The Irrefutable Herald needs to be more futable

JoeCapricorn

Bastion Nymic is a pretty fun challenge. There may be things that ought to be toned down, but overall it presents a good challenge that I wasn't expecting from content outside of vet dungeons and trials.

However, there is one boss that whenever I come across it, I just loudly groan because I know it's going to be painful.

The Irrefutable Herald, seems to follow the "Eater of Secrets", just is the most painful experiences ever. I suspect many things about it are bugged. As far as I can tell, it does have a tell for its Devour Brain ability, but sometimes that doesn't always show. It's just WHOOPS 3 of the group is dead, and the health of the boss went back up to like 90%

It was so frustrating one night that I had to call it a night. I hate to ditch a group, but I wasn't expecting going through 8 wipes on a zone daily after getting home from an 18 hour day. My endurance has a limit.

What actually made me quit though was the fact that the area would not let me in under any circumstance. A green barrier was up preventing me from entering. Even worse, my groupmates could go straight through. I tried exiting, I tried relogging, and the fact that the boss was too difficult for us to even beat was disheartening.

Please reduce the healing and damage of "Devour Brain" (or better yet: remove it entirely from his repertoire), and make the tell much more obvious and easy to interrupt or dodge. The other two bosses are fine, but this is vet hard-mode level of unfun that doesn't belong in content that is almost always going to involve 4 people randomly grouping together to complete it. And I really don't want to be saying out in zone chat "no low levels" when I go form my own Bastion Nymic groups because there is a chance it might land on this cephalopoid nightmare.

oh and also make the Herald Seekers a bit easier too. please. *points fingers together while making puppy dog eyes*

Tandor

Is there a minimum character level below which they won't attack without provocation? I wandered to and fro very closely past one or two of them the other day and was of no interest to them although they weren't engaged with anyone else. I was pleasantly surprised and assumed they had a reduced aggro in some way.

ESO_player123

JoeCapricorn wrote: »

Please reduce the healing and damage of "Devour Brain" (or better yet: remove it entirely from his repertoire), and make the tell much more obvious and easy to interrupt or dodge.

Is it the one where the character starts slowly walking towards the Herald on its own accord? If so, break free works fine. I did it on a ranged toon (sorc) though, so I was able to spot this zombie like behavior that was bringing the toon closer to the Herald.

Elsonso

Tandor wrote: »

Is there a minimum character level below which they won't attack without provocation? I wandered to and fro very closely past one or two of them the other day and was of no interest to them although they weren't engaged with anyone else. I was pleasantly surprised and assumed they had a reduced aggro in some way.

I did some minor experimenting with this. As long as I did not "touch" them, they ignored me. As soon as I got close enough that there was collision, they attacked. Outside of that, I was free to go past them, or stand while they went past me, and they ignored me. Need confirmation from someone else, but that is what I saw.

Tandor

Elsonso wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Is there a minimum character level below which they won't attack without provocation? I wandered to and fro very closely past one or two of them the other day and was of no interest to them although they weren't engaged with anyone else. I was pleasantly surprised and assumed they had a reduced aggro in some way.

I did some minor experimenting with this. As long as I did not "touch" them, they ignored me. As soon as I got close enough that there was collision, they attacked. Outside of that, I was free to go past them, or stand while they went past me, and they ignored me. Need confirmation from someone else, but that is what I saw.

Thanks, that seems to describe my experience other than for the fact that I stayed outside of collision range so didn't "touch" them and therefore get attacked.

tsaescishoeshiner

ESO_player123 wrote: »

JoeCapricorn wrote: »

Please reduce the healing and damage of "Devour Brain" (or better yet: remove it entirely from his repertoire), and make the tell much more obvious and easy to interrupt or dodge.

Is it the one where the character starts slowly walking towards the Herald on its own accord? If so, break free works fine. I did it on a ranged toon (sorc) though, so I was able to spot this zombie like behavior that was bringing the toon closer to the Herald.

Breaking free doesn't stop the effect for me sometimes. I'll break free, continue fighting for 5-10 seconds, and then get 1-shot by Devour Brain with no telegraph or animation. This happens to groupmates who also broke free or weren't targeted by the charm effect.

It makes it almost impossible solo or with low DPS, because that allows more time for the bug to occur, which also heals the boss, making it essentially a buggy DPS check that the other bosses don't have.

I've cleared it sometimes and had no issue, but have some groups completely stopped by this bug, after what's already a very long daily quest.

MafiaCat115

There's been quite a few times where my group stays away from the boss, range interrupts, and then gets one shotted by Devour Brain anyways even though all indications of it about to be cast are gone.

tsaescishoeshiner

MafiaCat115 wrote: »

There's been quite a few times where my group stays away from the boss, range interrupts, and then gets one shotted by Devour Brain anyways even though all indications of it about to be cast are gone.

Same as my experience.

The one workaround we found was to hold block for 5-10 seconds after its head glows yellow (the charm effect), whether or not you were targeted by the stun or another player. I would see it take down half my health instead of being a 1-shot.

Of course, "block for 8 seconds after one visual cue in case the boss is undetectably targeting you" isn't that reliable lol, and the punishment is a 40% max health heal if someone dies. We would get through the fight until 1 player messed up. This was with me carrying 2 level 8's lol. I thought, Zone daily? No problem.

RadagastThePink

When the boss’s head glows yellow you can interrupt it to prevent the brain attack. It was annoying.

tsaescishoeshiner

RadagastThePink wrote: »

When the boss’s head glows yellow you can interrupt it to prevent the brain attack. It was annoying.

Update: Just tried this, and it didn't stop the brain attack. In fact, when I went up to bash it, it suddenly stunned me and wiped the group in 1 second.

Just duo'd this boss and died over and over again to Devour Brain despite not being stunned, the boss's head not glowing, breaking free, not being targeted by the charm, etc. It even killed some companions with this attack and healed off of them being killed. We weren't sure whether it's targeting companions/combat pets and dealing AoE damage with its 1-shot, but a boss shouldn't be able to heal 40% off of 1-shotting a companion.

After trying to block and interrupt this, I'm pretty convinced it's bugged. At least with our DPS, it only took about 15 minutes and 4-5 tries.

Edit: Also, it often 1-shot 2 players at once, on opposite sides of the boss room, when only 1 had been targeted by the charm and broken free. Sometimes we would see it drop our health instead of 1-shotting if we blocked it, but again, there's no telegraph and sometimes the number of adds make it hard to have stamina to block during execute when it does Devour Brain every few seconds. Okay rant over lol

PrinceShroob

You can interrupt Devour Brain, but it's a very short window. We did some with 3 DPS and a companion, all endgamers. If one of us hadn't had an addon that was counting down to the channel, we probably would've wiped a lot more often (and we wiped a few times getting into the groove of things).

I definitely think the channel time should be increased so you can actually react to it and interrupt without knowing it's coming.

Galiferno

Devour Brain is either bugged or somebody made an incredibly poor choice designing it.

Necrotech_Master

the 2 times ive done nymics so far, ive gotten the same boss both times, i know its not a huge sample size but is the boss determined by random or by which section you clear first?

in the 2 times i did it i got the same boss, and in both times we cleared the vaermina wing first

another thing i noticed too is that you only have to clear 1 wing to even be able to fight the middle boss lol

MafiaCat115

Just had this fight in a Nymic yet again and kept wiping to Devour Brain. Even with a range interrupt as the spammable, Devour Brain activates and kills a player, sorcerer pet, or companion and refills much of its health bar. There were even times where it was using a different ability when suddenly a player would die due to Devour Brain all while a different attack was going on.

tomofhyrule

I had this with a few of my friends last night and we had a few issues until we finally got clear.

The basic answer seemed to be "stay the [snip] out of melee range."

I never saw any tell for an interruptable on him. When we were fighting normally (an Oakensorc, a Magplar, and I was on a baby Arcanist sort-of-healer-ish-but-in-rando-unmatched-sets), we had a few issues where everyone would just die to Devour Brain with zero warning. It was the Magplar who was in melee range and then she would get hit with it all the time, and if she was out of stam to break free of the charm, we'd wipe. When she switched to ranged, then it always seemed to target the closest person (which at that point was the Oakensorc since I was staying on the other end of the arena), and he could always break free in time. It never hit me over the whole run.

I do wonder how that'll go when I'm on main since I main a tank and I prefer dual SnB, so 'stay out of melee range' isn't that easy. May have to break out the stick and kite tank this one in the future. Unless they do change the fight to give a bit of reaction time in here.

So in essence, it seems that the mechanic is:

1. The closest person to the boss gets hit with a breakable charm (like the sirens in DSR)
2. When that person gets to him, it explodes with Devour Brain, which'll wipe everyone nearby

So if you have someone in melee range, they'll get hit with it, and then already be in melee range so they just explode immediately.

tsaescishoeshiner

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I had this with a few of my friends last night and we had a few issues until we finally got clear.

The basic answer seemed to be "stay the [snip] out of melee range."

I never saw any tell for an interruptable on him. When we were fighting normally (an Oakensorc, a Magplar, and I was on a baby Arcanist sort-of-healer-ish-but-in-rando-unmatched-sets), we had a few issues where everyone would just die to Devour Brain with zero warning. It was the Magplar who was in melee range and then she would get hit with it all the time, and if she was out of stam to break free of the charm, we'd wipe. When she switched to ranged, then it always seemed to target the closest person (which at that point was the Oakensorc since I was staying on the other end of the arena), and he could always break free in time. It never hit me over the whole run.

I do wonder how that'll go when I'm on main since I main a tank and I prefer dual SnB, so 'stay out of melee range' isn't that easy. May have to break out the stick and kite tank this one in the future. Unless they do change the fight to give a bit of reaction time in here.

So in essence, it seems that the mechanic is:

1. The closest person to the boss gets hit with a breakable charm (like the sirens in DSR)
2. When that person gets to him, it explodes with Devour Brain, which'll wipe everyone nearby

So if you have someone in melee range, they'll get hit with it, and then already be in melee range so they just explode immediately.

I've had that happen, but also die at range. It seems to be at the same timing that someone WOULD die to the charm effect 1-shot if they'd walked all the way to the boss. Until it gets fixed it's just DPS race, try to block, and be ready to try 1-3 times.

tomofhyrule

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I had this with a few of my friends last night and we had a few issues until we finally got clear.

The basic answer seemed to be "stay the [snip] out of melee range."

I never saw any tell for an interruptable on him. When we were fighting normally (an Oakensorc, a Magplar, and I was on a baby Arcanist sort-of-healer-ish-but-in-rando-unmatched-sets), we had a few issues where everyone would just die to Devour Brain with zero warning. It was the Magplar who was in melee range and then she would get hit with it all the time, and if she was out of stam to break free of the charm, we'd wipe. When she switched to ranged, then it always seemed to target the closest person (which at that point was the Oakensorc since I was staying on the other end of the arena), and he could always break free in time. It never hit me over the whole run.

I do wonder how that'll go when I'm on main since I main a tank and I prefer dual SnB, so 'stay out of melee range' isn't that easy. May have to break out the stick and kite tank this one in the future. Unless they do change the fight to give a bit of reaction time in here.

So in essence, it seems that the mechanic is:

1. The closest person to the boss gets hit with a breakable charm (like the sirens in DSR)
2. When that person gets to him, it explodes with Devour Brain, which'll wipe everyone nearby

So if you have someone in melee range, they'll get hit with it, and then already be in melee range so they just explode immediately.

I've had that happen, but also die at range. It seems to be at the same timing that someone WOULD die to the charm effect 1-shot if they'd walked all the way to the boss. Until it gets fixed it's just DPS race, try to block, and be ready to try 1-3 times.

Yes, if the charmed person reaches the boss, it can kill people at range.

The benefit to being at range here is that it gives you the reaction time to break free of the charm. If you're at range and then get charmed, you have time to break free (unless you're out of stam so RIP stam builds) so the fight can continue. If someone's melee, they'll get charmed since they're the closest, and then since they're already in melee range already, they'll just cause the group wipe.

So the strat seems to be that everyone needs to be ranged so that everyone has the time to break free of the charm so the fight can continue.

Ecgberht_confused

tomofhyrule wrote: »

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I had this with a few of my friends last night and we had a few issues until we finally got clear.

The basic answer seemed to be "stay the [snip] out of melee range."

I never saw any tell for an interruptable on him. When we were fighting normally (an Oakensorc, a Magplar, and I was on a baby Arcanist sort-of-healer-ish-but-in-rando-unmatched-sets), we had a few issues where everyone would just die to Devour Brain with zero warning. It was the Magplar who was in melee range and then she would get hit with it all the time, and if she was out of stam to break free of the charm, we'd wipe. When she switched to ranged, then it always seemed to target the closest person (which at that point was the Oakensorc since I was staying on the other end of the arena), and he could always break free in time. It never hit me over the whole run.

I do wonder how that'll go when I'm on main since I main a tank and I prefer dual SnB, so 'stay out of melee range' isn't that easy. May have to break out the stick and kite tank this one in the future. Unless they do change the fight to give a bit of reaction time in here.

So in essence, it seems that the mechanic is:

1. The closest person to the boss gets hit with a breakable charm (like the sirens in DSR)
2. When that person gets to him, it explodes with Devour Brain, which'll wipe everyone nearby

So if you have someone in melee range, they'll get hit with it, and then already be in melee range so they just explode immediately.

I've had that happen, but also die at range. It seems to be at the same timing that someone WOULD die to the charm effect 1-shot if they'd walked all the way to the boss. Until it gets fixed it's just DPS race, try to block, and be ready to try 1-3 times.

Yes, if the charmed person reaches the boss, it can kill people at range.

The benefit to being at range here is that it gives you the reaction time to break free of the charm. If you're at range and then get charmed, you have time to break free (unless you're out of stam so RIP stam builds) so the fight can continue. If someone's melee, they'll get charmed since they're the closest, and then since they're already in melee range already, they'll just cause the group wipe.

So the strat seems to be that everyone needs to be ranged so that everyone has the time to break free of the charm so the fight can continue.

This makes a lot of sense! I'm ranged dps and when I soloed the herald I was always able to notice the charm and break free. When in group, however, I often wiped without seeing any telegraph. So this would explain it

HushAzrael

Slotting SLIPPERY made a world of difference

Veinblood1965

Ecgberht_confused wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

tsaescishoeshiner wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I had this with a few of my friends last night and we had a few issues until we finally got clear.

The basic answer seemed to be "stay the [snip] out of melee range."

I never saw any tell for an interruptable on him. When we were fighting normally (an Oakensorc, a Magplar, and I was on a baby Arcanist sort-of-healer-ish-but-in-rando-unmatched-sets), we had a few issues where everyone would just die to Devour Brain with zero warning. It was the Magplar who was in melee range and then she would get hit with it all the time, and if she was out of stam to break free of the charm, we'd wipe. When she switched to ranged, then it always seemed to target the closest person (which at that point was the Oakensorc since I was staying on the other end of the arena), and he could always break free in time. It never hit me over the whole run.

I do wonder how that'll go when I'm on main since I main a tank and I prefer dual SnB, so 'stay out of melee range' isn't that easy. May have to break out the stick and kite tank this one in the future. Unless they do change the fight to give a bit of reaction time in here.

So in essence, it seems that the mechanic is:

1. The closest person to the boss gets hit with a breakable charm (like the sirens in DSR)
2. When that person gets to him, it explodes with Devour Brain, which'll wipe everyone nearby

So if you have someone in melee range, they'll get hit with it, and then already be in melee range so they just explode immediately.

I've had that happen, but also die at range. It seems to be at the same timing that someone WOULD die to the charm effect 1-shot if they'd walked all the way to the boss. Until it gets fixed it's just DPS race, try to block, and be ready to try 1-3 times.

Yes, if the charmed person reaches the boss, it can kill people at range.

The benefit to being at range here is that it gives you the reaction time to break free of the charm. If you're at range and then get charmed, you have time to break free (unless you're out of stam so RIP stam builds) so the fight can continue. If someone's melee, they'll get charmed since they're the closest, and then since they're already in melee range already, they'll just cause the group wipe.

So the strat seems to be that everyone needs to be ranged so that everyone has the time to break free of the charm so the fight can continue.

This makes a lot of sense! I'm ranged dps and when I soloed the herald I was always able to notice the charm and break free. When in group, however, I often wiped without seeing any telegraph. So this would explain it

Agreed, wiped several times in the last few days, when everyone just ranged it all went well. Shouldn't be that way though as some people are on melee toons and they pretty much are out of the fight.

patricknl76

Its also fun when it puts the mechanic on your pet and it only kills your pet and gets his life almost to 100%.;

pklemming

Meh, if you are soloing it, use crushing shock as a spammable. Similar if you are in group. Assign one person on crushing shock. Extremely easy fight.

endgamesmug

Bastion Nymics have been the best solo/duo content for me for ages!, gonna be a real bummer when everything gets nerfed.

CGPsaint

patricknl76 wrote: »

Its also fun when it puts the mechanic on your pet and it only kills your pet and gets his life almost to 100%.;

I think you may be on to something. I have had countless bad experiences with this boss where the entire group stayed ranged and we would all get wiped with no warning, and I'm willing to bed that pets are to blame. I'll have to get my group together and go in without any pets and see if staying ranged is the key WITHOUT pets that will obviously not do the same!

tsaescishoeshiner

Update: this issue has been fixed and the boss is much more doable! As of 1-2 weeks ago.

I want to point out that "staying at range" wasn't a solution before the fix, because it would randomly kill players instantly 20+ meters away with no telegraph, visual, interruptible, or sign.

CGPsaint

I ran Bastion Nymic 5-6 times yesterday and each time I made sure that we didn't have any pets or companions active and we only had 1 death in all of those runs and it was from a low level melee build that didn't break free. Otherwise we interrupted whenever we saw the telegraph and everything went smoothly. Pets and companions obviously don't break free which makes it much more likely that you can miss an interrupt before they are close enough to be murdered by the bosses brain devour attack.

Vhozek

'scuse me? 😳