Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

So March of Sacrificies HM is basicly Mazzatun's HM, just throwing mechanics on until you break under the weight.

It wasn't fun then this wouldn't be fun either.

I don't see how they are comparable. Mazzatun HM changed only 3 things: more boss stats, the addition of the stone shaper and root mason adds during the add spawns, and the removal of the reveal synergy so you actually have to communicate the statue location. The changes from non-HM to HM in Mazzatun were pretty modest, and we were able to clear Mazzatun's final boss HM in just 1-2 hours, on the first day we attempted that dungeon on the PTS.

In contrast, March HM changed 7 things: more boss stats, the fire attack with ridiculous DoT ticks, the cone attack that is a 1-shot to anyone who isn't a blocking tank, a very strong bleed DoT on the tank, multiple shades during the hunt that needs to be trapped, stranglers that grapple you during the hunt that only your teammates can save you from, and the ground/water denial mechanics are active during the hunt.

They're not even remotely comparable; Mazzatun HM is child's play compared to this mess of a HM.

Actually, now that you mention it, let's compare the non-HM vs. HM of the DLC dungeons.

• WGT
  1. Faster lightning line rotation (mostly just a challenge for execute, for groups who are slow to kill in execute)
• ICP
  1. Meteors drop throughout the entire fight (vs. only during the shade phase in non-HM) (adds virtually zero difficulty; the non-HM vs. HM gap for ICP is the smallest and most insignificant of all the DLC dungeons)
• Mazzatun
  1. More boss stats
  2. Two elite enemies during add spawns: stone shaper and root mason (the main source of difficulty for Mazzatun's HM--groups that focus them down and CC the shaper during his channel will find HM to be pretty straightforward)
  3. Reveal synergy not available for statues, which forces groups to communicate rather than just press a button
• Cradle
  1. More boss stats
  2. Instead of one door closed on non-HM, it's one door open on HM
  3. Mephala's statue shoots out bombs that will 1-shot DPS who are inattentive and fail to avoid or block them
• Falkreath
  1. More boss stats
  2. Two fewer columns (since the shouts happen at boss percentages and only start happening on a timer at the very end, this is only punishing for groups that scatter and end up using multiple columns per shout; for groups disciplined in staying together during the shout, the loss of these columns adds absolutely zero difficulty)
• Bloodroot
  1. More boss stats
  2. The mechanics synergies are not available (this means lava pools can never be cleansed, and the difficulty then becomes a matter of where RNG lands the lava pools--we've had pulls where RNG blesses us, sticks all the lava pools in out-of-the-way places, and the fight feels no different than non-HM, and we've had pulls where the lava pools are placed in the worst possible locations and we are quickly out of any safe places to stand)
• Scalecaller
  1. More boss stats (this is actually pretty significant since less boss health means it's easier to push the boss from ice phase to ice phase and thus forcing her to skip all her other mechanics, which is what we regularly do in non-HM)
  2. Individual protection mechanics (this adds difficulty in two major ways: first, it's additional targets that must die, thus slowing our DPS on the boss, extending the fight, and exposing us to more of the basic mechanics, and second, the roaming area-of-denial that they represent makes contending with the basic mechanics--that we see more of--more difficult)
  3. Commentary: Scalecaller is unique in that the things that make it hard are the base mechanics present in both HM and non-HM, and what actually makes HM hard isn't the HM stuff directly, but rather how the HM stuff slows you down and forces you to deal with more of the basic mechanics all the while getting in the way of you dealing with the basic mechanics. Because the basic mechanics are just so unforgiving, the more of them you have to do, the more opportunities there are for someone to mess up.
• Fang Lair
  1. More boss stats
  2. Orryn needs periodic interrupting during the first phase (a non-issue, since the damage is so low--if he can't be interrupted, a couple of dodge rolls and/or shields will easily save you)
  3. Colossi spawn initially with each crystal (coordinating ult drops on crystals makes them relatively easy to deal with)
  4. Two scarabs instead of one
  5. Ghost walls in the second phase (the biggest source of difficulty, given how quickly they spawn and then move and the difficulty of seeing them as they tend to blend in or be visually obstructed by the giant dragon of a similar color palette)
  6. Colossi at every 10% boss health in the second phase
• Moon Hunter Keep
  1. More boss stats
  2. Stranglers that add an extra layer of ambient damage if you stray from the center of the room
  3. The symbol mechanic
  4. Shock wardens (???) (not sure since we spent so little time with non-HM)
  5. More adds in general (???) (not sure since we spent so little time with non-HM)
• March of Sacrifices
  1. More boss stats
  2. The addition of a fire attack that does a big chunk of initial damage and then applies a ridiculous DoT on you--and this can happen during the hunt
  3. The addition of a wide conal attack that rotates and tracks the person it's targetting (so you can't actually get out of it, and trying to do so will just swing the cone, potentially into other players and killing them as well) and is a 1-shot if you're not a blocking tank--and this can happen during the hunt (the tank is not able to taunt, hold, and turn the shades, which is how you deal with the cone outside of the hunt)
  4. A very strong bleed that gets applied to the tank
  5. There are four separate shades that need to be caught in four separate traps during the hunt (vs. just one in non-HM)
  6. Stranglers will grapple you during the hunt and the only way to be free of them is for another player to notice that you are grappled and come to your rescue
  7. The poisoned ground and electrified water mechanics are active during the hunt (they are inactive during the hunt in non-HM), which means one more thing to pay attention to and avoid while dealing with the million other things during the hunt.

As I said earlier, the gap between non-HM and HM in March is by far the largest gap I've ever seen in a dungeon--a larger gap than either of the Dragon Bones dungeons and even its sibling dungeon, Moon Hunter Keep (we've cleared MHK's HM and it's downright tame compared to MoS, and that's saying a lot since MHK is still pretty challenging). It's not just that there are more things that are different--it's also that each of these differences by themselves are already pretty significant. For example, the first three differences that I listed for Fang Lair's HM are largely inconsequential and it's only the last two differences that have real teeth. But for March, all of the changes in HM (with the exception of boss health) have teeth.

@Katinas

please play the same again tonight or asap after and come list up your felt differences, especially on the Balorgh fight. We will be running again tonight as well and probably some other groups as well.

Here's hoping that the PTS server opens up alot sooner than last week and patch notes become available much earlier as well so there's still time to test this evening

We made another attempt at Hard Mode this evening.

First, I want to address the changes in today's patch notes.

Reduced the health of the Dire Wolves present in the encounter.

This is a good change. Now if we catch them in a destro, they die. (Whether or not we could reliably catch them in a destro without dying ourselves is another matter...)

The Shades of Balorgh can no longer cast Icy Roar.

Very good change.

There is now an Active Combat Tip that displays when the Fiery Eruption cast begins.

I don't think this is working. We didn't see any combat text for this mechanic. We saw combat text for things like the water being charged and the hunt starting, but not for his fire slam. One member of our group reported seeing some text in our first very pull. But he didn't see it again in any of our many subsequent pulls. And I don't think I ever saw the text.

We were also hoping that this text might give us a hint as to how to handle the fire. But the text that was reportedly seen was just something along the lines of "Balorgh is doing his fire thing".

Here's my problem: last week's patch notes said, "The Perfect Hunt Achievement now requires you to defeat Balorgh after desecrating the Moon Hunter Pack's banner, and without being hit by his fiery remnant ability for the duration of the encounter in Veteran March of Sacrifices." So... we're supposed to be able to avoid the fire DoT, right?! I mean, you said so yourself.

We tried last week and this week to avoid being hit by the fireballs. We tried dodging (early, late, even chain-dodging) and other means to avoid it, and we just haven't found a way to avoid the fireballs (aside from using nightblade cloak to cause the projectile to miss, but we are convinced that this isn't the intended way). This leaves us with three possibilities:

1. Maybe the "fiery remnant" referenced in the achievement isn't what we think it is. When the boss does his AoE fire slam, it sends out fireballs called Fire Blast. When hit by the fireball, we get an effect in our buff tracker called "fire remnant" ("fire", not "fiery"), and this effect ticks damage under the name of "Burning Embers". We are assuming that this is the "fiery remnant" that the achievement references, but we're not 100% sure since there's such a jumble of names.
2. There's a way to avoid it, but we just haven't figured it out yet. Hence why we were hoping that the combat text would've given us a hint. There was none, and none of the things we brainstormed worked.
3. It's not working as intended. Maybe you forgot to set the fireballs as dodgeable?

VO can now be heard at the beginning of the Fiery Eruption ability.

That's nice, but it doesn't help us. The fire slam (which is what I assume that "Fiery Eruption" is; if we stand in the AoE and die, the recap doesn't call it "eruption"--IIRC, I think it was "explosion") is not an issue outside of the hunt. But it is during the hunt, and the VO is played only outside the hunt, not during the hunt.

Burning Embers no longer ticks immediately from the Fiery Remnant ability.
Reduced the damage dealt per tick from Fiery Remnant.

This is a good change, and we can definitely feel it during the normal phases of the fight. I'd get three ticks of Embers, and a single shield will absorb most of that. Our strategy during the normal phase is to simply shield up when we see the fire coming.

But as I alluded to earlier, the problem isn't the normal phase of the fight. It's the hunt. So let's talk about the fire during hunt.

• The boss does not have VO for any of his abilities during the hunt, so we can't hear it coming.
• The boss shades do not render unless you are very close (at any reasonable distance, all you see are the glow from their eyes), so we can't see it coming.
• There is no active combat text for any of his abilities during the hunt, so we can't read that it's coming.
• It seems like everything does double (?) damage during the hunt. The electrified water, the poison plants, everything. That includes the fire.
• So, this is what it's like being hit by the fire during the hunt, keeping in mind that we can't hear/see/read that it's coming and that we can't dodge or avoid it:

So how are we supposed to deal with the fire during the hunt, aside from intensive shield-and-heal spamming throughout?



Now, for additional feedback outside of the 4.1.2 changes...

1. The bleed on the tank gets amplified when the boss enters the hunt. If there is a bleed already on the tank, when the boss enters the hunt, the final ticks of that bleed do hunt-enraged damage. Add in the couple of seconds where we don't have control over our characters because of the fear animation at the start of the hunt, and the tank basically insta-dies as soon as the hunt begins. This looks like a hoot and a half to deal with:
   
   The only way our tank was able to survive that was to cast Magma Shell right before the boss enters the hunt. Not sure how any other class of tank would be able to deal with that.
   
2. The poisoned ground and electrified water mechanics are present in the hunt in HM (but not in non-HM).
   • These mechanics do increased damage during the hunt.
   • The boss does not have VO for any of his abilities during the hunt, so we can't hear it coming.
   • The boss shades do not render unless you are very close (at any reasonable distance, all you see are the glow from their eyes), so we can't see it coming.
   • There is no active combat text for any of his abilities during the hunt, so we can't read that it's coming.
   • The only way we know the ground has been poisoned or the water has been electrified is something along the lines of, "Oh crap, this water that was safe just a second ago is now electrified and I'm starting to take damage!"
   • This is what it looks like when I'm in the middle of an island when the poison starts. With a cameo from the fire mechanic.
     
     The poisons ticks for 10K during the normal phases of the fight. And it's a lovely 20K one-shot during the hunt. If I had known that the poison mechanic was being cast, I might've been able to get out before it was too late, but as I just noted, there's no warning for it during the hunt, and the damage is so high that just a single tick of damage would kill me.
3. The traps have a nasty habit of being located inside an area denied by the poison and water mechanics. For example, there have been a number of times when the trap is right inside the electrified water, and if we want the boss to path through that trap, we have to stand in that water for a little bit. With focused healing and shielding, it can work sometimes. That is, until a fireball decides to say "hello":
   
   (The initial hit of the fire ball--the fire blast--did not show on the recap since it was fully absorbed by my shield. Also... a single 13K tick of the Embers DoT?!?!?!?!??!?!?!)
   
   (Also, not sure why the wolves are doing increased damage with each bite in this recap.)
   
4. After seeing all the seemingly generous adjustments in today's patch, we went into the fight with traditional DPS setups. That didn't go well, and we quickly switched back to the kinds of setups we had used last week. We were able to complete one hunt, but that was with every DD acting as a healer (this is in addition to the dedicated healer that we have). I had a resto staff back bar, and during the hunt, I was spamming purge (for the snare/slowdown removal), shields, keeping mutagen up, and making frequent use of the resto ult. Because there is just. so. much. damage. After hours of trying and our best pull only getting the boss down to around 40% or so, we gave up.

So my question to you, ZOS, is, "Have you actually playtested this fight on hard mode? What exactly did you envision players doing here?" Because even after all of the adjustments in 4.1.2, I just don't see this HM fight as fun--or even feasible--for 99.9% of the players in the game.

(Again, all this feedback is specific to just the HM version of the fight, and more specifically, just the hunt phases in HM; non-HM is so easy that it's a joke compared to HM. No fireballs at all. No poison/water mechanic during hunt. No stranglers. Just a single shade to trap.)

Cinbri wrote: »

This hunt for golden indrik boons is so fun. It remove possibility of speedrun but makes dung easier to complete. Very interesting mechanic.

@Cinbri We haven't tried the optional side hunts. Could you please elaborate? What does it do that makes the dungeon easier to complete?

I'd like to use the opportunity for a sec to remind the dear devs of some key elements that a well designed boss fight should have (personal opinion) and I will use as an example the 2 ogres fight in vSP which I really like in it's current state:

-The mechanics are hinted or communicated indirectly but clearly in such a way that even good pug people that don't speak english can 'get it'. (colored circles, cause and visual effect etc...) This prevents alot of trouble once the fight hits the veteran group finder

-The fight remains always challenging even to good players in order to keep it fun (prevents boredom), but at the same time very doable and possible once people understand the mechanics. (Even when you know the fight and did it alot it's still fun doing all the mechanics over and over because you still can fail due to a little bit of unlucky RNG or lack of skills or being drunk)

-Very competent players can compensate for less competent ones (always just enough rezz time just in between the mechanics for a good player to pull off a rezz without dying, a healer can use crushing shock interrupt to prevent skeevers if the dps doesn't do it etc...)

-The time of all mechanics is tuned to calculate overseas latency or technical problems (slow pc) in. In other words a player always has a certain time window to react and take action (a few seconds between visual/text notification of an incoming mechanic and the resulting BOOM damage on you)


Note that whenever devs fail to take even as little as just 1 of these requirements into account like in the vSP HM Zaan fight upon release time...Well we all remember what happened in eso live and that was even without any latency problems... The Zaan HM fight was simply considered total 'RNG luck' or 'impossible' until de devs tuned it several weeks after release to meet the last requirement in this list. I have the feeling the same will happen here after release on live.

I hereby invite them to not wait until release time before crosschecking this list to the fight(s)

I really believe that adding more mechanics to a fight -not stacking them!- is the key to increasing the difficulty of a boss fight to HM level

Dear devs when you test, please play and test with 200-300ms latency as a reference default just as we have to do right now (euro) and just like the many people on live in countries with bad internet lines

thanks for listening in advance

^Just to add to the above, props to the designers for the aesthetic during the hunt. As I believe was noted in the MoS article, they tried to really evoke the feeling of being stalked during that phase through sight and sound, and the amplified footsteps plus only seeing the swarm of glowing eyes through the fog is a really cool experience and accomplished that feeling.

However, I think that needs to be balanced with playability. If you need to sacrifice the cues to alert players to enemy attacks to preserve the stalked aesthetic, then maybe you need to sacrifice those attacks as well (or sacrifice some of the aesthetic). With only the mechanics currently in hm, I still think you can make a very challenging fight without stacking all of them up during the hunt phase during which they’re not adequately telegraphed. Or, perhaps there’s a broken mechanic that needs investigating. Maybe Balorgh is supposed to deal high damage during that phase so if a player is “caught” by him, it’s a death sentence. But maybe that damage multiplier isn’t supposed to be applying to bleeds that he applied before the phase, or to the heat seaking, undodgeable fireballs that you can have four of him shooting out intermittently. Or maybe you’re supposed to sneak during the hunt phase and the wolves/shades won’t attack you constantly, like during the Tarcyr fight, but a combat bug is preventing that from happening.

I think if you’d upload a video of some of the devs completing it on hm, that would assuage some playerbase concerns. I could be wrong, but it seems like the audience for the most recent DLC dungeon packs is:
Normal: accessible to all players at release.
Veteran: accessible to experienced players (CP300+) within a week of release.
Veteran hm: accessible to skilled players (generally CP700+) within a month of release.
And from what I’ve seen, the devs probably fall into/around that skilled player tier and I’d assume have been working on this for a month+. It wouldn’t even necessarily need to be a completion, but if we could see that they’re at least able to have a really good go at it, not continually get roflstomped without ever getting past 80%, I’d say its current design is defensible. If that’s not possible, then I’d argue that the design needs to be further balanced or more thoroughly tested to make sure it’s working as intended.

Patch notes commentary:

The additional damage from Balorgh’s The Hunt ability will no longer affect his bleed applied from his Swipe ability.

Thank you.

Balorgh’s Fiery Remnant ability can now be dodged.

Thank you.

The Active Combat Tips for Electric Water, Venomous Spores and Fiery Eruption will now display more reliably.

These tips still do not show reliably.

Being able to dodge the fireballs has made a huge difference during the hunt phases. The problem, though, is that it's really hard to dodge them when the hunt fog prevents you from seeing the ability being cast and the in-game combat tip notification still do not appear reliably. But that's okay, because addons exist to address these kinds of issues, right?

When we noticed that the combat text was still only showing intermittently, I made an addon to notify when the fire is being cast, and we were able to dodge the fireballs fairly reliably during the hunt. We then quickly found that, for us magicka-speced characters, stamina management was a bit tight because the shades really like shooting fireballs. Though with some adjustments, it was manageable. On a totally unrelated note, I hope folks kept their Amber Plasm pieces from Mazzatun!

On the topic of the in-game combat text, this is a general issue that's been in the game for years. For example, look at the Hulk taunt swap mechanic on the Rakkhat fight in vMoL. Each time the Hulk shatters the tank, there is in-game combat text that notifies the tank and tells them how severely they've been shattered. Except this text shows up only about a quarter of the time. This is why all tanks are taught to just manually keep count of the shatters that they get, because they cannot rely on the in-game text to tell them the degree of their debuff. And this has been an issue since the release of vMoL, which was well over two years ago. Similarly, in Cloudrest, the game displays a combat tip 3 seconds before a character gets the lightning curse. This way, the player is able to get on the bar that they want to "sacrifice". But in practice, the vast majority of the time, that combat text does not show, which is why players instead have to rely on Raid Notifier. This is a general game problem--it's not specific to March of Sacrifices. But as you design increasingly punishing and challenging mechanics that rely on cues that are not readily visible (in the case of the fire mechanic during hunt phases, it's literally invisible and hidden by the fog when you're a certain distance from the shades, and in the case of the Cloudrest mechanic, the accompanying visual effect of that 3s pre-curse is so subtle that it is almost impossible to see amidst all the other combat effects), this problem with the combat text has turned from a minor nuisance to a major problem that affects the feasibility of dealing with certain mechanics. (For starters, having combat text share the same UI space as synergy prompts and having the latter take priority probably wasn't a good design choice, ya know?)

In any case, addons can work around this issue. My condolences to the plebs console community, though.

How the fight feels this patch:

The fireballs being dodgeable (plus the help of an addon to do the job that the in-game combat tips were supposed to do) has made the hunt more manageable, and we cleared the hunt many times tonight. And I was no longer running a resto back bar like in previous weeks.

The problem is that to clear HM, you need to clear the hunt four times--at 80, 60, 40, and 20%. And clearing the hunt four consecutive times in a row is... still pretty tough. Our best attempt, we cleared three hunts and I think we trapped two of the shades in the final hunt.

We feel that MoS HM is still, by far, the hardest DLC HM. But it's manageable, and I think we could've gotten it if we had kept at it, but we called it because it had stopped being fun a long time ago.

The most common killer was stranglers. By the time someone calls out they were caught and someone reacts and goes back to free them, it's sometimes too late--the shades will get too close and 1-shot the victim and/or the player who had backtracked to save the victim. Many times, we were able to free the person and get back on track with no losses. But strangler-related mishaps (and ensuing domino effects) happen often enough that getting 4 consecutive successful hunts is pretty daunting.

There are three places where stranglers appear in the new dungeons.

1. MHK, maze area / lurcher boss... the stranglers here will spit and strangle you, and the only way to get free is for a teammate to free you... but there's really not anything dangerous there
2. MHK, final boss, hard mode only... the stranglers here will just spit at you; no love sessions with tentacles
3. MoS, final boss, hard mode only... the stranglers here will spit and strangle you, and the only way to get free is for a teammate to free you... and they spawn during a phase where you have limited visibility (you can't even see or target the strangler until you are close enough that it can strangle you), you have to contend with ground effects (it's so fun being strangled while crossing a channel of electrified water), and you're running from enemies that will 1-shot you if they caught you

As I said, MoS HM is the hardest DLC HM, harder than the HM of its sibling dungeon. And no, I'm not suggesting that MHK HM's stranglers should start strangling. If it were possible to break free of the stranglers in MoS HM, it would still make the stranglers punishing (particularly since stamina is tight from having to dodge roll a lot of fireballs), but it would make them a bit more manageable. (In Tempest Island, there is a boss that will stun a player, and that stun can be broken either by interrupting the boss or by breaking free; something like that would be nice here.)

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, the boons from the optional Golden Indrik hunts are disabled if HM is activated. They are available in non-HM, but not in HM. And I'm glad that they are disabled for HM, since they are really powerful buffs. Though it does further widen the already-substantial difficulty gap between non-HM and HM.

Bug reports:

Instead of having an instant-kill zone by the waterfall at the far "exit" end of the map, wouldn't it be better to just put in an invisible wall instead? There was one pull where the boss feared the tank into that instant-kill spot by the exit waterfall. (Video Clip) And there was another pull where the boss charged into that spot, got stuck, and then reset.

If I happen to have a fire DoT on me right before the boss enters the hunt, it does hunt-enraged damage and instantly kills me. Similar to the bleed problem that you fixed this patch. (Screenshot)

Also, we noticed stranglers spawning early in the fight in a number of pulls. They'd start appearing shortly after the fight began, before the boss entered the first hunt (they spawned around 90% boss health). Most pulls, the stranglers didn't spawn until the first hunt began, but there were some when they spawned before the first hunt. Is this intended?

break free on stranglers sounds like a really good suggestion. If you have to wait your group members to free you no PUG is ever going to clear this content... =P

Qbiken wrote: »

Disclaimer: I haven´t got the opportunity to try Marches of Sacrifice just yet (will do within the next few days though).

From what I can tell from @code65536 the last boss fight looks incredibly un-friendly towards non-magicka build that can´t rely on shields (what a surprise). Also seen LZH´s video where they do HM, and it´s not a fight where I personally would bring a stamina character.

The next part might sound like a more general "rant", but I hope I´m not alone when I say this:

While I understand that DLC content is supposed to be a bit more challenging, I don´t see the point in stacking several one-shot mechanics on top of each other. My issue with many of the latest content (not only DLC dungeons) is the extensive use of one-shot mechanics and the inability to recover from mistakes (aka "Can I resurrect my team-mate without having to be a Templar with Kagrenac, and not have to worry about dying myself"?).

Content can be difficult and challenging without having mobs between bosses dealing 30k one-shots without any visual hint, or having enrage mechanics that makes bossfights pure DPS-races (which is something I really dislike as well). A general rant, but I see this direction more and more in the new content that is released and I don´t think it´s healthy for the game.

Totally agree !

Every dungeon DLC is more harder to do than the others.

Look at the zone chat and you'l see that 99% of the player base want to do only non-DLC PLedges.

Why ? Because all the mechanics are poorly implemented with almost not a visual hint. Also ..there are too many mechanics ..every new dungeon DLC brings more mechanics....Seriously ZOS , this is more than exaggerated .

I understand that many people complain about the game content is too easy in many aspects. I agree that overland content is a joke for cp cap players but all the new content ( also the dungeon DLCs ) must be for the majority of players not for 5% of them .

We play ESO to have fun and the majority of the player base don't have time to stay all day trying to beat a HM dungeon or trial.

I think ZOS pushed the dificulty of the newest DLC dungeons and newest trials too far . This is a game not a test to see who can beat some mechanics that appear out of nowhere with no hints attached.

This is a game to have fun not to stress because of it.

Make the newest dungeons and trials like II variant of the base game and you'll see the player base who do dungeons and trials will grow.


English is not my native language.

Agalloch wrote: »

Qbiken wrote: »

Disclaimer: I haven´t got the opportunity to try Marches of Sacrifice just yet (will do within the next few days though).

From what I can tell from @code65536 the last boss fight looks incredibly un-friendly towards non-magicka build that can´t rely on shields (what a surprise). Also seen LZH´s video where they do HM, and it´s not a fight where I personally would bring a stamina character.

The next part might sound like a more general "rant", but I hope I´m not alone when I say this:

While I understand that DLC content is supposed to be a bit more challenging, I don´t see the point in stacking several one-shot mechanics on top of each other. My issue with many of the latest content (not only DLC dungeons) is the extensive use of one-shot mechanics and the inability to recover from mistakes (aka "Can I resurrect my team-mate without having to be a Templar with Kagrenac, and not have to worry about dying myself"?).

Content can be difficult and challenging without having mobs between bosses dealing 30k one-shots without any visual hint, or having enrage mechanics that makes bossfights pure DPS-races (which is something I really dislike as well). A general rant, but I see this direction more and more in the new content that is released and I don´t think it´s healthy for the game.

Totally agree !

Every dungeon DLC is more harder to do than the others.

Look at the zone chat and you'l see that 99% of the player base want to do only non-DLC PLedges.

Why ? Because all the mechanics are poorly implemented with almost not a visual hint. Also ..there are too many mechanics ..every new dungeon DLC brings more mechanics....Seriously ZOS , this is more than exaggerated .

I understand that many people complain about the game content is too easy in many aspects. I agree that overland content is a joke for cp cap players but all the new content ( also the dungeon DLCs ) must be for the majority of players not for 5% of them .

We play ESO to have fun and the majority of the player base don't have time to stay all day trying to beat a HM dungeon or trial.

I think ZOS pushed the dificulty of the newest DLC dungeons and newest trials too far . This is a game not a test to see who can beat some mechanics that appear out of nowhere with no hints attached.

This is a game to have fun not to stress because of it.

Make the newest dungeons and trials like II variant of the base game and you'll see the player base who do dungeons and trials will grow.


English is not my native language.

To be fair, the difficulty of vet non-HM is pretty accessible. It's one of the easiest DLC non-HMs, and I am certain that zone PUGs that can complete the IC dungeons will have no problem clearing vMoS non-HM.

It's only in HM--and only during the hunt mechanic of HM--when all hell breaks loose.

profundidob16_ESO wrote: »

I hate it when stuff is locked behind a (high) dps race. When you pug as tank there is nothing more annoying than to see that your group is complete stuck because a certain mechanic requires high dps like for instance killing the ice atronachs in the Zaan fight in vSP HM. To me that's bad design and locks the content away from lower dps people.

A good counterexample showing good design is the 2 ogres fight. No matter how long it takes or how low the dps is you can proceed and finish as long as everyone understands and does the mechanics. Low dps is not an issue there, it just makes things slower instead of impossible.

vMoS has no DPS races, and vMoS HM's difficulty stem entirely from the difficulty of surviving hunt phases. Balorgh HM is not a fight where high DPS can make a lot of difference.

In fact, in earlier iterations of the HM fight, we were essentially running 1 tank, 1 full healer, and 2 DD/healer hybrids, since every DD had a resto back bar. DPS wasn't important. Survival was.

They've since toned down HM so that we no longer feel compelled as DDs to equip a resto, but we do plan on wearing Amber Plasm when we do this on Live.

code65536 wrote: »

profundidob16_ESO wrote: »

I hate it when stuff is locked behind a (high) dps race. When you pug as tank there is nothing more annoying than to see that your group is complete stuck because a certain mechanic requires high dps like for instance killing the ice atronachs in the Zaan fight in vSP HM. To me that's bad design and locks the content away from lower dps people.

A good counterexample showing good design is the 2 ogres fight. No matter how long it takes or how low the dps is you can proceed and finish as long as everyone understands and does the mechanics. Low dps is not an issue there, it just makes things slower instead of impossible.

vMoS has no DPS races, and vMoS HM's difficulty stem entirely from the difficulty of surviving hunt phases. Balorgh HM is not a fight where high DPS can make a lot of difference.

In fact, in earlier iterations of the HM fight, we were essentially running 1 tank, 1 full healer, and 2 DD/healer hybrids, since every DD had a resto back bar. DPS wasn't important. Survival was.

They've since toned down HM so that we no longer feel compelled as DDs to equip a resto, but we do plan on wearing Amber Plasm when we do this on Live.

Ah that is great to hear. I was speaking in general, not for this dungeon specifically which I only did in normal mode so far but I'm glad to hear from you that the devs thought about that apparently for the veteran mode of this dungeon. Maybe the pug completion ratio for vMOS will be higher than some previous dungeons at release time