Both these bosses seem about balanced on live. Xalvakka's wipe timer may a little low, but I wouldn't say the fight is excessively long. I just want their health reduced by the same percentage as the DPS nerfs so that the difficulty remains nearly constant, or slightly easier. No group should lose the ability to clear any encounter when a patch releases.

I don't think I necessarily have a number in my head for what I think boss hp needs to be reduced to. But I think that if you're making a claim that you are going to reduce boss hp and difficulty to be in line with what it currently is on live then I'd be expecting to see boss hp follow a similar reduction in line with damage. If damage is going down by ~20% then I'd expect to see boss hp dropping 20% across the board.

This would bring Xalvakka to around 190.4m and Taleria to around 160.8m.

My biggest concern would be that should damage go down, regardless of the claim of closing some kind of existing skill gap, the fights need to remain the same time or better. Otherwise it's not actually lowering anything, it's just making it harder for the target demographic and accomplishing nothing for top players. 30s longer on Xalvakka will hardly affect most raid teams, but can shut out prog teams for another couple weeks.

I really don't think that damage matters a whole lot to most people, barring losing the ability to clear certain fights like Xalvakka. So as long as damage stays in line with what is expected from the content, these changes won't actually matter. What is really the make or break for me is how combat will feel after yet another round of sweeping changes. I think most people really enjoy the combat and stick around for that reason. You can go do big damage in pretty much any game, but eso's combat is what really attracts a lot of players in the community. Spamming the same skill 40 times isn't very fun. Heavy attacking isn't fun. There is already no reason to even do end game content in eso, it's pretty much a money sink. Having to play catch up every patch because of so many changes gets exhausting.

We are entering week 4 of PTS and are almost entirely in the dark on what changes are really coming. This concerns me more than anything. I really think that ZOS need to take a step back and pull these changes and give plenty of time for testing to be done. The changes being made here are not something to shove out to meet a quarterly combat patch expectation. These changes have the potential to be one of the worst introductions to the game since the last time similar changes were made in Morrowind. Zos has been doing a really good job of new content lately and I would hate to see it ruined by forcing something like this.

Same concept goes for the other boss fights. No need to balance even the hardest content strictly around the 0.01% of the top 1%.

To make it more accessible, the boss healths should be decreased so that a group that is able to get Godslayer (even if it's a 30 min GS) is able to clear both hard modes in RG and DSR with a bit of leeway for factoring in some recovery. You shouldn't need a perfect fight just for getting a clear.

This right here ⬆️ you have dedicated players willing to spend their free time running and testing for you providing real data trying to help you make a better, balanced game. Please give these folks the time of day. They deserve it for the considerable effort and contribution.

qcell wrote: »

Update after Week 5 changes: @ZOS_Finn please read, I spent a long time on this.

You are the best, qcell. You are a great model as a plugin author, an endgamer, and a community contributor.