PTS Update 33 - Feedback Thread for Coral Aerie

ZOS_GinaBruno · January 2022

This is the official feedback thread for Coral Aerie. 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?
Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…
Do you have any other general feedback?

umagon · January 2022

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for Coral Aerie. 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?

Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…

Do you have any other general feedback?

It was fun.
It felt a bit easier with some bosses but not much.
Veteran.
The whirlpool boss. The whirlpool mechanic was unexpected but fun.
Max level nightblade tank.
We found the secret boss after the end boss.
I am glad the dungeon didn’t have a lot of cheesy one shots.

WhiteCoatSyndrome · February 2022

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for Coral Aerie. 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?

Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…

Do you have any other general feedback?

Yes.
Haven’t run Vet yet but normal was fine.
Just normal so far.
I liked the boss with the whirlpool mechanic. It was easy enough to figure out what we needed to do but different enough to be interesting and memorable. Plus, indoor water park. Whee!
Magsorc healer, CP 1300+. Vicious Death/Kagrenac’s Hope/Master Resto staff/Earthgore head and shoulder if it matters.
We found the second secret miniboss entrance by accident and had to backtrack to get the first one. Third one had a door marker on the map making it kind of obvious, was that on purpose?
Getting buffs from the final secret boss to help get through the rest of it was cool, I could see this helping PuGs on live if they figure it out.

Soulshine · February 2022

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for Coral Aerie. 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?

Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…

Do you have any other general feedback?

This dungeon was really cool! Loved the layout, beautifully put together

Ran on vet only, did not do normal or HMs yet.
Found all the secret bosses and did the final fight with Z'Baza after last boss
Really enjoyable dungeon; will be going back for HM challenges
Ran on NA copied char, not template.

code65536 · February 2022

Note: The following is just the initial day 1 impression that I got. I'll write more later, once I've had a chance to spend more time with it.

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?

No.

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

Vet HM of both of the new dungeons make the vet HM of every existing dungeon feel like a leisurely stroll through the park.

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?

Cleared first two bosses on vet HM, attempted the final boss HM before finally giving up and clearing the final boss on vet non-HM.

Boss 1:
This is a fun fight, with new never-before-seen mechanics. The whirlpool is particularly nice. I have only two complaints:

A few times, I died after I jumped into the water, to a heavy attack by one of the adds on the platform. Their melee attack shouldn't be able to reach me once I'm in the water, but because they started the channel before I had gotten in, it's being allowed to hit and 1-shot me since I can't react to it while in the water.
The health of the adds during the whirlpool phase could use a reduction. Right now the phases seem like quite a slog and don't pace that well.

Boss 2:
This isn't a hard fight: Of all the bosses in this DLC, it's the one we wiped the least on (just a single wipe). But it's a chaotic, long, and very badly-paced fight. Too much jumping and teleporting and immunity phases. It's as if all the negative aspects of the Captain Geminus encounter were amplified. There was literally nothing that we liked about it.

Boss 3:
There are many great things about this fight. The mechanic that penalizes a tank for dodging heavy attacks is certainly an interesting (and sometimes amusing) twist. The mind link is an absolutely brilliant mechanic and we loved it.

What we don't love is how much health each gryphon has. Particularly the final gryphon, which we can't even ignore because it grants the boss immunity. The amount of health that we need to slog through for this fight is eye-watering.

Oh, and the Kena-style double-rotating wall, combined with the checkerboard mechanic, combined with the link mechanic, all happening at once, is just an excess of mechanics overlap that frankly doesn't feel fair.

Finally, Iliata's large lightning AoE NEEDS a red telegraph. It currently just appears as an light-colored transparent electric field that blends in very well the light sandy ground. It's really hard to tell at a glance where the boundaries are, particularly when there are other things going on. This is especially problematic because the AoE is constantly moving, so players need to continuously monitor its position.

Overall:
On the whole, I think that this is the more enjoyable of the two dungeons, with my main gripes being the pacing of the second boss fight and the execute phase of the last HM being too over-the-top. But compared to previous dungeons, I think both dungeons' HMs in this DLC are overtuned.

GrumpyKlam · February 2022

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?

I very much enjoyed the dungeon. It was a fresh take on reused mechanics.

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

The non-hm's are on the easier / medium side (ie: icereach / unhallowed grave)

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?

We did a run on non-hm vet only (for now)

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

The whirlpool boss was fun, like a combo of the last boss of black drake villa (jump in the circle) and the pillar boss of unhallowed grave (hookshot / add phase) but with water.

The last secret boss --> that boss should be a main boss in the dungeon

What level and build was the character you used?

Magplar (1700) Kinras / Bashei / Kilt / 1 slimecraw

Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…

Yes, and the last secret boss should 100 % be a main boss

Do you have any other general feedback?

We will go back to test the hard modes and give more useful feedback but here are the main things I noticed:
- the health of the adds during the whirlpool phase could be tune down (compared to similar phases in UG, for example)
- second boss (archer room) needs to chill down with the teleporting!
- the first 3 secret bosses are meh, but they are worth doing to fight the last secret boss

AJTC5000 · February 2022

This is my DAY 1 feedback! Ran in the same group as @code65536 above. Will post more thoughts once we've had some more time in there.

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
Some parts were cool, like discovering the whirlpool on Boss 1. I actually liked the mechanics on the last boss as well. However, the amount of mechanical overlap on Boss 2 and Boss 3 tempered my enjoyment.

How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
The difficulty from this dungeon comes from the amount of mechanical overlap - there is too much going on for it to be a fun encounter.

Did you complete Normal, Veteran, or both?
We attempted Veteran Hard Modes of all three bosses, clearing the first two bosses, and then clearing the final boss on Veteran after repeated wipes on Hard Mode.

Boss 1 - Maligalig
This fight is probably the best of the six. The whirlpool mechanic is awesome, it introduces you to the targetting sigil which remains throughout the dungeon, and is overall not too complicated. I only have the same complaints as @code65536 above - reduce the health of the Yaghra Strider and Spitter, and prevent people from dying to the heavy attacks from these enemies once they've jumped into the water.

Boss 2 - Sarydil
This fight sucked. It has the same problem as the Nazaray encounter in Shipwright's Regret, in which enemies with massive amounts of health are combined with a huge amount of area denial - and not only that, but immuntiy phases as well? We only wiped once but the pulls were the farthest from being clean - we practically limped to the end. Some thoughts:

Sarydil's split mechanic has her taunting the player with an echo-ey whisper while we try and locate the real Sarydil amongst her shades. Initially I assumed this was similar to the King Narilmor encounter from Depths of Malatar, in that once he's split you can track his voice to his location. However, I soon discovered that Sarydil's dis-embodied voice simply emanates from her starting perch and provides no help in locating her. This could be a cool change to mitigate that phase.
Sarydil will occasionally do a big firey AoE attack that visibly destroys the pillars that are closest to her. ... and that's it? Nothing really seemed to happen once all of the pillars were destroyed - was this intended? I had thought that maybe if you could bait her into destroying all of the pillars, the platform where her archer buddies were stood would crumble, and remove them from the fight. This again would be great to mitigate the sheer amount of damage during this encounter.
The lightning mages not only have a huge amount of health, but respawn soon after they are killed, similar to the Storm Atronachs on the Cyroniin Artellian encounter in The Dread Cellar. I don't really like that we have to just ... deal with them.
I still don't know what the big Khajiit's deal is. He puts up his shield and channels a lot of red energy into it, and then fires a triple-burst at you, which is mitigated by a shield and a heal no problem. But what causes it? Can we stop him from doing it? Is it a reflect mechanic where you have to stop damaging him? Still no idea. Also, the Khajiit again has way too much health, just like Nazaray's Lurcher.
Sarydil's heavy attack channel from her perch will sometimes bug out, and keep the telegraph on a player even when she's not doing it anymore.

Boss 3 - Varallion
This boss is actually really interesting, and I think done right, it could be an amazing encounter. Unfortunately, like Nazaray before him, he suffers again from too much mechanical overlap.

A couple of individual mechanics themselves are actually really good and I want to draw attention to them:

Mind Link, challenging every player who's completed Fungal Grotto 2 to forget what they've learned from Gamyne Bendu and hug each other for dear life.
Obliterate, where if the tank dodges it rather than eating it, causes a huge knockback effect that can have some fun consequences at times (and downright annoying at others).

Some general issues:

The gryphons have way too much health for the amount of health Varallion himself has - summing a total of 35+ million health. This makes the entire encounter a slog.
The Sea Orb just feels a bit pointless? I understand that when it detonates it hurts every player in range of it, but for 90% of the encounter it's incredibly easy to deal with. It's only in execute that I can see it becoming a problem, but execute has it's own problems anyway (see below).
Iliata's big lightning AoE needs to be better telegraphed - at least with the base colour underneath the blue lightning, similar to Valaran Stormcaller's AoE in Tempest Island. As it's a moving AoE it needs to be clearly visible!

However, the real problem from this encounter comes from execute, where all of the previous mechanics are compounded with a huge rotating pinwheel lightning storm, and Kargaeda, another gryphon with 8 million health that grants immunity to the boss. This sucks, full stop. For a brief idea of the amount of area denial present in this encounter, on top of an enemy that will not die quickly, consider the mechanics present here:

Kargaeda's lightning pinwheel
The checkerboard tidal wave
The purple pools
The Sea Orb
Mind Link

With the amount of mechanics present here, the first thought would be "Oh, let's just burn the boss as best we can - the longer we have to deal with these mechanics, the more likely we're gonna die to mechanical overlap!". But no, you can't do that, because you have to slog through an 8 million health gryphon first. It's just too much! Similar to my thoughts on Nazaray, you need to pick a lane - either focus on area denial, or focus on killing a big enemy. Both is way too much.

Which was your favourite boss of this dungeon, and why?
Boss 1 - see above.

What level and build was the character you used?
Magicka Templar, copied straight from the Live server with no PTS changes.

Bahsei's Mania - Kinras' Wrath - Death Dealer's Fate

Comfortable with melee on Boss 1. Boss 2 has a lot of moving around, so it's a little more unreasonable. Boss 3 is ranged or go home.

Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious ...
I preferred the secrets in this dungeon, and I liked the Black Drake Villa-esque secret final boss. The damage resist buff from the Sload tentacle is really nice and helped me out a bunch. We didn't try the Z'Baza fight on Hard Mode, as we cleared Varallion on regular Veteran, but the Veteran version of the fight at least wasn't too bad. I expect the Hard Mode version is much worse if Black Drake Villa's Sentinel Aksalaz is anything to go by.

Did you have any other general feedback?
I've yet to do a lore run of this place, and I'm excited to do so. I prefer the setting here than the one in Shipwright's Regret, where the enemies feel a lot more cohesive and complementary of each other. I was happy to see the Yaghra again after the Daedric War event, and it was nice to see Jakarn and Kaleen again as well I suppose.

RemanCyrodiil_I · February 2022

CyberOnEso · February 2022

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
Yeah! It was really fun, lots of interesting new mechanics. The secrets are great!

How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
The hard- mode is comparable to some of the harder DLC dungeons introduced recently (Which is great)
The vet mode is easy, which is good for PUG runs but the hardmode is a nice challenge, which is great to see. I want it to be a challenge, I want to have to progress some of the fights in the dungeon.
I want to be punished for messing up the mechanics, only when everyone can do the mehanics whilst dodging lightning AoE's with their eyes closed should you deserve to be able to kill the thing on vet hm.

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

Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?
First boss mechanics were really fun to learn. As code said above the Yagra should not be able to heavy attack anyone who is in the whirlpool.

Third boss mechanics especially the Tether was really great. However,I think it's important the tether is telegraphed a bit more. At the later stages of the fight it is hard to see which purple AoE is the tether and which isn't.
Iliata's lightning circle AoE is a bit too big and very hard to see if you are standing in, especially on the hard mode when you have 2 tidal waves every 5 seconds.

What level and build was the character you used?
Template characters
DK Tank - Turning Tide, Olorime, Magma Incarnte
Templar Healer - Worm, Master Architect, Symphony
Warden DD - Bahsei, Tzovgin, Kilt
DK DD - Bahsei, Tzovgin, Kilt

Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…
Yes, the secrets are excellent, although I have not yet had the opportunity to kill Z'Baza on vet hm I cannot wait to do so!

Do you have any other general feedback?
This dungeon is excellent, I love the world design, I love the boss design. The whirlpools are brilliant. The hardmodes are challenging yet doable.

The second boss - vet HM
The second boss is really something, when the boss splits you can hit the real one and be thanked for your service by immediately taking a light attack to the face, which is less than ideal.

The add waves are too long and too numerous, I think she spawns 3-4 add packs at ~70% hp, this just slows down the fight for no real purpose, the adds don't pose much of a threat but on vet hm at 70% is the time to go grab a cup of tea.

The defender, which spawns at ~30% of the bosses health is a massive damage sponge, and does really slow down the fight. His block mecahnic adds something interesting where it can happen at the same time as the kite mechanic, meaning you need to be precise with your block timings but he does slow down the fight a lot.

MyNameIsElias · February 2022

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?

Yes, it is really good.

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

Seems about what i'd expect from both veteran and hardmode, both seem balanced well.

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?

Veteran Hardmode, including doing the last secret boss on Hardmode (If that is a thing, we did the 3 normal bosses on hardmode, thus we assume the sload was also harder)

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

Boss 1, Maligalig. The whirlpool mechanic is hilarious.

What level and build was the character you used?

Max lvl templar magicka dd. Other dd was magicka dk, templar healer & DK tank.

Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…

Found all secrets.

Do you have any other general feedback?

The final boss has a lot of aoes on the ground at the same time, if possible it would be nice to tweak the color of the big waves you have to avoid & the big lightning aoe that spawns when gryphons are up. They are hard to see, and custom telegraph colors don't seem to work on the lightning AOE.

https://clips.twitch.tv/GloriousHardKangarooYouWHY-HUjypYXlszNjZtbG

code65536 · February 2022

We cleared vet HM earlier today, and I think that the issues with this dungeon are mostly pacing-related.

Boss 1:
The high health of the adds on the first boss makes that phase seem longer than necessary (esp. since we have to do two of them). Otherwise, boss 1 is probably the best-balanced boss.

Boss 2:
The second boss is a complete mess in terms of pacing, with the biggest problem being the bulwark.

He enters his retaliation phase far too frequently. We get only around 10 seconds to damage him. Crucially, most DoTs last longer than 10 seconds, which brings me to my next point:
His retaliation is proced off of any damage, including DoT damage. Have a DoT that is still ticking on him when he puts down his shield? You get punished. Have a lingering burning status effect from your weapon enchantment? You get punished. Graze him with a stray orb as you kill the other adds? You get punished.

The retaliation mechanic is completely broken because there's no reasonable way to play around it. It should instead only work for direct damage (after all, the visual is of him putting down his shield, which is something you would use to block direct damage). The time between retaliations need to be increased. And his health needs a major reduction.

The other pacing problem is how often the boss isn't there to fight. Why are there so many waves of small adds that spawn while she cowers upstairs? Do you think these small adds pose a challenge to anyone? Either reduce the number of waves (ideally to one or zero) or don't have the boss jump away: Let us fight the boss and adds together, if you really must spawn those add waves.

The boss's split mechanic is also another irritation, for two reasons. First, it's a period of time where we are not progressing the encounter. And second, because the boss immediately attacks as soon as she is revealed. She's just split herself into half a dozen copies and was then bashed, don't you think she needs a second or two to catch her breath? Instead, she immediately attacks, often before I even have a chance to swivel my camera towards the real copy and hit taunt. And of course, her light attacks are one-shots for anyone who isn't the tank.

Boss 3:
The encounter is mostly fine, and as I've said before, the Mind Link is brilliant and I love it, but there are a couple of problems that I want to reiterate.

The first is pacing: the gryphons--in particular the fourth gryphon--have too much health and serve to just drag the fight out. Execute phase is very mobile--for both players and their targets--which reduces players' damage output, and yet that gryphon has so much more health than all the others.

The second is that it feels like luck has an oversized role in execute. For example, on the pull where we cleared HM, there were two wave patterns back-to-back that had the super-narrow channels, and these two wave patterns were orthogonal to each other. Compounded with the rotation of the wall, the only way I could get from the safe channel of one wave to the safe channel of the next wave was to roll dodge, but the boss was also doing a heavy attack at the time, so I must wait for that to complete before I could roll. Fortunately, I lucked out: I dodged as soon as the heavy attack landed and was able to reach the safe channel right in the nick of time. But what if I wasn't? What if the heavy attack happened just one second later? Or what if I had the Mind Link at the time (fortunately, the Mind Link was on two other people at that moment, but it could've easily been me).

Yes, we did clear, but that particular moment was a very scary close call. To be clear, close calls are fine, but not when it feels like we have little control over them. Not sure what I would suggest to change this, though. Maybe only allow for a maximum of one narrow-channel wave per set of waves?

https://youtu.be/OT9LbXWFO5w

AJTC5000 · February 2022

I've put my edits in this second post for more visibility. Pretty much everything that @code65536 said in his edit was shared as a group sentiment, and I've reiterated and added a couple more things.

AJTC5000 wrote: »

Sarydil's split mechanic has her taunting the player with an echo-ey whisper while we try and locate the real Sarydil amongst her shades. Initially I assumed this was similar to the King Narilmor encounter from Depths of Malatar, in that once he's split you can track his voice to his location. However, I soon discovered that Sarydil's dis-embodied voice simply emanates from her starting perch and provides no help in locating her. This could be a cool change to mitigate that phase.

We discovered that she does in fact behave like King Narilmor, but only on her second voice line, while she's already throwing her knives. It would be really useful for her to tease her location on her first voice line, to give us more time to be able to mitigate the damage from the mechanic. On top of this, she reforms from all of her shades very quickly, meaning that if anyone had manually bashed her out of her mechanic, they'd more than likely get shanked by her before the tank could taunt her. Some sort of stun effect could be good here - think of the mental stress of reforming from all of her shades!

AJTC5000 wrote: »

Sarydil will occasionally do a big firey AoE attack that visibly destroys the pillars that are closest to her. ... and that's it? Nothing really seemed to happen once all of the pillars were destroyed - was this intended? I had thought that maybe if you could bait her into destroying all of the pillars, the platform where her archer buddies were stood would crumble, and remove them from the fight. This again would be great to mitigate the sheer amount of damage during this encounter.

So apparently there's an achievement for not breaking any of the pillars. Fun! Still prefer my previous idea.

AJTC5000 wrote: »

I still don't know what the big Khajiit's deal is. He puts up his shield and channels a lot of red energy into it, and then fires a triple-burst at you, which is mitigated by a shield and a heal no problem. But what causes it? Can we stop him from doing it? Is it a reflect mechanic where you have to stop damaging him? Still no idea. Also, the Khajiit again has way too much health, just like Nazaray's Lurcher.

Hoo boy, okay. So, when he raises his shield, he will reflect all damage that you're doing to him back at you in the aforementioned triple-burst. One pain point we discovered on the second run through is that if you run out of stamina to block it, it knocks you back, and usually into a handy knife-mine that Sarydil has thrown behind you. Also, his reflect seems to proc off of DoTs that had been placed before he puts the shield up, in addition to damage after the shield has been raised. This might just result in one burst being thrown at you, but any damage done once his shield is up - even something like a bash attack - will cause the triple-burst to fire. As a triple-burst removes about 18k stamina (my full stamina bar as a magicka DD), this seems a bit much - on top of the fact that his shield is up for about half the duration that he's on the field. And he has loads of health! Please balance him.

AJTC5000 wrote: »

With the amount of mechanics present here, the first thought would be "Oh, let's just burn the boss as best we can - the longer we have to deal with these mechanics, the more likely we're gonna die to mechanical overlap!". But no, you can't do that, because you have to slog through an 8 million health gryphon first. It's just too much! Similar to my thoughts on Nazaray, you need to pick a lane - either focus on area denial, or focus on killing a big enemy. Both is way too much.

Having now cleared Hard Mode, I can definitely say that execute is still the pain point of this encounter, and simply removing one or two of the mechanics from it would improve the experience drastically.

AJTC5000 wrote: »

I preferred the secrets in this dungeon, and I liked the Black Drake Villa-esque secret final boss. The damage resist buff from the Sload tentacle is really nice and helped me out a bunch. We didn't try the Z'Baza fight on Hard Mode, as we cleared Varallion on regular Veteran, but the Veteran version of the fight at least wasn't too bad. I expect the Hard Mode version is much worse if Black Drake Villa's Sentinel Aksalaz is anything to go by.

Hard Mode ... just added 4 million health? It didn't really seem to increase the damage, or add any new mechanics. A bit of a surprise, but honestly a welcome one after the gruelling Varallion Hard Mode encounter.

Hailan · February 2022

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for Coral Aerie. 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?

Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…

Do you have any other general feedback?

I enjoyed these dungeons so much they are so much fun. It is amazing to finally have vet hard modes that are challenging.

Compared to other dungeons they are harder but that is a great thing other vet dlc dungeons have been way to easy even on hard mode.

I have completed both vet hard modes multiple times and was doing so day one of pts.

Favorite boss has to be final boss of Coral Aerie on hard mode. It requires a ton of group coordination and communication and situational awareness.

I took my main character from NA to complete these dungeons using perfected bahsei on the body. medusa front barred
inferno with velidreth monster and maelstrom inferno back bar on all bosses and trash on magicka nightblade.

The mechanics were very refreshing and appeared to be new which was interesting because it didn't feel like recycled mechanics.

General feed back is please do not nerf or adjust these dungeons they are great the way they are. Obviously bugs need to be fixed but the difficulty is fine just the way it is. The trifectas for both are easily doable as long as groups dont wipe. I really LOVED both how they are now and at their current difficulty great job on these two. I hope newer pve content is this hard or harder in the future

KyleTheYounger · February 2022

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for Coral Aerie. 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?

Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…

Do you have any other general feedback?

After completing the Prologue quest, I can't start the DLC nvm this new dungeon. How do you begin/start either of these. The store picture is greyed out indicating the DLC was purchased. But no quest event triggers or map markers etc. show up in quest log or on map after the prologue ends?

WhiteCoatSyndrome · February 2022

KyleTheYounger wrote: »

After completing the Prologue quest, I can't start the DLC nvm this new dungeon. How do you begin/start either of these. The store picture is greyed out indicating the DLC was purchased. But no quest event triggers or map markers etc. show up in quest log or on map after the prologue ends?

@KyleTheYounger If you’re talking about the High Isle zone, that’s not out yet, that’s the Q2 expansion. This quarter is just the prologue and the two dungeons.

VaranisArano · February 2022

KyleTheYounger wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for Coral Aerie. 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?

Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…

Do you have any other general feedback?

After completing the Prologue quest, I can't start the DLC nvm this new dungeon. How do you begin/start either of these. The store picture is greyed out indicating the DLC was purchased. But no quest event triggers or map markers etc. show up in quest log or on map after the prologue ends?

This DLC, Ascending Tide, is just the 2 new dungeons.

To go to the dungeons, use the groupfinder or travel directly to the location of the new dungeons and enter manually.

KyleTheYounger · February 2022

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

KyleTheYounger wrote: »

After completing the Prologue quest, I can't start the DLC nvm this new dungeon. How do you begin/start either of these. The store picture is greyed out indicating the DLC was purchased. But no quest event triggers or map markers etc. show up in quest log or on map after the prologue ends?

@KyleTheYounger If you’re talking about the High Isle zone, that’s not out yet, that’s the Q2 expansion. This quarter is just the prologue and the two dungeons.

@VaranisArano Thank thee kind Sir!

So I'm NOT as insane as I've actually been all my life

Thank you both for the free head shrink <3333

WhiteCoatSyndrome · February 2022

Happy to help.

Troodon80 · February 2022

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?

Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

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

The overall difficulty I think was similar to some other DLC dungeons. The difference in difficult here comes largely from mechanics, which I really like. First boss especially.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?

Veteran and veteran hard mode.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

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

It's hard to pick one favourite, first boss and last are closely tied. I'll say the first boss because overall it has less visual clutter going on. The Whirlpool mechanic was really something and timing how long you'd be on the platforms was interesting and not just a rehash on a previously used mechanic. I hope we get more mechanics like this.

I've heard some people are struggling with understanding this, but I'll go over what we did a couple days ago.

We keep boss more or less central, but off-set towards entrance, that way we all go up on the 6 o' clock side, right of entrance going counter-clockwise.

Each platform has two cyclones you can synergise with. Once you get to around 7 stacks of the damage, drop back into the whirlpool and go past the first cyclone of the next platform, use the synergy on the second. In theory, if the tank goes to the farthest point on the current platform they could take the first cyclone on the next platform, but I'll do this to keep it simple as it doesn't matter where you are on the platform when you drop in. This ensures your debuff runs out (and the damage ticks reset). Tank retaunts and drops down first on each platform (with a second headstart) which gives time to taunt the adds on the next platform. Rinse and repeat until all three platforms are done.

My only gripe here is that the adds can start doing Reave as you're dropping down and can one-shot the tank from the other side of the room (I'm exaggerating, but the attack should be cancelled). Code mentioned similar.

I want to give a shout out to my current least favourite, which is Z'Maja's twin. After doing the previous hard modes, we did this boss and... it was hugely anti-climactic. Not like Jack Frost from Black Drake Villa where on PTS it was actually a challenge (though when it went Live people had foud out they could dodge the Ice DoT). This is quite possibly the least challenging boss in the game.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

What level and build was the character you used?

Max CP template. Nord DK tank. Turning Tide + Olorime + Magma Incarnate.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…

We cleared side bosses. On one side boss there are AoEs around the arena with gaps in two places. I think you missed an opportunity here to add in a knockback of some sort which would punt players into the AoEs if they weren't standing in the right spot to get knocked into one of those gaps. The gaps are largely meaningless as the centre remains clear.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Do you have any other general feedback?

As posted in the other dungeon feedback topic, Mind Sever seemingly detonates players a random. We've limited our incoming damage, but there still seems to be some random detonations which makes it a coin toss as to whether you'll die with this tether or not. Please see post here. It's also somewhat difficult to tell where the large lightning AoE is when you get vaious other AoEs overlapping. As said in a previous paragraph, there's a lot of visual clutter going on in this fight (but overall I liked the fight and the fact that you can't just pick a spot and stack and burn).

I had some additional feedback, but Cyber already mentioned above. So I'll just agree with that. We already discussed this boss being in the same group, so my feedback would be more or less the same.

On last boss, a small doughnut AoE could be placed under the player who has the large lightning AoE to make it more obvious who has "aggro."

CyberOnEso · February 2022

I love the fact that the mini wayshrines at the start of these dungeons are interactable, when previously they haven't been.

I hope we see this going forward and possible ported back into previous dungeons?

code65536 · February 2022

@Troodon80 After reading your posts in the other thread, we went back in and tried to test your theory that maybe it severs when a player reaches low health, rather than when the player dies. I used Balance to keep my health low whenever I got the link, and the sever wouldn't happen until it actually went down to zero.

There's some other weird behavior that we had noticed. There were a handful of times when one tethered player would die, but not trigger a Sever. I'm not sure if that's intended or not; haven't had a chance yet to examine the logs to see if there was something else about the mechanic that we had missed. Or it could just be that there are some bugs with the sever mechanic.

Contraptions · February 2022

[*] Did you enjoy this new dungeon?

Not too much. This dungeon definitely drags on longer than most DLC dungeons. It's a combination of the dungeon being physically longer, most boss fights having multiple invuln/add phases, and the larger amounts of trash here.

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

Definitely seems harder than average for a DLC. The HMs in particular look terrible.

[*] Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?

Soloed it on norm.

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

No favourites.

Trash mobs

The amount of trash in this dungeon seems a bit high. Trash health and damage also seem higher than average. The melee yaghra, Khajiits with the shield and the frost mage cultists with the beam are particularly annoying.

Magalig

The damage from this boss is pretty high, esp the heavy attack and associated DOT. Had a bug where I died from it and got a nice barb through my char as a souvenir.

Jokes aside, I didn't really enjoy this fight. The mechanic where one person has to cleanse the AOE in a green circle isn't super intuitive especially given how the cleanse circle has a red ring around it.

It took me a while to figure out the red symbol above my character was the targetting telegraph, telling me that exploding yagras were chasing me. Not super clear. Exploding yagras should be slower and the actual explosion needs to be slower so people can avoid the explosions more reliably.

The whirlpool phase looks really cool at first, until you realise it's just a glorified add phase with invulnerability. The total health of the reflections is so high even on normal that this phase just drags on for way too long. I think the added health of all the reflections and adds is comparable to that of the boss itself! Also from vids I've seen of HM, the DOTs during this phase can stack up to 17k/tick. Ridiculous.

Sarydil

Another tedious, overdesigned fight with multiple add phases and invuln phases. The fight also gets way too chaotic after a while with both adds and the boss spamming persistent AOEs everywhere. Why do the dagger AOEs from the boss last so long and why does she continue spamming knives even when she's on top hiding? Why does the boss's fire explosion that occurs so quickly apply such a high DOT? Why are there so many waves of adds, and so many of those annoying frost mages with snare beams? Why is there a need to add 2 nearly invulnerable adds on HM that have no other purpose than to add 2 more large, persistent AOEs in an already small and cramped arena that is usually already filled with AOES? Why does the large Khajiit bulwark add in the middle of the fight have so much damn health and damage? Why does that bulwark need a damage reflect mechanic to make it even longer to kill? Why does a mob that has a damage reflection mechanic spawn in with other mobs that need to be AOEd down quickly?

This fight is also impossible without some kind of ranged interrupt to stop her knife throw, and is also necessary when she splits to stop yourself from getting nuked by 6 streams of knives almost instantly. For the regular knife stream, why does she continue to hit you even if you hide behind a pillar?

The persistent, almost unavoidable damage from the archers above is just a nuisance. There's already tons of stuff going on and I don't enjoy getting plinked from above with no way of getting rid of them.

This fight is proof that adding more stuff doesn't automatically make an encounter better. Please go back and delete some of these mechanics. I would rather have one interesting core mechanic per boss fight as opposed to the game spamming crap at me for the sake of "challenge".

Varallion

The only good thing I can mention about this fight is how well telegraphed the big wave mechanic is. The AOE is bright and unique, and the time given to avoid it is generous enough. I only wish I had these sorts of telegraphs during vSCP HM.

Other than that, the usual issues appear. Why do the gryphon adds have so much health? Why does the black AOE dropped by each player after the unavoidable DOT last so long? Why do the gryphons themselves add even more AOEs in an arena that is already constrained by the big waves and when movement is blocked by the tether?

From vids I've seen the tether mechanic, at least on vet and HM, is unique and should be built upon for more of the fight instead of tacking on more adds and AOEs. Why not allow players to turn it against the boss and his adds, like how the HOF tether removes the sphere's shields in hunter-killers? If the boss or the adds touch the tether, they take much more damage or such. The reward for players following the mechanics should be a smoother, cleaner and easier clear. If this was added, the gryphons' high health stops being a problem, as there is now a way to counter it using the fight mechanics.

Please tone down the Kargaeda tornado with the 4 rotating shock walls. There's enough way too much going on during execute already. Maybe reduce the walls to 2, stop the rotation during the big waves and make the entire tornado disappear when Kargaeda dies.

[*] What level and build was the character you used?

Max level mag sorc.

[*] Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…

I found all the secret bosses. I was unable to fight Zbaza cos I couldn't get past the sword guardian and his 60k heavy attacks.

[*] Do you have any other general feedback?

I have already made another post here regarding fight complexity, overlapping mechanics and proper telegraphing. A lot of what I wrote there applies here as well. Please go back and trim these fights down to be less chaotic and overwhelming in general.

The other point I wish to add is regarding add phases. Adds are supposed to be side encounters to the main boss. If the total health of the adds and time taken to kill them is comparable to that of the main boss encounter, then something is very wrong.

CyberOnEso · February 2022

Thank you so much for the buff to Z'Baza on hardmode
It makes the fight much more interesting and actually challenging! This is ideal for the secret last boss on Hard Mode, there is no reason to go easy, it's an entirely optional boss.

However, at the moment the fight is extremely punishing, one mistake from one player can easily force a wipe as it is nearly impossible to recover due to the radiant tendril constantly firing AoE's at everyone stopping the rez.

This resulted in us just getting good at dodging AoE's until we could do the fight flawlessly in ~3 minutes, only damaging Z'Baza and the frost tendril and just avoiding all other sources of damage. If this is the intended solution then that's great, however, if you want us to kill the other tendrils then something should probably be changed.

With the rate at which the tendrils spawn currently there is not really a reason to kill them, it just makes the fight longer.

CyberOnEso · February 2022

CyberOnEso wrote: »

I love the fact that the mini wayshrines at the start of these dungeons are interactable, when previously they haven't been.

I hope we see this going forward and possible ported back into previous dungeons?

I would love to see this change reconsidered.
There's no reason not to have those wayshrines be interactable right? It's just a nice quality of life bonus

MyNameIsElias · February 2022

The final boss has a gryphon that summons a lightning storm AOE that follows one person around. This mechanic is impossible for color blind people to see, because the custom aoe colors don't affect this AOE. A dd in our group is colorblind and could never see the AOE.

Hell, even for non colorblind people like myself it was difficult to spot.

Troodon80 · February 2022

MyNameIsElias wrote: »

Hell, even for non colorblind people like myself it was difficult to spot.

Couldn't agree more, especially when you get other AoEs like the Tidal line AoEs overlapping. Can't see anything.

Cuwen · March 2022

This dungeon is far too long... I don't have hours to spend in 1 dungeon.

CyberOnEso · March 2022

Cuwen wrote: »

This dungeon is far too long... I don't have hours to spend in 1 dungeon.

This is one of the shorest DLC dungeons they have introduced. There are only 3 required bosses and not too long trash sections.

Cayr · March 2022

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?
Yes, very much so.
How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?
Normal feels pretty standard, Veteran was easier than most other Veteran dungeons, HMs were harder than a lot of the exiting ones.
Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?
Both.
Do you have any other general feedback?
Whereas I liked the dungeon overall, I did not find the second boss enjoyable. It's a good challenging fight, but it's horribly paced, overstays its welcome with too many small add spawns that slow down the fight for no reason and too much mechanical overlap. Everything is happening at once with no rhyme or reason.
- Bulwark: has too much health, right off the bat. It slows down the fight for too long.
- There is no reasonable way to avoid the reflect. Especially since the encounter has other adds you have to deal with. It should only reflect direct damage, rather than just punish players for dealing with other adds.
- The invulnerability phases combined with the huge amount of AoEs and the massive health pool of not only the boss, but also even the little adds, and the excessive waves of adds is a detriment to the fight. It should mirror more like Bahsei in vRG - where the boss itself doesn't have all that much health, but the challenge is genuinely in the other mechanics going on. But if you pair that with a big health pool, it's just tedious and slows down what could otherwise be an exciting fast-paced fight. Please limit the small add waves.