PTS Update 27 - Feedback Thread for Castle Thorn

ZOS_GinaBruno · July 2020

This is the official feedback thread for Castle Thorn. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?
Did you find anything… interesting?
Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
What level and build was the character you used?
Do you have any other general feedback?

tpanisiakb16_ESO · July 2020

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
We did!

How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
About the same. I find all dungeons relatively the same since Dragon Bones.

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?
Vet only.

Did you find anything… interesting?
We actually didn't. Other than the blobs that spawn from the corpses? We intend to do some more looking but we were speeding through both dungeons tonight. However ...

I have a feeling it has to do with the closed "gates" throughout the dungeon since they appear as actual rooms on the minimap? We'll have to explore and look around a bit better next time, but I do enjoy extra special secrets that are being added to the dungeons. Unhallowed Grave certainly has a fun secret with some of the best boss mechanics in the game!

Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
Last boss for sure! Lots going on. Lots to be aware of, the batswarm / moveable safe area felt nice. Compared to Stone Garden, all bosses felt far more interesting. I was way more engaged in Castle Thorn compared to Stone Garden.

What level and build was the character you used?
DK Tank (Alkosh / Yoln / Warden)
StamNB DD
MagDK DD
Magplar DD/Heal
All CP 810

Do you have any other general feedback?
Please stay away from long hallways with boring add pulls. Or at least, make the trash packs more exciting to encounter. (Depths of Malatar has some great trash packs!) I love the aesthetics of this dungeon even though I'm not into castles or vampires but it felt like a nice romp. Kudos to the design team! However, I just felt it was a bit too drawn out. Speaking of which, the last boss's swirling batswarm and moveable safe area felt unnecessarily long-winded. A lot of times we were just moving and waiting for the next add to spawn to use the synergy so it got pretty drab there.

Also, we did try HM tonight just to play around and it didn't seem like there was any new or interesting mechanic to work against? We did get the last boss to the first move/swarm phase so there might be something after that. If it's just "harder hits / more health / faster attacks", please, please, please, please stay away from that level of challenge. It's boring in the old content, and it's going to be boring here. Lair of Maarselok, Frostvault, are good examples of fantastic HM. I understand a lot of players may not have dedicated groups to run, so I felt Unhallowed Grave and Icereach were both a step down from LoM / FV while being fair to the larger playerbase. You can disregard this entire diatribe if there's actually new mechanics in the HM of these new dungeons.

Disturbed125 · July 2020

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?

Overall yes

How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?

I'd say its about on par with moongrave fane as far as difficulty.

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?

Veteran HM

Did you find anything… interesting?

Didnt find anything yet in this one

Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?

Lady Thorn, though followed closely by the wraith of crows boss (cant remember the name)

What level and build was the character you used?

CP 1290
Magdk - Mother's sorrow/False God's Devotion/Perfected Asylum inferno/Maelstrom Inferno
Magnecro - Mother's sorrow/False God's Devotion/Maw of the Infernal/Perfected Maelstrom Inferno

Do you have any other general feedback?

After completing this dungeon a handful of times I believe that the bosses previous to Lady Thorn are a little weak while she, specifically in hard mode, is slightly over-tuned. The bosses before Lady Thorn are fairly straightforward and the Wraith of Crows boss has a really cool mechanic with the scythe. That said, both groups were basically able to burn these bosses without doing much if anything with the mechanics. This feedback is not intended to suggest these bosses need more health but that it would be nice to make specifically the scythe mechanic a little more important to the fight than just summoning some pets that do damage for you.

On to the feedback for the Lady Thorn fight,

Firstly, I think non hard mode is done well and actually shows you almost all the mechanics that happen in hard mode. In hard mode however, I think she has far too much health. She goes from 7 ish million hp on non hm to 22 million hp on hard mode. This huge health pool coupled with several phases of invincibility make this fight drag on for what feels like forever with 2 dps. 3 dps the fight doesn't feel as bad but speed should be the reward for taking the extra risk of running without a healer, not necessary to make the fight feel reasonable in length.

The blood orbs that stun and do the "rive" damage spawn slightly too fast or apply their stuns slightly too fast. I'm fine with punishing deaths and making reviving a teammate a bit of a challenge but these things are just crazy. If your timing with starting the revive isnt absolutely perfect the orbs are going to interrupt you almost every time. Pair this with the bosses interdiction mechanic and reviving a teammate can sometimes take a minute or more. The stuns applying immediately from the orb also give you very little time to react to their spawns. During very chaotic portions of the fight such as the bat swarm these stuns are pretty much a death sentence to dps.

Lastly The 80% transition on the fight could use a little bit of a delay in it or it should dispel the bat swarm immediately similar to the 30 to 20% transition. Right now if you push the boss past 80% while the bat swarm mechanic is going the bat swarm is not dispelled. This means the boss can summon her huge aoe of blood orbs or even do her scatter mechanic while the bat swarm is still in effect. This covers the entire safe zone of the bat swarm mechanic with aoe damage.

Extra point: You broke the rule of 3's with the blood scamps during the bat swarm SHAME. Joking, but this makes this phase feel a bit drawn out

Overall I feel like this dungeon is in a good place. There were a few bugs we ran into but the experience was a fun challenge. Looking forward to trying any changes made going to release.

GrumpyKlam · July 2020

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
Castle Thorn has a very nice architecture. Very good gothic / vampire lair ambience. The pacing is also decent.
How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
I would say the difficulty is probably on par with Icereach (low-mid difficulty DLC dungeon)
Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?
I solo'd it deathless on Normal difficulty, cleared Veteran HM (Edited)
Did you find anything… interesting?
We didn't really look around for anything special.
Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
Lady Thorn. It was the only challenge in the dungeon. We ignored all other bosses mechanics and straight burned them.

A few comments on Lady Thorn:
1. The circle during the flying / Peter Pan phase goes somewhat fast and shows no indication on where it's heading next. While this is fine for HM, I feel like you might wanna lower the speed of the circle on normal / veteran non-hm. The reason behind that comment is that it's pretty hard to revive someone while the circle moves and it would help people to recover if they die during that phase.
2. Second comment about the circle. Would it be possible to highlight parts of the circle while its moving? For exemple, if the circle goes left, it would be nice if the left side of the circle would glow brighter than the other sides to indicate which way the circle is going to move. Right now, it feels like the circle is very erratic.
3. EDIT: We have 80IQ slow brains and realized the circle is on an ellipse like this ! The movement is now 100% predictable and we managed to rez multiple times during that phase cause we could anticipe where the circle would be
4. Final comment on Lady Thorn: her vampire abilities seem to be expending outside of normal vampire lordette abilities as you can see in this clip (we tested it twice):
  https://twitch.tv/videos/680125541 WALL CLIP BUG
What level and build was the character you used?
Magplar CP 810 (Mother's Sorrow / Perfected False God / Grundwulf)
Do you have any other general feedback?
Please remove the automatic chain pull from the scythe (except on the boss fight). Maybe have the first one pull you but good lord, it gets annoying really fast. Also, if you intend to keep EVERY scythe to pull you, make them pull you fast like stranglers and not super slowly like a tractor beam.

We basically ignored all mechanics up to Lady Thorn.
Here are a few suggestions on the mechanics:
1. on the Blood Twilight, make the imps unchainable so the boss cannot be burned in 15 secs and force us to move out of the pit.
2. on Vaduroth, make it more punishing to ignore the scythe mechanic. We ignore it and pushed the shield instead.
3. on Talfyg, we ignored all gargoyles and just burned. We saw there was an achievement for ignoring the big ones. Maybe make the little ones more "active" or do more APM.

CyberOnEso · July 2020

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
Yes

How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
On vet, comparable to Fungal Grotto 2? Except for the last boss where it becomes comparable to Cradle of Shadows/ Frostvault on HM

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?
Vet

Did you find anything… interesting?
Err, that Lady Thron likes gardening?
But seriously, is there something we're missing?

Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
Lady Thorn on HM

What level and build was the character you used?
810 DK Tank, Yolkanriin Alkosh
810 Templar Healer, SPC Hollowfang
810 Warden MagDD, False God Mothers Sorrow
810 Nightblade MagDD, Master Architect Mothers Sorrow

Do you have any other general feedback?
The first 3? bosses are so exceptionally easy that we couldn't tell if they had mechanics.
Even if the hard modes just increase their health *3 it would be so much better to have hard modes on each of the bosses.
On the second to last boss those gargoyles move so slowly that you can just ignore them all and burn the boss.

On the 'blood pool' boss, the imps didn't seem to do anything. I guess they are there to guard the boss, but we nuked through it.

Lady thorn on hardmode has some attacks which aren't telegraphed very well. Aside from that, it's an interesting fight with some good mechanics.

However, it becomes impossible to rez on hardmode post 20%, as the circle just moves too quickly.

Kurat · July 2020

I did enjoy the aesthetics but nothing else really there. We completed it on vet, all cp810, dk tank, templar healer, dps meta gear etc pretty standard setup. Its definitely among the easiest dlc dungeons. Dont know if there even was any mechanics, didn't notice (except the scythe throwing). I was tanking. Taunted and stacked everything and dps just burned. And our group dps was only around 70-80k. That's a bit disappointing. I actually cant think of any other dlc dungeon atm where you dont have to deal with any mechanics. I'm a big fan of dungeons like FV, MHK, DoM, SCP etc. Stacking and burning should be left in vanilla dungeons.
The only difficult part was the last boss hm. And the only mechanics there seemed to be the moving circle and avoiding stuns.

Princess_Ciri · July 2020

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
Yes

How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
Excluding the last boss HM it was really easy. I'm not sure our team even saw a mechanic (or had a death) until last boss. Everything died too fast.

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?

Vet HM

Did you find anything… interesting?
Don't think so but we didn't explore much

Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
The last one but only because the other bosses died so fast they weren't memorable.

What level and build was the character you used?
cp810 magicka necro

Do you have any other general feedback?
The last boss on HM was pretty fun, although we felt like the batswarm phase went on waaay too long. If the scamps could appear immediately that might help.

One bit of feedback i have is that playing a necromancer I had issues targeting the last boss when she flew into the air (not during the batswarm phase when I know she is not targetable anyway) but just during normal damage phases. My blastbones just wouldn't target at all sometimes which then meant I couldn't use siphon either. Was pretty frustrating to have 2 skills greyed out so often. If you could fix this that would be cool.

ListerJMC · July 2020

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
Yes

How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
I can't speak about veteran, but for normal it wasn't too bad. Most of my deaths happened in the process of learning the mechanics or miss-timing block, and I had the most difficulty getting past the Blood Twilight because his heavy attack could kill me through block if I wasn't near full health when he did it.

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?
I soloed it on normal.

Did you find anything… interesting?
No - I found the architecture book which made me wonder if there was a crack in the wall somewhere to use, but maybe that's just a way to explain why the place is gone in TES:V? I also noticed lot of gated rooms but I didn't see a way to open them.

Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
Probably Vaduroth, I found that mechanic with the meat hooks simultaneously creepy and the most fun to work out.

What level and build was the character you used?
CP810 pet sorcerer.

Do you have any other general feedback?
A little thing on the story - I thought Verandis adopted vampires into his family since he doesn't generally turn people, but this made it seem as though Gwendis had his blood? I was a little confused on that point but presumably it'll be explained later or maybe in the other dungeon which I haven't done yet...

Also on Talfyg, one of the gargoyles glowed red like I was able to attack it before the fight started but I couldn't target it. Unsure if that was intentional or not.

Cellentel · July 2020

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?

Yes.

How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?

Non-HM felt on par with most of the rest DLC dungeons. Likely challenging for a pug, but pretty easy for an experienced group. HM was quite difficult.

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?

Vet and then vet HM.

Did you find anything… interesting?

For the scythe mechanic, why is it an “Interact” instead of a synergy? I realize this is probably not what you had in mind for this question, but it bothered me a lot.

Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?

The final boss was the only one that felt like it had any substance to it. We burned through all of the other ones without really understanding what was supposed to be going on. The wraith of crows at least had a mechanic that you were forced to obey, kinda, but then it was back to burning the boss.

What level and build was the character you used?

Magcro DPS. The rest of the group was a DK tank, Templar healer, and Magsorc DPS.

Do you have any other general feedback?

Final boss HM was fun, but it seemed a bit overtuned. With a few tweaks, I could see this being one of my favorite HMs to complete with a good group (utterly impossible to pug, though).

First, she had way too much health. Once we figured out how to deal with the mechanics, we didn’t have any major problems with the phases that didn’t involve a moving circle. The extra health didn’t add difficulty to the fight, it just made it tedious. The fact that the moving circle phase takes forever to spawn the enemies you need to kill to get out of it doesn’t help. I suggest lower her health and moving the final phase threshold up a bit (so it retains the same length).

The mechanic in which she jumps to a player and one-shots them if they don’t dodge seemed buggy. I was able to see it fine, but my companions had issues seeing the animation.

The synergies to clear the moving circle phase were awkward to use. You press the synergy, then there’s a bit of a delay before your character starts the animation, which lasts several seconds. You seem to be invincible to most effects while the animation is in progress, which is nice and saved me a few times, but the awkward interaction between the animation and the mechanics made it hard to pull of sometimes. Sometimes I’d hit the synergy and it wouldn’t register, often resulting in my death to an aoe or the swarm. Other times, I’d finish the animation but the circle will have moved, leaving me with a split second to chase after it before the swarm kills me. Speed up the animation and make it start immediately after hitting the synergy, not several seconds afterward.

Rezzes are super hard during most of the fight. They’re fine before the first moving circle phase, but after that, the blood pools that appear beneath your feet make it very hard to rez someone unless you’re a Templar. During the moving circle phase, it was virtually impossible without the necro rez ult (I see from the comments earlier that someone was able to figure out the pattern to do it, but we had no luck rezzing during those phases). Even with the ult, you have to wait until the circle reaches the dead player again, which can take ages. While many fights have a phase where rezzing is hard, most have windows in which it is safe to rez. There wasn’t any here.

code65536 · July 2020

Note: The following feedback is based on our experiences during the first week of PTS; we have not attempted this dungeon in the second week.

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?

I terms of enjoyment, I would consider it below average, among the 8 most recent dungeons in 2019 and 2020, I would rate this above Icereach, below Stone Garden, Maarselok, Moongrave, and Frostvault, and comparable to Malatar and Unhallowed.

How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?

Regular vet seems comparable to Harrowstorm. Hard Mode is more difficult than Harrowstorm and probably comparable to Malatar.

Do you have any other general feedback?

Trash Base Population:
Similar to Unhallowed Grave, it doesn't seem like the trash actually posed any danger. The Reanimated Vampire is the only enemy that the tank absolutely must taunt; everything else was just inconsequential filler.

There are also too many scythes. In general, they feel like jarring speed bumps that break the flow of the dungeon. I understand that you are trying to telegraph a mechanic before a boss fight, but do you really need that many of them to accomplish this?

Boss 1:
This boss seems pretty light on mechanics, which is fine for the first boss. I would suggest making his leap happen a bit sooner in the fight since, with enough DPS, some groups will not see that mechanic.

Boss 2:
Um. What are the imps supposed to do exactly? They channel on the boss, but it's not clear what that channel does and why we should bother killing the imps. The boss has an immunity mechanic that appears to coincide with the channel, but seems otherwise unrelated to it. Killing the imps will not end the immunity sooner, and ignoring the imps will not end the immunity later.

Finally, with a 3 DD setup, there are basically no mechanics whatsoever.

https://youtu.be/7Gcy88K29Cc

Boss 3/4:
These are both fun fights.

Lady Thorn, HM:
First, my biggest complaint about this fight is that there's no point in having a healer.

With an eye-watering 22m health, Lady Thorn HM is just an excessively long fight, exacerbated by periods of immunity when she Scatters and when she does the 60% and 20% moving batswarms. With a traditional 2-DD setup, this fight is just too much of a long, tedious slog. For us, a 3-DD setup just felt much better in terms of pacing.
Lady Thorn HM suffers from the same problems as Malatar HM, where the damage encountered in this fight is not the kind of damage that a healer could help with.

For example, look at what often happens when I get snagged by an AoE during the moving batswarm:

It's fairly common for someone to get stunned and for the fast-moving safety circle to move out of position while they are trying to break free. Although it's not technically a 1-shot, it very often effectively is a 1-shot since players are often getting hit by the Batswarm tick half a second or less after the Rive tick. And the problem with 1-shots (either literal or effective) is that healers can't save people from them.

Further compounding this problem, outside of this avoidable damage, there's basically no other damage hitting players. Look at that death recap above--before I got that Rive-Batswarm combo, the last time that I took damage was over 2 minutes earlier when I got grazed by a Scatter AoE.

This sort of thing is why healers are often marginalized in Scalecaller, Fang Lair, Malatar, and now here in Castle Thorn, and it's disappointing to see you guys make this same design mistake over and over.
In order for a healer to be needed, you first need to get rid of this damage combo that's effectively a 1-shot. Either...
- Delay the stun from Rive by half a second so that players have more time to get out and so that grazing the edge of an AoE doesn't instantly stun and kill you. -OR-
- Delay the damage from Rive by a second. -OR-
- Just reduce the damage from Rive.
And second, fights where healers are needed are fights where there are things that tanks and DDs can't easily self-heal through. You did a superb job of this with the mid-PTS redesign of Moongrave's HM. Other "heal checks" in the game involve persistent damage that's either unavoidable or difficult to avoid; e.g., Cloudrest's Dark Drain, Falgravn's Unstable Energy, Assembly General's Seeker Projectiles, or Lokkestiiz's Static. It would be a better balance for there to be a shift in the incoming damage, shifting away from the unhealable Rive-Batswarm burst combo and towards something like a persistent DoT that everyone takes even in the green circle during a moving batswarm.
In summary: Right now, the damage spikes are so sharp that fast-reaction damage avoidance--not healing--is the way to survive. And furthermore, outside of this avoidable damage, there's really no other damage hitting players that a healer would need to heal through. And on top of that, this boss fight benefits a lot from higher DPS. A 3-DD setup means better pacing and it means that the dangerous Blood Guardians are eliminated much more quickly.

Second, I would suggest slowing down the moving circle in non-HM and in non-vet. With its fast movement and direction changes, I wouldn't be surprised if you get players complaining about the circle causing dizziness. I think the speed in HM is fine; I was just surprised to see the same speed in lower difficulties.

Finally, it seems like the AoE from Rive is larger than what's shown. Perhaps it's because of minor position lags/desyncs resulting from all the movement, but people often get stunned and damaged by Rive when it appears on their screen that they're still just outside of it.

Sphinxmoth · July 2020

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
Yes;

How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
OK;

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?
Normal, 2 DD;

Did you find anything… interesting?
Except for scythes? No. Did we miss something?

Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
Blood Twilight (did I spell it right?) was most interesting, 'till we understood that we can just permablock his Floats-Above-Basin stage. Is it supposed to be so?

What level and build was the character you used?
810 cp and some random trial stuff;

Do you have any other general feedback?
Castle Thorn was decent and Stonethorn story nicely tied to next DLC prologue, so it's way better than filler-ish Scalebreaker, I love it. And a small bug, I suppose: after completion of the Castle Thorn Gwendis gave out an odd line about hunting down some mad alchemist, but Stone Garden was already completed on this character, and Gwendis even commented it:

code65536 · July 2020

We ran through this dungeon's Hard Mode again last night, to test out the week 3 changes.

Reduced Lady Thorn’s health in Hard Mode.

Week 1: 22,238,648
Week 3: 20,607,814 (-7.3%, 1.6M)

It's a pretty modest change, and not really noticeable. It's still a lot of health for a boss that has so many immunity phases (Scatter and moving Batswarms).

Scatter will now take slightly longer to begin damaging enemies once cast.

The start of Scatter happens noticeably slower now, giving people more time to react and get the hell away.

Blood Scavengers will now spawn much quicker during Batswarm.

Compared to week 1, it doesn't really feel like that they spawn "much" quicker, and it still feels like that we spend much of the time during moving Batswarms waiting for them to spawn.

As for general feedback, I still have the same concerns that I had from week 1. The damage in this fight is mostly avoidable, the damage that people do take are sharp spikes, and the high health plus immunity phases result in a fight that feels like a bit too much of a slog with a traditional tank, healer, and 2-DD group composition. All this favors groups running healerless with 3 DDs, which is exactly what we did last night:

https://youtu.be/hj1vj4cHIgk

Finally, depending on how the timing of events line up, it's possible to have the 80% mass-spawn of Rive AoEs happen during a stationary batswarm. (Here's a short video clip of this.) While it's an interesting combination of mechanics, it's also one that either happens or doesn't happen based entirely on the whims of timing (i.e., if we push the boss at a certain speed), and that just feels a bit arbitrary.

code65536 · July 2020

I want to elaborate a bit more on why the 20M health is a problem.

The interesting/challenging parts of this fight are the moving Batswarms at 60% and 20%, and the final execute phase after the 20% moving Batswarm.

The boss is immune to damage during the 60% and 20% moving Batswarms, so her health isn't relevant to those mechanics. Which means that the only part of the boss health that's interesting is the last 4M health from 20% down to 0. The remaining 16M health is just filler.

When people wipe, it's usually during a moving Batswarm, particularly the 20% one. And so when they try again, they have to trudge through that first 16M health all over again. Do this a number of times, and people start becoming painfully aware of the amount of filler that they have to grind through each time just to get to the meat.

If you just reduced the health to 16M, and also moved the final Batswarm to 25%, you'll still have 4M health for the all-hell-breaks-loose phase at the end, but people will only have 12M to slog through to get there instead of 16M.