Tandor wrote: »

Thanks for the detailed review of your experience. My only comment being neither a PvPer nor a dungeoneer is that it's a shame when people feel they have to get to CP160 in a month. They miss so much of what this game is really about, but then of course if a new player is really mainly after PvP then ESO might well not be the game for them especially with Cyrodiil performance being what it is.

Well you are correct good Sir. For me it was mainly about the PvP aspect but if you want to play ESO somewhat competetively you have to endure the artificially created timegating or pay. If you wanna play it as a solo RPG experience it really does not matter what gear you have or how fast you are on your mount. Personally i wouldnt play a mmo if i look for a solo experience.

I also wish to say that despite the dated graphics, the performance of the game itself isnt all to good. Performance improvements usually take a lot of time and ressources though and seeing the state of this game i am pretty confident that there is nothing planned to improve on that.

Interesting read.

IMO for DPS, practice makes perfect. Try different gear, cp, skills, etc. while smacking a target dummy till you get consistent results. I'm not a fan of light attacks so I focus on a heavy attack build. A rotation for me is critical surge, boundless, twilight at start of fight, weapon swap, shock reach, unstable wall, weapon swap, lightning flood, two heavy attacks, surge or boundless (different buff each rotation), weapon swap, and repeat from reach while also remembering to use thunderous rage ultimate on cooldown. For serious fights will also drink major prophecy potions on cooldown as well. At 20% boss health I'll use one heavy attack and mages' wrath execute 4 times then repeat rotation from one buff skill and reach.

There are many different kind of rotations in the game, but without something consistent the damage will always be on the low end, which is why practicing on a dummy is important. Sometimes just changing your mundus, food, enchants (jewelry enchants 522+ damage), golding out your weapons, and slotted cp will make all the difference if you already have a consistent rotation. Of course, it is also important to use sets that support the way you want to play.

IMO in relation to a basic 3 million health dummy, 20k+ damage is good for vanilla vet dungeons, 25k+ is good for vanilla vet trials/vet DLC dungeons, 30K+ is ideal (not necessary if everyone pulls their weight with consistent 25k+ damage) for vet DLC trials. If you want to do leaderboard runs, trifectas, or do enough damage to skip mechanics then you might need to play whatever the current meta is for your class, but besides that it is not impossible to play how you want and be effective as a DPS.

From my experience you can still get lots of points focusing on healing and support in Battlegrounds. Most points will come from assists and ensuring your teammates are still standing so that they can put in the DPS.

The title of your post is quite misleading considering you cleared all the vet dungeons as a healer and obtained emperor in pvp. I play on PC NA, besides server lag in Cyrodiil and one suspicious player that was immune to stuns I don't really witness rampant cheating or experience significant bugs. Bugs definitely do exist and the permanent debuffs on your character are just a UI error.

Einar_Hrafnarsson wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Thanks for the detailed review of your experience. My only comment being neither a PvPer nor a dungeoneer is that it's a shame when people feel they have to get to CP160 in a month. They miss so much of what this game is really about, but then of course if a new player is really mainly after PvP then ESO might well not be the game for them especially with Cyrodiil performance being what it is.

Well you are correct good Sir. For me it was mainly about the PvP aspect but if you want to play ESO somewhat competetively you have to endure the artificially created timegating or pay. If you wanna play it as a solo RPG experience it really does not matter what gear you have or how fast you are on your mount. Personally i wouldnt play a mmo if i look for a solo experience.

I also wish to say that despite the dated graphics, the performance of the game itself isnt all to good. Performance improvements usually take a lot of time and ressources though and seeing the state of this game i am pretty confident that there is nothing planned to improve on that.

mm I left at the start of the game because of performance, however now the game is imo the most gorgeous of all the AAA and is rock solid 60 fps on my modest overclocked I7- the recent multithreading option definitely helper here. As for your other issues, that's the same with any mmorpg, you cant expect to have top end gear after 2 months in a game that offers so much gear variety. In saying that however you don't need top gear in ESO to be competitive, purple is perfectly fine, for e.g pick pariah and 1 resource/dmg set and you are good. this is very different from the likes of wow etc because of the level cap.

So there are a couple things to make note of. First, it's a shame that people in PUGs rush when told that someone is new or has a quest. If I'm told this at the start of a dungeon, I always, always, always go as slow as the slowest member of the group, even ensuring that they've triggered the next dialogue or quest sequence along the way so they don't have to come back and redo it.

This isn't always the case that people rush, nor does it have to be the case. Getting a group of friends or guild mates to run content with you is the best way to do this and ensure that you have ample time to listen or read everything. Some guilds even recruit under this very mantra of allowing you to go through a dungeon at your pace. When you queue for a random dungeon, as many people will testify, you agree to a dungeon clear. Or at least... an attempt (I still remember the early days when normal Ruins of Mazzatun was considered "hard"). Some people rush to the end, even skipping bosses. Some people queue as a role they are not (e.g. fake tanks/healers; one thing I like about FFXIV is how roles are baked into jobs).

Everyone in the group is their for their own reasons. Whether it's for experience or transmutes or the Endurance/Agility/Willpower gear for their collections. A lot of people in the queue have run the dungeon 56 million times already. I do expect some basic courtesy, but not everyone has the patience and I can equally understand that. Getting people to work together is... sometimes difficult.

I was a in a similar boat, mind you. Back when the game was in beta, I tried it out and it just didn't feel like an Elder Scrolls game. In much the same way Neverwinter Online didn't feel like a D&D game. I came back to the game a couple years later and stayed.

Second, playing DPS isn't that hard, but as someone else said you cannot just slap some random gear on and expect to hit thresholds that the top 1% are getting. Nor can you just spam random skills. Skills need to be done in a certain order. Compared to, for example, FFXIV, the order in ESO is incredibly forgiving. The moment you let your AoEs/DoTs run out is the point that you lose a significant portion of your DPS. Especially when that DoT/AoE is what is potentially giving you a weapon buff (berserker enchantment). I went from ESO to FFXIV and, in terms of rotations, it's insane. I opted for RDM as my first because it was the "easiest" but also the lowest DPS. I went SAM later. Almost every MMO that I've ever played has some form of "weaving." Whether it's weaving light attacks in ESO or weaving oGCD skills with GCD skills in FFXIV.

Compare, for example, a Nightblade's rotation in ESO versus a Black Mage's rotation in FFXIV. It basically comes down to a static or dynamic rotation which only has a couple minor changes in ESO. For Black Mage, it's staggering. There are flow charts for this stuff.

Both games take some time to get into. When I first played ESO, I played tank (templar tank; that doesn't mean much to anyone looking at the game now, but back then we didn't have chains, and trial groups would only take you if you were a DK tank -- so I made a DK tank) because I wanted a way to get into it that didn't involve memorising all these different rotations, now I play all three roles and all classes -- though keep tank as my main.

I've also tried New World and while I sort of like the combat, I found the game overall to be more grindy than ESO. In particular, the best stuff, like Outpost Rush, is level/time gated to level 60. Meaning you have people try-hard powerlevelling for the first 2-3 weeks of the game's life in order to hit that number. These same people have absolutely nothing in crafting or gathering. They go to a place that requires you to cut down Wyrdwood and... guess what? The lower level person has to do it because the level 60 spent all that time powerlevelling instead of actually playing the game fully and levelling in a balanced way. But that's up to them.

Now, third point, in terms of competitiveness, it is somewhat locked. There's no real way around that. Especially in CP campaigns. But you can play any of the PvP after level 10 in ESO. You can hit level 10 very fast with just 30 minutes of questing. I, personally, think this is a fair compromise. You can basically dive in whenever you want. Being at a disadvantage is not the same as being locked out. I hold by the belief that any game that requires or promotes that you get to max level as fast as possible is simply bad game design (apparently it's an unpopular opinion).

As for your 25k DPS single target. This depends largely on the context and content. 25k on what? On a boss? On a 3m health target dummy? On a trial atronach dummy? I'm going to assume you're referring to a boss. In which case, while low, I would consider it perfectly fine to clear any of the content in this game assuming you're not looking for titles like Godslayer, Planesbreaker, etc. But, again, as I stated above, I would strongly recommend trying to get into a guild or find friends in order to run content if you're looking to do harder stuff. If PvP is the only thing you're really interested in, you're going to find that running dungeons (PvE) content is beneficial to most builds in terms of gear, but not strictly necessary. So having a balanced experience is still good.

None of this is intended to get you to keep playing or return to ESO. I advocate you play what makes you feel good, what keeps you entertained. This ended up being more of a wall of text than I intended, but... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯