(Poll) How would you rate the roles in terms of difficulty to play?

Grandchamp1989

Poll: Which of these roles would you say is the easiest?
Comment: Which of these roles would you say is the hardest to master?

Criteria:
We're talking all the content that's expected of said role so:
PVE: Base game and DLC Vet Dungeons and Trials
PVP: Cyro, IC, Battleground, Duels

Kurat

All roles are easy if you're being carried.

Grandchamp1989

Healer (PVE) is generally the easiest to play

Kurat wrote: »

All roles are easy if you're being carried.

lolol just when I thought I covered everything in the poll you prove me wrong.

CrashTest

Healer (PVE) is generally the easiest to play

I play all 3 roles.

The following rankings are in order from easiest to hardest:


Difficulty based on rotation: heals, tank, DPS

Difficulty based on gear (number of sets needed, upgrade costs): DPS, heals, tank

Difficulty based on ongoing cost to play role: heals, tank, DPS (pots are expensive!)

Difficulty based on learning role: heals, tank, DPS

Difficulty based on mastering role: heals, tank, DPS

Difficulty based on situational awareness: DPS, heals, tank

Difficulty based on finding groups: tank, heals, DPS

Ryuvain

Cats are kinda cute

From hardest to easiest I'd say DPS, PVP, Tank, Healer.
Dps has to worry about rotation, resource, best gear, meta skills, and other such things.
PVP you just need to counter opponents, dodge skills, and generally react to them with skill and good setups and gear.
Tank has to worry about mechanics, taunts, and boss/add control.
Healer mostly has to just stay alive and keep everyone else alive. Can sprinkle a bit of damage in.

derpy_cat1234

OP You're comparing apples and oranges - the roles can not be compared in terms of difficulty in ESO

PvE dps or tank is the hardest depending on the trial/dungeon of course. Healer is generally ez mode but obviously you need a lot of exp to master and have high uptimes on sets and also have high dps as an off healer in certain content. Tho i cant talk about pvp and dont think pve roles and pvp is comparable

pod88kk

PVP is generally the easiest to play

Even if you're a really bad player you could run with a 40+ ball group and never take a hit while earning similar amounts of AP to a good player

nukk3r

OP You're comparing apples and oranges - the roles can not be compared in terms of difficulty in ESO

In PvE when your DDs are bad, it's hard to play support. When your tank is bad, it's hard to play DD. When your healer is bad, it's not the end of the world but can be noticeable in some cases, especially when the buffs and orbs aren't there.

In PvP you need a bit of everything and it requires more awareness that PvE.

pod88kk wrote: »

Even if you're a really bad player you could run with a 40+ ball group and never take a hit while earning similar amounts of AP to a good player

40+ is basically a faction stack and a good target for an actual 8-12 players ball group.

emilyhyoyeon

idk why PVP is in the poll. Pretty sure healers have harder rotations than DDs but no one plays healers to their full potential. Anyway I think for most people tank is the easiest, but it's the hardest for me even though I play it the most because of sensory issues that make me sometimes process a HA animation as a bash mechanic, and a bash a HA, for example

Contaminate

Healer (PVE) is generally the easiest to play

PvE tanks definitely have to highest learning, they’re also the most at the mercy of the group. Surviving forever stops being a blessing when your dps can’t break 10k between them.

As a healer main, it’s definitely the easiest. Rotations are simpler, gear choices are varied and typically easy to acquire (except you Hollowfang Lightning staff, damn you). But, you’re also usually unneeded outside dungeon achievement hunting and trials.

CaffeinatedMayhem

Damage Dealer (PVE) is generally the easiest to play

PvP cannot be compared to PvE, totally different skill sets.

for PvE:

DPS: have 2 sets per meta change (3 if monster helm changes) Maybe have to change red CP on a few trials. 1 rotation. Stay out of the red. Will be let into any group as long as you have decent skills.

Tanks/Healers: a million sets. It's a constant grind, and we are switching sets during trials and gearing differently for every trial, dungeon and arena.

Tanks/Healers do not have "rotations" - support reacts to everything that's going on. IN a perfect setup we would go through a set of actions... nothing is ever perfect. DPS stand in front of the boss and die? Now tank has to move the boss so the rez can go through.

Healers need to generally know the fight: stay out of the red and watch out for everyone being stupid

Tanks need to know what *everyone* in the fight is doing, to know which way to turn the boss, how to manage incoming damage. Most fights have multiple strats, good tanks are expected to know them all.

Tanking normal dungeons is EASY, tanking vet trials is HARD. Tanking Arenas is even harder (so much trash....)

I DPS when I'm half asleep and can't tank. Healing never clicked with me, but I do have a healer, and I do heal trials.
I can't tank half drunk (unless you want to die), I can DPS without thinking about it.

Tanking is hardest, healing is hard, DPS is mindless. Don't @ me.

RebornV3x

OP You're comparing apples and oranges - the roles can not be compared in terms of difficulty in ESO

Each role has its challenges
Tank- Once you have the skills you need learning the basics is easy knowing mechanics goes along away knowing where to position a boss or adds makes a decent tank into a great tank the only problem with tanking content if a tank dies in a vet trial or vet dlc dungeon that's usually a group wipe... So the margin for error is slim unlike with dps where if a few dps go down usually isn't as bad

Healer- Overall the easiest role especially if your a Templar or Warden all classes and builds have some sort of self healing or way to mitigate damage so being a healer can be easy or harder depending on the group and with one shots so prevalent in vet dlcs there just not much you can do being flexible and having different gear sets ready to swap out depending on group needs can be a pain.

DPS- While anyone can dps being a good dps is probably the hardest role. DPS is king in ESO even 1 bad dps can derail a whole dungeon or trial so there's alot of pressure to make sure your gear is maxed out and rotation is optimized.

MorganaLaVey

Damage Dealer (PVE) is generally the easiest to play

i wonder how many of the people who say Healer is easyer then DPS have ever realy playd healer
Met lots of good DPS who were just crap healers they are prob the ones who say its easyer and its not even taken sets like Zen or MK in account

VaranisArano

I would say that the unscripted nature, speed, and variety of PVP combat make it harder to both jump into as a new player and to master as an experienced player. And the ability of the player to persevere despite many, many deaths along the way.

Which is not to diminish the effort of mastering various PVE roles, but its much easier to start PVE group content and a lot more support for PVE progression.

Whereas PVP throws new players into the deep end to duke it out with experienced players. Learning how to survive, how to kill, building up the right reflexes...all that is learned through the school of hard knocks unless you have friends or a guild to help out.

Araneae6537

Healer (PVE) is generally the easiest to play

I love playing healer, but have to admit it’s probably the easiest role, especially if the rest of the group knows what they’re doing.

Tank seems to me the most challenging role as you especially need to know all the important mechanics of the encounters and maintain aggro without the benefit of area taunts.

DPS you have attack weaving and some ideal rotation to worry about... and know that you are being quantified and judged...

Flaaklypa

PVP is generally the easiest to play

change my mind

Moonsorrow

Cats are kinda cute

frontend wrote: »

change my mind

Nothing gonna change your mind. Or mine..

Malacath + strong promcs combination has allowed it (pvp) to become easy, and thus boring the longer this meta is here to stay.

50k hp ProcDens and Archer Legolas3000 teams with all just spamming PI for Sheers and Giggles, oh the joy of current pvp/s

What is left? Building a troll tank also to stalemate everyone on those kinda setups.

I want good old stat playing back..

Aznarb

Healer (PVE) is generally the easiest to play

Healer > DD > Off-healer > Tank > Off-Tank.

Healer is by far the easiest, put aoe heal, keep few uptime up, throw ressource, done.
DD is a close second, learn rotation, spam it in every content, most DD that suck don't put enough time in practice.
Off-healer, have to do the both previous.
Tank have many very punishing mec to deal with + keeping uptime + ressource management + have to adapt to many different fight + High pressure on the player, if he die, usually everyone follow.
Off-Tank : Need to be good at everything to be good.

I obviously speak for endgame, in base DG/trial everything is easy.

Won't speak about pvp, as far as I remember it was brain-dead anyway, tank build vs gank build, each of them asking to nerf the other one.

Mindcr0w

I'm going to ignore pvp as it is its own entity quite separate from pve.

But in terms of the pve trinity, ESO is the only MMO I have ever played where playing dps well (emphasis on well) is the hardest trinity role. Usually dps is the easiest role and healing/tanking are considered to require more skillful play. Not in ESO. The amount of actions per minute a good (again emphasis on good) dps needs to put out, along with the heavy reliance on attack weaving (a wholly unintuitive system that is actually a bug that is only in the game because the coders couldn't figure out how to remove it), and parsing makes finding good dps very difficult.

Look at how many guilds have more support role players than they need, but struggle to fill dps spots with people who can hit hard enough to clear higher end content. Even accounting for there being more dps spots in any dungeon or trial group than support roles the issue would be exactly the opposite in just about any other MMO. My guild almost always has extra support players who get left out of a trial because other support players beat them to the sign up sheet, but struggles to get the dps spots filled. It is absurd.

Attacking things is the most basic sort of action one can take in this sort of game, and it should be the simplest to do well

Faylestar

Damage Dealer (PVE) is generally the easiest to play

MorganaLaVey wrote: »

i wonder how many of the people who say Healer is easyer then DPS have ever realy playd healer
Met lots of good DPS who were just crap healers they are prob the ones who say its easyer and its not even taken sets like Zen or MK in account

Based on comments, theres a lot of "healers just have to keep a heal or two up". Thats the same as those garbage tier dps who jut mash keys.

If you're using actively potting top end potions on cooldown as your baseline for DPS, the equivalent healers are juggling a 9-10 ability cooldown priority rotation for keeping up relevant buffs, debuffs, dots, and at least one healing field to proc sets, while, weaving in heavy attacks and spot healing.

Kurat

MorganaLaVey wrote: »

i wonder how many of the people who say Healer is easyer then DPS have ever realy playd healer
Met lots of good DPS who were just crap healers they are prob the ones who say its easyer and its not even taken sets like Zen or MK in account

Healers are only needed in vet trials. In dungeons they are mostly dead weight unless they pull enough dps. Even in trials most healers just get carried.

Linaleah

Healer (PVE) is generally the easiest to play

MorganaLaVey wrote: »

i wonder how many of the people who say Healer is easyer then DPS have ever realy playd healer
Met lots of good DPS who were just crap healers they are prob the ones who say its easyer and its not even taken sets like Zen or MK in account

I main a healer for two reasons.
1. becasue i genuinely enjoy healing and it was my main role in multiple trinity based mmo's for over a decade.
2. in ESO - healing is the most forgiving role in part due to smart heals eliminating virtually all of manual triage.

because of how combat is structured.

I have never EVER played another MMO that made dps as difficult to do well as ESO does.
followed by tanking since in other MMO's I've tanked in, not only tanks are given AoE taunts along with single target, but just by the virtue of being in tank spec, everything you do generates extra thread, so controlling pulls is far FAR easier.

dps in ESO has a LOT more responsibility and its much harder to pull high or even mid range numbers. so in THIS specific game, dps is generally the hardest role IMO, with possible exception of certain tank intensive fights in trials. and even then.

healing is the easiest. even in harder fights, compared to dps and tanks - healing is easier. in hard fights it might not be easy per se, but its easier then tanks or dps, comparatively speaking.

Linaleah

Healer (PVE) is generally the easiest to play

Faylestar wrote: »

MorganaLaVey wrote: »

i wonder how many of the people who say Healer is easyer then DPS have ever realy playd healer
Met lots of good DPS who were just crap healers they are prob the ones who say its easyer and its not even taken sets like Zen or MK in account

Based on comments, theres a lot of "healers just have to keep a heal or two up". Thats the same as those garbage tier dps who jut mash keys.

If you're using actively potting top end potions on cooldown as your baseline for DPS, the equivalent healers are juggling a 9-10 ability cooldown priority rotation for keeping up relevant buffs, debuffs, dots, and at least one healing field to proc sets, while, weaving in heavy attacks and spot healing.

nope. even accounting for that, healing is still easier.

one exception. if you are running with a group that is... lets just say not ideal, then healing becomes harder, but even THEN. tanking for less then ideal group is harder then healing for less then ideal group, and even for a brilliant dps - it becomes exponentially more difficult to play as you now have to compensate for groups numbers WHILE trying to stay alive.

CaffeinatedMayhem

Damage Dealer (PVE) is generally the easiest to play

I think this thread is teaching that many players:

1. Have no idea what a good healer is.
2. Don't know what a good tank is.
3. Don't know that top tier DPS isn't needed for any base game dungeon, and not even to clear vet DLC's. Honestly, you can clear many vet trials with mediocre DPS.
4. Think all those DPS making the finder queue long are animation canceling. Hoo boy, do I have news for you...

Starlight_Whisper

Each role has their own job

Kurat

CaffeinatedMayhem wrote: »

I think this thread is teaching that many players:

1. Have no idea what a good healer is.
2. Don't know what a good tank is.
3. Don't know that top tier DPS isn't needed for any base game dungeon, and not even to clear vet DLC's. Honestly, you can clear many vet trials with mediocre DPS.
4. Think all those DPS making the finder queue long are animation canceling. Hoo boy, do I have news for you...

I also have news for you. Tanks and healers are not needed at all for base game dungeons norm or vet, you can steamroll everything with 4 mediocre dps. Tanks are only needed for vet dlcs with 3 mediocre dps.

CrashTest

Healer (PVE) is generally the easiest to play

MorganaLaVey wrote: »

i wonder how many of the people who say Healer is easyer then DPS have ever realy playd healer
Met lots of good DPS who were just crap healers they are prob the ones who say its easyer and its not even taken sets like Zen or MK in account

I don't know about others, but for me, there is absolutely no comparison between a DPS rotation and a heals rotation.

DPS is by far the more complex and less forgiving, thus more difficult If you fail your DPS rotation, your damage output drops significantly. If you fail your heals rotation, you can quickly rebound and make up for it with little consequence bc heals have fairly flexible rotations in that there is no real set rotation.

Heals are very reactionary and situational. Whereas DPS must adhere to a fairly rigid rotation or suffer damage loss - even the so-called dynamic DPS rotations are pretty static. For me, this is why DPS can get boring and healing is more fun.

rpa

Cats are kinda cute

Solo survival dps is the easiest. Don't have notable experience in tanking or healing in this game but I in other games I find catching the healing dummies wildly running around and dodging aoe heals oddly difficult compared to dps or tank duty.

novemberhhh

Cats are kinda cute

It's not really that any role is particularly easy or difficult, just different. And there's a very wide margin between playing as whatever role by clicking on the icon in group menu, and actually being good at that role.

Tabbycat

Cats are kinda cute

I think everybody has a different idea of what is easier/harder to play.

As you become more skilled in a role, that role becomes easier for you over time.

For a more competent and experienced player, all of them may become easy for them to play.

In terms of learning how to play each one effectively, if I had to guess, I would say the tank's job would be the hardest to learn how to do effectively, whether that is main tank or off tank. And that would only be for the most difficult content where mistakes could not be easily overcome by the rest of the group.

pihlaja

Healer (PVE) is generally the easiest to play

CrashTest wrote: »

I play all 3 roles.

The following rankings are in order from easiest to hardest:


Difficulty based on rotation: heals, tank, DPS

Difficulty based on gear (number of sets needed, upgrade costs): DPS, heals, tank

Difficulty based on ongoing cost to play role: heals, tank, DPS (pots are expensive!)

Difficulty based on learning role: heals, tank, DPS

Difficulty based on mastering role: heals, tank, DPS

Difficulty based on situational awareness: DPS, heals, tank

Difficulty based on finding groups: tank, heals, DPS

I agree with this. Healer feels easiest to play in terms of completing content when the rest of the group knows what they are doing, but learning to play healer really well feels quite complicated, because there is no simple single number or value (like dps for DDs) which you can just stare to evaluate whether you are doing really well or just barely hanging there and doing the bare minimum. I’m quite new as a healer and I’m struggling to evaluate if I’m having good enough uptimes and coverage for buffs and debuffs, giving enough orbs and resources and at the same time having good enough uptimes for heals. And for the sets; some lightning staves don’t really seem to exist (hollowfang, olorime...), which limits the support potential, but that’s more about how hard it’s to obtain all of the needed gear (as a DD main, I’m actually quite surprised how many sets a well equipped healer needs), not the player skills. And yes, I see the role more as a support function for resources, buffs and debuffs on top of the heals.

Edit. I mainly play healer in vet DLC dungeons and normal trials.