Unpopular opinion, the Lord Hollowjack boss fight is annoying and underwhelming

El_Borracho · October 28

I love mechanic-heavy content, even mechanics that one-shot players who fail to obey, as long as the mechanics are creative. That is where Lord Hollowjack falls apart. The boss fight has a one-shot that can be avoided through a new, creative crouching mechanic. But it comes at the same time as an irksome invulnerability phase, which seems to be a staple of new content. The first one is 50 seconds long, which is a bit long when it comes to boss fights in trials. Oh, but wait, there is a second invulnerability phase and its 80 seconds long. Why??

Any group familiar with the mechanics will have no problem with the fight, but will be subject to the 2+ minutes of squatting while the boss motors around the room. But this is for a boss fight during an event, where Lord Hollowjack might drop a bust or something rare, which as we all know, is a magnet for hapless pug groups, which turn this boss fight into a one-shot bonanza, where watching players hopelessly run for their lives is unintentionally the most entertaining part.

Would it be better if the boss dropped better stuff or more stuff? No, because that's not the issue. Why is there over two minutes of nothing in a boss fight to begin with?

Lugaldu · October 28

While I have to admit that the idea of hiding during the fight was nice, I also have to say that this fight was the most annoying thing I have ever done during an event. Once and never again. I'd rather stand at a dolmen for hours and hope that xy will finally drop next time.

Heren · October 28

Most likely because these kind of mechanics are some of the only ways to provide an encounter to pug wich can provide some '''''''''''''''''''''''challenge''''''''''''''''''.

You talk about 2 minutes of nothing, but the rest of the fight is just nothing as well.

dinokstrunz · October 28

Very boring content

Estin · October 28

I don't see the search as a true immunity phase because there's still mechanics you need to follow. It's not like the crow immunity phase that happens periodically where it's attackable but can't take damage, even if it's for a few seconds at a time. The search phase can be over and done with in 10-20 seconds as long as players are activating the synergies. If they're not, tell them to. If they still don't, just kick them. I like the concept of the fight, but the resource drain is too strong, especially when you have a larger group. Most players I've seen would just sit there 2 feet from a crow and do nothing and then get forced out of crouch because they ran out of stamina.

Taril · October 28

Estin wrote: »

The search phase can be over and done with in 10-20 seconds as long as players are activating the synergies.

Given that the phase lasts a set amount of time and is not in any way tied to the crows, that's is certainly not the case.

El_Borracho wrote: »

Why is there over two minutes of nothing in a boss fight to begin with?

Because the entire mechanic is all about causing resource drain. Ergo, it has to take time for that resource drain to do its thing (And cause some seasonal "Horror" by way of making people panic when their Stam gets low if they're not using any of the plethora of ways to completely ignore the entire mechanic)

As far as the overall trend of immune phases for event bosses... That really comes down to the whole event boss design thing.

Event bosses are supposed to be easy so that groups of plebs can go in there and get their event rewards without much issue. But by making bosses easy, this means that stacks of vet players will just vaporize bosses before anyone even so much as glimpses a mechanic.

Thus, immune phases. To hard stop the vaporization and give people some chance to actually see a mechanic, even if it's only that one singular mechanic.

Ingenon · October 28

I plan to keep doing the Lord Hollowjack daily for the golden box drop for the possible new style page drop and possible event feather drop. I am finding that it is quicker for me than doing an arena, trial, or infinite archive. I do not find that the length of the quest is very long, just a few minutes after accepting the quest if I am on a character that has done the rescue three haunted people on a previous day.

Taril wrote: »

Event bosses are supposed to be easy so that groups of plebs can go in there and get their event rewards without much issue. But by making bosses easy, this means that stacks of vet players will just vaporize bosses before anyone even so much as glimpses a mechanic.

Thus, immune phases. To hard stop the vaporization and give people some chance to actually see a mechanic, even if it's only that one singular mechanic.

^ This. All of the recent bosses in ESO have immune phases.

Alaztor91 · October 28

They seem to really like these invulnerability phases lately. They felt awful with the Oblivion portal bosses and they also felt awful with the Mirrormoor ones.

If ZOS doesn't want groups of players nuking ''group bosses'' then just dynamically scale their health based on the number of players present, instead of it being a fixed value probably balanced around 4 players.

Invulnerability phases where you basically just have to wait it out are boring, at least add a reflect mechanic like Tho'at Replicanum so we can see other players blasting themselves while we wait.

spartaxoxo · October 28

Fighting would pull you out of stealth anyway. The immunity phase actually makes sense for this boss and isn't just an artificial slow down like with the crow

LalMirchi · October 28

I don't agree. It's just a different kind of encounter and is lots of fun. The fight took 3:49 minutes with five players and assorted pets. The group was ready in a few minutes after I created it in the Group Finder as a healer. The Group Finder is really useful in this context.

Taril · October 28

Alaztor91 wrote: »

If ZOS doesn't want groups of players nuking ''group bosses'' then just dynamically scale their health based on the number of players present, instead of it being a fixed value probably balanced around 4 players.

Except, that doesn't solve the problem.

If they scale the bosses health so that groups of CP 2k+ with full gold gear don't vaporize them, then your average Joe McPleb team will require absurd amounts of time to kill the boss.

The issue isn't with the number of players, it's the vast difference between newbies and fully geared vets and the fact that they need to make it so that newbies still have an actual chance at beating the bosses and have fun doing so (I.e. Not grinding out for 60+ minutes on a health sponge)

If you want an easy fix, that'd be to apply DPS caps on the bosses. So that fully geared players aren't doing so much more damage. (Though you'd probably still see plenty of complaints about how long the boss takes to kill...)

GeneralGrundmann · October 28

Kind of enjoy it.

As soon as he gets out the lamp I feel a little bit like the kid from "The Sixth Sense" because I start to see lots of dead people.

Very thematic event boss, fitting to this time of the year.

Sleepsin · October 28

I still go in, but I make sure to make my own group with 4 people. The headache that happens with 12 is not worth it.

Hapexamendios · October 28

Unpopular opinion? I thought that was the prevalent opinion.

Alaztor91 · October 29

Taril wrote: »

Alaztor91 wrote: »

If ZOS doesn't want groups of players nuking ''group bosses'' then just dynamically scale their health based on the number of players present, instead of it being a fixed value probably balanced around 4 players.

Except, that doesn't solve the problem.

If they scale the bosses health so that groups of CP 2k+ with full gold gear don't vaporize them, then your average Joe McPleb team will require absurd amounts of time to kill the boss.

The issue isn't with the number of players, it's the vast difference between newbies and fully geared vets and the fact that they need to make it so that newbies still have an actual chance at beating the bosses and have fun doing so (I.e. Not grinding out for 60+ minutes on a health sponge)

If you want an easy fix, that'd be to apply DPS caps on the bosses. So that fully geared players aren't doing so much more damage. (Though you'd probably still see plenty of complaints about how long the boss takes to kill...)

My comment was aimed towards non-instanced bosses. If the health of a WB/Dragon/Harrowstorm/Oblivion portal guy/etc scaled dynamically with the number of players present(with a minimum scaling of 4 players) ZOS could buff their rewards and remove the 12 person drop limit because they would no longer be instantly killed, if they are no longer instantly killed you don't need ''immunity phases'' and their respective mechanics(if they have any) could be seen. It could even be a fun fight because they aren't being instantly deleted and ZOS could maybe even increase their damage so that you actually need Tanks and Healers.

Imo stuff like WB and ''Incursions'' become really boring when there are too many people present and are a chore when you are solo. Current system sucks because after doing the ''Do X task 30 times'' achievement there is mostly no reason to keep doing them. Increasing their rewards motivates more people to do them, we can clearly see this when there is an event tied to them and they get swarmed.

The issue with the DPS gap could also be mitigated with things like increasing DoT durations, standardizing their durations to allow for an easier rotation, increase buff durations/make more buffs work ''while slotted on either bar'', reducing light attack damage so that weaving is less important, etc.

Taril · October 29

Alaztor91 wrote: »

The issue with the DPS gap could also be mitigated with things like increasing DoT durations, standardizing their durations to allow for an easier rotation, increase buff durations/make more buffs work ''while slotted on either bar'', reducing light attack damage so that weaving is less important, etc.

Again, this doesn't address the problem.

It's not that there a giant rift in DPS because plebs play incredibly poorly.

It's a difference because the gap between random green equipment and 0 CP bonuses vs full gold sets + full CP slots is massive.

Since that's scope of people that will be facing these things.

All the random low level people who are leveling up and simply equipping whatever drops that is their level (Due to the whole "Leveling up makes gear get worse" so even if someone did bother to farm out sets they'd quickly become terrible as they leveled up) have to be the baseline for this sort of content.

Since that's the nature of Overworld/Event content, it urges everyone, including people whom haven't even hit level 50 yet (And the ones who just have and are the literal weakest characters in the game) to participate in it and thus has to be balanced for the lowest common denominator.

Now, if they introduced something like a Craglorn 2.0 that is specifically designed for high CP players, then they'd be able to balance the bosses and events accordingly (Though, even that would probably not end up particularly well... As it'd mostly likely just end up with damage sponge bosses if it has to try and scale for balls of 20+ people due to being overworld content and thus limited by zone player caps compared to dungeons/trials group player caps)

f047ys3v3n · October 29

I expect the prescription for this fight was to make a fight that required at least 6 people in a group no mater how good the players are but would still be able to be completed if the group ended up consisting entirely of players who didn't really understand combat. Because any combat that challenged a good PVE or PVP player enough to get them to pick up 6 other players would totally wipe out a group of casuals they came up with an alternative. The fight phase is easy but this non-fight sneak phase drains your resources when you move so most, or perhaps all builds, can't do it alone. Nobody can move much so you need a bunch of people to basically already be where all the birdies land to quickly activate them without having to move much.

The result, bingo, you have a fight that even top players need a big group for but players who have no idea how combat works should also be able to complete.

The fight is also pretty annoying and awful to do. Nobody I have spoken with likes it. I think the devs may have found a creative and effective solution to a problem they should not have been trying to solve. For the record, nobody I know who can solo the crow boss actually regularly does that. It simply takes less time to pick up a few PUGs than it does to solo the crow. So, I don't think there was actually a problem with people not grouping up anyway.

On an only partially related note, ZOS has done a great job lately at producing functional build options for players of a variety of skill levels. I have built one button builds for my young children that allow them to do very substantial damage and heal by just pounding a single key. There are quite a lot of options for players who don't want to get too far in the weeds dealing with rotations and buffs to do effective damage.

code65536 · October 29

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

I expect the prescription for this fight was to make a fight that required at least 6 people in a group no mater how good the players are

[...]

The result, bingo, you have a fight that even top players need a big group

Absolutely not. This fight is actually easier with a small group. Because ZOS scaled the behavior mechanics to group size. To their credit, this is the first time that they've done this (you get more waves of adds at dolmens, but that's not really the same), and I think it's a nice concept. There are some problems with the details of how this scaling was executed, which ultimately leads this fight being noticeably more difficult with large groups, which I suspect is probably unintended.

The scaling increments with every 3 players, so 1-3 players have the lowest scaling, then 4-6, 7-9, and the worst difficulty is 10-12. So a 3-person group is the ideal size: you have two buddies who can help you with the "do damage" bits, while the scaling of the mechanics is kept to its lowest level.

pklemming · October 29

This is not an unpopular opinion. It is both annoying and underwhelming at the same time. This was a really easy solo when you understand what is actually happening.

Extending a fight by around 1 and a half minutes does not make the fight harder, or more interesting. It just makes it kind of dull, like the incessant chattering in DSA, when we just want to go to the next round.

anadandy · October 29

The boss fight is ok (meaning Im willing to suck it up for a gold skull), it's the preamble to get to the boss fight in order to get the gold skull that I find annoying. If I see a group in group finder I want to join and not have to run around doing busy work first.

Castagere · October 29

Yeah, see my post about ESO boss fights.

El_Borracho · October 29

pklemming wrote: »

Extending a fight by around 1 and a half minutes does not make the fight harder, or more interesting. It just makes it kind of dull, like the incessant chattering in DSA, when we just want to go to the next round.

Exactly. Its the artificial slow-down of a fight to make it seem harder or that you accomplished something, which fails on both ends.

I understand that the power creep has made some "group" content laughable. I also understand that newer players and unorganized pugs need love, too, both of which I am 100% in favor of. But I can not stand prolonged immunity phases. I can accept immunity phases where you have to perform mechanics to undo the immunity, or short phases which give you/the group a chance to prepare for the incoming attack, or immunity phases brought on by too much burn. Those make sense.

This is none of those. This is an immunity phase for the sole purpose of prolonging the fight. To put this in another light, this phase is similar to Dro'zakar in vet Moongrave Fane. But instead of the blood puddle lasting for a few seconds, it lasts 2 minutes.

To those that pointed out that it also has a stamina drain component, thank you. Using a potion did not make this mechanic any more exciting. Or difficult.

code65536 · October 29

pklemming wrote: »

Extending a fight by around 1 and a half minutes does not make the fight harder, or more interesting. It just makes it kind of dull, like the incessant chattering in DSA, when we just want to go to the next round.

This is in no way comparable to DSA's dialog. Because there is an actual mechanic for you to engage with during these phases, and if the group is bad enough, you can even wipe during this mechanic.

When boss flies into the air for the event's crowborn encounter, they're immune and there's nothing for you to do. That's a pointless immunity phase. But this is not it. And if you think it's too boring, try doing it in a full group of 12 where the majority of players do nothing during the mechanic. That'll spice things up quite a bit.

Servadei · October 29

It would be better if there was a mechanic where we could actually damage the boss somehow during its hunt phase instead of it being completely immune.

Make the crows attack the boss instead and if enough crows attack then he stops hunting us and resumes the normal fight.

El_Borracho · October 29

code65536 wrote: »

When boss flies into the air for the event's crowborn encounter, they're immune and there's nothing for you to do. That's a pointless immunity phase. But this is not it. And if you think it's too boring, try doing it in a full group of 12 where the majority of players do nothing during the mechanic. That'll spice things up quite a bit.

Now imagine the Crowborn boss flying for 50 and 80 seconds. Man, if only that boss fight included the gripping drama that is crouching and drinking a potion instead of killing adds...

Just because Crowborn is worse, easier, similar, etc. doesn't mean Hollowjack is spicy fun.

kargen27 · October 29

Alaztor91 wrote: »

Taril wrote: »

Alaztor91 wrote: »

If ZOS doesn't want groups of players nuking ''group bosses'' then just dynamically scale their health based on the number of players present, instead of it being a fixed value probably balanced around 4 players.

Except, that doesn't solve the problem.

If they scale the bosses health so that groups of CP 2k+ with full gold gear don't vaporize them, then your average Joe McPleb team will require absurd amounts of time to kill the boss.

The issue isn't with the number of players, it's the vast difference between newbies and fully geared vets and the fact that they need to make it so that newbies still have an actual chance at beating the bosses and have fun doing so (I.e. Not grinding out for 60+ minutes on a health sponge)

If you want an easy fix, that'd be to apply DPS caps on the bosses. So that fully geared players aren't doing so much more damage. (Though you'd probably still see plenty of complaints about how long the boss takes to kill...)

My comment was aimed towards non-instanced bosses. If the health of a WB/Dragon/Harrowstorm/Oblivion portal guy/etc scaled dynamically with the number of players present(with a minimum scaling of 4 players) ZOS could buff their rewards and remove the 12 person drop limit because they would no longer be instantly killed, if they are no longer instantly killed you don't need ''immunity phases'' and their respective mechanics(if they have any) could be seen. It could even be a fun fight because they aren't being instantly deleted and ZOS could maybe even increase their damage so that you actually need Tanks and Healers.

Imo stuff like WB and ''Incursions'' become really boring when there are too many people present and are a chore when you are solo. Current system sucks because after doing the ''Do X task 30 times'' achievement there is mostly no reason to keep doing them. Increasing their rewards motivates more people to do them, we can clearly see this when there is an event tied to them and they get swarmed.

The issue with the DPS gap could also be mitigated with things like increasing DoT durations, standardizing their durations to allow for an easier rotation, increase buff durations/make more buffs work ''while slotted on either bar'', reducing light attack damage so that weaving is less important, etc.

Where you run into a problem is when players show up after the fight has begun. If three people are camping a dragon site and ten more show up after the fight starts because they traveled from a different dragon they just finished the fight is scaled for three players. What would the radius be for being counted in the dragon fight? Might it count a few players nearby who are only in the area gathering materials or just passing by? Hard to scale something to number of players when that number can change at any time.

Taril · October 29

kargen27 wrote: »

Hard to scale something to number of players when that number can change at any time.

Not really. MMO's have been doing it for years at this point.

Dynamically scaled enemies typically just get health increases (Both current and maximum) per player who's tagged them (I.e. Is currently eligable for rewards for their death such as loot/exp/quest or event progression)

Alaztor91 · October 29

kargen27 wrote: »

Where you run into a problem is when players show up after the fight has begun. If three people are camping a dragon site and ten more show up after the fight starts because they traveled from a different dragon they just finished the fight is scaled for three players. What would the radius be for being counted in the dragon fight? Might it count a few players nearby who are only in the area gathering materials or just passing by? Hard to scale something to number of players when that number can change at any time.

That's why I said dynamic scaling. Let's say for example that Dragons are currently scaled for 4 players(standard group size), if 4 or less players are fighting the Dragon it would have the standard 15m health it currently has, if 10 more players show up its health would be increased by a certain %. If the Dragon was at 50% health when the 10 extra players arrived, it would still be at 50% of its max health, but now it's max health would be something like 35m+.

The scaling would probably be something like +50% extra health for every 4 additional players(standard group size) that show up so that higher numbers are still incentivized, but you still take into account stuff like new/inexperienced players that want to tag along.

Other stuff that could also be done with Dragons in particular when they are scaled up is having more/harder Atronach/Undead spawns, more frequent uses of the Soul Tear shout, more frequent uses of the Tail/Wing attack or the Chomp Heavy attack, etc.

The radius that the game would use for being counted in the Dragon fight would be the ''circle arena'' that the fight takes place in. Basically, if you are attacking it or healing someone that is fighting it you are counted as being present.

GW2 does this whole dynamic event scaling really well, it can even scale down certain events if players leave or resurrect at the nearest wayshrine, but that wouldn't be an issue here since you can revive yourself with a Soul Gem.

MidniteOwl1913 · October 30

Hapexamendios wrote: »

Unpopular opinion? I thought that was the prevalent opinion.

Me too.

It's not just the fight, the mechanics have a sweet spot for the number of players. Too few and you can't survive the last phase, too many and dealing with the resource drain sources that scale is an issue.