How did you learn to be a good DPS?

Tasear

Good is a realitive term but question is how, who or what taught you how to dps in ESO?

Narvuntien

I honestly don't remember, I think maybe Alcast or Gilliam videos. I went in looking for Snipe builds for my PVP character but I learnt a lot about dps from them from watching their other videos. My second character was then built with PVE dps in mind.

Khivas_Carrick

Guildies, these forums, and ass tons of research across various platforms.

AKA, not ZoS lol

XiDiabolismiX

Lots and lots of hard work researching, and practicing rotations. I first started on console back when the bloodspawn dps test was around. I can’t remember what my time was on my first test, but I remember it was bad... really bad.

From tips and motivation of others in-game, I would research builds, gear, and rotations and just kept practicing until the rotations were etched into my mind and it became muscle memory.

Once dps dummies were a thing, that was all she wrote for my game time. I dedicated hours and hours, days and days to just hitting that thing. I would take criticism from whoever wanted to watch me hit the dummy and build myself from there.

That’s why I’ve always been an advocate for dummy parses, particularly on console. It literally engraves a rotation into your mind so you can focus on different trial and dungeon mechanics while keeping your rotation up.

It’s a whole different ball game while playing on pc now that I’ve made the switch though, with combat metrics. I still dummy parse to try out new gear, but maximizing your rotation and time on target on bosses is where the biggest learning curve is.

JKith

Farmed my first set of good gear and practiced, practiced, practiced on a dummy for days,... then something finally "clicked" and I understood the nuances of how to cast abilities, when to wait that fraction of a second when needed, and how my build synergizes and what specifically about my build increases DPS.

redspecter23

I was in a pug one day and the other players who were all clearly better than me but dying constantly for some reason, just started yelling at me in chat, telling me how I'm a horrible player and my sets are bad and my skills are bad and my cp is bad and my breath is bad. Well, that chat certainly did the trick. After I went and sat in the shower and cried for about 2 hours, I came back with a new sense of determination.

And that's how I finally hit 4k dps. Beers for everyone!

Drdeath20

It took somebody in a pug group to finally go off on me. I knew i wasnt good but i didnt understand just how awful i really was. Searched online for help and played as a healer for a good while to watch how others played.

ezio45

spending months infront of a testing dummy working on my rotation

MilwaukeeScott

Practise, practise, practise!

Artim_X

I wanted the Stormproof title, but my inability to melt Maxus the Many made me realize that I was not ready to stand on my own. Eventually after adjusting my playstyle and gear I was able to achieve my goal, but then I decided that I needed maelstrom weapons to really make my playstyle shine. The arena became a part of my daily routine and after getting essentially everything except a fire staff I decided to pursue the Flawless Conqueror title, which encouraged me to play the arena continuously and taught me to be more cautious of mechanics/rng nonsense. Although I'm retired from the arena I do go back when something significant is changed (damage shield changes).

Ramber

i was new, i golded my armor thinking it would help but it didnt, i was told i suck and i saw how others were killing it... i had someone show me how to test on a boss at the time there were no dummies... i did 10k... from then on all i did was research and practice. I worked my ass off for countless hours. Now all my dps do 40k plus and i have many lol.

Protossyder

Some time ago I made this thread https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/447322/how-long-did-it-take-you-to-wake-up/p1 about how I became a more or less good player.
But I forgot to mention that I met a random player ingame who showed me a rotation for the first time. He taught me how to weave and connect skills smoothly. Good guy.. ^^

Tip for new players: Never tell yourself that you suck at a particular role. You just didn't practice enough.
I know some people who keep telling others and themselves that they are bad at tanking/healing/dps/pvp/etc... how can you say that when you barely tried?

Vahrokh

Tasear wrote: »

Good is a realities term but question is how, who or what taught you how to dps in ESO?

One thing is 100% sure: not by following ANY official ESO tutorial, documentation or video.

Whereas every other MMO I have played had a fairly intuitive tutorial, video or post (something) teaching how to be decent, ESO does not.

ESO slaps "weaving" and "animation cancelling" on top of DPS rotations and by default you get told nothing about how to do well with them.

I had two very nice guys, ApochryphaESO (the person making videos about how to DPS / do arena with 1 bar setup) and a guildie (Quake) patiently sit down with me in game and show me how it's done.

Thanks to them I increased my DPS by at least 12k. Just thanks to decent, basic advice, it took all of 20 minutes, basic explanations and little practice.

Now, I wonder why we don't get a proper, official tutorial providing such information.

Protossyder

Vahrokh wrote: »

Tasear wrote: »

Good is a realities term but question is how, who or what taught you how to dps in ESO?

One thing is 100% sure: not by following ANY official ESO tutorial, documentation or video.

Whereas every other MMO I have played had a fairly intuitive tutorial, video or post (something) teaching how to be decent, ESO does not.

ESO slaps "weaving" and "animation cancelling" on top of DPS rotations and by default you get told nothing about how to do well with them.

I had two very nice guys, ApochryphaESO (the person making videos about how to DPS / do arena with 1 bar setup) and a guildie (Quake) patiently sit down with me in game and show me how it's done.

Thanks to them I increased my DPS by at least 12k. Just thanks to decent, basic advice, it took all of 20 minutes, basic explanations and little practice.

Now, I wonder why we don't get a proper, official tutorial providing such information.

Maybe I am wrong, but I think that Zenimax never intended to force us into a certain way of doing things in ESO. They supplied us with the game mechanics, sets, cp, weapon choices, skills, passives, etc. and it was upon the player base to make the best out of it.
Where do you think they would've been researching if they released official tutorials now? At recent guides made by players of course. Why would you invest resources into constant testing if you already got hundred thousands of people doing it for free?

ZeroXFF

Getting to 20k was a struggle. I tried making something by myself, but I ended up at 12k DPS and was constantly out of magicka, and that was pre-morrowind. So I started asking people around about what I'm doing wrong. Multiple months, conversations and guides later I was at 20k, with a build that I was told was supposed to do 30k.

So I went to the forums, and that got me to just over 30k in a few days... Without vMA staff. This was when I realized how impactful seemingly insignificant changes to the rotation can be. This thread was the "breakthrough" for me.

All improvement after this was gradual, with small adjustments (aside from when I switched classes, in some cases it was huge jumps again).

Just for context, my main was a templar tank which I played most of the time, so it's part of the reason why it took so long to polish my DPS.

Banana

Im still crap and I have over 1000 cp.

kathandira

Tasear wrote: »

Good is a realities term but question is how, who or what taught you how to dps in ESO?

It's a combination of things for me.

First thing is learn to be a good player. The key to this is situational awareness. Know the mechanics and environment and you will have step one taken care of.

Next part of sitatuional awareness is knowing the people you are playing with. Know what class they play and how they play it (Mag or Stam). The way I do this is two fold. First, talk to your friends who play other classes/roles. Or, the other route is to make each of the classes/roles yourself and learn first hand. The more you know about what they will be providing the more you will know about how to react to things during the fight.

Lastly, know your own skills. You may know what is going on around you, but to know how to react to you, you also need to know your own capabilities.

Once you have that down, you need to know about gear and skills/rotation. With the above, you can get through content, but won't be a high contributor unless you know how to maximize your abilities through gear and skills. For this, I read websites such as Alcast or Xynode. Now keep in mind, these don't need to be followed to the letter. But they are great resources to see what the pros are doing.

I also like to learn in tiers. Easy, Novice, Expert. For example, I will start a new character off with a pure stats build. For example, on a Magicka class, I will start using Julianos and Mothers Sorrow. There is no Proc on the 5pc, so you don't have to concern yourself with aligning the proc with any other skills or timers. Then i'll move to dungeon sets to find a Proc that will boost me up and learn how to use that appropriately. Then once i'm confident enough, i'll take the character to Trials to get a stronger proc set. (This isn't the same for all classes since some of the better gear for some classes might be a mix between the tiers)

Kikke

Old MMOer, animation canceling and 'waving' is normal in any MMO. You just gotta adapt the knowlage to ESO. Was what I did atleast.

Trained alot of new trial players also. Usually by giving them a specific builds to aim for that can be crafted or bought. Then by explaining roations, animation canceling and weaving. Give them a few examples on how it looks once your rotation is good. Then leave them be to practise rotation a houre or two.

Usually after this I get people from 15-20k DPS up to 35k+. After that he can aim for BiS gear and the 40k-50k mark.

All that are wiling to practise abit get up to that level, some need to practise more than others.

Odovacar

Practicing hard on dummies and sticking/applying my rotation during actual content. In the beginning I was unaware of animation-canceling and how to use my spells all within a timely fashion and reapplying them as they run out without gap in uptime & also how to proc certain sets, I had no idea, LOL. I started by counting in my head (I.E. WOE timing with my LL, etc.) until I could pull my rotation in my sleep. Relentless self-criticism until I could consistently pull numbers I was happy with. I asked questions to veteran players at the time and they helped me with understanding my role and certain sets & spells to use for specific trials versus dungeon, etc.

I also did a lot of reading, mostly on here before I actually logged in after years playing. So in the end I suppose a mixture of dedication, questions to my fellow guildies, and help for you guys by researching certain Q/A threads.

The funniest memory I have was thinking my gold gear & weapons would be the ticket to uber DPS. Wow, was that disappointing

SoLooney

Djmuscleboy

Iskiab

Kikke wrote: »

Old MMOer, animation canceling and 'waving' is normal in any MMO. You just gotta adapt the knowlage to ESO. Was what I did atleast.

Trained alot of new trial players also. Usually by giving them a specific builds to aim for that can be crafted or bought. Then by explaining roations, animation canceling and weaving. Give them a few examples on how it looks once your rotation is good. Then leave them be to practise rotation a houre or two.
.

This just isn’t true, there’s no animation cancelling or light attack weaving in other games. The closest game that came to it was EQ2 where some people would time their abilities to let their auto attacks hit.

kathandira

I should also add, Static Rotation don't apply across the board. A boss rotation might not apply to large groups of enemies.

Learn to be dynamic and identify what would be the best skills to use in particular situations. You might find that trash packs, or adds on a boss die before you finish 1/2 your rotation. Learn a broken down rotation for these situations.

Kilcosu

Rotation rotation rotation

Toc de Malsvi

Tasear wrote: »

Good is a realities term but question is how, who or what taught you how to dps in ESO?

No one exactly.

I came over from WoW, I learned to dps there so I had a good idea of the structure of MMO's and how to be a functional dps in a dungeon/raid environment.

The switch with ESO really was only a matter of getting a dps meter so I could compare relative setups and outputs.

Then I was shown a mag DK parse where I felt the guy had to be cheating to be getting his light attacks off so efficiently. @AverageJo3Gam3r said: "I don't know man.." that is all I needed and I set off to prove it couldn't be done. A few hours on a dummy and I found I could light attack significantly better than I had been in the past.

Basically practice and believe you can prove someone wrong.

Derra

I haven´t touched pve in eso prior to vMA.

I slowly crawled up the leaderboards when it was released and trying to get better scores there eventually made me a decent dps.

DPS and some movement solves everything in this arena. So i´m somewhat self taught and everything else came with talking to other players about strategy and/or gear.

Princess_Ciri

Tasear wrote: »

Good is a realities term but question is how, who or what taught you how to dps in ESO?

For me in realities I was bornsies this way. Good Dpsities.

NordSwordnBoard

A friend and a dummy. The friend was not a dummy, and the dummy was not a friend. You must be open to the idea that someone else who does it better will save you time & frustration at the cost of admitting you're not the smartest in the room.

Not having to go kill Bloodspawn with a stopwatch helped big time.

Kikke

Iskiab wrote: »

Kikke wrote: »

Old MMOer, animation canceling and 'waving' is normal in any MMO. You just gotta adapt the knowlage to ESO. Was what I did atleast.

Trained alot of new trial players also. Usually by giving them a specific builds to aim for that can be crafted or bought. Then by explaining roations, animation canceling and weaving. Give them a few examples on how it looks once your rotation is good. Then leave them be to practise rotation a houre or two.
.

This just isn’t true, there’s no animation cancelling or light attack weaving in other games. The closest game that came to it was EQ2 where some people would time their abilities to let their auto attacks hit.

Then you are to uninformed
auto-attack swing into abilty = weaving
Abilties cut short due to movement or other abilities and still hit = animation canceling

Conduit0

I don't know, over two years in and I'm still trying to git gud.

Ananoriel

It was a lot of information gathering and practice for me.

I read a lot of different guides, videos, forums and advice from guildies in dungeons and trials. And with all that information I make my own build, mixing what gives good DPS, and what 'fits' my character. I like to give my characters backstories and I like it to see it in combat. I look up what gear fits the best to the playstyle, and food as well.

I play ESO for 3 years or so, and with practice my rotation became better and better. It took me only a while to understand light attack weaving, so after that my DPS drastically improved.

disintegr8

Apparently I didn't - over 3 years and I still get called a scrub.