Satisfying kill. This boss is chronicles of ridiculous.

KenjiJU · November 2014

V14 - Vet Spindleclutch - Praxin Douare. This boss was beyond keyboard breaking for a while, but we got it after reforging a group from failed ones and trying and swapping out members (sort of a half pug). Sorry if this is non-sensicle, but proud of the group run we ended up finishing. We managed to finish the rest of the dungeon for a gold key too. Was my first time in the Vet version of this dungeon. Last boss was 20x easier than the ghost boss.

Fight starts with about 30 spiders that will overtake anyone within a few seconds of spawning. Even full aoe nukedown will still get you killed if you're near the entrance of the room. After clearing this, a Spider boss spawns, followed by two other bosses on a timer. A fourth, main boss is all the while going through phases shooting bolts, tri-floor missiles, casting heavy mana burn DoTs on a player and a ring that kills either the player it's cast on or nearby party members if they touch the edge. A few times I got knockbacked by the boss while in the ring for an insta-kill. It's a lot to take in.

If you're having trouble getting through the VR14 Vets, but your group has an inkling that you may be able to do it, stick with it.. they are actually do-able even if it feels like against all odds.

Thanks team

*You're also free to laugh at my loadout and or lack of addon usage. I was the main healer.

Circuitous · November 2014

I was wondering if anyone else ever said Chronicles of Ridickulous.

quarnyrwb17_ESO · November 2014

Yep just completed this, I've completed the dailies every day since the patch and I'd have to say it's one of the hardest bosses so far... those "mini" bosses have 100k HP each, watching out for the instagib aoe and dodging that tri-split aoe while trying to kill 2 mini bosses at the same time? Fun fun!

Valymer · November 2014

Just another example of bosses with waves of adds being overpowered. These types of mechanics are not fun. And by mechanics I mean "try over and over again wasting thousands of gold in soul gems until you get lucky and somehow survive the instant-kill damage"

Phinix1 · November 2014

I am all for a challenging raid experience, but I too am firmly against ANY insta-kill mechanic that isn't incredibly easy to avoid.

There are just too many variables with pugs, and ZOS will not be able to sustain the franchise in the long-term by catering only to those that use coordinated pre-mades with voice chat.

I think part of the problem is that many are coming from the template of WoW (and other MMO's) where there was a 3rd tier between "normal" and "psychotic." In those games, normal was easy, heroic (veteran) was moderately challenging (you could die), and then the highest tier was raids (and later heroic and hard mode raids).

In those games people accepted that raids would be exclusive to the hardcore twitch monkeys for two primary reasons:

1) There was enough heroic content to keep them satisfied and

2) You could gear up to a comparable (but not quite equivalent) level farming heroic tokens.

Sure, you missed out on the REALLY cool gimmick items (dislodged foreign object anyone?), but the heroic gear was good enough to start raiding and dominate anything in PVE.

In this game, there really isn't that satisfying middle ground. I think that will be the game's undoing, when it comes to end-game longevity. I do see they are beginning to take steps to avoid that, however.

This is a good thing.

EDIT: Also grats on the kill, OP.

Valymer · November 2014

We just gave up on this boss and went to DSA, and I am having much more fun here. I'm not gonna waste soul gems and repair bills trying to push past unavoidable one-shots...guess I'm not hardcore enough for that.

DSA requires tactics, coordination, etc. but when I die at least I know that it was because I screwed up and not because I just fell victim to some *** mechanic.

Hats off to the OP for sticking with this one though.

qiyamatawilrwb17_ESO · November 2014

I was the lowest player there at V2.
the 1st spider wave can straight at me every time

was lucky to have a group of determined players so we got it done without losing anyone. group quitters the the worst!

darkshade last boss for eg.
if the "skeletizes" the healer there's a good chance you will fail.
if players change their loadouts to add some support healing/regen and some cc to get those adds in an area while everyone hits the boss=problem solved!
on the "final" attempt declared by the quitter. the tools are there, use them.

Valymer · November 2014

Yeah that first wave of spiders is ridiculous. With everyone stacked and two people spamming combat prayer as fast as possible we still couldn't survive it even with veil of blade, circle of protection, bone shield, etc. Aggro is too wonky in this game, proximity doesn't seem to matter--the person standing farthest away kept drawing all of the aggro even without moving or using any abilities, that's just stupid.

I couldn't imagine doing it with a PUG.

This was at VR12 scaling though

aco5712 · November 2014

i have done this dungeon twice now with hard mode. Your dps is the key really. You gotta burst the adds down fast before the next wave comes.

BUT PLEASE ZENIMAX do not nerf any of these mobs in the dungeons. As a pure pvper, i have actually come out of pvp and have enjoyed myself quite alot in these dungeons. If you made it easier you would disappoint alot of people.

Ragefist · November 2014

Well done dude! We struggled with this madness as well and that was VR8 scaled by our lowbie dpser.

Its true that after this, kill of the last boss with achievement felt like bullying a kid next door.

I think its generally a problem with bosses that spawn adds. Get your sense of proper achievement before ZOS fixes it hehe

Gyudan · November 2014

aco5712 wrote: »

i have done this dungeon twice now with hard mode. Your dps is the key really. You gotta burst the adds down fast before the next wave comes.

BUT PLEASE ZENIMAX do not nerf any of these mobs in the dungeons. As a pure pvper, i have actually come out of pvp and have enjoyed myself quite alot in these dungeons. If you made it easier you would disappoint alot of people.

The first spider wave requires some investigation from ZoS though. If Negate Magic isn't used as soon as they spawn (happens when there is no sorc in the group ...), one player will be killed instantly.

xaraan · November 2014

Yeah, we did this last night for the pledges (four times for each of our v14 characters) and every time it was crazy with how fast the stuff spawns. I think ZoS just had some sort of blanket power up for everything and didn't really do much real balancing with it. More than the power levels of the mobs in the dungeons, they need to really work on the timers of the mechanics in all the dungeons - though some stuff hits way too hard IMO here and there. No matter what players that have beat them say (yes, we've beat all of them) about wanting to keep it hard, this isn't vet arena, this stuff should be do-able for players and if you can't do the achievements (anyone try a time achievement on one of these at v12? - all the bosses are do-able but have much more health and take much much longer to get down), then something is off.

I know every time someone says stuff like this there are people that crop up about players whining about making the game weaker. Fact is, it's not balanced. Most all of the v12 dungeons are harder than Crypt of Hearts (v12) or City of Ash(v14). This is coming from someone that has completed them all first try and enjoys the concept - I just recognize when something doesn't feel right. I care more about balance of the game and what makes sense than being in a club of people that says "I can do it when you can't."

zbtiqua · November 2014

KenjiJU wrote: »

V14 - Vet Spindleclutch - Praxin Douare. This boss was beyond keyboard breaking for a while, but we got it after reforging a group from failed ones and trying and swapping out members (sort of a half pug).

Praxin is harder than the last boss in Vet DSA now.

LoL @ Game balance...

KenjiJU · November 2014

Is that true? Maybe I should go get my achievement there then.

Valymer · November 2014

aco5712 wrote: »

i have done this dungeon twice now with hard mode. Your dps is the key really. You gotta burst the adds down fast before the next wave comes.

BUT PLEASE ZENIMAX do not nerf any of these mobs in the dungeons. As a pure pvper, i have actually come out of pvp and have enjoyed myself quite alot in these dungeons. If you made it easier you would disappoint alot of people.

Sorry, but this statement is simply incorrect.

The first wave of spiders kills one player INSTANTLY if they all aggro the same person, which is often the case.

It doesn't matter if you are blocking, drink a potion, you will die from the zerg of spiders if they swarm you.

It has nothing to do with the DPS of your group, even with pulsar spam + veil of blades and the dual wield aoe you cannot kill them before they kill one group member.

The only way to survive it is if you get lucky and they all aggro the tank who is holding block with immovable up and whatever else they can do to mitigate the damage.

This is not a mechanic which requires skill, or training, it is purely luck and is not something that makes the game more fun.

s7732425ub17_ESO · November 2014

For comparison, pre patch all the mini bosses of that fight had 25k HP max. Now they have 75k HP scaled to VR6.

Yet, another unfortunate, unforeseen, and untested side effect of the new dungeon scaling.

Laz · November 2014

Not sure why you had such a problem with it, I've beaten the entire dungeon before quite easily. Glad you finally got through it though! Congrats!

KenjiJU · November 2014

On the flip side, had a pretty bad experience with Darkshade VR5 today unfortunately. Mostly due to group balance though. Having too little AoE for one fight, followed by almost no ranged on the final boss.

Laz wrote: »

Not sure why you had such a problem with it, I've beaten the entire dungeon before quite easily. Glad you finally got through it though! Congrats!

On VR12/14?

Shunravi · November 2014

Valymer wrote: »

aco5712 wrote: »

i have done this dungeon twice now with hard mode. Your dps is the key really. You gotta burst the adds down fast before the next wave comes.

BUT PLEASE ZENIMAX do not nerf any of these mobs in the dungeons. As a pure pvper, i have actually come out of pvp and have enjoyed myself quite alot in these dungeons. If you made it easier you would disappoint alot of people.

Sorry, but this statement is simply incorrect.

The first wave of spiders kills one player INSTANTLY if they all aggro the same person, which is often the case.

It doesn't matter if you are blocking, drink a potion, you will die from the zerg of spiders if they swarm you.

It has nothing to do with the DPS of your group, even with pulsar spam + veil of blades and the dual wield aoe you cannot kill them before they kill one group member.

The only way to survive it is if you get lucky and they all aggro the tank who is holding block with immovable up and whatever else they can do to mitigate the damage.

This is not a mechanic which requires skill, or training, it is purely luck and is not something that makes the game more fun.

Based on my extensive experience with the fight both tanking and dps, no it is not a one shot. When handled correctly that is. It's not luck. (Dps is not necessarily key though. It is important....)

They will attack the first one to hit them, even if they go after someone else first. Stay a distance from the tank at first, give any that agro to you distance to travel.

Use aoe cc like an icestaff wall, or volcanic rune, or veil, or (my personal favorite) calthrops, or of course, negate.

Our tank throws out calthrops a few seconds before the fight so he can regen stamina. Then we wait a sec to engage on the adds for the calthrops to hit. Most, if not all, are now agroed on the tank.

Listen for the npc to say 'why are things never easy.' That's the battle cue.

The only thing my tank has really ever needed for this bit is hist bark. (That and me standing next to him spamming sap essence. Of course, he's spamming it too so I'm not sure who is healdpsing more...)

You have more than enough time to spread out around the room to prepare. Don't be too close, but be ready to assist the tank, and you will do fine. That is untill the boss goes litch mode... But the mechanics there are easy enough to avoid. Especially if the tank turns the boss away from the group. Then the three missiles are not really a problem.

I have been running it several times today with my guildies and a few pugs. Only had a sorc once, he didn't use negate. It wasn't necessary.

KenjiJU · November 2014

Yup. Along with what Shunravi said, I had our group move to the far side of the room to give us a little more time before the spiders reached us and I used Ice Blockade to slow them down. This also came in handy with the firebugs in VR14 Crucible.

Circuitous · November 2014

Ghost spiders? I forgot they were there the first time we fought the guy, and got destroyed before I even saw them. We all had a good laugh, a "lol whoops" moment, then we got smart. Everyone stood behind the ghost guy except the tank. Spiders spawn, tank AOEs, I spam heals and shields, and then I dropped Ult while the DPS dropped their AOEs. Spiders went down in no time, no one died.

You're basically screwed if you don't know they're coming, though.

Duccea · November 2014

First off, congratulations to everyone who actually managed to beat that boss.

Valymer wrote: »

We just gave up on this boss and went to DSA, and I am having much more fun here. I'm not gonna waste soul gems and repair bills trying to push past unavoidable one-shots...guess I'm not hardcore enough for that.

DSA requires tactics, coordination, etc. but when I die at least I know that it was because I screwed up and not because I just fell victim to some *** mechanic.

Our group did exactly the same, we gave up on Praxin and then tried DSA (non vet, since our dps are VR7 and 9) for the first time, and we found that to be challenging, but fair. And definetly easier than the Praxin fight. I know that HP isn't everything and resistances and such play a role as well, but Praxin's "minibosses" at VR7 had more health than most of the real VR14 bosses in DSA.

In my opinion, a VR dungeon simply should not be harder than a trial.

Those waves of adds were simply ridiculous and made us feel like we were banging our heads against a concrete wall. And we're a regular group who play together often and use voice communication, so I don't even want to start to imagine how this was for most pugs.

Last but not least, the timing of the waves spawning was also wonky; during our hour or so of wiping and trying again, we noticed that the time between waves was not consistent, going as far as 2 waves spawning at once.

This fight feels like ZOS just slapped a ton of health on each mob per VR increase and didn't bother with how this would affect the mechanics of the encounter at all.

Valymer · November 2014

Shunravi wrote: »

Valymer wrote: »

aco5712 wrote: »

i have done this dungeon twice now with hard mode. Your dps is the key really. You gotta burst the adds down fast before the next wave comes.

BUT PLEASE ZENIMAX do not nerf any of these mobs in the dungeons. As a pure pvper, i have actually come out of pvp and have enjoyed myself quite alot in these dungeons. If you made it easier you would disappoint alot of people.

Sorry, but this statement is simply incorrect.

The first wave of spiders kills one player INSTANTLY if they all aggro the same person, which is often the case.

It doesn't matter if you are blocking, drink a potion, you will die from the zerg of spiders if they swarm you.

It has nothing to do with the DPS of your group, even with pulsar spam + veil of blades and the dual wield aoe you cannot kill them before they kill one group member.

The only way to survive it is if you get lucky and they all aggro the tank who is holding block with immovable up and whatever else they can do to mitigate the damage.

This is not a mechanic which requires skill, or training, it is purely luck and is not something that makes the game more fun.

Based on my extensive experience with the fight both tanking and dps, no it is not a one shot. When handled correctly that is. It's not luck. (Dps is not necessarily key though. It is important....)

They will attack the first one to hit them, even if they go after someone else first. Stay a distance from the tank at first, give any that agro to you distance to travel.

Use aoe cc like an icestaff wall, or volcanic rune, or veil, or (my personal favorite) calthrops, or of course, negate.

Our tank throws out calthrops a few seconds before the fight so he can regen stamina. Then we wait a sec to engage on the adds for the calthrops to hit. Most, if not all, are now agroed on the tank.

Listen for the npc to say 'why are things never easy.' That's the battle cue.

The only thing my tank has really ever needed for this bit is hist bark. (That and me standing next to him spamming sap essence. Of course, he's spamming it too so I'm not sure who is healdpsing more...)

You have more than enough time to spread out around the room to prepare. Don't be too close, but be ready to assist the tank, and you will do fine. That is untill the boss goes litch mode... But the mechanics there are easy enough to avoid. Especially if the tank turns the boss away from the group. Then the three missiles are not really a problem.

I have been running it several times today with my guildies and a few pugs. Only had a sorc once, he didn't use negate. It wasn't necessary.

To test this, I stood in the tunnel and the rest of the group stood in front of me in the room. When the spiders spawned they all ran directly to me and killed me instantly. I did not cast a spell at all before or after they spawned. This happened twice in a row.

To top it all off I dropped negate on them several times and the majority of them just ran right out of it. A lag? Bug? Not sure but it wasn't helping at all (and yes I know how to use it correctly).

After we left I thought about having the tank use something like volcanic rune to aggro them all quickly (he doesn't PVP so no caltrops, and not a DK so no talons) but by that point it didn't matter because we were doing something else.

I mean honestly we probably could have figured it out after an hour or two of wiping but we decided, you know what let's go do DSA where we can have a lot of fun and get nice loot instead of beating our heads against this wall and wasting a ton of soul gems and repair bills for mediocre rewards.

If dungeons are going to be this hard then there needs to be rewards that justify it. I never said that this fight was impossible, I read this thread before we even tried it so I knew people were beating it but ultimately what do you really get out of it other than a sense of accomplishment? Well that is a great feeling and I know it very well, but 5 exp in the Undaunted skill line and a chance at an item that I will in all likelihood deconstruct or try to sell on a guild trader just doesn't seem to justify the frustration that comes with it.

But I know that my words fall on deaf ears because the players that beat it will think that the balancing is fine and the players that do not will not. And that is just the nature of the beast.

Anyways I can go a day without the Undaunted skill line exp, I got really nice drops today from DSA and had a blast. I'm done talking about balancing and will just ignore content that I feel is not worth it, I honestly have better things to do both in RL and in game than spend more time debating it.

Valencer · November 2014

If the dungeon is scaled to VR5 is the difficulty then the same as the pre-1.5 version (which was VR5)?

According to what I'm reading here, the scaling might be a little off, to put it kindly. Though I suppose this is happening to all dungeons right now.

I remember doing this dungeon a while ago before 1.5 and even then the Praxin fight was a pain in the ass, with the first swarm of spiders basically killing group members in a split second. We got through it after a lot of attempts and timing our ultimates well, but it was a frustrating mess. Eventually we did get the kill and proceeded to clear the rest of the dungeon with only a couple of wipes at the very last vampire boss.

The VR14 version sounds painful and I really don't think anybody in my guild would be interested in going through it if it's way worse than the old VR5 one.

There's repair bills, soul gems and keyboards to think about here. Risk vs reward and all that.

Goresnort · November 2014

Mostly enjoying the new scaled group instanced dungeons.
The added difficulty is generally also nice.

However their scaling mechanic seems to have been too dependant on a generalized procedure, instead of individually tweaking each principal boss encounter, as some bosses and their abilities seems to have had 'spiked' scaling.

Certain attacks are doing dmg way over the top, some previously high Health bosses now have skewed Health pools, and adds on some bosses also have errounously much Health.

Not many bosses have these issues, but a few require some additional tweaking.

Loot/reward/risk is utterly skewed for all the vet Dungeons imo.

I get better and more useable loot from my hirelings and by farming Resource nodes in solo pve, then I get from doing challenging 4 man veteran Dungeon encounters.

KenjiJU · November 2014

I ran CoH VR14/VR12 tonight and it seemed much easier than the other Vet dungeons, perhaps since there's not much scaling going on. I did have an ideal group and players who knew fully what they were doing though. (Thanks guys)

Valencer wrote: »

The VR14 version sounds painful and I really don't think anybody in my guild would be interested in going through it if it's way worse than the old VR5 one.

I think part of the issue is learning the dungeon. It seems much easier when you have a few people who've been through the prepatch Vet version and understand the mechanics. Since we can't really elect to bring down the encounters (without a workaround) to what they originally were, it can become a rather big discouraging wall to those just joining in Undaunted line and a barrier to actually learning the fights. eg. the spider swarm feeling like it one-shots players at the beginning of Praxus fight.

Shunravi · November 2014

Valymer wrote: »

Shunravi wrote: »

Valymer wrote: »

aco5712 wrote: »

i have done this dungeon twice now with hard mode. Your dps is the key really. You gotta burst the adds down fast before the next wave comes.

BUT PLEASE ZENIMAX do not nerf any of these mobs in the dungeons. As a pure pvper, i have actually come out of pvp and have enjoyed myself quite alot in these dungeons. If you made it easier you would disappoint alot of people.

Sorry, but this statement is simply incorrect.

The first wave of spiders kills one player INSTANTLY if they all aggro the same person, which is often the case.

It doesn't matter if you are blocking, drink a potion, you will die from the zerg of spiders if they swarm you.

It has nothing to do with the DPS of your group, even with pulsar spam + veil of blades and the dual wield aoe you cannot kill them before they kill one group member.

The only way to survive it is if you get lucky and they all aggro the tank who is holding block with immovable up and whatever else they can do to mitigate the damage.

This is not a mechanic which requires skill, or training, it is purely luck and is not something that makes the game more fun.

Based on my extensive experience with the fight both tanking and dps, no it is not a one shot. When handled correctly that is. It's not luck. (Dps is not necessarily key though. It is important....)

They will attack the first one to hit them, even if they go after someone else first. Stay a distance from the tank at first, give any that agro to you distance to travel.

Use aoe cc like an icestaff wall, or volcanic rune, or veil, or (my personal favorite) calthrops, or of course, negate.

Our tank throws out calthrops a few seconds before the fight so he can regen stamina. Then we wait a sec to engage on the adds for the calthrops to hit. Most, if not all, are now agroed on the tank.

Listen for the npc to say 'why are things never easy.' That's the battle cue.

The only thing my tank has really ever needed for this bit is hist bark. (That and me standing next to him spamming sap essence. Of course, he's spamming it too so I'm not sure who is healdpsing more...)

You have more than enough time to spread out around the room to prepare. Don't be too close, but be ready to assist the tank, and you will do fine. That is untill the boss goes litch mode... But the mechanics there are easy enough to avoid. Especially if the tank turns the boss away from the group. Then the three missiles are not really a problem.

I have been running it several times today with my guildies and a few pugs. Only had a sorc once, he didn't use negate. It wasn't necessary.

To test this, I stood in the tunnel and the rest of the group stood in front of me in the room. When the spiders spawned they all ran directly to me and killed me instantly. I did not cast a spell at all before or after they spawned. This happened twice in a row.

To top it all off I dropped negate on them several times and the majority of them just ran right out of it. A lag? Bug? Not sure but it wasn't helping at all (and yes I know how to use it correctly).

After we left I thought about having the tank use something like volcanic rune to aggro them all quickly (he doesn't PVP so no caltrops, and not a DK so no talons) but by that point it didn't matter because we were doing something else.

I mean honestly we probably could have figured it out after an hour or two of wiping but we decided, you know what let's go do DSA where we can have a lot of fun and get nice loot instead of beating our heads against this wall and wasting a ton of soul gems and repair bills for mediocre rewards.

If dungeons are going to be this hard then there needs to be rewards that justify it. I never said that this fight was impossible, I read this thread before we even tried it so I knew people were beating it but ultimately what do you really get out of it other than a sense of accomplishment? Well that is a great feeling and I know it very well, but 5 exp in the Undaunted skill line and a chance at an item that I will in all likelihood deconstruct or try to sell on a guild trader just doesn't seem to justify the frustration that comes with it.

But I know that my words fall on deaf ears because the players that beat it will think that the balancing is fine and the players that do not will not. And that is just the nature of the beast.

Anyways I can go a day without the Undaunted skill line exp, I got really nice drops today from DSA and had a blast. I'm done talking about balancing and will just ignore content that I feel is not worth it, I honestly have better things to do both in RL and in game than spend more time debating it.

Yea, I don't blame you. It certainly isn't easy to figure out right off the bat.

Your test sounds like no one actually hit them, and they went after the highest threat target. (Or the one with lowest HP. that seems to happen too.) I cant comment on negate, because I have not seen it used much in the dungeon. though, I do remember it not working on all of them sometimes. Also, talons is overrated.

In any case, hope you did indeed have fun in DSA, I know I did.

Aeratus · November 2014

Valencer wrote: »

If the dungeon is scaled to VR5 is the difficulty then the same as the pre-1.5 version (which was VR5)?

Nope. A v5-10 dungeon scaled to v1 is still much harder than the pre-1.5 version.

Rodario · November 2014

Aeratus wrote: »

Valencer wrote: »

If the dungeon is scaled to VR5 is the difficulty then the same as the pre-1.5 version (which was VR5)?

Nope. A v5-10 dungeon scaled to v1 is still much harder than the pre-1.5 version.

That seems... weird and potentionally unintentional.

Aeratus · November 2014

Rodario wrote: »

Aeratus wrote: »

Valencer wrote: »

If the dungeon is scaled to VR5 is the difficulty then the same as the pre-1.5 version (which was VR5)?

Nope. A v5-10 dungeon scaled to v1 is still much harder than the pre-1.5 version.

That seems... weird and potentionally unintentional.

We can't be sure if it's intentional or not. But in any case, calling the new dungeons merely "scaled" is misleading, because the overall difficulty was increased regardless of the actual scaling level.

For example, vet COH was already at v12 prior to 1.5, but the new v12 version of it is harder, and some of the bosses have a lot more HP than what they used to have.

Valencer · November 2014

Aeratus wrote: »

Valencer wrote: »

If the dungeon is scaled to VR5 is the difficulty then the same as the pre-1.5 version (which was VR5)?

Nope. A v5-10 dungeon scaled to v1 is still much harder than the pre-1.5 version.

That's worrying. Vet dungeon difficulty was in a really nice place pre-1.5 IMHO. You needed a competent team with good builds to get through it smoothly.

From my perspective, the only downside was that they (and the loot) had static levels, so I was hoping this dungeon scaling made it more viable and fun to run them at any veteran rank. Then you'd be able to find more people to run them with. Same with normal dungeons, really.

I just don't see why they had to be made more difficult, even at their original level/rank.