I think the biggest reason some people hate on Oakensoul builds, is because it's what many would consider a "selfish build". In and of itself, Oakensoul doesn't bring anything to the table to assist a group, the wearer has their skill slots cut in half so loses the ability to slot skills to contribute to the group dynamic, etc..

Oakensoul has it's uses. I use it myself, though pretty much only on solo farm builds, runninging arenas, or when I feel like just dialing it in while running random normals. But once I step into anything vet level, I swap to a build more conducive to contributing to the group. I know many players that still wear it in vet dungeons, and they're moderately successful. But they're pushing it when it comes to running HM. And I don't know anybody who'll run an Oak build in a vet Trial prog group.

I don't like the build for myself because on controller pushing the HA lever constantly is more tiring on my fingers than swapping, but I think it's a fine build on DDs who know their role and the mechanics of the fight, and it's also a safe bet for ranged fights that need a lot mitigation, so besides bosses with dps checks, or score pushing and speed runs, it should work nicely. The problem is not on the build itself, but the playstyle it attracts, ie., exactly because it's so forgiving, it encourages a imprecise playstyle, so people will ignore AoEs and positioning, and that makes for enforcing bad habits when it comes to raid awareness, which is one of the most important things in group runs. I've PUGed a lot of end game content, and when I'm on support and noting what's happening group-wide, very often the DD who is standing in the middle of the AOE or the DD who is way out of group will be a HA player. I think it also makes it harder to adapt to a 2-bar build afterwards, since the latter doesn't have so much mitigation built in, and therefore will feel riskier to play, but that's another story. To conclude, I think the build can work well for the majority of the content, and it doesn't deserve the flack it gets, but in some ways it does more harm than good in terms of player development, if the player is aware of it though, they can avoid the pitfalls and hopefully improve alongside using the build.

One-bar is often seen as a crutch since it brings up your base level performance significantly. However, your ceiling (overall damage potential) is also lower with a 1 bar build, which means your basically settling for something that is just a notch or two better than mediocrity. On almost every class, a 2 bar build with a practiced rotation will outperform a 1 bar build by a fairly large margin. So at the high end of gameplay, there is always going to be a bias against one-bar builds.

I personally hate the light attack weaving/bar swapping playstyle, so I think the One-bar is great for easy farming builds, but we don't have any 1 bar builds for our trials progression group precisely because it does limit your damage potential.

I've never seen actual hate against one bar builds.

I have seen groups with requirements to have or not have certain equipment/dps/classes. But that extends beyond one bar builds into all kinds of things, and it's not wrong for a raid lead to set requirements for their group's builds, whatever those might be.

This is a loaded question, and - unpopular opinion - there’s really not one person at fault. It’s a lot of things from a lot of people that all come together to make this mess.

• Oakensoul is not an accessibility thing. Full stop. If it were, it wouldn’t have been gated behind an Antiquity grind and requiring DLCs. What it is is just a solo-play assist - you get loads of buffs generally sourced from casting backbar skills and from healers, and that means you can focus exclusively on damage while being able to tank things a standard DD couldn’t. When people started talking about how it helped with their inability to weave due to carpal tunnel/arthritis/etc., then people just ran with that since “ESO added an accessibility thing” is a nice feel-good story.
• The reason Oakensoul was hated by the endgame community therefore was that it essentially trivialized their achievements. Why bring healers if the DDs could just source all of the buffs from one gear piece and also tank through standing in all the stupid? Why waste time trying to perfect a 300 APM rotation if you could just hold down one button and do better anyway? As a result, those people called for nerfs so Oakensoul wouldn’t make the standard roles irrelevant.
• (Remember also that at release, Oakensoul was the meta. If you didn’t have it, you were excluded from groups)
• (Also the “I had to work for it so everyone has to” mentality is always alive and well, and everyone has a different point that they can’t handle others having it easier. After all, there’s a bunch of people arguing that nobody else should get event furnishing X because they spent the time to log in on a specific date and other people didn’t, so offerring that furnishing would ‘devalue’ it. And as much as people want to say they care about everyone, it does get a lot harder to shrug it off when it’s something like “oh, you paid off your $200k loan and this other person didn’t, but we’re going to forgive their debt because they were financially irresponsible and you need to just suck up the fact that you worked so much harder to pay it back like a good person”)
• Anyway, Oakensoul got nerfed so 2-bar DDs and healers could be objectively better than Oakensouls. The idea of course was that “you don’t need to be slaves to the meta,” but in reality…
• This is where ZOS’s goal of trying to make all content approachable conflicts with human nature: if you try to level the playing field by homogenizing builds, then people will naturally gravitate to the one objectively better setup. Hybridization allowed people to pick the objectively better morph in either case, so people who wanted to spec purely into one resource were therefore at a disadvantage because they weren’t using the best skills. Making more and more non-Class skills also push people away from using Class things… which means people will feel forced to use the objectively best Class and drop the others whether they want to or not.
• Another ZOS backfire also affected groups: Account-wide Achieves was designed so people didn’t have to collect everything on only one character… but then endgamers who already had their trifecta didn’t have the desire to do it again since you wouldn’t get the “achievement get!” serotonin boost, even for doing it on a different character. That turned a number of people off the game. U35 also was well-intentioned to raise the floor and lower the ceiling, but it really only made healing worse and reduced damage across the board - the highest of the high end could recover easily and the low-end casuals didn’t feel a difference because it’s just overland, but everyone else took a hit. As a result, the remaining raid leads got a lot more selective about their groups.
• (This is one thing that scares me about the future - we know ZOS has a “you don’t need to be a slave to the meta!” stance - which is good! - but homogenizing characters any more by something like making Class skills less important or buffing non-Class stuff and leaning too much into Scribing or whatever will likely just lead to raid leads being even more exclusionary)
• Raid leads are at liberty to take whoever they want. Because of U33 and U35, a lot of the better raid leads left so a lot of the remaining ones are those who… think they’re better than they are. A good raid leads will just look at a parse and let players play. That’s how new tactics are found. Bad raid leads will look at content creators and logs to find out what the best possible thing is, and then demand exactly that. Why would they want a DD who can do 120k on Necro, when they could have the meta Arcanist doing 90k? Wait, what? You mean that just forcing someone to copy a build isn’t going to automatically make them be the best at it, and some people may even be able to do better on a non-standard build?
• But, raid leads also need to take teamwork into account. The Oakensoul does give a lot of buffs that are sourced from other teammates, which means that healers/tanks buffing the Oakensoul user is essentially a waste. If the healer’s throwing out Combat Prayer, that means everyone gets more damage… except for the person in Oakensoul, since they source Minor Berserk from the ring.
• That together goes with Oakensoul as a “solo stuff” item - it doesn’t get buffed by others, and it also doesn’t give any buffs to the group. Essentially, it’s a very “selfish” setup, which doesn’t always work in groups… unless everyone is an Oakensoul build.
• Finally, there are a number of Oakensoul users who think that simply equipping the ring means that they’re going to be able to get Godslayer. Every build, including heavy builds, requires practice. What other gear? What skills? What CP? Do you know the strengths (and weaknesses!) of your own build? I’ve seen two people put on the exact same Oakensoul build and one ended up doing literally twice the damage of the other because he knew when to cast which of his skills, while the first just held heavy attack and pushed the other skills whenever. And of course, a lot of dungeons and trials have mechanics that people need to consider, even if all they do is heavy attack.

Whew, that was a wall of text.

Look, my point is that there’s a lot that goes into this whole Oaken-argument - it’s not just “ew raid leads suck” or “ew heavy attack builds suck” or whatever.

Can Oakensoul builds do hard content? Sure! I’ve seen (current patch) Oakensorcs get IR. I even did a number of my dungeon trifectas as a totally-selfish DK tank with three Oakensorc DDs. Sure, the build won’t be able to go for the 0.001%er tris like Mindmender, but that’s out of reach of most two-bar players as well.

The important thing is to be on the same page as your group. If you have a raid lead who is permissive, then by all means. But if yours is demanding, then you need to either submit to their demands or not run with them. And since random PuGs are random, you can’t guarantee what you’ll get… and they can’t guarantee that you’re a pro Oakensoul user instead of just someone who put it on because you want to ignore teamwork either.

It’s the standard team thing: you can do anything solo, but in group content you need to play as a team. I always like to think of an Olympic relay race (also because it’s a funny head image) - if your whole team says “hey, wouldn’t it be funny if we all ran the relay in 18th century ballgowns and showed that we could still win even if we looked like Marie Antoinette?” and then you do it, great! But if you go up to a group in their super-speed leotards and you’re in a powdered wig and panniers, people are obviously going to eject you from the team.

I'm a big oaken fan, and have posted a lot here about it. I run it (on multiple classes), but I run 2-bar builds in almost-end-game content (I have hard mode in Kynes, Sunspire, vCR+2, a few trifectas, but don't have the HM in Rockgrove.)

What oaken did for me is it moved me into that higher level of play. Before oaken, I didn't have vDSR. I never thought I'd get vDSR. I thought it was out of reach.

Then I started playing an oakensorc, and I was able to go into those trials with a huge health pool, and a much less complicated rotation. I first got the Kyne's Aegis Hard Mode and the Asylum Sanctorum trifecta on an oakensorc. It allowed me to learn so much about the mechanics, and how to be an end-game player. I became a significantly better player because of oaken. And now I can do those trials on most any class (except necro, because I'm terrible at necro).

But it definitely has its place. I'm in two guilds who allow oakensorcs into vCR+, for instance. They limit the number of 1-bar players allowed, but it bugs me, because that means the rest of us get bar swap too often. And the supports get it waaaaay too often. Being a DPS getting hit over and over with bar swap is not fun, but being a support being burdened with that is simply not fair.

But I also have arthritis, and it's great to be able to run trials on a HA build when my hands hurt. I can still participate, do the portals, res others while using hardened ward, and still be useful even though my damage isn't the top.

abkam wrote: »

HA Oakensoul build will NOT be in last place. 100% sure.

It probably will be if the whole group is of equal or higher skill than the HA player, it is the way the game is currently balanced. I am a HA enjoyer, I have joined high end runs, and I have looked at the logs. It is humbling thinking you were doing well, when you're put up against higher end score pushing players. Even those sorts of players can put my arcanist to shame, but it is a little closer.

For non-hardmode vet content, there is no real reason for one bar hate. Unless it is in Cloudrest, one bars are horrible on the supports in +2 or 3. I have farmed ALL vet trials now, and I was often picked to be sent to do all the mechs as my one bar and never had any issues finishing all tasks if I was prepared.

But if you search this forum, this topic has been beaten to death. If ZoS wants to bring heavy attack builds up more, they would. Till then they have a good floor but bad ceiling.

sarahthes wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

• Raid leads are at liberty to take whoever they want. Because of U33 and U35, a lot of the better raid leads left so a lot of the remaining ones are those who… think they’re better than they are. A good raid leads will just look at a parse and let players play. That’s how new tactics are found. Bad raid leads will look at content creators and logs to find out what the best possible thing is, and then demand exactly that. Why would they want a DD who can do 120k on Necro, when they could have the meta Arcanist doing 90k? Wait, what? You mean that just forcing someone to copy a build isn’t going to automatically make them be the best at it, and some people may even be able to do better on a non-standard build?
  

The important thing is to be on the same page as your group. If you have a raid lead who is permissive, then by all means. But if yours is demanding, then you need to either submit to their demands or not run with them. And since random PuGs are random, you can’t guarantee what you’ll get… and they can’t guarantee that you’re a pro Oakensoul user instead of just someone who put it on because you want to ignore teamwork either.

It’s the standard team thing: you can do anything solo, but in group content you need to play as a team. I always like to think of an Olympic relay race (also because it’s a funny head image) - if your whole team says “hey, wouldn’t it be funny if we all ran the relay in 18th century ballgowns and showed that we could still win even if we looked like Marie Antoinette?” and then you do it, great! But if you go up to a group in their super-speed leotards and you’re in a powdered wig and panniers, people are obviously going to eject you from the team.

I wanted to address a couple of your points here.

1. I disagree with your definition of good and bad raid leads. First of all, just parsing on the dummy while a useful tool tells me very little about how a player will perform in content. I do not look at dummy parses when putting my groups together.
2. ESO Logs are a tool that is often used incorrectly. A raid lead that just rosters and builds setups based on ESO logs without taking into consideration the level of players they're leading is doomed for failure, but a good raid lead playing with highly skilled players can look at those logs and translate them into their own run. I think more raid leads should aspire to being able to do that, especially if they wish to play sweatier content.

I do agree with your conclusions. Be on the same page with the people you're running with. As long as everyone has similar expectations you're a lot more likely to be successful.

I don't even think that's a disagreement - I completely agree that good raid leads will be looking at logs with an eye for how things will flow with their own group instead of just "big number good, do that."

Dummy parses are never going to tell anyone much. "Ooh, you got a big number in an absolutely perfect scenario where nothing else is going on" is of course nothing reasonable in content at all. Most people I know care about DPS numbers from logs anyway because that is a more realistic scenario, and even then (as has been shown in this thread before) that doesn't take into account things like a support DPS wearing Z'enkosh or whatever that will naturally have a lower parse because they're buffing everyone else.

But yes, I do think that ESO's shift towards more homogenization is empowering the bad "just copy this build from this one log lul" type of raid leads, and that's getting them to eschew people who could do the content but just aren't running that one specific build. It seems like the number of "I'm not able to do what I want because randoms are random" threads is getting a lot more.

Also relevant: my trade guild GM brought to us from the Guild summit - they opened up for a Q&A session, even about things other than guilds, and this one one of the things mentioned:

Q: Thoughts about hybridization. A lot of the community isn't a fan of builds all being funneled in one direction.

A: Heard. Why do you feel you have to run exactly what the meta is.
(Questioner answers: "the creators show the best of the best").
Back to Rich: You don't need 120k DPS to do a trial. The meta can change. There's lots of builds that aren't necessarily "the most viable". We've watched this over the years and as soon as someone breaks a record, everyone changes their build. That's lessened past few years because we've been focused on making things consistent. Just because a creator says it's best, is it actually mandatory? I would argue it's not. ALSO, pay attention to Global Reveal in April.

Essentially ZOS's official stance is "anything goes," which is acceptable... assuming you're in a group which also thinks that. Unfortunately, there are a lot of raid leads that can't deviate (I've seen leads put up non-HM farm runs of trials where they demand specific classes for everyone, everyone needs a trash/boss setup, supports need to change to a completely different build each boss kind of thing that you'd only need for running the trifecta. For a farm run).

But like I said, people do need to know their own build. How many Oakensoul users are like "I use standard spell power pots because that gives extra damage!" without knowing that the Oakensoul ring gives that buff so the potions are literally worthless

What I think would help would be for ZOS to encourage more diversity through some of their systems to encourage more people to bring more varied groups. I think the best target they could play with would be the Undaunted Mettle passive - it gives stats based on wearing different armor weights, but what if they changed it to give stats (or even like unique 1% damage bonuses) for having more different classes in group? That would mean that there is then a bonus to bringing a varied group of DPS instead of just the standard "all Arcanists all the time" idea.
(also only 7 classes is not enough, so give us another one please!)

This topic is literally copied from Reddit. It’s as much of a joke as the discussion itself. Just go form your own groups of one bars and play how you want to. No need to try and force others to agree with you.

DenverRalphy wrote: »

But they're pushing it when it comes to running HM. And I don't know anybody who'll run an Oak build in a vet Trial prog group.

In vet progs there are many oaken players and a lot of them is doing well enough.
HMs are trickier, I wouldn't go higher than KA HM for most. But earlier ones are very much an option, as well as easier trifectas.

alpha_synuclein wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

But they're pushing it when it comes to running HM. And I don't know anybody who'll run an Oak build in a vet Trial prog group.

In vet progs there are many oaken players and a lot of them is doing well enough.
HMs are trickier, I wouldn't go higher than KA HM for most. But earlier ones are very much an option, as well as easier trifectas.

One bar still can do VKA/VSS/VCR(are they fix bug?) hard mode
But only can finished hm because they lost aoe dmg so can't clean mobs in time
maybe GH still can did,but you need found 3tank and 2 healer who want have 12min pain for a title