PTS Update 27 - Feedback Thread for Stone Garden

ZOS_GinaBruno · July 2020

This is the official feedback thread for Stone Garden. 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)?
Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
What level and build was the character you used?
This dungeon introduces a Hard Mode for each of the 3 bosses. Did you like this new format?
Did you happen to discover everything in the dungeon? If so, do you have feedback on the mechanics about anything you ran into?
Do you have any other general feedback?

CyberOnEso · July 2020

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
Yes!

How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
Harder than Unhallowed Grave (which is the right direction), easier than Scalebreaker.

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?
Just vet, first two bosses HM. Last boss tried HM for an hour or so then completed in on non- HM

Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
Boss 1 HM had some new mechanics, the idea of the boss alerting your max resources is something new and interesting.
However, the bosses interrupt mechanic isn't telegraphed very well. He has two circle AoE skills which both lead into 2 different attacks, either the interrupt or the bunch of ground AoE's. We didn't know exactly when he was going to cast his interruptable skill. So we're just spamming him with Crushing Shock every time he cast the knockback skill.

What level and build was the character you used?
We went with
Tank: 810 DK with Arkasis’s Genius + Alkosh
Healer: 810 Templar with SPC + Hollowfang
DD: 810 MagWarden with False God + MS
DD: 810 MagNightblade with Master Architect + Elemental Catalyst

This dungeon introduces a Hard Mode for each of the 3 bosses. Did you like this new format?
Yes! This was a great decision! Please keep it, use it everywhere, I cannot stress this enough. This is the right direction! There can never be too many hard modes!
We didn't do the non- hm's but if it makes the vet modes doable for an LFG group and allows you to add additional challenges for coordinated groups to each boss then it's worth it.

Did you happen to discover everything in the dungeon? If so, do you have feedback on the mechanics about anything you ran into?

We found the 3 "hidden" rooms. And all the green plants. Maybe there's more? But that's what we found.
If you want them to be a secret maybe don't show them on the map.
The buffs were fun, the concept of adding additional buffs if you have the laboratory use passive + ingredients is good. Very RPG like and really fits with the theme, it's a great idea.
However, it is a bit unintuitive, since the option only appears if you fulfill the criteria. So it was hard to explain what needed to be done to group members.

Additionally, the valves which you can interact with were very unintuitive. I'm sure they change the final fight somehow? But I have no idea what they do without going through it again

Do you have any other general feedback?
Yes, the last boss's hard mode 'werewolf' phase seems overturned, either we are missing something or we need to coordinate ults better- we may just need time to be able to learn it and get it right, if there is an intended strategy to this phase then don't nerf it yet we just need time to figure it out. However, we never came close to winning the 'boxing match' with the stone husks.
Also, the skills are very slow/ clunky it feels like playing a different game while in that form. Most skills have a cast time and it isn't obvious if that ability is casting and you seem to be able to interrupt the casting of most abilities too quickly. I feel like this mode should feel more like the current werewolf transform, rather than a very slow clunky behemoth.

Additionally, since using the potion CC's you can very easily die due to ticking from a DoT already on you, this isn't entirely fair as you need to pick up the potions fast in order to win again the stone husks. And if the potions spawn in AoE you're screwed.
Maybe make the potions purge you and remove the ground AoE when the boss hits 70%.

tpanisiakb16_ESO · July 2020

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
Not really.

How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
I didn't care much for Icereach non-HM, and this dungeon felt about as exciting and "challenging". Non HM versions of bosses are pretty uninspired and lack mechanics or engagement and so ended up not being difficult. As a tank there was nothing I felt was dangerous to me.

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

Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
First boss on HM. We only took one attempt at it tonight and got him down to about 40%-30%. It just felt like his attacks hit harder, faster, and he had more health which wasn't particularly exciting but it made the encounter more fun compared to the non-HM variant. It actually felt like you could reduce his health by 20% and removed the HM challenge entirely and it would make for a more fun encounter without the need for HM to bring that back in.

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

This dungeon introduces a Hard Mode for each of the 3 bosses. Did you like this new format?
In theory, yes. In practice, no. It made the non HM variant a snooze fest. I would be okay with it if mechanics were added instead of it becoming a health sponge with harder attacks. I'm speaking from a position that we attempted one HM boss, so the other two might be more entertaining.

Did you happen to discover everything in the dungeon? If so, do you have feedback on the mechanics about anything you ran into?

I think so, but it doesn't seem to change anything a whole lot. I like the idea of being able to buff your character but if you don't need to it's just an unnecessary time waster, one we'll likely do once or twice for the achievements. Compared to Unhallowed Grave, I love taking new folks through to experience the hidden bosses and mechanics, but with this dungeon I am okay skipping all of it. Also, the vents didn't make a good deal of sense to us? Our first attempt on the last boss (non HM) we purposely wiped at about 20% so we could see the difference when activating the vents. This might come into play for HM, but for non HM it didn't really seem to change a whole lot?

Do you have any other general feedback?
In Harrowstorm I felt your team made the best Vet dungeon (Unhallowed Grave) and one of the most boring dungeon (Icereach). I'm sad to see the trend continue here. I like that you're putting into practice HM challenges for each boss, but it feels like this comes at the cost of uninspired non-HM fights? The last boss in particular was not fun as a tank. Snag adds that pop up, transform into WW, hit random buttons until we get roofied, repeat until dead. It took us two attempts to get it, and we died the first time on purpose to see the fight having used the vents.

Kurat · July 2020

Aesthetics look great and turning into ww cool but please leave RP for base game dungeons. We did all bosses vet non hm. Had no time to try hm. Maybe hm has some extra mechanics added but non hm was just boring stack and burn. This is among the easiest dlc dungeons. 70-80k group dps was enough to ignore any mechs if there even was any. For dlc dungeon I would like to see heavy mechanics, needed group coordination etc. Make more dungeons like FV, MHK, SCP plz.

forthwinds · July 2020

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?

YES!

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

Was good difficulty

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?

Vet HM

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

Last boss, both mechanics and art team killed it!

What level and build was the character you used?

810 CP Magblade

This dungeon introduces a Hard Mode for each of the 3 bosses. Did you like this new format?

YES!!!!! Please make all future dungeons like this, it gives veteran players a nice challenge instead of just blowing through everything while ignoring mechanics

Did you happen to discover everything in the dungeon? If so, do you have feedback on the mechanics about anything you ran into?

Yes, remove the "secret" spots for the map so they have to be found with a little more work.

Do you have any other general feedback?

Please don't nerf this, it is very fun as is. The mechanics were mostly new and super fun. As I said earlier, big props to the art team. I hope the next trial can look this cool

forthwinds · July 2020

Cellentel · July 2020

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?

Yes.

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

Regular vet seemed pretty easy. Neither of the first two bosses had much going on in regular vet. It felt on par with the easier vet DLC dungeons (say, vICP) — hard enough to trip up a pug.

I don’t understand the final boss HM well enough to compare it, but so far it seems plenty hard. The earlier bosses HM were also much more challenging, although easier than most DLC HM final bosses (since this is the first time there is a HM non-final boss, there’s nothing to compare them with).

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?

Vet and then HM first two bosses (we attempted but didn’t complete the final boss HM).

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

I’ve yet to acquire warm or fuzzy feelings about any of them.

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.

This dungeon introduces a Hard Mode for each of the 3 bosses. Did you like this new format?

Yes. It allowed the base dungeon to be much more approachable without making it completely boring for a more experienced group.

Did you happen to discover everything in the dungeon? If so, do you have feedback on the mechanics about anything you ran into?

The fact that the “secret” rooms were displayed on the map (with arrows!) ruined the surprise a bit. What we discovered in the room was also much less interesting than previous dungeon secrets.

Are the special “ingredients” needed to activate the stations supposed to remain in your inventory after you leave the dungeon? At best, this seems annoying because they’re one more thing to delete. At worst, this is going to cause problems in groups that miss some of the ingredient pickups, but some group members have leftover ingredients and others don’t. One player will want to go back and search; others will want to continue, and it will be tense. I recommend making them count as quest items that disappear after the dungeon is complete.

Do you have any other general feedback?

Like its counterpart in Frostvault, the werewolf mechanics in the HM final boss are inscrutable. The werewolf phases earlier in the dungeon do absolutely nothing to prepare for the real mechanic, nor does the “tutorial” section at the start of the fight. We had the time to read the tool tips of the abilities (that’s an improvement), but there’s no indication of what the werewolf phases of the boss will look like or how we’re supposed to use the abilities to get through it. These tips only show up on the death recap, which only appears after you’ve gotten through the tutorial and start the real fight — and it is no longer possible to carefully study the abilities.

This meant our HM attempt looked like this:
1. Look at the bars during the tutorial and not really learn very much
2. Start the fight and get the boss to the first werewolf phase (this took a few tries to figure out the right approach for, but once we did it was pretty easy to do reliably)
3. Transform into werewolves
4. Die almost immediately because we had no idea what we’re doing
5. Read the death recap and ask “which ability is X that we’re supposed to use?”
6. Restart the fight and get to the werewolf phase again
7. Try to quickly look at our bars to figure out which ability we’re supposed to use
8. Use that ability to get slightly further into the phase
9. Die to something else
10. Repeat

In short, the tutorial phase doesn’t accomplish its goal of explaining what to do. Throw a stone husk into it and make us do the right mechanics in order to get through it. Provide a reset button that lets us do the tutorial again. Most of these challenges will go away when there are guides on the internet, but in its current form learning how to do the fight is really annoying.

Aside: it is really annoying that the HM challenge banner can’t be used when you first enter the room; you have to wait until you did the tutorial first. I suspect a lot of groups will forget at this point, or at least stress out considerably thinking they missed it. Make it activatable right away.

bdembz · July 2020

Done on 6.1.0 patch

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
Enjoyed it. A bit more challenging than most dungeons and one of, if not the most, beautiful.

How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
One of the more tougher dungeons. At least for the HMs

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?
Completed all HMs

Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
Final boss HM. The arena is coolest boss room in the game, and the mechanic is kinda fun. It's challenging but it doesn't really have a dps requirement to beat it. It's a more interesting way to make new content more challenging without just adding more HP to bosses or adding DPS checks.

What level and build was the character you used?
810cp Magsorc

This dungeon introduces a Hard Mode for each of the 3 bosses. Did you like this new format?
Yes, please keep this for all new content.

Did you happen to discover everything in the dungeon? If so, do you have feedback on the mechanics about anything you ran into?
Yes. wasn't really hard to discover. It's not very well hidden visually in the world. On top of that, it's on the map..

Do you have any other general feedback?
First, big props to the Art Team. Specifically, the final boss room is the the coolest room that's been designed in this game. Second, I liked the difficulty of this dungeon. I have done a final boss non hardmode and it was kind of boring. You didn't really have to do any mechanics at all.

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 loved it.

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

It's probably the hardest dungeon I've completed on HM.

This dungeon introduces a Hard Mode for each of the 3 bosses. Did you like this new format?

No. Well, yes, but no. Yes, it's a good concept. But no, for this particular dungeon, I didn't like this format and I think it was poorly done. I'll elaborate below.

Do you have any other general feedback?

Boss 1:
I haven't tried this boss on non-HM. Only on HM. Although I don't have a non-HM baseline to compare with, HM was disappointing. The only thing that seemed difficult was the Blood Rage, but it didn't feel like a fair difficulty. If you're in melee range (a tank), the start of the mechanic will knock you down even when blocking (in contrast to Llothis, who knocks you down only when you don't block), and you must break free and bash within just 1 second to stop the channel. If you have break-free and bash bound to a single key-press and spam it non-stop, you might on occasion be able to break free soon enough to get a bash in, but not always.

So with melee interrupt highly unreliable, when I was a damage dealer, I slotted Crushing Shock and just literally spammed that whenever I thought he might cast Blood Rage soon. Which mostly worked, but with the very short window to interrupt, if my Crushing Shock happened to hit him right before the interrupt window, then by the time the next Crushing Shock hits (remember, I'm just spamming it at this point), it would've hit too late.

So I would suggest increasing the channel from 1s to 1.5s. Aside from the Blood Rage (which, again, feels like an unfair difficulty due to the excessively small interrupt window), there's nothing else to this boss that seemed difficult. Sidestep ground AoEs and dodge his charge.

In general, this boss wasn't difficult--just annoying due to the finicky interrupt.

Boss 2:
I haven't tried this boss on non-HM. Only on HM. 19m health? Really?! Similar to the first boss, this boss on HM wasn't difficult. Just very annoying. Just running around sidestepping AoEs everywhere, trying to avoid the resource-drain beams, and just slogging through an excessively long fight.

It's not hard in the sense that there's really no threat of the group wiping. There's no mechanic to be mastered. It's just annoying, particularly the resource drain beam. And it's just a tedious slog to chew through nearly 19m health, with repeating mechanics that don't do anything interesting.

I hate this boss fight. It feels like a chore that I must toil through to get to the last boss.

Boss 3:
Ah, the centerpiece of the dungeon. It's a magnificent fight on HM, and I love it. Before Arkasis HM, my all-time favorite final boss fights were Stonekeeper HM and Maarselok HM, and Arkasis proves to be a worthy successor.

https://youtu.be/UStjYvj5CSQ

First, I want to commend the mechanical difficulty. It's a fight that is frustratingly difficult at first, but that becomes quite a lot easier once you figure it out and develop a working strategy for it, which I think is the hallmark of a well-designed fight: where a good understanding and strategy turns something from brutally hard to elegantly easy. This is in sharp contrast to Lady Thorn, where the difficulty is all about quick reflexes to avoid sharp damage combos, and there's nothing that a good understanding of the mechanics and a well-developed strategy would help with. I love Arkasis HM, and hate Lady Thorn HM.

That said, Arkasis HM does have an extraordinarily steep learning curve. And although this probably will not be too much of an issue for players who consult guides and videos, it is pretty daunting for people like us who approach it blind on day 1 of PTS.

The tether mechanic on the Stone Husk is not that clear. At one point, I was speaking to someone else who had cleared the WW phases and I mentioned the tether, and their reaction was, "There's a tether? We figured that we should try keeping them apart, but I didn't know about a tether." With the tether mechanic in vHoF, the visuals for the tether are very clear. In contrast, the tether here is visually nebulous: you get this cloudy mist of a line connecting the husks. Furthermore, when they are empowered by the tether, the husks gain a cloudy aura around them, which obscures the tether beam when they are close. And since the husks spawn in close pairs, it's very easy to miss that there's a tether line between them. Finally, the death recaps don't offer any hints about the tether.
The Caustic Cannonade can be a little visually confusing, too. We figured out pretty quickly that we need to interrupt it, but initially, we thought that the Gloomspore (which had a prominent telegraph) was the Cannonade. Then, we started to look for the cloud, which turned out to be a bad idea because there's a cloud above the husk that's shooting and a cloud above all the players as we take damage. Eventually, we figured out what to look for, but there are so many other visual cues that learning which ones to pay attention to and which ones to ignore was a significant part of the learning process. If the Cannonade had been telegraphed--e.g., with the "red sparkle" interrupt lines, this would've made things a lot easier.
As someone who loves tanking vHoF, I loved the taunt-swap mechanic during the second WW phase. But here, again, figuring out that a taunt-swap was needed took a bit of digging. After dying to it, we looked in the logs and saw that the husk had cast something called "Murderous Mark", and having tanked vSS and vKA, the moment I saw the word "Mark", I thought, "probably a taunt swap". But for people without access to logs or addons (e.g., console), how would they know the name of the effect? The visuals associated with this Mark also differ significantly with the visuals of other Mark mechanics. There is absolutely nothing about the visuals that would've suggested to me that a taunt swap was called for, and this is just a matter of consistency with existing mechanics. If you established in vSS and vKA that someone who's marked for extra damage sees a ghostly white screen briefly, then you should have carried that here so that these kinds of visual cues are used consistently.
While I appreciate that the skills are easier to learn for the WW phases compared to Frostvault HM's skeevaton phase, the hard part about the WW phase is figuring out what needs to be done. For the skeevaton mechanic, not getting singed by a fire trap or diced by a blade trap is pretty self-explanatory. But for the WW mechanic, the things that need to happen are not self-explanatory at all, and it doesn't feel like the "tutorial" really teaches players anything because the skills don't mean much when players lack the context of what they are trying to accomplish with those skills.

Anyway, these complaints about the learning curve are irrelevant to people who read guides or who have already cleared, but for blind-run first-timers, I feel like there are things that could've been done with the visual cues to make these things more intuitive to grasp.

Finally, my last complaint is with the Scalding Solution DoT. Please make this DoT ramp up to full strength over a few seconds instead of immediately ticking at full strength. 20K/s on a tank is pretty brutal, and even with me slotting purge on my front bar as a tank, the DoT would still get me at times.

Time Limit:
I did a 3-DD run with JDub where we had just two deaths through the entire dungeon (one death on boss 2, one on boss 3). Total time was over 34 minutes.

I've gotten the no-death/speed/HM all-in-one trifectas for all the previous dungeons, and with a traditional tank, healer, 2-DD setup, we'd get it usually with 5-10 minutes to spare. Here, with a faster healerless 3-DD setup and almost no deaths, we were over 9 minutes off. The 25-minute speedrun might be perfectly fine for non-HM. But for HM, it's unrealistic and way out of line compared to previous DLC dungeons. I'd suggest bumping the speedrun up to 35 minutes and halving the health of the second boss (which, as I've already said, is a bit of a drawn-out slog).

Overall:
I love this dungeon, but that's despite the first two boss HMs, not because. The final boss is what makes this dungeon, and everything else is just a road bump on the way there. In particular, I don't think that the HMs added anything meaningful to the first two bosses (and no, making the second boss a giant health sponge is not adding something meaningful).

code65536 · July 2020

Regarding the 2nd boss HM, I wrote in my previous post, "It's not hard in the sense that there's really no threat of the group wiping."

I want to elaborate on this a bit by comparing this encounter with others that we've seen...

Stone Garden, 1st boss HM: The Fracture and Blood Rage debuffs are, for all practical intents and purposes, permanent. Too many mistakes, and these debuffs will stack up to the point that continuing the fight becomes infeasible. Players must kill the boss before the players are strangled by the stacking debuffs, and they can do that either by killing quickly or by being deft at avoiding the debuffs.
Frostvault, Vault Protector: The laser sweeps and accompanying add spawns happen relentlessly on a timer, and if players fall behind because of deaths, they will get overwhelmed.
Maarselok, Cancroid: The stranglers spawn faster than players can feasibly kill them, so players who fail to burst down the boss within a reasonable number of seedings will be overrun.

What all of these boss fights share in common--keeping in mind that some of which are just regular vet without HM--is that it's easy for groups to fail. How does a group fail on the 2nd boss in HM? Aside from basic errors, like a tank dying or people not moving out of the big fire explosion AoE, there really isn't any punishment--specifically, the kind of punishment that drives a fight towards and inevitable wipe.

And that's why I think the second boss is the worst part of this dungeon. Because it's just a 19m damage sponge. Ridiculous levels of health does not make something challenging. Or interesting. Or exciting. The only thing that 19m health imparts on this fight is tedium. Even the first boss offers more of a challenge than the second boss.

Sphinxmoth · July 2020

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
Yes, it was great;

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

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

Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
Arkasis, fight was interesting, though Werewolf Behemoth part isn't quite understandable.

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

Did you happen to discover everything in the dungeon? If so, do you have feedback on the mechanics about anything you ran into?

We've found three rooms with Bloodknights and get alchemical buffs, though buffs kinda boring, mb in Vet and HM they're more relevant. Also activated dwarven valves, but didn't understood their functions.

Do you have any other general feedback?
Stone Garden is fun and nicely tied to Darkstrom Prologue, but some mechanics aren't clear enough.

code65536 · July 2020

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

Boss 1 and 2:
I'm disappointed that no adjustments were made to these two bosses; my earlier complaints about these two bosses (specifically, the interrupt timing being too punishing on the Exarch, and the Behemoth being a slow slog through way too much health for a boss that doesn't really do anything) still stand.

Boss 3:

https://youtu.be/NxZSJfDXAMU

With the reductions in health and the removal of cast times for the werewolf abilities, the pacing of the fight has improved somewhat. That said, we ran with a healerless 3-DD group composition, and it still took well over 9 minutes.
The removal of cast times for the werewolf abilities is a very welcome change and makes that part of the fight feel a lot less sluggish.
Comparing the logs between week 1 and week 3, the amount of damage taken from Volatile Gloomspore in HM remains unchanged (contrary to the patch notes). However, I think the current level of damage that we saw in week 1 and week 3 is fine, considering that the process of casting Gloomspore applies an extremely strong snare that, coupled with the inability for there werewolf to roll dodge, makes it exceedingly difficult to move out of the Gloomspore AoE. If you do intend to increase this damage well beyond what we currently have, then that snare needs to be toned down.
Having Scalding Solution ramp up to full strength is a very welcome change.
With the boss healing from 20% back to 40% after the second werewolf phase, you've essentially added 20% health back to the boss.
- Week 1 Health: 18,760,296
- Week 3 Health, Nominal: 13,713,834 (-27%)
- Week 3 Health, Actual: 16,456,600 (+20% heal after second werewolf)
So... why not just set the health to 16.5M and call it a day, instead of obfuscating some of that health behind a heal? It seems a bit strange, personally.

Time Limit:
The speed-run time is still far too tight for a group doing HM, when you compare it to the times set for Castle Thorn HM and every previous DLC HM, and this would be even more of a problem for groups running the intended 2-DD group composition with a healer. I'm just not sure why Stone Garden has a shorter speedrun time than Castle Thorn.

CyberOnEso · July 2020

The week 3 changes in response to feedback is really appreciated, thank you very much!
The new Werewolf Bohemoth animations feel much better. It makes the fight way more enjoyable.

The werewolf hardmode phase on the last boss is interesting, but you have to make the mechanics more intuitive.

A lot of the things in the werewolf stage need to be reacted to, the shock emitters, the interrupt, so having the Hircine's Howl skill take so long to cast makes it frustrating to react in time to an interrupt or a new shock emitter.

Also, the fouth skill needs to play it's animation much quicker, it has a long range but since it can take 3-4 seconds for it to 'do anything' you are left there wondering if the skill actually worked or if you missed the shot.
It's also taking so long to reach it's target makes it really unintuitive as to what it does.

The 'taunt swap' in the second werewolf phase is madness. Do you expect people to wipe to that mechanic multiple times, taking 5-6 minutes to get back to that point in the fight to figure out what is happening? You need to telegraph the fact that the player is marked.
You shouldn't need to read a guide to understand what is going on, or take the fight into ESO logs, it has to be intuitive.

Also as Code said the speedrun for all 3 HM's is too short, with a 19million HP sponge and a final boss fight that can take 10+ minutes the speedrun needs to be 5- 10 mins longer, 25 mins would be fine for non- hm.

GrumpyKlam · August 2020

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?

No, I did not.

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

Exarch Kraglen and Stone Behemoth are basically health sponge doing barely nothing, probably non-dlc difficulty, even on HM.

Arkasis the Mad Alchemist: This fight feels bad and gimmicky like Frostvault HM with the mouse phase.

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?

Soloed it deathless on normal. Cleared vet hm on Exarch Kraglen and Stone Behemoth. Made it to the second werewolf phase on Arkasis HM.

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

None? Probably Exarch Kraglen because he is the less obnoxious in the trio.

What level and build was the character you used?

Magplar 810 Maw-PFG-MS, rip beam

This dungeon introduces a Hard Mode for each of the 3 bosses. Did you like this new format?

I like the idea of having hard mode for each bosses but I feel like this dungeon misses the mark. Instead of adding new interesting mechanics, the bosses become health sponge AKA Exarc Kraglen and especially Stone Behemoth. It is better now (13M from 18M) but I feel like hard mode should add mechanics and not just health.

Did you happen to discover everything in the dungeon? If so, do you have feedback on the mechanics about anything you ran into?

Yes. Having it displayed on the map took the fun away of looking for it like in Unhallowed Grave. Also, is there any hints to tell you to look for his notes to get the better potions? I feel like the alchemy part of it should be better explained to the player.

Do you have any other general feedback?

Arkasis HM:

The animation for the attack "3" doesn't work in werewolf form. The attack does work but it doesn't display.
Werewolf feels less clunky, still an absolute pain to play.
After reading Code's comment on the last fight, it seems we need to swap taunt at one point during the second werewolf phase. THIS IS NOT CLEAR AT ALL. Please make the screen change color like on Navinthaas or Yandir to indicate we need to swap taunt. At the moment the indicator seems to be that the core of the behemoth changes color which is kinda hard to see.
STOP INCORPORATING GIMMICKS IN BOSS FIGHT, it is tedious! I will probably do the achievements and never go back in there like for Frostvault because I hate the damn mouse phase. While they can be fun mini games, it gets annoying to have to do them over and over again. Those gimmick should be a mini game out on there own, like the deer hunt in March of Sacrifice. I want to play my character, not learn how to play a dwemer mouse or a werewolf behemoth.

emilyhyoyeon · August 2020

GrumpyKlam wrote: »

[*] STOP INCORPORATING GIMMICKS IN BOSS FIGHT, it is tedious! I will probably do the achievements and never go back in there like for Frostvault because I hate the damn mouse phase. While they can be fun mini games, it gets annoying to have to do them over and over again. Those gimmick should be a mini game out on there own, like the deer hunt in March of Sacrifice. I want to play my character, not learn how to play a dwemer mouse or a werewolf behemoth.

I wanna show my support for this point. I have a lot of friends who also dislike the gimmicks, but it seems like they're really popular among a lot of players.... but I feel like making them optional wouldn't hurt at all.

I'm also someone who wants to play my characters, not something else. Please

Czekoludek · August 2020

Dungeon is fun and nice but for triple achievement 25 minutes seems to be too short. One werewolf berserk phase at last boss or 30 minutes speedrun should be okay tho

code65536 · August 2020

First, a bug report: We've had a number of cases where someone's skill bar completely locks up during werewolf phase. Where every skill becomes permanently grayed out and they are unable to do anything. Unfortunately, I don't have a video of this, since it's never happened to me personally, but it has happened to everyone else.

We never saw this problem during the first week of PTS (where we had spent more time). Only during weeks 3 and 4, so I suspect that this is a side effect to the removal of the cast times (perhaps the cast times had served a protective purpose to guard against skills glitching out?).

GrumpyKlam wrote: »

STOP INCORPORATING GIMMICKS IN BOSS FIGHT, it is tedious! I will probably do the achievements and never go back in there like for Frostvault because I hate the damn mouse phase. While they can be fun mini games, it gets annoying to have to do them over and over again. Those gimmick should be a mini game out on there own, like the deer hunt in March of Sacrifice. I want to play my character, not learn how to play a dwemer mouse or a werewolf behemoth.

I would not characterize the skeevaton or werewolf phases are "gimmicks". I strongly disliked the stealth mechanic for the Indrik hunts in March of Sacrifices, since there was nothing interesting in those mechanics. They were just "avoid AoEs while crouching".

In contrast, the skeevaton and werewolf phases, at least in HM, are rich and interesting. Just "playing one's character" is boring--doing a damage rotation on Arkasis is no different than doing a damage rotation on any other boss. Oh yay, there's some different scenery here. *Yawn*

What these special phases do is add interesting mechanics that are otherwise not possible to implement. With the skeevaton phase in HM, there is a kind of enforced teamwork--where support skeevatons are needed to help get assault skeevatons past hazards and the latter are needed to protect the former from spiders--that you can't really get any other way. Or with the werewolf phase, they are able to implement a Refabrication Committee-style taunt swap mechanic that would never have been possible in 4-person content otherwise.

I would call the Indrik hunts "gimmicks" because they don't offer anything interesting. These are not, because while they may seem gimmicky on the surface, they make it possible to design interesting, unique mechanics that require a level of teamwork in a way that you cannot have any other way (in HM, at least; this argument doesn't work as well in the neutered difficulties).

In short, I think both the skeevaton and werewolf phases (at least in HM) are brilliant.

Czekoludek wrote: »

25 minutes seems to be too short.

Since the 25-minute speed-run has been a point of contention since week 1, we did a number of runs during the 4th week of PTS to test the viability of this 25-minute limit.

We ran with an "intended" group composition of tank, healer, and 2x DDs.
We did usual "speed run" things like run through the dungeon with Major Expedition, not pausing, etc.
We tried to optimize trash pulls whenever practical (e.g., pulling rooms together and pulling transforming werewolves into the next room, so that we were killing stuff while waiting for their lengthy transformations).
We initially tried to skip all of the bonus areas, but we quickly discovered that if you skip the first bonus area (the one that grants a damage buff), you will then have to sit through a somewhat lengthy cutscene before you can continue. We therefore judged that it was a good idea to always grab the first buff because that cutscene plays out while we're making that slight detour (which is why we had never noticed that there was a delaying cutscene there until we did a run where we skipped that buff), which significantly reduces the actual time cost of the first bonus, and the time saved by having that extra damage for the rest of the dungeon more than makes up for it.
We skipped the second and third bonus areas.

So running with the intent of getting through as quickly as we can, we were able to activate the HM banner on the last boss (BTW, the cutscene before the WW tutorial and the WW tutorial itself take up quite a chunk of time too) at around the 16-minute mark in a totally clean run (no deaths up to that point).

And it takes us around 9 minutes to kill the final boss in HM. So is the 25-minute limit feasible? Yea. But is it appropriate? Absolutely not.

Let's compare this with Castle Thorn. We were able to activate the HM banner on the last boss in Castle Thorn at around 15:30 or so (and we weren't trying specifically for speed). And Lady Thorn in HM takes about 7 minutes. So we get to there sooner. We have a shorter boss fight. And we have a 30-minute speedrun, not 25.

Let me reiterate this again: 25 minutes is not appropriate for the speedrun. It needs to be 30.

Why is it not appropriate? Because it's inconsistent with the standards that you've set for your dungeons. Our first-ever trifectas for the following dungeons (all during the first week or two of their Live release, so with the original DPS levels at the time of their release) had these time margins:

Malatar: 4:49
Frostvault: 5:02
Maarselok: 3:49
Moongrave: 3:36
Unhallowed: 9:57
Icereach: 11:50

For all of these dungeons, we were able to take time before the final boss to take a breath and to double-check stuff. In contrast, for Stone Garden, we're projecting right now for a clean HM run to hit right on the 25-minute nose, with zero breathing room. This is not consistent with Castle Thorn (where we are projecting a 6-minute margin), and it's not consistent with any of the other dungeons that we've had in the past 2 years. It needs to be 30.

GrumpyKlam · August 2020

code65536 wrote: »

First, a bug report: We've had a number of cases where someone's skill bar completely locks up during werewolf phase. Where every skill becomes permanently grayed out and they are unable to do anything. Unfortunately, I don't have a video of this, since it's never happened to me personally, but it has happened to everyone else.

We never saw this problem during the first week of PTS (where we had spent more time). Only during weeks 3 and 4, so I suspect that this is a side effect to the removal of the cast times (perhaps the cast times had served a protective purpose to guard against skills glitching out?).

GrumpyKlam wrote: »

STOP INCORPORATING GIMMICKS IN BOSS FIGHT, it is tedious! I will probably do the achievements and never go back in there like for Frostvault because I hate the damn mouse phase. While they can be fun mini games, it gets annoying to have to do them over and over again. Those gimmick should be a mini game out on there own, like the deer hunt in March of Sacrifice. I want to play my character, not learn how to play a dwemer mouse or a werewolf behemoth.

I would not characterize the skeevaton or werewolf phases are "gimmicks". I strongly disliked the stealth mechanic for the Indrik hunts in March of Sacrifices, since there was nothing interesting in those mechanics. They were just "avoid AoEs while crouching".

In contrast, the skeevaton and werewolf phases, at least in HM, are rich and interesting. Just "playing one's character" is boring--doing a damage rotation on Arkasis is no different than doing a damage rotation on any other boss. Oh yay, there's some different scenery here. *Yawn*

What these special phases do is add interesting mechanics that are otherwise not possible to implement. With the skeevaton phase in HM, there is a kind of enforced teamwork--where support skeevatons are needed to help get assault skeevatons past hazards and the latter are needed to protect the former from spiders--that you can't really get any other way. Or with the werewolf phase, they are able to implement a Refabrication Committee-style taunt swap mechanic that would never have been possible in 4-person content otherwise.

I would call the Indrik hunts "gimmicks" because they don't offer anything interesting. These are not, because while they may seem gimmicky on the surface, they make it possible to design interesting, unique mechanics that require a level of teamwork in a way that you cannot have any other way (in HM, at least; this argument doesn't work as well in the neutered difficulties).

In short, I think both the skeevaton and werewolf phases (at least in HM) are brilliant.

I was talking about The Great Indrik Hunt side quest to get the Werewolf Behemoth Sigil, not the Indrik boss where you have to sneak and avoid AoEs. The sneak phase is indeed very boring and as gimmicky as the dwemer mouse and werewolf behemoth to me.

Adding interesting mechanics shouldn't be tied to gimmicks in boss fights, IMO. As much as I like vHOF and vMOL taunt swap mechanics, I don't think you need to be a werewolf to do that. The best example would be the Pinion fight in White Gold Tower. You can swap taunt by interacting with the pinion. Nobody swap taunts anymore because of the powercreep, but back when it came out, you had to swap during the blue phase.

I just feel using those gimmicks is a cheap way to introduce interesting mechanics. It's like the devs are saying "we've run out of ideas so let's just introduce some weird stuff they'll have to figure out. While it can be fun to learn the mechanic the first few times you play the dungeon, it gets old really fast when farming the motif pages or going for trifecta.

I understand a lot of people like those kind of things, I just don't, with a passion. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one!

EDIT: I also had the bug where I couldn't use any skill or do light or heavy attack as a Werewolf Behemoth on the last boss. Also, animation for the ground pound (skill 3) doesn't display (supposed to be fix according to today's patch notes, will need to check if it animates correctly)

GrumpyKlam · August 2020

Tested it again tonight, the swap mechanic is a lot smoother with the color change on the screen.

I think the werewolf phase is somewhat broken, i got the greyed out skills like 8 times. Can't light attack or heavy, can't use skills, can't jump, can't run. @ZOS_Finn