Frustrated with with combat in ESO. I need help!

remo51731

I’m frustrated with the combat in this game.

Been a member for a while, but I’m coming back after not playing for a few years. Just coming back and it seems things have changed a bit. I’m very frustrated with the combat in the game. It seems I’m getting my butt kicked, by what I assume to be fairly easy quests. I eve got smashed by a gyphon the other day. I’m guessing the combat system has changed significantly.

So I’ve searched through some posts. A lot of people post that they have no problems with some of the Non-player battles I’m having difficulties with. K’Tora was one of them. Then I thought I’d clean up the Theives guild quests and got murdered by Captain Virindi in the Thrall Cove, in like 4 seconds. Then an ogre and gryphon kicked me to the curb. Obviously I’m doing something wrong.

I built my character to be a meat-eater. My armor is set for stamina, I’m swinging a battle axe. A lot of my skillpoints went to crafting, but I’ve got a few built around combat.

I’m frustrated with some of the posts. They don’t seem to offer any real help, but most just brag that I shouldn’t be having trouble with these battles. No one really offers significant help, However, one post I read said that “new people aren’t really instructed on how the ESO combat system works” and I thought that was insightful. I’m sure my thinking is old school. My intent was to bash/hack every bad guy to death, but obviously, that isn’ working any more. I could use some help.

Should I re-distribute my Champion points?
Should I re-distribute my Skill Points?
Should I change my armor to more health boosts and enchantments?
Should I alter my playing style and run away more?
Should I use more magic and less weapons?
Should I start over with my char build with a different focus?
I bulk up with a meal before every battle, but it doesn’t seem to help that much.
My cool down with a healing potion is a long time. I’m only able to drink 1 per battle.

My current build is a Redguard, DragonKnight, Champion level 213. I’ve got armor and weapons sets, created when I hit level 160 (which I think is the highest I can go). The armor/Weapons are a set of 5 for Hundings Rage and 2 that are Night Mothers Gaze. All have enchantments for Stamina, I believe.

Cuirass - Hundings Rage - Heavy, divines, stamina
Girdle - Hundings Rage - Heavy, divines, stamina
Helm - Hundings Rage - Heavy, divines, stamina
Greeves - Hundings Rage - Heavy, divines, stamina
Gauntlets - Hundings Rage - Heavy, divines, stamina

Pauldron - Night Mothers Gaze - Heavy, divines, stamina
Sabaton - Night Mothers Gaze - Heavy, divines, stamina

Main Weapon - Battleaxe - Night Mothers Gaze, sharpened, weapon damage
Second Weapon - Bow - Night Mothers Gaze, Sharpened, weapon damage.

Necklace - Agility, robust, weapon damage
RingR - Agility, robust, weapon damage
RingL - Agility, robust, weapon damage

I’m happy to provide any other data for my character if it would help. Any constructive help would be welcome.

Thanks,

Remo

TheImperfect

I've found sometimes trying different skills out can help, the things you are using together might not work well. I'm not too familiar with stamina dragonknight or I would be more helpful but maybe someone can step in here and help. Alcast has some very clever character setups that a lot of people find helpful. Just Google 'Alcast stamina dragonknight '. Good food helps a lot. The self heal resolving vigor is good (I think that's what it's called) Generally roll dodging and keeping out the way of attacks and trying to interrupt attacks helps. You could try heavy armor for difficult bosses but it will take a lot longer and shouldn't be necessary for gryphons. The skills you are using might just not work well for your playstyle, try changing it up a bit. Maybe find someone in guild who has the same character type and can guide you.

the1andonlyskwex

remo51731 wrote: »

A lot of my skillpoints went to crafting, but I’ve got a few built around combat.

I'm curious what this means. You should probably make sure you have the following before dumping too many skill points into crafting:
1) At least 10 active skills and 2 ultimates, all morphed and equipped
2) All of your class passives (unless you know for sure something doesn't help your build, like Master Assassin on a Dark Cloak Nightblade)
3) Most of the passives for your equipped weapons
4) All of your racial passives
5) Armor passives for your dominant armor type

VaranisArano

Okay, first off, I wouldn't feel too bad about those fights. K'Tora is a tough fight if you aren't used to long waves of adds. Virindi, IIRC, is a World Boss.

Second, seven pieces of heavy armor looks like a tank build. With overland content it's often more efficient to focus on dealing more damage, quickly, than to try to outlast NPCs.

For your specific build, I would recommend trying Medium Armor. Medium Armor passives will buff your Stamina and your damage with stamina-based weapons like Two-handed and Bow. If you find you need more health, its often easier to just get a good food/drink buff like Dubious Camoran Throne or Bewitched Sugar Skulls.

If you want help with a specific "rotation" of skills, let us know. I find that overland content doesn't necessarily need that, but it can help.

Beyond that, here's some specific things to keep an eye on.
If you are dying due to running out of stamina: work some heavy attacks into your rotation to restore some stamina. Also, light attacks don't cost stamina.

If you are dying due to not dealing enough damage: you can practice light attack weaving where you use a skill then light attack in the same second.

If you are dying due to lack of on-demand healing: consider using a Stamina heal like Vigor (obtained via PVP) or a weapon skill that heals like a couple of the Dual Wield morphs.

If you are dying due to waves of adds: try to use AOEs like Endless Hail to soften them up, kiting them around in it if necessary, without using too much of your Stamina. (Against K'tora, I kited him and the adds around in my AOE while light attacking K'tora to death and using heavy attack to keep my resources high.)

If you are dying to combat mechanics: make sure you've got combat cues on and they are a color you can see (default red, mine are set to bright purple). You want to pay attention and block, dodge, and interrupt these mechanics whenever you can.

Hope this helps!

VaranisArano

Also, a small tip for using Two-handed Reverse Slash (that you might already be doing): use Settings to show you the percentage of enemy health so you can see when the execute will take effect.

p00tx

You got beaten up by a world boss. On console, I'm a CP 1400 with tons of experience in PvE, and last time I tried to pick a fight with that world boss, I got my butt whooped twice before I managed to kill them. Don't be too hard on yourself. You just maybe need to mess with your CP a bit, put a good heal on your bar, and start learning to move more evasively (blocking, roll dodging, etc). Stam has fewer healing options than mag, but you also have the major evasion skill in the medium armor skill line if you build into medium armor. It can do wonders for keeping you alive in some instances.

TheImperfect

Indeed died like 10 times yesterday to the wraith of crows. Even with 4 other players and several of them died repeatedly too.

remo51731

mrsrobot wrote: »

I've found sometimes trying different skills out can help, the things you are using together might not work well. I'm not too familiar with stamina dragonknight or I would be more helpful but maybe someone can step in here and help. Alcast has some very clever character setups that a lot of people find helpful. Just Google 'Alcast stamina dragonknight '. Good food helps a lot. The self heal resolving vigor is good (I think that's what it's called) Generally roll dodging and keeping out the way of attacks and trying to interrupt attacks helps. You could try heavy armor for difficult bosses but it will take a lot longer and shouldn't be necessary for gryphons. The skills you are using might just not work well for your playstyle, try changing it up a bit. Maybe find someone in guild who has the same character type and can guide you.

I'll try googling Alcast, thank you. I suspect I don't use roll-dodging effectively. I'll have to practice that. It seems when I do that, I get hit anyway by whatever spell is being cast, or whatever attack is being done. Thanks for the help.

remo51731

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

remo51731 wrote: »

A lot of my skillpoints went to crafting, but I’ve got a few built around combat.

I'm curious what this means. You should probably make sure you have the following before dumping too many skill points into crafting:
1) At least 10 active skills and 2 ultimates, all morphed and equipped
2) All of your class passives (unless you know for sure something doesn't help your build, like Master Assassin on a Dark Cloak Nightblade)
3) Most of the passives for your equipped weapons
4) All of your racial passives
5) Armor passives for your dominant armor type

By that I mean, this was my first character, so a lot of my time was spent advancing crafting. I suspect that I need to re-organize these a bit and build another character for crafting. Thanks for the advice on skill re-allocation. I don't have all my passives to be sure, but I've got some. I'll try that. There must be a way to pay to reallocate those or to get more skill points.

Everest_Lionheart

mrsrobot wrote: »

Indeed died like 10 times yesterday to the wraith of crows. Even with 4 other players and several of them died repeatedly too.

Those DLC bosses and world bosses are way harder than most of the vanilla game bosses also. I was helping some lower level players today in Elsweyr on the sword master boss. 3 of them between level 19-25. No way they are tackling a few of those bosses unless they know mechanics. Fortunately sword master is a good place to practice mechanics. Now those guys got tripped up on mechs a bunch but I carried them through it.

zvavi

Make sure to eat food. Food is good for the soul.

Joxer61

give this a look......
https://xynodegaming.com/murder-of-fire/

VaranisArano

remo51731 wrote: »

the1andonlyskwex wrote: »

remo51731 wrote: »

A lot of my skillpoints went to crafting, but I’ve got a few built around combat.

I'm curious what this means. You should probably make sure you have the following before dumping too many skill points into crafting:
1) At least 10 active skills and 2 ultimates, all morphed and equipped
2) All of your class passives (unless you know for sure something doesn't help your build, like Master Assassin on a Dark Cloak Nightblade)
3) Most of the passives for your equipped weapons
4) All of your racial passives
5) Armor passives for your dominant armor type

By that I mean, this was my first character, so a lot of my time was spent advancing crafting. I suspect that I need to re-organize these a bit and build another character for crafting. Thanks for the advice on skill re-allocation. I don't have all my passives to be sure, but I've got some. I'll try that. There must be a way to pay to reallocate those or to get more skill points.

My main character is also my crafter, so it can be done, so long as you hunt for skyshards. I do strongly suggest you make your crafter the character you learn motifs with since that increases you chance of getting master writs.

Rungar

Sounds like you just need vigor from the alliance line. Go dual weild so you can heal yourself better until you get that.

Major_Lag

remo51731 wrote: »

I’m very frustrated with the combat in the game. It seems I’m getting my butt kicked, by what I assume to be fairly easy quests. I eve got smashed by a gyphon the other day. I’m guessing the combat system has changed significantly.

So I’ve searched through some posts. A lot of people post that they have no problems with some of the Non-player battles I’m having difficulties with. K’Tora was one of them. Then I thought I’d clean up the Theives guild quests and got murdered by Captain Virindi in the Thrall Cove, in like 4 seconds. Then an ogre and gryphon kicked me to the curb. Obviously I’m doing something wrong.

To be honest... yes, it does sound like you are doing something wrong.

Specifically, it sounds like you haven't paid appropriate attention to healing and/or mitigating the damage your character receives.
For any character build to be viable in combat, it must have - at the very minimum - at least one reliable means of healing through the damage they will inevitably end up "eating".

On a stamina build (as in your case), there are 2 good heals you can use: Vigor and Rally, both available to any class. Every class also has access to one or more class-based healing abilities.

Finally, I would advise against using heavy armor unless you specifically want to perform the tank role in group content - wearing 5+ pieces of heavy in overland content is like shooting yourself in the foot knee, because your offensive stats will be abysmally low (making fights take a very long time) and also making many of your heals weak (because most healing effects scale off of your offensive stats).

vesselwiththepestle

Heavy Armor isn't actually bad for world bosses, I do that sometimes, too, but I am at max CP. With more CP you get a lot of more damage mitigation and I wouldn't feel bad to not be able to do world bosses solo on a Stamina character with so few CP. When you are doing group content, you should wear 7 medium armor, though. You are losing a lot of dps by wearing heavy armor.

You might want to get a monster set, like Kra'gh (Fungal Grotto 1 vet). You could keep 5 Hunding's on the body and switch to another set on Jewelry + Weapons. You might even want to do Maelstrom Arena NORMAL to get a Maelstrom Bow. You might

remo51731 wrote: »

Should I re-distribute my Champion points?

Your red cp, you should have put CP into Ironclad, Thick Skinned, Elemental Defender, Hardy. This offers you usually the best mitigation. If you visit Alcasthq, you can just use his CP distribution or use it as a guideline, if you have distributed totally different it might help a bit.

Should I alter my playing style and run away more?

You are not playing a kite class. Do you have Vigor (Alliance War) and Rally (2h) to heal? Keep up Vigor all the time (use the yellow, 10s morph for that), also Rally should be running for a possible burst heal if you need it. It's all about ressource management and you need to block (!) or roll dodge in the right moment. Also if you can interrupt a mechanic you should do it (just bash the enemy). Try to look out if you can interrupt an attack or you have to block it (it's explained in the tutorial).

Should I use more magic and less weapons?

You should go either Magicka or Stamina, although on a Stamina DK you still have some good class abilities which cost Magicka. While soloing hard bosses, you might like to have your DK shield (Volatile Armor).

I bulk up with a meal before every battle, but it doesn’t seem to help that much.

Uh, even the simple buff food should last at least an hour. You might check that you are using the best buff food, scaling to 160 CP and buffing health + stamina.

Main Weapon - Battleaxe - Night Mothers Gaze, sharpened, weapon damage
Second Weapon - Bow - Night Mothers Gaze, Sharpened, weapon damage.

Never put the same enchantment on both weapons. Use weapon damage on your buff, but make it an infused bow. You can proc the weapon damage enchantment even when you are on your front bar, when you make use of endless hail. On your front bar you can use a poison enchantment or those poisons you craft with alchemy.

eKsDee

VaranisArano wrote: »

If you are dying due to not dealing enough damage: you can practice light attack weaving where you use a skill then light attack in the same second.

Just want to mention, it's the other way round. Light attack, then skill. Skills override light attacks, but light attacks don't override skills, so by leading with a skill, you'll have to wait until the skill's animation is finished before you can follow with a light attack, which ends up feeling clunky, and defeats the purpose of weaving since you're forced to slow down.

Athyrium93

If you want to stick with heavy armor (not optimal but unless your doing vet group content will be fine) you should slot green dragon blood for big heals 33% of your missing health is a lot if your on a tank stacking health (anything over 30k makes it pretty good) put a damage enchant of some kind on your front bar weapon, use potions not for health but for buffs.

Your build honestly looks pretty close to a pvp build, so if that's something your interested in it could work pretty well.

If your health isn't over 30k or you want to do more damage in general, swap to medium armor and get the passives (unless you do sneaky stuff you can ignore the sneak passive) then go get vigor from the pvp skill line.

You aren't doing bad at all, those bosses are difficult and kill even really good players.

remo51731

Joxer61 wrote: »

give this a look......
https://xynodegaming.com/murder-of-fire/

A ton of good information in this ref link, thanks! I'm going to have to digest this and take notes. It does rely on monster dropped armor and weapons, though. That's always frustrated me, since in most cases, I get killed by those sorts of bosses taking them on solo.

Also, what is VMOL?

Danksta

You should have a skill to heal yourself so you don't have to rely on potions for a heal.

Sunderling

Hi friend.

I'm fairly new, I also have a stamdk. Argonian though.. bad pick for DPS, but will turn it into tank later.

Anyway, I use the exact same gear build you do but with a 2h gs and bow backbar.

I put most of my CP points into mighty, or any other stat that directly deals with dmg and poison/disease.

I use Venom, that flame breath skill I forget the name of with poison, I use endless hail from the backbar, often starting with that at range, I use cleave for for dungeons and wreckless blow (or whatever the name is) for my primary spammable until execution or reverse slice, pending which I bothered to put in, is viable. I use the group weapon buff (molten weapons?) as well.

I find my damage is alright! I'm only CP 190 something myself, but I haven't had a ton of trouble in vet dungeons yet, mind you I haven't done the very last few.

I can imagine a world boss would stomp on me too. I think it's probably that you're in mostly heavy gear which robs you of medium gear dmg bonus and also that your points probably need to be redistributed.

Sunderling

Danksta wrote: »

You should have a skill to heal yourself so you don't have to rely on potions for a heal.

Also this, using Vigor or I suppose green dragon blood.. I use vigor myself.

For additional dps I will also use Flames of oblivion... in pvp I switch that to Cauterize for additional heals.

newtinmpls

remo51731 wrote: »

Necklace - Agility, robust, weapon damage
RingR - Agility, robust, weapon damage
RingL - Agility, robust, weapon damage

So far no one seems to have spoken to this; I would strongly urge you to look into Monster helms and go two 5-peice sets and a Helm/Shoulders.

Sunderling wrote: »

Hi friend.

I'm fairly new, I also have a stamdk. Argonian though.. bad pick for DPS, but will turn it into tank later.

For me, I start a character as a tank if I want to end as one; it gets me much more in tune with actually using the skills.

TheImperfect

I'm sorry I just didn't notice in your original post that you were in all heavy gear, I just had in my mind medium being a stamina character. I do generally as a stamina player wear medium but for hard stuff swap it to heavy occasionally. It sometimes makes things take a lot longer to kill but I tend to survive better but is mostly unnecessary, only for hard world bosses and if there aren't many other players helping. Generally medium is better because it helps from the passives for doing damage and restoring stamina etc.