Ascending Tide Dungeons - Shipwright's Regret and Coral Aerie - Hard Mode Guide

code65536 · March 2022

Introduction

The two Ascending Tide dungeons—Shipwright's Regret and Coral Aerie—have arguably the most difficult dungeon Hard Modes to date. In contrast to my previous guides, this guide is less about technical details for the mechanics and more about offering players tips on how to best deal with the mechanics.

Shipwright's Regret – Foreman Bradiggan

Avoiding Paralyzing Fear

For players at melee range (inside the initial circular telegraph): It's recommended that you roll dodge the mechanic. Dodge either inwards or sideways, right before the expanding circle completely fills up. Do not dodge outwards, or you will likely catch one of the fear circles as it leaves.
For players at medium range (just outside the initial circular telegraph): It's recommended that you roll dodge the mechanic. Dodge forward towards the boss right as the fear AoEs travel outward.
For players at long range: You have enough time that you can either side-step the AoEs or dodge them.

Harrowing Haunters (and Haunting Charge)

These ghosts always spawn after a Haunting Charge, and there will be a ghost that spawns for every player who does not currently have a tethered ghost.
- The boss will always do Haunting Charge in the direction that he is facing, so the tank will often have control over the direction of the charge, though there can be times where the boss will turn for a mechanic (e.g., casting a Soul Bomb) and then immediately charge without first turning back to face the tank.
These ghosts increase the damage taken by players, reduces healing, and reduces players' damage output, on top of doing damage directly to the tethered players.
- Tanks need to be very careful while tethered; an unblocked light attack from the boss while tethered can hit for well over 30K, and heavy attacks while tethered are exceptionally painful as well.
Since the ghosts cannot be taunted or pulled, the way to stack the ghosts together is for the players to stack together.
The boss will always do 2x Haunting Charges in the first phase, 1x in the second phase, and charges happen on a timer in the third (execute) phase.
- Don't kill the ghosts that spawn from the first charge in the first phase: This will ensure that no new ghosts spawn from the second charge. Kill the ghosts after the second charge.
- Kill the ghosts immediately after they spawn in the second phase.
- Don't bother with killing ghosts in the third (execute) phase, since the constant charges mean that they will continually respawn.

Flame Shapers

They cannot be taunted, but they can be chained.

Ground Plague

This is the expanding circle that the Colossus's Rancid Hammer leaves behind.
Keeping the Colossus turned away from the group when it casts Rancid Hammer will leave the Plague in a somewhat more favorable position.
The plague does not expand indefinitely: When the Colossus casts Rancid Hammer a second time, the existing Plague will dissipate and is replaced by a new Plague at the location of the Rancid Hammer.
The strategy that we adopted was to keep the Colossus near the edge of the plague and slowly inching away as necessary to accommodate the growing Plague.

Soul Bomb

This is a damage share mechanic, similar to Roaring Flare in Cloudrest and Bug Bomb in Blackrose Prison
- However, unlike previous damage share mechanics, only two players should stack together for a bomb. Any other number of players in a bomb AoE will be lethal.

Shipwright's Regret – Nazaray

Kindred Spirit

Two spectral wolves opposite each other must be killed, and the resulting safe areas are the spots where the wolves stood. Entrance and exit wolves are generally the ones most groups target.

Liquidate

The small blue circles dropped by the boss will empower the boss and make it immune to damage and increase the damage done by the boss.
Empowered damage is very high: an empowered melee light attack can hit the tank for well over 30K if unblocked, and an empowered ranged light attack can hit for well over 40K if unblocked. Extra block mitigation (e.g., Bracing Anchor) is required to survive an empowered heavy attack if the tank opts to block rather than dodge it.

Lurchers

Terrorizing Timber / Agonizing Bramble: This is the Lurchers' "shake" mechanic, which will afflict every player with an unavoidable and unpurgeable health-scaled DoT. Healers are advised to keep HoTs on people, esp. when the group is split for Kindred Spirit.
Up to three lurchers can spawn, and their spawns are tied to boss health percentages.
Only one lurcher can be up at any time. (This is a nerf from the original mechanic on PTS.)
- Killing lurchers is thus optional. For groups with high damage output, killing lurchers will just mean that the next lurcher will spawn almost immediately after the current lurcher dies, which is effectively no different than just ignoring the lurchers outright. (But for groups learning this boss, focusing the lurchers down can help reduce pressure, particularly on the tank.)

Shipwright's Regret – Captain Numirril

Drowned Corpses

There can be a maximum of 8 corpses active at any given time (2 per side).
Corpses will slowly but continually spawn in pairs as long as there are "openings" on two adjacent sides.
- For example: If there are 2 corpses each on north and south and 1 corpse each on east and west, there will be no spawn, but if there are 2 corpses each on north and east and 1 corpse each on south and west, then a pair of corpses will spawn to fill the gaps on south and west.
- The very first ability that each corpse casts when it spawns is Wave. Corpse spawns are the source of the waves. And this is why waves always appear in pairs, originating from adjacent sides of the arena.
Hurl is the corpses' ranged light attack, and it targets players at random and does not respect taunt. Each hit of Hurl will spawn a Bile Pool at the target's location.
Retch is the corpses' interruptible channel that spawns Bile Pools near the corpse.
- It is NOT necessary to interrupt Retch. In fact, when the dungeon first appeared on PTS, the ability was not interruptible at all on Hard Mode.
- A corpse that is busy retching will not be hurling. So players have a choice: They can either interrupt Retch slightly slow the buildup of Bile Pools (keep in mind that Hurl will spawn pools as well, albeit not quite a quickly as Retch), or they can ignore the Retch and stop that corpse from casting Hurl for a period of time. And there can be scenarios where interrupting can even wipe the group.
  - For example: Let's say your group has had a couple of deaths and you're trying to recover. Because of the deaths, you've fallen behind on corpse management, and there are now five corpses around the room. In such a scenario, you should not interrupt as you try to recover. Let them channel: the Bile Pools are fairly easy to clean up, but having multiple corpses all throwing their Hurl at the surviving members of your group will almost certainly cut your recovery efforts short.
- To put it another way, when you interrupt, you stop the buildup of pools in front of the corpse, but in exchange, you get high-damage projectiles pelting players at random and pool spawns at player locations all around the room. On top of the time and effort to perform the interrupt itself. Needless to say, this is usually not a good trade.
General advice: Keep the corpse population in check. And don't bother with interrupts: this is one of the extremely rare encounters in ESO where interrupting usually hurts more than it helps, and I would even go as far as to say that any guide recommending interrupts is offering faulty advice.

Drowned Hulks

Two hulks will spawn at 40% boss health. At this point, the boss has 5.9M health and is subject to execute-style bonuses such as Bloodthirsty, whereas the two hulks combined have 8.2M health (4.1M health each). Groups may find it easier to simply focus on the boss and ignore the hulks at this point.

Positioning

Because the waves are caused by corpse spawns and the corpses always spawn in the middle area of each side of the room, the middle of the room is a dangerous location to hold enemies, as there will often be waves criss-crossing that area. Plus, the boss often charges to the edges anyway.

Shipwright's Regret – Video

https://youtu.be/y-a6bUAJKGs

code65536 · March 2022

Coral Aerie – Maligalig

Voracious Whirlpool: General

This mechanic happens at 70% and 40% boss health.
It is recommended that players position themselves clockwise from the tank's position shortly before reaching these health thresholds, so that the tank is "in front" for the mechanic.
- The Storm Cell mechanic (a.k.a., the "doughnut hole" mechanic) will dissipate when Voracious Whirlpool starts, so a player who gets that mechanic shortly before the health thresholds for Voracious Whirlpool might want to prioritize maintaining the correct position for entering the Voracious Whirlpool mechanic.

Voracious Whirlpool: Static Discharge

This damage, which appears only in Hard Mode, will hit every player on the platforms.
This damage is unresistible: It will hit the tank for the exact same amount as it hits a DD, and it cannot be shielded or mitigated in any way.
It hits for exactly 1881.5 damage per stack of Building Static.
Static Discharge hits (and Building Static grows) once every 2s.
- So at 0s, the player will have 1 stack of Building Static and take 1881 damage, and at 20s, the player will have 11 stacks of Building Static and take 20697 damage.
Players must take no Static Discharge damage for 8s in order for Building Static to reset back to 0.
- Jumping off a platform from the "entrance" half of the current platform and jumping up on the "exit"-side geyser of the next platform should give players enough time in the water for Building Static to dissipate.
Immediately before jumping into the water, healers should refresh Radiating Regeneration to ensure that every player has a HoT ticking on them to counteract the damage from the water; this will help if a player took a Static Discharge hit right before jumping in and thus entered the water at low health.

Voracious Whirlpool: What does it take to clear a platform in a single landing?

Each Ripple has 1804500 health.
The time available per platform is dependent on the max health of the player. For example, if every player has at least 21K health, then can they afford to stay on each platform for 20s (assuming the healer is able to heal everyone back to full in the 2s between each tick). Assuming that the first 3s are wasted as players recover from the stun of the jump, then 17s for two DDs to do 1.8M damage translates to 53K single-target DPS from each DD, if you want to clear the platform in a single landing.

Coral Aerie – Sarydil

General Tips

The tank should slot Crushing Shock and chains.
Do not kill the mages that spawn at the entrance and exit. They will respawn if killed. Just interrupt them with Crushing Shock whenever they channel. Their channel just creates a large area-of-denial AoE and is usually not imminently dangerous.
Stay in the middle-ish area of the room: Going to the edges is a great way to get boxed in and trapped. If the boss dashes to the entrance or exit, don't follow her. Just interrupt her from range, and she'll teleport back to the tank after being interrupted.
The tank does not need to kite the knives. If the tank stands still and just eats the damage, it will prevent them from "painting" a line of mines on the ground and make the area slightly easier for melee DDs to operate in. (Obviously, if the tank is in trouble, they should kite the knives and not eat that damage.)

Ascendant Bulwark

When he braces with his shield, he will retaliate against any player that damages him with a direct damage ability. This retaliation is telegraphed as a growing circle around the player's feet. Each player who the Bulwark retaliates against will receive three of these hits, which will knock down and stun the player if it is not blocked.
- Players who opt to keep damaging the Bulwark during this mechanic should block the retaliations. Magicka DDs may find it useful to use potions that also restore stamina, to help with blocking these retaliations.
- Alternatively, players can opt to avoid damaging the Bulwark with direct damage abilities to avoid this retaliatory damage.

Coral Aerie – Varallion

Obliterate

This is the boss's heavy attack, and it will knock back every other player if it fails to hit its target for any reason.
- The tank must not dodge this attack.
- It is also possible for the knockback to be triggered by outranging the heavy attack, if the tank runs away from the boss too quickly during a heavy attack channel.
- This attack also applies a 5s DoT on its target called Mental Wound.

Mind Link

The boss will periodically link two randomly-selected players. If the link breaks for any reason, then both of the linked players will instantly die. There are two ways to break the link:
1. One of the players dies.
2. A third player touches the link (which will also instantly kill the third player).
There is NO distance penalty. The one and only downside to a long link is the increased risk of another player walking into it. Obviously, the link should be kept short when possible, but don't worry too much about stretching it out if the situation calls for it.
The link itself does around 2.5K damage per second to each linked player (approximately 500 damage, ticking 5 times per second).
Unfortunately, death recaps will always show Mind Sever for both players when a linked pair dies. This can make it difficult to determine which player's death was the cause of the Sever and which player's death was the result of the Sever.

Sea Orb

There are two ways to deal with Sea Orbs:
- Attacking and killing it.
- Having the person who is being targeted by the Sea Orb go "pop" it. Only the targeted player can do this, and it is done by either walking into it while blocking or roll dodging through it.
  - The Sea Orb does have an AoE splash effect (Crashing Wave) with a 25-meter radius, so if there are other players nearby, they should be warned so that they can block and/or shield it. An orb that explodes along the shore will generate a wave that almost reaches the center of the island.
"Popping" an orb is generally preferred over killing it, but killing is an option if the situation is such that popping is too dangerous.

Ofallo

Lingering Current: This is identical to the Ghastly Wound effect from Moongrave Fane's Hard Mode.
- It applies a 35567-point heal absorption effect to the target.
- Additionally, it also reduces the healing done by the target by 90% so that it is impractical for the target to self-heal themselves out from the effect; externally-sourced heals are required. (Any damage shield that the target applies to themselves will be reduced in strength by 90% as well.)
- It is applied periodically and only to whoever Ofallo is aggroed to (i.e., the tank, if they're alive and have not lost taunt), and as long as the healer has kept HoTs on the tank, it should be relatively easy to heal out of. But if the healer is dead or otherwise occupied, it can be lethal for the tank.
- (For Healers) How do you tell, without the use of addons, if the tank has a heal absorption effect on them? If someone has a heal absorption effect, their health bar cannot gain any health. So if you see that the tank is suddenly is receiving zero healing while Ofallo is alive, then they have Lingering Current. And as soon as you see their health bar gain any amount—even just a single point—of health, then you know that they no longer have a heal absorption effect.
- Note: Some players have compared this mechanic to the Baneful Mark from Cloudrest. This is a misleading comparison, as Lingering Current shares nothing in common with Baneful beyond the fact that both are heal-check mechanics. As noted above, Ghastly Wound from Moongrave Fane is the most closely-related mechanic.
  - The key difference is that Baneful is a debuff to healing received from any source and does not affect shields, whereas Lingering Current is a debuff to the victim's healing done and the victim's shields. This means that some of the strategies commonly used for Baneful are inapplicable for Lingering Current (specifically, having the tank synergize a Blood Altar and/or Bone Shield; keep in mind that healing and shields that are sourced from a synergy are sourced to the player using the synergy, not to the player supplying it and are thus subject to the 90% reduction).
  - In general, Lingering Current is much easier to deal with than Baneful Mark, since externally-sourced heals are unaffected by Lingering Current, but unlike Baneful Mark, the fate of a victim of Lingering Current is almost entirely in the hands of their healer, whereas with Baneful Mark, the victim can (and often do, esp. with the use of Blood Altar and Bone Shield synergies) contribute significantly to their own recovery.

Kargaeda

Kargaeda's special mechanic is that he grants the boss invulnerability, so killing it is not optional. (The boss's dialogue cue for Kargaeda's spawn hints at this mechanic: "Kargaeda! Protect me!")
Similar to the Molag Kena fight, there are two ways to deal with Kargaeda:
1. Keep Kargaeda in the middle of the room, on the storm's center, and kill it while rotating around with the lightning lines.
2. Keep Kargaeda in a static position away from the middle and just roll, block, and/or shield the lightning lines.
Most groups kill Kena by keeping her in the middle of the room, so that seemed like the natural choice for us for Kargaeda, but I've seen other groups take the other approach successfully as well. Both approaches are valid.

Amplified Incoming Damage

A number of avoidable damage sources in the Varallion encounter will penalize players for taking repeated ticks of damage. Specifically, each tick of damage taken by the player will add a stack to a debuff on the player that causes the player to take increased damage from subsequent damage ticks from this source.
- Coalescing Pool: These are the dark circles that players drop after they have been affected by Coalescing Shadows. Players must avoid taking damage from this source for 10 seconds in order for the damage amplification to reset.
- Storm Shield: These are the tornados that orbit Mafremare. Players must avoid taking damage from this source for 15 seconds in order for the damage amplification to reset.
- Lightning Storm: This is the large moving ground AoE associated with Iliata. Players must avoid taking damage from this source for 15 seconds in order for the damage amplification to reset.
- Cyclonic Spark: These are the "lightning lines" that appear after Kargaeda has joined the encounter. Players must avoid taking damage from this source for 15 seconds in order for the damage amplification to reset.

Coral Aerie – Misc

Coral Crabs

They do not need to be killed for any of the achievements. Nor do they drop mudcrab chitin. Don't waste your time with them.

Coral Aerie – Video

https://youtu.be/jc5InZ8dPlE

Lawndart · March 2022

Great guide, using it right now. Thanks mate.

Tyrion87 · March 2022

Bookmarked!

So many great and valuable tips and explanations. Thank you @code65536

Dagoth_Rac · March 2022

Great work! Thank you! I like these new dungeons. It was possible to solo on normal, with no one-shots that can't be dodged or otherwise avoided, and no mechanics that require multiple players on normal, and no need for niche builds. Just bring in your vMA or vVH build and then have fun. But the hard modes are really challenging and require a lot of teamwork and coordination. So they seem well-designed from top to bottom and across different play styles.

code65536 · March 2022

Based on feedback from players who have messaged me, there have been a number of additions and clarifications to the guide since it was first posted a week ago, particularly for Coral Aerie.

OutLaw_Nynx · March 2022

Thank you!

SLEDGEHAMMER_X · April 3

Advice on Kargaeda fight? Trouble with the mechs when tether goes out. Keep wiping during this fight or exe. 3dds.

code65536 · April 3

SLEDGEHAMMER_X wrote: »

3dds.

The tether is a heal check, and you have no healer, and you're wondering why you're wiping?

The fight is not designed or intended to be run with 3 DDs. While it is possible to do the fight with 3 DDs if the DDs have sufficient self- and off-heals (for example, 3x magblades each with Swallow Soul for self-heals Healthy Offering for off-heals), I would consider it to be harder (the only advantage of 3DDs is that you might potentially skip execute with that much damage).