It sounds like a less than ideal encounter. That's unfortunate, but as long as you're using the RDF you'll have more. You'll have good encounters as well.

From the sounds of it, I'd have likely voted to kick that person as well. In fact, that is about the only reason you could get a vote kick out of me in a normal, unless someone asked for it.

DDs queueing as a tank to bypass the wait time is fairly common. It's not fair, but it's not against the rules per se. It can be difficult at times to tell the difference between someone who does this intentionally and an inexperienced player. If it is obvious, then your choices are to deal with it, challenge them or kick them, stop using the RDF, or be a tank.

You dont necessarily need to bow snipe in a dungeon to level the skill line. You can gain in a skill line by slotting a skill regardless of whether or not the weapon is equipped. Equip the bar that needs the most attention when you turn in quests or daily writs, every little bit helps.

Narvuntien wrote: »

Taunt.
Hold the boss still.
Don't die.

That's my basic expectations of tanks.

It's not completely a one-sided issue though. There are basic expectations of each role in an instance. I now have one of each role. I PUG with my DD every day. I'm fairly survivable and bring a little damage, it's fairly easy. It's rare that I'll PUG with my healer anymore. I'd rather give my cat a bath than PUG with my tank.

Shraar wrote: »

But in ESO, I see tanks who run past everything. Who aren't shieldmaidens and who let aggression fly everywhere. Is this allowed? This seems to be against the rules of the game, exploited by DPS who want a queue that is 20 seconds instead of 20 minutes.

There are no rules for how your build MUST be for choosing to queuing up as a tank. Thus it is allowed to queue up as tank however your build is. It's frowned upon by the other players if you can't perform the tank role good enough if they require you to do so. The only repercussion you may see from that is being votekicked and possibly blocked by the other party members.

I think there's something in the TOS about not disrupting others gameplay experience so say you did this all the time and really "disrupted" alot of players gameplay experience I guess you could technically get in trouble with the rules of the game.

When I tank, I take the first mob pull as an indication of how well I can expect the group to handle mobs.

If we're burning the mob down in seconds and no one's health is budging, well, I feel free to start pulling bigger groups of mobs together because I'm confident my DDs and healer can handle it.

If the group is taking forever to burn down the mob or our health is fluctuating wildly, I'm going to do this dungeon one mob pull at a time. Because no one is going to appreciate me pulling more enemies than they can handle.

A really good example is Darkshade Caverns. There are several places where a tank with a good group can pull lots of mobs for a very fast run if the group can handle it. If they can't, its easy to pull too many and people get overwhelmed.

He is unfortunately right... 3k DPS is doing something horribly wrong.

That said, he is a massive jerk.
He could have soloed that dungeon probably, and most other players would simply carry the team through the easy pledge with no complaints.

A tip for the OP: skill lines do not level based on killing blows. Your bow skill line levels with exp gains. Whenever you gain XP and have a bow and/or a bow ability equipped, your skill line gains XP also.
The more bow skills you have equipped, the faster it levels.
Killing blows mean nothing.

Starlock wrote: »

Glurin wrote: »

snegurd wrote: »

First of all, the issue of "fake tanks" (DDs queuing as tanks to avoid a long queue) is certainly prevalent. I would say half the time I queue as a DD the tank has less than 25k health and is clearly a DD build. For some dungeons this isn't really an issue but once you get to the vet II dungeons and the DLC ones it can ruin runs. I think issues with the Dungeon Finder are well documented and are the root cause of this.

I'm sorry, but no. This is not a dungeon finder issue. This is a community issue. It's people lying on their characters' resumes just to skip the line because they don't understand why lying is a bad thing, and then complaining about it when their lies put them in an unfavorable position. It's also people being completely unwilling to adapt to anything but the latest and greatest cookie cutter DPS build for maximum DPS e-peen.

I'm a bit curious about your thinking on this. I've never been interested in cookie cutter builds, and because I don't min-max everything, my damage dealers are apparently well below people's (to me) outlandish expectations. I quit trying to be a damage dealer at all because of it; in other words many folks are also unwilling to accept anything other than some number of dps in their groups (even on normal dungeons). If we aren't willing to be cookie cutter meta sheep, we're told to go away and go home. How does that factor in here? It feels like a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

As theorycrafters are able to parse higher DPS numbers, the expectations for dungeon DPS goes up even if the actual dungeon difficulty remains the same. Nothing changes as far as what's required to complete the content or how difficult that content is to complete. The only thing that changes is people now expect you to burn the boss in two seconds instead of three and pitch a fit about it if you don't. It's 100% a matter of perception, which is not at all a feature of the dungeon finder and would occur whether the dungeon finder exists or not.

So once again we find that the problem is with the community rather than the technical aspects of the game. Unfortunately this problem may be even more difficult to solve than the fake tanks problem, even though they essentially stem from the same source. Blind worship of the DPS Meter.

Don't get me wrong. The DPS meter itself is a useful tool when used properly. But as things are now it's a bit like handing someone a hammer and then watching them start using that hammer for absolutely everything from opening a can of olives to painting the walls to changing channels on the television.

Shraar wrote: »

Hello, intermediate player here and I'd like your opinion on something.

My understanding of tank is someone who should be the most durable party member, the one who leads the charge, engages and hold aggros so his squishier teammates can focus on healing/damaging. He controls the pace of each fight.

But in ESO, I see tanks who run past everything. Who aren't shieldmaidens and who let aggression fly everywhere. Is this allowed? This seems to be against the rules of the game, exploited by DPS who want a queue that is 20 seconds instead of 20 minutes. To me, that doesn't seem fair or right or expected but I don't know this community yet and I would like to be humble and understand exactly what's going on here. The way I see it now, this kind of behaviour shouldn't be enabled/encouraged, otherwise what is the point of "roles"?

My personal story:

Just recently, I saw a Bow+DW "Tank" who was bullying a member of our party in Elden Hollow I for doing little DPS. I think he had a mod that tracked group members I have seen similar things in WoW? I could tell she wasn't very good because she only heavy attacked and used abilities but she was probably very new because she didn't respond at all, maybe she didn't know how to type?

I decided to stand up and point out that he shouldn't blame DPS for not doing their job when he wasn't tanking anything and was blazing through the instance.
You see, I have the transcript of the conversation here, but names have been replaced so I don't break the Tenets:

Meanie: REALLY HORRIBLE DPS
Meanie: "Other DPS Name" is dealing 3.7k DPS...
Meanie: how is that even possible
Meanie: heavy 2h attack is garbage dude
Me: says the dw/bow tank?
Meanie: I can tank with shield but dps is terrible
Me: You obviously want to rush through this, stop typing.
Meanie: this is my 5 min pledge
Me: This is everyone's dungeon run
Meanie: solo dungeon
Meanie: [FTC] Chokethorn (+1) - 1:03 - 810,302 Damage (32,863 DPS)
Meanie: bow light attack and 2H heavy attack u are a garbage

(it was at this point that he insulted me personally for bow light attacks on a bunch of minions that I decided to vote kick him. I didn't feel like explaining I wanted to get killing blows on non-boss enemies with bow to level the skill line as I was taught to do because I'm below level 50 in skill-line and level. Hail of Arrows and Caltrops were already down! ...The vote kick was successful.)

Me: good people
Meanie (now in /say due to being kicked): u guys wanted a caary
Meanie (now in /say due to being kicked): trashes
Healer: blow me
Me: Lol

Then in the middle of the final bossfight he whispered me: "Garbages play with garbages I guess go play Mine craft trash builds"
Our healer said something along the lines of "hey on our second last boss" so I assume he whispered the other group members too and our healer accidentally responded in group chat??
I simply muted him. I didn't report him (even though I'll admit my spite made me want to...) because he only whispered me once and that's not harassment. I have never encountered toxicity like that in game before.

I am watching a Netflix series right now that features characters who stand up for people in need. I saw what I perceived to be a new player struggling to keep up, and this harsh criticism in Elden Hollow 1, casual and easy, was no place for such high standards and insulting judgments so I stood up against the bully as eloquently as I could. I chose not to be a bystander. Then we, the three of us, stood up to a bully and kicked him out. Hopefully that teaches him that the tortoise beats the hare. I just had to write it all out to get it off my level 40 Hunding's Rage heavy chest armor if you don't think it's relevant I understand that's why I hid it away. Hopefully that teaches him not to rush and be mean.

"This seems to be against the rules of the game, exploited by DPS who want a queue that is 20 seconds instead of 20 minutes."

having read the transcript, him not being a "tank" isn't against the rules, but what he said and his attitude is against the rules. What he did was basic harassment which is report-able.

Sadly people exist in mmo, i ran into my fair share when I was a tank in other mmo, i recall someone saying I shoulda been a stain on the bed sheets simple because I was new to a endgame dungeon having just reached level cap. And i wasn't pulling fast enough for them (multiple groups at once).


People with the wring attitude abd mindset started to get into mmo, and your stories happen more often then not now a days. When I first started to play MMO that mindset didn't exist really, ad trolls were universally hated and dealt with.

StamWhipCultist wrote: »

Tank is someone who uses taunt to keep enemies aggroed, uses buffs and debuffs to make dps and healers life easier.

Yep, this is very accurate description of the role.

To add to OP's argument, you know what's better than queuing as a true tank? Queuing into a random dungeon, only the last couple of bosses alive because the fake tank couldn't take it anymore and they kicked him out. You get in, finish the dungeon within 3 mins or so, piece of cake! But I feel sorry for the rest of the team of course. Those fake tanks should have the decency of leaving immediately if they can't tank a boss or two. It's especially annoying when it's a bow equipped NB with 12k health pool and no taunt/shield/self heal skill.

And about running past mobs, if they are trash, they might be trying to skip it altogether, which I do after asking the consent of the other players. If it's the mazzatun pledge, who wants to go thru all those trash every time they do it? Also, if they have an average s+b setup they won't have anything to add to trash clear except for AOE root once or twice, do you really need their 1-2k dps for 30k+ health group of mobs? I don't think so. And I'm not talking about ICP-like very tank-able mobs.

But if they run past them with you still fighting them trash, and they go on lure the boss themselves, that's a red flag. Kindly ask him to pull himself together or kick him.

I just finished a wonderful few hours tanking various dungeons and bosses. And to my surprise, no one was in a rush. I had fun and made a couple of new friends. Will group with them again tomorrow. And they all started out as pugs and only one person died. But he got back into the fight pretty quick.

We are born alone. and we die alone. But FFS don't live the middle parts alone. People I met today that didn't know much about herding or timing but they picked up pretty quick. By our second to last run we had *** figured out. I would get a little low on resources and it would start to rain shards. with an occasional orb.

The way I see this tank thingy is this. I thank @woeler for introducing me to an aspect of the game that fits me. If I run a bunch of pugs and make some cool friends then all of the previous bad pugs were worth it.

I don't rush anything at my age that is how you end up with plastic hips and life alert bracelets. So don't worry about me running ahead. I like to stop and pick the flowers. And raid the containers as much as anyone else. The NPC's aren't going anywhere.

I also learned something today as well. It seems that we can all teach other something new. And that is I was watching the health bars of the group and they were bouncing all over the place and mine was fairly steady. I am going to start bringing the Imperium set with me and put it in the quick slot queue. Will transmute out the pieces for optimum traits. We had a couple of close fights that had some hard-hitting attacks that were AOEs and the DPS couldn't get out of the way. The 13k shield with ebon may be enough to help the team more. So, In other words, I will bring two support sets in order to help the new healers and the squishies.

Warhorn is a good friend to have. I laughed when someone asked me why I was RPing in the middle of the fight. emote /warhorn.

was a good night.

There is a lot of sound advice from some great people in this thread. I will add this bit.

Patience and a cool head will net you more progress than haste and a hot head.