Vet Graven Deep final boss

Baeleth · September 2022

The final boss fight in vet Graven Deep needs to be toned down. I don't know what ZoS is smoking if they think this dungeon is "accessible". The mechanics are absurdly difficult compared to any other 4-man dungeon. Also, the abomination add that appears half-way through the fight hits WAAAY too often.

Honestly, the final boss fight in vet Graven Deep basically sums up u35 in demonstrating how out-of-touch the devs are with the players. "Make the game more accessible" by... making literally EVERYTHING harder?? This boss fight and the entirety of u35 scores an F. You fail, ZoS.

EF321 · September 2022

Orb mechanic is needless and stupid, other dimension thing even more so.

ZOS_Hadeostry · September 2022

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic.

Thank you for your understanding

Soarora · September 2022

I hated it at first, but I really like the HM. I think it's just way overtuned for vet as I've yet to have a pug clear it. I agree specifically on the abomination. It hits really fast and really hard, which is part of why I don't think the vet level is very dungeon finder friendly.

code65536 · September 2022

Soarora wrote: »

I've yet to have a pug clear it.

I've cleared it twice with random Group Finder PUGs, though I was the tank both times. And I was soloing the orbs.

That said, yes, I do agree that regular vet is overtuned. In fact, on the first day of PTS, I posted the following in the feedback thread: "[W]e were surprised at how tough it is by regular vet standards. [...] The amount of damage done by the flesh atro seems a bit high by regular dungeon vet standards." Someone else in the feedback thread wrote, "I feel the non- HM is around 80% the difficulty of the HM, which is probably not where the line should be drawn. Usually the vet bosses feel around 40- 50% as difficult as the vet HM bosses."

Specifically, the following things surprised me:

The damage from Sundered Soul is the exact same on regular vet as it is on HM, which means the amount of time you have is the same on regular vet as it is on HM. Their nerf with this mechanic was to make it affect only one person instead of two, but I think what they really needed to do was to give the player more time on regular vet.
The final stage penalty monster (flesh abomination) has the same health and hits for the same amount in regular vet as it does in HM. I suppose someone might argue that there are fewer Fractured Souls on regular vet, so it would be presumably easier to "downgrade" the flesh abomination into a harmless tiny flesh atro. But with the Afterlife mechanic being so unintuitive, it's unreasonable to expect players to reliably downgrade to a lesser enemy.
Phantasmal Barrage hits for the same damage on regular vet as as it does on HM. I'm not sure what they're thinking here with this. The difficulty with this is that you have only 1.6s to interrupt, which, for an interruptible mechanic, is on the short side. I've seen streams of groups that ask their tank to put on Crushing Shock so that they can get all the interrupts, which is hilarious, since if they channel at the same time, 1.6s means that you literally don't have enough time to get more than one. Anyway, if they kept the same interrupt window, but halved the damage, that should be fine for regular vet. Or kept the damage but doubled the interrupt window. But they did neither. Instread, the vet mode nerf that they went with was significantly lower health of the copies, so the mechanic ends quickly. But still not quickly enough for a couple of salvos to go off before the first copy can be destroyed.

To be clear, I think that this fight's HM is great and is well-balanced (and easier than U33's overtuned HMs). But the difficulty gap between regular vet and HM is noticeably lower for Graven, and regular vet is quite a bit harder than what I would've expected for regular vet.

On that note, I do encourage people to try the HM here. If you can beat the vet, you can beat the HM since you're already most of the way there. And if you need help, you can read this guide.

endgamesmug · September 2022

I havent been back in there for awhile now, i only have finder to run these dungeons. Ive had maybe 4 groups, each new group session would go on for a couple of hours. And this is regular vet, it was fun learning but often it would get too late and someone would have to drop. Me too it would get tiring going over mechs repeatedly, so in the end i needed a break. Ill be back in there sometime im sure.

Soarora · September 2022

code65536 wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

I've yet to have a pug clear it.

I've cleared it twice with random Group Finder PUGs, though I was the tank both times. And I was soloing the orbs.

That said, yes, I do agree that regular vet is overtuned. In fact, on the first day of PTS, I posted the following in the feedback thread: "[W]e were surprised at how tough it is by regular vet standards. [...] The amount of damage done by the flesh atro seems a bit high by regular dungeon vet standards." Someone else in the feedback thread wrote, "I feel the non- HM is around 80% the difficulty of the HM, which is probably not where the line should be drawn. Usually the vet bosses feel around 40- 50% as difficult as the vet HM bosses."

Specifically, the following things surprised me:
The damage from Sundered Soul is the exact same on regular vet as it is on HM, which means the amount of time you have is the same on regular vet as it is on HM. Their nerf with this mechanic was to make it affect only one person instead of two, but I think what they really needed to do was to give the player more time on regular vet.

The final stage penalty monster (flesh abomination) has the same health and hits for the same amount in regular vet as it does in HM. I suppose someone might argue that there are fewer Fractured Souls on regular vet, so it would be presumably easier to "downgrade" the flesh abomination into a harmless tiny flesh atro. But with the Afterlife mechanic being so unintuitive, it's unreasonable to expect players to reliably downgrade to a lesser enemy.

Phantasmal Barrage hits for the same damage on regular vet as as it does on HM. I'm not sure what they're thinking here with this. The difficulty with this is that you have only 1.6s to interrupt, which, for an interruptible mechanic, is on the short side. I've seen streams of groups that ask their tank to put on Crushing Shock so that they can get all the interrupts, which is hilarious, since if they channel at the same time, 1.6s means that you literally don't have enough time to get more than one. Anyway, if they kept the same interrupt window, but halved the damage, that should be fine for regular vet. Or kept the damage but doubled the interrupt window. But they did neither. Instread, the vet mode nerf that they went with was significantly lower health of the copies, so the mechanic ends quickly. But still not quickly enough for a couple of salvos to go off before the first copy can be destroyed.

To be clear, I think that this fight's HM is great and is well-balanced (and easier than U33's overtuned HMs). But the difficulty gap between regular vet and HM is noticeably lower for Graven, and regular vet is quite a bit harder than what I would've expected for regular vet.

On that note, I do encourage people to try the HM here. If you can beat the vet, you can beat the HM since you're already most of the way there. And if you need help, you can read this guide.

This is extremely insightful and surprising. I've been reluctant to re-try tanking HM because I hadn't run into the HM abomination yet and wasn't sure if I'd be able to do it... so I guess I will re-try tanking HM! I've noticed the abomination is fine with guildmates/friends but is a menace in a pug because I can only hold it so long until I run out of sustain + have too many cones and die (pug dps may be lower). The mechanics don't seem very well explained either, everyone I run into who knows mechanics is just kinda "you can try killing the floating ghost things but we don't know exactly what it does, just rumors". Sundered Soul definitely needs help. Even well-qualified guildmates struggle with getting to their soul in time. The only way I was able to get to my soul in time (as healer and dps, both on just vet) was using major expedition and even then, if I didn't have the addon notification for the mechanic I'd not notice in time and die.

Arbit · September 2022

Definitely the hardest regular vet dungeon boss I’ve faced yet. It felt like a HM even tho we had not activated the banner. I tried pugging it and we could get to final boss, but in the end it took a group of guildies to get the job done. I ended up tanking the final boss for our group, and found that to be a very difficult task with the flesh atronach in second phase. We ended up needing to use the lasers from the secret boss to get the atronach down a bunch of hp quickly to finish him and finish the dungeon. I kind of wonder if we hadn’t had the laser if we would’ve been able to kill the flesh atronach fast enough for me to survive. I found the combination of the bosses focused abilities that I couldn’t dodge, and the flesh atronachs constant damage a little much for me as a tank. It’s made me wonder if I should edit my tank build. I was using ebon to help the groups tankiness a little, yolnakrin for damage and a selfish monster helmet stonekeeper. I loved the challenge, but definitely agree with some of the posts that most of that difficulty should be put in the HM. I feel like it was a worthy challenge but I don’t know how accessible it is for many to complete this on veteran.

code65536 · September 2022

Arbit wrote: »

We ended up needing to use the lasers from the secret boss to get the atronach down a bunch of hp quickly to finish him and finish the dungeon. I kind of wonder if we hadn’t had the laser if we would’ve been able to kill the flesh atronach fast enough for me to survive.

I've lurked in a lot of streams of people trying this boss, and one common theme that I see are people trying to use the lasers and wiping as a result. My advice to people? Ignore the lasers. Pretend they don't exist. They almost always do more harm than good...

They are very finicky. They have to hit the abomination just right to do damage, and they don't last very long.
They damage players.
Using them requires dragging the boss and abomination around, which often resulted in them dying because they drop block during repositioning or move out of heals during repositioning or run into the laser themselves during repositioning.
Using the lasers requires holding the boss near the edge of the room instead of keeping him in the middle of the room. This is bad for the soul split mechanic, and if the boss was pushed to 40%, for sea orb management.

Most groups that try to use the laser end up wiping as a result of trying to mess with the laser and would've been better off if they just never touched it. Some groups do manage to get the laser to work for them and clear, but I don't think it made things that much easier for them.

While I agree that the flesh abomination is overtuned for regular vet, it doesn't require a whole lot of skill to tank. All it requires is for the tank to turtle up and hold down the block button until it's dead. Again, I've lurked in a number of streams, and tanks usually die because they drop block. So don't drop block. Play like a newbie tank and just hold block and don't let go. Blockcast everything. Make it even easier for yourself: don't even bar swap. Sustain should be fine as long as you've got the usual block cost reductions and don't waste your stam. If you do struggle with stam sustain, then slot the cheap one-hand-and-shield ultimate, which gives you free block for a period of time, during which you can freely heavy attack to restore your stam.

Holding the Flesh Abomination is no worse than tanking Axes in vAA.

El_Borracho · September 2022

Aside from the points made above, the most frustrating mechanic in this boss fight are the mini AOEs the boss drops under a player who stands still. Good luck trying to rez someone if you’re not a Templar or tank.

The regular vet fight is too punitive because of this mechanic. I love difficult dungeons but this has 2 one shots and a very, very annoying DOT in Sundered. It feels more like the final boss in Vatershan without the DPS check but more ways to die. The Orb was tough at first, but manageable once you figure out positioning. Sundered is the real pain during the shades stage. It always hit one player during the shades phase and the gold ghost appears across the room from the player most of the time, making cleansing while trying to maintain interrupts very difficult. While it can be done, if the a player dies, which happens often, you can’t rez reliably, which then sets the wipe in motion. It got to the point in one of our groups that the Sundered player would run to the tank to burn his shade a little then die if the ghost was too far away.

The same issue pops up with the colossus. If a player dies, the mini AOEs make it impossible for anyone but the tank to rez that player. So again, die next to the tank.

If those AOEs were tuned down or not as frequent on non-HM it would be better. But right now, might as well do HM. You need to no death it anyway under these conditions.

EDIT: One more thing. It you are running a Stamsorc, Hurricane prevents the Sundered glow from appearing on your character. Just more fun to deal with.

code65536 · September 2022

El_Borracho wrote: »

Aside from the points made above, the most frustrating mechanic in this boss fight are the mini AOEs the boss drops under a player who stands still. Good luck trying to rez someone if you’re not a Templar or tank.

The boss normally does not drop circles on players standing still. Instead, he picks one player at random and adopts their class abilities. If he copies a sorc, then he'll spam AoEs on everyone, but if he had copied a DK, for example, there will be no AoEs.

El_Borracho wrote: »

Sundered is the real pain during the shades stage. It always hit one player during the shades phase and the gold ghost appears across the room from the player most of the time, making cleansing while trying to maintain interrupts very difficult.

The boss will not do the soul split mechanic during the split phase. What's happening to you is that the boss is doing the soul split right before splitting off into 4 copies, causing the two mechanics to overlap. And that's a problem with your group's DPS being "just right". If your group's DPS was a bit lower, then there would be a comfortable amount of time between the soul split and the boss splitting. Or, if your group's DPS was a bit higher, then you can push the boss to the 4 copies before that soul split happens. But unfortunately, your group's DPS is at just the right level that the timing of those mechanics lined up. One option is to slow damage at 80%, wait for a soul split to complete, and then push to the 4 copies.

El_Borracho wrote: »

if the ghost was too far away.

The soul's trajectory is not random. It will always go to one of the 4 windowed walls, and it will always pick the one that's farthest away from the player. So the farther away the player is from the middle of the room when the soul is ripped out, the farther they'll need to run to get to it.

Lugaldu · September 2022

To be honest, I find the strength of the bosses in the new dungeons exaggerated, even in normal mode. If you just manage to get through the content as a couple (as a "normal" player) and the whole thing drags on for an endlessly long time, then that's no fun for me and, above all, it's not "easier access" to the content.

Zastrix · September 2022

Honestly I really liked the hard mode of this dungeon. I'm glad I managed to do it pre-patch so that personally I know I've done the hard-hard mode

The second dungeon is really just.. underwhelming though. It feels super spacious and that ad packs are super separated and the hard mode wasn't that hard tbh. Especially having the secret bosses which are as strong as minibosses. The only thing which is tricky is the cone AOE for the tank when the boss becomes a bear and the lightning thing during exec phase.

El_Borracho · September 2022

@code65536 Thanks, that is helpful. I wonder if it was because we had 2 sorcs, one Mag and one Stamina. I was the Stamsorc, hence the bit about Hurricane masking Sundered, which was a problem. Second problem was the soul/ghost simply not showing up, as sometimes it was a faint outline of the ghost similar to the adds in the 50% phase. I did check out the guide you posted earlier. Very informative. Awesome job.

Those AOEs made rezzing impossible. Good to know there is a work-around.

Good call on the damage. I'll give that a try.

code65536 · September 2022

Zastrix wrote: »

I'm glad I managed to do it pre-patch so that personally I know I've done the hard-hard mode

Uh, spoiler alert: They didn't really change Zelvraak today; the adjustments that were made were so small that you wouldn't notice them unless you were looking out for them.

I detailed it in this thread:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/617070

StarOfElyon · September 2022

Arbit wrote: »

Definitely the hardest regular vet dungeon boss I’ve faced yet. It felt like a HM even tho we had not activated the banner. I tried pugging it and we could get to final boss, but in the end it took a group of guildies to get the job done. I ended up tanking the final boss for our group, and found that to be a very difficult task with the flesh atronach in second phase. We ended up needing to use the lasers from the secret boss to get the atronach down a bunch of hp quickly to finish him and finish the dungeon. I kind of wonder if we hadn’t had the laser if we would’ve been able to kill the flesh atronach fast enough for me to survive. I found the combination of the bosses focused abilities that I couldn’t dodge, and the flesh atronachs constant damage a little much for me as a tank. It’s made me wonder if I should edit my tank build. I was using ebon to help the groups tankiness a little, yolnakrin for damage and a selfish monster helmet stonekeeper. I loved the challenge, but definitely agree with some of the posts that most of that difficulty should be put in the HM. I feel like it was a worthy challenge but I don’t know how accessible it is for many to complete this on veteran.

That's exactly the spot I'm in right now. This dungeon makes my tank feel so inadequate. And you know people expect the tank to carry the team on their back. They can die but you must not ever die, which is really punishing when you get a dungeon with so much going on. When that abomination shows up and I also have boss aggro, I'm RUNNING for my life. It was clearly designed to challenge the absolute chad-tanks out there but the majority of us don't play those. At least, I don't.

Hesperax79 · September 2022

We won after 1,5 hours fight. On PS whitout addons we simply can not catch the golden spirit. So, we stack and we could ress easily the dead mate.

jaws343 · September 2022

Yeah, this fight was a complete nightmare, and so much harder in difficulty from every fight preceding it, and the entire other dungeon in the DLC.

It's the mechanic stack of it. If the player you have juggling the orbs gets the soul/golden spirit mechanic, and the boss splits, and the atro is out, it's pretty much game over. A non pug group I was with Friday night took 2 hours on this boss alone, after clearing the rest of the dungeon in like 30 minutes.

Baeleth · September 2022

Whatever adjustment ZoS claims to have made on this final boss makes absolutely no difference in the fight. Whatever they did was a completely empty gesture. I really wish ZoS would listen. This fight is POORLY DESIGNED. It is completely out of sync with every other veteran dungeon final boss. The individual mechanics, taken out of context, are fine. The problem is how these mechanics are combined and stacked. Also, the magnitudes and frequencies of these mechanics are wildly out of touch with the skill level of the general player base. I'm not suggesting that every ordinary casual player should be able to faceroll through this veteran dungeon. Not in the least. But the challenge level of these mechanics should accurately reflect the skill threshold for comparable content. i.e. veteran dungeon NON-hard mode.

ZoS, you failed to tune this fight correctly. Stop digging your heels in the dirt and just fix it. Please.

HushAzrael · September 2022

I’ve never seen a dungeon so badly in need of a nerf. That boss fight is absurd. I know very few people that have even cleared it! Pugs are completely hopeless in there.

Milchbart · September 2022

HushAzrael wrote: »

I’ve never seen a dungeon so badly in need of a nerf. That boss fight is absurd. I know very few people that have even cleared it! Pugs are completely hopeless in there.

The very first version of white gold tower and the original version of the laser boss in frost vault were also rather "difficult".
Now they are nerfed so that you can play them with one hand and watching you tube videos on another screen at the same time.
I like how graven deep end boss is now. With my core group friends I've done all hardmodes of all dungeons. If you want all challenges done with your frist try then it would be no challenge at all.

Of course you can't pug it ... .that would be extra ultra mega hardmode.

Destyran · September 2022

Graven deep last boss Hm is harder than deep root enclave trifecta. Graven deep final boss on non hm is a joke and if you get the flesh atro at full 3.8 million health at 50% it has more health than the boss and the nuke pushes the boss to 25% split. Needs to be nerfed for the non hm players. The non hm defence lasers should last longer

Only complaint on hm is split phase someone randomly gets lasered by all 4 splits and sometimes a dps gets no soul to split or collects his souls but the boss tips it back out and it says failed to collect soul. Also if you stand to close to boss and turn for fear mechanic you still get feared. If you do the 50% ghosts to fast they stop spawning.

StarOfElyon · September 2022

Milchbart wrote: »

HushAzrael wrote: »

I’ve never seen a dungeon so badly in need of a nerf. That boss fight is absurd. I know very few people that have even cleared it! Pugs are completely hopeless in there.

The very first version of white gold tower and the original version of the laser boss in frost vault were also rather "difficult".
Now they are nerfed so that you can play them with one hand and watching you tube videos on another screen at the same time.
I like how graven deep end boss is now. With my core group friends I've done all hardmodes of all dungeons. If you want all challenges done with your frist try then it would be no challenge at all.

Of course you can't pug it ... .that would be extra ultra mega hardmode.

Wrong. You should be able to pug a vet dungeon. Hard mode? Only if everyone is up to the challenge, which isn't always the case. But no team of mid-tier or better players should fail to complete a non-hard mode dungeon. Vet DLC dungeons are challenging enough for average players. It shouldn't feel like hard mode.

code65536 · September 2022

Destyran wrote: »

Graven deep last boss Hm is harder than deep root enclave trifecta.

Only if you rush in there and try to brute-force it without a good strategy. Graven HM's difficulty is 80% strategy and 20% execution of that strategy. If you have a good strategy for the boss, it's an easy HM: easier than Coral or Shipwright, and definitely easier than ERE trifecta, and you should be able to clear it consistently even with new people (I know this from experience; I took two people who had never set foot in the dungeon before with me and we cleared HM on the second or third pull, with no deaths in the pull).

But without a good strategy, where the boss position is wrong, orbs are not assigned, etc., then Graven HM can easily become a very messy and much harder fight.

Destyran · September 2022

code65536 wrote: »

Destyran wrote: »

Graven deep last boss Hm is harder than deep root enclave trifecta.

Only if you rush in there and try to brute-force it without a good strategy. Graven HM's difficulty is 80% strategy and 20% execution of that strategy. If you have a good strategy for the boss, it's an easy HM: easier than Coral or Shipwright, and definitely easier than ERE trifecta, and you should be able to clear it consistently even with new people (I know this from experience; I took two people who had never set foot in the dungeon before with me and we cleared HM on the second or third pull, with no deaths in the pull).

But without a good strategy, where the boss position is wrong, orbs are not assigned, etc., then Graven HM can easily become a very messy and much harder fight.

We literally clear ERE with like 2-3 death we about to get trifecta. We can burn boss to 75% on graven deep before blind mechanic but it’s just the collosus and orbs and soulrend

Jakk · September 2022

Unpopular opinion - this dungeon is a masterpiece.

On ps4, With a competent 4, it's quite quick and easy.... but in the dungeon finder queue, it's a wonderful time of undivided attention. A good change of pace from every other dungeon you can do from the kitchen while cooking dinner.

For kicks, me and my wife travelled in and duo'd it on regular vet as a tank and dps. We haven't had a dungeon with this many mechanics in quite some time and it's absolutely perfect.
As a duo, juggling orbs together while doing everything else is very engaging. We went in as 2 templars, so I had a good time kitting nova's around.
The sundered souls mechanic only counts against people in the instance - so as a duo, we both killed all of our fractured souls during the 50% mechanic, and had a cute little bone collosus to kill with 900k hp instead of an abomination of an Abomination with umpteen million, so thay was actually easier than with a half assed finder group.

The only change I would like to see is on the soul split mechanic, when the soul gets thrown to the other side of the room, either have it stationary, or running very slowly on a linear path, or have it's absorption radius quadrupled.... because often it will dance around with you needlessly and not pick up resulting in a stupid death that shouldn't occur.

The amount of attention this fight draws out of you is reminiscent of a drawn out fang lair HM execute, or moonhunter keep hm when symbol phase is starting and you have 6 shock wardens and 12 werewolfs alive before they got nerfed to oblivion.

There is very few challenging dungeons left, with most hard modes trimed and nerfed and easily duo-able by myself and my wife, this is a welcomed challenge

HappyTheCamper · September 2022

Jakk wrote: »

Unpopular opinion - this dungeon is a masterpiece.

The amount of attention this fight draws out of you is reminiscent of a drawn out fang lair HM execute, or moonhunter keep hm when symbol phase is starting and you have 6 shock wardens and 12 werewolfs alive before they got nerfed to oblivion.

There is very few challenging dungeons left, with most hard modes trimed and nerfed and easily duo-able by myself and my wife, this is a welcomed challenge

A regular vet dungeon should NOT be reminiscent of the execute phase for one of the hardest vet HM dungeons in the game. Should the hard mode be full on crazy? Yea sure. A regular vet dungeon should not make someone think “wow, I haven’t been this sweaty since we trifecta ran Vet Cloudrest!”

Edit: and when I say Fanglair is one of the hardest HMs in the game, I really meant at its launch when that was well known/argued.