I teamed up my tank with a healer last night for running an old and easy pledge she still had in her quest journal: BC1. We opted for veteran BC1 to get 2 keys from "hard mode". I know that I can survive the boss fight indefinitely, and with a dedicated healer we figured any DDs should be able to remain upright most of the time. We just needed any decent level of DPS to get through it.

Enter two random DDs.

Great people, nice and friendly, responsive in chat, appreciative of our hints and tips, but totally abysmal DPS. Both were fairly high CP, around 500, but the fights leading up to the final boss took forever. After 30 minutes we finally reached the end boss, and because the healer wanted 2 keys we asked politely if they were willing to at least try hard mode, if nothing else just to see what it was like. They liked the idea of a challenge, and were willing to put in some effort and time. I briefed them on the simple mechanics of the fight: kill the orbs, shield or block to counter his random ranged attacks if you can, stay out of the pools of blue fire, res whenever you see a party member dead, and other than that, hit the boss with all you've got. Then we read the scroll and I pulled.

The random lash-outs from the boss were one-shots for both of them even with food buffs, and they did not block or shield. They moved out of the fire, but very slowly, placing a heavy burden on the healer. They had trouble doing enough DPS to even kill the orbs before they reached the boss, so we had a few minutes of the boss staying more or less at 100% health before I realized I needed to run around to both take down the healing orbs and tank the boss. The group did a collective 20k DPS in the preceding fights when everyone was alive, and the tank and the healer were responsible for more than half of that. In the final fight, with both DDs dead half the time and requiring constant ressing, the group dps was just barely above 10k. (Yes, you read that right. 10k group dps, in a veteran dungeon.) The healer and I made an effort to keep everyone engaged and active in the fight, because that is what we do when we play with a group. In retrospect, we would have been better off ignoring the dead DDs and doing it on just the two of us, but we ressed and healed and worked our butts off to keep the DDs on their feet at least half of the time, at the cost of most of our damage output.

We had a couple of wipes after I was the only one standing, failing to res anyone else between the constant knockdown attacks and being unable solo the boss with my tank's 4k DPS in reasonable time. However, after a few attempts with gradual improvement, we got through it, and it was a nice and rewarding experience for, well, for all of us, because I didn't really mind spending that full hour in vBC1 with nice people. However, this is an example of what you can get in terms of DPS from random DDs opting to queue for veteran dungeons. It's not even the most extreme case of low DPS I have seen, it's just the most extreme case where we actually pulled through. It was an experience for me to multitask with doing both the tanking and killing the orbs, and it was a nice learning experience for the healer who had to work hard on her shields and heals for an extended period of time, but neither of us would appreciate doing it again any time soon.

For the next few days at least, I will stick to groups of friends for the vet pledges.

MincVinyl wrote: »

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Let's be honest, most people can solo the nondlc dungeons without any sort of proper gear setup. queing as tank just expedites the process. Any teamate that dies, would have died regardless to some simple red circle mechanic. 90% of the nondlc mechanics can be avoided by just tapping block on any build.

I really think you are overestimating the skill level of "most people". Some people who don't play an actual tank would die on the spot to the first group of trash mobs in FG1. Others would die to the first heavy attack from the first boss because they fail to either block or dodge, or they fail to grind it down in reasonable time because of very low DPS and just give up.

"Most people" playing this game are not particularly good players. I'm not saying this as criticism, it's just the way it is. Most are just here for some fun, and really don't care enough to even try to solo a group dungeon, let alone spend any effort to clear it. The fact that you or I, or any experienced player having spent some effort on learning to play the game, can solo most non-DLC dungeons on normal mode without even caring to gear up or concentrate on what we are doing does not mean that "most people" can do it. I have seen very concrete, first hand evidence that this is not the case at all.

Having a fake tank is often immediately lethal to these people. They do not appreciate the bad habit of a DD queuing as tank because they can solo the dungeon, because the less skilled players will just be dead on the ground for most of the fights if nobody takes random aggro away from them. It is impolite, because it makes dungeon runs a lot less enjoyable for everyone else in the group. I get it, tanks are in short supply, and without fake tanks the dungeon finder would have even more ridiculous waiting times for DDs, but that doesn't make it right.

If you are going to queue for the tank role, at least be considerate enough to slot a taunt and try to take aggro from your team mates. It's the base level task of a tank, and if you can't even do that, please don't pretend to tank.

The only one I won't have a problem with is a fake healer, since if they can actually play as a DD properly I can perfectly tank and heal myself.

Tanks definitely set the pace in MMOs and ESO isn't any different in the dps regard. More dps is always better
WHICH IS WHY TANKS IN OTHER MMOS DO WAY MORE DPS *cough*

in FF14 while main tanking, or healing I can easily do a little over half the dps of any one of the dps in the group, WHILE doing my main role.

This is not bad design this is an example of doing it correctly, and why so few people tank in ESO. We have a lot more healers than tanks for the simple reason its far easier for a healer to do damage than a tank in this game.

More on original topic though, more dps is always an improvement over less, and ESO is not different in this regard this is true for all MMOs.

ESO's dungeon design however, easily allows the fun to be ruined by people rushing through, FFXIV at least makes you clear trash mobs before you can move on.

RageKing wrote: »

I mainly tank and and tend to pug alot. The horror stories about the trash "dps" ive come across.. which is why i think we should have option of setting CP limits when running a dungeon. Nothing as annoying as queing up for dlc dungeon even on normal and seeing non cp or low cp "dps" in your group and then watch them struggle on first trash mob pull.

We need a smarter group finder. If some low cp trash dps wants to try a dlc dungeon with his 5k dps, let him. But pair him up with people of similar caliber.
Idealy there should be some sort of title or achievment you need to reach for your role before you can que for certain dungeons. Or some more options when quing for dungeons.
-only group with people who have a complete in that dungeon
-only group with people who have completed that dungeon in vet. (even when running on normal)
-only group with people with a certian cp or higher(obv yourself included)
-only group with people who have affirmed their role through some sort of ingame dps,heal, or tank check.

These are just off the top of my head, but making the group finder smarter will be a godsend for veteran players.
And for new players, let them que with other new players so they can learn together. if you keep pairing trash players with vets those trash players never get better. They get carried forever through pain and misery of others.

I like this. Ultimately the core issue here is a conflict of more experienced players not wanting to waste their time and less experienced players being able to enjoy the story. Personally I have run Black Heart Haven and Selene's Web probably about 30-40 times each from various points when I or a friend needed a particular set. At this point I find both dungeons painful to run and I find it absolutely draining to run with somebody that stops and does the story. I don't say this to discourage or to attack people that want to experience the story, people should if they want but there comes a point where you can fight the same mind numbingly easy boss fight with the exact same mechanics where you just want to rip your eyes out. lol

dazee wrote: »

Tanks definitely set the pace in MMOs and ESO isn't any different in the dps regard. More dps is always better
WHICH IS WHY TANKS IN OTHER MMOS DO WAY MORE DPS *cough*

in FF14 while main tanking, or healing I can easily do a little over half the dps of any one of the dps in the group, WHILE doing my main role.

This is not bad design this is an example of doing it correctly, and why so few people tank in ESO. We have a lot more healers than tanks for the simple reason its far easier for a healer to do damage than a tank in this game.

More on original topic though, more dps is always an improvement over less, and ESO is not different in this regard this is true for all MMOs.

ESO's dungeon design however, easily allows the fun to be ruined by people rushing through, FFXIV at least makes you clear trash mobs before you can move on.

I disagree with you on the first point. When you have two people that consistently hit 80K parses, most mobs die before the tank can taunt them. Tanks can bring a lot of valuable debuffs but if mobs die before these debuffs even take effect do you even need them? Even in many vet dungeons, you just burn them in mere seconds. Having good DPS allows you just skip so many mechanics. It's just silly the difference in-between running with DPS that are good and those that haven't reached that point.

Likewise it doesn't matter if you take your time moving from group of mobs to group, if a simple trash pull takes 5 mins to burn vs walking taking 30 secs the biggest hindrance is the fight. It's simple mathematics.

Personally when I queue as a DPS as long as it isn't a DLC vet dungeon I usually just go and pull whatever. It really isn't that hard to stay alive, even if the group is lagging behind. As long as you have some semblance of a half decent build and a basic understanding of the mechanics of the game.