Feedback Wanted: Serpent Trial

Butters21 · September 2014

nusphere_ESO wrote: »

its sad ...

i was really happy - that the 1 boss in the new trial isn't able to overheal ... but he is ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEsIjpPXU_Q

after this video it seems interessing until the boss is down - first time ... after this - the most players will do it in overheal mode! ...

don't do this zos ... after 1 week the complete ini will be boring and there isn't something, that binds the raiders anymore! ... add a fear attack ... or platforms where players must stand. but do something against overhealing a trial boss!!!! SOON!!!

I am part of this guild we had a meeting with the developers last night, What we did in this video will be impossible to do once live! So very good news.

nusphere_ESO · September 2014

i hope!

i hear so oft: okay lets go on PTS and have a look, so we could find technics how we break the mechanic of an boss.

this sounds like: look how we cheat the game and show our big e-pen!

I love the idear of the first boss in AA, its a wonderfull mechanic. but what we do all the time? we knock him down in 16-20 seconds ... this isn't fun - this is boring.

sometimes i hope a hidden mechanik will trigger - a dmg reflection shield on the boss after he gets to much dmg in to short time. this shouldn't be able to "negate" ... negate is one of the most important ultis to break boss mechanics.

The most mechanics shouldn't be able to negate ...

@ZOS_GinaBruno‌ @ZOS_KaiSchober‌

squshy7 · September 2014

nusphere_ESO wrote: »

i hope!

sometimes i hope a hidden mechanik will trigger - a dmg reflection shield on the boss after he gets to much dmg in to short time. this shouldn't be able to "negate" ... negate is one of the most important ultis to break boss mechanics.

@ZOS_GinaBruno‌ @ZOS_KaiSchober‌

Yano, I've often thought about this, and I believe it would be an interesting mechanic; the antithesis of a dps check, sort of a dps "gate"; measures the groups sustain, not burst, in both dps and healing.

Sasky · September 2014

squshy7 wrote: »

Yano, I've often thought about this, and I believe it would be an interesting mechanic; the antithesis of a dps check, sort of a dps "gate"; measures the groups sustain, not burst, in both dps and healing.

On most of these bosses, your DPS gets amplified compared to normal mobs due to the FG line and being able to mostly ignore defense. So far the devs have countered this by just putting in higher and higher HP. In contrast, perhaps give the boss a straight-up 50% damage reduction. This has the effect of cutting DPS differences between group members in half, which would help un-optimized / un-balanced builds some. It also makes the trials playable longer through the inevitable MMO power creep (as your DPS increases only apply 50%).

Preventing group stacking is a bit more of a challenge. In order to be accessible to melee builds, some sort of stacking needs to be allowed in order to let melee get close enough to the boss (and to each other) to do damage. As well, with raid-wide damage, the best option is pretty much to stack because AoE heals are so much more cost-effective.

Sunrock · September 2014

The stacking up for healing is not rally the problem in it self. The problem is that you can stay stacked up and stand still during the entire fight ignoring everything the boss does. This makes most fights very boring for those that play healers. Spaming healing spring with a combat prayer every 8 sec is not really fun.

What makes a fun boss fight is that you are forced to move around to avoid damage. Either forcing individual players or make the group stack up while moving, IE move in formation, does not really matter as long as you can't stand still during the entire fight.

We where 10 players that tested out the Serpent trials yesterday. And before the black hole that you see on the ground suck in 4 players you can not stack up as there are 2 simultaneous 5m to 7m radius AOE based earth quakes that does about 4k physical damage each. You can't out heal that, especially if you stack up and get over lapping quakes and you can not use any skill to nullify it as its not do magic damage. But after the sucking hole appears the quakes stops and you can stack. So if the boss just keep casting those quakes during the entire fight you can't stack up ever. I guess that is what going to change for the live version.

But I want to give some feed back on the quake AOE animation.... As it is now the visual queues for it can be a bit confusing or challenging to read. What happens is that first you see some green smoke coming up from the ground then you see a red circle on the ground and then it goes "boom". Normally the red circle on the ground is the indicator to the player to get the *peep* out of the aria. However when you see the red circle here it's already too late. You need to start to move away as soon as you see the green smoke to have enough time to get out of the aria... even if you use a dodge roll.

IMO it might be best to just remove the red circle on the ground all to gather or stick to having that as the universal queue to "not stand in red". The first couple of times I thought the game was lagging or something like it because between the red circle appears and it goes boom is roughly 0.5 sec. For an average human brain to understand what is going on and how to react to an unexpected event takes 2 seconds. At least that is what you learn when taking your driving license. So any visual queue to tell the player to move out of any aria to avoid damge has to be minimum 2,5 sec long. Now many players are used to have the red circle on the ground as that queue from allot of other MMORPGs. I know old school MMOS did not use "don't stand in red" queues, not even vanilla WoW. So it's not really necessary to only use that as visual queues. But it might be good to stick to the standard to new confuse players...

PS:
Re: Keeping tank alive after the sucking hole.

Keeping the tank alive during that face because 4 players disappears was not really the problem for us. The main problem for us was keeping the 4 players alive before they even manage to do any damage at all to the Serpent, I'm guessing it is who appears in the hole, before he 1 shots every one with a 3800 damage hit.

But as we was not a full group, missing 2 players, I cant really comment on the "enrage timers"

Sunrock · September 2014

Denaia wrote: »

I haven't done the trial but I still have some feedback;

Please do not have any fights with 'enrage' timers or any ability that becomes harder to counter the longer the fight progresses. It will make sure that many builds will not be able to complete the trial just because they cannot do the right dps, even though they are good players.

Valariel is already a huge pain in the ass for me as I am not going with a destro staff spec (which is a great way to do the dps required) and I don't like the game telling 'no, you cannot do this with your build' just because my dps is not the most optimal.

Please make your 'play how your want' comment true and let all builds complete the trial if they are skilled and not because they have enough dps.

Hope this feedback is heard as a fight like valariel is really a gamekiller for me and because I am seeing the aoe hits harder and harder the first boss will have the same issue.

@Denaia‌

Having some version of an enrage timers is unfortunately a necessary evil. If you don't have any form of "enrage timer" on a boss at all you only need 1 tank and 11 healers... Making any "DPS" build totally unnecessary at all. That will for sure make even more builds totally unnecessary during the trials as no one wants to take in any pure DPS builds at all. At least not any PUG group or any other group that is not interested in doing speed runs.

The solution to your problem is not to remove "enrage timers" but to better balance the player combat abilities better. And the main problem here I think is that it's so easy to replenish your magica compare to replenish your stamina during a fight. If you are a magica built DD you can use potions, equilibrium or do heavy attacks with a restoration staff to replenish magica. DD'ers that do most or all of there attacks using stamina you only have potions to replenish stamina during combat. As long as this does not change restro+destro staff DD will always be the easiest way to get a high sustainable DPS during any fight that last longer then 10 sec.

PS: 'play how your want' also means you have the option to play a very bad build as well. Thinking 'play how your want' in anyway way means that any build should be valid for any situation is a very far stretched argumentation. Especially when the game have over 300 skill points and you only need about 100 skill points for any end game build witch means you have the option to change setup very easily without having to respec anything.

Sotha_Sil · September 2014

I watched the video and I really hope this is not going to be on live because it is AWFUL.

Concerning the stamina regeneration issue, hopefully when we get our hands on altering ability weapons we will be able to restore stamina too.

Azula · September 2014

The last boss sure is a interesting fight.

Having a bit of a problem with the trash. As there are so many ranged mobs, sometimes they will all target a single person before the tanks have a chance to taunt (at the start of a pull). It results in the unlucky person getting one shot.

akriden · September 2014

Wir waren da jetzt ein paar Mal drinnen und wir lassen das jetzt auf ungewisse Zeit. Sorry, aber der Sprung von Archiv und Hel Ra, selbst im Hardmode ist einfach nur irre. Ich spiel echt schon verdammt lange MMOs und hab alles gelegt, aber hier der erste Boss ist vorerst einfach nur unmöglich.

Wie schwierig ist diese Prüfung in Vergleich zu der Prüfung des Kriegers oder der Magierin?
Magierin ist einfach, Hel Ra mit ein bißchen Übung ebenfalls. Der Unterschied zum Sanctum ist wie Tag und Nacht. Von 10% Anspruch auf 100%

Biete diese Prüfung mehr oder weniger Spannung als die anderen Prüfungen?
Spannung bietet sie überhaupt nicht, nur Frust

Erster Anführer:
Seid ihr in der Lage, euren Tank während der Portal-Rotation am Leben zu halten. Z.B.: Könnt ihr ihn am Leben erhalten bis die zerstreute Gruppe wieder zusammenkommt?
Ja, allerdings überlegt die Gruppe oft den Zwischenboss nicht bzw. braucht trotz guter DDs einfach zu lange.

Der große Flächenschaden wächst mit jedem Mal, das er gezaubert wird. Wie lange währte euer Kampf als ihr daran gestorben seid?
Ist eine Scherzfrage oder? Sorry, aber das ist einfach nur übertrieben. Baut einen Hardmode für solche Sachen ein.

Wieviele Heiler nutzt ihr?
Aktuell 3 Tanks, 3 Heiler, Rest DDs

Aktuell, wenn man nicht zur absoluten Oberklasse/Elite gehört, einfach nicht machbar und unglaublich frustrierend.

Noch ein Bild, in voller Tankausstattung und im Block bzw. als DD im Block beim Zwischenboss:

Sunrock · September 2014

akriden wrote: »

Ist eine Scherzfrage oder? Sorry, aber das ist einfach nur übertrieben. Baut einen Hardmode für solche Sachen ein.

That is not really true. The fight is not so mush about individual skilled players but a trained team of players. The most important thing about being able to down this boss is that all 12 members of your group can act as "one body one mind".

And if we compare pare the difficulty mode of other them park MMOS tier#2 or #3 raids like WoW, EQ2, AoC and so on the Serpent trials are about the same difficulty mode.

Yes the jump from HR to Serpent is big but AA and HR is stupidly easy and is designed so anyone can do it without having to worry too mush about team play.

Just practice team play allot and you will be able to down it. Just remember that it only takes 1 to "***" for the group to go down in flames...

Here is one tip for you.. Make sure every one in your group knows how to block and heal at the same time.

akriden · September 2014

Did you do this group stacking on live servers? And how you deal with the voidzones, which ports 4 players to another boss room ? There is no chance to beat this boss without a tank. There is no time to react or dodge outside the dark hole.

Sunrock · September 2014

akriden wrote: »

Did you do this group stacking on live servers? And how you deal with the voidzones, which ports 4 players to another boss room ? There is no chance to beat this boss without a tank. There is no time to react or dodge outside the dark hole.

What we do is using 2 tanks and 3 healers. Then we have 3 groups of 1 healer 2 DPS that spread out to the left right and center. The extra tank stay with the center group so they becomes 4. After he do the "stomp" AOE the black hole will appear the 3 groups quickly stack up.Then the extra tank runs to where he is needed, or take over the tanking of the boss. If the hole spawn on the center group the tank don't have to run anywhere though

. If not the members have to kite the boss for 2-3 sec before the tank rives and can taunt. If the black hole spawn on the "main tank" have 2 DPS and 1 healer dedicated to quickly jump in. Or how your situation looks depending on how many are melee DPS.

Next stage the boss will cast some poison spears and for this we stack up (and I mean stack up as every one stand inside each other). We wait for him to cast the spear every one blocks and move out of the AOE. During this face you need to have more then just 2 healers that are left on the surface so everyone should have a backup restro staff and spam healing spring. This part of the fight is purely survival until the 4 kill the serpent shadow so don't worry about DPS here. After the 4 killed the serpent shadow the show starts over... so spred a bit so you can control who get sucked in for the next black portal and DPS as mush as you can.

Here is how we spred out

This is the path we kite him. Using this path will free up allot of space for the 2nd DPS stage. So you don't have to worry about placing the spears too correctly.

akriden · October 2014

Thank you very, very much for your guide and the pictures. We will try this tonight

Sunrock · October 2014

Was talking in team speak guild chat about the difference between Serpent trial and AA and HR.

And you can say that Serpent trial if compared to different dance style are more like Square dancing and AA and HR is more like club dancing

Petros · October 2014

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hello everyone!

We're looking to gather some specific feedback for the Serpent Trial. If you've had a chance to test out this new Trial, please answer the questions below. Also, if you plan on streaming your Trial runthrough, let us know! We'd love to watch, and will share good runs on our social media pages.
How does the overall difficulty of this Trial compare to the Warrior and Mage Trials?

Is the Trial more or less engaging than the prior Trials?

First Boss:
Are you able to keep your tank alive through a portal rotation. IE: Can you keep your tank alive until the split group comes back?

The large AOE scales its damage each time it’s cast, how long has the fight gone on when you are dying from it?

How many healers are you using?

Thoughts from The Lion Guards (NA/DC) Main Tank:

This week, we managed to find a great strat, we got him down to 14%.

Are you able to keep your tank alive through a portal rotation. IE: Can you keep your tank alive until the split group comes back?

Yes, they are able to keep me and the off tank alive for the duration, but as the fight continues in length, it's harder to keep other players alive from the AoE.

The large AOE scales its damage each time it’s cast, how long has the fight gone on when you are dying from it?

Good to know about this mechanic. Is this an OVERALL mechanic, or just between portal phases? Roughly near 30% it does get a lot more difficult, roughly 8 mins in, then people start dying from the AoE.

How many healers are you using?

Normally, 3 templar healers with 3 sorcs with healing off bars, and pretty much, every class has an off bar for healing, but we minimized it to 3 temps heals and 3 sorcs off heals for AoE/portals.

**Mainly what seems to happen is random players get hit hard from the AoE, down to either 10% health or death (claims to be blocking) while others are in the 40-60%

***It would be nice to know, if we could determine what attacks are poison or melee or spell damage from the attacks in the death recap so we could determine what each player would need more of to survive.

Overall, it's a challenging and fun fight, he have the mechanics down, we can do it, it's only the randomize deaths that really hurt us and the AoE damage stacking he produces. The *** suggestion would be really awesome for in-game hints.