The pve meta is the worst I've ever seen in any MMO at any period
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Gabriel_H✭✭✭✭✭
✭The point is that people haven chosen Arcanist over any other option when going for raw damage in full DPS spec as long as the class has been out.
Yet, it was by no means the best DD - it was however the easiest to play. Which goes back to my point about damage potential and efficiency.
Prior to sub-classing, a well played DK, Templar, Sorc was doing better damage than even a well played Arcanist.
You’re entirely wrong taking the stance that Arcanist only had such a high pick rate from it’s ease-of-use.
All of the top Leaderboards have been filled with them, these are people competing at the highest level, taking quest buffs, poisons at the start of the trial, doing practically ANYTHING for the micro advantage that will put their team above anyone else… if there was an advantage in running any other class, then that should have been visible on the leaderboards, and at the top of them.
The first patch of Arcanist you still see Dragonknights show up occasionally because people hadn’t adjusted to the new meta but they became fewer and fewer each patch.
ESO Logs. Damage scores. U45:
As you can see not the highest DPS. But:
The easiest to play.
Edited by Gabriel_H on October 22, 2025 2:08PM0 -
Gabriel_H✭✭✭✭✭
✭BXR_Lonestar wrote: »If they do this, will people still use subclassing at all?
In short: No.
The power of sub-classing comes from the passives. The active skills are just flavour, with the one exception being Fatecarver (due to AoE damage, shield, range etc) but even that would lose out somewht from not having the passives
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tomofhyrule✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭BXR_Lonestar wrote: »If they do this, will people still use subclassing at all?
In short: No.
The power of sub-classing comes from the passives. The active skills are just flavour, with the one exception being Fatecarver (due to AoE damage, shield, range etc) but even that would lose out somewht from not having the passives
In the meta world, this is the case. But overland? Sure, people will still Subclass.
This is another element of the “like vs hate Subclassing” divide: why are people taking lines?
For the endgame, it’s all about the passives. Remove passives, and people will instantly jump back to pureclassing. But for casuals, it’s about the skills. They’re not going to stop playing their elementalist because some passive that they don’t even know they have stopped working. They’re in it for the aesthetic.
Targeting the passives would be a great way for the team to try to balance Subclassing for the top end while not changing the gameplay of the for-fun crowd. I prefer the idea of making every line have three levels to the passives and only allowing you to take as many levels as you have matching skill lines, but honestly I’m at the point that I just want to see them address the balance by doing something other than nerfing DK sustain.4 -
spartaxoxo✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭tomofhyrule wrote: »BXR_Lonestar wrote: »If they do this, will people still use subclassing at all?
In short: No.
The power of sub-classing comes from the passives. The active skills are just flavour, with the one exception being Fatecarver (due to AoE damage, shield, range etc) but even that would lose out somewht from not having the passives
In the meta world, this is the case. But overland? Sure, people will still Subclass.
This is another element of the “like vs hate Subclassing” divide: why are people taking lines?
For the endgame, it’s all about the passives. Remove passives, and people will instantly jump back to pureclassing. But for casuals, it’s about the skills. They’re not going to stop playing their elementalist because some passive that they don’t even know they have stopped working. They’re in it for the aesthetic.
Targeting the passives would be a great way for the team to try to balance Subclassing for the top end while not changing the gameplay of the for-fun crowd. I prefer the idea of making every line have three levels to the passives and only allowing you to take as many levels as you have matching skill lines, but honestly I’m at the point that I just want to see them address the balance by doing something other than nerfing DK sustain.
Adjusting passives is a really interesting way to bring back more parity without nerfing everything. This made me think, one thing I think they could do is give a passive to all classes, maybe in the undaunted tree, that gives a DPS buff (against monsters perhaps, idk what pvp would need) for each same class skill that you have. Similar to how there is an undaunted passive for mixing up armor weights. So the strongest buffs would go for pure classing.Edited by spartaxoxo on October 22, 2025 4:21PM0 -
tomofhyrule✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭spartaxoxo wrote: »tomofhyrule wrote: »BXR_Lonestar wrote: »If they do this, will people still use subclassing at all?
In short: No.
The power of sub-classing comes from the passives. The active skills are just flavour, with the one exception being Fatecarver (due to AoE damage, shield, range etc) but even that would lose out somewht from not having the passives
In the meta world, this is the case. But overland? Sure, people will still Subclass.
This is another element of the “like vs hate Subclassing” divide: why are people taking lines?
For the endgame, it’s all about the passives. Remove passives, and people will instantly jump back to pureclassing. But for casuals, it’s about the skills. They’re not going to stop playing their elementalist because some passive that they don’t even know they have stopped working. They’re in it for the aesthetic.
Targeting the passives would be a great way for the team to try to balance Subclassing for the top end while not changing the gameplay of the for-fun crowd. I prefer the idea of making every line have three levels to the passives and only allowing you to take as many levels as you have matching skill lines, but honestly I’m at the point that I just want to see them address the balance by doing something other than nerfing DK sustain.
Adjusting passives is a really interesting way to bring back more parity without nerfing everything. This made me think, one thing I think they could do is give a passive to all classes, maybe in the undaunted tree, that gives a DPS buff (against monsters perhaps, idk what pvp would need) for each same class skill that you have. Similar to how there is an undaunted passive for mixing up armor weights. So the strongest buffs would go for pure classing.
Before Subclassing came out, I always thought that adjusting the Undaunted Mettle passive would be a great way to encourage more Classes in the first place.
Now it gives bonuses based on the different armor weights, but ever since the armor bonuses/penalties dropped, there’s really no reason to wear anything but light=heal, med=dps, heavy=tank. So why is that passive still focused on armor?
It would have been fun if it were instead “buffs resources/damage/whatever by 0.5% per unique Class you’re grouped with.” That would really have made some groups feel the tradeoff of Arcanist Beam vs. more Undaunted passive to be reasonable.
Of course now, that solution won’t directly work, unless they went to “each unique skill line” or something2 -
spartaxoxo✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭tomofhyrule wrote: »spartaxoxo wrote: »tomofhyrule wrote: »BXR_Lonestar wrote: »If they do this, will people still use subclassing at all?
In short: No.
The power of sub-classing comes from the passives. The active skills are just flavour, with the one exception being Fatecarver (due to AoE damage, shield, range etc) but even that would lose out somewht from not having the passives
In the meta world, this is the case. But overland? Sure, people will still Subclass.
This is another element of the “like vs hate Subclassing” divide: why are people taking lines?
For the endgame, it’s all about the passives. Remove passives, and people will instantly jump back to pureclassing. But for casuals, it’s about the skills. They’re not going to stop playing their elementalist because some passive that they don’t even know they have stopped working. They’re in it for the aesthetic.
Targeting the passives would be a great way for the team to try to balance Subclassing for the top end while not changing the gameplay of the for-fun crowd. I prefer the idea of making every line have three levels to the passives and only allowing you to take as many levels as you have matching skill lines, but honestly I’m at the point that I just want to see them address the balance by doing something other than nerfing DK sustain.
Adjusting passives is a really interesting way to bring back more parity without nerfing everything. This made me think, one thing I think they could do is give a passive to all classes, maybe in the undaunted tree, that gives a DPS buff (against monsters perhaps, idk what pvp would need) for each same class skill that you have. Similar to how there is an undaunted passive for mixing up armor weights. So the strongest buffs would go for pure classing.
Before Subclassing came out, I always thought that adjusting the Undaunted Mettle passive would be a great way to encourage more Classes in the first place.
Now it gives bonuses based on the different armor weights, but ever since the armor bonuses/penalties dropped, there’s really no reason to wear anything but light=heal, med=dps, heavy=tank. So why is that passive still focused on armor?
It would have been fun if it were instead “buffs resources/damage/whatever by 0.5% per unique Class you’re grouped with.” That would really have made some groups feel the tradeoff of Arcanist Beam vs. more Undaunted passive to be reasonable.
Of course now, that solution won’t directly work, unless they went to “each unique skill line” or something
Oh that would honestly be a great solution to class balance in general too!
I'm not really a high endgame player. I mean, I've done stuff like PUG Vet DLC trials but I'm not a score pusher or elite player. So, IDK how much this would be dumbing things down too much.
But how would you feel about a passive that gave certain sets of major/minor buffs for each same class skill line that you have? I know that buff uptimes is a part of skill expression, so that may not be desirable. But I also think one of the major advantages of subclassing is access to these passive buffs too they wouldn't come naturally with the class.
What would you think of that from an endgame perspective? Too much?
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Gabriel_H✭✭✭✭✭
✭tomofhyrule wrote: »In the meta world, this is the case. But overland? Sure, people will still Subclass.
This is another element of the “like vs hate Subclassing” divide: why are people taking lines?
For the endgame, it’s all about the passives. Remove passives, and people will instantly jump back to pureclassing. But for casuals, it’s about the skills. They’re not going to stop playing their elementalist because some passive that they don’t even know they have stopped working. They’re in it for the aesthetic.
Targeting the passives would be a great way for the team to try to balance Subclassing for the top end while not changing the gameplay of the for-fun crowd. I prefer the idea of making every line have three levels to the passives and only allowing you to take as many levels as you have matching skill lines, but honestly I’m at the point that I just want to see them address the balance by doing something other than nerfing DK sustain.
I'm talking from a purely end-game pov and it still wouldn't solve the underlying problem - the players.
Raid Leads would simply move on to demanding whatever the new meta was. You may get some pushback if they could reduce the damage differential between classes to less than 2.5% but it'll still be a bare fist brawl to convince the min/maxers. The inherent flaw in the combat system that ZOS have designed is that it does not account for the attitude of players, in particular min/maxers.
Lets talk WoW for a moment. The combat system there is based on threat mechanics. Bosses also enrage if not killed quick enough. The WoW system works by tanks generating as much threat as they can - as such the bosses are designed so that they require a certain amount of threat for the group to kill them within the allotted time.
This is because the threat amount the tank generates dictates the amount of dps that any one individual can do and the amount any one individual can heal. Both damage and healing generate threat.
From a healing point of view they are limited in the total amount they can heal in a short space of time, meaning the tank and the rest of the group must take steps to mitigate their damage received to keep the healing threat below the tank threat.
From a damage point of view they are limited in the total amount they can deal in a short space of time, meaning they have to self-throttle their damage and ensure they are keeping the damage threat below that of the tanks.
While the threat system itself is intrticate, it does mean that mechanics aren't really a thing. A DD has to stop doing so much damage and a tank has to keep spamming the same three skills ... *yawn* ... But it does mean it's irrelevent if a DD can out 150k dps, if they are only allowed to output 100k dps.
ESO does have a similar underlying threat mechanic, but this is over-ridden by the taunt system. It allows for more non-threat/taunt mechanics, and the tank to think a bit more in combat (in WoW its pretty much all pre-planning on build). The problem with that system is that neither the DDs or healers are constrained in their output - they can go as hard as they like. Ever looked at the overheal % in an ESOLog? It's shocking.
So you have a system that means it doesn't matter if the DD outputs 150k dps, and another DD in the same group is deemed as insufficient if they are only outputting 100k dps, and worthless if they are outputting 75k dps (on pure parse).
The thing is, the boss fight, designed around a trifecta, has to be completed withing a certain number of minutes - lets say 5 minutes for this example. A group with 8 DDs outputting 150k dps each get the boss down in 2 minutes. So why is the 75k dps deemed worthless? It's enough to do the fight in the required time. That designation is a player choice based on the group then having to contend with mechs - the actual challenge in a fight (shocking I know).
There are several ways to counter that problem. ZOS could dispense with WD/SD and move to a purely % of max health for damage and healing system, which would flatten out the disparity. They could introduce some form of threat mechanic requiring DDs to self-throttle. Or (and my personal favourite) they could make the existing mechanics mandatory - meaning no matter how quickly you kill that boss, at each % of health that normally triggers a mech, a mech is triggered and not skipped over, and adjusting the time based mechs to become a x seconds or y health trigger.
They have attempted something similar in the past with having bosses go invulnerble, or require certain conditions to be met (LC - mirrors) but these have been sporadic. There are also some bosses (DSR - Twins on HM) where too much damage can vastly increase the risk of death or wipe. Having the mechs play out, and in-some instances making two or more play out at the same time, would force DDs to self-throttle, that 150k output would have to be reduced down to 100k or the risk of death/wipe would be too high.
I'd very much like to see more of these in game. It would mean having to do mechs, it would mean power creep (at least in Dungeons and Trials - Overland needs the CP scaling cap increased and the local player count forumla adjusting better but that will never be perfect) is brought under control. It would make for more interesting fights, and it would stop the trivialization of older content.
ZOS's answer to power creep has been "GivE bOSs MoRe heaLTh!". It doesn't work. Making the bosses DO their attacks and mechs would address it. All the way? Probably not, but it would take a large chunk out of it, and if done right would very much limit the problem, as well as several others with that one change.
Hell, if they want to be really nasty about it they could introduce an enrage mechanic wherein if the boss loses x% of health in y Seconds they go nuts - Occam's Razor and all that. I mean think about how mad you get when a player hits you and you suddenly lose 50% of your health.
(And for my stabby friend who may or may not be doing this - time for some Zen :-P)
PS. I would actually like them to move to a better system for healing. That overheal number is just too much.Edited by Gabriel_H on October 22, 2025 4:39PM2 -
tomofhyrule✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭
That was the original intention. That’s why every trial has two light sets, one for heals and one for DPS
And them hybridization and armor passives made it so all DPS wear medium. There is no longer such thing as “magicka DPS” anymore. It’s just DPS, and you maximize DPS by wearing medium.2 -
Gabriel_H✭✭✭✭✭
✭tomofhyrule wrote: »
That was the original intention. That’s why every trial has two light sets, one for heals and one for DPS
And them hybridization and armor passives made it so all DPS wear medium. There is no longer such thing as “magicka DPS” anymore. It’s just DPS, and you maximize DPS by wearing medium.
Is Magicka DPS as high as most Stamina DPS - no, but it is still a thing.
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tomofhyrule✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭tomofhyrule wrote: »
That was the original intention. That’s why every trial has two light sets, one for heals and one for DPS
And them hybridization and armor passives made it so all DPS wear medium. There is no longer such thing as “magicka DPS” anymore. It’s just DPS, and you maximize DPS by wearing medium.
Is Magicka DPS as high as most Stamina DPS - no, but it is still a thing.
Oh, is esologs an official ZOS-sponsored site that lists everything as it is in the current patch?
Or is it also using outdated terminology in a post-hybridization and post-subclassing world.
Remember, a character who’s entire rotation is “flail-flail-beam” with daggers frontbar and inferno staff backbar could still be listed as “Stamina Nightblade” by using exactly zero NB skills. Heck, I’ve been in casual runs where half of the DPS end up being categorized as healers because their DPS is so low that the site assumes they were supposed to be healing, even though they were marked as DPS and had no Resto staff.3 -
BananaBender✭✭✭✭✭BXR_Lonestar wrote: »If they do this, will people still use subclassing at all? I really don't know.
Yes they would. Base game classes might not, but once again arcanist (and necro) would just be better off than any other class. Their entire offensive toolkit in the same skill line, so ditching the two others for some extra DoTs or better ultimate would just be a massive increase compared to base game classes. The skill line based approach to subclassing just doesn't work if the skill lines are so vastly unbalanced compared to each other.
One way they could make subclassing work without it favouring the two newest classes, would be if subclassing let you keep all of your skill lines and passives, but you were able to select a few skills (no passives) from other skill lines.1 -
BananaBender✭✭✭✭✭The point is that people haven chosen Arcanist over any other option when going for raw damage in full DPS spec as long as the class has been out.
Yet, it was by no means the best DD - it was however the easiest to play. Which goes back to my point about damage potential and efficiency.
Prior to sub-classing, a well played DK, Templar, Sorc was doing better damage than even a well played Arcanist.
You’re entirely wrong taking the stance that Arcanist only had such a high pick rate from it’s ease-of-use.
All of the top Leaderboards have been filled with them, these are people competing at the highest level, taking quest buffs, poisons at the start of the trial, doing practically ANYTHING for the micro advantage that will put their team above anyone else… if there was an advantage in running any other class, then that should have been visible on the leaderboards, and at the top of them.
The first patch of Arcanist you still see Dragonknights show up occasionally because people hadn’t adjusted to the new meta but they became fewer and fewer each patch.
ESO Logs. Damage scores. U45:
As you can see not the highest DPS. But:
The easiest to play.
In U45 the balance was starting to look better ever since Arcanist was released. For most content and most groups Arcanist was still by far the best class, but it's true that in the right hands other classes could parse higher, which is why subclassing felt like such a massive leap backwards when it came to balancing. It looked like the beam meta was finally coming to an end and here we are again, beaming like there is no tomorrow.
For everyone other than the top 1% of players the Arcanist meta never left though.2 -
What’s a good set to combine with Tideborn for PVE? I’ve been using Order’s Wrath and Sergeant’s Mail for a while now. I also equip Oakensoul ring.1
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BananaBender✭✭✭✭✭tomofhyrule wrote: »
That was the original intention. That’s why every trial has two light sets, one for heals and one for DPS
And them hybridization and armor passives made it so all DPS wear medium. There is no longer such thing as “magicka DPS” anymore. It’s just DPS, and you maximize DPS by wearing medium.
Is Magicka DPS as high as most Stamina DPS - no, but it is still a thing.
Magicka and stamina builds look identical after hybridization, that's why people are saying that magicka builds are dead, because there is just rarely a reason to play anything other than stamina.
For example, I looked at the highest parsing magicka templar build on Zilyesset and this is it
On paper, that is a magicka build. In practise, it's identical to a stamina one. It plays exactly the same as does every other magicka and stamina build, because you can use the same skills in both build types. It's not that magicka builds deal less damage, in fact they deal identical damage, medium armor is just better in all ways and having higher stamina pool is more convenient for the vast majority of players.
This wasn't the case before hybridization and that's why people say the magicka builds are dead, because they used to play differently compared to stamina builds. For example again, stamina templar didn't used to have access to jesus beam, making the two builds completely different.4 -
BananaBender✭✭✭✭✭So you have a system that means it doesn't matter if the DD outputs 150k dps, and another DD in the same group is deemed as insufficient if they are only outputting 100k dps, and worthless if they are outputting 75k dps (on pure parse).
Where is this idea that lower damage makes someone worthless coming from? I keep hearing people mention that on the forums when they are talking about the toxic minmaxing root of all evil raid leads who seem to be around every corner, but I've never ran into a single one despite thousands of hours of raiding in groups of varying level. Most groups are completely fine having someone dealing less damage than the top parse. Is this stemming from the fact that some groups have high parse requirements or something like that? Some people want a better score, simple as that. They want to play with people their level and that's completely fine. In those groups doing half the damage than other DDs might be a problem, but that doesn't mean this is a community wide problem which needs solving.The thing is, the boss fight, designed around a trifecta, has to be completed withing a certain number of minutes - lets say 5 minutes for this example. A group with 8 DDs outputting 150k dps each get the boss down in 2 minutes. So why is the 75k dps deemed worthless? It's enough to do the fight in the required time. That designation is a player choice based on the group then having to contend with mechs - the actual challenge in a fight (shocking I know).
Why do people want to kill the boss faster? Simple, it's much easier. The longer any fight lasts, the harder it is on the supports. The more mechanics will happen and the more risk there is that someone dies. After all the goal of every single encounter in the entire game is to drop the boss' HP to 0, not to complete every mechanic. Of course there is also score which is higher the faster you complete the trial. Doing half the damage compared to the top damage dealer can often come across as the player not pulling their own weight (Not always the case, they could be raid leading, calling ultimates, calling or doing other mechanics etc etc).
Again, not all groups care about parse and they manage to clear trifectas without any problems, those kinds of groups are usually found in social PvE guilds.There are several ways to counter that problem. ZOS could dispense with WD/SD and move to a purely % of max health for damage and healing system, which would flatten out the disparity. They could introduce some form of threat mechanic requiring DDs to self-throttle. Or (and my personal favourite) they could make the existing mechanics mandatory - meaning no matter how quickly you kill that boss, at each % of health that normally triggers a mech, a mech is triggered and not skipped over, and adjusting the time based mechs to become a x seconds or y health trigger.
They have attempted something similar in the past with having bosses go invulnerble, or require certain conditions to be met (LC - mirrors) but these have been sporadic. There are also some bosses (DSR - Twins on HM) where too much damage can vastly increase the risk of death or wipe. Having the mechs play out, and in-some instances making two or more play out at the same time, would force DDs to self-throttle, that 150k output would have to be reduced down to 100k or the risk of death/wipe would be too high.
I'd very much like to see more of these in game. It would mean having to do mechs, it would mean power creep (at least in Dungeons and Trials - Overland needs the CP scaling cap increased and the local player count forumla adjusting better but that will never be perfect) is brought under control. It would make for more interesting fights, and it would stop the trivialization of older content.
ZOS's answer to power creep has been "GivE bOSs MoRe heaLTh!". It doesn't work. Making the bosses DO their attacks and mechs would address it. All the way? Probably not, but it would take a large chunk out of it, and if done right would very much limit the problem, as well as several others with that one change.
Hell, if they want to be really nasty about it they could introduce an enrage mechanic wherein if the boss loses x% of health in y Seconds they go nuts - Occam's Razor and all that. I mean think about how mad you get when a player hits you and you suddenly lose 50% of your health.
More forced damage stops, and generally punishing people for playing better and optimizing more is a horrible idea. It completely kills the flow of the fight and it's not engaging for anyone, as well, everyone will be just waiting for the boss to do the one mechanic. Making players manage their DPS can be pulled off well, like making sure the bosses have to die within a certain time frame, like in vDSR first boss, vLC first boss and vOC second boss. Directly making the boss immune, so the group has to wait around and twiddle their thumbs is just lazy combat design. Limiting players ability to do damage and express their skill as a group and as a individual is a quick way to kill any resemblance of endgame community.
Thankfully there is a simple fix to all of this. ZOS needs to know what the players can, and can't do, and plan the encounters accordingly. Power creep needs to happen to keep the game interesting. If there wasn't any power creep, nobody would be nothing to look forwards to in an update. The power creep needs to be controlled and within a reasonable margin and design the encounters based on those numbers. The problem is that it's completely not the case with ESO and hasn't been for a long time now. The encounters being completely gutted with all mechanics skipped isn't a player problem, it's a ZOS problem. They are the ones who came up with, and are responsible of ALL the numbers, item sets and skills, not the players.
The solution isn't to turn every single boss into a snooze fest where you will have to wait for the boss to do the mechanic it was supposed to, because ZOS couldn't put the effort into thinking through their balance changes.
It's wild to think that the players are at fault that the encounters feel off and mechanics get completely ignored when the history of the game balance looks like this. U35 guts damage because it's too high → few patches later Arcanist gets introduced, a class on par with the power of the prenerfed builds, which makes it wildly over tuned in comparison → ZOS spends 2 years trying to fix the problem → They introduce subclassing which turns everyone into demigods.
It's very clear, now more than ever that the game direction is a complete mess. There is no clear vision, controlled power creep or grand plan at play, it really just feels like they slap on some numbers and then proceed to completely ignore the whole situation and move on to the next feature. They haven't even tried to fix subclassing, like come on...
TL;DR - Blaming the miserable state of the encounters on anyone but ZOS is just wild. They are solely responsible for creating this mess, as they are literally the ones who made it. Reducing skill expression and punishing playing well will not solve anything and will kill off what's left of the end game community.10 -
SolarRune✭✭✭I feel we have been in a similar position before, when the oakensoul HA was being heavily used by everyone.
We need to be careful for all those players that are now playing content because of the accessibility provided by subclassing. I saw so many people stop playing after the oakensoul nerf because they felt their accessibility to vet trials or hm trials had been taken away, I do fear the same will happen here.0 -
percept✭✭✭The point is that people haven chosen Arcanist over any other option when going for raw damage in full DPS spec as long as the class has been out.
Yet, it was by no means the best DD - it was however the easiest to play. Which goes back to my point about damage potential and efficiency.
Prior to sub-classing, a well played DK, Templar, Sorc was doing better damage than even a well played Arcanist.
You’re entirely wrong taking the stance that Arcanist only had such a high pick rate from it’s ease-of-use.
All of the top Leaderboards have been filled with them, these are people competing at the highest level, taking quest buffs, poisons at the start of the trial, doing practically ANYTHING for the micro advantage that will put their team above anyone else… if there was an advantage in running any other class, then that should have been visible on the leaderboards, and at the top of them.
The first patch of Arcanist you still see Dragonknights show up occasionally because people hadn’t adjusted to the new meta but they became fewer and fewer each patch.
ESO Logs. Damage scores. U45:
As you can see not the highest DPS. But:
The easiest to play.
That's not how that data works. That just shows the base class. Dk/sin/Templar/nb are almost all either beam or runeblades0 -
GloatingSwine✭✭✭✭BananaBender wrote: »Where is this idea that lower damage makes someone worthless coming from? I keep hearing people mention that on the forums when they are talking about the toxic minmaxing root of all evil raid leads who seem to be around every corner, but I've never ran into a single one despite thousands of hours of raiding in groups of varying level. Most groups are completely fine having someone dealing less damage than the top parse. Is this stemming from the fact that some groups have high parse requirements or something like that? Some people want a better score, simple as that. They want to play with people their level and that's completely fine. In those groups doing half the damage than other DDs might be a problem, but that doesn't mean this is a community wide problem which needs solving.
It's a universal truth of repeated content in MMOs that the majority of players only ever want a smooth ride, they don't want to struggle through for a win, they want the boss to fall over and to get the loot and they really don't want there to be any problem with that happening.
And if there is a problem and they do have to struggle that is always someone else's fault.
It's often the tank's fault, which is why only masochists play tank, but anyone who is lower DPS than you, well it can also be their fault can't it? If they did a bit more then the fight would end quicker and the problems with mechanics would be a lot less because they would be skipped or appear less.1 -
Gabriel_H✭✭✭✭✭
✭tomofhyrule wrote: »tomofhyrule wrote: »
That was the original intention. That’s why every trial has two light sets, one for heals and one for DPS
And them hybridization and armor passives made it so all DPS wear medium. There is no longer such thing as “magicka DPS” anymore. It’s just DPS, and you maximize DPS by wearing medium.
Is Magicka DPS as high as most Stamina DPS - no, but it is still a thing.
Oh, is esologs an official ZOS-sponsored site that lists everything as it is in the current patch?
Or is it also using outdated terminology in a post-hybridization and post-subclassing world.
Remember, a character who’s entire rotation is “flail-flail-beam” with daggers frontbar and inferno staff backbar could still be listed as “Stamina Nightblade” by using exactly zero NB skills. Heck, I’ve been in casual runs where half of the DPS end up being categorized as healers because their DPS is so low that the site assumes they were supposed to be healing, even though they were marked as DPS and had no Resto staff.
You are seeing the outlier mistakes as the norm. I have data that supports my position, you have what?1 -
Gabriel_H✭✭✭✭✭
✭The point is that people haven chosen Arcanist over any other option when going for raw damage in full DPS spec as long as the class has been out.
Yet, it was by no means the best DD - it was however the easiest to play. Which goes back to my point about damage potential and efficiency.
Prior to sub-classing, a well played DK, Templar, Sorc was doing better damage than even a well played Arcanist.
You’re entirely wrong taking the stance that Arcanist only had such a high pick rate from it’s ease-of-use.
All of the top Leaderboards have been filled with them, these are people competing at the highest level, taking quest buffs, poisons at the start of the trial, doing practically ANYTHING for the micro advantage that will put their team above anyone else… if there was an advantage in running any other class, then that should have been visible on the leaderboards, and at the top of them.
The first patch of Arcanist you still see Dragonknights show up occasionally because people hadn’t adjusted to the new meta but they became fewer and fewer each patch.
ESO Logs. Damage scores. U45:
As you can see not the highest DPS. But:
The easiest to play.
That's not how that data works. That just shows the base class. Dk/sin/Templar/nb are almost all either beam or runeblades
The point was about pre-subclassing DPS, and I clearly stated it was from U45.2 -
Gabriel_H✭✭✭✭✭
✭BananaBender wrote: »TL;DR - Blaming the miserable state of the encounters on anyone but ZOS is just wild. They are solely responsible for creating this mess, as they are literally the ones who made it. Reducing skill expression and punishing playing well will not solve anything and will kill off what's left of the end game community.
Where did I say ZOS were innocent in this? They created a system where 50k+ dps was enough, but the players decided ithat 100K+ dps was needed - the fault lies upon both.
Things like players having to throttle, as skill in istelf, would be ZOS addressing the flaw in their system and your immediate repsonse is NO - demonstrating the players complicity in the problem.
2 -
Gabriel_H✭✭✭✭✭
✭BananaBender wrote: »The point is that people haven chosen Arcanist over any other option when going for raw damage in full DPS spec as long as the class has been out.
Yet, it was by no means the best DD - it was however the easiest to play. Which goes back to my point about damage potential and efficiency.
Prior to sub-classing, a well played DK, Templar, Sorc was doing better damage than even a well played Arcanist.
You’re entirely wrong taking the stance that Arcanist only had such a high pick rate from it’s ease-of-use.
All of the top Leaderboards have been filled with them, these are people competing at the highest level, taking quest buffs, poisons at the start of the trial, doing practically ANYTHING for the micro advantage that will put their team above anyone else… if there was an advantage in running any other class, then that should have been visible on the leaderboards, and at the top of them.
The first patch of Arcanist you still see Dragonknights show up occasionally because people hadn’t adjusted to the new meta but they became fewer and fewer each patch.
ESO Logs. Damage scores. U45:
As you can see not the highest DPS. But:
The easiest to play.
In U45 the balance was starting to look better ever since Arcanist was released. For most content and most groups Arcanist was still by far the best class, but it's true that in the right hands other classes could parse higher, which is why subclassing felt like such a massive leap backwards when it came to balancing. It looked like the beam meta was finally coming to an end and here we are again, beaming like there is no tomorrow.
For everyone other than the top 1% of players the Arcanist meta never left though.
You mean Arcanist wasn't the highest DPS but it was the easiest to play?0 -
BananaBender✭✭✭✭✭BananaBender wrote: »TL;DR - Blaming the miserable state of the encounters on anyone but ZOS is just wild. They are solely responsible for creating this mess, as they are literally the ones who made it. Reducing skill expression and punishing playing well will not solve anything and will kill off what's left of the end game community.
Where did I say ZOS were innocent in this? They created a system where 50k+ dps was enough, but the players decided ithat 100K+ dps was needed - the fault lies upon both.
Things like players having to throttle, as skill in istelf, would be ZOS addressing the flaw in their system and your immediate repsonse is NO - demonstrating the players complicity in the problem.
Players decided not to carry other people's weight simple as that. This isn't a new thing, MMO specific thing and especially not eso specific thing. Many people prefer doing group projects with people who put in equal effort as everyone else, I don't see how that's surprising or even a bad thing.
If you are doing a school project where one person is completely fine with a 1/10 score, you can't blame the rest of the group because they want to aim higher and feel as if the one person is holding the group back. Same applies to literally every environment where you work with other people, ESO raids included.Edited by BananaBender on October 23, 2025 7:56PM6 -
BananaBender✭✭✭✭✭BananaBender wrote: »The point is that people haven chosen Arcanist over any other option when going for raw damage in full DPS spec as long as the class has been out.
Yet, it was by no means the best DD - it was however the easiest to play. Which goes back to my point about damage potential and efficiency.
Prior to sub-classing, a well played DK, Templar, Sorc was doing better damage than even a well played Arcanist.
You’re entirely wrong taking the stance that Arcanist only had such a high pick rate from it’s ease-of-use.
All of the top Leaderboards have been filled with them, these are people competing at the highest level, taking quest buffs, poisons at the start of the trial, doing practically ANYTHING for the micro advantage that will put their team above anyone else… if there was an advantage in running any other class, then that should have been visible on the leaderboards, and at the top of them.
The first patch of Arcanist you still see Dragonknights show up occasionally because people hadn’t adjusted to the new meta but they became fewer and fewer each patch.
ESO Logs. Damage scores. U45:
As you can see not the highest DPS. But:
The easiest to play.
In U45 the balance was starting to look better ever since Arcanist was released. For most content and most groups Arcanist was still by far the best class, but it's true that in the right hands other classes could parse higher, which is why subclassing felt like such a massive leap backwards when it came to balancing. It looked like the beam meta was finally coming to an end and here we are again, beaming like there is no tomorrow.
For everyone other than the top 1% of players the Arcanist meta never left though.
You mean Arcanist wasn't the highest DPS but it was the easiest to play?
Depends on what do you mean by highest dps. Highest in single target? Nope, has never been, still it was clearly the best for raids. Highest AoE damage? Yes and no. Again, it depends which fight and which type of fight we are talking about. A quick AoE fight like the triplets in HoF? Nope, necro was the best. In an extended AoE fight like Reef Guardian, arcanist was the best. If you want a one size "highest dps" class, it was arcanist, but there were individual fights where other classes which could perform better.
None of this has anything to do with the current state of the game. I wish we still had a meta even close to what we had in U45...1 -
Radiate77✭✭✭✭BananaBender wrote: »BananaBender wrote: »The point is that people haven chosen Arcanist over any other option when going for raw damage in full DPS spec as long as the class has been out.
Yet, it was by no means the best DD - it was however the easiest to play. Which goes back to my point about damage potential and efficiency.
Prior to sub-classing, a well played DK, Templar, Sorc was doing better damage than even a well played Arcanist.
You’re entirely wrong taking the stance that Arcanist only had such a high pick rate from it’s ease-of-use.
All of the top Leaderboards have been filled with them, these are people competing at the highest level, taking quest buffs, poisons at the start of the trial, doing practically ANYTHING for the micro advantage that will put their team above anyone else… if there was an advantage in running any other class, then that should have been visible on the leaderboards, and at the top of them.
The first patch of Arcanist you still see Dragonknights show up occasionally because people hadn’t adjusted to the new meta but they became fewer and fewer each patch.
ESO Logs. Damage scores. U45:
As you can see not the highest DPS. But:
The easiest to play.
In U45 the balance was starting to look better ever since Arcanist was released. For most content and most groups Arcanist was still by far the best class, but it's true that in the right hands other classes could parse higher, which is why subclassing felt like such a massive leap backwards when it came to balancing. It looked like the beam meta was finally coming to an end and here we are again, beaming like there is no tomorrow.
For everyone other than the top 1% of players the Arcanist meta never left though.
You mean Arcanist wasn't the highest DPS but it was the easiest to play?
Depends on what do you mean by highest dps. Highest in single target? Nope, has never been, still it was clearly the best for raids. Highest AoE damage? Yes and no. Again, it depends which fight and which type of fight we are talking about. A quick AoE fight like the triplets in HoF? Nope, necro was the best. In an extended AoE fight like Reef Guardian, arcanist was the best. If you want a one size "highest dps" class, it was arcanist, but there were individual fights where other classes which could perform better.
None of this has anything to do with the current state of the game. I wish we still had a meta even close to what we had in U45...
Exactly, no skill in the game compares to Fatecarver in terms of cleave. Using data for one trial does not equate to other classes having more damage.
You run an Arcanist for its cleave, and sure Lucent Citadel’s design favored other options, great. Yet you bring that Arcanist elsewhere, in places where adds do not chase, and all of sudden you start hitting outrageous total DPS because simple math dictates the more enemies you hit, the higher damage you’re going to do. Let’s also keep Azureblight in mind, as there were a lot of changes done to that set within the last year or two.
It’s not an ease-of-use situation, although the class is certainly easy to use, that’s not why it was so popular at the top end of gameplay.Edited by Radiate77 on October 23, 2025 8:11PM0 -
tomofhyrule✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭BananaBender wrote: »BananaBender wrote: »The point is that people haven chosen Arcanist over any other option when going for raw damage in full DPS spec as long as the class has been out.
Yet, it was by no means the best DD - it was however the easiest to play. Which goes back to my point about damage potential and efficiency.
Prior to sub-classing, a well played DK, Templar, Sorc was doing better damage than even a well played Arcanist.
You’re entirely wrong taking the stance that Arcanist only had such a high pick rate from it’s ease-of-use.
All of the top Leaderboards have been filled with them, these are people competing at the highest level, taking quest buffs, poisons at the start of the trial, doing practically ANYTHING for the micro advantage that will put their team above anyone else… if there was an advantage in running any other class, then that should have been visible on the leaderboards, and at the top of them.
The first patch of Arcanist you still see Dragonknights show up occasionally because people hadn’t adjusted to the new meta but they became fewer and fewer each patch.
ESO Logs. Damage scores. U45:
As you can see not the highest DPS. But:
The easiest to play.
In U45 the balance was starting to look better ever since Arcanist was released. For most content and most groups Arcanist was still by far the best class, but it's true that in the right hands other classes could parse higher, which is why subclassing felt like such a massive leap backwards when it came to balancing. It looked like the beam meta was finally coming to an end and here we are again, beaming like there is no tomorrow.
For everyone other than the top 1% of players the Arcanist meta never left though.
You mean Arcanist wasn't the highest DPS but it was the easiest to play?
Depends on what do you mean by highest dps. Highest in single target? Nope, has never been, still it was clearly the best for raids. Highest AoE damage? Yes and no. Again, it depends which fight and which type of fight we are talking about. A quick AoE fight like the triplets in HoF? Nope, necro was the best. In an extended AoE fight like Reef Guardian, arcanist was the best. If you want a one size "highest dps" class, it was arcanist, but there were individual fights where other classes which could perform better.
None of this has anything to do with the current state of the game. I wish we still had a meta even close to what we had in U45...
Exactly, no skill in the game compares to Fatecarver in terms of cleave. Using data for one trial does not equate to other classes having more damage.
You run an Arcanist for its cleave, and sure Lucent Citadel’s design favored other options, great. Yet you bring that Arcanist elsewhere, in places where adds do not chase, and all of sudden you start hitting outrageous total DPS because simple math dictates the more enemies you hit, the higher damage you’re going to do.
It’s not an ease-of-use situation, although the class is certainly easy to use, that’s not why it was so popular at the top end of gameplay.
And along with the cleave possible from Fatecarver, we’ve also seen several nerfs one after another to Azureblight.
An Azureblight build may not have been able to match Fatecarver, but it did provide a way for non-Fatecarver builds to be able to get a lot of cleave. And then it just kept getting nerfed over and over, making it so the only way to get good cleave was to use Fatecarver.
“Nerf every alternative into oblivion and leave only one solution” definitely isn’t a good way to balance that thing.1 -
Barovia87✭✭✭✭BananaBender wrote: »BananaBender wrote: »TL;DR - Blaming the miserable state of the encounters on anyone but ZOS is just wild. They are solely responsible for creating this mess, as they are literally the ones who made it. Reducing skill expression and punishing playing well will not solve anything and will kill off what's left of the end game community.
Where did I say ZOS were innocent in this? They created a system where 50k+ dps was enough, but the players decided ithat 100K+ dps was needed - the fault lies upon both.
Things like players having to throttle, as skill in istelf, would be ZOS addressing the flaw in their system and your immediate repsonse is NO - demonstrating the players complicity in the problem.
Players decided not to carry other people's weight simple as that. This isn't a new thing, MMO specific thing and especially not eso specific thing. Many people prefer doing group projects with people who put in equal effort as everyone else, I don't see how that's surprising or even a bad thing.
If you are doing a school project where one person is completely fine with a 1/10 score, you can't blame the rest of the group because they want to aim higher and feel as if the one person is holding the group back. Same applies to literally every environment where you work with other people, ESO raids included.
Except this isn't a school project, or a work project, or anything actually truly that important. It's a social video game. And it's mean to exclude people from playing games with the group - especially when they're plenty "good enough" to play - just because you've decided to gatekeep fun.
Good faith efforts aren't hard to spot, nor are bad faith efforts. I just wish people would be less myopic and rude to their fellow players."Anyone who can play a stringed instrument seems to me a wizard worthy of deep respect." - J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 142 Dec. 19533