Boss Health Changes Comms

Parrot1986 · August 2022

Just another example of poor communication at best and at worst another example of contempt for the player base. Best way to avoid anecdotal feedback on patch notes is to totally avoid including any useful information.

Not even summarising the changes and requiring players to go into each trial to find out what the enemy health changes are, if arenas are impacted and if all trials/dungeons have had the same changes applied is shocking.

We are customers, not paid testers and this was a fairly simple thing that should have been communicated for awareness.

ZOS_GinaBruno · August 2022

The health changes vary slightly for each boss so it’s not simply a flat numerical or percentage change. We can at least confirm the changes only affect Dungeon and Trial bosses, not Arenas.

wolfie1.0. · August 2022

So... you just made solo arenas that much more inaccessible to the playerbase?

NettleCarrier · August 2022

Right? Awesome...

davidtk · August 2022

I am just rly curious.
Why not Arena bosses??

marius_buys · August 2022

This makes absolutely no sense
In a dungeon or trial 4 or 12 players can rely on cross healing and buffing from group members but in a solo arena ZOS have now made it just so much more difficult for the entry level player which is basically the majority of the playerbase. Why?

acastanza_ESO · August 2022

This is a joke right? You didn't re-balance the arena bosses?!
Thanks for confirming that this patch is somehow even worse than we thought.

Ezhh · August 2022

Was it not possible to get a list? I would have assumed this would be easier to pull from game data by those with access to it than it is for players to work through trials on PTS to find it.

The HP values for RG/DSR (especially HMs) would be really good to know; it's going to be especially difficult for players to get that info on PTS (never mind do meaningful testing) before the patch goes live, but at least knowing the values might help people decide if their prog groups are worth holding together.

Dagoth_Rac · August 2022

Why would you not adjust Arenas? Vet Blackrose Prison is probably the most difficult 4-man content in the game. If the goal was to retain challenge after lowering DPS across the board, that is a failure. You just made some of the hardest content in game much harder. And in Vet Veteshran, focusing and killing the tethered shades in the middle of that mess is already rough. Trying to do it with lower DPS across the board is not retaining the challenge, it is making it much harder.

Seriously, the power creep in game has almost all been in organized 12-man groups. Individual power and small group power has been held in check reasonably well. So if there was an area where the DPS reductions were going to hurt it is Arenas.

I can somewhat understand vDSA and vMA. They are very old and predate One Tamriel and have likely become easier than originally intended. But vBRP and vVH don't strike me as content that has become caught up in power creep and rendered too easy.

X_K · August 2022

can you get an example for us of a boss that want nerfed by exactly 10%? Olms is 10% Zamaja is 10% vaa first is 10% Oax HM is 10%. they are all exactly 10%. if there are bosses that dont follow this mold. please enlighten us

Elsonso · August 2022

You realize that this doesn't matter, right? If it was important enough to tell us that this was happening, it was important enough to document what bosses and how much the health was reduced.

K9002 · August 2022

It's not just the bosses. The mini-bosses and ads are important in arenas too. They usually have to be killed before shifting full focus to the boss. With less DPS potential it takes longer to wipe them out. Somebody tested the same build in vMA on live and PTS and reported pretty much just that - many ads lingering for longer than they would on live.

This means more difficult ice, poison and volcanic levels in vMA, generally a greater need for shielding. More pullbacks in blue portals in vVH. More difficult to break the ring in the final stage of vVH and more health restored to the Voidmother boss.

code65536 · August 2022

@ZOS_GinaBruno We've done spot checks of 9 different enemies, ranging from base game vet dungeon to the latest vet trial. And in every single case, it was a flat 10% reduction.

Maybe there's an exception to this, but asking players to spend their time on what amounts to an Easter Egg hunt to see if there are any exceptions to this 10%-across-the-board cut seems rather strange, when the developers should know this sort of specific information and communicate it to us.

Iron_Warrior · August 2022

1-we need specific numbers. Words don't matter

2-good job on making arenas more accessible

AmendmentI · August 2022

You're asking the player base to run all relevant trials and dungeons in less than one week and we don't even know the health changes? This was extremely vague and we also don't know it's impact on other parts of trials. Did the crystals in vcr get changed? What about the eternal servant in vss? Or the health of the enemy on the boat in vka?

Your player base is tired at this point and we could at least get some numbers or some clear answers. And an FAQ defending this isn't it. That's just dismissing the feedback.

Also the content isn't all the same. So using the same percentage(roughly) doesn't help. 10% of 300 million and 10% of 64 million are 2 totally different things.

HEIIMS · August 2022

You want constructive and well worded feedback yet you don't provide us BASIC information on how things were changed exactly?

Like how hard is it to make a 2 row table with U34 Boss name HP / U35 Boss name HP? You also realize that to see some of the boss HP we would have to gather a 12 man raid group who can actually clear the trial (or 4 man for dungeons) and do it? Let's count, there are 9 trials in total (not counting mini trials because you can obviously see their respective boss's HP values by just porting in) which gives us 22 bosses to kill (didn't count last boss of each trial), if I did not make any mistakes counting, point is, it's not new content, yet you expect us to kill 22 bosses (some have individual hard modes) to EVEN SEE what you changed?

I'm not even going to waste time counting dungeon bosses as well, maybe someone has more time to waste, but the number would be even more insane.

And to top it all off The health changes vary slightly for each boss so it’s not simply a flat numerical or percentage change. Doesn't this make a proper list even more important?

I'm not going to make a case comparing 10% HP reduction in vAA to vDSR either (as so far players were able to find only 10% HP reduction). If you can't even do a proper report (which is basically what patch notes are), then I have absolutely 0 faith you are capable of delivering while balancing the actual game.

I really don't get it why people still waste time testing on PTS when you treat them like that.

Knee jerk reactions indeed

sbr32 · August 2022

Ah, so the accessibility update torpedoed most people's ability to do Arenas. Makes sense.

Emperorsplishy · August 2022

I think we all need to take a step back and focus on the real enemy here - Parrot1986

neferpitou73 · August 2022

Why do I get the feeling that we're going to find two bosses that were nerfed by 10.1% and 10.2% with all the others being a flat 10% nerf?

I also get the feeling that noone actually ran the content with these new numbers to see if it was possible, instead of relying on the almighty spreadsheet.

Tannus15 · August 2022

they didn't want to do it. the intent was to wait 3 months and see.
this is a band-aid they have chucked on [snip] we wasted hours proving to them how bad it was going to be on PTS1 and PTS3 to get them to understand the actual impact of what they have done, and they reluctantly reverted some of the more stupid ideas and added a slight boss nerf.

[edited for bashing]

Tannus15 · August 2022

@HEIIMS it'll be 10% rounded to the nearest round value. [snip]

[edited for bashing]

Arunei · August 2022

@ZOS_GinaBruno
Was there any specific reason Arena boss HP wasn't adjusted? Like...Arenas, both solo and 4-man, are just as much content the casual playerbase tends to skip because of the difficulty as Dungeons and Trials. It makes no sense not to adjust Arenas as well to account for the lowering DPS. It's just making them even harder to complete, which is going to have the exact opposite effect of getting people to try them.

Please pass on the feedback to them that they REALLY need to step back and consider a lot of these changes, or in cases like this, the lack of them. Yes, the skill gap needs to be closed to some extent, and trying to make content more accessible for more players is a very good thing. The more people who can actually clear the content, the longer the game stays online. But a lot of these changes do the opposite of making things more accessible.

anvilbert · August 2022

So the player base gets a 20%to 30% nerf. And bosses get a 10% nerf wow that is not going to make anything accessible to any mid or lower level players. U35 is the biggest mistake ever put into this game.This is absolutly absurd insane and ridiculous.

Kusto · August 2022

Boss nerf is one thing and doesn't affect accessibility that much, fights just last longer. But they didn't nerf portals and extra mechanics that usually play huge factor whether some lower end groups clear or not. They nerfed Z'Maja by 10% but kept portal crystals the same lol. Portals are where the low end groups struggle not the boss. I just pugged vCR+0 the other day and we had to send 4 dps down. We cleared but what about next patch, send half the group down? Lol. And what about vSS last boss portal, can't send more than 3 there. The cat there wasn't nerfed and again, newer players struggle there now on Iive. Content will be less accessible if portals dont get nerfed also.

karekiz · August 2022

Soooooooo

Can The Devs name them?

If they were simply listed <Boss X reduced by Y> in comparison Boss A reduced by B would basically have solved this issue, but no info is given. So it shows some error in patch or the devs miss-communicated something, or they don't know what was actually posted.

Ishtarknows · August 2022

But nobody's going to want a VMA inferno now anyway so it doesn't matter for Maelstrom Arena anyway

/S

Didgerion · August 2022

@ZOS it is a bad DLC!

Every time you rollback a change it feels good!

In this specific patch rolling back Vigor feels good!

Rolling back AOE hots and dots felt good!

Rolling back the ligh and heavy attack scaling felt good!

Just few more thing left to rollback. Looks like all you need is just to extend the PTS cycles by 3 weeks.

Arthtur · August 2022

Sooo... vBRP wasnt adjusted when its one of the hardest content for 4 players group...
Let me guess. Bosses in vCradle of Shadows were nerfed even tho its one of the easiest DLC dungeons...
Im not even gonna go on PTS to check it. Im probably right anyway...

Sandman929 · August 2022

Lol...ok then...I'm almost afraid to ask but surely SOMEONE has a list of the changes that could in theory be shared right? Why is everything pulling teeth?

Sandman929 · August 2022

It really inspires confidence when the answer to questions about content changes turns into a freaking scavenger hunt to find out what the changes actually are.

MashmalloMan · August 2022

What a mess. Nerf everyone because the top 1% of organized end game raids can output obscene dps and sustain, while gutting solo and small group scenario's where the majority of the new players you're trying to help are struggling..

How does that make any sense? What is this patch?