The tanking issue: There aren't tanks. The tank role is non-existent.

Marthenil

JLB wrote: »

Khivas_Carrick wrote: »

Although I put in a reply to each thing you said, I will and must say I agree with you that there is much left to put into this game to make Tanking fun and exciting.

Regarding the mitigation thing, sorry I didn't specify better. I was referring to a flat % damage reduction while tanking (like Nord's racial) not spell resist/armour values.

I know what you mean by heavy armour taking all the possibilities away, but is still possible with a few new implementations. Let me elaborate better what I meant by a Tanking Guild (have in mind numbers are totally random, just for the example) so you have a better picture.

Tanking Guild skills

1. AoE taunt, 10m radius, 15s duration. Affected enemies deal 5% less damage.
2. Mark: marks 1 ally for 20s. Caster takes 50% of ally's damage.
3. Buff (resources): each blocked attacked restores 0.15% of magicka and stamina.
4. AoE CC: All enemies in the area are forced to go into caster's melee range. 4 second duration.
5. Leech (AoE): Deals X damage to each enemy and heals player for 100% of damage done for 4 seconds.

Ultimate:
increase dodge change by 70%
increase healing recieved by 20%
You are immune to enemy control effects.
10 second duration

Passives
(having 1 tanking skill slotted will decrease your damage output by 50%. Passives only apply when at least 1 tanking skill is slotted):
1. Reduce block cost by 10% and increase block mitigation by 10%
2. Reduce costs of tanking guild skills by 20%
3. Decrease damage of enemies's AoE by 20%.
4. Increase dodge chance by 20%. Dodging an attack will put a DOT on enemy.
5. Reduce incoming damage by 20%.

Something like this is what I miss about tanking in ESO, other than slot a taunt and a spell/armour buff and go.

The moment they introduce AoE taunts, is the moment the game is not fun as a tank.

Anyhow, single target tanking would be a lot more fun if tanking was more reactive.
What could solve that might be increased blocking cost for each 0.5sec you keep block up. That way, instead of holding block, you would have to block specific attacks.

But AoE tanking is right were it should be, imo.

JLB

Marthenil wrote: »

But AoE tanking is right were it should be, imo.

But there is no AoE tanking at all. You don't need a tank to AoE CC + dmg AoE spam the hell out of a group of mobs.
Having an AoE tank (not CC) figure would change many fights and strategies, even more if they create new content with this in mind.

Even in the case of 2-3 hard hitting mobs, the AoE taunt + tanking options would be very beneficial, fun and entertaining from a tank's PoV.

Marthenil

JLB wrote: »

Marthenil wrote: »

But AoE tanking is right were it should be, imo.

But there is no AoE tanking at all. You don't need a tank to AoE CC + dmg AoE spam the hell out of a group of mobs.
Having an AoE tank (not CC) figure would change many fights and strategies, even more if they create new content with this in mind.

Even in the case of 2-3 hard hitting mobs, the AoE taunt + tanking options would be very beneficial, fun and entertaining from a tank's PoV.

Again, have you done trials? Arena? Clearly not.
Heck the last boss in AA is effectively AoE tanking.
Stop talking about VR dungeons. They are not tuned correctly. There are videos of people two-manning them.

Pmarsico9

Marthenil wrote: »

JLB wrote: »

Marthenil wrote: »

But AoE tanking is right were it should be, imo.

But there is no AoE tanking at all. You don't need a tank to AoE CC + dmg AoE spam the hell out of a group of mobs.
Having an AoE tank (not CC) figure would change many fights and strategies, even more if they create new content with this in mind.

Even in the case of 2-3 hard hitting mobs, the AoE taunt + tanking options would be very beneficial, fun and entertaining from a tank's PoV.

Again, have you done trials? Arena? Clearly not.
Heck the last boss in AA is effectively AoE tanking.
Stop talking about VR dungeons. They are not tuned correctly. There are videos of people two-manning them.

You don't seem to understand:

The fact that tanks are needed on a miniscule amount of fights is not proof that they are needed or desired overall.

And I'm not talking about tossing out Inner Beast with a bathrobe, sword, and shield on.

Pmarsico9

JLB wrote: »

Khivas_Carrick wrote: »

Although I put in a reply to each thing you said, I will and must say I agree with you that there is much left to put into this game to make Tanking fun and exciting.

Regarding the mitigation thing, sorry I didn't specify better. I was referring to a flat % damage reduction while tanking (like Nord's racial) not spell resist/armour values.

I know what you mean by heavy armour taking all the possibilities away, but is still possible with a few new implementations. Let me elaborate better what I meant by a Tanking Guild (have in mind numbers are totally random, just for the example) so you have a better picture.

Tanking Guild skills

1. AoE taunt, 10m radius, 15s duration. Affected enemies deal 5% less damage.
2. Mark: marks 1 ally for 20s. Caster takes 50% of ally's damage.
3. Buff (resources): each blocked attacked restores 0.15% of magicka and stamina.
4. AoE CC: All enemies in the area are forced to go into caster's melee range. 4 second duration.
5. Leech (AoE): Deals X damage to each enemy and heals player for 100% of damage done for 4 seconds.

Ultimate:
increase dodge change by 70%
increase healing recieved by 20%
You are immune to enemy control effects.
10 second duration

Passives
(having 1 tanking skill slotted will decrease your damage output by 50%. Passives only apply when at least 1 tanking skill is slotted):
1. Reduce block cost by 10% and increase block mitigation by 10%
2. Reduce costs of tanking guild skills by 20%
3. Decrease damage of enemies's AoE by 20%.
4. Increase dodge chance by 20%. Dodging an attack will put a DOT on enemy.
5. Reduce incoming damage by 20%.

Something like this is what I miss about tanking in ESO, other than slot a taunt and a spell/armour buff and go.

This is a great idea, but it should have something about actual threat in there.

Marthenil

Pmarsico9 wrote: »

Marthenil wrote: »

JLB wrote: »

Marthenil wrote: »

But AoE tanking is right were it should be, imo.

But there is no AoE tanking at all. You don't need a tank to AoE CC + dmg AoE spam the hell out of a group of mobs.
Having an AoE tank (not CC) figure would change many fights and strategies, even more if they create new content with this in mind.

Even in the case of 2-3 hard hitting mobs, the AoE taunt + tanking options would be very beneficial, fun and entertaining from a tank's PoV.

Again, have you done trials? Arena? Clearly not.
Heck the last boss in AA is effectively AoE tanking.
Stop talking about VR dungeons. They are not tuned correctly. There are videos of people two-manning them.

You don't seem to understand:

The fact that tanks are needed on a miniscule amount of fights is not proof that they are needed or desired overall.

And I'm not talking about tossing out Inner Beast with a bathrobe, sword, and shield on.

Miniscule? Yeah I get it, the whole endgame pve is miniscule...riight.

Marthenil

Also, the bathrobe thing you keep mentioning is a non argument. Armor type does not make a tank. And fyi, while tanking in light is doable it's not as safe.

JLB

Marthenil wrote: »

Again, have you done trials? Arena? Clearly not.
Heck the last boss in AA is effectively AoE tanking.
Stop talking about VR dungeons. They are not tuned correctly. Heck, there's video of people two-manning them.

Who is the heck talking about VR dungeons?
Trials, Arena, second time you throw this, maybe you are interested in exchanging achievements?
Besides that, none of your business but 7 years of tanking in other MMOs with classes 1000 times more complicated to learn and play properly than ESO's tanking. But anyways.

Honestly, I think you are missing the point here. We're talking about tanking in general and specifically the dumb-down tanking ESO way, which sums up to slot 1 taunt and 1 AoE CC and pum, you are a "tank", which takes no dedication at all to do.
If you like it that way, good for you. I don't like it that way. I'm more used to having to have some skills, options, resources, variety, brain, while tanking.

Pmarsico9 wrote: »

This is a great idea, but it should have something about actual threat in there.

I totally agree with you, Threat (and subsequent tank's Threat increase and Damage decrease) would be ideal. This is just "if" taunt is going to be the only way to hold aggro in ESO.

Pmarsico9

JLB wrote: »

Miniscule? Yeah I get it, the whole endgame pve is miniscule...riight.

You don't seem to understand that most of the playerbase doesn't see trials.

Healers are needed in non-veteran dungeons. So are DPS. Tanks are needed for what before that?

I've run Veteran Dungeons simultaneously healing and tanking them in cloth with 3 other DPS and cleared them more easily if I had been a dedicated tank or healer.

That doesn't make me good, that makes the game dumb. The fact that Tanking is effectively a Taunt and CCing what you can, because you can't contribute decent DPS while Sword and Board, is so simplistic that it's dumb. Beyond that, there's a major issue with incoming damage overall. There's simply not enough that 1 shots people when they play poorly. Look at my video in the OP. You see the stack and spam that exists? Then look at how amazing Sword and Shield has been in previous ES games. They had to know, whether it be from previous MMO's or their own damned games, that people loved Sword and Shield and Tanking. Yet Sword and shield functions as a survival PVP mechanic much more prominently than in actual tanking, which is very unfortunate considering how amazing Sword and Shield was in Skyrim and Oblivion.

I digress: If you had to move out of red circles or tanks had to hold something to prevent the red circle of one shot from killing your raid and mechanics like this were consistently present, even on trash, you'd have a leg to stand on.

Prior to this patch, most people said you only needed a tank on axes that was it. A pure tank was useless in almost every other case.

Not that I would know, I'm a Templar and I can't get a competitive trials slot anyway because we only get one slot as a healer if your team is any good at all.

I also just want to go on record here:

There is nothing skillful about how top trials times are made. They are about memorizing your route, avoiding as much trash as possible, and stacking up in a group, spamming AoE heals on each other, and stacking NB's and DKs (aside from the Negate or Templar healer you may need), and staying as tight as a group as possible.

I mean a Baron Geddon fight would be classic because the "skilled" trials time toppers would probably be thrown for such a loop by one shot mechanics DUE to stacking that they wouldn't know what hit them.

This is far more screwed up than any modern MMO end game should be. Especially considering how the DPS metrics are met via nonsense such as animation cancelling.

I really hope after Spellcrafting and the Champion system come out they spend the next few patches fixing these rubbish "skillful mechanics."

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Flaming]

JLB

Pmarsico9 wrote: »

JLB wrote: »

Miniscule? Yeah I get it, the whole endgame pve is miniscule...riight.

You don't seem to understand that most of the playerbase doesn't see trials.

Healers are needed in non-veteran dungeons. So are DPS. Tanks are needed for what before that?

I've run Veteran Dungeons simultaneously healing and tanking them in cloth with 3 other DPS and cleared them more easily if I had been a dedicated tank or healer.

That doesn't make me good, that makes the game dumb. The fact that Tanking is effectively a Taunt and CCing what you can, because you can't contribute decent DPS while Sword and Board, is so simplistic that it's dumb. Beyond that, there's a major issue with incoming damage overall. There's simply not enough that 1 shots people when they play poorly. Look at my video in the OP. You see the stack and spam that exists? Then look at how amazing Sword and Shield has been in previous ES games. They had to know, whether it be from previous MMO's or their own damned games, that people loved Sword and Shield and Tanking. Yet Sword and shield functions as a survival PVP mechanic much more prominently than in actual tanking, which is very unfortunate considering how amazing Sword and Shield was in Skyrim and Oblivion.

I digress: If you had to move out of red circles or tanks had to hold something to prevent the red circle of one shot from killing your raid and mechanics like this were consistently present, even on trash, you'd have a leg to stand on.

But to insist that "LOL NOOBS DON'T DO TRIALS BECUZ DEY ARE TEH SUCKZORZ AND I AM TEH AWESOMESAUCE SO STFU NOOBS" only highlights that you found the one spot in this game where a pure tank is beneficial.

Your argument is ridiculous. Prior to this patch, most people said you only needed a tank on axes that was it. A pure tank was useless in almost every other case.

Not that I would know, I'm a Templar and I can't get a competitive trials slot anyway because we only get one slot as a healer if your team is any good at all.

I also just want to go on record here:

There is nothing skillful about how top trials times are made. They are about memorizing your route, avoiding as much trash as possible, and stacking up in a group, spamming AoE heals on each other, and stacking NB's and DKs, and staying as tight as a group as possible.

I mean a Baron Geddon fight would be classic because the "skilled" trials time toppers would probably be thrown for such a loop by one shot mechanics DUE to stacking that they wouldn't know what hit them.

This is far more screwed up than any modern MMO end game should be. Especially considering how the DPS metrics are met via nonsense such as animation cancelling.

I really hope after Spellcrafting and the Champion system come out they spend the next few patches fixing these rubbish "skillful mechanics."

100% agreed.
By the way, not my quote on your post

Khivas_Carrick

I'm a DPS and I would use the *** out of those skills if they were ever implemented. In fact I could see those being implemented as a Redguard Sword School or something, and just to be fair, have a healing version for people from Daggerfall or the Imperial City or something.

Pmarsico9

JLB wrote: »

Pmarsico9 wrote: »

JLB wrote: »

Miniscule? Yeah I get it, the whole endgame pve is miniscule...riight.

You don't seem to understand that most of the playerbase doesn't see trials.

Healers are needed in non-veteran dungeons. So are DPS. Tanks are needed for what before that?

I've run Veteran Dungeons simultaneously healing and tanking them in cloth with 3 other DPS and cleared them more easily if I had been a dedicated tank or healer.

That doesn't make me good, that makes the game dumb. The fact that Tanking is effectively a Taunt and CCing what you can, because you can't contribute decent DPS while Sword and Board, is so simplistic that it's dumb. Beyond that, there's a major issue with incoming damage overall. There's simply not enough that 1 shots people when they play poorly. Look at my video in the OP. You see the stack and spam that exists? Then look at how amazing Sword and Shield has been in previous ES games. They had to know, whether it be from previous MMO's or their own damned games, that people loved Sword and Shield and Tanking. Yet Sword and shield functions as a survival PVP mechanic much more prominently than in actual tanking, which is very unfortunate considering how amazing Sword and Shield was in Skyrim and Oblivion.

I digress: If you had to move out of red circles or tanks had to hold something to prevent the red circle of one shot from killing your raid and mechanics like this were consistently present, even on trash, you'd have a leg to stand on.

But to insist that "LOL NOOBS DON'T DO TRIALS BECUZ DEY ARE TEH SUCKZORZ AND I AM TEH AWESOMESAUCE SO STFU NOOBS" only highlights that you found the one spot in this game where a pure tank is beneficial.

Your argument is ridiculous. Prior to this patch, most people said you only needed a tank on axes that was it. A pure tank was useless in almost every other case.

Not that I would know, I'm a Templar and I can't get a competitive trials slot anyway because we only get one slot as a healer if your team is any good at all.

I also just want to go on record here:

There is nothing skillful about how top trials times are made. They are about memorizing your route, avoiding as much trash as possible, and stacking up in a group, spamming AoE heals on each other, and stacking NB's and DKs, and staying as tight as a group as possible.

I mean a Baron Geddon fight would be classic because the "skilled" trials time toppers would probably be thrown for such a loop by one shot mechanics DUE to stacking that they wouldn't know what hit them.

This is far more screwed up than any modern MMO end game should be. Especially considering how the DPS metrics are met via nonsense such as animation cancelling.

I really hope after Spellcrafting and the Champion system come out they spend the next few patches fixing these rubbish "skillful mechanics."

100% agreed.
By the way, not my quote on your post

My fault. These things get loopy.

Marthenil

Pmarsico9 wrote: »

JLB wrote: »

Miniscule? Yeah I get it, the whole endgame pve is miniscule...riight.

You don't seem to understand that most of the playerbase doesn't see trials.

Healers are needed in non-veteran dungeons. So are DPS. Tanks are needed for what before that?

I've run Veteran Dungeons simultaneously healing and tanking them in cloth with 3 other DPS and cleared them more easily if I had been a dedicated tank or healer.
Listen, this is just a case of the game being too easy pre-Trials.
I will give you a prime example. In MOP, on my Frost DK, I could "tank" every single one of the heroic dungeons. Does that mean the tanking role is dismissed?
Also, MMO's are *generally* balanced around the end-game. Because this is where most of the time is spent by the playerbase to whom balance matters.
That doesn't make me good, that makes the game dumb. The fact that Tanking is effectively a Taunt and CCing what you can, because you can't contribute decent DPS while Sword and Board, is so simplistic that it's dumb. Beyond that, there's a major issue with incoming damage overall. There's simply not enough that 1 shots people when they play poorly. Look at my video in the OP. You see the stack and spam that exists? Then look at how amazing Sword and Shield has been in previous ES games. They had to know, whether it be from previous MMO's or their own damned games, that people loved Sword and Shield and Tanking. Yet Sword and shield functions as a survival PVP mechanic much more prominently than in actual tanking, which is very unfortunate considering how amazing Sword and Shield was in Skyrim and Oblivion.

I digress: If you had to move out of red circles or tanks had to hold something to prevent the red circle of one shot from killing your raid and mechanics like this were consistently present, even on trash, you'd have a leg to stand on.
Again, I have already said this, but I will repeat myself: Dungeons, ESPECIALLY VR dungeons, are NOT tuned right. NOPE. Plenty can be SOLOED and most can be done with a good duo. This is why "Balance" doesn't matter in this content bracket.
But to insist that "LOL NOOBS DON'T DO TRIALS BECUZ DEY ARE TEH SUCKZORZ AND I AM TEH AWESOMESAUCE SO STFU NOOBS" only highlights that you found the one spot in this game where a pure tank is beneficial.
Again, balance is only important where it matters. VR and low level dungeons are completely unimportant.
What you're saying is basically WoW is imbalanced because you don't need a tank to do Deadmines.
This has nothing to do with "LOLELLITISM" and everything to do with what's important and what's not.

Your argument is ridiculous. Prior to this patch, most people said you only needed a tank on axes that was it. A pure tank was useless in almost every other case.
Nope and nope. Especially after they introduced hard modes.

Not that I would know, I'm a Templar and I can't get a competitive trials slot anyway because we only get one slot as a healer if your team is any good at all.
That's plain crap, Templars are excellent tanks and if you want the Retri pala feel, try this build here and you won't be disappointed. Join a guild that's not consisted by *** if you're still refused access.

I also just want to go on record here:

There is nothing skillful about how top trials times are made. They are about memorizing your route, avoiding as much trash as possible, and stacking up in a group, spamming AoE heals on each other, and stacking NB's and DKs (aside from the Negate or Templar healer you may need), and staying as tight as a group as possible.
This
I mean a Baron Geddon fight would be classic because the "skilled" trials time toppers would probably be thrown for such a loop by one shot mechanics DUE to stacking that they wouldn't know what hit them.

This is far more screwed up than any modern MMO end game should be. Especially considering how the DPS metrics are met via nonsense such as animation cancelling.

I really hope after Spellcrafting and the Champion system come out they spend the next few patches fixing these rubbish "skillful mechanics."
This is where your post goes completely bonkers. A few paragraphs above you state that you have no experience, yet now you criticize something you have no idea about. Stacking is a thing, yes, especially for the joke that AA is, but not only have they fixed this with hardmodes, the new content is completely stack unfriendly. You can simply not stack.

Just replied in bold text inside the quote because I'm too lazy to multiquote

EDIT: About VR dungeons, I, personally, expect them to be tuned appropriately when they introduce the scaling mechanic.

Pmarsico9

@Marthenil
You need a healer in a NORMAL dungeon, say at-level Fungal Grotto, non veteran. You need DPS. You don't need a tank. You point to "balance at end game." Well that's about 2% of the content. This isn't wow. This is aiming to be a complete game, not some rush to raid. Because there aren't raids.
In fact, there's more of an argument that Cyrodiil is the end game because it's readily accessible at VR1 while the DPS discrepancy between a VR14 and a VR1 is too large to allow them into trials.

And your comments are laughable about Templar DPS. Go rank in the top 10% with 2 plus Templar DPS then make your absolutely uneducated comments. Templar's aren't competitive end game.

Not everybody is playing ESO to try to equate to Master Race WoW. If that's your opinion, enjoy Draenor. You have nothing offer here but input regarding how this game can become yet another canned themepark of generic recycled trash.

I played WoW from release until this content lull, taking the awfulness that was Cataclysm off.

I won't be playing anymore WoW. It's not something to aim for. People confuse WoW's marketshare with something being executed WoW when the truth of the matter is that people won't give up something they've had for 10 years.

And even then, in 2004 that game's mechanics were completely effed too. You thinking that they aren't effed now because "end game trials are all that matter," is from a horrid school of thought that has released incomplete game after incomplete game, with entire maps being dead aside from one tiny continent. And if this game becomes that, it won't gain them subs.....that's for sure.

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Flaming]

Pmarsico9

[...]

What if that role is as a tank? Who cares, right? A game should only ever matter at maximum level? Is that your thought? Then why is there a role selection for the non-veteran dungeon finder? Is that just an illogical flaw?

The Templar discussion is this:

There's anecdotal evidence of a build that does more damage than other Templar builds in trials, but isn't competitive with Sorc, DK, and NB builds. Not even in the same ballpark. If you truly are attaining top 10% in Europe on your trials times, then try it without your "DPS" templar and put another sorc/dk/nb in there.

Ideally, a Templar does nothing but heal in trials, and even then, their true versatility exists in PVP, not in Trials, because in trials, big expensive burst heals matter far less. That's the truth.

You are not talking to somebody that hasn't researched this. I have been at the bleeding edge of content in WoW and Rift. I have lead guilds and understand what assets actually are. And forcing a square peg in the round hole and it sorta almost molds to the proper shape is not ideal.

There's zero argument why Templars need to persist in this state in regards to DPS. Just as there's no logical reason as to how you can persist stating that tanking is fine as is, when it's not. If it's meant to be a role on par in importance with healing or DPS, then it shouldn't just matter in 5% of the game.


[Moderator Note: Removed moderated quote]

Marthenil

Pmarsico9 wrote: »

Marthenil wrote: »

For the N-th time, who the hell cares for low level dungeons. Just get in as whatever role you want. You can even solo some of them. Jesus, what's so hard to grasp?

The templar discussion is off topic, but I'll bite once more.
I went through your post history. You do the same with anyone who disagrees with you. Yes, templars need some love, but so do NBs, and so on and so on. The game needs balance, true. But holy crap you make it sound as if Templars are completely worthless unless they're healbots, which is COMPLETELY untrue.


Edit: Also, try to come up with a real argument instead of just hitting LOL like it's a dislike button

What if that role is as a tank? Who cares, right? A game should only ever matter at maximum level? Is that your thought? Then why is there a role selection for the non-veteran dungeon finder? Is that just an illogical flaw?

The Templar discussion is this:

There's anecdotal evidence of a build that does more damage than other Templar builds in trials, but isn't competitive with Sorc, DK, and NB builds. Not even in the same ballpark. If you truly are attaining top 10% in Europe on your trials times, then try it without your "DPS" templar and put another sorc/dk/nb in there.

Ideally, a Templar does nothing but heal in trials, and even then, their true versatility exists in PVP, not in Trials, because in trials, big expensive burst heals matter far less. That's the truth.

You are not talking to somebody that hasn't researched this. I have been at the bleeding edge of content in WoW and Rift. I have lead guilds and understand what assets actually are. And forcing a square peg in the round hole and it sorta almost molds to the proper shape is not ideal.

There's zero argument why Templars need to persist in this state in regards to DPS. Just as there's no logical reason as to how you can persist stating that tanking is fine as is, when it's not. If it's meant to be a role on par in importance with healing or DPS, then it shouldn't just matter in 5% of the game.

For the last time, what you describe as a problem with Tanking, is not an inherent issue with tanking itself.
It's a product of the low difficulty that dominates all the low level content straight through to the VR Dungeons.
As I've already said, I believe this will be fixed when they introduce scaling with dungeons.

On the templar part, you keep mentioning anecdotal evidence, when all the evidence you need is in the link I posted.
DPS is in the 1200-1500 bracket for all the competitive builds (for all classes) I've seen, both mentioned by others and in action.
The build I linked provides proof of being in that bracket.

As for it being a melee, I'm a melee myself and doing perfectly fine (for my DPS spec). Yes, I've done both trials, cleared both Hardmodes as a melee DPS, while providing enough DPS. Was it harder than just standing there spamming funnel health? Yes it was. Was it rewarding enough (risk of being a melee vs reward) no were near. At least I had fun.

Pmarsico9

Marthenil wrote: »

For the last time, what you describe as a problem with Tanking, is not an inherent issue with tanking itself.
It's a product of the low difficulty that dominates all the low level content straight through to the VR Dungeons.
As I've already said, I believe this will be fixed when they introduce scaling with dungeons.

On the templar part, you keep mentioning anecdotal evidence, when all the evidence you need is in the link I posted.
DPS is in the 1200-1500 bracket for all the competitive builds (for all classes) I've seen, both mentioned by others and in action.
The build I linked provides proof of being in that bracket.

As for it being a melee, I'm a melee myself and doing perfectly fine (for my DPS spec). Yes, I've done both trials, cleared both Hardmodes as a melee DPS, while providing enough DPS. Was it harder than just standing there spamming funnel health? Yes it was. Was it rewarding enough (risk of being a melee vs reward) no were near. At least I had fun.

Sorcs, DK's, and NB's are parsing far above that at this point. Last link I saw from my wow buddy's top 5 U.S. group had his NB at 2100-2200 Single target, which is around 30% higher than what you claim you are doing.

And the DK's can go even higher than that according to him due to RNG.

Sacrificing 30% damage potential to allow somebody to play a Templar sounds like carrying them to me.

Your tanking comments make no sense at all because you keep saying the problem is with the content and refuse to acknowledge that keeping up a taunt debuff is not a very deep design, since there's no threat tables, nor can a tank produce the damage to overcome threat from healing or DPS on the same target, even if there was one.

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Baiting]

Pmarsico9

To attempt to get this thread back onto some semblance of its original point,

There are three main roles in this game, or such as how it was described during beta AMA's:

Tanking, DPS, and healing. Granted we were told that we could play however we want within those roles, but we were told that all 3 roles were needed.

There's some major issues with the necessity for tanks in this game since they bring so little. A taunt debuff and in best case scenario, some CC while not taking significantly less nor really being very reliant on active abilities to extend survivability or build threat (since it's just a taunt debuff) provides neither depth nor anything of real value to people who want to tank in ESO. It's almost entirely a niche role because as has been pointed out repeatedly, it only ever truly has value on particular boss encounters within 12 person content.

It's compounded by the fact that the traditional heavy armor is effectively always a bad choice.

This is something that is severely out of whack.

Khivas_Carrick

Yes Templars can DPS, but not using their skills

Yes Templar skills kinda sorta blow horribly for the most part aside from their healing

No not all Templar's are forced to heal, but most are since most groups on EP-NA really only want a Templar Healer. Hell, as a melee DPS Templar I get heckled constantly by random pugs to heal because they don't feel that they can do it, but ask me, who's barely ever touch a resto staff, to fully heal a group while in Medium Armor because they think I'm that good at it.

A lot of Templar issues stem not so much from the class but from people's mindsets about it, so much so that it's actually as stressful as being called a Hispanic or Arabic man when you're simply a mixed black and white kid. And yes that comes from irl experience and yes I went all deep on you guys to explain the situation about Templars in game.

Tanking and balance matters at all levels of a game, no matter what that game is. The statement to make is that at what point does it or should it matter more or less than the other points of the game. Beginning of the game shouldn't need any specific role, but say every 10 levels or so the game should get just that much harder to remind and train the player in question that set and defined roles are indeed very needed.

Just as Healing consists of more than just spamming the same super heal or HoT over and over again, and DPS is more than just killing things violently (Cleanses, Shields, Crowd Control, Support) Tanking should involve more than just tossing out a taunt every so often.

A taunt is just that, a taunt, and if it has dimishing returns, the attack that hits rather well and is dirt cheap also becomes largely useless because you can't actually use it too often on an enemy mob. Is tanking necessary in this game? By God yes, even at lower levels. If you go into a Dungeon, Vet or Otherwise at the appropriate level, I promise you that you will need a tank and a healer. If you go in all overcharged, then yea, you'll wipe the floor with it, hell tank and maybe even healers optional.

But that doesn't address the problem.

It just shows how good you can potentially be or already are depending on where you are and what you're doing.

The problem here is the game design is shoddy and shaky at best in nearly half of the game itself. PvP, alright cool good. PvE? Bah, ok.

Game needs raids, badly, but before any new content, any new skills, skill lines, groups, features, whatever are added.

Actual Threat Mechanics needs to be put into place.

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Flaming]

Khivas_Carrick

Allow me to clarify what I meant by Class Skills and DPS:

A DK and a Sorc can nuke a player down using only their class skills if they wanted to, everything else is optional decorations.

A NB and a Temp need to use few of their skills at most and mostly weapon and guild skills to do the same, in this case NB's getting the best deal with a bow and Templar's without a damn thing.

Marthenil

Enough with the templar derailing and more on the topic at hand. What @Khivas_Carrick‌ said about difficulty is true.
I'm on mobile so quoting is a bit shoddy so bear with me.

What I keep repeating, almost sounding like a broken record now, is the simple truth. VR dungeons are undertuned. Spindle for example, is designed with VR 5 players in mind. The difference between that and the arena (which is an indication of where Eso's 4 man pve is heading) is massive.
Crypt of hearts is kinda in the middle.
When you can faceroll encounters not only tanking but even healing is unneeded.

On the topic of aggro, there IS a form of aggro in the game. Read one of my previous posts.

As far as boss tanking goes, the mechanics are not that great, but , in my opinion, the problem stems from the fact that you can effectively stand there blocking while also casting spells.
A solution would be to make blocking more reactive, along with giving incentives to use heavy/light attacks. The latter is getting there with the newest patch, but still not there yet.

Personally, I've come up with an idea where holding block for more than X seconds increases block cost every Y seconds. Costs reset after not blocking for Z seconds. That way tanking is more reaction based and less "hold block until it's dead".

That's a completely different topic, however.

JLB

Pmarsico9 wrote: »

It's almost entirely a niche role because as has been pointed out repeatedly, it only ever truly has value on particular boss encounters within 12 person content.
It's compounded by the fact that the traditional heavy armor is effectively always a bad choice.
This is something that is severely out of whack.

That's true, but at the same time, how can they fix it? They can't boost too much heavy amrour regens, otherwise everyone would switch to heavy in PvE and PvP and ESO would become the current LA picture but on steroids.
As it is now, I only see two options:
-rework S&S skills and passives and make it specifically for tanking.
-a new guild focused in tanking, with new skills and passives.

In both cases though, there would be a problem:

Khivas_Carrick wrote: »

I'm a DPS and I would use the *** out of those skills if they were ever implemented.

So in order to not make some DPS builds OP, there should be an exchange, sacrifice a flat % of your DPS to get a flat % of damage mitigation.
For example, whenever you slot 1 skill of that Guild, you automatically gain the passives, for each skill slotted you gain 5% mitigation but lose 5% of your damage. Skill costs could be cheap to balance the bad sustain in HA, for example.

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Flaming]

Khivas_Carrick

I've come to find that each class seems to shine brighter than others depending on which phase of the Arena they're fighting in. I was mediocre at best fighting in the marshlands, and average to pretty ok in everything else up to stage8, but in stage 9 and 10, against undead, daedra, and freaking vampires? Templar Mortar Fire for everyone.

Also It became frighteningly apparent that support builds are actually useful in there as a healer alone was unable to keep up, and a CC type (cough Bowplar cough) was freakishly life-saving. DK's would obviously shine here as well.

Point is, if that's the direction this game is going to take, they're headed the right way because holy hell it's hard, it forces more than two build types, and it felt rewarding.

ZOS_MichelleA

Edit: We are now reopening this thread for discussion. Please keep the Code of Conduct in mind when discussing. We understand that posters are going to disagree from time to time, but we do expect them to do so in a constructive and respectful manner. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

Pmarsico9

JLB wrote: »

Pmarsico9 wrote: »

It's almost entirely a niche role because as has been pointed out repeatedly, it only ever truly has value on particular boss encounters within 12 person content.
It's compounded by the fact that the traditional heavy armor is effectively always a bad choice.
This is something that is severely out of whack.

That's true, but at the same time, how can they fix it? They can't boost too much heavy amrour regens, otherwise everyone would switch to heavy in PvE and PvP and ESO would become the current LA picture but on steroids.
As it is now, I only see two options:
-rework S&S skills and passives and make it specifically for tanking.
-a new guild focused in tanking, with new skills and passives.

In both cases though, there would be a problem:

Khivas_Carrick wrote: »

I'm a DPS and I would use the *** out of those skills if they were ever implemented.

So in order to not make some DPS builds OP, there should be an exchange, sacrifice a flat % of your DPS to get a flat % of damage mitigation.
For example, whenever you slot 1 skill of that Guild, you automatically gain the passives, for each skill slotted you gain 5% mitigation but lose 5% of your damage. Skill costs could be cheap to balance the bad sustain in HA, for example.

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Flaming]

This is perfectly reasonable. But really, there should be a fundamental alteration to the methodology.

With as many class abilities as we can have available, there should be some sort of threat modifier.

I'm still not completely on board with the necessity to there being a damage penalty to tanking, either. The sword and shield tree is extremely diminished in comparison to other ES games.

I also am not totally on board that a tank shouldn't require heavy armor, either. In a vacuum all armor types should be viable for everything, but from the perspective that you have plenty of skill points, and how rigid things are from the perspective of what does the most damage right now, it doesn't fully seem to make sense or be reasonable that tank shouldn't just equal heavy armor by default. It's not like skill points are hard to come by.

Michaeljdaveyb16_ESO

How about creating entirely seperate versions of dungeons/trials for hard modes, which feature entirely new mechanics for all bosses and force players more into the three metas.

is it possible with the current mechanics to make a mob/boss target the raid member with the most health for instance? that way you could control the mechanics of the fight more by ensuring your intended tank has higher health than the rest of the raid, and needs to be kept at that level of health, or face losing control of the mob (possibly even making the mob not tauntable?)

without a threat table, there are going to have to be creative mechanics in place to make the boss target a tank, without the tank feeling like anyone could do his job with the two taunts available in game, and a healer or two behind them!

Splitting the group, as in hel ra, is a good way to ensure that a tank is necessary, how about trial where 6 members have to take opposite sides for the entire raid, (6 in nirn, and 6 enter a daedric portal to a mirror image of the same but with different mechanics and set up needed). This could be used to ensure that more than one tank is needed also.

I also concur that Sorcerer tanking should totally be a viable option - and maybe even a necessary option for an encounter or two, just for variety, but ultimately your end game audience is playing with a meta in mind from character creation, and all apart from one class - sorc, is getting their meta dreams shattered.

from my experience in Tamriel, as a guild master and raid leader, is that 90% of people who are playing through end game content are not running the roles they wanted to. Nightblades and DK's want to be hacking away at bosses with swords, axes, daggers and maces, but have to use Staves like the Sorcerers just to get invited to a trial run, for fear of not having the DPS to survive. (Although i do understand this is currently being fixed)

I must add also, that the new Sanctum Ophidia trial is perhaps tipping the scale in the opposite direction (only from experience of first boss attempts). - it does prevent you from stacking and negating/vob/nova through the entire fight, but even with our set up, maximising on hp and armor, tanks still seem to take ridiculous amounts of damage! That said - it has been completed by NA, so its not impossible, just very difficult! (If, by the way, there are hints in the game somewhere on what to do in sanctum, could some one kindly point the way, as the mechanics only suggest so much )

All of that said - I love the game, and will continue to put my faith in you guys, and look forward to the future content, fixes and patches

Athas24

Khivas_Carrick wrote: »

A taunt is not and never has been meant as the way to tank, only a tool used an in emergency or as a strategy to a fight, and for them to make sure the mob stayed on you was to have heavy threat modifiers present on your currently attached attack skills to build that form of threat.

This game does not have the above mentioned version of threat. In it's place instead is a weird system that tries to mimic a real world PvP situation but fails to do so, where mobs will randomly go off to kill a member a hundred yards away because they were afk, or a mob that had been attacking the tank the entire time to suddenly and without cause just stop and keel over another party member, despite nothing happening to the tank.

That is bad, really, really bad.

This issue of not having any way to build threat, because there is no agro table is the largest issue. It makes taking pretty dumb imo because you just constantly spam taunt or use roots to stop fools from running around like chickens with their heads cut off. . .

dodgehopper_ESO

Vaelen wrote: »

Right now, Light Armor offers the most damage reduction and survivability if you use the vr12 PvP set Cyrodiils Light, the active 25% damage mitigation is like equal to an extra 2500 armor and 2500 spell resistance, so that means if you currently have 2k armor and spell resistance already soft capped with this full Light Armor set + sword and shield you basicly have equal to over 4500 Armor and 4500 Spell Resistance which is impossible to currently get with any Heavy Armor set.

This is pretty much at the core of frustration for everyone who wanted to play a Knight/Warrior/Barbarian type character in this game. Heavy Armor just falls woefully flat. I use it a lot of times because it looks good, but looks just aren't enough. I agree that Heavy Armor should get a flat damage reduction per piece slotted. This would change a lot about the problem with taking on the Knight role. As it stands, even if I can get +30% weapon damage with things like balanced warrior, flawless dawnbreaker, heavy armor set bonuses, and some weapon set bonuses... its not enough to make up for a complete lack of ability to spam things like Spike armor, Blazing Shield, Conjured ward, etc. If you can't keep those abilities up... your piddly little boost to weapon damage isn't going to cut it. This is why for most of the content you are better off not wearing heavy armor, and only a few instances you are.

In fairness, I actually have worn Heavy Armor 5-7 pieces most of my playthrough, with a little bit of Medium or Light here and there mixed in. It worked, but I have to say it was much easier just rolling Light pretty much all the time when I leveled my DK. I'll grant that the DK has the benefit of +armor buffs that move with him, which is a lot easier to use than rune focus. Even so, with light armor I can spam green dragon blood all day long. I soloed every public dungeon with that character in my faction, all bosses, all the time. It was easy. The problem with Heavy Armor is that the benefits of it are too little, and you run out of resources (stamina and magicka) way too fast. I personally don't mind the lack of resources, as long as the mitigation makes up for it.

Pmarsico9

Shouldn't heavy armor be viable for DPS too though?

If it's not REQUIRED to tank in, starves resources, and is completely non-competitive with medium and light armors for dps, what's the point?

The heavy armor destruction magic caster is certainly something that has existed throughout all of the ES games.

I mean, I know I'm not the only one who used J'Zargo as their companion through skyrim multiple times (he was the only follower than leveled to max pre-Dawn Guard) and he was hell bent on being a sparks-spamming heavy armor caster!

This is a bit of a digression, but is probably just as important of a point.

diabeticDemon18

Pmarsico9 wrote: »

Cogo wrote: »

1. ESO is ESO, not another MMO. Its a new "type" if you will.
2. There is "tanking", but depends on your setup, encounter, teamwork and using different tactics on the same boss. Tanking is a new "version" in ESO
3. You can not say "this is a tank build". Any class can tank. Depends who they play and what encounter they meet.
4. The problem is not "tanking", or "healing", its the thinking that there are specific roles. Yes, in Dungeons, raids etc, you need a teammate who can aggro stuff and keep the hard hitting mob on you without dying.
5. Moving, using different abilities, block, interupt, group abilities as buffs, damage shields, heals, or what not. Debuff targets if possible.
6. ESO is outstanding in really making your "build" into a "class".
7. Gear does matter, teamwork, figure out the encounter, try stuff, "think outside the box". Is the key. Not to tanking, but when you need a tank. Vet Grotto Undaunted achievement comes to mind.

ESO is cutting a corner by not having to worry about threat values because, again, there are no threat values. Other games have threatless "tanking," none of them worked out that well.

Again, keeping a taunt debuff and your shield up is not tanking. You are grossly overstating "tactics." There is little to this beyond having the right gear set on, the right group comp (some mix of DKs and Sorcs and maybe a Templar healer), and standing on top of each other.........People like to over complicate things when they don't have access or the wisdom to do raw calculations to produce indefeatable metrics outside of the scope of when the content was designed. New games almost always have this problem:

Burning Crusade WoW had warlocks who pressed one button over and over and were unstoppable damage dealers.

Rift had 1-3 button macros on warriors that did the same thing when it was first out.

The thing is, however, these weren't as offensive as having one person be forced to play holding their right mouse button in, maintaining a debuff, and keeping a mob positioned into your raid to maximize damage.

The rest of your post is written from your perspective about some Veteran Grotto achievement, which is too anecdotal to really comment on.

I will admit, I'm rather new to MMOs but you seem to have one major problem... you're stuck on what "tanking" is in other games, not what it's used for. If tanking is just used to take damage from the hard hitting enemy in the room, distracting them from the other players so they can focus on DPS, then tanking is still available and useful. No, you don't have the same style to get that outcome, you have to keep a taunt debuff up instead of using your threat level to distract him. The fact of the matter is, tanking at it's basic definition is distracting enemies and taking damage for the rest of the team as to allow them to focus on other tasks, that is still happening you just have to go about it a different way. It seems to me that you people who are mad about tanking are just too stuck on the old way to try and learn something new. ESO is made to be different, to be a new style of MMO. If you want to play it, you have to be willing to adapt to the new game style. It is not the same as WoW or other MMOs, it is it's own game and should be played as itself. I understand why you're upset, but you have to be willing to learn new things in life or you won't get anywhere, just saying. Let it go, get used to the new way of tanking, and then move on with your life.

-Thanks,
diabeticDemon