it a projectile that has a travel time if you can't dodge it? The ability has a 3s cooldown so it's basically spamming fireballs when it isn't doing light attacks.
• Unavoidable damage based on 75% of the remaining health: This seems to be calculated at the time of the cast, not when it hits. So if you take any damage while that projectile is on its way, with a travel time obviously based on distance (0s to 3s from what I've seen), you can potentially take a two-shot with, as you said, no counter-play. I've seen it where someone gets hit by either lightning or poison at 0.1~0.2 seconds prior and then King Orgnum's Fire kills them (see IDR screenshot of me below). If it were 75% of the remaining health at the time of the hit, it wouldn't be able to kill you (though lightning and poison still could). It''s not a HPS check. It's RNG. Give it some counterplay. At the very least make it calculate the 75% when it hits, meaning if someone was already low it won't just kill them outright. Ideally, make it dodgeable.

AJTC5000

Okay so I'm not as technically minded as some of the other players in this thread (who've provided some brilliant feedback btw), nor do I share much experience with the support-side of group composition, but I would still like to jot down some general thoughts and feedback of mine about this trial.

Probably not as important feedback-wise, but the aesthetics and lore of this trial are pretty good I feel. While I did hype this up in my head as being a bit more water-y (maybe including some form of a ship battle, fighting a giant sea serpent etc), what we got was still surprising and interesting. In particular I love the dynamic that Turlassil and Lylanar have between each other, their little quips just add a whole other dimension to that encounter.

While the inclusion of a lot of mechanics from the Q1 Ascending Tide dungeons (and other dungeons) may feel a little cheap, on the other hand I think it provides the player an opportunity to experience that content and almost "revise for the test" - get experience in the dungeons to be able to do the trial. Interesting strat!

- - -

I only have Tick-Tock Tormentor to my name, but my trials group is one that has gotten many trifectas in the past, and I can confidently say our group power is sufficient. However, I feel this trial is just simply too much at the moment.

I feel Rockgrove was the start of all of this, and there have been volumes of feedback on why Rockgrove is the way it is. Kyne's Aegis was at a much easier standard and the pendulum had swung back in the opposite direction - by this notion, I was expecting that Dreadsail Reef would be a middle-ground between the two, with the feedback on both of the preceding trials being taken into account. However, this does not seem to be the case, with DSR being firmly at the Rockgrove level, and even harder in some respects.

When I logged into PTS with my raid team on Week 1, I expected that we'd run into a couple of challenges, but we'd be able to clear within the two hours of our raid session, since this was regular Veteran mode. We didn't clear until the week after, and most of this was due to the final boss. This already didn't set a high expectation of the hard modes in my mind, and indeed when we tried them this week, we didn't really make much of a dent.

Previously people have said that Sunspire is the gold standard for a trial's difficulty - Veteran mode is pretty accessible to a lot of teams, Hard Modes hit for a lot but are ultimately consistently beatable, and the trifecta is achievable with a solid progression period. Right now, DSR Veteran mode feels like it's shifted one place above - the DSR Veteran modes are taking a similar amount of effort as the Hard Modes from other trials, and the DSR Hard Modes are currently at trifecta level. I do not look forward to seeing what the DSR trifecta is like.

I don't want to call out any names, but it seems the dev team behind trials is simply looking at the feedback from the top 0.001% who can comfortably clear it and get results, and tailoring these newer trials to those people. Sure, this makes DSR "possible", and if that's all they are concerned about then there's not a whole lot more I can say. But do you really want to gatekeep your hardest difficulties to maybe 50 people maximum? How does that look to the rest of the playerbase? How does that encourage more people to get into the raiding scene?

Vaoh wrote: »

One point I would like to make about all of this feedback about difficulty....

ZOS, do not forget there are console players too. We have worse game performance and no add ons. My server has only 21 players with Planesbreaker which is only two PB completes (3 players are in both runs).

And I feel this account from Vaoh sort of illustrates my point - currently, Planesbreaker is achievable on console, and thus, ZOS will not change much about it, because it's "possible" to 21 people. How many people are playing this game again?

Raiding should be a fun activity. I was initially quite excited for DSR because Boss 1 Veteran mode was fun! The dome mechanic was something completely new, it had a Twins-esque split, the stacking Siroria-esque runes - you were constantly doing something different whilst fighting a boss with a manageable health pool and damage output (at least, from the DD's point of view), and you didn't need to be outputting a lot of damage yourself as it focused on mechanical difficulty instead of artificial difficulty. Contrast this with Boss 2 Hard Mode, which looks like it's taking some teams 20 minutes? (How long is the speed-run again?) Why do you need to have so much health, on top of all the stacking mechanics (including King Orgnum's Fire, which as others have mentioned above, wtf is this?)? Maybe others get some enjoyment out of fights like this, but not me personally. I can't speak for the healers and especially the tanks, but it doesn't seem to be much fun on them either.

At the end of the day, we will prog this trial simply because the other alternative is Rockgrove, and nobody wants to do that. Sure, I could persuade some of my team-mates to revisit older content and re-acquire some trifectas for my benefit, but it's a short-term solution at best, and I fear for the longevity of the group, and other groups like ours, if this is the raiding standard that we've settled on. I would much rather upset 50 players at the top than cut out any chance that the rest of the playerbase have at completing this content.

WrathOfInnos

code65536 wrote: »

[*]There is unavoidable damage in Dreadsail. For example, what if someone is being targeted by a Lightning Strike? The kind that tracks a player is unavoidable. There is literally no counterplay for a scenario where someone gets hit by KOF and Lightning Strike at the same time. And this sort of thing does happen: I've seen someone die because they were hit by lightning 0.3s after being hit by KOF.

Agree, I'm not a fan of the lightning mechanic on right side split and boss, as well as during the Reef Guardian. The poison mechanic on left side is very similar in that it is based on proximity (to other players and danger zones) and deals stacking damage, but it is avoidable if you are situationally aware. The lightning mechanic does not reward good awareness or positioning, it simply hits everyone that is not under shelter. It would be much better if it was more like the lightning strikes throughout Kyne's Aegis trash, where it would be ground targeted on or near players, with the opportunity to move out.

This is most noticeable when waiting to pull levers. On poison side you can dance around and avoid damage (anti-stack and anti-stationary mechanics are interesting), but on lightning side all you can do is spam a heal or shield as your stacks count up toward inevitable death. Sure that is a punishment for an ally being slow to their lever, but some counterplay here would be nice.

code65536

Is there something that could be done about Taleria's hit box? It feels like she is the new Olms, and by that, I mean that the OT seems pretty prone to accidentally taunting Taleria when trying to grab a Behemoth, much like how easy it is for the OT to inadvertently taunt Olms in Asylum when trying to grab Llothis or Felms.

skinnycheeks

Feedback on the Secret Buffs:

With the RNG element to the buffs, cycling through random buffs every 60s, they aren't really something you can plan around and don't really make it noticeably easier to get through any of the content, in my opinion. However, they do lock you out of some of the achievements if you use them.

I think more reliable buffs like you get from the secret dungeon bosses would make more sense here. Those dungeon buffs are really felt and do a great job of bridging the gap and alleviating some of the pressure from the harder difficulties. Where-as the trial buffs don't really make anything feel easier AND you are dissuaded from using them by missing out on the achievements.

So it seems like it would be better to either go one way with them or the other. Either have them like the dungeon buffs where they are always present, but then a special rule for Trials where you don't qualify for the achievement OR keep them as they are but have no effect on getting the achievement or not.

I think the 1st option would be a nice middle ground by essentially creating a new difficulty setting that is somewhere in between. And even though you don't get the achievement, you could have an easier time practicing and then at some point move to the final difficulty level of HM with no buffs.

Hope you will consider this for Dreadsail Reef and for Trials moving forward.

Wellsley

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/606194/stormsurge-body-and-face-markings-face-markings-and-colored-eyes#latest

Troodon80

Heading into the last week of PTS, my thoughts right now are as follows. This will be my last feedback post as we head toward the Live update. It would be unprecedented for ZOS to make the sweeping changes I believe are necessary between now and when PTS rolls over to Live; since there has been no patch this week or last week, meaning that feedback cannot be implemented or used to make any last minute player-testable adjustments to the trial.

Specifically referring to hard modes: First boss is manageable. Second boss is silly, but manageable. Third boss is next to impossible.

Breaking this down a bit. First of all, the speed run time is silly compared to what you need to do in order to clear each boss in a time that would allow you to get speed run on hard mode. This isn't just about pushing your limits, which I'm perfectly fine with. That is, assuming you could do just the main bosses -- and the side bosses were completely optional -- speed run would be much more attainable to people outside of one or two scorepushing groups.

First boss: Kill atronachs with the boss for the first like-pair, off-tank takes opposite pair. Bleed x2* + Hindered + Rattled + Devitalized + Blacken/Glaciate + dropping Icy Drip/Blazing Bead + light/heavy attacks from everything is a bit unfair. Oh, and if you dodge heavy attacks you give enemies Seethe, so doing that while a Blockade is up is almost certain death for the group unless the group is actively watching their feet (no reason not to be, but many DDs do not). "Just do more DPS and kill them before they do Blockade." That sounds like a great idea. As usual, punishing groups who are not the top 0.000001% (basically ~30 players out of your alleged 19 million). Maybe you can just Barrier spam? Nope. You'll get hit by "Devitalize." I'm well aware that the option exists here is to take the boss heavy and dodge the atronachs, which just puts more pressure on the DDs.

* You can have up to x4 Bleed. Why does ZOS like Bleed so much now? Is this your long term goal to make healers feel needed? You're not making them feel needed, you're making them feel like babysitters. Baneful Mark in Cloudrest made healers feel needed.

Boss does a heavy, you get Rattled+Hindered. Get a well-timed Barrier to help get you through that and now an atronach is doing a heavy while Blockade is up? Now you have Rattled, Hindered, and Devitalized. I'm sure everyone by now knows what these debuffs do, but I'll post just for reference sake:

Seethe: Overwhelmed by anger from a missed attack.
For 12 seconds damage done increased by 60%.

Rattled: You are shaken up for 12 seconds.
Damage done decreased by 70%.
Damage taken increased by 40%
Rattled is immune to skills that remove negative effects.

Hindered: Healing your missing health is prevented for 12 seconds or until 39670 points of healing is received to penetrate and remove Hindered.
Hindered is immune to skills that remove negative effects.

Devitalized: You are weakened for 8 seconds.
Physical Resistance and Spell Resistance decreased by 60%
Damage taken increased by 30%
Damage shields are decreased by 30%
Devitalized is immune to skills that remove negative effects.

Groups aiming for speed run (or trifecta) have only one recourse: Guard. For both tanks, ideally. But at least for one tank. The use of Guard, if that is indeed intended, to mitigate damage is quite frankly a lazy design. I mentioned this in another topic that if Mist Form were still a thing, tanks would be using it here as well. You're making the same mistakes as you did in Rockgrove. If you want to spread damage around and make a healer feel needed, why don't you simply have raid-wide damage like Baneful Mark which requires healing through? Or an Ofalla style heal debuff which can't be self-healed through? It doesn't need to be health-scaling, it needs to be enough that people want to be topped off before the next round of raid-wide damage hits and potentially kills them. HPS is absurd in this game, but no amount of HPS will help if you get x2 or x4 Bleed ticks + Blacken/Glaciate + Rattled/Hindered within 15ms.

And that comes after a patch which has already reduced the damage. This is only in the first 60-60% of the fight. The rest of the fight, for tanks, is actually really easy in comparison once you take the adds out of the equation (which also means healers are stuck with Guard which they now don't need post 60%; again, Guard should never be the only option to a fight in the same way that Mist Form should have never been the only way, you should play a mechanic and not just brute force through it using Guard and Barrier spam). To reiterate on that point, if we still had Mist Form, I can guarantee it would be used in this fight and last boss. The same mistakes are being made again.

With the impact that the bleeds have, why are there two per element? Let's say there's an atronach left over which didn't die in the first round and you now have to take new atronachs, you've got x4 bleeds all doing 9k~10k each (less with Guard and naturally less with reducing your total health, but if you get unlucky that they tick at the same time, you melt, no amount of healing will get through it if mechanics just line up in a way that you get all the damage at once; e.g. you have bleeds ticking and, oh look, now you also have Fragility or Blacken/Glaciate, a fight shouldn't just be about luck).

All right, so post-adds. So far, so good. You're at 60-65%. You've cleared the adds and we just have two bosses to work with. We still have to contend with the waves from the weapons when you destroy them.

Issue #1: sometimes the waves just don't show. "You can still see the particle effects." To a degree, certainly, when you don't have 56m other AoEs/particle effects happening. I've also seen it occur where no effect happens and you get blindsided by a completely invisible wave. You can make an addon like Qcell's Dreadsail Reef Helper, but how do people on console manage this? Someone can call out that there's a wave on the way, but how does a tank with Fragility know when to dodge through it when they can't see it, on top of the fight being incredibly hectic now you have to wish upon a star? You just have to hope you're dodging at the right time?

Issue #2: while affected by Frigidarium/Charred Constriction, there is no mitigation against the weapon waves. Nor light attacks from boss. Which, by the way, wasn't fixed -- the boss can jump over and the other can immediately do a light attack, one-shotting a now-defenceless tank (why, why, do we have such high impact light attacks these days? I defended it with Shipwight's Regret, which I really do regret); there's still no proper shared cooldown on this. You have mitigation from the boss's heavy attacks, Blacken/Glaciate, damage from AoEs dropped by Blazing Bead and Icy Drip (there's even some leeyway in that you stop dropping AoEs from Icy Drip/Blazing Bead while pinned), but not from boss light attacks and atronach light/heavy attacks and bleeds. Seems like you missed some stuff here?

Just to reiterate on this, I remember tanking vMoL in full medium armour back in the day and I wasn't perma-blocking against light attacks. I wasn't being overrun by undodgeable , unavoidable, unpurgeable bleeds or health scaling DoTs from... everything. The content was fun. This is not.

Issue #3: the boss can still queue up Numbing Shards/Cinder Surge instead of doing their respective Spike (note above regarding light attacks, if interrupted it will immediately turn around and light attack the still defenceless tank or, if taunt has run out during this time, will likely kill an unsuspecting DD or healer). This only serves to take people off-guard, make the fight even more hectic, and even a single hit of Numbing Shards/Cinder Surge to people not protected by the appropriate dome is enough to kill them.

Issue #4: if hit by Constriction/Frigidarium and the opposite group comes to free you, the dome actually needs to be over your character, otherwise you get the appearance of being unpinned while still being unable to move out of the impending Spike.

Issue #5: if you kill a boss you have all of 5 seconds grace period to kill the next before you lose the dome, and with that the boss who is still alive will likely start teleporting around the room again -- this time unable to be interrupted. If we were to liken this to Twins in vMoL, you have around 30-45 seconds before a group wipe. This really is the definition of threading the needle. On top of that, if there are any weapons of the boss you've defeated left over at the time of death, they all explode simultaneously. See Issue #1.

If it's not a hardcore group and they are simply aiming for a hard mode clear and not + speed run, this is likely a 20 minute fight just by itself, if they can even manage the mechanics. Speed run on hard mode isn't going to be doable by any group aside from the most hardcore, even on non-hard mode it's going to be a struggle for most groups, and even those hardcore groups are going to have a hard time.

I would sum up first boss as: use Guard... Get some luck, and just... Hope... maybe pray if you're into that? This boss was/is really interesting when I first saw it on non-hard mode. That non-hard mode fight could have been hard mode compared to most other trials in the game. As Code mentioned previously with others he spoke to, the thought in week 1 was "How are they going to ruin it going into hard mode?"

With every new trial you come out and say "This is the new vMoL!" You understand that players like vMoL, but apparently you don't understand why players like vMoL? I'm genuinely confused as to who your demograph/target audiance is for this trial.

I'm not even going to touch on the other bosses. Bearing in mind, the fastest clear I've seen to date was a few seconds shy of 6 minutes for first boss on hard mode and their tanks died a couple times. Only one group that I'm aware of has cleared second boss. Groups aiming to get the trifecta need to get first boss down in no more than 5 minutes, ideally 4 minutes to allow time on second and third, and that sets the standard for the rest of the trial. No more than 5-6 minutes on second and 6-7 on last boss, and then nuke the base-pop and side bosses between, assuming roughly 1 minute per side boss (not including travel time, pulling levers, etc. here). You cannot spend more than 12-15 minutes (including non-optional sides) on trash pulls and have those boss times stand. And even then, you'd be pushing to make every second count in order to get a 30 minute speed run.

If you didn't need to do side bosses, speed run would be doable by most groups out there who wanted it.

I'm not even sure the trifecta is realistic even for the most hardcore groups currently.

From the very first week I have been compiling a technical reference sheet of all visible mechanics in the trial. In the rare circumstance that ZOS completely overhauls the trial when it releases on the 6th, I probably won't edit this document. Maybe it'll help some group out there. Maybe not. Good luck with your trial running. 👋

code65536

The Glaciate, Blacken and Bleed effects no longer deal damage based on the target’s maximum health and instead are based on the power of the caster.

Finally.

akdave0

Xbox console feedback:
The trial is too difficult for normal or pug teams to clear on vet. The twins fight is a rehash of vmol with the added domes. Mainly, the last boss is extremely difficult. The mini one shots four or five people with the swing of the hammer. No telegraph animation for the wave, full team wipes. Bubbles are difficult to see on players. It almost seems you expanded the skill gap only for top tier teams to clear on vet. Haven’t even seen hm. The mechs are op and create a chore rather than a fun video game fight. If I want stress I’ll work more at my job. Video games are supposed to fun.