Roles, characters and builds

ajkb78

So many of the discussions here seem to be people complaining about having to change one skill, one weapon or one part of their rotation, or that X role is under valued, I thought I'd offer a different perspective.

ESO isn't about fixed roles, it's about characters and how they engage with the content the game offers. By thinking in rigid terms like "I'm a DD" or "I'm a healer" one limits one's engagement with the game. It's understandable, in a way, because you can set up a character as a cookie cutter DD or a cookie cutter single setup healer with a bare minimum of skill points. Nowadays you can even set up as both, using armoury slots to switch around the skills required. But if a character only has that bare minimum of skill points, and only ever carries one set of gear then they can't adapt at all to different content, or even different groupmates playing the same content.

Consider the possibilities of a more rounded character. My main is a sorcerer but that's about all that's fixed about her. She has every skill line except bow and WW maxed, and over 400 skill points which are all allocated and all get regular use. Sometimes she'll be wearing meta DD gear (sometimes staves, sometimes daggers etc. with minimal self heals and rely on heals from other players, sometimes she heals herself, sometimes she might slot the matriarch and provide off heals, sometimes maybe wear support sets and a resto staff and provide more heals and buffs. Sometimes she might stay in light armour but slot inner rage and take care of the bosses in normal difficulty; for harder stuff, she might put heavy armour on and go 'full tank'. She does like summoning things but whether it's a scamp, tormentor or matriarch, or one, two or none at all varies again.

The mix of skills, attributes, damage output, self healing, healing of others and damage mitigation is a rich and complex one in ESO and it deserves far more than the 3 basic 'roles' of tank, DD and healer. The only place it's worth thinking in those terms is when queuing for the group finder, and only because you need a rough idea of how to set up your character so that together with the other 3 they form a rounded team, but even then there's a lot of freedom in how to fulfil the role as long as you cover the basics. Light armour tank? Fine, if it works for you and you can keep the boss taunted and survive. Healer that does nothing but heal? Fine, if that's what your group needs, but equally it's fine to complete a dungeon with everyone providing heals as well as damage.

If we can stop thinking strictly in terms of "my toon is a healer" or "my toon is a DD" and start thinking in terms of "what does my toon need to bring to this group / content" I think we might enjoy our toons more for the characters they are rather than the basic roles we try to shoehorn them into.

Treeshka

Tanking is not always about keeping the taunt of the boss, and healing is also not about healing all the time in this game. In end game content tanks are supposed to hold the boss and apply reduction to their resistances, applying damage buffs to the group through sets.

I want to point out, in this game whatever you do in normal content and overland zones does not matter. Overland and normal content does not require any damage dealer role, healer role and tank role. Just put any gear on you and spam light attack you can do any quest in the game and any normal dungeon in the game. Maybe not in five minutes but you can do it believe me.

So this game is good for now in terms of roles. Characters might not be perfectly balanced but roles are balanced. There are some issues, or design decisions when it comes to the end game raiding compositions though, in terms of classes. Since some classes give your group certain buffs which other classes or any set in game can do which leads some classes not favored towards certain roles.

SeaGtGruff

About roles in overland-- they can help if there are two or more players doing "group" content (whether or not they're actually grouped together), such as a World Group Boss or a Group Dungeon. I think experienced players can handle these okay, but less experienced players on low-level characters may lack the skills and gear needed to stay alive without someone else healing them or tanking for them. Dragons would probably be the ultimate example of this.

EozZoe1989

new stuff is always the rage on the games these days.. it seems people like new content and more lore .. its super good and i can say i love it too takes time for me to get he content .. but i do eventually.. the story is amazing and the maps--wow loving it...

Ksariyu

I really wish the game actually favored this mindset more. But it's just not how the community feels overall, and it's not something the game encourages even slightly. Just the fact that it requires a respec to swap between Carve and Brawler, for example, puts a very definitive roadblock against characters being flexible. There are many morphs in the game where the difference between each is basically the content you would use them for, or the specific role you choose, but rather than make both accessible, they force you to go through respec-ing. I know it's cheap, I know it's not difficult, but it is an unnecessary barrier either way. Stats are similar. The fact that skills still inexplicably scale off your max resource means that you're nerfing yourself if you mix your stats, and again, you have to go to a shrine and pay to swap them.
The armory was a bit of a band-aid for this issue, but it's just that, and once again the best way to use it is to spend crowns which. . . no.

Supreme_Atromancer

I think its a very valid way to think, but the Holy Trinity is still the design assumption for all pve outside of solo arenas, and therefore the easiest way for many players to engage the game. I don't believe there's anything wrong with that, or subscribe to this notion that its training wheels that any true gamer must learn to throw off in order to become the real deal.

Specialisation of roles has been a thing in RPGs forever, and the way that RPGers tend to think. People LIKE to think of themselves in the traditional heroic roles. People want to feel like healers, protecting and healing their group, or destruction mages burning down their enemies (though I do think that "tanks" should evolve now. It was always a lazy concept that didn't make much sense, and I can't see why tanks shouldn't also be able to contribute a more significant part in direct damage). This is what zos is speaking to when they design for trad roles, and if the real experience ever becomes that roles are usually obsolete outside the top percent of players, then zos will have failed at making that work. Despite what certain echo chambers...echo though, this isn't the reality today.

Of course you should always keep an open mind regarding the challenges that content throws at you, and if for your group that means self heals on 3dds, then go for it. There's no real problem here except for this push to reframe and leverage "what ESO actually is" such that it must reflect only the way you engage the game, and the lack of consensus that its the true right way, and the problems that causes when what you think isn't necessarily agreed upon by the pugs in your random. Unfortunately for the case you're trying to make, debating with a few randoms on The Forums isn't going to change the fact that roles are suggested in the core of the game, are probably a deliberate design choice meant to appeal to an audience of people who do want to play roles, and is naturally the way that many people are naturally going to tend to think and **want** to play.