MMO Noobie with 3 basic questions

Caroloces

#1)I have a templar character at lvl 29, and I've been trying to enhance its combat skills with 2-handed weapons, but also cultivating its healing skills with restoring light and healing staff. I've equipped him from the beginning with heavy armor thinking that would add the most protection, but now I'm reading that light armor might be preferable. What effect does the various armor settings have on the overall development of a character, and how do you get a sense of that from within the game itself?
#2) In forming groups with the group finder tool, you need to determine whether you are tank, dps, or healer. I'm not quite certain of the difference between a tank and dps (both deal damage to enemies), and with the mix of skills you are capable of building up in ESO, how do you determine whether you are more of a healer or dps when you're really both?
#3)This is more of a criticism than a question, but I thought I'd include it in this Noobie post: I've tried to complete Darkshade Caverns with a group 2 or 3 times, and each time the group disintegrated when we were unsuccessful against the Hive Boss. I continued questing in Shadow fen and raised my level up. Now When I return to Darkshade and use the group finder tool to form a party, it does not allow me to specify Darkshade as the destination dungeon quest because it only lists dungeons that are at my level. So this tool basically becomes useless in this type of situation. Why can't the tool be more flexible and offer a greater degree of choice for differing levels?
I know this is a long post, but these are my essential questions for this wonderful game. Any help on any of these 3 questions would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Caroloces

starstruck

#1 The armor difference comes with the passive for each for the armor type. You have to invest your skill points into the passive for the relevant armor type. Other then that, the only difference are look and armor rating.

Generally light armor passive are more geared towards magicka casting, medium for stamina and heavy armor has health regen and protection.

#2 The tank is expected to hold the attention of the harder mobs, or boss while the rest of the group kill them. Healer responsibility above all else is to make sure everyone health is top up, while DPS can focus mainly on pewpew.

Different groups run with different set up, but most group I have seen uses the basic of 1 tank, 1 heal and 2 DPS. Its always good to be able to do multiple roles. I would presume a heal would bring 5 different skills as compared to a DPS.

#3 Ya the LFG tool is a little too limiting. If u want to do dungeons that u have out level, only way to find a group is to use the zone chat.

Sarenia

You want heavy armor if you intend to take a lot of hits, and have very few options to avoid or heal the damage.

Since you're a not a dedicated healer, that may be ideal for you. Or you could go the other way and use light armor, focusing more on healing than melee.

A good balance may be wearing 5 pieces of light and a heavy chest & leggings to help maximize your defense, while retaining the 5 piece set bonus for light armor.

blueline

In general:
1) Armor types provide bonuses to resource regeneration. Heavy armor - health, medium armor - stamina, light armor - magika. Your Templar's healing and Dawn's Wrath skills need magika, but your two handed attacks need stamina. Plus, as a front line melee character, a higher armor rating and health regeneration is important. You can mix and match types of armor to strike a balance.

2) A "tank" is traditionally a heavy armor wearing character who probably uses a shield and one handed weapon. A tank's job is usually to take the brunt of punishment from enemies, protecting the rest of the group so they can do damage and heal. A "DPS" character focuses on dishing out maximum damage to the enemy, while avoiding taking damage. ESO operates by the same general principle, but allows for some creativity and blurs the lines that separate these traditional roles to a degree.

3) It is possible to out level a particular dungeon, making your character inelligable for the group finder tool. This tool attempts to form a group with a make up of characters around the same level range as each other. So if you could que up for a level 20 dungeon as a level 40 character, and the tool grouped you with a few other level 20 something characters, your level 40 would severely imbalance the group. You would blast the low level enemies, take very little damage and generally make your group partners somewhat superfluous. That said, you can "manually" form a group at any time to go back and complete dungeons you missed, I.e. guild mates, in game friends etc. Bear in mind, as you have out leveled the dungeon, you won't receive XP points or loot, just credit for completion, and the dungeon's skyshard (if you find it!).

Aeradon

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

1. You have a tendency to perform multiple roles, brawler and healer; and you want to excel in both ways. I suggest looking into the skill lines of respective armours and understanding the edge on resource management that the passive allows. As you are still in levelling phase, and yet to invest much points in armour passives, it would be decent to equip as much heavy armour as possible and very crucial to maintain all three types of armour on your body at all times. This is to ensure you level each of the armour types appropriately to enable more build options later on in game.

2. Tank - Reduce damage taken by team members, by acting as the meat shield, taunting and getting attention/aggro, reducing enemy effectiveness, mitigate damage done to members.
DPS - Damage Per Second. Main focus is damage and only damage, doing so by critical hits, weapon raw damage, damage over time, attack speed, damage drain, so on.
Healer/Support - ESO allows most abilities to carry a form of support morph, allowing most people to take up minor supporting roles even when they're categorised as Tank/DPS. Healer, however, shares resources with members. Maintains HP pool of members in order to sustain until next heal, efficiently manages own resources to convert and share with others, provide confidence (i.e. manages magicka efficiently in order to convert into team HP, a healer is only effective when they are able to have Magicka enough to sustain heals for a long time)

3. Limitations of game system. Personally I do my own stuff in the zone of intended dungeon, and most likely within half an hour someone would be typing in /zone in search of members. Otherwise just move on and catch it later, much more content awaits and it's much more fun to do it with people you know. If skill point is your concern, so far at level 45 I missed 5 group dungeons, class skill passives are maxed out, weapon passives maxed out, invested in all hirelings and researches, maxed racial vamp soul, 1 armour line maxed, invested in intimidate and persuade, yet I have 22 skill points unused.

Lemme know if some points are wrong.

jdandrews108b14_ESO

1. There is no baseline difference between heavy and light armor (except that heavy gives more armor) unless you begin to put your skill points into the skill lines for each. As a rule of thumb, light armor will revolve around negating and mitigating spell damage, while boosting the power of your own spells and magicka regen, and heavy armor will increase the armor rating further and allow you to receive more healing from spells. It also boosts your health regen.
It might be nice to mix a few of both if you are going a semi-healing Templar. Taking 5 pieces of heavy armor will give you all the bonuses you can gain in the heavy armor passives while still being able to equip 2 light armor pieces for magicka regen.

2. By classic definition, a tank is the person in a group who draws the most "agro" and forces enemies to attack them instead of the group mates, who in turn are able to kill the baddies.
It is a much more loose term in ESO as mainly you will be tanking the bosses (taunting them to attack you only) since they can one shot cloth wearers and people who don't block. Group pulls that include more then 5+ enemies will have the tank grabbing hold of the big macho guy who would otherwise run rampant through the group.Think of the tank as the person who controls the fight, and lets his group members do what they need to do...Kill enemies and keep him alive!
As for the other roles, Damagers (dps) have remained largely the same as other games, but they are now much more capable of taking on a few enemies alone.
Healers or supports will make sure that the group doesn't die (at least too often) by using skills that buff up allies and heal damage.
As you pointed out though, they will all being doing damage to the enemies, but in what ratio is up to the group itself

3. Every dungeon finder are there out of convenience for the player, but they never seem to work out well enough. Pugs can do wonders, but I have always found it better to be in a guild focused on PvE content. You can search the guild chat for people who can help you out, and it's much better to be in a team you are used to then having a new group every time.
If you don't mind public groups, zone chat is there to help you communicate with people, and so long as you don't spam it, you can often times find a replacement for a lost group member.

Welcome to Elder Scrolls online, hope you enjoy it!

TicToc

1) It really depends on what you are trying to do, and the need for a certain armor type is somewhat mitigated by stats on your equipment and how you spend your stat points.

Since my main focus was healing while in groups, and class skills when soloing, I wore 5 light/2 heavy and I put most of my points into magicka. Around level 18 I switched to 5heavy/2 light as I was hitting the soft cap on max magicka, and found that I could still heal effectively while being a bit more sturdy...plus I wanted to be more tanky in general. Right now my max magicka and magicka recovery are both at the soft cap, with my current gear., so if you want to keep your heavy armor, you can do it, just build the rest of your gear and stats around it.

Some people focus mainly on weapon skills and use medium armor, so it all depends on how you want to play.

2) Tanks can do damage, but the key differences that make them tanks is their ability to take damage, and more importantly, keep the aggro of the MoBs and pull the aggro off of other players. All tanks need taunt abilities to keep the enemies attention on them rather than on other group members. If you can't taunt, you aren't a tank. If you are squishy, you are not a tank.

If you are healer and DPS you can do either, so you could sign up for both and play the role that you get selected for. While as a character you could do both, the role you play, at any given time, will be specific to one or the other, as will your hotbar loadout.

The key factor is that you need to be committed to whatever role you were selected for. If you are designated as the healer, then you need to focus on healing. If you can't heal because you are out of magicka, or weren't paying attention to party members' health, because you were DPSing, that is a problem. As a healer your number one priority needs to be keeping your party alive.

As DPS your main focus would be on doing as much damage as possible. Though, throwing a heal now and then if the healer is struggling to keep up with damage is always appreciated.

3) Because the tool wants to provide a god gaming experience for the group. If people are too high (or too low) level for the dungeon, it will not be as fun. If players are too high, there is little challenge, so they need limitations. That does not prevent you from joining a pickup group from chat (or forming one yourself), and running the dungeon.

Caroloces

Hey, thanks to all of you that replied to my query. These answers are tremendously helpful to my understanding of MMO mechanics, particularly as it relates to ESO. If I may extend my curiosity a bit further on this topic, the main thing I'm wondering about now is how a "tank" holds on to the attention of an enemy or boss. Frequently, I'll see an enemy go after a player, then get struck by another player, and then turn its attention to doing damage to the most recent player who inflicted damage. It seems that the great skill in being a tank is "holding on" (aggro?) to an enemy while the other members of a party do dps, or healing.
I've heard the term "taunts" in relation to this strategy, but I'm uncertain as to how a tank taunts an enemy. Is it just a matter of getting up close and personal and maintaining a melee barrage, or are their particular class skills that include taunts as part of their effect? And then, how does a tank maintain its hold on the enemy when the dps players start inflicting damage, for as I said, most enemies I've seen seem to counterattack other players when the players are getting particularly aggressive.
The other observation that occurs to me is that dps players would inflict their damage from afar, primarily with magic attacks, while the tank gets close and personal. If a dps player went in, say with dual-wielding (relying primarily on stamina), then, it seems he would cross the line into being a tank?
I'm kind of fascinated (being primarily a single-player gamer in the elder scrolls world) with these dynamics. It seems to me that those player groups and guilds who have the greatest understanding of these dynamics and know how to strategize well will find the greatest success in the challenging content of this game.
Once again, sorry for the long-winded post, and thanks in advance for your responses.
Caroloces

KerinKor

I'll let others talk about the exact mechanics in the game as I haven't delved into them in ESO.

The principle though is as you realise, the tank holds aggro by 'taunting' using whatever skills the game give him and DPS have to 'ride the hate line' as some other games refer to it: a DPS' job in life is to do as much DPS as they can before the mob sets its sight on them.

You'll often see the term 'threat meter' (like many things it originated in WOW) which is usually an add-on that gives a visual indication of how much aggro everyone has, and where such meters are available DPS and healers will focus on those to some extent to gauge how close they are to stealing aggro.

Of course in the absence of meters it's trial and error and if a DPS sees a mob heading for them they need to stop and let the tank get control back.

All this also applies to healers, they gain aggro/threat when they heal players attacking a mob.

In MMO PUGs (pick-up groups) when things go wrong there's often pretty heated arguments over whose 'fault' it was when the party wiped, the tank will be blamed for not holding aggro, DPS will be blamed for stealing hate .. and the healer will be blamed for letting the tank die and thus causing the wipe.

Chalybos

The healer is always at fault.

If a dps pulls aggro, it's his own fault, in my opinion (unless the tank is asleep). But that's personal bias from always playing dps.

Aeradon

charles.cavanaughub17_ESO wrote: »

Hey, thanks to all of you that replied to my query. These answers are tremendously helpful to my understanding of MMO mechanics, particularly as it relates to ESO. If I may extend my curiosity a bit further on this topic, the main thing I'm wondering about now is how a "tank" holds on to the attention of an enemy or boss. Frequently........................................................ It seems to me that those player groups and guilds who have the greatest understanding of these dynamics and know how to strategize well will find the greatest success in the challenging content of this game.
Once again, sorry for the long-winded post, and thanks in advance for your responses.
Caroloces

As explained by KerinKor, aggro and taunting differs from game to game. There is yet a threat meter for ESO and it's solely based on trial and error to see how the game mechanics calculate it. From my personal perspective and observations, I believe they use an AI system whereby it allows the mobs to coordinate in a way similar to how airplane dodges each other. When one mob is attacking Player 1, the other will move to Player 2. Hence it's very common that even if you're not doing anything nor in their line of sight, as long as your teammate is engaged, a *** mob will rush to you.

Currently taunting in ESO is through specific skills such as the 1 handed & shield "Puncture" and Undaunted skill line "Inner Fire". These skills force targeted mob to attack them for (x) seconds. Should another player uses a taunting skill, the mob will switch to the latest caster.

DPS is basically one who is focused on dealing the most amount of damage efficiently, hence the name damage per second. One can be Melee DPS or Range DPS. Being in melee position or range position doesn't mean you're in more danger or safer. Depending on the mobs, the situation varies. Should the tank be able to hold aggro well, DPS positioning has much more options. Depending on play styles, some DPS are glass cannons that do short burst and can't take any hits, whereas some focus on prolonged sustainable DPS through well thought resource management and DPS calculations.

The ones who cross the lines between tank and DPS could be categorised as Semi-tanks/Brawler/Warriors. Some despise this play style due to lack of focus, others admire it as it showcases versatility and covers two roles to provide more room for other roles. In other MMO, these builds may surprise you or make you hate them forever.

Also, whether you use more stamina or magicka, it doesn't matter. What matters is your skill build and ability to do what you're supposed to do.

Kessira

There are skills in the one hand/shield line and Undaunted line that "taunt" the mob or force it to attack you for x number of seconds. These are skills tanks use to hold aggro as well as doing regular damage attacks. A tank should be able to absorb a lot of damage so they typically wear heavy armor and use 1h/shield. Tanks typically invest a lot of points into health and skills that cause them to reduce damage by dodging/blocking/resisting spells.

A melee dps such as dual wield or 2h wielder wants to do as much damage to the mobs as they can without pulling aggro. They do not use taunts except perhaps to pull a mob off someone who is squishier in the group than them such as a healer or other cloth wearer. Usually instead of using taunts they will help control the mobs by cc (crowd control) spells such as root, stun, snare, or knock back.