PC EU: Spells not triggering reliably – observed across multiple dungeons (e.g. Graven Deep)

Roctan · August 28

On August 28, 2025, we repeatedly encountered serious issues with abilities not triggering properly. Most noticeably, this happened during the final boss fight in Graven Deep (Hardmode), where the fight became unfinishable due to missing effects. However, the same problems also occurred on earlier bosses in the same dungeon and have been observed in other dungeons as well. Other players reported similar behavior.

Observed behavior:
- Cephaliarch's Flail: often cannot be cast despite having sufficient resources, or it casts but does not generate Crux.
- Pierce Armor: repeatedly cast but does not apply a taunt to the target.
In general, abilities sometimes “fire empty”: the animation plays, resources are consumed, but no actual effect is applied.

Impact:
- Boss mechanics become significantly harder or impossible to handle (e.g., missing taunt from the tank).
- Resources are consumed without effect.
- Group performance and dungeon clears are heavily impaired.

Additional notes:
- This issue is not limited to Graven Deep; it has been reported in other dungeons as well.
- Multiple players across different roles/classes were affected simultaneously.
- Reports from other groups in chat suggest that this is a widespread/server-wide issue.

Question to the community:
Has anyone else experienced the same problems with abilities not firing correctly?
Do you recognize possible causes (server performance, specific abilities, class interactions, etc.) that could explain this behavior?

@ZOS_Kevin:
Is this issue already known to the team, and can you share when we can expect a fix?

YandereGirlfriend · August 29

There are now giga-reports of Pierce Armor not working (including myself) as well as things like block and taunt randomly dropping.

I was running a bunch of Scalecaller and Tempest Island for gear and the mundane ogres from SCP and the Storm Atronachs from TI would reliably resist the ability to cast Pierce Armor on, even while highlighted by the cursor for many seconds.

I have a friend doing a Godslayer prog and their run last night was scuffed by getting killed through block and targeted abilities not firing.

This is on PC-NA.

Gabriel_H · August 29

I'm running solo content atm and having to double press for skill fires.

Roctan · September 6

I keep hearing from more and more frustrated players who are struggling with this bug. Especially tanks are affected, since their taunts sometimes don’t go off at all – which makes encounters extremely frustrating or even impossible to clear.

Please don’t be misled by the fact that there are not too many posts about it here on the forum. Many European players simply log off when something like this happens and turn to another game instead. For them, writing a forum post feels like pointless extra work and has nothing to do with having fun in ESO. That should always be kept in mind.

@ZOS_Kevin – it’s really time to address this serious problem. When essential abilities like taunts or other core skills fail to trigger, the entire gameplay experience breaks down. Many players are already losing patience because of this. Can you please update us on when a fix can be expected?

SolarRune · September 6

Did a trial this evening and at least 4 of the dds coyldnt cast anything other than ultis and light or heavy attacks. Really really game breaking and needs looking into and resolving quickly. Much more of an issue than the housing tours being broken!!

SaintJohnHM · September 7

I'm in a fairly active dungeon guild and have seen a bunch of reports about Graven Deep and skills not firing, I was also in a Graven Deep run and skills stopped firing, and also Earthen Root Enclave got some reports of skills not firing.

@ZOS_Kevin

SolarRune · September 7

My trial run was vAA HM in execute a number of people had the issue

SaintJohnHM · September 8

Skills not firing is still a problem, I haven't seen the devs even address it yet.

Roctan · September 8

In-game, on Discord servers, and across every player communication channel you hear the same frustration again and again about this issue.

My question is: how can we, as a community, make sure ZOS gets a realistic picture of this problem? Right now it seems clear that the scope of the issue is not being assessed correctly – and yet it’s serious enough to drive players away from ESO.

@ZOS_GinaBruno Can you help?

ZOS_GinaBruno · September 8

Hi all, we're pretty sure we have pinpointed the issue here and it is currently scheduled to be fixed in next week's incremental patch (Sept 15 for PC and Sept 17 for consoles)

Mr_Friendly · September 9

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi all, we're pretty sure we have pinpointed the issue here and it is currently scheduled to be fixed in next week's incremental patch (Sept 15 for PC and Sept 17 for consoles)

It would be nice to elaborate when issues like this happen. I'm sure all appreciate the quick fix, but it still leaves people totally in the dark about what's going on.

i.e. is it limited to certain dungeons, certain setups, can anything be done to alleviate before the patch?

LycanthropyManiac · September 9

When I was on Graven Deep as a Arcanist last week and I was using Cephaliarch's Flail it sometimes doesn't work at all. But I figured it out that when I'm not aiming cursor on the boss directly, skill work just fine. Of course, this can only work on skills that can be activated not directly on the enemy (e.g. Radiant Glory still don't work).

Gabriel_H · 3:18AM

Mr_Friendly wrote: »

i.e. is it limited to certain dungeons, certain setups, can anything be done to alleviate before the patch?

1) Happens everywhere. Grouped or Solo.

2) There seem to be two problems.

Multiple keypresses required to get skills to fire. This even affects bar swap.
Skills that require a target only half register there is a target - enough to allow the button to be pressed but not enough to actually fire the skill (Flail seems to be a bit of an outlier here, as it doesn't need a specific target, but it does mark a target which could be why it along with the likes of Pierce Armour, Radiant Glory are not working).

3) Nothing can be done other than avoiding those skills affected by 2) and hoping you can keypress quickly enough to fire the others.

exiars10 · 7:36AM

Gabriel_H wrote: »

I'm running solo content atm and having to double press for skill fires.

And I was tought something is wrong with my rotation or I'm going crazy as Endless Hail almost never triggers when I click, had to click twice almost every single time.
And I'm also solo player most of the time, too..