Feedback from casual tank ( imperial city )

Teridaxus

First of all: Lag
I have no idea if this is normal on pts or if imperial city. I play on the eu server and heard lag situation is better than on na and since pts is shared, it might be worse than eu too.


Block and tank situation:
Dk tank here. I spend my cp half on damage, half on block cost reduction and stamina regen/cost reduction. I also use green stamina drinks which bought me up on around 1300 regen. 7/7 yellow heavy armour ( 5 histbark, 4 undauted bastion, 3 shadow walker ) with sword/shield and 2 hand for damage.
Shadow walker and 2 hand was choosen by me so i can help killing players in pvp and help less experienced dps on live in pugs.

On live pvp i am pretty much useless because of mace exploit and general high penetration but on pts i finaly felt like i could just absorb damage like how a tank is supposed to do. Soul assault? Haha. Jesus Beam? The only thing which hurts are my eyes. Nightblade? Spam surprise attack more please. In general i only used block against mulitple players/npcs or when a boss is aggroed.

The stamina situation was bad for me. Because of the lag, animation cancelling was pretty much impossible and goofed up heavy attacks for me. When a boss prepares a heavy attack, i either tried to block or dodge (in live i always ask me, can i roll out of that aoe circle ? ) but after a while i noticed dodge is simply better because it saves me much more stamina even when i still get hit which happens in 8 out of 10 tries when i rolled. ( i'm either still in that circle or was unlucky and rolled from one into another lol )
When the reds and yellows are beaten, we tried to kill bosses and since everyone is testing molag kena as dps build, i was pretty much the only tank there.
I barely had stamina to aggro adds and pretty much saved it for block, dodge, rally and taunting the boss, but after a while i just had too lose aggro and let a dps kite the boss.
Bashing mage npcs or players was always quiete a difficult choice, do i let them do damage/cast fear and hope my allies will survive or lose stamina regen by bashing the enemy?
If evil hunter proc doesn't hate me ( i use unstable flame on random daedra in hope to proc evil often ) and lag was better stamina would have been less a problem. Well, i will find it out on live then. ^^

Dragon blood felt really weak, even with the broken mathematics on pts. Standard was rarely used because of the high costs and when i did, some npc comes around and cast negate magic or some new unknown aoe spell like that skeleton boss on blue flames. Instead i used flawless dawnbreaker to help execute weakened reds/yellows and deal with many daedra npcs even if my pitiful damage gimbs it a lot.
In general, i used less abilites than on live and was the whole time worried about my stamina. It was manageable with 300 cp, stamina enchaments and probaly healers with master staff.
The nerf on werewolf hurts but it's a justified nerf. 15% free stam regen was just broken.
I have no idea how a new player ( no cp ) or less experience pugs will deal with tanking. Tanking isn't dead, but instead of solving perma block problem, people will just try to find alternative ways to achieve it.


The city itself:
Npcs hit hard despite me being a tank and they also tank a lot of damage since they aren't affected by the pvp debuff. I can solo small groups of 2-3 npcs but anything above was too much. On my first try in which i forgot to spend champ points, i got defeated by a xivkiyn bonelord and 2 dremora.

Item drops for materials are terrible low. I know you want to keep us busy until wrogthar is out, but you need to find some balance between 1 toon people like me and altholics with 8 toons. I guess i will need a month or two to get full vet 16 items with casual playing of 1-2 hours per day.

Telvar stone grind wasn't that bad as i thought, when a nightblade thinks he can get my stones, i just jump into some bigger npcs and only lose 10%. ( i don't have the ap for a lot of teleport stones ). Maybe make those stones buyable with both ap or tel var similiar to some basic pvp items like balistas or soul gems which can be bought either with gold or ap. But since it was pts only, i guess not many people are there and could find a treasure chests every 20 minutes. Maybe telvar stones becomes a problem on live when far more people are there.

Detect radius of npcs is terrible like outside of imperial city. I could stand 5 meters in front of a boss and not aggro him. Even when i was cced and had to break free, the boss still walks with 1km per hour to me. Those daedra seems pretty chilled. Sure those are from molab bal and not uncle sheo?

Boss difficulty get a special mention. Even with block, standard up, and 30000 resisstance i could get hit by 20000 damage hits and those were light attacks. Normally they do 5k-10k, but sometimes those mega hits happen. Can bosses crit now? I forgot how to make screenshots of death recap, can someone help me so i can show those were cleary light attacks and not a heavy one. Also bosses got insane high amounts of hp.
I fear imperial city will soon become a zerg city when it hits live since only a zerg can deal with those bosses ( well a small group can do it too with kiting....if they kite the next 15 minutes to get like 100 stones each) and guarantee safey from pvpers/npc mobs.


Some suggestions:
- Reduce damage and health of npcs a little. 10-15% should be enough.
- To prevent zerging, add some kind of alarm system for the npcs. The more players, the higher the chance it triggers which opens a mini rift and scamps with proximity detonation and other npcs spawns out of it. Npcs should use more aoe skills like impulse or steel tornada
- Add more mats thought the city like a wagon with 3 of each mat, guarded by 4-5 npcs and a miniboss or maybe get mats by saving npcs.
- Stamina return when you succesfully interrupt a spell
- Atleast consider to weaken the block nerf like 50% less regen or increased block costs on longer use, also the chances for those are pretty much 0 since the city is out in less than two weeks


The city made a lot of fun with it's pve and pvp mix so i guess i will get the dlc, even with block nerf. ( i know it comes as base patch but i wanted to protest zos first )
I would love to try a vet dungeon but the lag and the fact i got a new keyboard so i still have to get used it ( i keep pressing the wrong buttons during the combat...no i don't want to talk with customer support lol )

kojou

I like the idea of stamina return on a spell interrupt. That would be very helpful.

nimander99

Are you saying the lag is already terrible on the pts? If so, I shudder for launch month...

rastlin0122

I have to agree. As a average player who has taken up the challenge of tanking in the pve enviroment, I really don't see how new players and average player will be able to tank dungeons and/or the Imperial City. I myself have approximately 170 cp and I suffered greatly on the PTS when I attempted to tank some of the new mobs and content.
Recently, I have used a template V16 DK with the new sets of gear, weapons, etc. I placed most of my cp points in block cost reduction, and stamina cost reduction. I was able to survive some encounters now and my resources though taxed were still managable. Though these were fights with groups of three trash mobs and not boss encounters. The problem I see is that the average player will not be starting with end game gear, they will not have 170cp, etc.
I am not asking for the Devs to return Stamina Regen back to 100%, I understand the turtle complaint in pvp with DK tanks. All I ask for, and all I believe the rest of the PvE community is asking for is that you meet us with some type of compromise. I do feel that without the compromise the ability for average players to find pug groups with tanks that will be able to tank dungeons, etc will be almost nil. There will always be the 5% that have the 500+cp, end game gear, etc that will say they don't have a problem with the changes. There will always be that 5% that say L2P your toon, L2 tank, etc. If you ask those tanks, they will almost 100% be in established guilds that do not pug dungeons with the average player, and run in their comfortable circle with the dps the do ungodly amounts of damage.
Personally, I am trying my best to learn to adapt to the impending changes that are suppose to happen when the DLC goes Live. Unfortunately with the testing I have done and the lack of compromise from the Devs I will probably not be able to enjoy playing my DK anymore as a tank. So, I will probably listen to the 5% that the Devs have listen too, and I will look for a new game to play. Sorry ESO, was fun while it lasted.