Vet DPS targets

OldGamerESO

I was reading in another thread about how you need 30K dps for vet dungeons. How PUG's fail more often from bad DPS than from bad tanking/healing. I had no idea what my DPS actually was, so I added a combat meter and ran some dungeons in my Magicka Templar, Magicka Nightblade and Stam Sorc. I have 370 CP. Before I get into builds and gear, let me say that my single target DPS on bosses from beginning of the fight to the end is about 10-14k on all my characters. Very often it was below 11K. So this is just me "playing" dps without research, just relying on my above ground PvE and public dungeon experience as to what "kills stuff fast". My 3 characters have all cp 160 equipment at least purple and all have gold weapons. I use food/drink, good weapon traits, weapon damage enchants, pick a reasonable Mundus stone, have tried to pick good sets, use potions, self buffs, empower myself, use dots as well as DD, etc.

What I am saying is that I feel I have done a reasonable job at being knowledgeable and prepared for pulling my weight in dungeons.

Yet clearly I don't.

I couldn't for the life of me figure out why my dps is so low. I like to figure out stuff from within the game, but I wasn't making any progress so I started googling DPS, spec, rotations, etc.

I was NOT happy with what I found out. When I read one long post on Magicka Templar DPS I was shocked. I had never heard of "weaving" or "animation cancelling". Most of the morphs that I had picked were the "wrong" versions (Like picking Radient Glory for self heal over Radiant Oppression). Many of the spells I thought were weak were actually strong. I had no CP in Damage over time, yet the advice is to beef that up. Etc, etc. I have Thief Mundus stone, all gold gear, Julianos divines, Arcane Will power, Torugs (head/staff) and Kena shoulders.

So I made some adjustments, relearned some things and tried again. My dps went down. I was so confused with timers and the whole weaving thing. And I can't seem to move around and dodge when I am trying to also do complicated things. I added a buff timer addon with a unique sound per buff. Ding, ding, buzz, rrrr.. it is like an electric rod showing me how non-optimal I am as each buff runs out, usually when I am on the wrong bar. And meanwhile the boss is moving our of my aoe, my "weaving" keeps messing up my casts and I keep switching to the wrong bar at the wrong time. I am now dying a lot more as well.

It turns out that the biggest issue with my DPS is how much I suck. Maybe its my age, but I can't really handle that kind of mental gymnastics and hand eye coordination.

So if this is what we expect our pug DPS to be doing I can see why there might be issues. How many people go an look up stuff and put in the time to get truly optimal? I tried and I still suck. I probably can handle a 1 bar rotation. I am lucky if I can remember to empower my ultimate. If there is lot of ground AOE and I have to move around a lot my DPS goes into the toilet.

Now that I see what is involved at DPS I have to rethink every prejudice I had about roles. I find it much easier to tank and heal. I can even heal, debuff boss and do some dps. But I am sure I will NEVER get a sustained 20K single target dps in any fight where I need to move around.

Foxic

First of all, I commend you on making the effort to get better.

Secondly you do not need 30K single target dps for any dungeon I can think of, higher dps just makes it alot easier. A group that consistently does mechanics will be fine everywhere.

The only time you need to start worrying about 30K+ single target dps is in vet trials

Masel

Tanking and healing is more relaxing, but I usually prefer Doing damage because as a tank or heal, I always fear that the damage of randoms is too low and you end up stuck for hours in one dungeon. As a tank or heal, You should support the dds though, E.g. as a tank with alkosh and molten weapons, healer with aether and spell power cure etc, not even talking about warhorn rotations. This can make the difference between 20 and 30k dps. It's all about support.

And it's very cool that there are people like you who prefer playing heal or tank, because those roles are very rare compared to dds!

Joy_Division

I also commend you on your efforts for improving your gameplay.

Yes, a big problem in this game is that there are too many sub-optimal "wrong" morphs that ZoS allows and the overland PVE solo questing experience does *not* properly prepare players for anything beyond questing.

What I would say it that you don't need 30K DPS to "win" at ESO and it's not an embarrassment to do under that. 20K will get you through any dungeon without any issues. All those add-ons are not necessary to increase your DPS to the point where you are pulling your wait. Each skill takes roghly a second to cast, so you can plan out a rotation that does a decent albeit not perfect job reapplying DoTs and stuff. Animation cancelling, I won;t lie, is extremely useful but is *not* hard to do once you get the hand of it. I am probably the least coordinated person I know and it took me maybe a week to get it down. You just need to get a light attack in pbeofre the skil, don;t worry about weapon swap cancelling, bash cancelling, and all the other advanced techniques - that's just icing on the cake and not necessary for being a good contributing DPS.

The other thing to keep in mind is that 30K+ DPS is dependent on raid buffs and debuffs from other players. In a typical "PuG" dungeon, you'll be fortunate to even get a warhorn.

DeadlyRecluse

1. You don't need 30k for vet dungeons. If both DPS are putting out 10k and you follow mechanics you'll be fine.
2. If you are having trouble with magplar rotations, start with something VERY simple rather than a perfect trials rotation. You should be able to break 20k with just Entropy for spellpower buff, and a light attack+puncturing sweeps rotation (with Radiant Oppression in execute). Keep Inner Light on your bar for that buff. Once you have that very simple rotation down pat, start working more complex things in.

Koolio

I recommend taking some time to do VMSA. One thing it will help with is the timing of your Dps. I never did a Dps test for a long time. Until they announced they were changing the BS boss health. So I went in there not really paying attention to buffs/timing/rotation. Since I have beaten VMSA I already knew what I did to beat that. Was around 23-25k Dps because I had tried and failed VMSA so many times that I knew the timing for the bosses and applied that to my test. They really need training dummies for this purpose. In DCUO I was on mine dummy for hours just watching numbers. I don't really like Magplars for Dps but that's just personal preference. It takes a lot of time to get it down right. Start doing dungeons with a tank only(friend) that way you can practice. With the right setup you should almost be at 14k just from dark flare ( not very good move for trials). Wall of elements meteor sweeps should be enough for any of these trash dungeons.

Lashiing

it's just taking the time aside from normal runs to practice
i can pull 15k easy on my lvl 10

hmu if you want a workshop/help