OP people here are right, these dungeons are very easy and it is a l2p issue - but maybe not your l2p issue, since you play a support role and run with randoms.

The main issue is, if you pug or use grouping tool you may get in a group with players who wear no set gear, and don't have required skills and ablities slotted. Lack of communication, lack of understanding of eachothers roles are all major killers in dungeons.

For instance at the first boss in WGT, when a person gets locked up - they might take damage, so it helps if the healer runs near the cage and throw in a few heals.

• Do you wear a restoration staff? Because casting Siphon Spirit can ease your job a lot, because the Damage Dealers will heal themselves a bit, while you are locked inside a cage.
• Do the group members carry lockpicks for that fight? Does everyone have a small stack of soulgems? Do everyone have food buff and potions?
• Do you deal damage? Because if your Damage Dealers are level 20 then they probably don't have proper passives and skills unlocked to be efficient, and it will help if you and the other support role actually deal damage.

I play a healer, and I sometimes heal randoms in dungeons. I usually equip minimum heals for those dungeons, because I know that healing is my last worry. Hell I even carry v1, v5, v10 and v15 purple food buff in case I end up in a group with players who don't know they will need such things lol

All these problems can be solved by stop running these dungeons with randoms, but socialize - get friends and join active friendly social guilds.

...I've 2 manned this dungeon on normal with my girlfriend on lowbie alts in out dated leveling gear and we are not even a end game raiders or elitist for the matter. The dungeon itself is a joke, WGT and ICP have already been smacked around with the nerf bat. Just sounds like your group members were inexperienced and complicated matters for you thus holding you back OP, this is the gamble you take with group finder.

kylewwefan wrote: »

Look man. 45~50 minutes into the dungeon, you're still on the first boss getting ready to wipe again. The next bosses are even harder and have more "mechanics" to follow. I'm getting visions of the little internet tough guys saying how easy this is. I want to flush him down the toilet.

Well I can tell you I am not a guy and I am not tough, and I still think this is kinda silly and a learn to play issue.

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

Rainteal wrote: »

KoshkaMurka wrote: »

The topic is about normal versions, if you havent noticed.
Also, I help my guildies from social guild with these dungeons from time to time, and I gotta say the only thing that can prevent an average player from beating them is ultimate selfishness and not willing to adapt. For example, not taking pinion cause it will lower their dps, even if tank died and healer got portal duty. Or not jumping in Lord Warden's portals because they are busy attacking him.
If you are such player or have one or more of those in your group, then yeah, you are going to have hard time.

My comments about the vet circled back and contributed to my point about the normal at the end of my post. Not sure why you felt I didn't notice the topic was about normal?

I am in no way trying to be obtuse toward you, but I wonder, as a guy in Hodor with a vMOL score, how much time do you really spend playing and interacting with actual casual, average gamers? (especially the level of casual player that console produces) I ask that question honestly and wish for you to really consider it. I believe the truly average player would not miss picking up the pinion for risk of DPS suffering, but instead because they are totally overwhelmed with the fires bursting from the floor, the boss's AoE explosion, and the DoT constantly chipping away at their health bar. The fight is probably going on much longer than it needs to because the folks are doing far less damage without BiS gear and skill choices, and with a longer fight, the lesser player is in greater jeopardy from those mechanics. They also lack the self-awareness to quickly react to portals spawning while avoiding ground AoEs and dodging boss.

For these reasons, I am all for making the normal easier than it is now. Let those folks see and enjoy that content. With that said, leave the vet versions alone, heck, buff them significantly to give folks like us something to do.

First, dont assume things, please. There's 5 guild slots in this game. I'm in 2 social guilds, and I sometimes help people from those guilds with stuff like crafting and dungeons. That example I mentioned was actually with casual players, 2 of them werent even from the guild if I remember correctly, and the the "dps" wasnt some exquisite 40k dps rotation as you might've assumed, it was just poison arrow spam. But that dps was the reason why the player refused to pick the pinion no matter what. It is just one example, but in general, from my experience, stuff like this causes wipes a lot more often than anything.
As for nerfs, there's no way to make these things easier except removing mechanics whatsoever - but in this case they couldnt be used as training grounds for veteran version and players will be unprepared. This is a serious problem in this game's design - there's nothing to fill the gap between very easy and very hard content. In my opinion, there should be content of all levels, so every player will have something that they enjoy.
On a side note, mechanic-based dungeons are actually more friendly for average players than straight up burning everything, because the latter is much more gear/stat dependent. In WGT, all "difficulty" is mechanic-based, for example, and even if the team doesnt have BiS builds, they can fight as long as they're following the mechanics - and eventually win. vICP has a bit of dps race mechanic (atronachs), but the dps requirement is really low and players can avoid getting more than one mob at once by following the strategy.

I made no direct assumption. I had a belief based on conjecture and asked you an honest question about my belief in order to better understand your position.

I have had similar experiences with people just not wanting to adapt. I asked an inexperienced Templar healer to put on shards or repentance to help our low level tank in nICP random dungeon with resource management and he told me, "Hey buddy, I don't do any of that fancy stuff. I'm just a healer." I wish I was making that up...

With the above being said, that is not my normal experience with less experienced players. Normally folks just need a nudge in the right direction to help learn the tricks of the trade.

As for the gaps between very easy and very hard, I am not sure if I agree that that doesn't already exist. Vet Wayrest and vet Elden Hollow are fantastic segues from normal dungeons into the veteran world. I think that nICP and nWGT could be made a bit easier without gutting the dungeons by making the mechanics a little bit more forgiving. (maybe also putting a level restriction on them; a level 10 just doesn't have the skills unlocked to be effective in those dungeons even when scaled). Mechanics are great and I love them, but there is a way to make them friendlier for less experienced. Hands cause less damage, rifts despawn after spawning one add, sparks don't have a lingering DoT, things like that.

I think nMSA and vMSA are great examples of this in practice. In many cases, the mechanics are very similar or the same in both instances, but nMSA is SUPER forgiving. I know it is hard for some to believe, but I have some guys and gals in my little guild that have either never tried nMSA or tried and couldn't beat it.

The whole point I was originally making in my post was focused on all of the people I see posting in the forums CONSTANTLY that vICP and vWGT and (insert any other piece of content) are really easy. To me, to you, yes, they are VERY easy. I just don't believe that a large portion of players of ESO would agree with that assessment. In fact, I believe the larger portion of ESO players might find the normal versions of those dungeons too hard for them as well.

Nothing in this game needs a nerf. Frankly, I'd be happy with a buff to every dungeon and trial In this game (besides vmaw, that's good where it is).

There was all a point for us where we couldn't do some trial or dungeon, but you work at it. Learn the game better, learn the mechanics better, get better gear and go in and beat it.

..You just need to get better at the game

OP if you are interested, I could type a small guide with the needed details of White Gold Tower, from a healers perspective.

Do not nerf this. I completed WGT with 3 level 15's and a 38. It is not impossible. Everyone wants to nerf the most entertaining dungeons. Get voice chat, learn mechanics, and have fun. This same group, minus one person(we are a three man team that picks up a 4th) beat ICP at level 13 too. 5 moves and no extra bars. It is not impossible. ZOS, I ask that you do not nerf these dungeons. Sigh...... the other dungeons are just face rolls!

kylewwefan wrote: »

A guide would be completely worthy of its own post, and I would check it out!
Just tittle it "WGT Guide" or "White Gold Tower Guide"
Sadly, one does not seem to come up from search.

Google................

The OP does have a valid point, though.

nICP and nWGT, relative to the other normal dungeons, are much harder. Which, on its own, is fine.

But the really big problem, though, is that the minimum level for nICP/nWGT is 10.

Battle-leveling doesn't help with missing passives. It doesn't help with the fact that level 10 characters don't have AoE skills and other important skills unlocked.

And if the players are true newbies, Battle Leveling doesn't help with L2P issues and with a lack of CP.

Compared to the other level 10 normal dungeons, nICP/nWGT are on a difficulty level of their own. Of course, that wouldn't bother me if I'm leveling a new alt. But how is a real newbie, who is doing their very first group dungeon, supposed to know that ICP/WGT are very different than Spindleclutch?

The solution, though, isn't to nerf nICP/nWGT. They're already so easy that they don't really help prepare a player for the vet version. But it's also idiotic to open it up to level 10 players. This is one place where the DLC model creates conflicts of interest. ZOS doesn't have the guts to tell their customers, "No, you shouldn't play this cool new content you just bought until you hit a much higher level." So they set the minimum level to 10 and instead feed into these dungeons players who are unprepared and unequipped to deal with something like this.

And that's what ZOS needs to do: Make the minimum level of nICP/nWGT 45, similar to Vaults of Madness.

(Also, it matters a lot which roles are the lowbies. If lowbies are the tank and healer, and you have VR16 DPSs, the dungeon shouldn't be problematic, and the DPS--if they are halfway decent--should be able to carry the group. But if the high-level players are the healer and/or tank and the DPS are the lowbies, then the dungeon will likely be problematic.)

@code65536 that won't happen though, because it's DLC content and ZOS is trying not to scare off lowbies who just bought the game they should though, because ICP and WGT are harder than usual normal dungeons.

Mush55 wrote: »

failkiwib16_ESO wrote: »

OP if you are interested, I could type a small guide with the needed details of White Gold Tower, from a healers perspective.

Nice offer,
but there are a multitude of guides and many more you tube videos showing it in practice.

All it requires is a bit of effort to type in Wgt normal Or Vet Wgt guides and hey presto there are pages of them.

I did this before I even entered Wgt Or Icp just to give me a heads up of what I was against and although not the same as being there it helped alot.

@Mush55 maybe, but many of those guides are written to match the general public, so they don't go much into details of how to carry a group of kicking & screaming pugs from hell through a dungeon.

Tbh. I think OP would have better chances to pug the veteran version, because he/she might get lucky and get into a competant group lol

---

OP since you seem to want a guide, I will write you one. Since you do seem to have a nice chunk of champion points, I will get into that as well just give me some time, because I'm suffering brainlag from doing laundry for 5 hours now and half of it with my hands, cuz the damn machine is drunk.

N0TPLAYER2 wrote: »

I've never done wgt and prison on normal. Are there quests and skill points for the normal versions? There is for other dungeons but I'm not sure about this. Anyone fill me in?

? Anyone know?

My opinion on WGT and ICP is that scaling does not provide the appropriate handicap to lower-level players to place them on-par with the difficulty of the dungeon. I've seen evidence of this in numerous areas, but I believe it is most pronounced in these two dungeons specifically.

Scaling puts too much emphasis on the wrong stats, and it's disproportionate to the way we build our characters at vr16. I've never seen a scaled character that ended up with the "appropriate" amount of max stats (including health) and offensive stats (crit, SD/WD, etc.). Now, part of this is based on the gear worn by the scaled player, which makes this is bit more complicated, but the point of scaling is supposed bring that character to a level where they are actually competitive. I've known good players with a lot of CP who brought mid-vet rank characters into these two dungeons, and still didn't end up with a good stat allocation.

I think part of the problem here is that ZOS is trying to make too much endgame content available to players that should probably be waiting to a higher rank to participate. Please understand that I'm not against newer or lower-level players personally, I simply believe the difficulty of the dungeon sets higher standards which even I would struggle to meet on a mid-vet rank toon.

Scaling should be a tiered system. Depending on the content, scaling should adjust certain stats to a higher/lower degree accordingly. For example, a vr10 character going to Wrothgar should not be scaled identically to that same exact vr10 character going into ICP or WGT. Rather, that player should be scaled to a more competitive level (relative to the Wrothgar scaling) so that it matches more closely with difficulty of ICP and WGT.

I also support lower limits on characters who wish to participate, an example perhaps is setting ICP and WGT to vr10-vr16 range, rather than opening it up to vr1-vr16. At the very least, this would help ZOS maintain a more appropriate scaling system (it would be easier to fine-tune a narrower range of vet levels). Again, this isn't because I hate lower vet characters (in fact, I help new and returning players daily). I simply don't think it speaks well to content balancing, and I don't think there's anything wrong with reserving some content for higher-level characters. After all, we can't really call it endgame content, if you can go in there after 25% of the leveling process.

I just ran ICP on normal with 3 lvl 10s and myself at 40. They had 0 champion points. We made it all the way to Lord Dusk when 2 for some reason not known left. We managed to pick up 2 more people to finish. Nerf? No.