Historically, in MMOs, there's always been a shortage of Healers & Tanks. The roles are more difficult than DPS, and in many older games Tanks & Healers had absolutely terrible DPS and couldn't solo quest. Also, PUGs would generally blame the tank or the healer when they failed.

So. More responsibility/difficulty, harder & slower to do non-group content, and more abuse from other players. Gee, why do people prefer to DPS? (On the other hand, some people would pick tank/healer because they could get dungeon groups faster.)

Now, in this game (with the ability to have lots of skills/rearrange skill bars, and with every class having some self-healing) this is less of an issue. But dedicated tank/healer still isn't as "easy" and "fun" as DPS. /shrug

Shad0wfire99 wrote: »

Players like to feel powerful. From a new player's perspective, healing and tanking definitely aren't that.

I feel power when I'm healing on my sorc and out-dpsing the dps.

It's this way in every MMO with a Holy Trinity, which is why I dislike that system. Sad thing is everyone wants to be DPS but majority of them are terrible at it. So I play my healer alt as pure DPS with a few heals to make dungeons go faster since they're painfully slow majority of the time when I'm not playing my DPS main. Healing is the easiest thing in this game but no one wants to do it. Tanking is a bit trickier in some vet dungeons and DPS may need a 2nd armor set unfortunately to do both.

That'll probably all be ruined through in Marrowind but I'm not on PTS to know for sure. Lotta my DPS healers strength comes from having so much Magicka/regen.

I started eso as a Templar healer and played that from launch on console until Theives Guild. I got bored with it and retired her to be my crafter. I have had more fun playing as a sorc and mdk Dps than I ever did on my healer.

The sort of post the op came up with has been around for as long as there have been mmos that utilise the tank, healer,dps combo, and the comments have all been roughly about the same as far as I can remember and focus mainly on the simple premise, i.e. I AM better than you.

Considerably more skilled, aware of spell rotations, better gear etc.

Good for you...

I like to tell stories, craft stuff, explore and blow crap up! Being shouted at because I can't heal the pug dps for 60 k a second because the useless git keeps standing in the red poo just ain't fun.

At the moment cp600 means sod all skill wise other than you probably know a lot about clearing dark anchors and that you are very familiar with part of skyreach

I swear at the moment the worst dps are 600s, for every light attack spamming archer at low cp there are swarms at 600, it's as if some of them don't know one end of a keyboard from the other. It's hilarious when as a tank you realise your holding agro, throwing out buffs and even a heal or two and still doing more dps than the ones that queued for it

ntellect_ESO wrote: »

Most people don't want to be tanks or healers due to the responsibility. Most people just want to play and have fun but there is a level of stress that can be attributed when you add the responsibility of supporting other people. But to.me that's the symptom. The problem is not enough support in the overall community to train and teach new tanks and healers.

Without that imparting of knowledge you will have those who try to be tanks and get berated for not being good or they become part of the symptom and never try. Which tends to be easier (and unfortunately more enjoyable) than trying. Of course this omits those who love the role, are eager to train, or persevere through failure.

To be clear, I think this is an MMO problem and not specific to ESO, though I value this community higher than the others I've been apart of over the last 15 years.

I agree. There are very few incentives and learning opportunities for Tanks and Healers early on, other than having to go out, risking it and be exposed to trash talk. You either can take it and learn or you give it up quickly. True.

Integral1900 wrote: »

I like to tell stories, craft stuff, explore and blow crap up! Being shouted at because I can't heal the pug dps for 60 k a second because the useless git keeps standing in the red poo just ain't fun.

At the moment cp600 means sod all skill wise other than you probably know a lot about clearing dark anchors and that you are very familiar with part of skyreach

I swear at the moment the worst dps are 600s, for every light attack spamming archer at low cp there are swarms at 600, it's as if some of them don't know one end of a keyboard from the other. It's hilarious when as a tank you realise your holding agro, throwing out buffs and even a heal or two and still doing more dps than the ones that queued for it

The Sons of Skyreach!

I don't mind healing, when healers are given fun and unique tools. FFXIV did it correctly with their healers. Astrologians are an absolute hoot to play. Even in WoW, Disc priests were always fun to play because you were active and were expected to DPS and support the group.

In ESO, the healing abilities are generic simply because of the nature of the classes in this game. They cannot give fun and unique mechanics to a class without shoehorning you into a play style which then goes against the game design of class skills simply being part of a toolbox. All they can do, is give the classes flavor.

Hence why I hate when people say, "no classes" because that would ultimately make things even worse. Everyone would make a tanky, healing DPS build and it would be meta. Period.

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

Sabbathius wrote: »

The answer is very simple, and tons of people in this thread missed it completely.

The game has a lot of content, most of it in fact, that HAS to be done as DD. You can't heal vMA to death. Yeah, you can do it as tank or heals, but how's your score? Want to kill world bosses? Sure you can do them (many of them anyway, some you can't because they self-heal and your DPS is ***) as tank or heals. But they're meant to be done as DPS. Want to solo a vet dungeon? It'll take you considerably longer as healer/tank. Want to farm some gold off of Imperial mobs, while wearing Prosperous set? If you do it as tank/heals, you'll be stupidly inefficient. And so on, and so forth.

What I'm getting at is, the game is centered around KILLING. Tanking and healing are just the means to an end. DD does the actual work. It is also more applicable to all facets of the game. For example, if you want to run a really, really fast dungeon normal mode? You don't need a tank or heals at all, a full team of self-sustaining DD builds will do it far faster. Even leveling and CP farming, try to do it as a tank, and you'll be pulling your hair out.

In short, it's got nothing to do with fun, or what people prefer. It's a factor, yes. But ultimately it's just the way they designed the game. As long as only killing matters for 95% of the game's content, there will be more DD.

What a load of codswallop. It's either "nothing to do with fun" or is a factor. Can't be both. It's designed like almost every other combat game out there; Press button(s) until npc is dead. To many, tanking isn't fun and healing isn't fun, so yeah, it's a factor and can have everything to do with it. Why? Because I, myself find tanking unfun so don't do it. I'm not unique.

I may have gotten wording not exactly right. English being my 4th language and all that.

What I meant to say is, fun may be a factor, but it's not something that decides the outcome, all by itself.

Also no, it is not like almost every other combat game out there. Because they have other features which help with these issues. Something that ESO lacks. WoW, as an example, has dual specialization. Meaning, I can press one button, and my spec, my action bars, even my equipped gear and weapons, all swap to something else. With a single keypress. So, say I have a warrior in WoW. And I'm a tank. I press one button, and I'm DPS! Press it again, I'm a tank! Again? DPS! See? Gorgeous! By comparison, in ESO, if I wanted to switch from tank to DPS? I have to go to a shrine in a specific location and change my skillpoints, and pay every time you do this. Then you manually unlock the abilities and morphs you need, which is 2 clicks pet skill, minimum of 24 clicks just for the action skills and ultimates in total, not including passives (helluva lot more clicks). Then you gotta go and change your attribute points as well. Oh, and CP, don't forget the CP. And then you have to swap all your gear and weapons and set up action bars, consummables, etc. Now a very quick, intuitive process, is it?

So what I was trying to say was, even if I find tanking/healing fun, the process of switching from DD to tank/healer is so stupidly painful AND expensive in ESO that I just won't do it. And maintaining one character per role is too time-consuming, seeing as I have to unlock all that *** (Undaunted, Mages' Guild, etc.) on *per-character* basis rather than per-account. It's not that people don't find it fun, some do, it's just that the fun isn't worth the aggravation of dealing with the character design mechanics of this game.

If they want more tanks/heals in ESO, dual (at the minimum, ideally 3-4 specs would be better) specialization is the way to go. At the minimum. The gear-swapping system has to be built in. On PC it's already done with player-made addon, but consoleers are *** out of luck as usual. A better alternative would be to allow characters to tank, heal or DPS on demand, just not at the same time. To use WoW as an example, warrior has three stances (Battle, Defensive and Berserker). The first is just default all-around, the second is tanking, the third is mad DPS. We saw something similar in Age of Conan, like Frenzy stance and Defensive stance. Can't do both, but you can switch. Makes making a tank much more attractive. I also heard WoW's recent expansion did something with tanks and healers which allows them to do solo content even with their tank/heal spec, don't know how well it works, of it at all, as I haven't played the game in a while. But at least they're trying.

I've tanked and healed in other MMOs, but I always like to start out as DPS to learn the fights before I perform either role. Yeah, I watch videos when I can, but I'm really shy when it comes to tanking, as you're usually expected to lead the group. I'd say healing is the most comfortable role for me, but I'm leery of the templar changes and, again, I've not been in any dungeons. So yeah, that's why right now I play DPS. Heh.

Tanking leaves a lot to be desired in this game.

Block and single target taunt. A few tricks here and there but kinda meh.

Haven't done the trials, so can't comment on that.

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Zyrudin wrote: »

It is only really easy to tank if your group is competent. Trust me on that

Probably also varies by game & content level. I recall people talking about raid tanking in early-days WoW.... having two+ tanks, who had to stand in particular spots (then move to other ones as boss phases changed), trading off threat whenever certain attacks happened, etc. Or just the general issues of having to manage your threat-generator abilities and taunts, making sure your DPS didn't attack too hard at first or they'd pull the boss, needing to use mods to monitor how much threat each member of the group had, blah blah blah.... didn't sound fun at all, I could definitely understand why people didn't want the job.

In wow now, you run in, hit an aoe, everything's glued to you.

And people still crap on the tank if they don't pull full rooms and then run into the next while the healer's trying to loot.