A question and a rant...

LinearParadox

So, I've got a question for you all. An honest question. A desperate question.
Am I the only one that's sick to ****ing death of the meta monsters out there?

Here's where the rant starts...
There's no build diversity right now. None.
Now, before you start in on me, understand that I'm talking about the top-tier; Duelists, BGs, and so on. Not Cyro open-world PuG-potato land (but even that is dwindling as the meta humping cancer spreads)
I'm *** sick and tired of fighting the same abusive builds over and over, and I'm even more sick and tired of getting punished over and over for not joining them.
I like coming up with interesting builds, off-meta ideas, 'themed' characters, etc. I played Pet Sorc 2 years ago before it was cool, and made it work. I made a tanky StamDK when everyone else was running Med armor and wrecking blow spam.
And I made these builds WORK. And it was FUN. Challenging, yes. Maybe more difficult to get the same payout as the meta-humpers, but it could still work.
Now? Now I just die. Over and ****ing over, to the same ****. Bleeds, Defile, Sweeps spam, etc. The same 2-3 abilities, the same builds, the same build philosophy of maximum cheese>burst>dead.

inb4 lrn2play. 808 CP currently, can solo vet dungeons on HM, can and have 1vX'd in Cyro and IC. I might not stream, and I might not be the best of the best, but I'm certainly not a potato.
What I am, is extremely disgruntled with the state of the game right now. The window for unique and fun builds is basically shut now. It's been closing for about 6 months with the last 2-3 nerf passes.
Sure you can do what you want, go into Cyro, and win sometimes. Beat some lowbies, newbies, etc. Sure you can zerg up and let your buddies in meta builds do all the work, get assists, and tell yourself you're 'winning'... but honestly, nothing stands up to a meta build anymore except another meta build. Not 1v1, and CERTAINLY not 1vX.
The meta builds are so brokenly OP that nothing else can compete. Just the raw numbers they throw out, are asinine: 6K wrecking blows and 10K Assassin's Wills against a target (me) with (deliberately overcharged for testing) 35K resists and proper CP allocation into mitigation...
What the hell is supposed to stand up against that, except another build putting out those same absurd numbers?
The penultimate definition of something being OP, is when it's only countered by itself. This holds true in context (gun, ship, spell, whatever) If you have to use the thing, to beat someone using the thing, it's OP
Wanna play a DoT focused build? Wanna play the long game? Wanna play around CC and kiting?
Nope, nope, and NOPE.
Their healing completely negates your DoT damage. Their sustain is infinite. They have immov pots and will kill you dead in the 15 seconds before it expires.
Thanks to healing and damage scaling off the same stat (A mistake even terrible MMOs usually don't make) they can crap out 5K healing per second like it's nothing, all while s**tting damage all over you in the mean time.


After putting probably 1000s of hours, and 100s of dollars into this game, farming, grinding, talking it up to friends, even buying copies for them, getting my GF into it...
I wanna quit. That's how far this has pushed me, and it's disgusting that it's been allowed to become so horrifically imbalanced.
I'm gonna take a break, see what the 1stQ patch brings in terms of changes, but seeing as it's not being lauded as a huge balance patch (and their historical record of failing to balance the game) I really don't have high hopes.
Oh well, just one more vet leaving. Who care, right? They've got Clown Crates and a churn-based business model. They'll just replace me with another wide-eyed hopeful that'll get into the game and shell out $$$ before they realize how busted the endgame is and leave.

Narvuntien

Okay if someone asks me "Hey how should I build this or what do you think of my build?" I am just going to point them in the direction of the meta.

But I....everything I run myself is non meta.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

You know it is okay to stop playing a game if you are not having fun.

Rohamad_Ali

There will always be a meta for each class . Nothing can change that .

davey1107

Pot became legal in California last week. Like totally legal...that seems odd. One day you wake up and it’s a whole new world. No idea why I thought of that. Lol

I generally agree with your post, which lets sum up as saying that there are highly “specialized” builds right now that utilize the best possible skills and gears in relation to their class, and in doing so those builds feel ridiculously more powerful than most any others in the game.

As a result, I wouldn’t say that mag sorcs or stamblades are OP as classes...but I would say that there are magsorc and stamblade builds that are OP themselves. There are magsorcs that can Indefinitely sustain 20k shields while occasionally pushing out their dps skills. My stamblade can push out 45 consecutive snipes that hit for 15k each. Either of these builds would definitely feel over powered when encountered in a scenario favorable to them. (I though of these builds because I encountered a mag sorc last week where I was up on a wall, and I figure I hit him for some 400,000 damage before we got bored...and my stamina was doing fine.)

So what is allowing for these builds? I think it’s a lot of things in combination, so that there’s no easy solution. Champion Points contribute, but they are only part of it. In non-cp play you still end up with OP builds, they’re just the builds that take advantage of the lack of CPs. A second cause are the ultra powerful sets...some which simply over-perform. And the multitude of sets, so that there are more opportunities for exploitative combos. Then there are the occasional ultra-powerful abilities, which over-perform. Clever players (or anyone with internet access) can figure out how to stack as much power into a build as possible, CPs + sets + abilities + order of operations, and...pow.

So what’s a solution?

The easiest solution might be to ask why you’re playing the content that specifically frustrates you. I don’t mean that rudely. The the play that is frustrating you is pvp. If you’re in Cyro, I just always play like there are generals in the world and they’re not to be fought. There’s a DC stam DK in my campaign that has...I don’t know...100k health, endless shields, endless resistance, AND he plays tethered to another build just like him. Ha ha, very funny guys. They are always getting groups of 4-8 endless chasing them. What’s the point? I can quickly push out 50k damage on one, at which point he will heal and be at full health. Like any war, there are battles you shouldn’t pick. I don’t join in on those two. (Instead, I sit on a high spot nearby because some curious blue ALWAYS has to come join in, and they NEVER have 100k health and endless shields).

If you’re talking Battlegrounds...yeah, they kinda suck. ZOS did a poor rollout all together with those. Because there’s no rank, everyone runs together and they are terrorized by the OP builds you’re complaining about. So I avoid BGs. For a bunch of other reasons too...the random map and random game is effing idiotic to me. I love my NB on capture the flag, but he stinks in domination.

Other than avoiding the content that frustrates you, we might brainstorm solutions. I’m sure ZOS has as well. Off the top of my head, things that might help:

- a revamp of the CP system (sigh...again) to reduce the stronger passives, and maybe to tone down the wayntheyre so front-loaded, which allows high CP players to suck way too much power out of the system.

- a bit more daring, maybe ZOS could introduce new C200 armor...BUT they maintain extremely tight control and only allow a few sets at a time to drop/be crafted, retiring some or most of the current sets. They could use this to return the sets to a less complex baseline. If Twice fanged serpent and Hundings rage are considered too powerful, don’t let them upgrade to C200, then players can choose to play with their old gear and fall behind, or opt for the new sets.

- untether pve and pvp in some ways. The hardest pve content is pretty darn hard, and a lot of players need to get more powerful to play it. A lot of teams need eye of the storm doing 300k damage per proc. But skills that help advance pve are often the ones that kill pvp. I have no problem with shield stacking in trials...who cares? But then it’s annoying to fight someone doing this in pvp.

Anyway, those are just a few ideas. I don’t personally think the balance is as far off as you seem to think, but I definitely see where you’re coming from. If you need to, clean up your inventory, lock things down, strip and bank everyone’s gear, feed the cats, and take a few weeks off. The game as always gone in cycles, and by summer things will be different one way or the other.

Qbiken

When you start to understand how certain mechanics in the game synergies with eachother, that´s when you´ll realise how many "meta´s" there actually are. Anyone can go buy/farm the gear for the job and pretty much Ctlr C + Ctlr V a build, be it meta or not. But if you don´t understand how mechanics in this game works the meta won´t do the work for you.

I´m not claiming to understand all stuff in this game (far from it), but my advice to OP, if you´re willing to take it ofc, is to do some more digging into what makes the meta strong. When you find that out it will be much easier to counter it.

But if that doesn´t work for you, do as I do: Just accept that you won´t be able to deal with all builds/setups in PvP, for the sake of enjoying the game

LinearParadox

@Lightspeedflashb14_ESO
I know dude, I know. It's the sunk cost that's getting me, ya know? Hard to just drop things that I've put so much time and effort into, but I did that with LoL (5, almost 6 years) and I can do it again.

@Rohamad_Ali
I know. And I accept that, grudgingly, because I know it's true. However, it's not the meta that I'm complaining about, or it's existence per-se, rather it's overwhelming dominance.
Meta builds are far and above any alternative build right now, in my opinion, and are oppressively OP. As a side-effect of that dominance, the meta is spreading faster and wider than normal, because players are being forced to (in most cases) hop on the meta train, or resign themselves to getting utterly destroyed by it.

@davey1107
Your analysis of the imbalances was both insightful and well thought-out. Your proposed solutions are volatile, but I think that might be what the game needs right now.
As to why I'm playing content that frustrates me, well the answer to that is 2-fold, but honestly rather simple;
1. PvE is boring and stale to me. As I mentioned, I've run dungeons 100s of times, in every possible role, with a variety of builds trying to keep it fresh, etc. I'm just done with it. Maybe if ZoS had implemented Dungeon trading and more pledge keys and separating out the RNG pools into different chests, etc. sooner, I might not be so godawfully sick of PvE content from the grind, but that's a different story altogether.
2. I'm playing PvP because that's what I (used to, at least) enjoy. It was the entire reason I got into this game in the first place. Don't get me wrong, this MMO's PvE and leveling content is a LOT better than most, with typically interesting stories, varried quest objectives, and fully voiced NPCs, it's a good head and shoulders above most other MMOs, but for me personally, PvE just doesn't hold my attention in the long term. I enjoy the competitiveness of PvP, pitting my wits and skill against others, enjoying the triumph of victory as well as the lessons of defeat.
And understanding that mindset I have, I hope you can understand why I'm so pissed off with this stale, oppressive meta.
And if you meant why am I playing BG/duels and not Cyro... that's because I don't enjoy zerging. I have a raid healer, I sometimes lead groups when I'm in the mood, sometimes just farm AP with insane healing numbers, but it gets boring fast. I like small group play, but nowadays it's impossible to play Cyro without getting run over by a 20-man Destro train -.-

@Qbiken
I understand what you're saying, and I /do/ understand the meta(s). Believe me; I can see a direct correlation in how well my builds perform compared to how close they are to the meta.
As to there being many metas as you suggested, I'm going to have to disagree; unless you're referring to there being several ways each class can go about that meta, I retain that there is only one meta right now and that's exploit every possible broken combination you can, stack as much damage as you can, and burst as hard as you can.
Burst is, honestly, the enemy here. The burst meta, just like having an assassin meta in any game, is inherently toxic because the concept itself revolved around denying your opponent agency (free will, opportunity to react, counter, etc)
The idea of "bursting down" your opponent boils down to denying them the ability to heal through your damage, or mitigate it in any meaningful way such that they die.
If you think about that for a moment, ask yourself how that's functionally different from something people would call out as being absurd immediately... say for example, the meta was to set up some absurd 10 second unbreakable stun. People would go absolutely NUTS watching their character get CC'd for a solid 10 seconds and die, and rightfully so. That's ridiculous.
But examine it from a functional point of view, they died because they couldn't do anything to stop their opponent.
compare that to getting ganked, or "bursted" from full to 0 in about a second, usually in time with CC such that by the time you're done breaking the CC you've just been hit with Deep Fissure, Swooping Dive, Crit Rush, and Dawnbreaker all at once, followed by an animation cancelled executioner if you survived all that by some miracle.
You're now dead, without an opportunity to react. That's depriving someone of agency, and that's the meta.


People will always go for the strongest thing, that's just natural and I understand that, but in a properly balanced game, that meta should only be a very slight advantage: a couple %, so to speak, above the alternatives.
That's not what it feels like anymore.
I left this game once already, because of what I considered to be the "illusion of choice" back in the days of "soft caps", (and only came back because they were removed).
They touted "play how you want", but really the system was so limiting and punishing that what they really should've said is "If you wanna cut yourself off at the knees and tie one arm behind your back, we won't stop you."
I feel like we're almost back to that today; not because of an intentional limiting factor in character stats, but because the meta combinations are so head-and-shoulders above the alternatives, that trying to go against the grain is deliberately handicapping yourself.
A year ago, I felt like I could get an off-meta build, with effort and some clever ideas, and skillful gameplay, to about 90% of a meta-build's power. I'd have to sacrifice a good bit, and play unconventionally, get laughed at a little, etc. But I could still play effectively, win a decent % of the time, and have fun doing it.
No longer. Now I fight other players at my level with my off-meta builds, and we have good fights. I usually win, sometimes I lose, but it's fun.
If I fight a meta build at my level, unless I'm on my (basically meta itself) Stam DK Bruiser, I'm generally dead in seconds. And it's not just player skill. I'm talking about a general jump in damage taken by at least double, and with their damage stats scaling into healing themselves, they mitigate insane levels of damage just as easily as they put it out.

VaranisArano

This is why I prefer Cyrodiil.

I know my build and my skills as a PVPer are not well-suited to dealing with every player and every build. My reach exceeds my grasp plenty of times. Sometimes I win. Sometimes I stealth siege a keep, drive off the players who come to kill me and succeed in flagging it so that my faction manages to capture it. Sometimes I set up siege and die miserably to the couple of players who come out to deal with me. I can get better, and learn my build better, but I won't be able to win in every situation.

But what I don't ever have to do in Cyrodiil is get farmed.

If I'm in a situation where I know I can't win against a another player(s) for whatever reason. I don't have to get farmed. I can walk away and find something else to do where I can have fun and make AP.

Whether that's the solo duelist taunting me to come chase him
the 1vXer tank who does no damage but doesn't die
The small group sitting on a resource farming players who come in onesies and twosies to take it back
The large group pouring oils over Alessia bridge
Whoever

I don't have to get farmed. In Cyrodiil, I can walk away and still have fun and find good fights better suited to how I want to play.

Not so much in Battlegrounds.

Waffennacht

I know exactly of what you speak.

The dueling scene has become so specialized only DKs and NBs are used by the top tier players (there are others but the number of DKs and NBs dueling are just going up)

The BGs are becoming the same way, the same fotm builds over and over again.

1 I've been doing more PvE to both to farm equipment and replenish supplies (and is surprisingly fun)
2 I now boring af builds in PvP

I don't really duel anymore unless it's just to kill time.

What I'm looking forward to is no CP BGs, should at least shake up the scene for a month

davey1107

In regards to your response to me specifically, I totally get it. PVE is pretty stale...the game is four years old. They can add new content, but anything they add is sort of repetitive at this point. It makes me wonder if the future would be a sequel game where we move over some of our loot from ESO to ESO 2, and maybe our characters move there, but we have to start a whole new game. I assume this is sort of how Destiny 2 works.

In regard to PVP and zerging, that brings to mind something I totally neglected to include, and something I've been saying for weeks in various posts:

2018

It's

Time

For

Alliance War season 2

It's time for a complete overhaul of Cyrodiil, changing up the game. I'm not sure how extensive this should be. I envision keeping mostly the same map, but perhaps bringing in some significant changes like adding canyons or altering terrain in places. Maybe the keeps and capture system get overhauled. Maybe the resource system gets an overhaul.

I can think of hundreds of new ideas, some that would be good and easy to develop and some that might be awful, lol. But it feels time for a massive reboot, which I think would reset everyone and break up the repetitive player habits. Some of what makes PVP stale is us...I can guarantee when I log in to my campaign tonight (I'm AD), the reds are going to send three guys to take crops ford, then the whole Zerg is going to dead Rez there and they'll head to the three AD back keeps and just run in circles taking them while AD runs in circles re-taking them. That's not entirely ZOS's fault that teams fall into a routine.

Casul

Gold. It's too expensive to waste mats and time on a build that ends up failing. I've made my fair share of builds and some work, some fail. But nothing worse then thinking outside the box only to find you wasted 40 hours and 80k gold.