Not a tank or healer? No pledges for you!

Alucardo · April 2019

It's quite common in any MMO to get insta queued for dungeons if you're a tank or healer, and have a bit of a wait if you're damage. However, in ESO this problem is even worse. As a DD you can spend up to 30 minutes in a queue, and if it's mid afternoon you can just forget it. I gave up yesterday, specced for tank and got a hit in 6 seconds.
This is a huge issue, because the dungeon finder is filled with 17k health damage dealers pretending to be tanks just to get their pledges done, but they are usually kicked for not holding agro, not pulling in ranged trash mobs, getting one shot, or using dawnbreakers when war horns were expected.
So in reality there are 2 problems: Occasionally getting a terrible tank, or not getting your pledges done because you can't find a group as a DD.

But what can be done to rectify this? Why is it so hard to queue as DD? The answer to the second question is quite simple really. The rewards are jank, and as you've seen these dungeons hundreds of times you don't want to run them, especially as a boring tank.
My suggestion would be to add better rewards for running pledge dungeons, even after you've already completed it once. It could be something like a few transmute crystals at the end (for veteran only), but obviously cap it after a certain amount so they can't just farm all day long. But this may help people queue more than once, and make finding people for pledges much easier.

If you have any ideas, let us know!

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · April 2019

Find another player, even a dps, the queue for 2 people is always faster.

Alucardo · April 2019

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Find another player, even a dps, the queue for 2 people is always faster.

Aye I do ask around, but all of my friends are PvPers with their undaunted done on all characters. They aren't interested in running pledges again unfortunately.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · April 2019

Alucardo wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Find another player, even a dps, the queue for 2 people is always faster.

Aye I do ask around, but all of my friends are PvPers with their undaunted done on all characters. They aren't interested in running pledges again unfortunately.

Always ask in Zone chat in your capital city, those being deshaan, stormhold and grathwood. Cycle between those three citys and you will find another player really quick.

Alucardo · April 2019

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Alucardo wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

Find another player, even a dps, the queue for 2 people is always faster.

Aye I do ask around, but all of my friends are PvPers with their undaunted done on all characters. They aren't interested in running pledges again unfortunately.

Always ask in Zone chat in your capital city, those being deshaan, stormhold and grathwood. Cycle between those three citys and you will find another player really quick.

Well I've specced for tank now, so it's not so much of a problem. But I mean really, the dungeon finder should provide easy and quick access to a dungeon - that's it's job. I shouldn't need to travel from city to city begging for a group.

Kidgangster101 · April 2019

Alucardo wrote: »

It's quite common in any MMO to get insta queued for dungeons if you're a tank or healer, and have a bit of a wait if you're damage. However, in ESO this problem is even worse. As a DD you can spend up to 30 minutes in a queue, and if it's mid afternoon you can just forget it. I gave up yesterday, specced for tank and got a hit in 6 seconds.
This is a huge issue, because the dungeon finder is filled with 17k health damage dealers pretending to be tanks just to get their pledges done, but they are usually kicked for not holding agro, not pulling in ranged trash mobs, getting one shot, or using dawnbreakers when war horns were expected.
So in reality there are 2 problems: Occasionally getting a terrible tank, or not getting your pledges done because you can't find a group as a DD.

But what can be done to rectify this? Why is it so hard to queue as DD? The answer to the second question is quite simple really. The rewards are jank, and as you've seen these dungeons hundreds of times you don't want to run them, especially as a boring tank.
My suggestion would be to add better rewards for running pledge dungeons, even after you've already completed it once. It could be something like a few transmute crystals at the end (for veteran only), but obviously cap it after a certain amount so they can't just farm all day long. But this may help people queue more than once, and make finding people for pledges much easier.

If you have any ideas, let us know!

@Alucardo what platform do you play on?

Alucardo · April 2019

Kidgangster101 wrote: »

Alucardo wrote: »

It's quite common in any MMO to get insta queued for dungeons if you're a tank or healer, and have a bit of a wait if you're damage. However, in ESO this problem is even worse. As a DD you can spend up to 30 minutes in a queue, and if it's mid afternoon you can just forget it. I gave up yesterday, specced for tank and got a hit in 6 seconds.
This is a huge issue, because the dungeon finder is filled with 17k health damage dealers pretending to be tanks just to get their pledges done, but they are usually kicked for not holding agro, not pulling in ranged trash mobs, getting one shot, or using dawnbreakers when war horns were expected.
So in reality there are 2 problems: Occasionally getting a terrible tank, or not getting your pledges done because you can't find a group as a DD.

But what can be done to rectify this? Why is it so hard to queue as DD? The answer to the second question is quite simple really. The rewards are jank, and as you've seen these dungeons hundreds of times you don't want to run them, especially as a boring tank.
My suggestion would be to add better rewards for running pledge dungeons, even after you've already completed it once. It could be something like a few transmute crystals at the end (for veteran only), but obviously cap it after a certain amount so they can't just farm all day long. But this may help people queue more than once, and make finding people for pledges much easier.

If you have any ideas, let us know!

@Alucardo what platform do you play on?

PC

Wise_Will · April 2019

Me and my friend have 1 DD each and 1 Tank each, we group and rotate our roles each day so we can get in super quick. I never bother queuing as a solo DD as the wait is far too long.

An idea that may solve the problem would be to only receive Tank set rewards if your a Tank, Healing Sets if you are a Healer and DPS sets if you are a DD, other than that, i don't know.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · April 2019

The queue seems to prioritize groups before individuals. So that means if 2 people que together, they will get out into a group that needs 2 players before 2 separate players queueing. Also sitting in a queue longer then 5 minutes is bad, you have better chances requeueing after that 5 minutes is up, I rarely ever have to que more then that second time and I use the dungeon finder almost exclusively.

MartiniDaniels · April 2019

In this case I doubt ZOS can do anything about. If you need undaunted points fast for new char, or farm something just go as a tank or healer.

Alucardo · April 2019

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

The queue seems to prioritize groups before individuals. So that means if 2 people que together, they will get out into a group that needs 2 players before 2 separate players queueing. Also sitting in a queue longer then 5 minutes is bad, you have better chances requeueing after that 5 minutes is up, I rarely ever have to que more then that second time and I use the dungeon finder almost exclusively.

Thanks for the info - I didn't actually know that. I'll keep that in mind when I try to do them today :I

Diundriel · April 2019

do pledges with 4 dd, you can 4 dd all non dlc pledges

Alucardo · April 2019

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

In this case I doubt ZOS can do anything about. If you need undaunted points fast for new char, or farm something just go as a tank or healer.

Yeah, I'm literally just trying to speed through Undaunted, so I did spec for tank yesterday. But it does feel like a problem if solo queuers need to do that

Reverb · April 2019

As a player who has healer and tank toons, I offer my perspective. I haven’t successfully done pledges with randoms for over a year. The sole reason is the skill gap in the dps role. Yes there are a huge number of players queuing as dps, but an absurd number of them are doing 15k dps or less. I don’t know how that’s even possible, but I see it every time I decide to use the groupfinder. Every time.

I can teach mechanics, I am happy to teach mechanics. I can teach optimal positioning, I can educate about the most effective skills for group content. But I don’t have the time or patience to help half of Tamriel with their build and basic combat techniques when my guilds are filled with people who pull 40k dps without breaking a sweat.

Kidgangster101 · April 2019

Alucardo wrote: »

Kidgangster101 wrote: »

Alucardo wrote: »

It's quite common in any MMO to get insta queued for dungeons if you're a tank or healer, and have a bit of a wait if you're damage. However, in ESO this problem is even worse. As a DD you can spend up to 30 minutes in a queue, and if it's mid afternoon you can just forget it. I gave up yesterday, specced for tank and got a hit in 6 seconds.
This is a huge issue, because the dungeon finder is filled with 17k health damage dealers pretending to be tanks just to get their pledges done, but they are usually kicked for not holding agro, not pulling in ranged trash mobs, getting one shot, or using dawnbreakers when war horns were expected.
So in reality there are 2 problems: Occasionally getting a terrible tank, or not getting your pledges done because you can't find a group as a DD.

But what can be done to rectify this? Why is it so hard to queue as DD? The answer to the second question is quite simple really. The rewards are jank, and as you've seen these dungeons hundreds of times you don't want to run them, especially as a boring tank.
My suggestion would be to add better rewards for running pledge dungeons, even after you've already completed it once. It could be something like a few transmute crystals at the end (for veteran only), but obviously cap it after a certain amount so they can't just farm all day long. But this may help people queue more than once, and make finding people for pledges much easier.

If you have any ideas, let us know!

@Alucardo what platform do you play on?

PC

Yeah I would also suggest making a tank or healer. Tanking in dungeons is pretty easy you can tank most vet dungeons in crafted gear or farm ebon from an easy dungeon and pair it with a crafted set.

Your other option is to find a guild. If you were on PS4 I was gonna invite you to a good one, but unfortunately there are so many people that refuse to play support roles that is why they get instant qued. And tbh a lot of really good tanks refuse to use dungeon finder because a lot of DPS tend to be rude or blame tank and healer often so they just avoid it all together and only tank for their guild.

And to get me to que as a tank for random daily it would need to be a very good reward like 20+ transmutes a day lol. The last dungeon I ran on my tank in a pug group I am pretty sure I was top DPS and it took me almost an hour to finish vet crypt of hearts. And when I tried to give the DPS advise they both cussed me out so I stopped going with pugs that day lol.

Alucardo · April 2019

Diundriel wrote: »

do pledges with 4 dd, you can 4 dd all non dlc pledges

Aye, I have done in this a couple of times in the past. We had 4 PvPers running through pledges, so we were already built for self healing and damage. It actually worked out perfectly, except for one guy using wrecking blow.
But unfortunately I can't find a group like that these days because everyone already has their undaunted done

Svenja · April 2019

The thing is, on a support role, there is little to no incentive to use the group finder, as you already said.
As a healer, I never run dungeons via group finder. And I always warn new players who play as thanks or healers to do that and recommend that they ask in their guilds first.
My dps as a healer is not good enough to carry a group through a veteran dungeon, and more often than not, I got fake DDs in my group in the past.
When I deal ~60-70% of the group's damage just by casting elemental blockade and spear shards, it's a really bad thing and it happened way too often. I don't have the will or the time anymore to spend 90 minutes with only one dungeon. (I am not exaggerating here. A 90-mins run of spindleclutch 2, where group (!!) DPS was 10.5k on blood spawn, with me as the healer dealing 5.8k of that, was the run when I decided to never queue random on my healer again. I had to respec to DD after two or three wipes on blood spawn because apparently, you need around 13-14k group dps to not wipe to his enrage, but then the DDs insta-died because of a lack of heals..)

When I am running on a DD, I can deal with a fake tank or a fake healer easily. I slot self heal or a taunt.
But I don't have a way to deal with fake DDs when on a healer without completely changing my complete gear, all my skills and even CP, and that keeps me from using the group finder.
The skill level of the average ESO player is incredibly low, so for experienced people there should be some kind of reward when they use the group finder.

Reverb · April 2019

Svenja wrote: »

The thing is, on a support role, there is little to no incentive to use the group finder, as you already said.
As a healer, I never run dungeons via group finder. And I always warn new players who play as thanks or healers to do that and recommend that they ask in their guilds first.
My dps as a healer is not good enough to carry a group through a veteran dungeon, and more often than not, I got fake DDs in my group in the past.
When I deal ~60-70% of the group's damage just by casting elemental blockade and spear shards, it's a really bad thing and it happened way too often. I don't have the will or the time anymore to spend 90 minutes with only one dungeon. (I am not exaggerating here. A 90-mins run of spindleclutch 2, where group (!!) DPS was 10.5k on blood spawn, with me as the healer dealing 5.8k of that, was the run when I decided to never queue random on my healer again. I had to respec to DD after two or three wipes on blood spawn because apparently, you need around 13-14k group dps to not wipe to his enrage, but then the DDs insta-died because of a lack of heals..)

When I am running on a DD, I can deal with a fake tank or a fake healer easily. I slot self heal or a taunt.
But I don't have a way to deal with fake DDs when on a healer, and that keeps me from using the group finder.
The skill level of the average ESO player is incredibly low, so for experienced people there should be some kind of reward when they use the group finder.

Yup, this is exactly what I was talking about above. The rock-bottom dps is what keeps most of us away from the groupfinder.

Unless zeni somehow figures out how to close the floor-to-ceiling gap in dps performance without alienating the entire player base, that’s unlikely to change, and there will continue to be a shortage of healers and tanks willing to use the queue. So...never.

Anhedonie · April 2019

Here is a better idea: devs should make tanking and healing fun and engaging instead.

pauli133 · April 2019

Diundriel wrote: »

do pledges with 4 dd, you can 4 dd all non dlc pledges

...which is why we have this problem in the first place.

Alucardo · April 2019

pauli133 wrote: »

Diundriel wrote: »

do pledges with 4 dd, you can 4 dd all non dlc pledges

...which is why we have this problem in the first place.

Nah, if you have 4 people who play well together, 4 dd can breeze through pledges. Obviously 4 random DDs is going to cause you pain and heartache

VaranisArano · April 2019

Anhedonie wrote: »

Here is a better idea: devs should make tanking and healing fun and engaging instead.

That's not going to help with the problem faced by those who already find tanking and healing engaging: low DPS makes being in a support role an absolute pain.

There are many tanks and healers. But if they are good at their job, they don't have to subject themselves to groupfinder unless they want to. As one poster pointed out here, why would they want to deal with DDs doing less than 15k DPS in Vet Dungeons when they could tank for guildies doing far more?

Waffennacht · April 2019

On the flip side, those of us whom have some tanks, do enjoy a short queue.

The only time being a tank just plain sucks is when the total dps is sub 20k

Ufretin · April 2019

I've you're in a trading guild of 500 players, finding people of at least average skill for pledges should be no problem at any time of the day.
Group Finder is only your last option when you're truly desperate.

Gretzel · April 2019

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

The queue seems to prioritize groups before individuals. So that means if 2 people que together, they will get out into a group that needs 2 players before 2 separate players queueing. Also sitting in a queue longer then 5 minutes is bad, you have better chances requeueing after that 5 minutes is up, I rarely ever have to que more then that second time and I use the dungeon finder almost exclusively.

That's wrong. Dps queues are twenty minutes, every single day. Two months of queuing and its always insanely long. I play all three roles so I don't care but 5 minutes for dps doesnt happen. My healer queue is almost always under a minute, tank nearly the same, and dps is always 20+.

Reaper_00 · April 2019

Alucardo wrote: »

pauli133 wrote: »

Diundriel wrote: »

do pledges with 4 dd, you can 4 dd all non dlc pledges

...which is why we have this problem in the first place.

Nah, if you have 4 people who play well together, 4 dd can breeze through pledges. Obviously 4 random DDs is going to cause you pain and heartache

I’m not sure that was the point pauli133 was making. I think it’s more that because most content doesn’t require a healer or tank is why there is a lack of healers and tanks when you do need one.

HappyLittleTree · April 2019

especially as a boring tank

yeah right just because you can't tank doesn't mean tanking is boring...why don't you run a tank then?
don't complain that dds have to queue longer. make a change.

xF1REFL1x · April 2019

When I'm on by myself as a dps I will rarely queue up unless I have something else to do that will distract me from how long it actually takes just to find a group and play.

Alucardo · April 2019

HappyLittleTree wrote: »

especially as a boring tank

yeah right just because you can't tank doesn't mean tanking is boring...why don't you run a tank then?
don't complain that dds have to queue longer. make a change.

If you bothered to read, you'd know that I did start tanking. I'm sorry if my finding tanking boring offends you.

kathandira · April 2019

Alucardo wrote: »

It's quite common in any MMO to get insta queued for dungeons if you're a tank or healer, and have a bit of a wait if you're damage. However, in ESO this problem is even worse. As a DD you can spend up to 30 minutes in a queue, and if it's mid afternoon you can just forget it. I gave up yesterday, specced for tank and got a hit in 6 seconds.
This is a huge issue, because the dungeon finder is filled with 17k health damage dealers pretending to be tanks just to get their pledges done, but they are usually kicked for not holding agro, not pulling in ranged trash mobs, getting one shot, or using dawnbreakers when war horns were expected.
So in reality there are 2 problems: Occasionally getting a terrible tank, or not getting your pledges done because you can't find a group as a DD.

But what can be done to rectify this? Why is it so hard to queue as DD? The answer to the second question is quite simple really. The rewards are jank, and as you've seen these dungeons hundreds of times you don't want to run them, especially as a boring tank.
My suggestion would be to add better rewards for running pledge dungeons, even after you've already completed it once. It could be something like a few transmute crystals at the end (for veteran only), but obviously cap it after a certain amount so they can't just farm all day long. But this may help people queue more than once, and make finding people for pledges much easier.

If you have any ideas, let us know!

Be part of the solution. Make a Tank or Healer, and run your dailies on those.

Not enough people play these rolls, and we often see DPS asking for a fix. But the only fix really is for those DPS players to help by putting more tank and healers into the queue. Take one for the community and do your part.

Signed,
Player with multiple of each roll

Myrkgrav · April 2019

This isn't a reward issue, it's a no one wants to heal or tank (ie support) because A) they lack the skill,

they don't want to suffer the verbal abuse when the sub 10k output DDs keep wiping and want to blame it on support roles instead of their crap performance.