Combat Practice?

Happy_Turtle · June 22

Hello, new player here.

Besides the opening tutorial, is there any sort of combat practice area? Otherwise I'm just wandering around Vvardenfell, practicing by killing little things that probably don't deserve such mistreatment.

I really suck at combat. Too many keys to think about, fingers never in the right place, sometimes bashing works and other times I might as well be hitting myself over the head...pretty amusing to watch, I'm sure.

Dojohoda · June 22

Vvardenfell is a decent place to learn how to react and dodge. So, learn the cues and watch for the cues that the enemy is about to jump on you and roll dodge at the right time. There're more to know about good places to learn combat but that's all I can think of at the moment.

Soarora · June 22

There are target dummies, most guilds have a guild hall that has one. I wouldn't go and do a full parse (which is killing an iron atronach trial dummy from 100%-0%) because it takes a really long time with low DPS. But it's a great place to work on learning your rotation and fiddling with your build then you can go do worldbosses and dungeons and other content to get better at situational awareness, instead of trying to do both at the same time. Best of luck!

Happy_Turtle · June 23

Thanks for the help!

fred4 · June 23

Every place in ESO is a little different. A combat strategy or build that works well in one place is not necessarily good in another. That said, when I make a new solo build, I like to:

Hard for a new player: Go to Skyreach (Craglorn instanced group delve). The mobs, there, will follow you. You can aggro as many groups of them simultaneously as you want, by running further in. This will mainly test your AOE (area of effect) damage and self-healing. There are also side rooms and mini-bosses of varying difficulty. This is a place I visited often when I was a new player.
Harder, but short and sweet: Go to the Shivering Shrine boss in Stonefalls and solo it. Every base game zone has 6 bosses, one of which is harder than the others. I believe this is one of the hard ones. It's a DK-type boss that is nasty, because it stuns and whips you, as well as having adds that pressure you. You can block and inhibit the whip damage. This tests your reactions and sustain. On the other hand, if your intention is to test a tanky build, you can let him go ahead. The damage is of a strength that (unblocked) tends to kill a DD, but won't hurt a tank much. This boss will also test your self-healing.
Hard solo player content, designed by ZOS, that ramps up in difficulty: Play some vet Maelstrom or vet Vateshran arena. If you've never done vet Maelstrom, it's quite a good place to learn, because it gradually ramps up round by round, unlike Vateshran which mainly has a big difficulty spike at the end. Don't forget to set group to "veteran" in your group menu. Normal mode is arguably not hard enough to really test you.
Stupid hard / impossible: For extreme builds, I like to go to vet Blackrose Prison (solo). This cannot be fully soloed, or at all soloed really, at least not by any reasonable build or playstyle. It's more a test of how tanky and sustainy your character is. In general you can, and should, do a lot of stuff with a build that leans towards damage, not tankiness. However, it can be useful to have a tankier build option in your back pocket for when a world boss or, say, an Elsweyr dragon hits too hard. If you're trying to solo it, of course. The trouble is how to test such builds, e.g. how to distinguish whether one build is better / tankier than another. You simply can't do it, if you aren't being pressured hard enough. You can't generally tell the difference between builds (other than by DPS), until you play them at their breaking point. In vet Blackrose Prison you will feel the difference almost instantly. Even a top player on anything resembling a normal build will die (when they are solo). Just how quickly and how it feels is the question. That said, vBRP isn't the be all and end all. Every content is different. In particular the Infinite Archive is very different from anything else and requires altogether different strategies from arc 2 onwards. I still like going to vBRP occasionally, though, e.g. if I want to test how effective my tanky builds are.

Pelanora · June 23

Just do all the delves in a zone. They are great starter places for newbies.

Happy_Turtle · June 23

Pelanora wrote: »

Just do all the delves in a zone. They are great starter places for newbies.

Thanks! I had sort of figured that out. I also figured out that trying to do a Public Dungeon by myself is not a good idea.

Last night I helped to kill a dragon. Sort of. Well, ok, mostly hid behind a rock while a ton of other people killed it. Occasionally popping out to fire off my one tiny spell. I must have done something right because after it was dead it turned yellow and I collected a bunch of stuff.

This game is huge. I will be playing forever.

fred4 · June 23

Happy_Turtle wrote: »

Occasionally popping out to fire off my one tiny spell.

Just to say I pitched my reply at someone a bit further along, e.g. someone who has at least reached the level cap (50) and the gear cap (CP160). Good luck / have fun!

Necrotech_Master · June 25

i like infinite archive as combat practice, as this provides a large array of mechanics, and progressively gets harder over time

fred4 · June 25

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i like infinite archive as combat practice, as this provides a large array of mechanics, and progressively gets harder over time

I left it out of my recommendations, because it's got it's own meta, significantly different to everything else. Arc 1 might be decent training for a new player, but otherwise I think it ramps up too slowly. There's also no consistency as visions and verses may carry you. It's OK when you know, for example, that Swift Gales kills a dragon like nothing else. For a new player those cheap and unearned thrills might be fun, but probably not educational. There's quite the gambling element to the archive.

Necrotech_Master · June 25

fred4 wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

i like infinite archive as combat practice, as this provides a large array of mechanics, and progressively gets harder over time

I left it out of my recommendations, because it's got it's own meta, significantly different to everything else. Arc 1 might be decent training for a new player, but otherwise I think it ramps up too slowly. There's also no consistency as visions and verses may carry you. It's OK when you know, for example, that Swift Gales kills a dragon like nothing else. For a new player those cheap and unearned thrills might be fun, but probably not educational. There's quite the gambling element to the archive.

if your trying to push for sure, completing arc 1-2 is usually a decent combat practice

if the person does not want to use the verses/visions they could pick low/non-impact ones as well, a large majority of the visions are very unimpactful until you get to later arcs and stacked up the bonuses (and to be honest i feel 80% of them are underwhelming)

for verses theres usually more defensive verses to practice dealing dmg without worrying as much about survivability