The tanky meta

LordTareq

Anyone else seeing an exponential increase in battlegrounds of these really tanky builds? Lately it seems like every other player I run into is just this indestructible damage sponge no matter the class. In response I've adapted my build to do more and more damage, but now I've reached a point where my survivability is crap, my damage vs 'normal' players is insane, and sustain is decent. However the tankier target's I still just can't really harm despite having invested significantly in armor penetration (maul, sharpened bow, spriggans, Onslaught ultimate that ignores resistance).

Metemsycosis

Game wants to encourage team play so eventually team will be necessary to PK anyone at end game.

Iskiab

I doubt it’s actually tankiness considering your setup, you should be bringing people under 20k resistances to near 0.

Sounds more like health regen or lots of self healing. Try and add major defile.

jadarock

You are just now noticing this??
I've played a squishy stamblade full damage build on xbox for years.
It was fun for a long time until I realized many PATCHES ago that every other encounter in cyrodiil or bgs was met with enemies that do similar damage and face tank me at the same time. Admittedly I'm not good but with almost 8k damage I was having trouble finishing
people off. They just tanked and or healed through my burst. Boring. Now my nb is retired other than crafting gear for my tankier alts 😬

LordTareq

Iskiab wrote: »

I doubt it’s actually tankiness considering your setup, you should be bringing people under 20k resistances to near 0.

Sounds more like health regen or lots of self healing. Try and add major defile.

Battlegrounds are no-CP, so its hard to take away 20k resistances.

jadarock wrote: »

You are just now noticing this??
I've played a squishy stamblade full damage build on xbox for years.
It was fun for a long time until I realized many PATCHES ago that every other encounter in cyrodiil or bgs was met with enemies that do similar damage and face tank me at the same time. Admittedly I'm not good but with almost 8k damage I was having trouble finishing
people off. They just tanked and or healed through my burst. Boring. Now my nb is retired other than crafting gear for my tankier alts 😬

Well you always had some of them. But since early-access Elsweyr it really feels like there are a lot more of them. Doesn't help that the necromancer is super-effective as a PvP-tank.

Iskiab

LordTareq wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

I doubt it’s actually tankiness considering your setup, you should be bringing people under 20k resistances to near 0.

Sounds more like health regen or lots of self healing. Try and add major defile.

Battlegrounds are no-CP, so its hard to take away 20k resistances.

Well, a sharpened maul would bring someone down to 4K resistances from 20k.

If someone’s indestructible they’re either perma blocking or have really high self healing/health recovery or both. Major defile or fear does the trick.

Minno

Sharp+CP+major resist.

Gotta drop that armor to 15/10% mitigation otherwise you'll never get anywhere.

Then again you'll never get anywhere with things like corrosive in the game lol. #ThisGameIsTrashForAnythingButCasualERP

LordTareq

Iskiab wrote: »

LordTareq wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

I doubt it’s actually tankiness considering your setup, you should be bringing people under 20k resistances to near 0.

Sounds more like health regen or lots of self healing. Try and add major defile.

Battlegrounds are no-CP, so its hard to take away 20k resistances.

Well, a sharpened maul would bring someone down to 4K resistances from 20k.

If someone’s indestructible they’re either perma blocking or have really high self healing/health recovery or both. Major defile or fear does the trick.

20000 - (3450 + 2752) = 13798. 20% ignored from maul = 11038 resistance left. Or am I missing something? Anyway I suppose its a combination of defensive PvP sets, self healing, damage shields and defensive class buffs and not only of resistances.

dodgehopper_ESO

LordTareq wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

LordTareq wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

I doubt it’s actually tankiness considering your setup, you should be bringing people under 20k resistances to near 0.

Sounds more like health regen or lots of self healing. Try and add major defile.

Battlegrounds are no-CP, so its hard to take away 20k resistances.

Well, a sharpened maul would bring someone down to 4K resistances from 20k.

If someone’s indestructible they’re either perma blocking or have really high self healing/health recovery or both. Major defile or fear does the trick.

20000 - (3450 + 2752) = 13798. 20% ignored from maul = 11038 resistance left. Or am I missing something? Anyway I suppose its a combination of defensive PvP sets, self healing, damage shields and defensive class buffs and not only of resistances.

11k resistance is nothing at all practically.

Iskiab

LordTareq wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

LordTareq wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

I doubt it’s actually tankiness considering your setup, you should be bringing people under 20k resistances to near 0.

Sounds more like health regen or lots of self healing. Try and add major defile.

Battlegrounds are no-CP, so its hard to take away 20k resistances.

Well, a sharpened maul would bring someone down to 4K resistances from 20k.

If someone’s indestructible they’re either perma blocking or have really high self healing/health recovery or both. Major defile or fear does the trick.

20000 - (3450 + 2752) = 13798. 20% ignored from maul = 11038 resistance left. Or am I missing something? Anyway I suppose its a combination of defensive PvP sets, self healing, damage shields and defensive class buffs and not only of resistances.

20k start
5k major fracture = 15k
20% maul = 12k
Spriggan’s plus sharpened = 6k

Isn’t that the right order of operations? I haven’t tested this stuff myself, I just went off what someone else said.

Trinity_Is_My_Name

Play as you want. Some are Tanky, some are Glass cannons. It is what it is.

Thogard

Iskiab wrote: »

LordTareq wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

LordTareq wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

I doubt it’s actually tankiness considering your setup, you should be bringing people under 20k resistances to near 0.

Sounds more like health regen or lots of self healing. Try and add major defile.

Battlegrounds are no-CP, so its hard to take away 20k resistances.

Well, a sharpened maul would bring someone down to 4K resistances from 20k.

If someone’s indestructible they’re either perma blocking or have really high self healing/health recovery or both. Major defile or fear does the trick.

20000 - (3450 + 2752) = 13798. 20% ignored from maul = 11038 resistance left. Or am I missing something? Anyway I suppose its a combination of defensive PvP sets, self healing, damage shields and defensive class buffs and not only of resistances.

20k start
5k major fracture = 15k
20% maul = 12k
Spriggan’s plus sharpened = 6k

Isn’t that the right order of operations? I haven’t tested this stuff myself, I just went off what someone else said.

No, it’s not the right order of operations. Everything subtractive comes out first.

Joy_Division

Trinity_Is_My_Name wrote: »

Play as you want. Some are Tanky, some are Glass cannons. It is what it is.

The ones that are glass cannons do not know what they are doing.

Cathexis

I cannot stress this enough:

PLAY NO-CP.

PapaWeeb

Cathexis wrote: »

I cannot stress this enough:

PLAY NO-CP.

I cannot stress this enough:

HE MEANT IN NO-CP

ilcavallo

Grinding CP took too long for me to just give it up.

But to each their own I guess

Derra

Joy_Division wrote: »

Trinity_Is_My_Name wrote: »

Play as you want. Some are Tanky, some are Glass cannons. It is what it is.

The ones that are glass cannons do not know what they are doing.

Sadly. The benefit of investing into dmg stats over sustain or defense is virtually nonexistant.

Thogard

Derra wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Trinity_Is_My_Name wrote: »

Play as you want. Some are Tanky, some are Glass cannons. It is what it is.

The ones that are glass cannons do not know what they are doing.

Sadly. The benefit of investing into dmg stats over sustain or defense is virtually nonexistant.

It’s rare to find a good player that isn’t running damage sets.

This patch made it easy to still be tanky while building for dmg.

There’s no reason to be in a 5pc tank set right now unless you’re targeting a very specific type of medium or large scale gameplay that involves zergbusting in laggy environments

Kidgangster101

LordTareq wrote: »

Anyone else seeing an exponential increase in battlegrounds of these really tanky builds? Lately it seems like every other player I run into is just this indestructible damage sponge no matter the class. In response I've adapted my build to do more and more damage, but now I've reached a point where my survivability is crap, my damage vs 'normal' players is insane, and sustain is decent. However the tankier target's I still just can't really harm despite having invested significantly in armor penetration (maul, sharpened bow, spriggans, Onslaught ultimate that ignores resistance).

The reason we have tanky people is because they enjoy pvp. The reason meta shifted to heavy armor is because damage is way to high.

People enjoy pvp and don't like dieing in 3 seconds so tank meta will always exist because of this.

Derra

Thogard wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Trinity_Is_My_Name wrote: »

Play as you want. Some are Tanky, some are Glass cannons. It is what it is.

The ones that are glass cannons do not know what they are doing.

Sadly. The benefit of investing into dmg stats over sustain or defense is virtually nonexistant.

It’s rare to find a good player that isn’t running damage sets.

This patch made it easy to still be tanky while building for dmg.

There’s no reason to be in a 5pc tank set right now unless you’re targeting a very specific type of medium or large scale gameplay that involves zergbusting in laggy environments

I meant that more along the line of running 2 (or 3 with monster) dmg sets and dmg enchants.
Yes most players wear 1 dmg set. But usually thats accompanied by either a sustain or tank set, tanky or atleast stat oriented jewelry traits and enchants and mundusstone.

I´m not blaming anyone mind you. It´s not that i´m doing anything different.

Iskiab

Derra wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Trinity_Is_My_Name wrote: »

Play as you want. Some are Tanky, some are Glass cannons. It is what it is.

The ones that are glass cannons do not know what they are doing.

Sadly. The benefit of investing into dmg stats over sustain or defense is virtually nonexistant.

It’s rare to find a good player that isn’t running damage sets.

This patch made it easy to still be tanky while building for dmg.

There’s no reason to be in a 5pc tank set right now unless you’re targeting a very specific type of medium or large scale gameplay that involves zergbusting in laggy environments

I meant that more along the line of running 2 (or 3 with monster) dmg sets and dmg enchants.
Yes most players wear 1 dmg set. But usually thats accompanied by either a sustain or tank set, tanky or atleast stat oriented jewelry traits and enchants and mundusstone.

I´m not blaming anyone mind you. It´s not that i´m doing anything different.

That combined with the horrible usual forum advice of telling people to spec glass canon with no defense while learning to pvp.

New players have caught on that they aren’t learning anything constantly respawning and padding other pvp players kill stats.

LordTareq

Iskiab wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Trinity_Is_My_Name wrote: »

Play as you want. Some are Tanky, some are Glass cannons. It is what it is.

The ones that are glass cannons do not know what they are doing.

Sadly. The benefit of investing into dmg stats over sustain or defense is virtually nonexistant.

It’s rare to find a good player that isn’t running damage sets.

This patch made it easy to still be tanky while building for dmg.

There’s no reason to be in a 5pc tank set right now unless you’re targeting a very specific type of medium or large scale gameplay that involves zergbusting in laggy environments

I meant that more along the line of running 2 (or 3 with monster) dmg sets and dmg enchants.
Yes most players wear 1 dmg set. But usually thats accompanied by either a sustain or tank set, tanky or atleast stat oriented jewelry traits and enchants and mundusstone.

I´m not blaming anyone mind you. It´s not that i´m doing anything different.

That combined with the horrible usual forum advice of telling people to spec glass canon with no defense while learning to pvp.

New players have caught on that they aren’t learning anything constantly respawning and padding other pvp players kill stats.

The thing is, two damage sets do work to some extent. You do more damage but are more fragile and/or have no sustain. The latter you can compensate somewhat with the psijic order meditate skill, but you still have more downtime. You need to be really on top of your game though, because as you said you do more damage but die in seconds as a glass cannon. So far this seems balanced.
However from my experience testing a Magblade class cannon, and I mean really going all out on damage, the tanky players, and that is almost everyone these days, they just completely counter it. They survive the burst, heal up to full with minimal effort, then go to town against a glass cannon who just spend half his resource bar on the initial ineffective burst. Good luck.

My stamblade has sacrificed some damage for sustain using bone pirate, pure survivability is poor but I manage. But often I find myself missing the damage to actually finish people. So I'm often forced into kiting people across the battleground for 5+ minutes to slowly grind them down, who has the time for that? Not even these meta brawlers have fun, because its wasting their time too. So they try to disengage. I unload as they retreat, they get pissed enough to re-engage, and the stalemate continues. It has now come to the point where I'm apparently so annoying people start hunting me down with the entire team as their main objective for the match. And they now hump my corpse.

Kidgangster101 wrote: »

LordTareq wrote: »

Anyone else seeing an exponential increase in battlegrounds of these really tanky builds? Lately it seems like every other player I run into is just this indestructible damage sponge no matter the class. In response I've adapted my build to do more and more damage, but now I've reached a point where my survivability is crap, my damage vs 'normal' players is insane, and sustain is decent. However the tankier target's I still just can't really harm despite having invested significantly in armor penetration (maul, sharpened bow, spriggans, Onslaught ultimate that ignores resistance).

The reason we have tanky people is because they enjoy pvp. The reason meta shifted to heavy armor is because damage is way to high.

People enjoy pvp and don't like dieing in 3 seconds so tank meta will always exist because of this.

There is a subtle difference between building so you don't die in 3 seconds, and building so you don't die.

Derra

LordTareq wrote: »

There is a subtle difference between building so you don't die in 3 seconds, and building so you don't die.

The problem has two dimensions though.

1. Not dying in 3 seconds depends very heavily on the player being able to utilize the games active defense mechanics.

2. Because of 1. and ZOS trying to cater to people incapable of fulfilling this requirement gearing allows to build tanky enough to not ever die in 3s.

bardx86

Derra wrote: »

LordTareq wrote: »

There is a subtle difference between building so you don't die in 3 seconds, and building so you don't die.

The problem has two dimensions though.

1. Not dying in 3 seconds depends very heavily on the player being able to utilize the games active defense mechanics.

2. Because of 1. and ZOS trying to cater to people incapable of fulfilling this requirement gearing allows to build tanky enough to not ever die in 3s.

Yup and the game is complete *** now.

Iskiab

I think you guys are looking at it from a dueling or very small group perspective.

Sure in those settings anticipating one person’s actions work and you can block or dodge roll one person’s actions. However, even in a battleground this is impossible because you can’t keep track of what 8 people are doing.

Myself I much prefer building tanky. The whole glass canon thing is ridiculous to me - he who gets the burst/stun combo off wins. I even dislike being grouped in BGs with those type of players because they’re unhealable, so end up being really passive and try to use their team as a shield and blow up in seconds in any engagement.

I don’t know what the game was like before, but building tanky makes the game more like other pvp games where fights aren’t over in less then 5 seconds. ESO is too high damage and healing compared to other games, and building tanky makes the game feel like a proper MMO pvp game.

LordTareq

Kidgangster101 wrote: »

LordTareq wrote: »

Anyone else seeing an exponential increase in battlegrounds of these really tanky builds? Lately it seems like every other player I run into is just this indestructible damage sponge no matter the class. In response I've adapted my build to do more and more damage, but now I've reached a point where my survivability is crap, my damage vs 'normal' players is insane, and sustain is decent. However the tankier target's I still just can't really harm despite having invested significantly in armor penetration (maul, sharpened bow, spriggans, Onslaught ultimate that ignores resistance).

The reason we have tanky people is because they enjoy pvp. The reason meta shifted to heavy armor is because damage is way to high.

People enjoy pvp and don't like dieing in 3 seconds so tank meta will always exist because of this.

I disagree that damage is too high. You need high damage & especially high burst options in PvP to be able to counter healing + mitigation. When this is not in balance, the gap between organized groups in PUGs widens as it means unorganized groups cannot overcome the group AOE healing output + mitigation of the premade, which is most certainly the case in ESO. And even two organized groups against one another can usually not even finish the objectives in the high MMR matches, its just sort of a stalemate that lasts 15 minutes. The match times out and one team wins due to having 1 more kill or they were the first to claim the ball.

Also compared to what PvP games is damage in ESO too high? In my experience most other MMO's have PvP in which you die much faster. My Bountyhunter in SWTOR melted people in seconds. My hunter and warlock in WoW (okey that was 10 years ago) the same. Age of Conan had the most intense and fast paced PvP ever.
Normal builds and even glass cannon ones are also more than capable of surviving for a significant time. I myself with 20k health, only 950 crit resistance and a mere 9k physical & spell resistance can still survive for an extended duration even when multiple people are focusing on me just due to the combination of dodge, my heals, block & cloak. When I die its usually because I either ran out of stamina, end up in the middle of an AOE stacked brawl, or my weapon swap after the dodge roll somehow fails but I can't fault my build for that.
Even the most incompetent glass cannon sorcerer should be able to survive for more than 3 seconds just by alternating the shield and bolt escape.

I think Derra's conclusion is spot on.

dsalter

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

LordTareq wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

LordTareq wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

I doubt it’s actually tankiness considering your setup, you should be bringing people under 20k resistances to near 0.

Sounds more like health regen or lots of self healing. Try and add major defile.

Battlegrounds are no-CP, so its hard to take away 20k resistances.

Well, a sharpened maul would bring someone down to 4K resistances from 20k.

If someone’s indestructible they’re either perma blocking or have really high self healing/health recovery or both. Major defile or fear does the trick.

20000 - (3450 + 2752) = 13798. 20% ignored from maul = 11038 resistance left. Or am I missing something? Anyway I suppose its a combination of defensive PvP sets, self healing, damage shields and defensive class buffs and not only of resistances.

11k resistance is nothing at all practically.

i mean hell my medium armor WW has over 40k resistances and in damage focused gear.

Thogard

Iskiab wrote: »

I think you guys are looking at it from a dueling or very small group perspective.

Sure in those settings anticipating one person’s actions work and you can block or dodge roll one person’s actions. However, even in a battleground this is impossible because you can’t keep track of what 8 people are doing.

Myself I much prefer building tanky. The whole glass canon thing is ridiculous to me - he who gets the burst/stun combo off wins. I even dislike being grouped in BGs with those type of players because they’re unhealable, so end up being really passive and try to use their team as a shield and blow up in seconds in any engagement.

I don’t know what the game was like before, but building tanky makes the game more like other pvp games where fights aren’t over in less then 5 seconds. ESO is too high damage and healing compared to other games, and building tanky makes the game feel like a proper MMO pvp game.

I keep track of 8 people all the time. That’s kind of a requirement for not being a feeder in high MMR BGs

Derra

Iskiab wrote: »

I think you guys are looking at it from a dueling or very small group perspective.

Sure in those settings anticipating one person’s actions work and you can block or dodge roll one person’s actions. However, even in a battleground this is impossible because you can’t keep track of what 8 people are doing.

Myself I much prefer building tanky. The whole glass canon thing is ridiculous to me - he who gets the burst/stun combo off wins. I even dislike being grouped in BGs with those type of players because they’re unhealable, so end up being really passive and try to use their team as a shield and blow up in seconds in any engagement.

I don’t know what the game was like before, but building tanky makes the game more like other pvp games where fights aren’t over in less then 5 seconds. ESO is too high damage and healing compared to other games, and building tanky makes the game feel like a proper MMO pvp game.

Thats fine in my book.

I have nothing against building tanky in general. But i also think building as a glass cannon should be legitimate and vaible - which it currently is not.

The reason i dislike building tanky in eso currently is that it comes without a real tradeoff. A glasscannon makes huge sacrifices in tankiness AND sustain to achieve between 15 and 25% higher damage output.
As a result someone building for tankiness and sustain makes marginal sacrifices in dmg to gain massive sustain and survivability.

The root issue of this is imo defensive sets being magnitudes stronger than offensive sets.

Waffennacht

Derra wrote: »

Iskiab wrote: »

I think you guys are looking at it from a dueling or very small group perspective.

Sure in those settings anticipating one person’s actions work and you can block or dodge roll one person’s actions. However, even in a battleground this is impossible because you can’t keep track of what 8 people are doing.

Myself I much prefer building tanky. The whole glass canon thing is ridiculous to me - he who gets the burst/stun combo off wins. I even dislike being grouped in BGs with those type of players because they’re unhealable, so end up being really passive and try to use their team as a shield and blow up in seconds in any engagement.

I don’t know what the game was like before, but building tanky makes the game more like other pvp games where fights aren’t over in less then 5 seconds. ESO is too high damage and healing compared to other games, and building tanky makes the game feel like a proper MMO pvp game.

Thats fine in my book.

I have nothing against building tanky in general. But i also think building as a glass cannon should be legitimate and vaible - which it currently is not.

The reason i dislike building tanky in eso currently is that it comes without a real tradeoff. A glasscannon makes huge sacrifices in tankiness AND sustain to achieve between 15 and 25% higher damage output.
As a result someone building for tankiness and sustain makes marginal sacrifices in dmg to gain massive sustain and survivability.

The root issue of this is imo defensive sets being magnitudes stronger than offensive sets.

Thing is, I don't even need defensive sets to build mad tanky builds.

I can build tanky via health and health scaling abilities
Or
I can build tanky via block and inter woven defensive ults
Or
I can build mad tanky via mitigation channels and stacking resistance

But tanky comes from many different sources

olsborg

Heavy meta aside, zos keeps handing out mimor and major protection ontop of giving ppl other ways to reduce dmg by a %. This is creating a meta that makes it really hard to die outside of lagg or getting straight zerged. They need to basicly revamp pvp combat imo..