Game not possible without DPS skills... is that not unusual?

jesterstear · July 2014

I'm trying to play a tank with secondary healer role. Up to VR2, I didn't really have any dps skills on my bar, because well

a) they surely wouldn't work with my build or it'd be OP... if you can tank and heal surely your dps must suffer?
b) Templars were the Cinderella class at the time, i'd heard their dps skills were really poor
c) in heavy armour, with almost all in health and stamina, I didn't have the magicka for skills with a low dps/damage ratio - I planned to save it for healing.

Also , in other games i'd played, tanks can't dps , nor can healers, at least not without switching stances/builds and sacrificing their defining characteristic. Yet, these characters can solo, they're just slow, and can actually beat tougher mobs than any other class, rewarding the patient player.

Not so it seems in this game. My prior build was

1) Ransack (Sword and Shield) Buffs your armour, debuffs opponent, for 12 seconds
2) Honour the dead (instant cast heal)
3) Remembrance (on defeat heal of health and stamina)
4) Degeneration (mage guild, heal over time and damage over time simultaneously)
5) Vampire's bane (damage over time ranged skill with snare)

The problem is, you'll be taking melee damage for nearly a minute while your volcanic rune/impulse spam staff user is done in a few seconds. With softcapped Stamina regen, you have no problem tanking dungeon bosses, but three landscape mobs will eventually drain it as you try to block /interrupt each of the power attacks they spam (remember, while blocking one power attack, you are wasting stamina blocking the light attacks of the other two). It's also much much more demanding on player skill to try and spot, interrupt or dodge power attacks from all three mobs over such a period of time, than to just knock them down with volcanic rune, then kill them with impulse before they have a chance to perform any power attacks of their own.

I've now swapped skills 4 and 5 for Rune Focus (buffs armour , spell resist by 1250, +30% incoming healing, very low power cost) and Puncturing Sweep (melee AOE with knockback and returns 40% of damage done as a heal).

It's so easy now... I've gone from being no good at any of the holy trinity roles, to decent at all three. I burn less stamina per minute because the closest mob gets interrupted by Puncturing Sweep (which uses magicka) so can't perform heavy attacks, and the battle is over sooner to boot. Finally, i'm getting so much healing from Punturing Sweep, I can afford to eat some of the lesser power attacks (throwing knives.. meh) and keep the STA for the big stuff.

Pmarsico9 · July 2014

Look at it this way instead: Heavy Armor and stamina are extremely underpowered overall.

I leveled my temp 1-50 as a tanklar, then immediately went bathrobe and stick right after Molag Bal died at VR1 and specced into DPS. And I haven't really looked back, because the amount of content in this game that tanks are useful in is miniscule since they don't save much healing compared to straight DPSers.

They still take too much damage because Damage Reduction caps are too low.

So knowing what I know now, you are 100% right about one ability: Puncturing Strikes.

However, equip a resto staff and 5 piece VR1 warlock with 5 piece crafted light seducer and watch how much higher your damage goes as you spec into crit in light armor and how many more puncturing strikes you can get off with all that magicka regeneration.

jesterstear · July 2014

I am 5 Light 2 Heavy now, with the Warlock set. The thing is, "DPS" skills are more appropriately entitled "Soloing skills". Not only does Puncturing Strikes DPS, it heals and interrupts. But that healing is dependent on multiple mobs being present.... if you are tanking elites, there won't be, making it a waste of magika. Also the CC aspect wont work against these.

But are there any pure DPS skills that offer genuine top of the line dps (for any class/weap) with no other utility/support aspect? perhaps requiring a group and a tank to use safely? guessing not.

Pmarsico9 · July 2014

There's no viable pure DPS skills for Templars at all, but that's due to ability design. The problem is that Templars are the only class to access to healing without swapping their weapon, which really shouldn't matter unless they nerf Cycle of Life and Combat Prayer which provide flat + damage buffs.

Dawn's Wrath needs reworks across Backlash and Eclipse, in my opinion. And Dark Flare's bonus is too low.

Aedric Spear actually isn't bad as it stands, but it could stand to gain some damage increases on certain morphs (Luminous Shards, Piercing Javelin (which also sucks horribly)).

The best thing to do is build a solid healer set wearing cloth and a resto stave (since they have top-end on par with Destro Staves.)

The one thing you can do as a tank is run Vets well and provide solid damage in some cases, provided your healer is good and you use Blazing Shield Judiciously.

But DPS beyond soloing simply isn't viable right now. It's pathetic in PVE. In Cyrodiil, we are arguably more annoying than Sorcs due to Breath of Life.

temjiu · July 2014

Yes, OP. currently the game is in a bad state of design. It's getting better...Z is moving in the right direction. but tanking mechanics still have a long way to go. Light armor is still king...medium got better, but heavy is still in a real ditch due to the above listed reasons.

now on the note of tanking your way through a game...

Most the MMO's I've played were very similar. high end tank builds did squat for DPS. tanks were all about holding threat and reducing damage...neither of which helps a great deal in solo play (though reducing damage can...)

It's a DPS race. there always has to be a balance. in most MMO's, the general balance is this: if you do allot of damage, your squishy. you NEED to kill the mobs fast so they don't lay the smack down on you. As a tank, you didn't do allot of damage, but you could stay alive FOREVER.

The issue in this game is the lightest variation of armor can still cap the thresholds for mitigation...which means they LITERALLY can have as much armor as a heavy armor wearer can, AND still put out tons of damage. the "dress" wearing staff wielders, who normally in other games would turn into a road pizza the minute a mob looked at them cross-eyed...can facetank 95% of the content in the game. They pretty much evolved the tank concept right out of ESO.

its a severe balance issue that Z has yet to resolve decently (I wonder if they'll actually be able to...) plenty of quality ideas as to how have crossed the forums in the past. increase heavy armors mitigation threshold...give it more direct damage reduction passives....make it's capstone only available when using 5+ pieces of heavy armor...etc. not much of a response from Z. But they listened to the concerns of medium armor wearers, so they'res hope that heavy is next in line for some buffs.