My review after the last 15 pug dungeons

Carbonised · July 2018

All this hate for fake tanks, but let me tell you, as a REAL tank, there is nothing worse than fake DPS.

I've met plenty of them, they have no rotation, the wrong gear, and do DPS in the single K digits.

It's virtually impossible to do vet dungeons with these people, even the easy vet ones, and I have gotten to where I just leave the group after first trash pull, when I can see them dying to trash, or it takes 3+ minutes to clear the first group.
With those DDs, it's going to be impossible to finish the dungeon anyway.

Even NORMAL DLC dungs like WGT and ICP are often impossible to do when people have terrible DPS and no clue of mechanics.
Yesterday I had to leave a group for normal Cradle because two of them had not done the dungeon even once, and were not even in CP levels. Next queue after 15 minutes already had killed a boss and obviously lost their tank somewhere along the way. Well I queued to get my pledge and key, so sorry, had to leave that group as well, before finally getting a group to clear the dungeon.

Sure, fake tanks is a problem, but fake DPS, or at least DDs with terrible damage and no clue of dungeon mechanics, is just as much of a problem, and the reason why I loathe to even use the group tool to begin with.

Seeing that ZOS releases 4 extremely hard and mechanic heavy dungeons every year, they really need to adress this at some point. The disparity between the leet players and the sucky players is just too vast to make the group tool and random groups remotely satisfying for anyone.

Mahabahabtha · July 2018

Soleya wrote: »

You do know that all NPCs have injured their arm and cannot fight? If not you haven't done enough quests.

I thought it was an arrow in the knee ?

sudaki_eso · July 2018

Must be a pc thing, i pug vet dungeons quite often, no dlc ones tho, and yes some runs are pretty bad but i would say 2/3 are ok for a random group. Playing on ps4 EU...
I am sorry that you have such a bad experience.

SoLooney · July 2018

although i agree with you that 90perc of pugs are complete aids, its your own fault that you have expectations for a good group

find some friends or guildies. beggars cant be choosers.

vometia · July 2018

Heka Cain wrote: »

As long as you're having fun!

There's no time for fun and frivolity, gaming is serious business!

Carbonised · July 2018

SoLooney wrote: »

although i agree with you that 90perc of pugs are complete aids, its your own fault that you have expectations for a good group

find some friends or guildies. beggars cant be choosers.

Load of BS. None of us expect a good group in the group finder, but we do expect a group able to finish the content. Why else make it possible to do the content via group finder to begin with?

Also, not everyone have the luxury of being in a close-knit guild with regular dungeon groups. Fine that you don't have the problem, but there are other players than you, and I'd make a bet that most of them/us only do dungeon content with people we usually don't know. Like in battlegrounds, the "premades" of dungeon groups make up the minority.

So no, saying "just don't use the group tool" isn't a viable solution.

LadyNalcarya · July 2018

SoLooney wrote: »

although i agree with you that 90perc of pugs are complete aids, its your own fault that you have expectations for a good group

find some friends or guildies. beggars cant be choosers.

But if you signed up for a role and playing it just fine, you're not a beggar.
Group finder is merely a tool for making groups, its not supposed to be a cesspool of the worst players or something. Advocating for it is actually harmful for the community in general and leads to more toxicity. Bad experiences is not something we should defend, especially if this is completely avoidable if you pay any attention to game mechanics and skill descriptions.

And yeah, this is a game and not rocket science, there's nothing a functioning adult cant comprehend, even after a day of work. Even more so, after a day of work you wouldnt want to be stuck in a dungeon for 3 hours and leave it anyway without killing the last boss.

Carbonised · July 2018

LadyNalcarya wrote: »

SoLooney wrote: »

although i agree with you that 90perc of pugs are complete aids, its your own fault that you have expectations for a good group

find some friends or guildies. beggars cant be choosers.

But if you signed up for a role and playing it just fine, you're not a beggar.
Group finder is merely a tool for making groups, its not supposed to be a cesspool of the worst players or something. Advocating for it is actually harmful for the community in general and leads to more toxicity. Bad experiences is not something we should defend, especially if this is completely avoidable if you pay any attention to game mechanics and skill descriptions.

And yeah, this is a game and not rocket science, there's nothing a functioning adult cant comprehend, even after a day of work. Even more so, after a day of work you wouldnt want to be stuck in a dungeon for 3 hours and leave it anyway without killing the last boss.

I agree. But part of the problem is that the damage system and technical system of ESO is not very accessible.

I've played a lot of RPGs in my time, and plenty of Skyrim, and I recall being very frustrated about ESO 3 years back when I began. You use whatever stuff you pick up from mobs (which is usually green and blue trash), you constantly die to world bosses and even delve bosses sometimes, there is NO explanation that damage is tied to either your stamina or magicka pool, NO explanation that being hybrid is a huge DPS loss and you should only pump up either your mag/spellpower or stam/weappower, NO explanation that you need to be in either full medium or light armor, since armor is a huge buff to damage (which is very unlike all other RPGs and even TES games like Skyrim).
All these things I had to find out by going to external websites, where this is still a lot of contradicting information.

And also, there is NO explanation whatsoever about animation canceling or "weaving" or even of such things as a rotation. It was not until I did some massive research on this myself, and joined a couple guilds and asked other people about it that I got a grasp of how damage and stats work in ESO. It's incredibly hard to find out the relevant information, and the game gives you very little feedback. That was 3 years ago, but today it's only slightly better than way back then. I see so many people in PUGs who have no idea about skill use and rotation. They spam light attacks or a single skill and nothing else, and they probably wear green or blue trash gear.

Until ZOS starts taking this seriously, and make their game more accessible to "casual" people, as well as lower the disparity between the top and the bottom tier players, then the group tool will always/often put you with people who have noe clue about the game and just drags their group down.

The responsibility is twofold though, ZOS needs to take more responsibility about their convoluted and non-accessible game mechanics, but players also have to take responsibility of not queueing for content they have no idea about or cannot do, instead of just expecting the group to carry them. I didn't queue up for a single group dungeon until I was way up in the CP and have decent gear. And even then I only did my first group dungeons with guild members. I wish more players would realize the limits of their characters and expertise, instead of expecting random strangers to carry them through content they are in no way ready for.

remilafo · July 2018

People need to chill out..

I queue as whatever i want so long as i get into a pug ASAP.. i can solo a normal dungeon without help, so your assistance and opinion isn't needed or wanted.

As far as vet dungeons goes they don't need a tank either or a healer if you tank is good enough. Adapt.

JasmineMcCoy · July 2018

In my opinion, if high cp people rush through random normal and solo everything without caring for the others in their party, they can hardly complain when in vet they get group members that know neither the dungeon nor their class. You can learn only so much by questing and reading/watching how others do it.

LadyNalcarya · July 2018

JasmineMcCoy wrote: »

In my opinion, if high cp people rush through random normal and solo everything without caring for the others in their party, they can hardly complain when in vet they get group members that know neither the dungeon nor their class. You can learn only so much by questing and reading/watching how others do it.

1)They are not nessesarily the same people
2)Normal dungeons do not prepare you for vets even if you solo them
3)Its hard not to "melt" everything if you have a good (or at least semi-decent) dps build. Mobs in normal dungeons melt even when you heavy attack them with a lightning staff.

Carbonised wrote: »

LadyNalcarya wrote: »

SoLooney wrote: »

although i agree with you that 90perc of pugs are complete aids, its your own fault that you have expectations for a good group

find some friends or guildies. beggars cant be choosers.

But if you signed up for a role and playing it just fine, you're not a beggar.
Group finder is merely a tool for making groups, its not supposed to be a cesspool of the worst players or something. Advocating for it is actually harmful for the community in general and leads to more toxicity. Bad experiences is not something we should defend, especially if this is completely avoidable if you pay any attention to game mechanics and skill descriptions.

And yeah, this is a game and not rocket science, there's nothing a functioning adult cant comprehend, even after a day of work. Even more so, after a day of work you wouldnt want to be stuck in a dungeon for 3 hours and leave it anyway without killing the last boss.

I agree. But part of the problem is that the damage system and technical system of ESO is not very accessible.

I've played a lot of RPGs in my time, and plenty of Skyrim, and I recall being very frustrated about ESO 3 years back when I began. You use whatever stuff you pick up from mobs (which is usually green and blue trash), you constantly die to world bosses and even delve bosses sometimes, there is NO explanation that damage is tied to either your stamina or magicka pool, NO explanation that being hybrid is a huge DPS loss and you should only pump up either your mag/spellpower or stam/weappower, NO explanation that you need to be in either full medium or light armor, since armor is a huge buff to damage (which is very unlike all other RPGs and even TES games like Skyrim).
All these things I had to find out by going to external websites, where this is still a lot of contradicting information.

And also, there is NO explanation whatsoever about animation canceling or "weaving" or even of such things as a rotation. It was not until I did some massive research on this myself, and joined a couple guilds and asked other people about it that I got a grasp of how damage and stats work in ESO. It's incredibly hard to find out the relevant information, and the game gives you very little feedback. That was 3 years ago, but today it's only slightly better than way back then. I see so many people in PUGs who have no idea about skill use and rotation. They spam light attacks or a single skill and nothing else, and they probably wear green or blue trash gear.

Until ZOS starts taking this seriously, and make their game more accessible to "casual" people, as well as lower the disparity between the top and the bottom tier players, then the group tool will always/often put you with people who have noe clue about the game and just drags their group down.

The responsibility is twofold though, ZOS needs to take more responsibility about their convoluted and non-accessible game mechanics, but players also have to take responsibility of not queueing for content they have no idea about or cannot do, instead of just expecting the group to carry them. I didn't queue up for a single group dungeon until I was way up in the CP and have decent gear. And even then I only did my first group dungeons with guild members. I wish more players would realize the limits of their characters and expertise, instead of expecting random strangers to carry them through content they are in no way ready for.

I agree. The lack of tutorials and difficulty curve are huge issues, indeed.
We cannot solve technical problems, but when people create social problems on top of that... Honestly, this is just really toxic. And it gets even worse. When you're being called "elitist" for trying to explain the mechanics or not wanting to carry the whole group as a healer... This is not just the lack of tutorials, its just a certain group of players being toxic and selfish.

Sylosi · July 2018

Carbonised wrote: »

The responsibility is twofold though, ZOS needs to take more responsibility about their convoluted and non-accessible game mechanics, but players also have to take responsibility of not queueing for content they have no idea about or cannot do, instead of just expecting the group to carry them.

You missed a bit, back when MMORPGs weren't full of braindead Skinner Box zombies it was also considered the responsibility of experienced players to teach newer players what to do, that was part of an MMORPG.

So for example back when I played LOTRO (long time ago back when it was a subscription only game), it was not uncommon to see individuals offering to teach new players (or new max levels) a dungeon, guilds did public events for the same thing, even for some of the easier raids, I don't think I have ever seen that in chat in my entire time of playing ESO, it speaks volumes.

Makes me laugh when people say how "good" the ESO community is (or other games like GW2), you just have to take one look at dungeons/raids and you can see they are trash.

LadyNalcarya · July 2018

Sylosi wrote: »

Carbonised wrote: »

The responsibility is twofold though, ZOS needs to take more responsibility about their convoluted and non-accessible game mechanics, but players also have to take responsibility of not queueing for content they have no idea about or cannot do, instead of just expecting the group to carry them.

You missed a bit, back when MMORPGs weren't full of brainddead Skinner Box zombies it was also considered the responsibility of experienced players to teach newer players what to do, that was part of an MMORPG.

So for example back when I played LOTRO (long time ago back when it was a subscription only game), it was not uncommon to see individuals offering to teach new players (or new max levels) a dungeon, guilds did events for the same thing, even for some of the easier raids, I don't think I have ever seen that in chat in my entire time of playing ESO, it speaks volumes.

Makes me laugh when people say how "good" the ESO community is (or other games like GW2), you just have to take one look at dungeons/raids and you can see they are trash.

Have you tried helping an average "I play as I want, f you" gamer? I tried. Even if you try to explain dungeon mechanics, you are likely to be flamed. Yes, even if you're polite. And dont you dare suggesting help with their build or offering food buff!
That's why group finder is so toxic and a "good" part of the community mostly consists of guilds.

dtsharples · July 2018

remilafo wrote: »

People need to chill out..

I queue as whatever i want so long as i get into a pug ASAP.. i can solo a normal dungeon without help, so your assistance and opinion isn't needed or wanted.

As far as vet dungeons goes they don't need a tank either or a healer if you tank is good enough. Adapt.

This is exactly the type of person Jasmine is (rightly) referring to.
If you can solo a dungeon, go do that. If you join the RDF you are there to play a role. Just because you can solo everything, doesn't mean that the new level 15 can also withstand taking a beating from the Boss that isn't being tanked.
Honestly, the selfishness of some people is beyond belief.
If you want to take that attitude, slot a taunt at least or a resto staff and maybe the new guys might actually learn something useful.

Kuramas9tails · July 2018

My boyfriend and I can two man vCOH as 2 DPS. Not hard. As 750's, I would have thought they could too.

Thestephenmcraeub17_ESO · July 2018

Just don't pug. Join a guild, make a group, then do the random finder. Saves countless hours and brain cells, and you won't pull your hair out. Let the solo queuing pug groups figure it out or suffer on their own. No group should be unable to clear vet CoH 1, that's absolute madness and waste of everyone's time.

OrphanHelgen · July 2018

Kuramas9tails wrote: »

My boyfriend and I can two man vCOH as 2 DPS. Not hard. As 750's, I would have thought they could too.

I'm not gonna go into a vet dungeon with a recovery and self heal build just because fake roles is common

ImmortalCX · July 2018

Carbonised wrote: »

All this hate for fake tanks, but let me tell you, as a REAL tank, there is nothing worse than fake DPS.

I've met plenty of them, they have no rotation, the wrong gear, and do DPS in the single K digits.

It's virtually impossible to do vet dungeons with these people, even the easy vet ones, and I have gotten to where I just leave the group after first trash pull, when I can see them dying to trash, or it takes 3+ minutes to clear the first group.
With those DDs, it's going to be impossible to finish the dungeon anyway.

Even NORMAL DLC dungs like WGT and ICP are often impossible to do when people have terrible DPS and no clue of mechanics.
Yesterday I had to leave a group for normal Cradle because two of them had not done the dungeon even once, and were not even in CP levels. Next queue after 15 minutes already had killed a boss and obviously lost their tank somewhere along the way. Well I queued to get my pledge and key, so sorry, had to leave that group as well, before finally getting a group to clear the dungeon.

Sure, fake tanks is a problem, but fake DPS, or at least DDs with terrible damage and no clue of dungeon mechanics, is just as much of a problem, and the reason why I loathe to even use the group tool to begin with.

Seeing that ZOS releases 4 extremely hard and mechanic heavy dungeons every year, they really need to adress this at some point. The disparity between the leet players and the sucky players is just too vast to make the group tool and random groups remotely satisfying for anyone.

As a DD, this is funny to me, but not for the reason you think.

As a tank, your queue times are instant. Because queue times are instant, a tank can leave a bad PUG; which will then be looking for a new tank.

This means that tanks have a higher% chance of getting bad groups that other tanks gave up on.

It's probably like being a crime scene analyst; you see more blood in a week than most cops see in a year.

Guppet · July 2018

ImmortalCX wrote: »

Carbonised wrote: »

All this hate for fake tanks, but let me tell you, as a REAL tank, there is nothing worse than fake DPS.

I've met plenty of them, they have no rotation, the wrong gear, and do DPS in the single K digits.

It's virtually impossible to do vet dungeons with these people, even the easy vet ones, and I have gotten to where I just leave the group after first trash pull, when I can see them dying to trash, or it takes 3+ minutes to clear the first group.
With those DDs, it's going to be impossible to finish the dungeon anyway.

Even NORMAL DLC dungs like WGT and ICP are often impossible to do when people have terrible DPS and no clue of mechanics.
Yesterday I had to leave a group for normal Cradle because two of them had not done the dungeon even once, and were not even in CP levels. Next queue after 15 minutes already had killed a boss and obviously lost their tank somewhere along the way. Well I queued to get my pledge and key, so sorry, had to leave that group as well, before finally getting a group to clear the dungeon.

Sure, fake tanks is a problem, but fake DPS, or at least DDs with terrible damage and no clue of dungeon mechanics, is just as much of a problem, and the reason why I loathe to even use the group tool to begin with.

Seeing that ZOS releases 4 extremely hard and mechanic heavy dungeons every year, they really need to adress this at some point. The disparity between the leet players and the sucky players is just too vast to make the group tool and random groups remotely satisfying for anyone.

As a DD, this is funny to me, but not for the reason you think.

As a tank, your queue times are instant. Because queue times are instant, a tank can leave a bad PUG; which will then be looking for a new tank.

This means that tanks have a higher% chance of getting bad groups that other tanks gave up on.

It's probably like being a crime scene analyst; you see more blood in a week than most cops see in a year.

That is sooo accurate. Like I’ll go on runs of getting placed in a dungeon just to see a portal at the start. As a tank you’ll cautiously step through, eyes half closed, just wondering what car crash awaits.

Asardes · July 2018

I used to PuG veteran dungeons as tank a long time ago, when I was CP300-500. It god really boring and frustrating after 3-4 months of doing 2-5 dungeons a day because of multiple issues:
- Ultra low DPS, my finger and hand joints started hurting after a few hours of play because I had to taunt and re-taunt the same trash pack 10x until they managed to kill it. When I made DD specs myself (nothing spectacular, there are much better DDs out there) I realized just how bad those players were.
- People not even bothering to read what I wrote on chat about mechanics - wiping 20+ times at Bandu in FG2 because people can't focus a single add while someone is chained, despite I copy-pasted and repeated the explanation after each.
- People cursing me for daring to provide polite, helpful, basic advice about builds, ex. not use 1H+S and Puncture for DPS
- People going AFK in the middle of the dungeon without giving a valid reason - I had no problem waiting for people that said so, even 10 minutes.
etc.

4/6 of my fully trained chars have full tank setups, but I only use them when running with people I can trust to do their job in the group. Otherwise, I just run a DD spec with a taunt, which is enough to pull the whole group trough the dungeon, if it's a base game veteran or a normal one. I only rarely run dungeons nowadays, usually when I need Undaunted & Skill points, and it's even rarer to run them with random groups. And that's partly because that initial experience has left me partially burned out. Even when I do join a random group, I'm often left with an intense bitter taste since it's so stressful trying to do everything because the others aren't.

ImmortalCX · July 2018

dtsharples wrote: »

remilafo wrote: »

People need to chill out..

I queue as whatever i want so long as i get into a pug ASAP.. i can solo a normal dungeon without help, so your assistance and opinion isn't needed or wanted.

As far as vet dungeons goes they don't need a tank either or a healer if you tank is good enough. Adapt.

This is exactly the type of person Jasmine is (rightly) referring to.
If you can solo a dungeon, go do that. If you join the RDF you are there to play a role. Just because you can solo everything, doesn't mean that the new level 15 can also withstand taking a beating from the Boss that isn't being tanked.
Honestly, the selfishness of some people is beyond belief.
If you want to take that attitude, slot a taunt at least or a resto staff and maybe the new guys might actually learn something useful.

They won't slot a taunt because if they are getting beat on, they can't use their leet DPS.

The other players are there as cannon fodder.

Sociopaths exist in all walks of life.

Shadowmaster · July 2018

Troneon wrote: »

You don't need tanks in dungeons.

Just run 4 sorcs with pets/heals/shields...

Yeah let me know how that works on the menagerie in the DLC dungeons.

A LOT OF YOU ESO PLAYERS MUST WORK FOR CNN WITH ALL THIS FAKE NEWS YOU POST

KittyHazWares · July 2018

Fake DPS are the worst of all roles. Spamming snipe in the back and going for the shiny red circles to stand in.

Also for NORMAL - you don’t need a tank or healer. Idk why people complain over a NORMAL dungeon. If I ever go in on a legit tank or healer to level a skill - the dungeon takes hours because of the “dps” that only do light attacks.

Vet on the other hand, I totally agree. They are mostly toxic. A lot are max rank and don’t even know mechanics..

I’m a support usually but those vet pugs are the worst.

xan4silkb14_ESO · July 2018

remilafo wrote: »

People need to chill out..

I queue as whatever i want so long as i get into a pug ASAP.. i can solo a normal dungeon without help, so your assistance and opinion isn't needed or wanted.

As far as vet dungeons goes they don't need a tank either or a healer if you tank is good enough. Adapt.

IF you can solo why do you bother with the queue? Is it just for the rewards? Do you even need the rewards at this point?

I'll admit I'm a noob and not that great of a player but I knew the basics of how to tank before I joined the queue for the first time. My first experience PUGing a dungeon was full of players that just DPS through the thing as fast as possible and I was running to catch up all the time trying to learn/do my job. They barely slowed down to let me do the quest. I want to do my job and learn to do my job better even if the content doesn't strictly need it to finish. I've since joined a few guilds that do regular dungeon delves. They've helped me learn a bit more, but I'm still tinkering with my build so that it is effective and fun to play. I don't expect to do vet content or trials for awhile if ever and I'm ok with that.

zaria · July 2018

sudaki_eso wrote: »

Must be a pc thing, i pug vet dungeons quite often, no dlc ones tho, and yes some runs are pretty bad but i would say 2/3 are ok for a random group. Playing on ps4 EU...
I am sorry that you have such a bad experience.

Has puged lots of vet dungeons even a couple of dlc. Yes its been some fails but its rare, two reactions, player drops out or we discuss it after a lot of wipes and agree to disband, weirdest was vIcP with friend who planned to do normal, the two others also messed up so we did it on normal after failing

Never do random vet, only pledge ones.

Did plenty of random normals before cp cap, and saw some weird stuff, weirdest was probably nBC2 who did not manage the dps check on Imiril, my skillpoint starved warden healer did 70% of group dps, they probably thought AoE was dangerous

Still I think its 90% success rate overall,

Carbonised · July 2018

ImmortalCX wrote: »

Carbonised wrote: »

All this hate for fake tanks, but let me tell you, as a REAL tank, there is nothing worse than fake DPS.

I've met plenty of them, they have no rotation, the wrong gear, and do DPS in the single K digits.

It's virtually impossible to do vet dungeons with these people, even the easy vet ones, and I have gotten to where I just leave the group after first trash pull, when I can see them dying to trash, or it takes 3+ minutes to clear the first group.
With those DDs, it's going to be impossible to finish the dungeon anyway.

Even NORMAL DLC dungs like WGT and ICP are often impossible to do when people have terrible DPS and no clue of mechanics.
Yesterday I had to leave a group for normal Cradle because two of them had not done the dungeon even once, and were not even in CP levels. Next queue after 15 minutes already had killed a boss and obviously lost their tank somewhere along the way. Well I queued to get my pledge and key, so sorry, had to leave that group as well, before finally getting a group to clear the dungeon.

Sure, fake tanks is a problem, but fake DPS, or at least DDs with terrible damage and no clue of dungeon mechanics, is just as much of a problem, and the reason why I loathe to even use the group tool to begin with.

Seeing that ZOS releases 4 extremely hard and mechanic heavy dungeons every year, they really need to adress this at some point. The disparity between the leet players and the sucky players is just too vast to make the group tool and random groups remotely satisfying for anyone.

As a DD, this is funny to me, but not for the reason you think.

As a tank, your queue times are instant. Because queue times are instant, a tank can leave a bad PUG; which will then be looking for a new tank.

This means that tanks have a higher% chance of getting bad groups that other tanks gave up on.

It's probably like being a crime scene analyst; you see more blood in a week than most cops see in a year.

I DD as well. In fact, I DD more than I tank, but yes, I do run as a tank when PUG'ing, due to the insta-queue. However, I still get a 15 minute penalty when leaving a bad group, so I can't just queue again for another group, without waiting the 15 mins.

Also, It is a lot easier to carry a bad group as a good DD, as your DPS will at least weigh up for the other bad DD. As a tank, I need at least 2 good DDs or one great and one bad DD. If they both suck, no amount of carrying will get them through the content.

I've queued as both DD and tank, and one isn't really better than the other. Tanks in queues have instant groups, but are much more reliable on their groups, unless you play a DD with just a taunt slotted. I play as a real tank, since I also want to be able to use that setup in hard DLC dungeons and trials.

And yes, as a tank you do get into more half-finished groups, which sucks for doing pledges.

zaria · July 2018

double post ignore

Septimus_Magna · July 2018

On a DD its usually not so bad because you can carry the group in most dungeons. On my tank Ive left group mid-fight because DDs were doing like 4k dps. If killings adds takes too long I’m gone.