Weakening Glyph can break the Endless Archive Bosses. Changes needs to happen.

Erickson9610

We need more alternatives to Magma Shell. If there's a specific build that can make survivability in higher Arcs possible, even if it is one that reduces enemy damage to 0 rather than one that limits your incoming damage to 3% of your Maximum Health, then it's better for build diversity if it is allowed to exist.

CameraBeardThePirate

I do tend to usually agree with the "more difficult and challenging content is great" crowd, but I don't think the fix to this problem would be upping the bosses' damage values. That's a classic mistake of treating the symptom and not the true issue - which is how potent the combo of Torug's AND Heartlands is. It's a very niche combo, and increasing the boss damage would cause a lot of other issues.

Even the title is somewhat misleading. The weakening glyph isn't the problem in and of itself; the combo of Torug's and Heartland's makes it become overly powerful.

YetAnotherLinuxUser

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

I do tend to usually agree with the "more difficult and challenging content is great" crowd, but I don't think the fix to this problem would be upping the bosses' damage values. That's a classic mistake of treating the symptom and not the true issue - which is how potent the combo of Torug's AND Heartlands is. It's a very niche combo, and increasing the boss damage would cause a lot of other issues.

Even the title is somewhat misleading. The weakening glyph isn't the problem in and of itself; the combo of Torug's and Heartland's makes it become overly powerful.

leave them alone

IZZEFlameLash

YetAnotherLinuxUser wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

I do tend to usually agree with the "more difficult and challenging content is great" crowd, but I don't think the fix to this problem would be upping the bosses' damage values. That's a classic mistake of treating the symptom and not the true issue - which is how potent the combo of Torug's AND Heartlands is. It's a very niche combo, and increasing the boss damage would cause a lot of other issues.

Even the title is somewhat misleading. The weakening glyph isn't the problem in and of itself; the combo of Torug's and Heartland's makes it become overly powerful.

leave them alone

Seconding this. Heartland Conqueror barely see any use outside of levelling and some niche build in PvP. Torug's is basically not in use except for PvE tanks ever since Oblivion damage glyph related nerf.

If ZOS must 'nerf' this, then they can do it by removing weapon/spell damage from bosses completely and make them only do set amount of damage. But knowing ZOS, they will opt to nerf the sets and glyphs instead.

Heelie

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

I do tend to usually agree with the "more difficult and challenging content is great" crowd, but I don't think the fix to this problem would be upping the bosses' damage values. That's a classic mistake of treating the symptom and not the true issue - which is how potent the combo of Torug's AND Heartlands is. It's a very niche combo, and increasing the boss damage would cause a lot of other issues.

Even the title is somewhat misleading. The weakening glyph isn't the problem in and of itself; the combo of Torug's and Heartland's makes it become overly powerful.

You're most the wrong here the main problem is actually just Heartland and the visions, Torugs is additive and adds very little once you have 2 or more visions. Heartland is multiplicative and that is why we see the big values.

Ph1p

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

Seconding this. Heartland Conqueror barely see any use outside of levelling and some niche build in PvP. Torug's is basically not in use except for PvE tanks ever since Oblivion damage glyph related nerf.

If ZOS must 'nerf' this, then they can do it by removing weapon/spell damage from bosses completely and make them only do set amount of damage. But knowing ZOS, they will opt to nerf the sets and glyphs instead.

That’s exactly what OP is calling for: Change the damage calculation so that it scales less with the weapon/spell damage stat/variable, but otherwise keeps the overall damage output the same as before. Not a word on changing the glyph or the sets.

Having a boss deal a few hundred DPS in Arc 7 is pretty ridiculous. That’s literally like the DPS of the very first trash pack of the whole EA. By comparison, even Arc 1 Tho’at easily deals over 1k DPS. Not saying this combo needs to be eradicated or nerfed to oblivion, but some tuning would make sense.

Tyrant_Tim

I know I was joking earlier, but hopefully whatever solution ZOS picks is respectful to both forms of Cowardice, especially given half of the gimmick of Warden’s set revolves around it, and Nightblade as a support depends on it.

DinoZavr

the catch is obtaining a certain vision is not guaranteed and even during a long run player might not get it at all
it is a good riddle for game-makers to solve, though i am afraid unnecessary nerfs might happen.

RealLoveBVB

Ph1p wrote: »

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

Seconding this. Heartland Conqueror barely see any use outside of levelling and some niche build in PvP. Torug's is basically not in use except for PvE tanks ever since Oblivion damage glyph related nerf.

If ZOS must 'nerf' this, then they can do it by removing weapon/spell damage from bosses completely and make them only do set amount of damage. But knowing ZOS, they will opt to nerf the sets and glyphs instead.

Having a boss deal a few hundred DPS in Arc 7 is pretty ridiculous. That’s literally like the DPS of the very first trash pack of the whole EA. By comparison, even Arc 1 Tho’at easily deals over 1k DPS. Not saying this combo needs to be eradicated or nerfed to oblivion, but some tuning would make sense.

And where exactly is the issue with that?
Finally players have to make certain and more different builds to come more far instead of using the same 3 sets for every kind of content.

The archive is endless, so let the sets nerf the damage of arc 7 to 0, but players will have issues on higher arcs again, even with the nerf-combo.

At the end Fanged Focus and Attuned Vision will be nerfed to death at one point anyway, which will make EA a dead and boring place again. But that's probably what some players want here.

Heelie

RealLoveBVB wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

Seconding this. Heartland Conqueror barely see any use outside of levelling and some niche build in PvP. Torug's is basically not in use except for PvE tanks ever since Oblivion damage glyph related nerf.

If ZOS must 'nerf' this, then they can do it by removing weapon/spell damage from bosses completely and make them only do set amount of damage. But knowing ZOS, they will opt to nerf the sets and glyphs instead.

Having a boss deal a few hundred DPS in Arc 7 is pretty ridiculous. That’s literally like the DPS of the very first trash pack of the whole EA. By comparison, even Arc 1 Tho’at easily deals over 1k DPS. Not saying this combo needs to be eradicated or nerfed to oblivion, but some tuning would make sense.

And where exactly is the issue with that?
Finally players have to make certain and more different builds to come more far instead of using the same 3 sets for every kind of content.

The archive is endless, so let the sets nerf the damage of arc 7 to 0, but players will have issues on higher arcs again, even with the nerf-combo.

At the end Fanged Focus and Attuned Vision will be nerfed to death at one point anyway, which will make EA a dead and boring place again. But that's probably what some players want here.

The problem is that the spell damage does not change with higher Arcs, they scale only with cycles, this means that the boss doing 0 damage in Arc 3 also does 0 damage in Arc 30.

XSTRONG

I didnt know about this but I really hope they dont up the damage for Marauders

FoJul

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

RIP Minor & Major Cowardice

Lol, if they do manage to nerf major and minor cowardice, I give up for magblade non meta builds.

Galeriano

Wait till You see a shield value on a shield dmg enchant with 5x attuned enhancements and torug+heartland.

Bowmanganie

As someone who solo can only sometimes barely get past Arc 2 I enjoy having this information. It gives me some hope and some resolve to at least try something out. When the 4-armed random boss shows up I have just been setting my controller down and ...letting it happen... as I have been unable to defeat it.

So, wasn't Endless Archives tested? Didn't all the super streamers hop in there and check out builds and such? Was this known before it went live? If the answer to this is yes, then I would say that it is something that ZoS obviously knew about. If the answer is no, then it shows a flaw in the testing system.

ajkb78

virtus753 wrote: »

Heelie wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Heelie wrote: »

ESO_player123 wrote: »

May be it's better to fix the root of the issue (the glyph + the buff or whatever that is) nstead of blindly upping all bosses' damage and ruining EA for those players that are not min/maxing, running optimal setups, or generally great at combat?

Where in this post did I ask them to increase damage, I only ask them to increase weapon and spell damage, they can then decrease the modifier accordingly, so that damage stays the same. Stop this fear mongering.

Not everyone has that glyph. I had no idea that was even a thing tbh. It wouldn't stay the same for people who aren't using it.

Damage is not just a result of the bosses weapon and spell damage, there is are other modifier that essentially scales multiplicative with it, decrease this accordingly, and damage stays the same.

What exactly are these other factors that go into the bosses’ damage in addition to weapon and spell damage?

My partner and I have been trying to test the Cowardices, and we would appreciate information on what contributes to mob damage besides the WD/SD stat. The game does not seem to provide it.

Well each of their attacks presumably has a base "tooltip damage" similar to how player attacks have a base "tooltip damage" that then gets modified by WD / SD, max stats etc. So yes, in theory you could increase the bosses' WD but decrease their attacks' "tooltip damage" to compensate.

Having said that, I'm not sure the level of effort to adjust multiple skills across 64 bosses is worth it for a setup that is both niche and relies on RNG in terms of the EA buffs you happen to get. At least while we still have the situation where you can't save progress, reaching very late arcs is something only a small minority of the playerbase has time to do even if they had infinite threads. It's not like these builds are available only to some players, and it's already advisable to make an EA-specific build. Anyone can put together a torug's / alessia build or whatever, so everyone has the same chance to post a high leaderboard score using them.

FantasticFreddie

YetAnotherLinuxUser wrote: »

so that leaves us with what the old light attack weaving and nothing else because any thing else that performs better than light attack weaving gets nerfed

Considering the number of people using oakensoul and velothi in here, I suspect that light attack weaving is not what is being pushed here.

Jaimeh

Oh, now I wanna try this, I hope they won't fix it before I can give it a go

MrCray78

5 Attuned Enchantment at Arc 2 🤡🤡🤡

rauyran

No need for increasing damage and rebalancing or complex rules about what buffs can be affected. Simply add a minimum damage threshold for each monster. For example, say that a boss's damage output can't be reduced below 10% of its usual value, no matter what debuffs are applied.

ivelbob

Sounds like Endless Archive working as intended. With so many players experimenting, they are bound to find formerly niche sets and combos that outperform. If ZOS nerfs the pieces of this combo, something else will rise to the top. ZOS can continue playing whack-a-mole like this as new metas emerge but it's a fine balance. Nerfs that hit more popular pve or pvp sets will antagonize those player bases. And punishing players too much for finding effective Archive strategies will make the whole piece of content even more grindy and unfun.

jaws343

I decided to try out the torug/heartland combo on my heavy attack sorc setup last night. It was a little sluggish up front due to lower DPS in the first ARC. And I only got lucky enough to get 1 attuned buff and zero focused efforts.

Reached farther than I had before, 6:4:2 I think, but I can't recall exactly without being able to open the game right now. All in all, further than my Sergeant/Orders Wrath setup. Definitely a lot tankier. And with better vision RNG, I could see this going very far. Generally, by ARC 2, I am dropping Caltrops for Ele Sus to make better use of focused efforts damage. With a few of those and a few attuned, I could see this build going very far.

Heelie

rauyran wrote: »

No need for increasing damage and rebalancing or complex rules about what buffs can be affected. Simply add a minimum damage threshold for each monster. For example, say that a boss's damage output can't be reduced below 10% of its usual value, no matter what debuffs are applied.

We're usually at 75%+ metigation minimum, so this could go very wrong very quickly

AlterBlika

ivelbob wrote: »

Sounds like Endless Archive working as intended. With so many players experimenting, they are bound to find formerly niche sets and combos that outperform. If ZOS nerfs the pieces of this combo, something else will rise to the top. ZOS can continue playing whack-a-mole like this as new metas emerge but it's a fine balance. Nerfs that hit more popular pve or pvp sets will antagonize those player bases. And punishing players too much for finding effective Archive strategies will make the whole piece of content even more grindy and unfun.

This vision affecting weakening is clearly ridiculous. Even with the best defensive pve builds you can't reach the same result. Bosses' damage in EA is obviously low, but still, in other content when solo you can only reduce damage by maybe around 1500 if playing nb, and bosses there tend to have even more damage. Meanwhile in EA you can get nearly twice the value without using cowardice debuffs.

Well maybe parsing on a dummy that can't kill you is fun for you

Treeshka

Heelie wrote: »

The problem is that the spell damage does not change with higher Arcs, they scale only with cycles, this means that the boss doing 0 damage in Arc 3 also does 0 damage in Arc 30.

So there is a secret coefficient in the equation based on Arc number and that amplifies the boss damage. Because naturally bosses do more damage as Arc number goes up. But it seems like that coefficient is somewhere in the equation, that reducing boss weapon and spell damage to zero makes that coefficient useless.

If this the case they can move that coefficient somewhere in the equation so boss weapon and spell damage increases with Arc number not only with Cycle number.

Four_Fingers

Adjust your build they say, finds good build. Oh no too OP - nerf it!

Heelie

Treeshka wrote: »

Heelie wrote: »

The problem is that the spell damage does not change with higher Arcs, they scale only with cycles, this means that the boss doing 0 damage in Arc 3 also does 0 damage in Arc 30.

So there is a secret coefficient in the equation based on Arc number and that amplifies the boss damage. Because naturally bosses do more damage as Arc number goes up. But it seems like that coefficient is somewhere in the equation, that reducing boss weapon and spell damage to zero makes that coefficient useless.

If this the case they can move that coefficient somewhere in the equation so boss weapon and spell damage increases with Arc number not only with Cycle number.

Exactly the rule for all math in eso is that flat changes comes before % modifiers (we see this with cost reduction jewelry as well). Every attack from bosses is (weapon / spell damage) * % modifier, this modifier increases with each Arc, maybe also each cycle, it could be multiple % modifiers. The problem is that these are multiplicative, so if we reduce the weapon and spell damage to 0, we multiply by 0. it's also the case that a 99% reduction in spell / weapon damage is a 99% reduction in damage taken.

Heelie

Treeshka wrote: »

Heelie wrote: »

The problem is that the spell damage does not change with higher Arcs, they scale only with cycles, this means that the boss doing 0 damage in Arc 3 also does 0 damage in Arc 30.

So there is a secret coefficient in the equation based on Arc number and that amplifies the boss damage. Because naturally bosses do more damage as Arc number goes up. But it seems like that coefficient is somewhere in the equation, that reducing boss weapon and spell damage to zero makes that coefficient useless.

If this the case they can move that coefficient somewhere in the equation so boss weapon and spell damage increases with Arc number not only with Cycle number.

They have several options, personally I just think they should make it so that weapon and spell damage scales a little with Arcs, and then reduce the modifiers so that damage would stay the same as now, without any spell / weapon damage reduction in the build. I think going for about 50% damage reduction with this Torugs and Heartland build around Arc 20 would be fair. Somewhere in that Ball Park. That would be around 100 or so spell damage per Arc.

YetAnotherLinuxUser

That's what you say. I say all these calls for nerfs every time a old set suddenly becomes good is nothing more than baiting for a fight.

Erickson9610

I recently tried out the Major + Minor Cowardice with Heartland + Torug's on a non-Dual Wield Infused Weakening glyph build. You can drop the enemy damage very low, but that does not affect ground hazards and DoTs from ranged enemies.

If you want to score push in the Endless Archive, the weapon damage reduction build isn't going to cut it. You're going to need Magma Shell to limit all incoming damage, including the damage that Weakening glyphs cannot reduce.

FantasticFreddie

I honestly don't think it needs a nerf, mostly because of how limited the glyph is to begin with.

Unless they changed it, the weakening effect will only apply to one enemy at a time, and in trash that's going to be difficult to control, any boss that has adds you run the risk of reducing the incoming damage from a single scamp rather than the main boss, etc.

And I'm not even sure what the weakening enchant effects-- if a boss summons something stupid like a totem, is that damage decreased? If it summons atronachs? What about oblivion damage?

And it's only strong IF you get lucky with your visions and bosses-- which sometimes you might, and sometimes you might not.

If someone wants to build for it, more power to them. I probably never will because I don't think I'll ever be going beyond arc 4