Cleared the trial on veteran (non-hardmode). I like the trial layout and encounters, especially the surprise trash encounters. Trash seems too easy on veteran. I am enjoying the difficulty of first boss on hard mode, but wasn't a fan of the mechanics that disengage the player from attacking the boss, like the Simon-Says room on 2nd boss, and the maze on the last boss. Haven't seen their hardmodes yet. Historically these kind of battles have been the most unfun encounters in the game, like the 2nd and final boss in Frostvault, and the 2nd boss of Lair of Maarselok.

Did you enjoy this new Trial overall?

Yes, would rate it a 7/10 at first run through. Some enjoyable and unique trial encounters, with some negatives (visuals, clutter, zone structure).

What level and build was the character you used?

PTS 3600 CP template

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?

Veteran

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

Significantly easier than vDSR on first play through - disappointing

Were there any mechanics you had difficulty with?

Not really - Boss 1 took a few wipes to understand the portal/ghost mechanics, otherwise we had a clean run, which was hugely disappointing to see brand new vet content cleared so quickly. Biggest feedback and request would be to re-balance difficulty upwards to give experienced players a greater continued challenge.

Did you complete the Trial?

Yes

Did you have any companions with you?

No

Do you have any other general feedback?

Biggest feedback and request would be to re-balance difficulty upwards to give experienced players a greater continued challenge. Didn't have time to try HMs last night, but sincerely hope they are balanced well, similarly to RG/DSR.

Day 1 Thoughts. I will add more as we progress through hard modes.

Did you enjoy this new Trial overall?
Moderately. I definitely do not like it as much as past PTS trial experiences thus far.

What level and build was the character you used?
I used a Stamina Necromancer. - Side note for this class specifically: Blastbones is consistently a 3-4s GCD for me on the first boss despite being right up against the target. This is incredibly frustrating.

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

How did the difficulty compare to existing Trials on Normal and Veteran versions?
Pretty comparable. I didn't think it was difficult, just annoying.

Were there any mechanics you had difficulty with?
Not difficult. But there are plenty I do not like.

Did you complete the Trial?
Yes.

Did you have any companions with you?
No.

Do you have any other general feedback?
- We didn't spend much time on Trash pulls but the bosses that jump up are pretty awful. If they are truly random then it's make trifecta/score pushing super obnoxious. Disruptors are kinda cringe as well. You can kinda just nuke everything and not deal with it, but I don't think that's a good solution to bad mechanics. The Wamasu are ridiculous, everyone complains about the cats in vSS and these are just those but intentionally mobile.
- Boss 1 seems ok. Hard Mode was fun, the mechanics there seem to be balanced decent enough. I don't have many complaints about it so far.
- Boss 2 was pretty unenjoyable. I think ESO does a great job of keeping all party members engaged in all trial encounters. This fight had half our team just standing there waiting for targets to become damagable. The boss in the puzzle rooms should take damage but not be able to be killed until the puzzle is finished. This way everyone is doing something the entire time and you accomplish the same goal. It takes away nothing from the mechanic but will reward high skill gameplay and coordination.
- Boss 3 was the worst. The maze just leaves me wondering what the point is. Felt like a lot of just standing around waiting or walking through a maze for someone to just be faster anyway. The red aoe that leads to slow people down is just serving to slow the entire fight artificially. You could accomplish the same thing without it.

Visually, the trial is stunning. The aesthetic is awesome, the animations are really well done, and the flow of the ads to bosses is well balanced. There's a couple places with dead time, but nothing too bad.

Entire group has crashed twice in 2 days on Boss 2 HM in Sanity's Edge on PTS. Really annoying to lose progress of the trial instance 2 days in a row , in addition some members of the team took 20-30minutes to be able to log back into the servers....

[/quote

Razorruk wrote: »

Entire group has crashed twice in 2 days on Boss 2 HM in Sanity's Edge on PTS. Really annoying to lose progress of the trial instance 2 days in a row , in addition some members of the team took 20-30minutes to be able to log back into the servers....

Make that 3 group crashes in 2 hours on 3rd boss. [snip]

[edited for bashing]

K_G wrote: »

KiltMaster wrote: »

General Feedback: IMO the titles are kind of 'meh' - not as notable as 'Godslayer' or 'Planesbreaker' or 'Swashbuckler Supreme'

Agreed. There was a separate thread regarding this - Dreamwalker and Nightmare both were among suggestions from other players that I liked. I've found the raid community likes the one word titles more, they have a bit more gravitas imo. Tormentor's Bane sounds like it comes from a base game dungeon (pls stop putting bane titles in trials zos ). Mind Master isn't the worst I suppose, but it still feels lacking and sounds like an overland title.

Would also like to add my voice in support of changing the titles. There are some amazing suggestions here, and the current ones are extremely meh by comparison.

Did you enjoy this new Trial overall?
It is alright. The mechanics especially of the 2nd boss are quite unique so I enjoy that aspect.

What level and build was the character you used?
most of these questions are quite irrelevant in regards to actual useful feedback. I played magplar, but also cro tank on 3rd boss. Our group has raided a lot especially on last boss so the group comp is what should really be paid attention to.

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?
Veteran HM until boss 3 0.6% (effectively completed, seen all mechanics)

How did the difficulty compare to existing Trials on Normal and Veteran versions?
I would put it below vRG and vDSR HM, but also above vKA HM, with the last boss possibly being on vRG and vDSR HM levels of difficulty. The first 2 bosses are not super difficult but this is a step in the right direction. vDSR HM has compareable clear rate to planesbreaker, the vRG HM trifecta. (its way too difficult to really be played by anyone but the absolute top)

Were there any mechanics you had difficulty with?

The first boss has no real difficult mechanics. Shrapnel hitting players in portal feels unintentional but can be easily outplayed by simply waiting for the percentage at which shrapnel happens. The wamasu can spin around very randomly which is hilarious but also dangerous cause just 2 ticks of the lightning cone channel can kill sub 25k health players.
The fear thing that goes in a circle around the ghosts in portal, it feels clunky. thats all im gonna say.

The second boss's first puzzle entrance feels a bit weird. Surviving the invincible mini-boss inside kind of needs a tank or at least healer to survive.There does not seem to be remotely any consistency to choosing which players get in the first rooms (we've often had 2 tanks in 1 room, and the other 2 rooms just wipe) After the first rooms the wamasu, lion and gryphon spawn which make it controllable however. If there is some way to tell it is quite unclear because all players I've talked to said they do not know a method of determining who goes where in the first descent into the puzzle rooms. The rest of the fight is good.

Third boss HM is where things get quite messy. I do not like this fight's design in some details, but I have well over 10 hours in it by now haha.
first of all, the good stuff:

Banishment is a very interesting mechanic. My group has not really determined the best way to deal with it (3rd tank? or healer with taunt takes it at 91, 71 etc, or even a dps) The methods to deal with it all come with their upsides and downsides which makes for a very interesting thought process on how to deal with it, though it has caused a lot of conflict with differing opinions.

The split at 20% and then instant full throttle complex dps check is very exciting although extremely difficult.

The maze has potential to be a lot better. I like it's inclusion but in my opinion its done a bit poorly.

Now some(a lot) criticism:

The maze is too slow. I would highly recommend making it a bit faster on HM. There is never an instance where my group was not holding block at each corner to not run into the furthest maze aoe (artificially slowing down), its just really boring. There was also never any instance of anyone dying to the maze aoe behind thats chasing you, unless they were going for a risky resurrection in which case going through the maze actually becomes fun. I'd almost recommend removing the aoe in the front or making it go way faster although this has the problem that the arcanist portal could skip the maze entirely. Careful what you do with this mechanic as it has potential to make the fight either hated or loved.

Anxiety's grip is a weird mechanic that I feel was just thrown in there for no real reason other than to add more random damage in haha. It's also heavily bugged, never dissapears and can detonate instantly upon appearing causing random instant deaths. Poison mind and Wrack make it impossible to see Anxiety's grip on the ground especially during execute, in my opinion it has been the main reason we've been unable to clear in execute despite getting to sub 5% very very often.

Speaking of the worst mechanic in the game; poison mind.
The concept is the only good part, it acts similar to flare where you can stack with other players to mitigate the damage, thats where the good stuff ends.
This mechanic can happen on anyone, including people who just got banished (instant death if you do a healer/dps takes boss strat) or dps coming out of portal (literally instant death, its so frustrating) It can also happen when you go INTO portal, your chances of survival are basically 0 when that happens. The aoe also hides every aoe below it despite not really needing to, I'd make it more like an outer line ,very transparant circle, rather than its current extremely large opaque look. As I said earlier, the main problem is that it hides anxiety's grip causing instant death if the highest poison mind ticks overlaps with you randomly walking into basically an invisible land mine. highly consider reworking both the visuals and way this aoe targets people (especially make it avoid targeting banished or coming out of portal players)

Meteors feel a bit out of place but they're workable except for the fact that they randomly dissapear, or desync so hard you roll dodge out of it and die 2 seconds later despite being 6m+ away from it.
It can also spawn seemingly on anyone. if it lands on the main tank in execute you're basically screwed regardless of what happens, frustratingly. We initially thought it was a kite mechanic which would make a lot of sense but its either bugged or we're just wrong.
The aoe also looks similar to poison mind which is a problem because with poison mind you want to stack or die, but with meteor you want to absolutely not stack or you make everyone die. Other than the visual and possibly the speed at which it lands (this can be good), and the fact that it can land on anyone its fine. I'd recommend changing the visual a bit to fully differentiate it from poison mind.

Wrack is in my opinion actually an interesting mechanic. It doesn't seem to have a very accurate targeting system, or at least one that is predictable in any way. Combined with anxiety's grip being invisible, instant detonating and never dissapearing and poison mind + wrathstorm it can seem like the most dangerous mechanic but with good ping (not 250+) and the bugs/issues fixed this mech imo is good. If anything I'd make the aoe like 10 or 20% smaller cause you essentially have to quadruple roll dodge in execute when it happens or get stunned, or stand in the boss's cleave where MT is standing. unless you're playing at range which I cannot imagine is the intended way to do execute.

Wrathstorm is in a similar position as wrack, its very quick though so on my current ping I have to roll dodge before the aoe even appears. You can also get knocked back while outside of the aoe max range which seems to just be a bug. The tiny fire aoes around the outer range seem to spawn before the animation even starts which could be altered, the fire portal boss throws them out similar to for example kjalnar throwing out knives in vUG HM. The main boss kinda just spawns them in with no obvious animation, making it very dangerous to even stand in that mid-range area especially in execute because those fire aoes instantly put ignite on you in addition to their aoe damage. I've had one time where 8 spawn on me at once while rezzing, just out of nowhere since there's no way to determine when or where there gonna spawn aside from ''this large circle around the boss you should stay away from. It essentially forces you to play extremely stacked melee, or very far ranged (and not like olms ranged, like genuinely always 20+ meters away) It makes the close range playstyle extremely risky/dangerous.

The portal mechanics are mostly fine. I would say green and red portal are kind of undertuned actually, and the lightning portal is nearly impossible to survive without a death or 10 (very similar to the maze actually lol, but maze only cause of desyncs). The 17k hit from the light attack impact and the aoe dot he puts on someone makes for like a 30k dot. You need 4+ healing skills as a dps to survive it and even then its a bit rng since if the ticks line up just right you get 1shot. Red portal has a lot of aoes but only really 2 things you can feasibly die to, both of which are simple to roll dodge. Green portal basically has no mechanics aside from the bomb he throws on a random dps which needs to be roll dodged really really fast (before the circle closes it seems to hit, idk if thats a desync or actual wrong timing) regardless its very very easy. It's kind of boring actually, feels way too similar to portal in vSS, less engaging even.


Other than that, I do like the fight. It can be very good but right now just feels clunky. It is week 2 (almost 3) so I expect a lot of this can be dealt with. It also may seem like I'm just complaining about hard mechanics, but I do want it to be difficult, just not as difficult as rockgrove/dsr were. I think it's time to dial back the difficult of the trials a bit since this new trial content is very inaccessible for a lot of the playerbase. This doesn't mean I want it to be neccesarily like *** easy, but definetely want it to be looked at as ''this seems doable but will be a challenge'' rather than ''there is less than 200 people who have cleared DSR HM, we will never get past 80% on first boss'' haha.


Do you have any other general feedback?

The general area in which the trial takes place feels... very empty. It's a super tiny place. Clearly much more effort was put into the boss fights which I like, but it does take away a bit from how ''grand'' the trial feels. Trash is very boring, the bosses showing up mid trash pack I initially thought would be quite interesting but they dont really have mechanics, they're more like elite adds. There's also only 2 afaik and nothing for the last trash packs making the last trash feel especially monotone since they all look identical. I genuinely can't even remember how many trash packs there are in last area, I'd say like 5 but im not sure.

The loading screen is *** sick HOLY. as always insanely well done on the art team with the beautiful loading screen

In general, the boss mechanics are interesting. Some are a bit unintuitive, especially on 2nd boss its a bit confusing when first stepping in there. Overall, assuming the issues are fixed (especially the desyncs/lag aughh) this will be a good trial. Can't say I'd enjoy it more than rockgrove/dsr personally though. Also, pugging 2nd boss will be so bad with the puzzles lmao. I can't wait to see a craglorn pug attempt this. It's like the levers on dsr except 2x worse to coordinate.

Did you enjoy this new Trial overall?

Yes! I think it's a wonderful trial that's very engaging. Big Kudos to Finn and the rest of the Encounter Team!

What level and build was the character you used?

Close to CP 1800 Necromancer using Elemental Catalyst or Martial Knolwedge depending on the raid necessity.

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?

Veteran and the first two hardmodes.

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

Mechanically the fights are challenging but I believe they are quite easily learnable with some repitition and an observant eye. I am very happy that Sanity's Edge is not as difficult as Rockgrove or Dreadsail Reef during their respective releases on the PTS. I think the current difficulty is a very healthy tuning. Not too hard that it excludes the vast majority of players, but still engaging enough where highly expereinced endgamers still have something to prog.

I am also very happy that the difficulty of the trial is not disporportionate depending on what role you are playing. In both vRG HM and vDSR HM, the amount of brutal punishment tanks and healers are put through is far, far worse than what the DPS have to go through in their time in the trial. It was very unfair, and with an already limited pool of support players, it shrunk the number of tanks and healers who were capable of doing the trial. I believe vSE HM is a big step in the right direction.


Were there any mechanics you had difficulty with?

On Ansuul HM, the Poison Mind AoE is large enough where it utterly obscures the Mine that can randomly spawn. And the Mine can spawn underneath a player and will instantly erupt, leading to an immediate death that cannot be reacted to at all. There is quite literally nothing that can be done in this situation.

Also, during the labyrinth phase on Ansuul, both veteran and HM, the stun from the roaming AoEs is highly incosistent and even desynced. This has lead to many deaths that simply cannot be reacted to or avoided.

Did you complete the Trial?

Yes.

Did you have any companions with you?

No.

Do you have any other general feedback?

As I said, this is a wonderfully made trial. It's mechanically engaging and not egregoiusly overtuned in difficulty like Rockgrove and Dreadsail were. Even now, those two HMs are well out of reach for the vast majority of ESO players. I think Sanity's Edge hits that sweet spot. With just some tweaking of certain mechanics on Ansuul, I do believe it will be a phenomenal trial at launch.

CE_Nex wrote: »

Did you enjoy this new Trial overall?

On Ansuul HM, the Poison Mind AoE is large enough where it utterly obscures the Mine that can randomly spawn. And the Mine can spawn underneath a player and will instantly erupt, leading to an immediate death that cannot be reacted to at all. There is quite literally nothing that can be done in this situation.

Some visuals to support this message, there is so much visual clutter because majority of AOEs are fully filled, in many situations AOEs overlap and are either invisible or barely visible. It does not help that existing skills used by the team members add visual clutter to the arena, for example Pets and Standards
I think Poison Mind and Afterburn traveling AOEs should be outlines, not fully filled for better visibility.

Hemorrhage is absolutely broken. This honestly makes tanking this fight extremely exhausting.