PTS Update 37 - Feedback Thread for Bal Sunnar

ZOS_GinaBruno

This is the official feedback thread for Bal Sunnar. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
• How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
• Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?
• Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
• What level and build was the character you used?
• Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…
• Do you have any other general feedback?

chessalavakia_ESO

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?

Yeah. I had fun pretty much the entire time. I thought it was cool how the environment changed and the story was interesting and I was left with some questions regarding what exactly happened.


Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?


Normal

What level and build was the character you used?

1596 CP Tank, Scourger + Crimson + Leeching Warden. I did it with just myself and Mirri.


How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?

I would say that it was probably one of the harder normal dungeons that doesn't have a specific mechanic that wipes you out on a tank. However, the difficulty experience might be different on a less durable character. I had to heal Mirri quite regularly and she still died occasionally. I could see some of the mechanics killing people that had 18k rather than 50k+.


Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?

I would say probably the first boss. The character acted like they were in control of the situation and seemed quite novel in some of their abilities.

I did find the vomit ability on the latter boss fight to be amusing but, I'm unsure if it would be as funny if other people used it on me.

I found the fight with the blocks all over the place to be a bit annoying but, I enjoyed the help we received. I had healed the character in hopes they would help so I was happy when they actually intervened.


Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…

I felt I was missing something as I was a bit unclear on the Matriarch's goal/what exactly happened at the end (I assume some of that was intended) but, I did get the optional content achievement. I found the time period mentioned in some of the notes to be interesting.

Do you have any other general feedback?

I really liked being able to do the secrets without needing someone else.

CyberOnEso

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
Yes (As always)

How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
Vet HM felt quite easy, especially the last boss.

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?
Vet HM

Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
The first boss's time slam mechanic was really great! Really interesting fight.

What level and build was the character you used?
4 Template Characters. 1 DK Tank, 1 Templar Healer, 1 Templar DD, 1 DK DD

Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…
Yeah, the secrets were interesting. Maybe we're just thick, but the puzzle mechanics took long to engage with in a group setting. The puzzle's essentially turned into one person solving it and the rest just being bored/ confused for a minute or so.

Do you have any other general feedback?
The last boss felt like it was missing some mechanics to be a challenge on vet HM, especially compared to the final bosses of Firesong etc.
Healing through the poison, stunning and staying away from the skeevers, and killing the adds during one 'freeze' period was perfectly manageable. There were very few things to avoid or focus on. Previous fights like Thurvokun HM would have you do all of this whilst dodging ghost walls.

Not to say I dislike the boss design, you folks make some of the best boss fights in any game, not just compared to other MMO's and you really don't get enough credit for that. Your roster of boss fight's is second to none. Please keep making the best group boss fights in gaming!

code65536

We cleared both dungeons on Monday on vet HM. Haven't had time to really process them; these are just some initial thoughts.


Boss 1 HM:

The hardest part about this fight is Manipulate, which I assume is intended as a heal check, where everyone gets a circle around their feet and can't stack together because overlapped circles is lethal. So everyone is in a loose stack, with a ton of incoming health-scaled damage (as a tank, I was taking 10K ticks every half second--essentially, it was a 20K/s heal check, which is pretty nuts). Oh, and on top of all this, the boss can do other mechanics that can create areas of denial and force us to move, while we are in the middle of this spicy heal check.

And the best part about all this is that the effect is purgeable. Is that intended? I'm guessing not. If it's not intended that we can purge this effect, then I think that this heal check could be toned down slightly, considering that this is the first boss. <mumbles something about difficulty progression> We were able to just barely heal through it before we discovered that it was purgeable.


Boss 2 HM:

The laser-on-the-tank mechanic seemed a bit unintuitive at first. My initial thought was that this was like Zaan's beam and needed to be broken. Well, that clearly was wrong, and this turned out to be nothing more than just a please-babysit-the-tank heal check like the cone on Devyric HM. Similar to that aforementioned cone, it required not only focused healing, but also Bracing Anchor to reliably survive.

I'm also not sure what governs the placement of our NPC ally's circle of light during those stand-in-the-light phases. It appears to just be random? There was once when the circle was a fair bit off-center, and there were orbs on the far side that needed interrupting. Even with a ranged interrupt like Crushing Shock, it required venturing out of the circle for a quite a ways to get the interrupt. I think a more centered placement of the NPC's circle would be better.


Boss 3 HM:

This fight seemed pretty straightforward once we figured out what to do. Immobilize and kill skeevers, group up the other adds and use the time stop thingie, and make sure the tank doesn't drop block during a cone (thank goodness for those tank changes).

We were initially confused about the dome surrounding the boss during the room-is-filled-with-poison phase. We thought "oh wow, the room is filled with poison! maybe that dome is a safe spot?!". It wasn't until after the run, when I was reviewing my recording, that I realized that the dome wasn't for us, but instead was there to protect the boss and make the boss immune to damage. The visual cues there were definitely not very intuitive.


General:

As I wrote in my feedback for the other dungeon, both dungeons lack a clear difficulty progression, with the second boss being the hardest and the final boss being the easiest.

Finally, I wish that the lasers for final optional puzzle would activate all at once, rather than piecemeal; it makes solving the puzzle a lot more time consuming when it takes so long to check if you got it right.

AJTC5000

Hello again, providing some more Solo Normal context to this dungeon as I did with the other, and now I can compare directly to @code65536 's post as we ran Vet HM together.

As before, some general points

• A return to the more traditional secrets, and while relatively simple, I still enjoyed them, though I do agree with Code that the last one could be sped up a little - especially as it seems that at minimum, Normal and Veteran have different puzzle arrangements, so it doesn't seem to be something you can learn (interestingly the first puzzle for both difficulties was the same).
• While I love the concept of a time-travel dungeon, and the first two bosses play with this theme very well, the last boss feels very out of place as being mostly Peryite themed - it almost felt like I'd gone back to Scalecaller Peak instead of continuing this dungeon. I recognise that this isn't something that it is going to be changed due to time and development constraints, but I do wish that the last boss would have interacted with the time theme more, and built upon the previous two bosses, instead of just a simple Nahviintaas-style time freeze.
• Some more cool music in here, including some remixed tracks if I'm not mistaken.

Boss 1 - Kovan Giryon

Definitely the flashiest boss in this dungeon in my opinion. This boss is exactly the same on Normal as it is on Vet HM, including the add spawns and the Manipulate ability. In comparison to Riftmaster Naqri though, Kovan was pretty much okay to solo. The lasers seem to spawn in set, predictable locations, which leave numerous safe areas to drag the boss into and simply stack-and-whack. I think this boss is fine currently for Normal difficulty, but the Manipulate ability could be looked at for Vet HM, as Code mentioned above.

Boss 2 - Roska the Warped

This boss was the one I was feeling the most anxious about solo'ing out of all six bosses in this DLC, due to the long, heavy-hitting triple laser attack in Vet HM. However on Normal, this was more than manageable, with me just about surviving the single laser without having to spec defensively at all. The Darklight orbs are a neat mechanic to keep your mind engaged, but I feel having them eligible to spawn in while the boss is doing the room-wide AoE is a little much - forcing you to leave the safe AoE in order to prevent being one-shot.

The only thing I couldn't quite figure out was the apparent "tell" for the boss' location during the add phase - a pair of glowing orange eyes will spawn in one of the three side grottoes. On Normal this simply indicates where the boss is going to be prior to spawning the laser attack - however, you have more than enough time to find this youself, and your ally even shouts something like "Get ready! It's going to attack!". On Vet HM, the eyes still spawn, but they become redundant as all three grottoes spawn a copy of the boss to then execute three lasers. Is it just to say where the boss will be coming from after the attack is over? Maybe I'm missing something but it seems a little unnecessary.

Boss 3 - Matriarch Lladi Telvanni

Going in I assumed this boss would be the easiest of the three in this dungeon to solo, as it was the easiest on Vet HM. However this was the only boss in this dungeon where I did have to spec defensively, using an ice staff to mitigate the long vomit breath attack (mostly so I didn't run out of resources and then gain a vomit cone myself as a result).

On Normal this fight becomes even more simplified - there are no skeevers, the Peryite's Blessed enemies can be damaged without the Time Freeze synergy (although they do take more damage if they've been frozen), and neither the Voriplasms nor the boss herself apply any debuffs. As Code mentioned, the boss dome isn't very intuitive - maybe make the shield completely opaque as to hide the boss, similar to the Vault Protector from Frostvault?


After seeing and completing all of the bosses on Vet HM, on my solo normal run:

• Completed Kovan first try
• Roksa took 1 wipe (laser mitigation)
• Lladi took 2 wipes (testing vomit cone survivability and equipping an ice staff)

SirLeeMinion

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?

Yes, nice job! The dungeon is pretty; the art department did a nice job with the environment! I found one hidden boss and was glad it didn't have any "need three people on pressure plates" mechanics to open it. Probably there were others (?)


How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
I don't think I could have blitzed through it in a straight DPS build like most of the base game dungeons. On normal, the mechanics required some thought, but could easily be handled without an online guide. I've died soloing some of the other base game dungeons, so I definitely wouldn't put it at the top of the DLC difficulty scale. I'd place it as average difficulty compared to other DLCs. In addition, it was much more enjoyable than, say, spending the entire fight as a goat or dying in a fiery kiln numerous times before you look up the grapple and rune mechanic. My only deaths were in attempting to use the new vampire skill to get past the lava barriers and out of the map.


Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?
normal, solo

Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
I think the Roksa the warped was my favorite. There was a variety of things to do, and it felt as though if you totally ignored them you wouldn't be able to complete it.

What level and build was the character you used?
I used my main account and my existing solo dungeon gear: CP 1700, khajiit with vamp stage 3 wearing 2 pc Lord Warden, 5 piece leeching with tri-stat glyphs, perfected maelstrom shock staff, oakensoul (triune), and 2 training jewelry pieces (protective) all with spell damage, well the new version of it. Bastian ran it with me, but spent most of his time dead. Interestingly, he frequently survives vet dungeons, but this one laid him flat every time.

Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…

I made a few attempts to get across the lava and over the fences, but no I didn't notice much different. I'm pretty oblivious to details.


Do you have any other general feedback?

ofc...

1st boss (not sure of the name) - it seemed that there were mechanics I should be following, but sadly, I didn't get it. In the end, I just dodged the split personality attack, stayed out of red, and out healed the rest.The phrase "This has happened before" is repeated often enough to be annoying. By now, I know that PTS feedback is largely ignored, but he really ought to acknowledge that he's losing when he's at 10% health vs. confidently taunting that it's "happened before" (again & again).


Arena tunnels - Uvel Drath - I enjoyed the mobility of the fight and thought the boss commentary was much better handled. On normal, it was a simple avoid the orbs til they impact on stones and dodge or block heavies. I am not a fan of mechanics I need an online guide to understand, so this was fun. Unlike the previous boss, this guy seemed to know when he was whipped.


Roksa the warped - This reminded me of Vateshran a bit, and I liked the aesthetics of the arena. If the triple AoEs are three per person, I could see it getting a bit tight in the circle of light if you had 4 people. Getting to a light circle seemed a bit challenging even though I was running Refreshing Path, that said, I didn't take much damage from it. The black/green beam that comes from the boss to the player was, what? a heal check? The NPC says something, but I didn't catch it (unlike the orbs warning, which seemed easy to understand). On vet, I bet I'd be looking up a guide to see how I'm supposed to handle it.


Lladi Telvanni - Having read the thoughts above, I equipped an ice staff for this fight. It did make blocking the vomit simple. However, I realized part way through, that I could just dodge backwards twice and get out of range. Knowing that, I could have stuck with the shock staff and gotten through it more quickly. Overall, this seemed like a pretty standard fight on normal; my lower DPS with an ice-staff made it a bit of a slog.

frozzzen101

Was part of Cyber's group where we completed HMs, tank pov. Dungeon was enjoyable since blind prog is fun. Visually very nice but everything else is average to meh, especially if we compare it to last 4 dungeons released.

Trash: Is worthless. It serves only to stack up on Thrassian charges and doesn't pose any danger to anyone. I remember us standing in big Argonian Behemoth's overhead slam and it didn't even kill non blocking dd, just knocked him back. This trend of trash being completely useless is kinda sad. Give them mechanics you need to engage with. You don't need to baby your players like this. It's a DLC dungeon and they are known to be challenging. Even if you nerf them later down the line at least have them relevant as latest content released.

Boss 1 HM: All roles are engaged, lots of chaos. Once we figured some semblance of strategy it was fair difficulty I'd say. Manipulate seems to start dealing damage very fast when it spawns without giving proper time to split and react. If someone was stacked close to me as tank I'd carpet in a second due to hp scaling damage.

Boss 2 HM: Sometimes AoEs and approaching elite spider add were rough to see due to all color chaos in that fight. Tripple beam overstays its welcome with how long it takes to charge and channel. Nothing really happens at that time and it really kills the pacing of that fight which is otherwise great. Consider spawning boss right away alongside beams or add something that needs to be focused and killed during that downtime. Necro tanks for example really could use target to scyte and selfheal. Otherwise solid boss.

Boss 3 HM: This feels like one of worse final boss designs ever since difficult HMs were introduced with Scalecaller/Fanglair. As long as your are relatively stacked with healer it's completely trivial. Tank doesn't get any pressure. Healing absorb HA is overdone at this point, and it didn't seem like there's penatity for dodging it. It's okay because healers are enouraged in this fight due to group wide damage, but I just don't see the point of tacking it on here. It's completely out of place. HA itself doesn't deal any damage even if it connects. Seriously not sure if you just forgot to add damage to HA completely. Boss deals so little damage to the point we were confused. Elite adds don't do anything that we managed to notice except go invulnerable after a point and can be chained (not sure if that's intended). Rats are nice idea but super low hp, and I think tank should not be exempt from that mechanic or you should give tanks something to do here. Vomit cone is also completely worthless. Change it to Reef cone of sorts with both area denial and actual threat or something similar. I'm seriously at a loss what mechanics are there that need to be even semi respected. Add something. Slight exageration, but double the hp of every single enemy in this fight and adding additional two digits on boss LA/HA values might be good start if you don't want to add any new mechanics. Idk if we just winged it luckily but this boss seems really, really weak.

Secrets: Puzzles were just bad, no way around it. Not even mini boss encounter after you complete those. Since we've done it only once I can't tell, but either they are static in which case one person will know what to press in exact order and it will be written in guides the first day of it going live - it stops being puzzle completely, or if they are dynamic, they are not worth it due the time it takes (it took us like ~10 minutes per puzzle) and being compeltely unengaging to people not solving them. Those puzzle mechanics are going to be ignored by everyone in pugs where „assistance“ from other players might just interfere with you solo solving the entire thing. You want to add combat encounters where all roles are actively participating. Don't do this again plz.

Bastekk

The Choking Pestilence ability will now do more damage in Hard Mode.
In the first week we did lasy boss without any problem on HM. With the change in damage, Strangling Pestilence is practically impossible to do. We did it on 3 barriers and could not do it
It seems to me that someone got the numbers wrong in the damage of this skill

Raikiki

Bastekk wrote: »

The Choking Pestilence ability will now do more damage in Hard Mode.
In the first week we did lasy boss without any problem on HM. With the change in damage, Strangling Pestilence is practically impossible to do. We did it on 3 barriers and could not do it
It seems to me that someone got the numbers wrong in the damage of this skill

Yes, its impossible. Please fix. Damage far to high.

Dazzzen

It seems like someone just added a 0 too much... The moment magmashell wore off, i got oneshot as Tank.
https://www.esologs.com/reports/YaXy3bJzmZpnfCGh#fight=8&type=damage-taken&source=1&start=1273082&end=1293408
Overall it seems like the PTS is running low on fuel, with pingspikes above 1k, resurrectionbugs, tabtarget bugs uvm...
Hope that will be better next week.

Belhawk1

I decided to see how far in I could get solo, and it went badly. I got to the mob in front of the bridge and they quickly wiped out me, a Templar and isobella. So, i think the regular mobs are too tough. I then went to stonefalls Public Dungeon and soloed it easily. On the public server, I had already done the 1st level of Glenumbra's group dungeon, struggling some with bosses, so i thought that I could get to the 1st boss with no problems.

code65536

Dazzzen wrote: »

It seems like someone just added a 0 too much... The moment magmashell wore off, i got oneshot as Tank.
https://www.esologs.com/reports/YaXy3bJzmZpnfCGh#fight=8&type=damage-taken&source=1&start=1273082&end=1293408
Overall it seems like the PTS is running low on fuel, with pingspikes above 1k, resurrectionbugs, tabtarget bugs uvm...
Hope that will be better next week.

Thanks. Those logs are interesting.

Based on our week 1 log...

• The mechanic lasts for 25s, with no apparent way to end it early.
• Choking Pestilence ticks every half-second and is health-scaled; i.e., the tank will take more damage than a healer.
• The damage ticks ramps up linearly for the 25s duration.

Comparing the damage that your healer took in week 2 vs. what our healer took in week 1, the damage starts at around the same place (1.6K/tick). At the 10s mark, it was 3.5K/tick in week 1 and 8.5K/tick in week 2. At the 15s mark, it was 4.7K/tick in week 1 and 12K/tick in week 2. The final tick at the end of the 25s mechanic was 6.5K in week 1, and since you guys never made it to the end of the mechanic, I can only extrapolate: it would be around 18K/tick.

Keep in mind that it ticks every half second. So the damage taken per second is double what you see above. Also keep in mind that I'm comparing ticks between the two healers (same class and similarly-built); the damage on the tank is considerably more since this is health-scaled.

So, I agree that this is clearly not doable. How on earth did these numbers even make it past QA? If you're going to keep the rate of ramp-up that you have in week 2, then you must at least halve the damage (by getting rid of this ridiculous two-ticks-per-second nonsense; keep in mind that all player heals tick for, at most, once per second) or add some sort of mechanism to end the mechanic early, before it has ramped up to insane levels. The latter would be preferable, as it would be a more interesting counterplay than "spam heals".

And it's disappointing to see that ZOS's approach to "we need things harder" is to just jack up the numbers. This is the same mistake that you made with Taleria HM. Having insane incoming damage doesn't make a fight that has simple mechanics any more fun or interesting and serves only to add artificial difficulty. It was a mistake on Taleria, and it's a mistake you're repeating here.

chessalavakia_ESO

I love the change to Beexilko It's a blast to heal him up and watch him smash.

I had some of the spawned blocks remain on Urvel Drath encounter after he died which left the character in combat for a little bit and unable to leave the room but, they despawned after a little bit to let me leave the room.

Edit: I ran the fight again and all of the blocks cleared on kill.

MyNameIsElias

Bal Sunnar last boss hardmode seems bugged after the latest patch. the AOE poison room mechanic deals an INSANE amount of damage compared to first 2 weeks of pts. There was no mention of this in the notes. It's literally unbreatable now.

Dazzzen

@ZOS_GinaBruno , @ZOS_Kevin
Any Info on the 3rd Boss? Will it be fix next week? Do you know it is bugged?

code65536 wrote: »

Dazzzen wrote: »

It seems like someone just added a 0 too much... The moment magmashell wore off, i got oneshot as Tank.
https://www.esologs.com/reports/YaXy3bJzmZpnfCGh#fight=8&type=damage-taken&source=1&start=1273082&end=1293408
Overall it seems like the PTS is running low on fuel, with pingspikes above 1k, resurrectionbugs, tabtarget bugs uvm...
Hope that will be better next week.

Thanks. Those logs are interesting.

Based on our week 1 log...

• The mechanic lasts for 25s, with no apparent way to end it early.
• Choking Pestilence ticks every half-second and is health-scaled; i.e., the tank will take more damage than a healer.
• The damage ticks ramps up linearly for the 25s duration.

Comparing the damage that your healer took in week 2 vs. what our healer took in week 1, the damage starts at around the same place (1.6K/tick). At the 10s mark, it was 3.5K/tick in week 1 and 8.5K/tick in week 2. At the 15s mark, it was 4.7K/tick in week 1 and 12K/tick in week 2. The final tick at the end of the 25s mechanic was 6.5K in week 1, and since you guys never made it to the end of the mechanic, I can only extrapolate: it would be around 18K/tick.

Keep in mind that it ticks every half second. So the damage taken per second is double what you see above. Also keep in mind that I'm comparing ticks between the two healers (same class and similarly-built); the damage on the tank is considerably more since this is health-scaled.

So, I agree that this is clearly not doable. How on earth did these numbers even make it past QA? If you're going to keep the rate of ramp-up that you have in week 2, then you must at least halve the damage (by getting rid of this ridiculous two-ticks-per-second nonsense; keep in mind that all player heals tick for, at most, once per second) or add some sort of mechanism to end the mechanic early, before it has ramped up to insane levels. The latter would be preferable, as it would be a more interesting counterplay than "spam heals".

And it's disappointing to see that ZOS's approach to "we need things harder" is to just jack up the numbers. This is the same mistake that you made with Taleria HM. Having insane incoming damage doesn't make a fight that has simple mechanics any more fun or interesting and serves only to add artificial difficulty. It was a mistake on Taleria, and it's a mistake you're repeating here.

Bastekk

They'll fix it when it goes live

code65536

We cleared Bal Sunnar HM on Tuesday, without getting any of the optional buffs, to test the changes that had been made since the first week of PTS.

Boss 1 HM:

Manipulate handily makes this the hardest first boss HM ever, on the level of Shipwright. I could go on about difficulty progression and first bosses being a gatekeeper, but I grow tired of being a broken record. So let's instead dive into what makes this fight bad.

The biggest problem is that things are hard to see, particularly in the final execute phase.

A picture is worth a thousand words. This is a screenshot from a couple of seconds before a death. Can you spot what's about to go wrong?


Yep, the boss is about to land on top of Skinny and drop his big Fold AoE right on top of him, which will instantly kill him. There is a visual telegraph for it. Can you see it?

Yea, you can kinda see it in a freeze-frame, but in the middle of combat? He didn't see it and died to it.

There is a lot going on during these heal check mechanics. There's area of denial from the Rifts, and the boss is dropping his giant Fold AoEs around the place. And to make things worse, there are effects overlaid on top of the telegraphs that obscure them.

As you can see from the bright pink Rift AoE, I have my telegraph brightness jacked up to max. But that doesn't matter because both the Manipulate and Fold AoEs have this inky black visual effect overlayed on top of them, and during the final execute phase when the whole room is dark, they make things really, really hard to see. So here, you have the bright Rift telegraph obscuring part of the telegraph for the incoming Fold, and you have the inky black overlays from the other Fold and our Manipulate AoEs obscuring the rest of it.

Here's another picture. This is from right before I died. Skinny is about to just barely graze me with his Manipulate AoE. Notice how we can't even see where each others' AoEs end because the boundaries are being obscured by the swirly inky black effects.


This picture brings me up to the second problem: Manipulate appears to quadruple-tick during an overlap.

In the picture above, I instantly died after I touched his AoE because I took four ticks of Manipulate at the same time. Manipulate normally ticks once every 0.5s, but here, it ticked four times.


This doesn't make sense. If I'm touching someone else's Manipulate AoE, I should be taking damage from my own AoE and from theirs, so I should be getting two ticks every 0.5s, not four. As you can see from the screenshot above, I wasn't near the Manipulate AoEs from the other two players.

Looking through our Manipulate deaths when there were accidental overlaps, almost all of them were quad-ticks. This makes Manipulate much less forgiving, since accidentally touching someone else's will often just 1-shot you; this might be fine if we could remain static during Manipulate, but with all the AoEs that are being spammed around us, we need to move during Manipulate, and one false step and you're dead.

This is a pretty common sequence of events: We have Manipulate, we see the telegraph for the boss dropping down on top of us with Fold, so we quickly move out of it, but in the process, two players brush their AoEs (which, mind you, is hard to see with the <expletive> inky black visual overlays obscuring them) and then instantly die.

Is the quad-ticking intended? If not, it needs to be fixed ASAP. And if it is intended, then it's downright stupid.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention Verge, where one of the boss's shades charges. The first problem is that this is a very fast attack. Players have just a bit over 1 second to react to it. The telegraph appears as an AoE targeted at the charge location, which in a fight filled with AoE spam, can be easy to miss.

And finally, the radius of Verge is apparently bigger than the size of the telegraph. I looked through our deaths caused by Verge, and in multiple cases, the player who died was clearly outside of the telegraph. Here's a compilation clip:
http://eso.code65536.com/clips/20230221_verge.mp4

Oh, and Verge can happen during Manipulate and during the hard-to-see execute.

On the whole, the first boss is just a clusterf--- of overlapping mechanics that are obscured, particularly in the final execute phase. Get rid of the quad-ticking so that people don't instantly die the moment they brush up against someone else's Manipulate. And get rid of those inky black swirly effects.


Boss 2 HM:

Not much to say since there weren't many changes here. The NPC's dialog letting you know that orbs have spawned will not always play, which means that the interrupter will sometimes take a few extra seconds to notice that they're up. This is a problem for people who rely on the NPC's audio cues. (But hey, PC players will have addons to call it out for the times the NPC's audio cue is missing.)


Boss 3 HM:

Not much to say here; the heal check is more manageable now. It seems the key now is to defend the healer against skeever bites, since we can't afford to have the healer get infected during that mechanic.

AJTC5000

Some more comments from the DD PoV in addition to Code's comments above ^

Kovan's shades have a very, very quick telegraph where they briefly turn from green to orange when they're about to "activate" - however, most of the time the generic danger telegraph has already spawned, which makes this telegraph borderline useless. See the attached pic below where the shade is still green even though the danger telegraph has already begun to spawn in.



The worst part about this is I can almost see the intention with the orange colouring - it's supposed to alert you that that particular shade is about to activate, and you need to get ready for it to avoid it's attack. Currently however this is way too short to be useful, and in such a visually confusing fight anyway, you're almost never going to see it in time until the shade has dived onto you and killed you. Trying to keep track of the different shade positions while you have lasers, Manipulate, area-denial AOEs on the ground, dive-bombing adds, etc, etc . . .

Increasing the duration of the orange colouring, and thereby delaying the activation of the shade, by even just another full second, would work wonders IMO.

In addition:

• Manipulate occurs very frequently
• The generic AOE area-denial attack Kovan spawns seems a bit unnecessary on top of Manipulate - this also seems to start with one AoE at the start of the fight and then progress to two, even three at any given time, which further decreases the amount of available space
• Dive-bombing Kwama adds hit a DD for almost 10k each - two at once is death most of the time
• As Code mentioned the black effects obscure a stupid amount of useful information - these absolutely need to be adjusted

Bosses 2 and 3 as Code said were pretty much the same - thanks for removing the eyes telegraph in Boss 2 HM. Boss 3's heal check is still a bit spicy but more manageable than the week 3 changes for sure.

code65536

I want to elaborate a bit more on Verge from the first boss. Last week, I commented on the version of Verge where one of the shades charges to the boss's position, without realizing that the version of Verge where the boss charges to a player behaves a bit differently.

Specifically, when the boss charges a player with Verge...

• It does not respect taunt. There were many instances where the boss charged someone who wasn't the tank, even though there was an active taunt on the boss.
• It is untelegraphed. When a shade charges to the boss's position, it is telegraphed with a ground AoE that appears at the target location before the charge begins. When the boss charges a player, there is no ground AoE at the target location, and the only AoE telegraph is the AoE surrounding the boss during the charge itself. This AoE is often not visible, e.g., if the boss starts the charge from within a Fold AoE. There is no way for the victim to know that the boss is charging them until they see that the boss is in motion.
• The charge happens very quickly. Looking at a charge frame-by-frame in my recording of this fight, from the time the boss starts the charge animation to when the damage hits is about 0.5-0.7 seconds. In contrast, for the version of Verge where the shade charges to the boss's position, the damage comes about 1.5s after the initial appearance of the AoE telegraph.
• The charge does AoE damage to the target and anyone near the target; it's about 15K-17K on HM (similar to the amount of damage done by the better-telegraphed shade charge), which is over 2/3 the health bar of most non-tanks. And it knocks the player back if they are not blocking.
• This mechanic can happen during execute, when players have Manipulate and there are hazardous AoEs that will very quickly kill the player if they are knocked into them.

The vast majority of time, players get lucky. They get hit by it and recover from it. But if it happens during a Manipulate and targets someone who isn't the tank, it will very likely get them killed without much in the way of meaningful counterplay.

There are a number of ways to fix this... just one of the following changes to the boss's player-targeted Verge should suffice:

• Telegraph it and give people more than half a second to react.
• Make it respect taunt.
• Don't allow it to happen during Manipulate.
• Reduce the damage and get rid of the knockback.