Endless Archive Verses, Visions, Maruders and that one bug

notyuu · November 2023

It's simple, a few changes that'd make EA a little more enjoyable over all

Verses, more often than not before you go to fight a boss you'll get a verse pull which is "effect on kill X2/3" which while neat is not really effective given that most of the bosses lack mobs to proc said effects on, so can we get the RNG weighted to make these effects less likely to show up on the pulls at the end of stage 2?

Visions, would it be possible to add a sanity check, or at least a re-roll button (at an increasing cost of archive fortunes)so if we get a completely dead pull, such as "max mag/pet buff/element damage" on a build that has no pets, does martial damage and uses stamina (this has happened 21 times so far)

Maruders, Turn down their damage slightly and make them spawn at the end of the stage or at least make it possible to flee from them at the cost of the verses pull, as given how they are right now, if you encouter one solo it's basically "you found a maruder, toss a coin, heads you lose a life, tails you get [REDACTED] over and lose a life"

The gear bug, for the love of all that is holy fix the bug that stops gear sets from working after you are transformed into something (watcher/goat/avatar), sure there's a work around of simply re-equiping one piece of gear from that set but that shouldn't have to be done in the first place!

Treeshka · November 2023

I agree that we should be able to reroll visions at the cost of fortunes.

Not sure what developers intend but Marauders are not a big deal until Arc five if you are on a tank build that can do a little damage.

EF321 · November 2023

Problem with marauders that I have is that if one spawns at stage 1, you have no verse. You can use consumable verse, but you will be left without extra verse for boss fight, and you don't even have a conscious choice of what it's gonna be, just the type. And you better recognize what you got by name and know how proc works, you won't have time to read.

And yes, limited choices of verses and visions make entire mode a lottery. You can get broken OP by the time you finish arc one, or you can be jack of all trades, master of none still by the end of arc five, will all visions all over the place, including areas you don't care about at all.

Also, I think blobs in trash on later arcs are too much. Other added Tho'at mechanics are fine, but targeting blobs in huge trash crowd with the way targeting in ESO works... can be challenging to say the least. Unless devs wanted you to bring deadlands demolisher to every trash fight, or only use one of two classes with mass interrupts...

Sarannah · November 2023

Treeshka wrote: »

I agree that we should be able to reroll visions at the cost of fortunes.

Not sure what developers intend but Marauders are not a big deal until Arc five if you are on a tank build that can do a little damage.

Wow, the marauders do much more damage than even the bosses in the lower arcs. Like 5-8 times more damage, and they deal that damage very quickly. So far I've only gotten marauders in arc 1-3, but they three shot me. Especially Maugogh. And I'm half defense/half dps. (For the record, I'm always going in solo with a tank companion)

Could you tell us what defenses you are using?
I'm using two damage reduction nodes in the blue CP tree(direct and one more which I forgot), which means sacrificing damage. Have the health and armor red CP nodes. I use a shield skill, and the shield every 10 second while blocking CP. I also mostly pick defensive verses and visions. Have a tank companion to take the damage for me, but he doesn't last long on marauders. Have 28k resistances. Use max health/stamina food. And as an arcanist my main attack grants me a shield. (Currently working on getting vamp for the damage reduction, but honestly, that shouldn't be needed. Marauders are just too strong.)
Note: I don't have the undaunted passives.

Personally I think this is already WAY overboard on defenses for anything the EA should throw at me. Unless I forgot something really important. Especially for the first four arcs for which there are achievements like killing 60 bosses in those arcs.

PS: I've only gotten to the end of arc 3. Solo with companion. As I want to solo all the achivements in there.

Edit: I've noticed the losing buffs bug only happens after the watcher stage, where we have to hunt tomeshells.

Nebs · November 2023

I like the idea of being able to reroll Visions, but I don't like the idea that it could just cost an increasing number of fortunes. Maybe something like the consumable Verse items that can only be used once per Cycle (or perhaps in this case, Arc?), but can also drop after defeating a marauder?

My partner and I like the difficulty of the marauders for the most part, and I like that they spawn while adds are still around. It becomes a sort of balance of "Do we try to keep the last add of this wave alive or try wiping out the adds before we focus on the marauder?" Though I have done a run of the archive solo exactly once and fighting those guys alone or with a dopey companion who will be obliterated by their AoEs does sound nightmarish. Defense against AoEs is often a top Vision pick for me, which helps, but it'd be kind of nice if there were more Verses that cleansed there because there's a ton of ruthless DoTs inside the Archive.

The gear bug has actually made my partner and I often skip Doors to the Unknown because it's so annoying. We have an add-on that lets us unequip and reequip our gear, but it's still such a drag and I hope it's part of the first downloaded patch to the Archive.

EF321 · November 2023

Sarannah wrote: »

Treeshka wrote: »

I agree that we should be able to reroll visions at the cost of fortunes.

Not sure what developers intend but Marauders are not a big deal until Arc five if you are on a tank build that can do a little damage.

Wow, the marauders do much more damage than even the bosses in the lower arcs. Like 5-8 times more damage, and they deal that damage very quickly. So far I've only gotten marauders in arc 1-3, but they three shot me. Especially Maugogh. And I'm half defense/half dps. (For the record, I'm always going in solo with a tank companion)

Could you tell us what defenses you are using?
I'm using two damage reduction nodes in the blue CP tree(direct and one more which I forgot), which means sacrificing damage. Have the health and armor red CP nodes. I use a shield skill, and the shield every 10 second while blocking CP. I also mostly pick defensive verses and visions. Have a tank companion to take the damage for me, but he doesn't last long on marauders. Have 28k resistances. Use max health/stamina food. And as an arcanist my main attack grants me a shield. (Currently working on getting vamp for the damage reduction, but honestly, that shouldn't be needed. Marauders are just too strong.)
Note: I don't have the undaunted passives.

Personally I think this is already WAY overboard on defenses for anything the EA should throw at me. Unless I forgot something really important. Especially for the first four arcs for which there are achievements like killing 60 bosses in those arcs.

PS: I've only gotten to the end of arc 3. Solo with companion. As I want to solo all the achivements in there.

Edit: I've noticed the losing buffs bug only happens after the watcher stage, where we have to hunt tomeshells.

Don't take a hit from Marauder unblocked. Preferably block on Ice Staff / SnB bar, if you have that (I slot ice staff after first two arcs).
Their hard hitting attacks can be dodge rolled, and marauders can be entirely kited without ever landing a hit on you, if you have mobility for that.

For me, offensive verses and visions in most cases work better, bonuses they give are huge and they make fights much shorter. You will end up melting bosses as a 40k hp tank

Vynera · November 2023

EF321 wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

Treeshka wrote: »

I agree that we should be able to reroll visions at the cost of fortunes.

Not sure what developers intend but Marauders are not a big deal until Arc five if you are on a tank build that can do a little damage.

Wow, the marauders do much more damage than even the bosses in the lower arcs. Like 5-8 times more damage, and they deal that damage very quickly. So far I've only gotten marauders in arc 1-3, but they three shot me. Especially Maugogh. And I'm half defense/half dps. (For the record, I'm always going in solo with a tank companion)

Could you tell us what defenses you are using?
I'm using two damage reduction nodes in the blue CP tree(direct and one more which I forgot), which means sacrificing damage. Have the health and armor red CP nodes. I use a shield skill, and the shield every 10 second while blocking CP. I also mostly pick defensive verses and visions. Have a tank companion to take the damage for me, but he doesn't last long on marauders. Have 28k resistances. Use max health/stamina food. And as an arcanist my main attack grants me a shield. (Currently working on getting vamp for the damage reduction, but honestly, that shouldn't be needed. Marauders are just too strong.)
Note: I don't have the undaunted passives.

Personally I think this is already WAY overboard on defenses for anything the EA should throw at me. Unless I forgot something really important. Especially for the first four arcs for which there are achievements like killing 60 bosses in those arcs.

PS: I've only gotten to the end of arc 3. Solo with companion. As I want to solo all the achivements in there.

Edit: I've noticed the losing buffs bug only happens after the watcher stage, where we have to hunt tomeshells.

Don't take a hit from Marauder unblocked. Preferably block on Ice Staff / SnB bar, if you have that (I slot ice staff after first two arcs).
Their hard hitting attacks can be dodge rolled, and marauders can be entirely kited without ever landing a hit on you, if you have mobility for that.

For me, offensive verses and visions in most cases work better, bonuses they give are huge and they make fights much shorter. You will end up melting bosses as a 40k hp tank

But lets say for solo runs, and your on a templar and have to go to melee range to use your jabs..
well you cant blockcast channeled skills like jabs, one hit and your dead. Even on arc 3 they hit way harder than some bosses on arc 10+

EF321 · November 2023

Vynera wrote: »

But lets say for solo runs, and your on a templar and have to go to melee range to use your jabs..
well you cant blockcast channeled skills like jabs, one hit and your dead. Even on arc 3 they hit way harder than some bosses on arc 10+

You have an option to bring a gun to a knife fight, and you bring rubber knife

Sarannah · November 2023

Thanks for the advice, but if there is one thing I hate in games it is kiting mobs. Kiting mobs means they were too hard to fight, and shouldn't be fought at all. Kiting means bad gamedesign in my opinion. Mechanics/telegraphed hard hits is one thing, but this is totally different. Especially with how ESO's combat and boss system works.
(Note: For the same reason I dislike kiting, I dislike one-shot mechanics. There is no point in having more than 1 health or any defenses at all in these situations. No matter how tanky or untanky you are, these things completely negate any of it. And totally ignore any character building.)

Also, arcanist beam is channeled and the shield is destroyed in one hit. And marauders hit in quick succession, meaning the other hits take my health down.

Marauders need some big changes in my opinion.

For the OP: Forgot to mention this in my previous reply. There are upgrades you can buy to get three verses and three vision choices, increasing your odds to get one you like/fits your build.

PS: Just went to do some leads I got from the archive, and noticed ZOS added leads/antiquities to Apocrypha, including base leads... AWESOME!

Sarannah · November 2023

So... I did the kiting thing on Maugogh and finally killed him. But this really isn't how I want to play. Or how I think the game should play.

Firstmep · November 2023

I think a drastic rebalancing of visions needs to be done.
Focused Efforts is far ahead of anything else it ridiculous.
Meanwhile, in contrast you 3% increase to a damage type or vs bosses, while focused efforts is 500%. These damage visions either need to be buffed to at least like 25%, or some for of scaling added to them, like 3% per arc, or an exponential stacking like 1 vision gives 3% but 2 gives 12% and so on.

Also do like to see a little less rng, we should get stacking visions that we already have chosen to be offered more often to allow for more deck building.

The rng element of visions is just way too frustrating. 1 run I get 4 focused efforts by arc 5 and I'm just mowing everything down in full tank gear another run I get 0 and even in full fps gear everything takes ages to kill. The power imbalance between the 2-3 good visions and the rest is just too much.

Jaraal · November 2023

Nebs wrote: »

My partner and I like the difficulty of the marauders for the most part, and I like that they spawn while adds are still around. It becomes a sort of balance of "Do we try to keep the last add of this wave alive or try wiping out the adds before we focus on the marauder?" Though I have done a run of the archive solo exactly once and fighting those guys alone or with a dopey companion who will be obliterated by their AoEs does sound nightmarish.

I've always done EA with a companion, never tried it with another player. I've killed a lot of marauders, but I don't think the companion has ever survived, even in the larger maps. My strategy is to stay away from the boss while killing the adds, then dealing with him once all three waves of trash are taken care of. Occasionally I have to block his heavies and bash the channels, but I find it simpler to clear the map first, rather than trying to kill him with everything else beating on me.

Galeriano · November 2023

Vynera wrote: »

EF321 wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

Treeshka wrote: »

I agree that we should be able to reroll visions at the cost of fortunes.

Not sure what developers intend but Marauders are not a big deal until Arc five if you are on a tank build that can do a little damage.

Wow, the marauders do much more damage than even the bosses in the lower arcs. Like 5-8 times more damage, and they deal that damage very quickly. So far I've only gotten marauders in arc 1-3, but they three shot me. Especially Maugogh. And I'm half defense/half dps. (For the record, I'm always going in solo with a tank companion)

Could you tell us what defenses you are using?
I'm using two damage reduction nodes in the blue CP tree(direct and one more which I forgot), which means sacrificing damage. Have the health and armor red CP nodes. I use a shield skill, and the shield every 10 second while blocking CP. I also mostly pick defensive verses and visions. Have a tank companion to take the damage for me, but he doesn't last long on marauders. Have 28k resistances. Use max health/stamina food. And as an arcanist my main attack grants me a shield. (Currently working on getting vamp for the damage reduction, but honestly, that shouldn't be needed. Marauders are just too strong.)
Note: I don't have the undaunted passives.

Personally I think this is already WAY overboard on defenses for anything the EA should throw at me. Unless I forgot something really important. Especially for the first four arcs for which there are achievements like killing 60 bosses in those arcs.

PS: I've only gotten to the end of arc 3. Solo with companion. As I want to solo all the achivements in there.

Edit: I've noticed the losing buffs bug only happens after the watcher stage, where we have to hunt tomeshells.

Don't take a hit from Marauder unblocked. Preferably block on Ice Staff / SnB bar, if you have that (I slot ice staff after first two arcs).
Their hard hitting attacks can be dodge rolled, and marauders can be entirely kited without ever landing a hit on you, if you have mobility for that.

For me, offensive verses and visions in most cases work better, bonuses they give are huge and they make fights much shorter. You will end up melting bosses as a 40k hp tank

But lets say for solo runs, and your on a templar and have to go to melee range to use your jabs..
well you cant blockcast channeled skills like jabs, one hit and your dead. Even on arc 3 they hit way harder than some bosses on arc 10+

With over 30k resists and around 40k HP You need to wait until arc 6-7 until marauders start to tackle You. Building tanky is the way, You will get more than enough dmg anyway especially if You will be lucky with the visions.

Jierdanit · November 2023

Vynera wrote: »

EF321 wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

Treeshka wrote: »

I agree that we should be able to reroll visions at the cost of fortunes.

Not sure what developers intend but Marauders are not a big deal until Arc five if you are on a tank build that can do a little damage.

Wow, the marauders do much more damage than even the bosses in the lower arcs. Like 5-8 times more damage, and they deal that damage very quickly. So far I've only gotten marauders in arc 1-3, but they three shot me. Especially Maugogh. And I'm half defense/half dps. (For the record, I'm always going in solo with a tank companion)

Could you tell us what defenses you are using?
I'm using two damage reduction nodes in the blue CP tree(direct and one more which I forgot), which means sacrificing damage. Have the health and armor red CP nodes. I use a shield skill, and the shield every 10 second while blocking CP. I also mostly pick defensive verses and visions. Have a tank companion to take the damage for me, but he doesn't last long on marauders. Have 28k resistances. Use max health/stamina food. And as an arcanist my main attack grants me a shield. (Currently working on getting vamp for the damage reduction, but honestly, that shouldn't be needed. Marauders are just too strong.)
Note: I don't have the undaunted passives.

Personally I think this is already WAY overboard on defenses for anything the EA should throw at me. Unless I forgot something really important. Especially for the first four arcs for which there are achievements like killing 60 bosses in those arcs.

PS: I've only gotten to the end of arc 3. Solo with companion. As I want to solo all the achivements in there.

Edit: I've noticed the losing buffs bug only happens after the watcher stage, where we have to hunt tomeshells.

Don't take a hit from Marauder unblocked. Preferably block on Ice Staff / SnB bar, if you have that (I slot ice staff after first two arcs).
Their hard hitting attacks can be dodge rolled, and marauders can be entirely kited without ever landing a hit on you, if you have mobility for that.

For me, offensive verses and visions in most cases work better, bonuses they give are huge and they make fights much shorter. You will end up melting bosses as a 40k hp tank

But lets say for solo runs, and your on a templar and have to go to melee range to use your jabs..
well you cant blockcast channeled skills like jabs, one hit and your dead. Even on arc 3 they hit way harder than some bosses on arc 10+

Youre not going to want to use jabs after about arc 4 or 5 because they will barely do damage anymore.

The only way to do decent damage in the later arcs is to get at least 2 of the Focused Efforts Visions and basically use Elemental Susceptibility on Ice Staff as spammable.

Jaimeh · November 2023

notyuu wrote: »

It's simple, a few changes that'd make EA a little more enjoyable over all

Visions, would it be possible to add a sanity check, or at least a re-roll button (at an increasing cost of archive fortunes)so if we get a completely dead pull, such as "max mag/pet buff/element damage" on a build that has no pets, does martial damage and uses stamina (this has happened 21 times so far)

This is a good idea, but I would also like the ability to re-choose a vision even from the existing pool, because sometimes you can click something by accident (in my case a finicky controller button).

Luke_Flamesword · November 2023

Bugs are worst offenders. One time when I killed marauder, whole stage reset and I lost thread. I was not dead and didn't had a rebirth verse. It was death of marauder which was for some reason counted as mine.

EF321 · November 2023

Sarannah wrote: »

So... I did the kiting thing on Maugogh and finally killed him. But this really isn't how I want to play. Or how I think the game should play.

Remembered this conversation when marauder appeared and facetanked it just because:

https://youtu.be/TL-p2LOiHdM

(This is first time I am playing this character and this build in arc)

For first arcs you don't even need dodging/blocking/kiting, just being fat and have some passive heals going is enough, really.

You need to be fat anyway if you want to get solo to higher arcs. Visions and verses will compensate for own tankiness you bring. As example, verse I picked somewhere on arc 1 did 65% of damage on this tanky character.

Jierdanit · November 2023

EF321 wrote: »

[

Sarannah wrote: »

So... I did the kiting thing on Maugogh and finally killed him. But this really isn't how I want to play. Or how I think the game should play.

Remembered this conversation when marauder appeared and facetanked it just because:
https://youtu.be/TL-p2LOiHdM

(This is first time I am playing this character and this build in arc)

For first arcs you don't even need dodging/blocking/kiting, just being fat and have some passive heals going is enough, really.

That is the arc 2 marauder.

The marauders in the other arcs get a lot more difficult, with the arc 3 marauder already doing a lot more damage.

You can facetank the arc 2 marauder on most builds that are decently tanky, but that is simply not possible anymore from at the latest arc 4 going forward (unless youre an actual full tank).

EF321 · November 2023

Firstmep wrote: »

I think a drastic rebalancing of visions needs to be done.
Focused Efforts is far ahead of anything else it ridiculous.
Meanwhile, in contrast you 3% increase to a damage type or vs bosses, while focused efforts is 500%. These damage visions either need to be buffed to at least like 25%, or some for of scaling added to them, like 3% per arc, or an exponential stacking like 1 vision gives 3% but 2 gives 12% and so on.

Also do like to see a little less rng, we should get stacking visions that we already have chosen to be offered more often to allow for more deck building.

The rng element of visions is just way too frustrating. 1 run I get 4 focused efforts by arc 5 and I'm just mowing everything down in full tank gear another run I get 0 and even in full fps gear everything takes ages to kill. The power imbalance between the 2-3 good visions and the rest is just too much.

Yes, FE is crazy strong, along with just a couple of other good visions. Some verses are very strong too, much more than anything, Exsanguinate on bosses for example.

I would very much prefer them significantly buff weaker choices to match levels of FE, rather than make FE as useless as many other choices. Building character around specific visions and verses was very refreshing so far.

Sarannah · November 2023

Galeriano wrote: »

Vynera wrote: »

EF321 wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

Treeshka wrote: »

I agree that we should be able to reroll visions at the cost of fortunes.

Not sure what developers intend but Marauders are not a big deal until Arc five if you are on a tank build that can do a little damage.

Wow, the marauders do much more damage than even the bosses in the lower arcs. Like 5-8 times more damage, and they deal that damage very quickly. So far I've only gotten marauders in arc 1-3, but they three shot me. Especially Maugogh. And I'm half defense/half dps. (For the record, I'm always going in solo with a tank companion)

Could you tell us what defenses you are using?
I'm using two damage reduction nodes in the blue CP tree(direct and one more which I forgot), which means sacrificing damage. Have the health and armor red CP nodes. I use a shield skill, and the shield every 10 second while blocking CP. I also mostly pick defensive verses and visions. Have a tank companion to take the damage for me, but he doesn't last long on marauders. Have 28k resistances. Use max health/stamina food. And as an arcanist my main attack grants me a shield. (Currently working on getting vamp for the damage reduction, but honestly, that shouldn't be needed. Marauders are just too strong.)
Note: I don't have the undaunted passives.

Personally I think this is already WAY overboard on defenses for anything the EA should throw at me. Unless I forgot something really important. Especially for the first four arcs for which there are achievements like killing 60 bosses in those arcs.

PS: I've only gotten to the end of arc 3. Solo with companion. As I want to solo all the achivements in there.

Edit: I've noticed the losing buffs bug only happens after the watcher stage, where we have to hunt tomeshells.

Don't take a hit from Marauder unblocked. Preferably block on Ice Staff / SnB bar, if you have that (I slot ice staff after first two arcs).
Their hard hitting attacks can be dodge rolled, and marauders can be entirely kited without ever landing a hit on you, if you have mobility for that.

For me, offensive verses and visions in most cases work better, bonuses they give are huge and they make fights much shorter. You will end up melting bosses as a 40k hp tank

But lets say for solo runs, and your on a templar and have to go to melee range to use your jabs..
well you cant blockcast channeled skills like jabs, one hit and your dead. Even on arc 3 they hit way harder than some bosses on arc 10+

With over 30k resists and around 40k HP You need to wait until arc 6-7 until marauders start to tackle You. Building tanky is the way, You will get more than enough dmg anyway especially if You will be lucky with the visions.

Tried this today, to see where it would get me... changed all my stats to health, and changed mundus to defensive. For some reason this worked! Thank you. Made me get to arc 4 for the first time, but then I messed up by being distracted.

Though I do not have 40k health, I did get quite far(for me) in the EA. Haven't met Maugogh yet, after doing this. So will post to see if I can tank him too when I meet him. Will probably look towards some more defensive upgrades as well.

Relying on lucky verses and visions seems weird to me, but it works! Which is probably why the 3 verses and 3 vision upgrades are so cheap. Thank you!

EF321 wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

So... I did the kiting thing on Maugogh and finally killed him. But this really isn't how I want to play. Or how I think the game should play.

Remembered this conversation when marauder appeared and facetanked it just because:
https://youtu.be/TL-p2LOiHdM

(This is first time I am playing this character and this build in arc)

For first arcs you don't even need dodging/blocking/kiting, just being fat and have some passive heals going is enough, really.

You need to be fat anyway if you want to get solo to higher arcs. Visions and verses will compensate for own tankiness you bring. As example, verse I picked somewhere on arc 1 did 65% of damage on this tanky character.

The lightning and other marauder can be tanked, I did it too. It is the Maugogh one that hits hard, and is(maybe was) impossible for me to face tank. Even on the lower arcs.