How did you learn to DPS?

MudcrabAttack

How did you learn to do the thing?

By watching videos? Getting help from other players? Trial and error?

Light attack weaving or heavy weaving: do you do it, and at what point did you start doing it?

Personally I started with trial and error for years, then went to online sources, watched videos of meta builds, and it took me a long while to do light attack weaving around skills. I was RPing years before getting into PVE. DPS was a very awkward thing to do at the start, and took months to get used to. But now I can light attack weave without using any thought, it’s a built-in reflex.

The issue I’m running into is trying to help friends who want to learn dps in a brief explanation. It’s like trying to give them a crash course on flying a plane. I was a very patient player when learning, and didn’t mind spending months to get adequate at weaving light attacks around skills. But what might be a good fast-track method to learn DPSing? I found out that you can build very decent DPS without any weapon attacks at all, save for an occasional heavy attack:

https://www.esologs.com/reports/Gv3qWJHmzMyAftRQ#fight=last&type=damage-done&source=1

In light of this, does it even make sense to focus on weaving at the start? I’m starting to think perhaps a rotation of skills is more important to learn initially.

As a reference I’m in my fourties, played FPS games for years, and the old coffee addled brain doesn’t take change very well. Every new thing beyond pointing and shooting takes a while to learn. The friends I want to help are also my age, sort of, but not as patient since they aren’t as invested in the game as I was.

etchedpixels

Actually I would argue that the most important thing to learn early on is block, dodge-roll and interrupt. Even with bad DPS that'll get you a long way.

The other bit depends. If you have the mindset to spend ages parsing on dummies doing light/skill/light/skill then add in a skill or two and then bar swaps whilst looking at data then great. If you need an insta-result option then build a one bar stamplar and learn jabs/light/jabs/light whilst pasting bosses. After that you can add in other skills and bar swaps.

The nice thing about the stamplar is you really can get to the point of feeling like you are death incarnate without mastering the complex rotations of other classes, so it's a good motivating way to learn. It's still my favourite build for playing in brain-off relaxing mode.

RBAP28

The way I help people learn to weave and animation cancel is to;
1. Get a cheap spam ability and only LA/ability until you understand how it looks and feels. Knowing the abilities
animation and when to cancel is the most important.
2. When it gets easy to cancel the spam skill, use a Dot on the same bar and add a LA after.
3. Put the Dot on your back bar and after doing a couple LA/ability front bar switch to back bar and use Dot followed by a
LA then swap to front bar and start over.

After a while it becomes muscle memory and you can start adding more skills.

Vevvev

Someone told me how things scaled shortly before Summerset came out with the Psijic Skill line. When I got ahold of Imbue weapon it forced me to light attack weave, and by light attack weaving my damage and skills improved. Then I got ahold of the Clockwork target dummy and kept practicing on it over and over again. I refined my techniques from there.

Ciotola

I learned to do dps by not indulging a bug never corrected by the beta: I tank

Merlin13KAGL

MudcrabAttack wrote: »

It’s like trying to give them a crash course on flying a plane.

What a terribly perfect analogy.

I think most people learned it by accident with bar swap cancel being the first to jump out at you and going from there.

It's still not as intuitive as I think it should be, and would still like to see something in game to help people correct minor timing issues.

Not everyone is going to pour through metrics logs and translate that into actionable data. While you can try to explain it all day long, sadly, it's one of those things that just suddenly has to "click."

Then, once you know it, you can't un-know it, but passing on that to others isn't so easy to do.

For the ones doing it wrong, they're going to be doing it wrong in their own way. I haven't seen someone that can train another without a lot of time involved, and not everyone is going to Patreon the likes of Liko for $300, no matter how much your DPS goes up.

phaneub17_ESO

I don't weave... I spam skills nonstop then heavy attack when low. Don't care what anyone thinks of my damage, it's all about the shinies and pretty colors!

Amottica

I learned by playing. Sure, when I finished leveling up guildmates helped me with my build as I was new to the game but it takes practice to do it well.

OWLTHEMAD

In my case when teaching noobs i start with figuring out a basic skill rotation without making them practice it.

First i have them practice on the dummy just weaving spammable and LA.

Once they have that reasonably down i have them add their second skill. Then the third, then the fourth and so on untill they have a full rotation.

Within a few hours, assuming gear and other requisite stats are addressed, they will have a perfectly functional dps for vet content.

Not earning any skins but its a great start.

After that just play through base game content and world bosses so they get used to doing the full rotation on enemies while under fire.

After that i send them to vet maelstrom.

They dont have to beat it, but the arena WILL make you a better player in terms of mechanic, enemy pressure, and general reaction times.

After that theyre on their own. Gotta research and optimise to get better.

fizl101

By joining a guild and realising pretty quickly that me thinking I was good because I could do overland no problem actually meant my DPS was about 7k

These days the first thing I tell people when they ask how they can improve their dps is to slow down with hitting buttons. GCD is only 1 second so if you hit two skills in that time you are wasting your time.

If they have a set with stacks like rele, I tell them to put it on (doesn't matter what traits as long as they have 5 pieces) and then slow right down just doing a light attack and a spammable and watch that they can keep the 10 stacks up at a really slow speed. Doesn't need to be against a dummy, it could just be facing a wall if the spammable allows.

Once you can do that add in another skill into the rotation, then another etc. After you have that you can start trying to speed it up to get to around 55 or so skills a minute

Usually people have farmed sets because they have read they are BIS, but don't get much out of them because of things like having to keep stacks up, or with Bahsei having to keep magicka low and so on. Not everyone is a theorybuilder (including me) so I can understand that, but can help with the bit they can control, their practice on their rotation.

UglyTriangle

I learned from other people. A guildie took the time to help me understand gear and skill setups, then gave me the rotation to practice with on the dummy. I was parsing all the time until I finally hit a point where I was getting stuck around 85k-ish. I had to watch a few videos to understand how to correctly LA weave (text descriptions didn't make sense for LA weaving on a controller).

Personally, I had a big learning curve coming from a different MMO that I played for over a decade. It was rocky to fully grasp the different combat system - IMO it takes time to get it. Not sure that there's really a quick way to boil it down to where someone can pick it up and run.

thorwyn

I learned it by watching a couple of videos and lots and lots of practicing. Just like you, I'm coming from a FPS background, played Quake 3 on a competitive level back in the days, so my hand-eye coordination and reflexes are still ok for my age (I'm older than you are ). Still, ESO is different because it is a combination of muscle memory, endurance and awareness instead of just reflexes.
Combat metrics, LA helper and combat metronome proved to be quite helpful to improve my rotation. The ability to analyze your logs and spot potential weaknesses like lost light attacks ins invaliable. Bit by bit, I worked my way up from 50-60 like 2 years ago to 80 and 90 and eventually 110 these days. It is a difficult process though and without a decent amount of patience, I don't think it's possible.

ixthUA

When i played LA2 20 years ago, DPS consisted of using same ability over and over. The only way to improve DPS was to improve equipment, and it had a chance to fail and destroy it in the process.
Then i moved to RFO, there characters had several abilities with cooldowns. After hundreds of hours of mob grind, i noticed i can use more abilities if i use those with short cooldowns first and those with long cooldowns second. That game also had very powerful healing potions on 3 sec cooldown, so if someone wanted to kill an enemy - they needed to do good DPS, otherwise enemy would just heal - it was a very good incentive for everyone to improve their DPS.
Then, coming to ESO, i learned to appreciate DoTs - they do way more damage per cast than direct damage abilities, it was a new thing for me.
I do the most DPS on my healer - around 20k single target on a boss.

MEBengalsFan2001

Here are my thoughts on being a damage dealer in any mmo game. Play a healer or tank first. Learn all the mechanics of dungeons, trials, etc... it will make being a damage dealer easier.

Once you get comfortable as a support player create a damage dealer build with proper gear, stats, etc.. than go to a parsing target to learn rotation of abilities with light attacks. Person doesn't need to spend hours on end at the sparing target but long enough to know their rotation and how to be fairly effective with light weaving. since lag can mess up anyone rotation.

That player will be a decent damage dealer because they will know the content mechanics and know their rotation. Knowing mechanics is IMO is the most important part of being a damage dealer because when you are dead you damage output is zero. And having played a few different MMO games and playing mainly as support I've picked up my fair share of damage dealers that simply spent more time dead than alive but where great when they weren't dead but died a lot because they cared more about their rotation than doing mechanics.

Vaoh

Overland questing, PvP, occasional normal dungeons where I would died over and over.... all of this back when ESO launched on PS4. I actually had to follow combat mechanics in Overland (for Vet Rank zones) because proc sets, infinite resources, and inflated character stats didn't exist.

Now I have all the trial trifectas including Planesbreaker.... my experience was pretty much the ideal way to play imo. I just had fun and got better and better until I accomplished everything. This is not the experience new players will have. I feel they will mostly have to watch tons of eso videos and dps parse like it’s their second job before they can even join progs

fizl101

thorwyn wrote: »

Combat metrics, LA helper and combat metronome proved to be quite helpful to improve my rotation. The ability to analyze your logs and spot potential weaknesses like lost light attacks ins invaliable. Bit by bit, I worked my way up from 50-60 like 2 years ago to 80 and 90 and eventually 110 these days. It is a difficult process though and without a decent amount of patience, I don't think it's possible.

As a console user - monitoring relequens stacks and then parsing on the dummy was my LA helper and combat metronome lol. I would love a few more tools to help with that on console, but I don't think that likely

Artim_X

I was struggling with clearing vet maelstrom arena so I started watching Deltia to get a better understanding of how I could improve.

After that, clearing the arena 100+ times for a single fire staff drop helped me become a better player.

thorwyn

As a console user - monitoring relequens stacks and then parsing on the dummy was my LA helper and combat metronome lol. I would love a few more tools to help with that on console, but I don't think that likely

Get a metronome app for your smartphone and set it to a 1 second click or ping. It really helps.

Araneae6537

I had a breakthrough today, doing much as has been suggested here and by my awesome encouraging guildies!

I put aside all thoughts of DPS, only focused on I’m going to finally learn this light attack weaving and so just hit my LA then spammable each GCD, click-boom, click-boom, felt like I was standing there watching the combat metronome bar more than actually doing anything but it made me finally get it and then I added in a few more skills from that bar, then bar swapping. In just one day I’ve gone from a panicked turbo-clicked hand-cramping 45k to a steady sustainable 60k.

Every parse my numbers are tighter; with more practice and gear optimization, I think I’ll actually do alright!

fizl101

thorwyn wrote: »

As a console user - monitoring relequens stacks and then parsing on the dummy was my LA helper and combat metronome lol. I would love a few more tools to help with that on console, but I don't think that likely

Get a metronome app for your smartphone and set it to a 1 second click or ping. It really helps.

Yep do that too - Currently my rate is 56 - I miss LA at 60 as I am a jabby stamplar and that 0.8s channel is a killer

Everest_Lionheart

fizl101 wrote: »

thorwyn wrote: »

As a console user - monitoring relequens stacks and then parsing on the dummy was my LA helper and combat metronome lol. I would love a few more tools to help with that on console, but I don't think that likely

Get a metronome app for your smartphone and set it to a 1 second click or ping. It really helps.

Yep do that too - Currently my rate is 56 - I miss LA at 60 as I am a jabby stamplar and that 0.8s channel is a killer

57 BPM is about as high as you will want to go on console. But even on magplar I feel better about 56. I’ve pushed MagDK and Stamden to 58 a few times but ground based dots can sometimes miss if you aren’t exact with the timing especially if you bar swap cancel the animations or if you take a synergy right afterwards. Necro faces a similar issue with boneyard and Templar with shards. At 56 everything will land, at 57 you need to check the synergy thing at 58 you better be right on the money.

Vevvev

Araneae6537 wrote: »

I had a breakthrough today, doing much as has been suggested here and by my awesome encouraging guildies!

I put aside all thoughts of DPS, only focused on I’m going to finally learn this light attack weaving and so just hit my LA then spammable each GCD, click-boom, click-boom, felt like I was standing there watching the combat metronome bar more than actually doing anything but it made me finally get it and then I added in a few more skills from that bar, then bar swapping. In just one day I’ve gone from a panicked turbo-clicked hand-cramping 45k to a steady sustainable 60k.

Every parse my numbers are tighter; with more practice and gear optimization, I think I’ll actually do alright!

Sees Araneae6537 light attack weaving.
"What are they doing?"
"They're beginning to believe."

Mesite

I'm too casual (lazy) to improve my DPS. I only play as a healer in dungeons.