Dread Cellar HM

Tannus15

So last night we ran vet Dread Cellar HM on live and then on PTS (as far as the second boss)

esologs:
Live Log
PTS log

I've cleared it as a dps on HM when the dungeons were released, but haven't gone back since. I was tanking for this run.

Twitch VOD

Here is the TLDR
first boss HM live:


first boss HM PTS:


second boss HM live:


second boss HM PTS:


PTS should have been cleaner since we had literally just run it on live. On live we had to work it out a little, on PTS not so much.

First boss analysis

DPS



Yup, you're reading that right, 99k group dps dropped to 72k dps, the frost warden losing a whopping 19k dps.
The mag sorc was accidentally running matriarch instead of tormentor on live and still lost 6k dps on PTS.

Add took significantly longer to kill on PTS and the crystals had to be focused immediately or we risked the boss enraging.

Healing



at first glance it all looks fine, there was even more "healing done" on PTS right? What you're actually looking at is I'm taking more damage because the adds are taking longer to die. here it is again with over heal displayed



that's a 4k hps loss, just over 10%.
It was critically important to stay within the ground targeted heals, or as i put it, "in my little healing garden"

if you really want to see the impact of the dps loss plus the heal loss, here is my health for the 2 fights

live:


pts:


Overall PTS was significantly harder. The fight was longer because of the dps loss, the damage taken was increased because the adds took longer to die, healing was harder and less effective. We got through it, by improving our positioning and working harder for it.

Second boss analysis

Well, it's harder to compare this fight since we didn't manage to clear it. I think the fact that we cleared it on the 3rd try on live and failed after 11 attempts on PTS speaks for itself.
I've already filled the page with graphs, so i'll just summarise the issues we had.

Movement

This is a much more mobile fight than the first boss. Because of the red walls of death we're constantly moving from one side of the room to the other, which made the ground targeted heals and dots less effective. This mean we were relying more on "sticky" abilities and direct target abilities.

Adds
The dps loss meant that there was again more incoming damage because the storm atronarchs would last longer, the bolt wyrms would last longer and the red skellys would last longer.

Conclusion
Here is the big one, if you're struggling with this level of content on live, you're in big trouble once this patch hits.
We easily cleared both bosses on live and had a much harder time on PTS.

As I've pointed out in many other threads, the "power creep" issues are from super organised groups having all the buffs and debuffs all the time.
A 4 person group has a much harder time since it's impossible to have everything, and the more casual you are about such things, the worse it gets.

As far as increasing accessibility, less people will be able to clear this HM. This is not an opinion, this is a fact.

Arthtur

Nice data but wrong name of dungeon. Its Dread Cellar not Dread Cauldron. Its funny tho.

ssewallb14_ESO

Dread Cauldron sounds cooler tho.

Tannus15

My brain is totally fine. I promise

MaraxusTheOrc

Think those parses and charts are the most compelling data I’ve seen thus far against the U35 changes. Thanks for sharing. I was on the fence, reserving judgment since I haven’t touched the PTS, but that tank HP graph comparison is…woo boy. That’s bad.

Galiferno

Don't worry this will make it more accessible

shaxigamingeb17_ESO

Thank you for this. It's good to get to see data outside of trials as well. I've been partaking in a dungeon group thing as of late, but we might be running into trouble going forward by the looks of things. Been working towards Mountain God lately, butnot sure if we can clear it in U35.

Tannus15

shaxigamingeb17_ESO wrote: »

Thank you for this. It's good to get to see data outside of trials as well. I've been partaking in a dungeon group thing as of late, but we might be running into trouble going forward by the looks of things. Been working towards Mountain God lately, butnot sure if we can clear it in U35.

Everything will get harder, so it'll be a set back for sure.

We cleared vSCP HM last week on the worse version on the PTS so it's definitely doable, but that's the thing with this update. No matter where you are at on live, if you are working on content that you find challenging, be it specific world bosses, maelstrom or Mountain God, this update will push you back down the ladder. It might be intended to mostly affect the ceiling, but it's demonstrably going to affect everyone the same.

Dagoth_Rac

I think we misinterpreted "accessibility". The people talking about accessibility were Wheeler and Gilliam. The "combat team". And the combat, at least on PTS 1 was indeed more "accessible". Your buffs and DoTs lasted a long time. You could kind of "fire and forget" and concentrate on your front bar. Combat was not necessarily less "actions per minute" but it was less frantic. Less bar swapping and less attention to timers. If live is like a fast guitar part with all kinds of swirling arpeggios and scale runs, PTS 1 was like a fast guitar part that was a lot of power chords.

The fact that this more accessible combat is completely and totally incompatible with the game's content seems to have been overlooked. Or the combat team just does not particularly care and consider "content" someone else's problem.

But the PTS 3 changes are kind of the worst of both worlds. The combat is back to being a mess of awkward timers and lots of bar swapping, but the DPS nerfs remain, putting content out of reach. If you were a Vet Hard Mode person, you are now a Vet person. If you were a Vet person, you are now a Normal person. If you were a Normal person, you are now an Out Of Luck person.

I almost feel like they should have gone live with PTS 1. It did kind of meet their goal, at least for combat. And it would have forced the content team's hand to make adjustments. But this compromise is just gonna mean that you can still kind of sort of clear content, but it is a major league pain in the neck. And that is gonna drive players away. And game can kind of go either way in the future. Further reversion of combat changes back to pre-U35 state? Or adjustments to content to bring it closer to new combat? And probably a lot of stubborn turf wars because I am a developer myself and know what development teams are like.

Wheeler and Gilliam are gonna take the brunt of criticism. And maybe Finn if dungeons/trials feel punishing rather than challenging. But the problem is higher up the food chain. The combat teams and content teams were clearly not on the same page for U35 and that is a management problem.

WrathOfInnos

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

I think we misinterpreted "accessibility". The people talking about accessibility were Wheeler and Gilliam. The "combat team". And the combat, at least on PTS 1 was indeed more "accessible". Your buffs and DoTs lasted a long time. You could kind of "fire and forget" and concentrate on your front bar. Combat was not necessarily less "actions per minute" but it was less frantic. Less bar swapping and less attention to timers. If live is like a fast guitar part with all kinds of swirling arpeggios and scale runs, PTS 1 was like a fast guitar part that was a lot of power chords.

The fact that this more accessible combat is completely and totally incompatible with the game's content seems to have been overlooked. Or the combat team just does not particularly care and consider "content" someone else's problem.

But the PTS 3 changes are kind of the worst of both worlds. The combat is back to being a mess of awkward timers and lots of bar swapping, but the DPS nerfs remain, putting content out of reach. If you were a Vet Hard Mode person, you are now a Vet person. If you were a Vet person, you are now a Normal person. If you were a Normal person, you are now an Out Of Luck person.

I almost feel like they should have gone live with PTS 1. It did kind of meet their goal, at least for combat. And it would have forced the content team's hand to make adjustments. But this compromise is just gonna mean that you can still kind of sort of clear content, but it is a major league pain in the neck. And that is gonna drive players away. And game can kind of go either way in the future. Further reversion of combat changes back to pre-U35 state? Or adjustments to content to bring it closer to new combat? And probably a lot of stubborn turf wars because I am a developer myself and know what development teams are like.

Wheeler and Gilliam are gonna take the brunt of criticism. And maybe Finn if dungeons/trials feel punishing rather than challenging. But the problem is higher up the food chain. The combat teams and content teams were clearly not on the same page for U35 and that is a management problem.

That seems like a fair and accurate assessment. The question now is how should they fix it? Go rebalance every piece of difficult PVE content (dozens of dungeons and trials), or walk back a handful of excessive damage nerfs on skills and light/heavy attacks. One if those options seems feasible in the next 3 weeks.

I like your guitar analogy. I would argue that both the arpeggio and power chord styles were available already, but now ZoS has told everyone they must abandon their practiced shredding solos for 3-chord pop songs. Needless to say we don't like this direction. Normal content exists for players that don't want to practice rotations or utilize all their skill slots.

Tannus15

@Dagoth_Rac solid points. Except that doesn't really work either.

Increasing the timer from 10 to 20 seconds makes almost no impact. you still need to watch the timers and be ready to do it at the right time.

Standardising timers is a step in the right direction and i'm a fan of the 10, 15, 20 second timers. entropy with it's weird 24 seconds can go away. 12 seconds for winters revenge? Why? Make everything 10, 15, 20, 30.
Line them up.

Take all passives that increase the duration and either make it work with these numbers or change it to increase the damage tick.

Going live with this patch and then fixing the content later is a terrible idea, and it's why people like myself are trying to give all the feedback we can, right now, to show this is a terrible idea.

I run a prog trials group and if we can't progress anymore because we took massive nerfs and need to wait 3 to 6 months before the content is brought down to meet the new "standards" this will kill our guild. No one will stick around for that long to "maybe" get thing balanced again.
I'm not going to keep dedicating 2 evenings a week to run content which was made for a level of DPS we can no longer meet.

danno8

Closing the skill gap - now everyone can fail!

Jaimeh

This a good experiment, particularly because a lot of movement is involved in the first boss as well, which drops dps anyway, and happens in a lot of fights, so it's interesting to see how it translates on the PTS with the new nerfs. The first fight took ~25% longer and the tank's health dipped much lower throughout, which I think basically paints the picture of how combat will be like in harder content from now on if the changes go through, and for many groups this will be prohibiting for their progression.

code65536

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Wheeler and Gilliam are gonna take the brunt of criticism. And maybe Finn if dungeons/trials feel punishing rather than challenging. But the problem is higher up the food chain. The combat teams and content teams were clearly not on the same page for U35 and that is a management problem.

QFT.

Dawnblade

Thanks for testing - interesting results, especially the wild swings on tank health.

Also very good for showcasing how reducing damage increases fight length, which increases the performance requirements across all roles, which increases the risk of failure.

Absent content adjustments, players will likely see the boundary between success and failure pushed closer to the failure side - which kind of flies in the face of the 'for accessibility' excuses regarding the changes.

Not sure how many players want to wait for future TBD adjustments if what was at the edge of possible today becomes failure tomorrow.

Sallymen

We all said this would happen, thank you for testing this. Let's hope the combat team comes to their senses in either reverting the combat back or adjust ALL content.

FluffyBird

Dawnblade wrote: »

Not sure how many players want to wait for future TBD adjustments if what was at the edge of possible today becomes failure tomorrow.

I can speak only for myself, and I'm rather casual, but this update is a good candidate for that straw that will break camel's back. Camel being my desire to play (and pay).

I'm only worried that when I take a break, there won't be much left to return to. I mean, ZOS is working on a new MMO while they treat ESO as if they barely have resources for fixes, quality control and actually putting thought and soul in the game. Looks like maintenance mode is already there.

skinnycheeks

Thanks for sharing the info! Really great head to head comparison here!

DuckFayth

This is a neat test but when I dig in to the 2nd boss fight it indicates your deaths are mostly due to one-hit walls, that fight specifically seems more of a mechanics issue than dps or heals.

Were you experiencing infamous PTS desync/lag?

code65536

DuckFayth wrote: »

This is a neat test but when I dig in to the 2nd boss fight it indicates your deaths are mostly due to one-hit walls, that fight specifically seems more of a mechanics issue than dps or heals.

Were you experiencing infamous PTS desync/lag?

The second boss is mostly about movement and awareness, and as long as people don't die to the walls, you should be fine. With a longer fight comes more opportunities for something to go wrong, so while I would not directly attribute their wipes to the combat changes, I think it's still fair to say that they had an indirect contribution.

We had the same problem when we tested Cloudrest during the first week. Cloudrest is, well, Cloudrest, and there are a million ways for people to mess up mechanics and wipe that doesn't have anything to do with the combat changes. When we were discussing it afterwards, Nefas said that all the wipes were just mechanical errors that were unrelated to the combat changes, which is 100% true. But then someone else said that there were more mechanical errors because things were taking longer, so people had to deal with more rounds of mechanics and had more opportunities to mess up. Which is also true.

So while I would not say that the combat changes directly prevented this group from getting past the second boss, I would say that it has somewhat raised the bar for the amount of mechanical precision that's required. Which I think was the point that Tannus was trying to convey; it doesn't make it impossible, just harder. Which isn't what most people would describe as being "accessible".

acastanza_ESO

This post alone is all the justification needed for completely scraping these changes. There is zero reason anyone's ability to play the game should ever be so badly regressed.

Remathilis

code65536 wrote: »

DuckFayth wrote: »

This is a neat test but when I dig in to the 2nd boss fight it indicates your deaths are mostly due to one-hit walls, that fight specifically seems more of a mechanics issue than dps or heals.

Were you experiencing infamous PTS desync/lag?

The second boss is mostly about movement and awareness, and as long as people don't die to the walls, you should be fine. With a longer fight comes more opportunities for something to go wrong, so while I would not directly attribute their wipes to the combat changes, I think it's still fair to say that they had an indirect contribution.

We had the same problem when we tested Cloudrest during the first week. Cloudrest is, well, Cloudrest, and there are a million ways for people to mess up mechanics and wipe that doesn't have anything to do with the combat changes. When we were discussing it afterwards, Nefas said that all the wipes were just mechanical errors that were unrelated to the combat changes, which is 100% true. But then someone else said that there were more mechanical errors because things were taking longer, so people had to deal with more rounds of mechanics and had more opportunities to mess up. Which is also true.

So while I would not say that the combat changes directly prevented this group from getting past the second boss, I would say that it has somewhat raised the bar for the amount of mechanical precision that's required. Which I think was the point that Tannus was trying to convey; it doesn't make it impossible, just harder. Which isn't what most people would describe as being "accessible".

I can't help but think that this is part of their design scheme: to return content that was no longer hard due to DPS/burn back to content that requires endurance and skill rather than raw burn. In essence, to stop the 11 elites and a potato from getting trifectas. Longer fights require more skill and coordination and less "lol faceroll".

Of course the downside to making vet content for vets again is less people doing the vet content since "git gud" only goes so far. I don't doubt that some content will have to be tuned. But unfortunately that doesn't seem to be happening or happening soon. So while combat damage is flatter and simpler, it's begun excluding people who could only nominally complete the content in the first place.

I really think U36 would address the changes to the content side of things, but by then it will be too late.

Tannus15

DuckFayth wrote: »

This is a neat test but when I dig in to the 2nd boss fight it indicates your deaths are mostly due to one-hit walls, that fight specifically seems more of a mechanics issue than dps or heals.

Were you experiencing infamous PTS desync/lag?

most of our issues with the second boss came down to the fact that the storm atros were there for most of the wall phase which also made picking off the bolt wyrms problematic.
I died several times to the atro's physically blocking me and not having the stam left to dodge roll through them to avoid a wall.

We did have some issues with the timing of the dodge rolls on the evil skulls of doom, but again killing off all the red skellys during that phase made a missed dodge roll a wipe instead of a set back.

As codes pointed out, we would have got there eventually, but it was surprising how much harder it was on PTS compared to live.

code65536

Tannus15 wrote: »

most of our issues with the second boss came down to the fact that the storm atros were there for most of the wall phase which also made picking off the bolt wyrms problematic.

Because the atros were interfering with targeting?

Tannus15

code65536 wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

most of our issues with the second boss came down to the fact that the storm atros were there for most of the wall phase which also made picking off the bolt wyrms problematic.

Because the atros were interfering with targeting?

Yup. It's all stuff we would eventually get though like most progs. We had less damage and less healing so people were more likely to die and the mechanics we had to deal with had more obstacles.

We probably could solve some of our issues by just holding a destro until the wall phase and then ult dump the atro's so we had less things to deal with. On live we had the dps to just kill them at the start of the wall phase.