Dungeon fights - chaotic w/no tactics involved?

karstenb16_ESO7

Hi everyone,

I've been to two instanced dungeons so far, Spindleclutch and Fungal Grotto. My main is a lvl 17 tank. My friends and I are wondering if this is how all of the dungeons are designed:

Large groups of mobs (10+) are linked, you aggro one of them, they all come. The fights are chaotic, zero tactics required. Those large groups usually die fast and we move on, occasionally one of us dies. A few bosses with no worthwhile loot and that's it.

Is that it? Or is it going to get more interesting at higher levels?

For example, is there any kind of crowd control and tactics required at some point? Dealing with groups of 10 and just trying to DPS them down as fast as possible may be fun for some people, it simply isn't for us. What we're seeing so far is a huge chaotic mess.

Please tell me it gets better...

Thanks!

Cal

TrillBilly

It doesn't. And it seems they are all very streamlined except the very last one it was really cool and big. But the same fight mechanics like the CPU just tries to zerg your group with alot of mobs at once. Don't expect it to get better you will be very disappointed.

Xaei

It is chaotic, but then if you think about it, it would be if this was in real life.

Mobs wouldn't go for the guy with the heaviest armor and stay stuck on him even though those fragile people in the back are piling them with fireballs just because he shouted some bad words at them, and that's what it's like in here. So instead, you have to use other strategies.

For example, you can use Burning Talons to root all the melee mobs in place so your DPS can nuke them down. If its Daedra, your group can throw silver bolts at them to keep the rangers knocked out.

They don't exactly try to zerg you either. Its not GW1 levels of good AI but the rangers will kite you, mobs will try to scatter to avoid being mass-nuked, etc. There's blogs the devs posted about what dungeon designs are based on, those will give you insight.

karstenb16_ESO7

Thanks for the hint with the dev blog. I found this: elderscrollsonline.com/en/news/post/2013/07/01/inside-eso-dungeons

Ran two more dungeons last night and the trash groups do behave like described in that post. I have a better understanding now of what's going on. But still, I find this system very chaotic. I would have preferred less mobs and more tactics instead.

I fear that this will lead to AoE clearing, which personally I find extremely boring. Also where does a tank fit into this system? I suppose just for the bosses? For the trash the tank should probably use AoE abilities as well.

Kinda sad. I wonder if people really want a system like this. I know I don't.

Artemiisia

I actually like the dung fight more then, if we compare it with AoC, where the tank agro the whole fight, mobs and boss. Here we all need to keep on our toes, have quick reflexes, when boss suddenly feels you need to get a spanking too.

Dont know what lvl you are, but in +34 dungs, some of the bosses requires tactics to complete, not hard tactics but still people start wiping on them, until they learn how to do them, which is like that for all other mmos

I love the dungs, some more then others for sure.

Xanxarib16_ESO

sad lol, yea name one MMO that did't have trash where you could just AoE the crap out of it if you had a good group and or a overgeared group for it?
there are none.

and saying AoE clearing is boring on trash man wake up, if you find clearing 3 or 4 packs of trash boring that probaly only take 5 min maxium to kill well im sorry but you should't play MMo's then

karstenb16_ESO7

Well, I guess I'm just a dinosaur when it comes to MMOs. I've played since 97 (Ultima Online) and spent many years in Everquest. There's your one MMO where AoE was useless and tactics was required. But that was a long time ago.

I simply prefer a good dungeon crawl where you soak in the atmosphere and you need to pay attention to detail, where you have to employ tactics and use crowd control over rushing through an anonymous place using big fireworks to get to the phat lewtz. If you want that then devs could just hand you the loot, saves you a lot of trouble.

But then I am probably a different generation than yours (sorry for the generalization here).

Don't worry though. I won't be making a big fuss and demand game changes just to please my style of play. When I don't like a game I simply move on.

Punche

VR 8 DK tank here, thought I'd pitch in since there are a few of you who thing dungeons take no tact: At low level, they are aoe fests, but in VR content, they absolutely do require a tank and coordination. The tank taunts the most dangerous mobs, while the dps take care of the rest through cc, and of course damage. If you go in to a dungeon as a dps with no cc or survivability options, you can't aoe anything down fast enough cause you'll get 2 shot.

The boss fights at VR actually require you to know the mechanics of the fight. If you don't know them or can't figure it out... then have a fun time wiping over and over.

In short - Dungeons get better at the VR level, because they actually require coordination to get through them.

Xaei

karstenb16_ESO7 wrote: »

Thanks for the hint with the dev blog. I found this: elderscrollsonline.com/en/news/post/2013/07/01/inside-eso-dungeons

Ran two more dungeons last night and the trash groups do behave like described in that post. I have a better understanding now of what's going on. But still, I find this system very chaotic. I would have preferred less mobs and more tactics instead.

I fear that this will lead to AoE clearing, which personally I find extremely boring. Also where does a tank fit into this system? I suppose just for the bosses? For the trash the tank should probably use AoE abilities as well.

Kinda sad. I wonder if people really want a system like this. I know I don't.

A tank is there to keep the situation under control. For example, a standard pull I've been seeing people do is have an archer pull the mobs and the DK tank would talon all the melee mobs once they funnel to stop them overwhelming the group and so that they can be AoE nuked.

He then would taunt the remaining archers/mage/mobs that managed to escape, perhaps with the help of things like charges and fiery leash.

I haven't done the vet dungeons yet and I mostly did dungeons on my characters when I was just their level. Maybe you can faceroll them if your over-leveled. But for example, doing BC at level 13 was pretty difficult even on trashmobs and a good tank definitely helped a ton.

lajnus86b16_ESO

Xanxarib16_ESO wrote: »

sad lol, yea name one MMO that did't have trash where you could just AoE the crap out of it if you had a good group and or a overgeared group for it?
there are none.

and saying AoE clearing is boring on trash man wake up, if you find clearing 3 or 4 packs of trash boring that probaly only take 5 min maxium to kill well im sorry but you should't play MMo's then

Molten core,BWL to name a few. gl aoeing the fire giants. that almost 1hited the tanks, with pre raid gear.

Xaei

When I played a tank, it was definitely more tactful than say, AoC, where I can just keep everything under control purely through aggro mechanics, which really takes very little skill.

Xanxarib16_ESO

lajnus86b16_ESO wrote: »

Xanxarib16_ESO wrote: »

sad lol, yea name one MMO that did't have trash where you could just AoE the crap out of it if you had a good group and or a overgeared group for it?
there are none.

and saying AoE clearing is boring on trash man wake up, if you find clearing 3 or 4 packs of trash boring that probaly only take 5 min maxium to kill well im sorry but you should't play MMo's then

Molten core,BWL to name a few. gl aoeing the fire giants. that almost 1hited the tanks, with pre raid gear.

omfg did you just compare Raids with dungeons???? yea i quess you are a tool ohh sorry Troll then...


to karstenb16_ESO7


im a VR10 DK Tank here and dungeons in this game are a joke. to easy and it not the boss mechanic that are bad its the whole combat system and the lack of skills you need to play this game.

1. players talk abourt you need to timed blocks. that is 100% BS... As a tank you hold down your block key 99% of time on trash pulls and boss fight.

2. players talk abourt you need to aim to hit. again this is 100% complete BS... There is soft target in this game aka you just need to have your crosshair around a mob and the soft target takes over...

3. players talk abourt healing and how you need to know what do. again this is 100% complete BS... There is soft target and smart healing in this game all the healer have to do is just hit a button and the game does the rest for him and its not doing a great job imo.

Xaei

^ why would you want to hold down the block key all the time? I mean you can but why would you if you can do something more useful when you don't need to?

Xanxarib16_ESO

like what? what usefull thing would you do besides keeping block up ?

Xaei

Do damage, debuff, CC, anything. If you aren't dying or about to get hammered with a massive attack, blocking is basically doing nothing and contributing nothing.

Xanxarib16_ESO

roflmao so you dont know that you can use abilities while holding block up i take it then...

Xaei

^ I did not know that.... wow, ok, I stand corrected. That should not happen. I just assumed that you can't do that for like, 50 levels, cos that's just silly.

Blocking does drain your stamina though, and do does mobs hitting you when you block. They should up that stamina drain, it would instantly fix the problem.

Xanxarib16_ESO

no and yes, holding block up dont drain your stamina, the only thing that makes you loose stamina is when you block an actual attack, or when you dodge, Sprint or use bash or use a stamina based ability. so there is not a reason why you should't keep block up. aka tanking take no skill at all

Xaei

There certainly skill in tanking because I have experienced runs where the tank just has no idea what he's doing and you question why he's even there, and when I tank, its pretty obvious when I dun goof it up.

But what doesn't take skill is really blocking itself. It needs to be more punishing if you just full turtle, ie, be left on 0 stamina very quickly for abusing it.

Xanxarib16_ESO

they call this action combat, but there is not really any action to it. if you look at Tera online and this game, you will find tera online have action combat but ESO are miles away from it. it kills me they made it so noobish, Soft target is pure BS, smart healing another BS, lack of timed blocking and or dodge another BS to there flawed combat system. everything elase is great. and yea there are bugs and they fix them i really dont complain abourt that, but this was supposed to be a game where you had to read the bosses and adds movement and time block dodges and so on. but its not even close to that.

they killed there own action combat with soft target, smart healing and this easy block thing...

Axer

It gets much better.

The VR version of Fungal Grotto for example is 100% completely different.

Every major boss fight requires extreme group coordination and very specialized tactics.

The final boss undaunted one especially, you have to play the game in a very different way then normal to get that done.

I'd go far as to say it's unpractical to do it without voice chat. Or at least would be frustratingly unfun. The teamwork required is pretty high. (Sucks they never built voice chat in)

Some other mmos did do dungeons and teamwork required bosses better sure.. But ESO did a nice job on most of the VR dungeons imo.

They most certainly are not the "chaos/no tactics" that the low level ones can boil down to. No tactics means defeat in fungal grotto, even with all VR10s with strong gear.

Axer

Xanxarib16_ESO wrote: »

no and yes, holding block up dont drain your stamina, the only thing that makes you loose stamina is when you block an actual attack, or when you dodge, Sprint or use bash or use a stamina based ability. so there is not a reason why you should't keep block up. aka tanking take no skill at all

Simply not the case in VR dungeons vs some of the tougher bosses.

Try for example blocking all the time vs the Gargoyle boss in spindleclutch. You will run out of stamina and die.

Or don't block at all? you will get knocked back and die.

You have to block their power attacks. (And they don't give easy mode on screen prompts like trash mobs do)

And you have to NOT block his regular atacks, or you will lose all your stamina and not be able to block the power ones.

It's not easy.

Is it as hard as TERA tanking? No. But it's still fun.

Xanxarib16_ESO

and as i said the boss mechanic are fine its the Action combat or so called action combat ESO have that kills the game. Soft target come on man this is noobish, Smart healing another noobish thing, and the lack of time block another noob thing, they made it so you dont really need any skills to play this game. sure they can make the boses hard but that dont help if you remove the skill requirement from the players that play each char.

as it is now there is no differnce between a good or bad healer it is only based of when he presses he's buttons and avoide red ***. it dont take skills to land a heal on the right target can you say smarthealing and softtarget!!!

as it is now there is no differnce between a good or bad dps it is the same thing hit buttons avoide red ***. you dont need to aim to hit can you say softtarget!!!

as it is now there is no differnce between a good or bad tank you just hold block up taunt now and again and avoide red ***. and you dont even have to avoide the red *** most of the time. Softtarget no timed block bonus or penalty.

bosses got soft target to so no dodge will save you if you time it right he will still hit you or the missile will still follow you as you dodge even if you dodge behind a wall the missle will just ignore the wall and still hit you...

Wifeaggro13

Punche wrote: »

VR 8 DK tank here, thought I'd pitch in since there are a few of you who thing dungeons take no tact: At low level, they are aoe fests, but in VR content, they absolutely do require a tank and coordination. The tank taunts the most dangerous mobs, while the dps take care of the rest through cc, and of course damage. If you go in to a dungeon as a dps with no cc or survivability options, you can't aoe anything down fast enough cause you'll get 2 shot.

The boss fights at VR actually require you to know the mechanics of the fight. If you don't know them or can't figure it out... then have a fun time wiping over and over.

In short - Dungeons get better at the VR level, because they actually require coordination to get through them.

They do get better yes and require more tactics. but they are still kind of ridiculous with the social agro. They need to bring back the art of pulling . currently you pull one group in a large room of 5 groups. Tanking used to require spacial awareness delicate movement and LOS tactics. those skills dont exist here yet. though the other groups have no line of sight all five come. of course there is CC and such but its so short of times it becomes point less. Add in the fact once DPs and healers are geared enough its more efficient to have no tank at all and AOE the crap out of the trash, and kite bosses. They have a decent combat system but its far from complete and requires more tweaks to define it. I am tanking the first set of VR dungeons since VR 1 and form what ive seen and heard some of the VR 5 dungeons are actually harder then V10. the tanking mechanics are rudimentary right now and need to be addressed. its all CC hold block spam your shield bash click, taunt boss when needed. move boss when needed or place your puddles when your the tank has the mechanic. I enjoy the game but its obvious end game grouping needed more testing and they did not have time to properly itemize the VR dungeons. dont get me wrong the game is awesome . Tons of content longer lvling process, they put in serious work hands down the most beautiful MMO ive ever payed most immersive as well. Far far far better then TOR. but its not perfect group mechanics need work and really need to be tweaked and expanded