Role playing and end game consequences

KennyAr

I am relativly new to the game. Now I am role playing two chars, may turn one of them into a vampire,

1) a necromancer 2H/SNB heavy armor/health tank
2) a necromancer 2H/destro staff mage fighter, heavy armor/health

One at level 35 the other 25. By far it's less of an issue in doing the PVE contents.

My question is how the builds will be with end game contents. Will they surfer from the lack of magicka or stamina due to the heavy armor/health build, or will there be the lack of attacking power due to the tank build and possibly be unable to efficiently solo the end game PVM contents?

Generally how is the performance of the tank builds in terms of soloing end game contents?

Your inputs are much appreciated. Thanks.

Major_Lag

KennyAr wrote: »

Generally how is the performance of the tank builds in terms of soloing end game contents?

Most ESO endgame content is group content, you won't normally be soloing much (or any) of it unless you are in it for the extra challenge.
There are no special rewards for soloing group content, in fact you get WORSE rewards than if you did it with a group.

The only endgame content which is intended to be soloed (in fact, there is no other possible way other than soloing it) is vet Maelstrom Arena.

And to answer your question: most of the soloable content "can" also be soloed on a tank build... it will take longer than forever though, as "full tank" builds are generally incapable of dealing any more than pitifully low damage.
There are special "tanky DPS" builds in existence for such use cases, it's somewhere in the middle between a proper tank and a proper DPS - both in terms of survivability and damage output.

To put an example in numbers - my 38k HP real tank (for vet content) does about 4k DPS on a good day.
But my ~22k HP very tanky petsorc can easily do upwards of 15k DPS in actual content (not on a dummy), on a good day being able to break 20k if the nature of the content allows it.

KennyAr

Major_Lag wrote: »

KennyAr wrote: »

Generally how is the performance of the tank builds in terms of soloing end game contents?

Most ESO endgame content is group content, you won't normally be soloing much (or any) of it unless you are in it for the extra challenge.
There are no special rewards for soloing group content, in fact you get WORSE rewards than if you did it with a group.

The only endgame content which is intended to be soloed (in fact, there is no other possible way other than soloing it) is vet Maelstrom Arena.

And to answer your question: most of the soloable content "can" also be soloed on a tank build... it will take longer than forever though, as "full tank" builds are generally incapable of dealing any more than pitifully low damage.
There are special "tanky DPS" builds in existence for such use cases, it's somewhere in the middle between a proper tank and a proper DPS - both in terms of survivability and damage output.

To put an example in numbers - my 38k HP real tank (for vet content) does about 4k DPS on a good day.
But my ~22k HP very tanky petsorc can easily do upwards of 15k DPS in actual content (not on a dummy), on a good day being able to break 20k if the nature of the content allows it.

Thanks, truly insightful.

I have another question. Why the back bar of most tank builds is a destro staff but not something else. I can understand that a tank better has SNB as its front bar, but why so many buids using a destro staff as the back bar. Is there any special reason for this?

pelle412

KennyAr wrote: »

I have another question. Why the back bar of most tank builds is a destro staff but not something else. I can understand that a tank better has SNB as its front bar, but why so many buids using a destro staff as the back bar. Is there any special reason for this?

Tanks use destro staves on backbar for two reasons primarily. One, the glyph of crushing. This is an important debuff that a tank can apply to the target. As you may know, glyphs on 1h weapons receive half their value, so it's ideal to apply to a 2h weapon, destro staff one such example. This debuff lasts for 5 seconds. The destro staff has a skill called elemental blockade. It lasts up to 14 seconds. When the tank puts down the elemental blockade, the first target receives the crusher debuff. After 5 seconds the debuff expires but the next tick of the blockade automatically reapplies it, and once more after 10 seconds. It is very convenient to not have to micro-manage the uptime of this debuff. It's much easier to look at your elemental blockade timer and just re-cast it before it expires. The second benefit of shock destro staves is that they can apply off-balance if the target is already concussed. Off-balance is a state which has benefits for the group. Ice staves do not offer this benefit, but instead they can offer much better blocking mitigations. Which one you use is a matter of personal choice, the shock staff being the stronger group-benefit wise.

Major_Lag

Also, about roleplay in endgame content in general:
Unless you run in a guild (and/or with friends), prepare to get frequently kicked from endgame content if you are using very "unusual"/"RP looking" builds in random (groupfinder) groups.

For example, showing up to a veteran dungeon as a "tank" with dual wield+bow, or as a DPS with 1H&S on any of your bars.
It does not matter that your build may be perfectly viable for the content involved; some people will consider your "wrong" weapon type(s) a sign that you queued as a fake role (and/or that you have absolutely no idea what you should be doing) and initiate a vote kick.

Then there's also the matter of veteran trials: many raid groups will not let you freely choose your own gear and ability setup, because it's up to the raid leader to decide the most optimal group composition.
So your options boil down to:

• doing vTrials with friends or guildies who won't mind your (quite possibly suboptimal) RP setup,
• try to find a more casual progression raiding guild who will let you do that (but be prepared to fail... a lot... as that's what progression raiding involves),
• paying vast amounts of gold for a carry,
• if all else fails, stick to normal trials instead.

Having said that... if your idea of RP revolves around tanky heavy armor builds, your best and safest bet is to do endgame group content as the tank role.
Due to the nature of the tank role, the absolute minimum requirements are very low: 1. don't die, and 2. keep the most dangerous enemies taunted.
(1) should not be a problem if your build is technically sound and you can deal with the content's mechanics.
(2) requires using a taunt of some form, either from a slotted ability (1H+S weapon skill or Undaunted ranged taunt) or from a frost staff heavy attack.

etchedpixels

KennyAr wrote: »

I am relativly new to the game. Now I am role playing two chars, may turn one of them into a vampire,

1) a necromancer 2H/SNB heavy armor/health tank
2) a necromancer 2H/destro staff mage fighter, heavy armor/health

One at level 35 the other 25. By far it's less of an issue in doing the PVE contents.

My question is how the builds will be with end game contents. Will they surfer from the lack of magicka or stamina due to the heavy armor/health build, or will there be the lack of attacking power due to the tank build and possibly be unable to efficiently solo the end game PVM contents?

Generally how is the performance of the tank builds in terms of soloing end game contents?

Your inputs are much appreciated. Thanks.

I'd say - don't worry about it. By level 50 you'll have a pair of free respec scrolls and enough gold to do respecs anyway. The game designers actually thought that one out. At that point you can decide if you want to turn your character into something a bit different or create a new one.

Also once you've gotten to 50 CP 160 once you should find that knowing the ropes you can level more characters pretty fast.

MrBrownstone

There is no point in using heavy armor on a damage dealer, if you just want your character to look like they're wearing heavy armor, use the outfit system. Bu actually wearing heavy armor and investing in health, you're crippling that character. Same for the hybrid style, mage + warrior is not effective since most stats focus on increasing your physical or spell damage so trying to increase both instead of focusing just one will split your resources, ending up as a weak character

KennyAr

Thanks guys for your valuable inputs.

I will continue with my 1H$S+2H tank to see where he can get to. Perhaps will finally tweak it to a tank for the endgame contents. I have another more typical DPS char which is a level 42 Khajiit DW/Bow stam necro (somehow I enjoy playing with the necro skills). So another option is to use the DW necro for endgame contents while keeping the other two chars for role playing only.

Grianasteri

KennyAr wrote: »

I am relativly new to the game. Now I am role playing two chars, may turn one of them into a vampire,

1) a necromancer 2H/SNB heavy armor/health tank
2) a necromancer 2H/destro staff mage fighter, heavy armor/health

One at level 35 the other 25. By far it's less of an issue in doing the PVE contents.

My question is how the builds will be with end game contents. Will they surfer from the lack of magicka or stamina due to the heavy armor/health build, or will there be the lack of attacking power due to the tank build and possibly be unable to efficiently solo the end game PVM contents?

Generally how is the performance of the tank builds in terms of soloing end game contents?

Your inputs are much appreciated. Thanks.

Playing Hybrid builds can be fun when you are engaging with basic story and overland content. However if you are thinking about end game content, or even just normal and veteran dungeons, hybrid builds become far more problematic and in most circumstances (outside of a few niche hybrid builds) the characters performance will be well below par and you will struggle to have a positive impact in dungeons, arenas, trials.

A focus on either magica or stamina is strongly advised, so no combining 2H with, staffs, both draw damage from your max stat, so if you spread your magic/stamina, both will be far lower than otherwise focusing on one. Or if you do focus but still use both weapon types, one will clearly be hitting like a wet noodle.

I have a vamp necro tank that rocks 2H and SB, it works fine and is fun. He was designed to deal far more damage than an average tank, Still has 35k health and all the main tank skills needed, but with Alkosh and the ability to take my own synergies, it can kick out about 15k dps on a dummy (last time I tried which was a long time ago), which for a tank I think is pretty good.

p00tx

Don't worry. At the rate the devs are going, you'll be able to get Godslayer with those builds by the time you're 400cp.

idk

Major lag hit on some good points, that most of end game is group content outside of the solo arenas.

First, the solo arenas will use different builds than the group content since the focus is different as we have to rely on ourselves for everything.

As for the group content and your builds, you will probably be able to find a nice social guild that does normal trials and dungeons and will be accepting of the builds. For more challenging PvE content, high health and S&B are not common because neither are associated with strong damage dealing and neither build is ideal for tanking either.

However, you are fine doing what you want to do leveing up and running around overland. Depending on how serious you want to get at end game you can seek advice based on your interests then and it is not hard to update ones build. Many of us have done it many times over the years.

Good luck and enjoy the game.