I think the game balance is broken.

ImmortalCX · June 19

Last night did vet random and got spindleclutch.

After the first pull the tank left group. Then the healer left. I figured it had to do with the other DPS running ahead and just burning stuff down, after all vet spindleclutch is pretty easy.

I am CP900, the other dps was CP2000ish and he was doing a ton of damage so I thought we could clear it.

I am no slouch in vet content although my stamblade build is not meta, I do have good gear sets, stack crit, enchants and food. And I use all my cooldowns. In most vet dlc I am doing 45% of the damage +/- (unless a dps has queued as tank, in which case Im doing 30-35%) so I figure I am about average compared to other high-cp pug dps. In non vet I am usually doing 60-70%.

In last nights run, I was doing 30%, and the other dps was legit doing 70%. He had green beam. I don't know what class he was, he either had a taunt slotted or had an aoe that aggroed trash so I wasn't being targeted much. His companion was healing. ( I dont have a companion). He was a "do everything" build, he was holding aggro and doing 70% dps, and surviving no problem. And his rotation was simple, it was mostly green beam.

I think what has happened is that arcanist was OP to begin with, and now that class can pull in other skill line passives, it is completely OP. So much that you don't even have to respect dungeon roles any more.

I admit I don't know the specifics of his build, and it was very optimized, but I have never had an experience where I was completely outclassed on dps. I'm not hating on the other player, its just that this seems broken. I know I could go out and duplicate his build if I had the time/knowledge and farmed trial gear, but I'm not complaining about lack of balance so much as how power creep just breaks content.

I don't know how they can fix this.

jaws343 · June 19

It's going to pretty much be most builds at this point. I threw together a pet heavy attack build last night, still missing some passives in the new skill lines, and the build did 88K for me on an unfamiliar rotation. I expect it to pass 100K once I have passives and familiarity with the rotation. And this build is very unoptimized in favor of just having max pets. The heavy attack build pre-patch was doing ~75k.

A truly optimized build is going to do far, far more than that.

ImmortalCX · June 19

jaws343 wrote: »

It's going to pretty much be most builds at this point. I threw together a pet heavy attack build last night, still missing some passives in the new skill lines, and the build did 88K for me on an unfamiliar rotation. I expect it to pass 100K once I have passives and familiarity with the rotation. And this build is very unoptimized in favor of just having max pets. The heavy attack build pre-patch was doing ~75k.

A truly optimized build is going to do far, far more than that.

I haven't even thought about subclassing because I thought it would just be another minor boost. But stacking skills for the passives and using an OP spammable just means everything is a faceroll one button build now.

I only have a vague idea of the specifics, but I am guessing that most classes have a dps skill line with major passive boosts. So instead of getting passives from that skill line (and maybe fighters/undaunted/mages) they are also getting the passives from other class dps skill lines.

Heronisan · June 19

Literally almost every single player is running beam, its crushing everything else with good margin, there are some single target builds that can do like 10k more dps, but they are single target (also arcanist usually) and dont come close to the efficiency of killing adds so far away you cant even see them, nor do they have such a simple rotation, so average player cant pull it off. Its OP beyond belief right now. Amazingly there are people out there who think only end gamers play the meta. But end gamers are usully the ones who can do off meta builds.

Desiato · June 19

This isn't a new thing. Vet spindleclutch was easy for all classes to solo with a dps meta build prior to u46. Beam isn't necessary.

This is why players say full tanks and healers are not required for normal and vet base game dungeons.

But also yes, balance is completely broken compared to before. This happens all the time in ESO. vMOL and vSS used to be TOUGH, but haven't been to meta players for many years.

ImmortalCX · June 19

Desiato wrote: »

This isn't a new thing. Vet spindleclutch was easy for all classes to solo with a dps meta build prior to u46. Beam isn't necessary.

This is why players say full tanks and healers are not required for normal and vet base game dungeons.

But also yes, balance is completely broken compared to before. This happens all the time in ESO. vMOL and vSS used to be TOUGH, but haven't been to meta players for many years.

I know vet spindleclutch is easy, but based on the dps comparison it is broken to a degree I didn't understand.

It just feels dumb. I pug vet dungones and usually vet dlc are a challenge, and involve knowing mechanics. But if I'm dps and the other dps is 50% more damage because he bought arcanist and subclassed, it makes the game feel unfun.

I own arcanist and can do the same thing, but it invalidates everything I have done with my stamblade. Old sets in ESO still have use, but old CLASSES are now obsolete. This was a bad bad bad change.

I don't want to play green beam, nor do I want to be an NPC in dungeon runs.

katorga · June 19

Players are doing random vets to get exp to level skill lines. One vet and an exp scroll will get you 1-25 in a skill line. They have to group to get the exp.

Once players have Herald of the tome, or are an arcanist, they can solo all 90% of vet, 1-2 of them in a group and the other players are superfluous. I started with a basic Sorc heavy attack build to level 2 skill lines at a time. Once the beamers get going, I cannot even finish a full heavy attack channel except on bosses, maybe.....

Fatecarver + CP covers all your healing needs. You kill so fast you don't need tanks. Any other build is just carried and not offering dps fast enough.

Desiato · June 19

ImmortalCX wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

This isn't a new thing. Vet spindleclutch was easy for all classes to solo with a dps meta build prior to u46. Beam isn't necessary.

This is why players say full tanks and healers are not required for normal and vet base game dungeons.

But also yes, balance is completely broken compared to before. This happens all the time in ESO. vMOL and vSS used to be TOUGH, but haven't been to meta players for many years.

I know vet spindleclutch is easy, but based on the dps comparison it is broken to a degree I didn't understand.

It just feels dumb. I pug vet dungones and usually vet dlc are a challenge, and involve knowing mechanics. But if I'm dps and the other dps is 50% more damage because he bought arcanist and subclassed, it makes the game feel unfun.

I own arcanist and can do the same thing, but it invalidates everything I have done with my stamblade. Old sets in ESO still have use, but old CLASSES are now obsolete. This was a bad bad bad change.

I don't want to play green beam, nor do I want to be an NPC in dungeon runs.

You don't have to. What the dude you're describing did, I do on every class. If you want to see vet dungeon trash melt, try a stamden with tarnished nightmare and sul-xan! And I'm not an elite player, I'm old and slow, but I am a gamer. I run strong builds and min max. It's rare I do less than 70% of the damage in a pug. But lately, I've noticed more strong parsers in dungeons as they experiment with builds and progress subclassing.

Not that % of damage is a good gauge. If you want to know how you stack up against other players, the way to do that is with target dummies -- particularly the 21M trial dummy because it is most commonly used.

Arcanist and beam are so widely used because they are easy to use, not because a pure arc represents peak power. Especially Pragmatic Fatecarver. The most powerful single target herald builds do not use beam. Beam isn't even optimal for the use case you're describing because abilities like swallow soul and puncturing sweep are much better for soloing bosses.

preevious · June 19

I agree with Desiato, on that one.

Beamers are not that powerfull, in the long run.
In trials, they do more damage than me on trash, I do more damage than them on bosses.
Differents use cases use different builds.

So, yes, it's the great ratio investment/return that makes beamers builds popular.

Renato90085 · June 19

Vet basegame dungeon very easy,not need really broken unbalance subclass arc do this, all class can easy do samething

JaxontheUnfortunate · June 19

Yeah as a tank if dps keep pulling mobs then clearly I am not wanted so I will generally bounce on the group. I expect that behaviour in normal not vet.

Sarannah · June 19

Players were already doing vet dungeons easily, even before subclassing. Other players doing more damage and having more survivability only helps you when you are grouped with them.
Other players doing more damage and having more survivability also grows the endgame community by a very large margin of players, as more players will be able to do that endgame. Not just the handful of two-bar/weaving players.

That said: To me it seems you are guessing someone left because of subclassing, but the truth may be that that tank simply got annoyed due to someone else running ahead and aggroing everything. As a tank, that is dang annoying! Especially since we can't re-taunt everything right away, due to single target taunts only. And if we have to rush after that dps at the same time, we won't have any stamina left to do any taunting anyways, even if we were to keep up. This game is heavily weighted against tanks/tanking, so I can understand why he left.

Subclassing isn't always the big bad some claim it to be.

JaxontheUnfortunate · June 19

Yeah it’s not subclassing that is the big issue, it’s more the mentality that tanks and healers are not required.

ImmortalCX · June 19

JaxontheUnfortunate wrote: »

Yeah as a tank if dps keep pulling mobs then clearly I am not wanted so I will generally bounce on the group. I expect that behaviour in normal not vet.

The truth is honestly, that the tank and healer werent needed.

The healer wasnt needed because of his companion. A companion can keep up the healing on two dps pretty well.

Game is borked.

Dungeons were the one area that ESO excelled. They were accessible with varying levels of challenge. PVP has been broken forever, but the dungeons were the reason to play eso. Now they don't even care about balancing to that.

sarahthes · June 19

ImmortalCX wrote: »

JaxontheUnfortunate wrote: »

Yeah as a tank if dps keep pulling mobs then clearly I am not wanted so I will generally bounce on the group. I expect that behaviour in normal not vet.

The truth is honestly, that the tank and healer werent needed.

The healer wasnt needed because of his companion. A companion can keep up the healing on two dps pretty well.

Game is borked.

Dungeons were the one area that ESO excelled. They were accessible with varying levels of challenge. PVP has been broken forever, but the dungeons were the reason to play eso. Now they don't even care about balancing to that.

Are the 2 newest dungeon HMs as trivial as vet Spindleclutch?

ZOS should balance around the newest content. Not the oldest.

ImmortalCX · June 19

sarahthes wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

JaxontheUnfortunate wrote: »

Yeah as a tank if dps keep pulling mobs then clearly I am not wanted so I will generally bounce on the group. I expect that behaviour in normal not vet.

The truth is honestly, that the tank and healer werent needed.

The healer wasnt needed because of his companion. A companion can keep up the healing on two dps pretty well.

Game is borked.

Dungeons were the one area that ESO excelled. They were accessible with varying levels of challenge. PVP has been broken forever, but the dungeons were the reason to play eso. Now they don't even care about balancing to that.

Are the 2 newest dungeon HMs as trivial as vet Spindleclutch?

ZOS should balance around the newest content. Not the oldest.

Its not that spindleclutch is too easy, its that an arcanist hybrid build is doing 50% more damage trivially with an easier rotation.

Its not hard to extrapolate that four players with this level of power will stomp any content.

And if they tune the content so that it provides a challenge for those players, then my old nightblade class is obsolete.

sarahthes · June 19

ImmortalCX wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

Players were already doing vet dungeons easily, even before subclassing. Other players doing more damage and having more survivability only helps you when you are grouped with them.
Other players doing more damage and having more survivability also grows the endgame community by a very large margin of players, as more players will be able to do that endgame. Not just the handful of two-bar/weaving players.

That said: To me it seems you are guessing someone left because of subclassing, but the truth may be that that tank simply got annoyed due to someone else running ahead and aggroing everything. As a tank, that is dang annoying! Especially since we can't re-taunt everything right away, due to single target taunts only. And if we have to rush after that dps at the same time, we won't have any stamina left to do any taunting anyways, even if we were to keep up. This game is heavily weighted against tanks/tanking, so I can understand why he left.

Subclassing isn't always the big bad some claim it to be.

I said the tank left probably because the other dps was run

sarahthes wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

JaxontheUnfortunate wrote: »

Yeah as a tank if dps keep pulling mobs then clearly I am not wanted so I will generally bounce on the group. I expect that behaviour in normal not vet.

The truth is honestly, that the tank and healer werent needed.

The healer wasnt needed because of his companion. A companion can keep up the healing on two dps pretty well.

Game is borked.

Dungeons were the one area that ESO excelled. They were accessible with varying levels of challenge. PVP has been broken forever, but the dungeons were the reason to play eso. Now they don't even care about balancing to that.

Are the 2 newest dungeon HMs as trivial as vet Spindleclutch?

ZOS should balance around the newest content. Not the oldest.

Its not that spindleclutch is too easy, its that an arcanist hybrid build is doing 50% more damage trivially with an easier rotation.

Its not hard to extrapolate that four players with this level of power will stomp any content.

And if they tune the content so that it provides a challenge for those players, then my old nightblade class is obsolete.

Most players aren't that good even with the general power boost, in my experience.

Desiato · June 20

ImmortalCX wrote: »

Its not that spindleclutch is too easy, its that an arcanist hybrid build is doing 50% more damage trivially with an easier rotation.

Its not hard to extrapolate that four players with this level of power will stomp any content.

And if they tune the content so that it provides a challenge for those players, then my old nightblade class is obsolete.

It was the other player doing more damage than you, not the class. I routinely out-damaged Arcanists in pugs with my parse-healer nb in u45 and pretty much every time when I was queued in as a DD. An nb with soul harvest can basically soul tether every trash pack.

This is what my stamden did to u45 dungeon trash:

Yes, the Arcanist rotation is simplistic to be sure, but it doesn't result in a 50% damage increase over a non-beam build! Beam builds are slightly sub-par compared to optimal single target builds.

The skill cap for Arcanist was slightly increased from u45 to u46 because it's not as easy to sustain.

You should explore the trial community for perspective. There you can see the parse results from hundreds of other players including their builds.

Here's a strong single target parse from a guildmate I just grabbed quickly from discord:

They do less damage with beam builds.

FeedbackOnly · June 20

Arcanist dps needs a nerf

ImmortalCX · June 20

Desiato wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

Its not that spindleclutch is too easy, its that an arcanist hybrid build is doing 50% more damage trivially with an easier rotation.

Its not hard to extrapolate that four players with this level of power will stomp any content.

And if they tune the content so that it provides a challenge for those players, then my old nightblade class is obsolete.

It was the other player doing more damage than you, not the class. I routinely out-damaged Arcanists in pugs with my parse-healer nb in u45 and pretty much every time when I was queued in as a DD. An nb with soul harvest can basically soul tether every trash pack.

This is what my stamden did to u45 dungeon trash:

Yes, the Arcanist rotation is simplistic to be sure, but it doesn't result in a 50% damage increase over a non-beam build! Beam builds are slightly sub-par compared to optimal single target builds.

The skill cap for Arcanist was slightly increased from u45 to u46 because it's not as easy to sustain.

You should explore the trial community for perspective. There you can see the parse results from hundreds of other players including their builds.

Here's a strong single target parse from a guildmate I just grabbed quickly from discord:

They do less damage with beam builds.

I've been pugging vet/dlc the past couple months and I was never outclassed to this degree. Not only was his dps top shelf, but he was survivable too and tanking the majority.

I uninstalled the game and am not going to go through the many-hour install. They are just monkeying with mechanics to stretch out playability without actually doing any balance testing.

Desiato · June 20

ImmortalCX wrote: »

I've been pugging vet/dlc the past couple months and I was never outclassed to this degree. Not only was his dps top shelf, but he was survivable too and tanking the majority.

I uninstalled the game and am not going to go through the many-hour install. They are just monkeying with mechanics to stretch out playability without actually doing any balance testing.

gf pugs were pretty weak for a couple of months in the lead-up to u46. It's unremarkable that an Arcanist blasted through vet spindleclutch, regardless of the update. Or any class with a decent build.

I was in your position not too long ago. I had returned to eso after a long break (5ish years) and was able to throw together a decent enough build. Like you, I tried to do about 50% of the damage in a pug and that's about as scientific as it got for a while. I knew my builds weren't optimal but I didn't really care because they worked well enough and I was more focused on grinding cp and sets.

When I finally took the time to learn the meta, my dps performance literally doubled.

spartaxoxo · June 20

The best players haven't needed to run random dungeons that often in ages because it's been a long while since people needed to fix up their builds. The average pug DPS has been low.

It's been easy to breeze through Spindleclutch for years on any even moderately good build. People have been able to do the speed run in there by themselves for a long time. It's got nothing to do with Arcanist.

I'm not saying subclassing hasn't added power. It obviously has. But that's got nothing to do with what you described in Spindleclutch. The only reason that's not the easiest dungeon in the entire game is Fungal Grotto exists.

Soarora · June 20

Its arcanist. Subclassing makes it far worse but arcanist has pen and fatecarver which makes it outclass every dps in a dungeon, basically. Blade doesn’t have a lot of aoe, arc just beams and everything in the vicinity is dead… and spindle is all aoe.

Soarora · June 20

ImmortalCX wrote: »

JaxontheUnfortunate wrote: »

Yeah as a tank if dps keep pulling mobs then clearly I am not wanted so I will generally bounce on the group. I expect that behaviour in normal not vet.

The truth is honestly, that the tank and healer werent needed.

The healer wasnt needed because of his companion. A companion can keep up the healing on two dps pretty well.

Game is borked.

Dungeons were the one area that ESO excelled. They were accessible with varying levels of challenge. PVP has been broken forever, but the dungeons were the reason to play eso. Now they don't even care about balancing to that.

I mean, tbh, I’ve been and will continue to complain that dungeons aren’t balanced well enough. They’re fun when you’re not very good or the group you’re with has low dps but once you’ve racked up enough skill they all become pretty boring. Mechanics get skipped by good groups even without any power creep. Trifectas get obtained within the first week…

preevious · June 20

Soarora wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

JaxontheUnfortunate wrote: »

Yeah as a tank if dps keep pulling mobs then clearly I am not wanted so I will generally bounce on the group. I expect that behaviour in normal not vet.

The truth is honestly, that the tank and healer werent needed.

The healer wasnt needed because of his companion. A companion can keep up the healing on two dps pretty well.

Game is borked.

Dungeons were the one area that ESO excelled. They were accessible with varying levels of challenge. PVP has been broken forever, but the dungeons were the reason to play eso. Now they don't even care about balancing to that.

I mean, tbh, I’ve been and will continue to complain that dungeons aren’t balanced well enough. They’re fun when you’re not very good or the group you’re with has low dps but once you’ve racked up enough skill they all become pretty boring. Mechanics get skipped by good groups even without any power creep. Trifectas get obtained within the first week…

Yes, I understand, but .. isn't it a skill issue?
I mean, when you get too good at something, of course it'll become bland.
But there's no real solution. You can possibly calibrate content to challenge those who are too good. Not worth it for a population so low.

ImmortalCX · June 20

Desiato wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

I've been pugging vet/dlc the past couple months and I was never outclassed to this degree. Not only was his dps top shelf, but he was survivable too and tanking the majority.

I uninstalled the game and am not going to go through the many-hour install. They are just monkeying with mechanics to stretch out playability without actually doing any balance testing.

gf pugs were pretty weak for a couple of months in the lead-up to u46. It's unremarkable that an Arcanist blasted through vet spindleclutch, regardless of the update. Or any class with a decent build.

I was in your position not too long ago. I had returned to eso after a long break (5ish years) and was able to throw together a decent enough build. Like you, I tried to do about 50% of the damage in a pug and that's about as scientific as it got for a while. I knew my builds weren't optimal but I didn't really care because they worked well enough and I was more focused on grinding cp and sets.

When I finally took the time to learn the meta, my dps performance literally doubled.

I have 2500 hours and have been running dungeons every day for the past two months. My build is not that far off meta. Using Maelstrom Bow instead of 2H.

sarahthes · June 20

ImmortalCX wrote: »

Desiato wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

I've been pugging vet/dlc the past couple months and I was never outclassed to this degree. Not only was his dps top shelf, but he was survivable too and tanking the majority.

I uninstalled the game and am not going to go through the many-hour install. They are just monkeying with mechanics to stretch out playability without actually doing any balance testing.

gf pugs were pretty weak for a couple of months in the lead-up to u46. It's unremarkable that an Arcanist blasted through vet spindleclutch, regardless of the update. Or any class with a decent build.

I was in your position not too long ago. I had returned to eso after a long break (5ish years) and was able to throw together a decent enough build. Like you, I tried to do about 50% of the damage in a pug and that's about as scientific as it got for a while. I knew my builds weren't optimal but I didn't really care because they worked well enough and I was more focused on grinding cp and sets.

When I finally took the time to learn the meta, my dps performance literally doubled.

I have 2500 hours and have been running dungeons every day for the past two months. My build is not that far off meta. Using Maelstrom Bow instead of 2H.

Given the design of most dungeons I think I'd use an inferno staff in about half of them rather than a 2h.

I have 12K hours btw. I almost never run dungeons.

Soarora · June 20

preevious wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

JaxontheUnfortunate wrote: »

Yeah as a tank if dps keep pulling mobs then clearly I am not wanted so I will generally bounce on the group. I expect that behaviour in normal not vet.

The truth is honestly, that the tank and healer werent needed.

The healer wasnt needed because of his companion. A companion can keep up the healing on two dps pretty well.

Game is borked.

Dungeons were the one area that ESO excelled. They were accessible with varying levels of challenge. PVP has been broken forever, but the dungeons were the reason to play eso. Now they don't even care about balancing to that.

I mean, tbh, I’ve been and will continue to complain that dungeons aren’t balanced well enough. They’re fun when you’re not very good or the group you’re with has low dps but once you’ve racked up enough skill they all become pretty boring. Mechanics get skipped by good groups even without any power creep. Trifectas get obtained within the first week…

Yes, I understand, but .. isn't it a skill issue?
I mean, when you get too good at something, of course it'll become bland.
But there's no real solution. You can possibly calibrate content to challenge those who are too good. Not worth it for a population so low.

I believe in harder hardmodes for new dungeons or another difficulty level with complex forced mechanics or even just more complex side achievements. Exiled Redoubt and Lep Seclusa were pretty decent for this but Oathsworn and Bedlam were too easy. Instead of increasingly difficult dungeons, sometimes a few of the dungeons are easy HMs. While I understand its because not all players can achieve a hard HM, there’s about 26 dlc dungeons already that cover a range of difficulty.

Darrett · June 20

Soarora wrote: »

preevious wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

ImmortalCX wrote: »

JaxontheUnfortunate wrote: »

Yeah as a tank if dps keep pulling mobs then clearly I am not wanted so I will generally bounce on the group. I expect that behaviour in normal not vet.

The truth is honestly, that the tank and healer werent needed.

The healer wasnt needed because of his companion. A companion can keep up the healing on two dps pretty well.

Game is borked.

Dungeons were the one area that ESO excelled. They were accessible with varying levels of challenge. PVP has been broken forever, but the dungeons were the reason to play eso. Now they don't even care about balancing to that.

I mean, tbh, I’ve been and will continue to complain that dungeons aren’t balanced well enough. They’re fun when you’re not very good or the group you’re with has low dps but once you’ve racked up enough skill they all become pretty boring. Mechanics get skipped by good groups even without any power creep. Trifectas get obtained within the first week…

Yes, I understand, but .. isn't it a skill issue?
I mean, when you get too good at something, of course it'll become bland.
But there's no real solution. You can possibly calibrate content to challenge those who are too good. Not worth it for a population so low.

I believe in harder hardmodes for new dungeons or another difficulty level with complex forced mechanics or even just more complex side achievements. Exiled Redoubt and Lep Seclusa were pretty decent for this but Oathsworn and Bedlam were too easy. Instead of increasingly difficult dungeons, sometimes a few of the dungeons are easy HMs. While I understand its because not all players can achieve a hard HM, there’s about 26 dlc dungeons already that cover a range of difficulty.

It isn’t just that not all players can achieve a HM, lots of players can’t achieve veteran dungeons in general. One of the issues to me is that there’s no indication of relative difficulty of the dungeons and no incremental step from normal into veteran dungeons.

So you go from normal dungeons where you can ignore mechanics completely and many mechanics just don’t exist, into veteran dungeons where you can be one-shot from a wide variety of things.

I wouldn’t be opposed to another difficulty level above the current hard mode, but the bigger need to me is a difficulty between normal and veteran dungeons introducing all veteran mechanics but with no coded one-shots associated with them.

Desiato · June 20

ImmortalCX wrote: »

I have 2500 hours and have been running dungeons every day for the past two months. My build is not that far off meta. Using Maelstrom Bow instead of 2H.

Yeah, that's what I was doing pre-meta too because it's what I had done in 2018.

Anyway, it's there for you to see if you want to.. You have experienced players telling you facetanking vet spindleclutch with a dd isn't remarkable. That 2018 stam dk build I was playing pre-meta could do it just by rolling vigor and slotting the reaving blows CP passive. I say it was a bad build because it was, but I could still do things like vma effortlessly.

We often talk about how eso is in the forums because it is. vMA was completed with a broom years ago! An experienced player can have success with literally any build against 99.9% of the encounters in the game.

This results in confusing feedback for the player because the game seems to be telling them they're doing really well, resulting in complacency, poor habits and perhaps an inflated view of one's abilities. It happened to me and I've seen it happen to countless others. The way to avoid this is joining the enthusiast community to learn established best practices.

After about a month of trial boot camp, I have certainly ripped through dungeons since! Yet, I still have SO much to learn.

Zodiarkslayer · June 20

I don't think the game balance is broken.

Just today I ran Scalecaller Peak with my yet unfinished Necromancer "Dark Knight" (subbed Aedric Spear and Shadow), because I am still levelling her. And I had three(!) Arcanists in my run. A healer, a tank and a DD.

On two Bosses I was doing two thirds of the DPS and on one even 80% 🤯
On the second to last Boss, the Plague Concocter Mortieau, they had a combined 20k DPS, because I was doing the rest. It's pretty straight forward. CMX gives you your own dps and your group's total.

... 20 ... k ... combined.

But Arcanist is supposedly broken?

I mean, I agree that Arc has low hurdles for high damage, but I disagree that Arcs are broken, let alone beyond repair.
I think there is a large amount of players who do not take the time to learn and practise. And that is what was originally promoting Oakensoul HA Sorcs and after that Arcanists.
Players do not have the time, so they take the fastest route to success.

I also think that there is this sort of feeling of having to comply to certain expectations. Those who fear being rejected, will play Arcanist to avoid getting into exactly that situation. It's just my personal opinion, but it would explain a lot that I have seen in game and talked about with guildies and friends on Discord.