2 Man PvE Party Setup Help/Suggestions

CharginMaverick · October 2019

What are some good setups for 2 man groups to do given the characters we have:

Him: Redguard - Templar, Orc - Dragonknight

Me: Breton Warden, Khajit Nightblade

The issue we have is we either are so squishy we just die without being able to handle the dungeons or such. OR we can survive for all of it but because we are built so defensively we have absolutely no DPS and everything takes waaaaaaayyyy too long to kill.

What would be the most optimized setups where we have enough survivability to do some of the group dungeons and such (we aren't looking to do trials or anything crazy) but also enough damage where it doesn't feel like a giant noodle fight?

Combinations we tried:

Healing Warden + Dragonknight Tank (this worked the best for surviving but was sooooooo slow)
Healing Warden + Dragonknight off-tank (wasn't really tanking or damaging well enough)
Stamina Nightblade + Dragonknight Tank (Not enough sustain, may have been poor optimization on our end)
Magicka Warden + Tank Dragonknight (Magicka warden just felt really really bad but I may have not been using a good build)
Healing Templar + Magicka Warden (Same as above but also not tanky enough)

If you think we had a good combination but were just playing it wrong please let me know what you think a more optimized version would be or if you have any new suggestions I am totally open to it. We are just trying to enjoy the PvE in the game together and haven't found the right set that works.

Realistically we COULD start new characters over from scratch but we would prefer to not have to train stuff up again if possible. But if you see the potential for something to really work smoothly then definitely suggest it!

Thanks again for the help guys!

VaranisArano · October 2019

Are you trying to do Group dungeons with a 2-man setup? Presumably on Normal Difficulty?

If so, your best bet is something that can survive and do DPS. Higher DPS will almost always make dungeon fights easier. Classes that can self-heal will also make it easier.

You can probably do it on any of those classes, but your roles might have to change. I'll talk about roles below.

For normal, I recommend that you don't go with a full tank build. Tanking is the easiest thing to do in a two man because all you need is someone who can hold boss aggro and keep the boss more or less in place, which really helps with DPS. You could combo the tank as healer/tank or DD/tank. For normal dungeons, tank is the easiest role to combo, since most DDs or healers can pick up the role by slotting Inner Fire from the Undaunted Line on top of their normal builds.

If you can, both players can self-heal and you can do without the healer. If you can't do that, the healer needs to be a Healer/DD who also does a fair bit of DPS. Alternatively, if the healer doesnt like to DPS, Healer/Tank is a great combo because the healer should be able to stand there and heal through most of the boss's attacks. That does mean the DD needs to pick up the slack with damage though.

In Normals, I prefer to play as a DD/tank, who's built like a DD but who has 1H&S one one bar or who uses Inner Fire. My Healers tend to wind up face tanking by default thanks to fake tanks in groupfinder.

Hope you find something that works!

Gundug · October 2019

I agree with the above poster, but wanted to add my own points to this. Any of the base game dungeons, aside from those that have mechanics that make it impossible, can be soloed with a sufficiently survivable DPS build. Even some of the DLC dungeons are doable. If you don’t have a strong enough character, one self-sufficient tank and one solid DPS with a minimum of self healing can clear any non-DLC dungeon with not much difficulty.

To make it easier, I recommend looking up solo builds, like vMA setups and working toward those. You and your friend can clear much of the content in the game with a couple decent vMA builds.

redspecter23 · October 2019

Make one a tank and one a dps, both with enough self heals to survive. Having a dedicated healer with only 2 people doesn't make much sense when you can just have some side heals on each of the characters you do have instead. A healer (buffer) starts to make more sense with larger group sizes where those buffs start to add significant overall damage.

My preference would be warden tank with stamplar dps.

Set up the warden with Bahraha's Curse as one of your 5 pc sets (or Leeching) and you are near impossible to kill in normal dungeons and many of the easier vets.

The stamplar will have access to vigor hopefully as well as ritual of retribution and can pretty much jab anything to death. Good for single target, great for packs of mobs. If this setup is still too squishy, you can go magplar instead even though it doesn't synergize as well with redguard, but sweeps will keep your health high in all but the most extreme circumstances

SirLeeMinion · October 2019

With normal non-DLC dungeons, just about anything will work. If you are having trouble getting through those with two people, take a hard look at your DPS using a 6M target skeleton. For vet content and for some of the normal DLCs, make sure you understand the mechanics. Xynode has some great videos that explain them for four person groups. The sets mentioned above are good for running content with fewer people. For mag toons, Iceheart is pretty handy. So far as roles, I'd go Tank + DPS and use self heals - ones with a benefit to the other person as well, where possible. The tank is going to want to be able to pull some DPS, and the DPS has to have some survivability. In contrast to this advice, though, most vets I've run with just two people have been two random guildies running VMA builds.

You will likely want to bring more than one armor set, as some bosses are better with two DPS or DPS + heal (the final boss of Darkshade 2 comes to mind). You may also want to look at your individual builds. Stuns and CCs, especially on final bosses of vet dungeons have a disproportionate impact as your group size goes down. Consider the final boss of Banished 2 where one party member is in the air and doing nothing maybe half the time - that will really cut into your DPS if it's just you or even two of you.