For myself, after a bitter run of Vet Banished Cells (banished cells 2 now) where it was pretty clear the friends I was running with weren't impressed with the damage I was doing, I said to myself that I wouldn't touch vet content again as a dps at least until clearing vMA. I had done normal to the point of tedium, so by the time I went to do it on vet the major differences were the added pressure from incoming damage and higher damage requirements. It is probably a common piece of advice you'll get, but it all comes down to comfort.

The biggest difference between normal and vet is the mindset you need. You need to be ready to pay attention to your enemies and what attacks they do, since many times' people who don't regularly run vet trials spend most fights on the ground brooding about how unfair it is when they died to an attack that mostly just required paying attention to. You should be expecting to die a few times to live long enough to see what each fight has to offer and be willing to improvise and adapt to what they require, unlike one pug who was so committed to being a werewolf for an entire fight they stood next to an invulnerable boss in lethal aoes without once attempting to do anything else.

And the biggest thing is to find a play style that works for you, which class, what skills, and work on being comfortable with those. If you can play your character without much thinking, just reacting to what you see around you, you'll find that learning fights and getting acclimated to the demands vet content puts out will be a lot easier and is probably the first place I would start.

Thank you all for the input i find it very encouraging. I've always suspected that vma is the one to strive for as you can get loads of challenging practice without having to rely on other players. I will continue to do it on normal until i know al the fights inside out and i want to try the easier vets dungeons to improve too.

For me practising my rotation on a dummy, looking at what the you tubers can do with similar set ups and try to get within 5-10k of that then just do dungeons and trials.

I’ve seen a lot of people out dps me on a dummy but be way behind in a trial and mainly that’s down to vault to do both mechanics and damage together. That only comes through practice

Rotation and execution is 100% the most important thing.

Maybe a wording thing but the idea isn’t to fire skills as fast as possible. You can only fire one per second.

Main thing is weaving in light attacks and doing that as fast as possible and maintaining uptime on your damage over time skills. I’d try and get as close to a static rotation as you can. So it’s easier to remember and execute. Through that you will improve as well.

If your ok pc addons can help get that improvement and better analyse your performance.

Combat metrics - let’s you see damage, light attack weaving success and timings and also DOT Uptime.

Metronome - helps you to time out light attack weaving between skills

Action duration reminder/fancy action bar - let’s you see skill timing etc

First of all let me say it took a long time, years in my case, because I hadn't played an MMO before, and in the beginning, when I was just trying to get my bearings, it was mostly learning through other players, and taking notes. For instance, when I had just started trying to do normal dungeons, I was using a resto staff on my magsorc, and I remember being in a pug run, and someone asking why was I using a resto staff on a dps. At the time I didn't even know I was a dps, or what the role even involved, but I took the advice to heart and started using a second destro staff. At first it was mostly things like that, but when I begun to understanding the game a bit better, I wanted to search for more information on how to improve, and that's when my progress started more meaningfully. Back then, there weren't so many resources available as now, I remember reading up on fextralife, or eso academy, and later on I found deltia's and alcast's guide, and slowly tried to learn more about builds and so on. The rest was pratice: doing dungeons and trials, trying and failing in a bunch of different vet contents, and then trying some more (you don't even want to know how many months and soul gems my first vMA clear took... ). You can only improve on your playing by doing the content; preparing, building, etc., are useful but can only take you so far, it's the practice that will show you what works, what doesn't, your shortcomings, and so forth. Solo arenas are particularly helpful with honing one's combat (and also crushing one's spirit, and everything that's good, but I digress ), so I think all players who want to improve should give them a go.

When dummies came out I did a lot of parsing for my DDs, this was very helpful, not because of trying to achieve a certain number, but train your hands to move in a way that can continue when you're in a trial and have to do mechanics at the same time. And here's a caveat: if you only do parsing and never practice on a live instance, you won't really improve, so take the opportunity to jump in whenever possible and learn. If damage is the chess queen, mechanics are the king, and sure, some groups can skip them, especially for older content, but one mistake on an important mechanic can wipe the whole group, so I think after learning basic combat, they should be the next thing. This is especially important for the others two roles: I don't tank very much, but I did a lot of healing, and as a support, you really need to know mechanics to be able to react fast, or act preemptively, and best help your group. Healers do have rotations as well, it's something the vast majority of healers forget or don't practice, and you only see that in the higher end-game groups, but it's very important. Not only because support skills have cooldowns as well, but because depending on sets, they have to be mindful on the uptimes of buffs and debuffs they are responsible for. This takes a lot of practice and also familiarity with how certain sets work. Some time ago I was healing in a group, and afterwards the other healer sent me a message complimenting me on my APM, and I said I was a dps main, which they replied with 'ah that explains it', but it goes to show that healing is not just casting an aoe and orb and doing some heavy attacking in between, it needs effort as well, but unlike DDs whose performance is easily evident through metrics, even as the trial is happening, that's not the case for supports, so the support player themselves have to look at their uptimes afterwards, and see where they need improvement. Also, I think playing with unorganized groups is a good lesson for support players: it's easy to heal or tank when everyone is positioned optimally, kills stuff fast, and knows how to stay alive, but in a less experienced group you learn how not to panic, act premptively, and when chaos happens, what to prioritize.

The ''git gud'' takes time, effort, and mindful practice; some good players might be blessed with twitchy hands, and need less of all that, but most good players I know have spent a very long time trying to improve and perfect their playstyles, both alone in their houses dummy prasing, or in solo areanas, but also in group content.

I mainly heal for my guild. Prior to this, I didn't focus on group content that much in ESO as I was often completing raids in a different game. I came back after I decided to quit the other game for good and found that I had so much to catch up with on top of unlearning some of the habits I picked up in the other game that didn't translate well to ESO.

There are guilds out there that will take the time to show you the ropes. Some will hold weekly learning runs for normal content. As you progress in knowledge and gearing, then you can start getting into the vet trials. There might be a core progression group which would be harder to get into, but they might also have veteran learning runs so everyone can learn together without the pressure of performing perfectly.

Ask questions. More experienced players can offer advice and give you pointers on gearing, mechanics, etc. Even if it's not necessarily a question related to your specific role, I find that it's helpful to ask tanks or DPS about certain mechanics that I'm unfamiliar with or what would be helpful or I see what other people are asking about in Discord. My guildmates often post their parses to Discord for others to see and use that as a way to see what someone could change or do better.

Other than that, I definitely recommend reviewing guides as others have mentioned and practicing mechanics as you can. You could run veteran dungeons with PUGs, though it might not be the most conducive learning environment. If you can find a guild or multiple guilds that help their players learn and grow, that would probably be a better starting point.

Good luck!

Recent wrote: »

Hello,
I want to improve and I know I could join a raiding guild and get lots of good tips but I want to hear from you all cos I'll get more variety of advice etc.
What was your journey like towards becoming a good player that can clear vet trials and arenas etc.

I always read all my replies and i thank you for your time.

If you want to discuss gear knowledge feel free i can use all the help i can get 😊

Personally I believe it's mostly a matter of roles;

As a DD I improved a lot when I did VMA first, after that now one can do Vateshran as well, solo content will boost a lot your survivability as you'll actually have to soak up damage (by block-dodge etc.) while doing damage. You also learn VERY WELL the importance of target focusing. When going with a tank around, in a group, he usualy handles the pressure so the DD will not train his survival skills that much.

As a Tank, my main role, it's kinda slower and can be harder (as a support role you need a team to support and you need a team on par with your skills level or either you or them could get bored/argue while the other one is catching up).
Any DLC dungeon makes a good start then VMA, Craglorn Trials/VSS(Yoln also drops here) can be good to get more efficient: VSS in particular can teach you to handle an high damage income (main tank on dragons) or how to handle adds while surviving on your own mostly (off tank); Main-Off tanking can require very different gameplay.

For healers same principle than tanks but harder: you might not find team willing to have an healer in 4 man content, it's kinda dumb imho, an healer is not an hindrance in 4-man, actually it allows the DD to use full nukes setup, doubles the buff (you'll have twice the support sets) and allow for a relaxed gameplay (DDs casting often shield or vigor deals poor damage).
Anyway you can get ANY achievement in the game with 2DD+Heal+Tank so if they tell you that you NEED 3 DDs know they are not telling the truth (or maybe they do if in 3 they can only dish out the damage that is supposed to come from 2 ppl); some things can get easier/faster on 3 DD but definely you will never "NEED" 3 DD (even unchained, the BRP trifecta, can be comfortably made in 35~40" by 2 DD+heal+tank)