This Event Isn't Fun -- Too Many Tanky Players

GrumpyDuckling · January 2021

I've cycled through a bunch of all-out-damage, glass cannon builds (Spriggans/Spinners + Damage Sets) to try to counter a lot of tanky players in heavy armor and get kills, but they just laugh off damage. It would be really nice to be able to counter tanky builds when you go all-out damage and leave yourself so vulnerable, but it's just not worth it. Too many players have high resistance, high health, and HOTs.

Jierdanit · January 2021

GrumpyDuckling wrote: »

I've cycled through a bunch of all-out-damage, glass cannon builds (Spriggans/Spinners + Damage Sets) to try to counter a lot of tanky players in heavy armor and get kills, but they just laugh off damage. It would be really nice to be able to counter tanky builds when you go all-out damage and leave yourself so vulnerable, but it's just not worth it. Too many players have high resistance, high health, and HOTs.

Yea it is pretty much impossible to play a really offensive build and perform well on it atm.

Because the damage difference between someone in 7 heavy, with 40k hp and capped resistances to someone in medium / light who is built very offensively is just way too small and the tankiness difference between those is insanely high.

So as soon as you try to build more offensive to be able to kill the tanky builds they just 2 shot you while you still dont have enough dmg to kill them in a reasonable time.

Vizirith · January 2021

For pvp you have to survive first to be able to kill, only exception is nb's. A pure glass cannon requires you to be quite good to be able to survive with the limited innate survivability.

JanTanhide · January 2021

Well, the PVE players are doing one of three things i.m.o. 1) Dying to every encounter with a PVP player 2)Grouping up with other PVE players and getting quests done and still dying. LOL or 3) Crafting gear sets to make themselves tanky as heck to survive long enough to get some quests done.

Vevvev · January 2021

My glass cannon build struggles against these tanky players to, which forced me to drop one of my pure damage sets for Clever Alchemist. The extra health, albeit small, ended up being a massive improvement in overall survivability. Still can't kill the truly dedicated heal tanks so what I do is waste their time and tick them off with Fossilize. The fully laden proc set ones though have a chance of grinding me down and killing me so I have to be careful.

Pauwer · January 2021

On a full damage build you can only kill the "bad" players. Everyone "decent" or better are just too tanky.

Grebcol · February 2021

PvP is a joke right now.

jaws343 · February 2021

Pauwer wrote: »

On a full damage build you can only kill the "bad" players. Everyone "decent" or better are just too tanky.

This. I was kiting around 4 players in the Arena last night, and none of them could kill me because they could actually burst my shields or out damage my healing while I stayed out of melee range, but I couldn't burst them down either, or I'd get them to execute and they would either heal to full health, usually 30K+, immediately, or I'd would have to go on the defensive again.

And I am mostly running a full offensive build, with Spinners, Alfiq, and Engine Guardian. 30K health is asking a lot to burst through without running procs.

Goregrinder · February 2021

It may not be fun for you, but its fun for others. Also, stacking pen/weapon damage/spell damage/max mag or stam is a good start against tanky and high health targets but it is only part of the equation. The whole point of stacking those things to boost your damage, is so your burst combo hits as hard as possible, and eats as much of their health as it can in a short amount of time, so they have as little opportunity to react before you can execute them. Without a good burst combo, stacking for high damage is essentially worthless. It's like having the best quarterback on your team that can lob the ball to any target, and he always throws the ball to the slowest player on the field.

Another thing people forget, especially people new to PVP, is that ESO PVP is fundamentally a war of attrition. Newer players don't learn this until they get more experience PVPing, but often times your 1st or even 2nd attempt at burst comboing someone down can fail. That is normal! The goal here is for your opponent to run out of resources before you do. Because once you have no mag to heal, no stam to dodge roll or block...then you better LOS or get out of that fight because you're open to CC, or someone ult dropping on you.

With that said, in the tank meta we're still in some targets just can't be killed alone. That's just how it is. Some targets need a multiple people burst comboing at once to take down. You really have to learn to pick your battles, because if you try to take every single fight that is presented to you, you may lose most of them. Coordination goes a long way in PVP, so any opportunity to focus fire a target with someone else (even if they are not grouped with you) take it.

There are many more nuances to PVP, but the basic starting point would be this:

Pick a target you think you can kill > Pre buff yourself > Debuff your target > Go in on them with your opener > Hit them with whatever stun you've slotted > Go in hard with whatever your burst combo is > Ult drop or use whatever execute ability you've slotted to finish them off. Hopefully they didn't stun break and heal themselves, but if they did no biggie just back off, replenish your resources and try again. That's the basic flow of PVP.

Jierdanit · February 2021

Goregrinder wrote: »

It may not be fun for you, but its fun for others. Also, stacking pen/weapon damage/spell damage/max mag or stam is a good start against tanky and high health targets but it is only part of the equation. The whole point of stacking those things to boost your damage, is so your burst combo hits as hard as possible, and eats as much of their health as it can in a short amount of time, so they have as little opportunity to react before you can execute them. Without a good burst combo, stacking for high damage is essentially worthless. It's like having the best quarterback on your team that can lob the ball to any target, and he always throws the ball to the slowest player on the field.

First of, i really know barely anyone who is enjoying the current Meta in PvP, even if someone is playing a meta build atm nearly everyone who does still says that it is really no fun.

Second, stacking offensive stats actually does not do a lot in the current meta since even if you have 15k pen, 5k WD / SD and 35k+ max stam / mag, youre going to have a really hard time killing the meta builds running with 2 procs, malacath and 40k hp, while they are going to 2shot you when you build that much offensive stats, as you will have to sacrifice big amounts of defense for that.
And you are just not going to hit someone for 25k - 30k with a burst combo and as soon as they drop below 50% they just start blocking and spamming heals (e.g. Arctic Blast, Vigor, etc.).

Another thing people forget, especially people new to PVP, is that ESO PVP is fundamentally a war of attrition. Newer players don't learn this until they get more experience PVPing, but often times your 1st or even 2nd attempt at burst comboing someone down can fail. That is normal! The goal here is for your opponent to run out of resources before you do. Because once you have no mag to heal, no stam to dodge roll or block...then you better LOS or get out of that fight because you're open to CC, or someone ult dropping on you.

In this patch with everyone having a 40% buff to all ressource regens and if youre stam nearly always another 20% buff to stam regen its really not that hard to sustain infinitely, especcially in 1v1s if you have a proper build youre nearly never going to run out of ressources.

With that said, in the tank meta we're still in some targets just can't be killed alone. That's just how it is. Some targets need a multiple people burst comboing at once to take down. You really have to learn to pick your battles, because if you try to take every single fight that is presented to you, you may lose most of them. Coordination goes a long way in PVP, so any opportunity to focus fire a target with someone else (even if they are not grouped with you) take it.

This part is pretty much true.

There are many more nuances to PVP, but the basic starting point would be this:

Pick a target you think you can kill > Pre buff yourself > Debuff your target > Go in on them with your opener > Hit them with whatever stun you've slotted > Go in hard with whatever your burst combo is > Ult drop or use whatever execute ability you've slotted to finish them off. Hopefully they didn't stun break and heal themselves, but if they did no biggie just back off, replenish your resources and try again. That's the basic flow of PVP.

That is a quite big "Hopefully", as nearly no decent player is going to just let you finish them and will rather CC break as soon as possible and go into the defense instantly.

So in general it is kind of only possible to kill players who either dont know how to play the game or who are not playing a meta build (in a 1v1), which certainly is not a healthy environment for PvP.