The community can't have this both ways, we can't both rage and whine and stomp our feet that content is too hard (*Cough* IC) then say that healers have no jobs when it gets nerfed to dust.

As was pointed out to me recently ZoS has made their choice regarding difficulty, they want the type of player that thinks if you say mmo you just spelled mom wrong. That type of player wouldn't last ten seconds at the difficulty this game was at when a healer was required and so it will simply never go back to that. As much as I appreciate the video the OP is essentially saying "let me limit my content exposure then complain about lack of hard content", if you want difficult content go join "the core" in Hodor or run duals with Legends or vdsa(no idea why they do) with Almost Heroes. This is a gateway mmo and ZoS has made it clear it will remain such.

I say all of this in the most respectful way possible

Alabyn wrote: »

Healers now are expected to provide rare emergency heals

Pug for vICP or vWGT via group finder and say this again.
Seriosly, its really funny how many people are like "but casuals are the majority so we need to make the game as carebear as possible" in dps meter related threads, and now everyone is suddenly focused on top 10% of playerbase.

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Alabyn wrote: »

Healers now are expected to provide rare emergency heals

Pug for vICP or vWGT via group finder and say this again.
Seriosly, its really funny how many people are like "but casuals are the majority so we need to make the game as carebear as possible" in dps meter related threads, and now everyone is suddenly focused on top 10% of playerbase.

It is really funny, threads like these are all over filled with players complaining about the fact how the top players are able to destroy content in insane amounts of time, and rally people to it as if that was an issue, but are not actively apart of it. Looking through this thread I have not recognized a single name of one of those players and I beg the question, If you (the reader) were capable of preforming to the letter of which this thread describes, would you be complaining about it being an issue? Also this whole notion of "After patch 1.6 this game became a pure DPS race, everything is so easy, X dungeon used to be hard!" is so misleading and incorrect. This game has always had players who made content look like a joke, but they were a lot more exclusive and didn't spread ANY information in fears that the community would get hold of it and destroy it, which ended up happening anyways. A lot of old metas were crushed because the wrong people heard about it and exploited it, or players who refused to learn counter play cried nerfs too loud and doomed entire builds to ruin. Content was always hard when it first came out, but not because the content itself was so challenging, but because players needed time to learn the new mechanics and moves, understanding mob AI to the point where they could anticipate almost every move, etc.


Don't get me wrong, I think ZoS keeps taking the wrong direction in terms of difficulty of PvE, since it's either always too easy or insanely unforgiving (the new trial/vma, both filled with artificial difficulty of bugs, one shots, etc instead of true difficult mechanics). But this isn't because players are capable of preforming insane damage or really well rounded builds that can take, mend, and dish out good amounts of damage, it's because of the situation at hand. The amount of players capable at preforming at that level is very low, so designing content around them seems foolish. Yet at the same time, every player has the capability to reach that same level of play, but many of them don't. Why is that? Well the main reason is the fact that ESO has absolutely no guidelines and stepping stones for players to learn how to preform at an end game level. There is not a single in game mention of mechanics such as weaving, the priority system, block casting, etc. Tooltips are broken and unreliable, stat explanations are vague or flat out incorrect, ability calculations are completely hidden meaning players have to spend an absurd amount of time doing math testing with NO proper means of doing so (no testing dummies/controlled instances where players control mobs/etc). All the while Zenimax praises builds that are put up into Battle Master's Corner that would get absolutely decimated in any sort of end game performance, or would hold back other group members if they were with them.

On top of that, all of these comments are trying to trivialize this phenomenon. Learning the game at an advanced level and then spending the time fine tuning your build and maximizing efficiency is not something you can do over night, or even a month. It took the top players in the game a LONG time to get where they are, if it was so simple then way more people would be at the same level, and ZoS would be able to create a baseline of difficulty for players to enjoy. The fact is though, skill level varies SO much from player to player that it makes it impossible for a design team to balance something around everyone. Everyone is focused on the wrong topic here. There is definitely a finger to point at something, but it isn't this.

@Gilliamtherogue While I do not disagree with what you are saying, I think you are taking a bit of an elitist approach at the subject. Basically, seems you are stating that if others aren't in the Top 2%, then they have no say in the subject. I am a pretty damn good player, but certainly not in the Top percentile. Beyond that simple statement, I will not measure male members with you.

Yes, there are some absolutely phenominal players in this game. But I do not think that is what the OP, or even the majority of players that have commented in this thread are speaking to. At even the 'good player' level, things are a DPS race and most regular vet dungeon mechanics can be ignored. Yet still, that is a bit off topic from the points that I brought up. And I bring this up only because you mentioned vMSA...

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

Don't get me wrong, I think ZoS keeps taking the wrong direction in terms of difficulty of PvE, since it's either always too easy or insanely unforgiving (the new trial/vma, both filled with artificial difficulty of bugs, one shots, etc instead of true difficult mechanics). But this isn't because players are capable of preforming insane damage or really well rounded builds that can take, mend, and dish out good amounts of damage, it's because of the situation at hand. The amount of players capable at preforming at that level is very low, so designing content around them seems foolish.

...I feel that a lot of the reason that support characters such as Healers and Tanks are completely undervalued or simply not necessary for a lot of content is two fold:

1) Due to solo content such as vMSA, the devs had to give each and every class the tools to beat demanding and difficult solo content. In essence, they have stepped towards making each class fully self sufficient in terms of DPS, sustain, and heals. And when each class is fully self sufficient and can put out high DPS, then the need for Healers, and to a degree Tanks, drops dramatically. So for regular vet dungeons a typical Tank, Healer, 2xDD team composition simply isn't necessary. Although, Trials still need Tanks and Healers simply so that DDs can achieve the highest parses. And to clarify, I don't mean this about Trials in a bad way; simply I wish Dungeons required the same composition and due diligence.

2) In relation to (1), because of the constant whining of the PvP community (of which I am a part of, but I don't whine or cry for nerfs)...my class needs an execute because they have an execute, I need mobility because they have mobility, they can do better DPS so up mine, why can they out heal burst when I can't, etc...the devs are moving even further towards making every class more and more self sufficient, with class role focus seemingly becoming less and less (i.e. DKs make the best Tanks and Templars make the best Healers).

Simply, I think the devs are taking the game in a direction that seems to mitigation conventional team composition, and it is this regard that I agree with the OP.

Refuse2GrowUp wrote: »

@Gilliamtherogue While I do not disagree with what you are saying, I think you are taking a bit of an elitist approach at the subject. Basically, seems you are stating that if others aren't in the Top 2%, then they have no say in the subject. I am a pretty damn good player, but certainly not in the Top percentile. Beyond that simple statement, I will not measure male members with you.

Yes, there are some absolutely phenominal players in this game. But I do not think that is what the OP, or even the majority of players that have commented in this thread are speaking to. At even the 'good player' level, things are a DPS race and most regular vet dungeon mechanics can be ignored. Yet still, that is a bit off topic from the points that I brought up. And I bring this up only because you mentioned vMSA...

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

Don't get me wrong, I think ZoS keeps taking the wrong direction in terms of difficulty of PvE, since it's either always too easy or insanely unforgiving (the new trial/vma, both filled with artificial difficulty of bugs, one shots, etc instead of true difficult mechanics). But this isn't because players are capable of preforming insane damage or really well rounded builds that can take, mend, and dish out good amounts of damage, it's because of the situation at hand. The amount of players capable at preforming at that level is very low, so designing content around them seems foolish.

...I feel that a lot of the reason that support characters such as Healers and Tanks are completely undervalued or simply not necessary for a lot of content is two fold:

1) Due to solo content such as vMSA, the devs had to give each and every class the tools to be demanding and difficult solo content. In essence, they have stepped towards making each class fully self sufficient in terms of DPS, sustain, and heals. And when each class is fully self sufficient and can put out high DPS, then the need for Healers, and to a degree Tanks, drops dramatically. So for regular vet dungeons a typical Tank, Healer, 2xDD team composition simply isn't necessary. Although, Trials still need Tanks and Healers simply so that DDs can achieve the highest parses. And to clarify, I don't mean this about Trials in a bad way; simply I wish Dungeons required the same composition and due diligence.

2) In relation to (1), because of the constant whining of the PvP community (of which I am a part of, but I don't whine or cry for nerfs)...my class needs an execute because they have an execute, I need mobility because they have mobility, they can do better DPS so up mine, why can they out heal burst when I can't, etc...the devs are moving even further towards making every class more and more self sufficient, with class role focus seemingly becoming less and less (i.e. DKs make the best Tanks and Templars make the best Healers).

Simply, I think the devs are taking the game in a direction that seems to mitigation conventional team composition, and it is this regard that I agree with the OP.

Let me start off by stating that I am NOT in the idea that if you aren't a top tier player then you have no say in a discussion about top tier players. Rather, I feel that many people's opinions are heavily biased and are missing a lot information and facts about the topic, leading them to have opinions on things that aren't really true. I made that statement as a sort of eye opener to some of the people who jump on the bandwagon of this game's meta and say ESO is in a bad state because the game is too easy or imbalanced and bring back softcaps yada yada. There's a lot more to this debate than people are aware of, and being a person who is more aware of that, it would only make sense for me to want others to realize that.

Well while you are absolutely correct, we need to step back and remember that ESO was developed around an idea that was to shift AWAY from the holy trinity of MMO's. It was constantly reinforced to players at an early development stage that they wanted all classes to have some sort of answer to content to allow for diversity, which didn't happen the way they exactly envisioned, but it does still exist in game. Many classes have core abilities that allow them to go toe to toe with group content if a player utilizes it well enough, or allows them to fill in weaknesses that their build has (Damage shields for glass cannon builds, dodge rolling to mitigate all damage, etc). The trinity was only followed by the playerbase for so long because it's easier to follow. It allows for mistakes, it's easier to control the flow of combat, etc. But ZoS wanted a group of players in 4 man content to be able to do whatever they wanted, to help alleviate the restrictions that the trinity holds with it. Waiting until you find optimal group roles can be a drag in MMO's since tanks and healers are usually the lesser picked roles, and that was heavily considered when designing each class. So with that in mind, it should only make sense that 4 DPS roles would be more efficient than the trinity, as that was what the game was designed around for 4 man content. This is obviously not true for each scenario, like going into vICP/WGT with 4 DPS is highly ill advised.

The next thing to realize is that content in ESO aside from vMA is all outdated. 4 man dungeons, while do scale to v16, only scale to v14 in loot. Many encounters are archaic in nature of mechanics back to the number expansion, when everyone had 2k health instead of 20k. Mechanics back then were much more punishing than now because pools were so small. DPS was still about the same for the most part as well as time of fights, but death was a much more common thing. Now thanks to CP, new skills and gear, as well as much higher stat pools, death is much easier to avoid since you have more breathing room to react. On top of all this, mobs, while "scale" to level of the leader in dungeons, are actually only level 50. Their armor ratings, damage ratings, etc are all level 50 instead of v16, with some minor scaling adjustments (Not on mitigation though!). This means mobs die EXTREMELY quickly due to being improperly designed, and it's not because of the player, but because of ZoS.

I also disagree with you on the fact that tanks and healers only exist in trials to allow DPS to achieve higher DPS. While not the case in every trial, healers and tanks especially have extremely vital roles that an entire encounter hinges upon. Take Mantikora in SO for example, you literally cannot do this fight without a dedicated tank, and is actually meant to be done by TWO tanks. It's not that he needs to be controlled to be kept stationary to allow DPS to wail on him, it's because without a tank he will literally massacre everyone by the sheer damage he deals, on top of his bonus mechanics (though I will admit high DPS allows to ignore, but is VERY risky, many resets happen because of strange bugs or poor timing). Unfortunately trials and vma are the only scenarios where risk reward is important, but at the same time it means this entire debate is null. There is no gain for a group to run 4 dps over a trinity group aside from clear time. Both will clear it if the players are competent, and both will get the same gear. The only difference is speed, so why even complain about it? Also, good luck getting no death achievements with a 4 dps group instead of a trinity.

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Alabyn wrote: »

Healers now are expected to provide rare emergency heals

Pug for vICP or vWGT via group finder and say this again.
Seriosly, its really funny how many people are like "but casuals are the majority so we need to make the game as carebear as possible" in dps meter related threads, and now everyone is suddenly focused on top 10% of playerbase.

Right on, those two are definitely the exception. I was thinking more of the many dungeons, normal and veteran, that players burn through with ease.

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

I don't feel like a healer/support anymore i feel like a monster drink that someone is using because they are hungry or low on energy, dps has become too important leaving healers to aside as nothing more than orb spamming shard throwers player buffing mongrels.

Quoting myself for obvious reasons.

So you dont wanna be an extra mana/stamina/hp battery... But you wanna be just an extra hp pot?
Please explain how supporting your team makes you a "mongrel" and how's spamming support abilities is different from spamming 100 diferent heals, like topicstarter suggested. And if casting support abilities is problematic for you, a boss that requires a ton of heals/HoTs and purges will be even more complicated. You will still need to support the team, especially if their dps ability would be gimped.

Because they ''need'' all of that help because they can't sustain their own resources they put everything into damage and then just sit there spamming a simple af rotation while they cancel the animation and then scream ''Orb'' when they get low.

I'm forced to run elemental drain as well but the biggest issue is that the damage that bosses do comes in waves that hit like a tsunami instead of being constant i only need to heal when their health gets cut by a sudden attack instead of constantly providing healing like a healer is supposed to, no i have to be a battery because in this game if you have sustain in a dungeon you suck, to add to this almost 70% of the abilities that classes use (excluding templar) for dps are instant cast so canceling makes them use 2 attack at the same time draining resources even faster but no as a healer my job is to sit back and let everyone do the job while i just fill your resource bars cose i'm a mountain dew.

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

I don't feel like a healer/support anymore i feel like a monster drink that someone is using because they are hungry or low on energy, dps has become too important leaving healers to aside as nothing more than orb spamming shard throwers player buffing mongrels.

Quoting myself for obvious reasons.

So you dont wanna be an extra mana/stamina/hp battery... But you wanna be just an extra hp pot?
Please explain how supporting your team makes you a "mongrel" and how's spamming support abilities is different from spamming 100 diferent heals, like topicstarter suggested. And if casting support abilities is problematic for you, a boss that requires a ton of heals/HoTs and purges will be even more complicated. You will still need to support the team, especially if their dps ability would be gimped.

Because they ''need'' all of that help because they can't sustain their own resources they put everything into damage and then just sit there spamming a simple af rotation while they cancel the animation and then scream ''Orb'' when they get low.

I'm forced to run elemental drain as well but the biggest issue is that the damage that bosses do comes in waves that hit like a tsunami instead of being constant i only need to heal when their health gets cut by a sudden attack instead of constantly providing healing like a healer is supposed to, no i have to be a battery because in this game if you have sustain in a dungeon you suck, to add to this almost 70% of the abilities that classes use (excluding templar) for dps are instant cast so canceling makes them use 2 attack at the same time draining resources even faster but no as a healer my job is to sit back and let everyone do the job while i just fill your resource bars cose i'm a mountain dew.

Well, with mandatory heal spam they would need you to heal them because they dont have enough mitigation to survive on their own... So you wouldnt be their Mountain Dew, you would be their Sunny-D to restore their health all the time. So why restoring specific resource is better than the other? Why recharging health makes you feel important for a team, but helping with other resource pool doesnt? They will wipe without health, but without resources to fight they will wipe as well.
If your team threats you badly because you're not forced to be a healbot 24/7, its a problem of your group.
Btw, things like ele drain, repentance, shards or even spell symmetry were used in groups before 1.6 You're very naive if youre thinking that if new content requires a lot more more heals, you wont need to help with sustain. In competitive groups anyway, but in pugs healers usually dont care about ele drain anyway.

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

I don't feel like a healer/support anymore i feel like a monster drink that someone is using because they are hungry or low on energy, dps has become too important leaving healers to aside as nothing more than orb spamming shard throwers player buffing mongrels.

Quoting myself for obvious reasons.

So you dont wanna be an extra mana/stamina/hp battery... But you wanna be just an extra hp pot?
Please explain how supporting your team makes you a "mongrel" and how's spamming support abilities is different from spamming 100 diferent heals, like topicstarter suggested. And if casting support abilities is problematic for you, a boss that requires a ton of heals/HoTs and purges will be even more complicated. You will still need to support the team, especially if their dps ability would be gimped.

Because they ''need'' all of that help because they can't sustain their own resources they put everything into damage and then just sit there spamming a simple af rotation while they cancel the animation and then scream ''Orb'' when they get low.

I'm forced to run elemental drain as well but the biggest issue is that the damage that bosses do comes in waves that hit like a tsunami instead of being constant i only need to heal when their health gets cut by a sudden attack instead of constantly providing healing like a healer is supposed to, no i have to be a battery because in this game if you have sustain in a dungeon you suck, to add to this almost 70% of the abilities that classes use (excluding templar) for dps are instant cast so canceling makes them use 2 attack at the same time draining resources even faster but no as a healer my job is to sit back and let everyone do the job while i just fill your resource bars cose i'm a mountain dew.

Well, with mandatory heal spam they would need you to heal them because they dont have enough mitigation to survive on their own... So you wouldnt be their Mountain Dew, you would be their Sunny-D to restore their health all the time. So why restoring specific resource is better than the other? Why recharging health makes you feel important for a team, but helping with other resource pool doesnt? They will wipe without health, but without resources to fight they will wipe as well.
If your team threats you badly because you're not forced to be a healbot 24/7, its a problem of your group.
Btw, things like ele drain, repentance, shards or even spell symmetry were used in groups before 1.6 You're very naive if youre thinking that if new content requires a lot more more heals, you wont need to help with sustain. In competitive groups anyway, but in pugs healers usually dont care about ele drain anyway.

If i was providing actual buffs instead of filling your 3 bars it would make me happy, now i have been called an excellent ''healer'' in many occasions by many people but that always makes me eyeroll because it feels so trivial to me that i get the sensation that my grandma could heal vMoL.

But still, why is it a bad thing if "healer" role in eso is more than just using healing spells? I simply do not understand how helping with 3 resource pools rather than just 1 makes you less important for your teammates and less "skilled" so to speak.
Ooh, vMoL is gonna be interesting. Have you tried it on pts already? And what about being a single healer in SO hard mode, also too easy perhaps?
The content in this game is mostly very easy, I agree with that, but it was nerfed because of casual playerbase that demanded it. If difficulty suddenly jumps up, and people wont be able to finish dungeons that they were facerolling just 1 week ago, it wont be good for the community.
P.S. You can also provide combat prayer and put HoTs on teammates to proc spell cure, use warhorn, etc. Thats a lot of stuff actually. Enough to fill both bars.

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

I don't feel like a healer/support anymore i feel like a monster drink that someone is using because they are hungry or low on energy, dps has become too important leaving healers to aside as nothing more than orb spamming shard throwers player buffing mongrels.

Quoting myself for obvious reasons.

So you dont wanna be an extra mana/stamina/hp battery... But you wanna be just an extra hp pot?
Please explain how supporting your team makes you a "mongrel" and how's spamming support abilities is different from spamming 100 diferent heals, like topicstarter suggested. And if casting support abilities is problematic for you, a boss that requires a ton of heals/HoTs and purges will be even more complicated. You will still need to support the team, especially if their dps ability would be gimped.

Because they ''need'' all of that help because they can't sustain their own resources they put everything into damage and then just sit there spamming a simple af rotation while they cancel the animation and then scream ''Orb'' when they get low.

I'm forced to run elemental drain as well but the biggest issue is that the damage that bosses do comes in waves that hit like a tsunami instead of being constant i only need to heal when their health gets cut by a sudden attack instead of constantly providing healing like a healer is supposed to, no i have to be a battery because in this game if you have sustain in a dungeon you suck, to add to this almost 70% of the abilities that classes use (excluding templar) for dps are instant cast so canceling makes them use 2 attack at the same time draining resources even faster but no as a healer my job is to sit back and let everyone do the job while i just fill your resource bars cose i'm a mountain dew.

Well, with mandatory heal spam they would need you to heal them because they dont have enough mitigation to survive on their own... So you wouldnt be their Mountain Dew, you would be their Sunny-D to restore their health all the time. So why restoring specific resource is better than the other? Why recharging health makes you feel important for a team, but helping with other resource pool doesnt? They will wipe without health, but without resources to fight they will wipe as well.
If your team threats you badly because you're not forced to be a healbot 24/7, its a problem of your group.
Btw, things like ele drain, repentance, shards or even spell symmetry were used in groups before 1.6 You're very naive if youre thinking that if new content requires a lot more more heals, you wont need to help with sustain. In competitive groups anyway, but in pugs healers usually dont care about ele drain anyway.

If i was providing actual buffs instead of filling your 3 bars it would make me happy, now i have been called an excellent ''healer'' in many occasions by many people but that always makes me eyeroll because it feels so trivial to me that i get the sensation that my grandma could heal vMoL.

But still, why is it a bad thing if "healer" role in eso is more than just using healing spells? I simply do not understand how helping with 3 resource pools rather than just 1 makes you less important for your teammates and less "skilled" so to speak.
Ooh, vMoL is gonna be interesting. Have you tried it on pts already? And what about being a single healer in SO hard mode, also too easy perhaps?
The content in this game is mostly very easy, I agree with that, but it was nerfed because of casual playerbase that demanded it. If difficulty suddenly jumps up, and people wont be able to finish dungeons that they were facerolling just 1 week ago, it wont be good for the community.

Maybe you are right and i'm just really angry that my favorite people (best friends) are not as good as me and all things i do just seem trivial to me but i can't just leave them i love those guys.

Hehe. Dpsing is even more trivial, and it is an issue, I never argued that.
I just wanted to say that support role is not very easy to play, in fact, very few healers provide resources and buffs for their teammates. And since all these fancy dps parses are simply not possible to pull off without good support, said support is extremely important.

infraction2008b16_ESO wrote: »

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Alabyn wrote: »

Healers now are expected to provide rare emergency heals

Pug for vICP or vWGT via group finder and say this again.
Seriosly, its really funny how many people are like "but casuals are the majority so we need to make the game as carebear as possible" in dps meter related threads, and now everyone is suddenly focused on top 10% of playerbase.

It is really funny, threads like these are all over filled with players complaining about the fact how the top players are able to destroy content in insane amounts of time, and rally people to it as if that was an issue, but are not actively apart of it. Looking through this thread I have not recognized a single name of one of those players and I beg the question, If you (the reader) were capable of preforming to the letter of which this thread describes, would you be complaining about it being an issue? Also this whole notion of "After patch 1.6 this game became a pure DPS race, everything is so easy, X dungeon used to be hard!" is so misleading and incorrect. This game has always had players who made content look like a joke, but they were a lot more exclusive and didn't spread ANY information in fears that the community would get hold of it and destroy it, which ended up happening anyways. A lot of old metas were crushed because the wrong people heard about it and exploited it, or players who refused to learn counter play cried nerfs too loud and doomed entire builds to ruin. Content was always hard when it first came out, but not because the content itself was so challenging, but because players needed time to learn the new mechanics and moves, understanding mob AI to the point where they could anticipate almost every move, etc.


Don't get me wrong, I think ZoS keeps taking the wrong direction in terms of difficulty of PvE, since it's either always too easy or insanely unforgiving (the new trial/vma, both filled with artificial difficulty of bugs, one shots, etc instead of true difficult mechanics). But this isn't because players are capable of preforming insane damage or really well rounded builds that can take, mend, and dish out good amounts of damage, it's because of the situation at hand. The amount of players capable at preforming at that level is very low, so designing content around them seems foolish. Yet at the same time, every player has the capability to reach that same level of play, but many of them don't. Why is that? Well the main reason is the fact that ESO has absolutely no guidelines and stepping stones for players to learn how to preform at an end game level. There is not a single in game mention of mechanics such as weaving, the priority system, block casting, etc. Tooltips are broken and unreliable, stat explanations are vague or flat out incorrect, ability calculations are completely hidden meaning players have to spend an absurd amount of time doing math testing with NO proper means of doing so (no testing dummies/controlled instances where players control mobs/etc). All the while Zenimax praises builds that are put up into Battle Master's Corner that would get absolutely decimated in any sort of end game performance, or would hold back other group members if they were with them.

On top of that, all of these comments are trying to trivialize this phenomenon. Learning the game at an advanced level and then spending the time fine tuning your build and maximizing efficiency is not something you can do over night, or even a month. It took the top players in the game a LONG time to get where they are, if it was so simple then way more people would be at the same level, and ZoS would be able to create a baseline of difficulty for players to enjoy. The fact is though, skill level varies SO much from player to player that it makes it impossible for a design team to balance something around everyone. Everyone is focused on the wrong topic here. There is definitely a finger to point at something, but it isn't this.

Who said this thread was an attack on the top players? Anyone can spend an hour or two reading/watching a couple of guides, researching on builds and gear and come up with something that can churn out at least 20k. Hell once you start to learn your class/skill lines etc you can pretty much come up with something just by experimenting.

The issue here is not the top players doing too much DPS than anyone else, the issue is DPS is so high now it's possible for most decent builds to out DPS mechanics entirely. With fights being so short this leaves tanks or healers being the spare parts not finding a challenge and just being there for convenience of the DPS while everyone else has the DPS race as their main focus.

Having come from games where there is co-ordinated healing and tanking this game just sticks the middle finger up at them for the sake of high number DPS ego.

I never said it was an attack on the top players, I mentioned it because the builds you're referring to were made by players who dedicate an astronomical amount of time and passion into the game. Reading guides and builds can only help so much, this game demands more mechanical performance than it does stat boosting. ESO's combat is not bound by the normal walls of conventional MMO's like WoW where everyone had a DPS ceiling because of GCD's and basic game play. ESO is extremely dynamic and combat fluctuates greatly based on many factors. Two players in the same build/gear setup can pull extremely different numbers because of it. This means that ZoS cannot truly balance gameplay to the same degree other games can with simply fine tuning numbers, because operational values and efficiency alter so much from player to player and encounter to encounter that there is no end all be all. Imagine if they simply nerfed damage output by 50% across the board. While everyone would take a large hit by it, players who were already competent enough to clear content still will, but those who were teetering the line are now in a world of hurt and no longer can reliably play the game. I'm not one for carebearing in my games, but I do understand that in the state ESO is in, many of its players are not in a position to be greeted by insane game play, because Zenimax has done such an awful job teaching them how to play their own game.

See my 2nd post for the explanation as to why you believe DPS is too high. The issue isn't the character's power, it's content that is severely behind the character's level. When you run into PvE and hit a mob, you're hitting a mob that has the armor ratings of a level 50 mob, even if it is scaled to v16. All of ESO's PvE content aside from vMA and vICP/WGT is out dated, and is what you are referring to about places where you can ignore mechanics. ZOS acknowledges this and continues to make new content that is properly scaled and designed so that we cannot burn past mechanics. Go step inside the new trial on PTS and tell me DPS is too high for it.

I came from the same sort of games and I see no issues with this in those terms, because they still exist in the content that matters. Who cares about stuff like vCOH/COA that drops v14 gear and has no repeatable purpose? We SHOULD be making a joke out of those dungeons because they aren't up to date with where our characters are.

infraction2008b16_ESO wrote: »

Gilliamtherogue wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Alabyn wrote: »

Healers now are expected to provide rare emergency heals

Pug for vICP or vWGT via group finder and say this again.
Seriosly, its really funny how many people are like "but casuals are the majority so we need to make the game as carebear as possible" in dps meter related threads, and now everyone is suddenly focused on top 10% of playerbase.

It is really funny, threads like these are all over filled with players complaining about the fact how the top players are able to destroy content in insane amounts of time, and rally people to it as if that was an issue, but are not actively apart of it. Looking through this thread I have not recognized a single name of one of those players and I beg the question, If you (the reader) were capable of preforming to the letter of which this thread describes, would you be complaining about it being an issue? Also this whole notion of "After patch 1.6 this game became a pure DPS race, everything is so easy, X dungeon used to be hard!" is so misleading and incorrect. This game has always had players who made content look like a joke, but they were a lot more exclusive and didn't spread ANY information in fears that the community would get hold of it and destroy it, which ended up happening anyways. A lot of old metas were crushed because the wrong people heard about it and exploited it, or players who refused to learn counter play cried nerfs too loud and doomed entire builds to ruin. Content was always hard when it first came out, but not because the content itself was so challenging, but because players needed time to learn the new mechanics and moves, understanding mob AI to the point where they could anticipate almost every move, etc.


Don't get me wrong, I think ZoS keeps taking the wrong direction in terms of difficulty of PvE, since it's either always too easy or insanely unforgiving (the new trial/vma, both filled with artificial difficulty of bugs, one shots, etc instead of true difficult mechanics). But this isn't because players are capable of preforming insane damage or really well rounded builds that can take, mend, and dish out good amounts of damage, it's because of the situation at hand. The amount of players capable at preforming at that level is very low, so designing content around them seems foolish. Yet at the same time, every player has the capability to reach that same level of play, but many of them don't. Why is that? Well the main reason is the fact that ESO has absolutely no guidelines and stepping stones for players to learn how to preform at an end game level. There is not a single in game mention of mechanics such as weaving, the priority system, block casting, etc. Tooltips are broken and unreliable, stat explanations are vague or flat out incorrect, ability calculations are completely hidden meaning players have to spend an absurd amount of time doing math testing with NO proper means of doing so (no testing dummies/controlled instances where players control mobs/etc). All the while Zenimax praises builds that are put up into Battle Master's Corner that would get absolutely decimated in any sort of end game performance, or would hold back other group members if they were with them.

On top of that, all of these comments are trying to trivialize this phenomenon. Learning the game at an advanced level and then spending the time fine tuning your build and maximizing efficiency is not something you can do over night, or even a month. It took the top players in the game a LONG time to get where they are, if it was so simple then way more people would be at the same level, and ZoS would be able to create a baseline of difficulty for players to enjoy. The fact is though, skill level varies SO much from player to player that it makes it impossible for a design team to balance something around everyone. Everyone is focused on the wrong topic here. There is definitely a finger to point at something, but it isn't this.

Who said this thread was an attack on the top players? Anyone can spend an hour or two reading/watching a couple of guides, researching on builds and gear and come up with something that can churn out at least 20k. Hell once you start to learn your class/skill lines etc you can pretty much come up with something just by experimenting.

The issue here is not the top players doing too much DPS than anyone else, the issue is DPS is so high now it's possible for most decent builds to out DPS mechanics entirely. With fights being so short this leaves tanks or healers being the spare parts not finding a challenge and just being there for convenience of the DPS while everyone else has the DPS race as their main focus.

Having come from games where there is co-ordinated healing and tanking this game just sticks the middle finger up at them for the sake of high number DPS ego.

This "DPS race" reminds me of a communication phenomena. I'll run with a pug and no one will say boo; just link dps stats and high five each other. I suppose I could link heal stats, woo woo.

hrothbern wrote: »

Just as example, "out of the box", how simple this stacking can be adressed:
IF DPS scales only from Spell/Weapon Power and HPS scales only from Magicka/Stamina stat....

You are forced to choose, like in the CP tree.

For the Trinity this means:

1. A Healer can stack 100% stat for max HPS as 100% dedicated Healer (high HPS output but less DPS), or stack less stat to Heal and add more Spell Power (to support DPS) or add more Recovery to add support / Group synergy abilities.
2. A Damage Dealer can stack 100% Spell/Weapon Power as 100% DPS (high DPS output but less self heal), or stack some stat for sustain or solo.
3. A Tank can stack Mitigation & Health as 100% damage sponge (high sustain, but no DPS), or stack less mitigation and free up room to add DPS or support the Group with synergy abilities.

And there are many, many more ways, where "simple" technical changes will adress the current meta of very high DPS + very high selfsustain from self heals.

I have to bring up a post from Improving Health regarding decoupling healing from damage by @Sentinel .

Sentinel wrote: »

In the calculations for healing, health is given an equal role as stamina/magicka and simply added to the equation. (the actual math itself would have to balance so that healing itself isn't massively buffed up front). What this would mean is, perhaps for using rally, someone with 40k health and 15k stamina would get the same values as someone with 20k health and 35k stamina. If this were used in conjunction with improving the modifier for health back to 1.5x, then health will be a stat that provides more statistical improvement to healing (since it could be raised higher than the other stats), but you do not lose out on all healing by investing in one stat. You would just have less than ideal.

The fun I had in tanking was the ability to switch between tank and dps focuses with my weapon swap. The DPS inflation has made that type of play impossible. Trying to be a sufficient tank while also setting aside enough stats for sufficient DPS is simply not possible. The two main factors are the DPS inflation and lackluster Heavy Armor. No, I don't quite mean the passives. Heavy Armor as a whole is lackluster. Not a steaming pile of dung, but clearly behind Light and Medium Armor. In damage mitigation particularly, the one thing Heavy Armor is supposed to be king at. But that can also be traced back to DPS inflation. Heavy Armor users did not complain about lack of mitigation in 1.4 and 1.5, even though soft caps placed our mitigation at lower values than today.

The power gap between casual and elite was smaller before Update 6, allowing viable multi-roling and for casuals to more readily attempt high end content. Multi-roling (unless Magicka stacked) is not viable, let alone competitive and the expert players can pull DPS numbers double those of less dedicated. Very often in Wayrest, friends and guildmates are denied a group for tougher dungeons because they do not meet the benchmark for the burn strategy. Tougher content, the taste of defeat, is what drives players to perform better, to reach the level of elite players. That taste is denied by the high benchmark. And yes, @Gilliamtherogue , the game has a very poor difficulty curve, lacking milestones almost across the board. We used to have such milestones in Doshia, Molag Bal, the Veteran zones... those were all nerfed to trivial status.

Doshia was early on in the game, encountered in the first Fighters Guild quest, and tested player's ability to recognize and deal with enemy mechanics and utilize AoE or fast single target attacks. Doshia is a Soul Harvester and was a high level enemy type in a low level quest, being the penultimate boss. A high hurdle to hone one's skills against. Doshia was the first enemy we fought with a special mechanic. Ane likely an enemy all of us died many times to, trying to figure out how to counter it. And now Doshia dies before her mechanic even triggers.

Veteran zones were intended for two people, assuming you made and played with friends. Many of us went on to solo these zones and faced a bump in difficulty. Enemies had higher stats, higher Health and higher damage, which gave every encounter a possibility of death. It forced players to consider encounters, which ones were winnable, which ones were not, and how to approach encounters with uncertain outcomes. It was fun. And it was nerfed.

Molag Bal was nerfed before I even began playing, but I hear it was a penultimate test of skill that only elite players could clear in the day. Without even experiencing that, I know the Molag Bal we fight now is a mere shadow, beatable with only Restoration Staff heavy attacks in mismatched armor.

The difficulty was there, but the cues to which tools were needed was not. Now the difficulty is not there. The new content brings it back, but the difficulty curve and accompanying learning curve has still been nerfed away from the base content, leading to "insane and unforgiving fights."

I agree that the role of a healer and tank has changed. But as far as (healers) being "reduced" to providing resources and/or DPS-ing. It's not at all a reduction, but really an upgrade. When I was in pre-vet and even lowbie vet ranks, I just wanted to heal. I had no care, whatsoever, if my damage was low, all I wanted to do was be pure healer. And at pre-vet/lowbie vet you can get away with that. As I progress to higher vet ranks (all the way to v16), it's time to up my game. As a Templar, it is easy to heal and off-DPS (if that's a thing lol). I still wanted to heal, but more than anything, I wanted to be a support. I wanted to be able to buff teammates (whether or not they have insane DPS), debuff enemy targets, manage/sustain my team's resources, provide damage mitigation through shields and ultimately keep my party alive. If I just wanted to heal, then why slot any other spell but BoL (until TG goes live, that is). If I just wanted to heal and save my teammates from death, I honestly would just slot everything with healing spells. But I find that play-style boring and not challenging.

That said, this (the whole "I-just-want-to-heal" thing) was my mind set once. I dislike DPS-ing, and I really can't tank to save my life. I just wanted to be a dedicated healer. I didn't even bother improving my spell damage. But now I wanted to matter in game as a healer/support. Prolonged fights are OK, but just healing on prolonged fights is boring. I want things to be dynamic when I am being challenged to think how can I be more of a support to my team, than just providing heals. I want to think when I'm running a dungeon/trial/any content. I want to be conflicted on which spell would work for a boss-- should I take a spell that can aid in stam/magicka regen? A debuff spell? A buff spell? A utility spell?, versus thinking "slot BoL and I'm good to go".

The DPS role still isn't my play-style, I still prefer healing/support roles. But I play DPS (in ESO) too, only to have a first-hand experience and a better understanding how I can support them the best. And in the process, I have now also taken into consideration my DPS when I heal. I know I need to contribute to dealing damage in certain boss fights, because a dead boss equals you saving your team's lives. "Prevention is better than cure".

We all have different play-styles, but it doesn't mean that just because we have a clear understanding of how we play that we close our minds to other forms of play-style. To OP, I'm sure you're pretty good at what you're doing and/or your role, and I get it, damage in this game (even with all it's "nerfs") is quite insane, especially in PvE. And as much as I agree that roles outside DPS is worrisome, if you think that the healing role is only to save someone from eminent death, and that you are being "reduced" as someone who only provides resources, etc, then I believe it's an issue with your play-style. Not necessarily a lot of healers/tanks.