Taarente wrote: »

If you’re going to post a parse and claim it represents you, then show an unbuffed skeleton dummy parse instead. That at least answers the honest question: what can you do on your own, without perfect uptime, perfect positioning, and imaginary supports?

It is obvious that parses on the trial dummy and the unbuffed one have different setups and rotations.
If you wanna optimize you build and hands for solo arena run, you should parse the skeleton, yes.
If you try to progress with optimized trial group, you should master your rotation on the trial dummy. Otherwise you underperform.
With a good dummy rotation, your muscle memory will help you to perform well in real non-ideal curcumstances. If you didn't work for that muscle memory, you won't do any solid amount of dmg in encounter, whatever amount of luck you have.

Taarente wrote: »

One real downside of this culture is how these inflated numbers get used to gatekeep. Trial-dummy parses become a shortcut for judging players, even though they say very little about awareness, survivability, mechanics, or consistency under pressure. We end up filtering for rehearsed DPS rather than actual reliability, and that’s bad for groups and the game.

Parses aren’t useless, but let’s stop confusing rehearsed numbers with real performance.

An experienced progression RL analyses many factors, not only dps. The effects uptime for example.
Just to let you know, the low trial dummy parse is an early sign that the player has problems with uptimes.
So a good parse is just the beginning. To perform well in HMs and trifectas you need a good parse AND much much more.

From my experience, sometimes people with high parses were excluded from progression raids due to low survivability etc.
But systematically most of the people with very strong parses performed better then others in real runs.
So try not to take a parse requirement as a filtering and gatekeeping attempt. It is just the first step to show your performance. The first of many.

It's weird people think trial dummy buffs are hard to achieve. Even 5 minutes of looking at your roster can tell you what you have and what needs to be brought. I don't really pug though, so maybe that's what you mean.

As for dummy parses. People in this thread have already said eloquently what they're for and why they're beneficial. A dummy parse also helps people get better. I post parses and people much better than I can watch and critique and tell me where I'm going wrong. As for gatekeeping, if you're in a trial guild that wants a ridiculous number to do vet trials, leave the guild. Full stop. Look for the guild that wants to see a parse to help you improve them get you into content to get you the right gear to help with that. They're out there. I'm in trials guilds that require no parse for open runs, only score push runs and hard mode stuff and even then it's about competency not a huge number.

Use the dummy for what it's for. To keep learning and improving.

twisttop138 wrote: »

It's weird people think trial dummy buffs are hard to achieve. Even 5 minutes of looking at your roster can tell you what you have and what needs to be brought. I don't really pug though, so maybe that's what you mean.

As for dummy parses. People in this thread have already said eloquently what they're for and why they're beneficial. A dummy parse also helps people get better. I post parses and people much better than I can watch and critique and tell me where I'm going wrong. As for gatekeeping, if you're in a trial guild that wants a ridiculous number to do vet trials, leave the guild. Full stop. Look for the guild that wants to see a parse to help you improve them get you into content to get you the right gear to help with that. They're out there. I'm in trials guilds that require no parse for open runs, only score push runs and hard mode stuff and even then it's about competency not a huge number.

Use the dummy for what it's for. To keep learning and improving.

thats the issue a lot of players are talking about more and more guilds are asking for parses more as an way to gate-keep runs then to get an baseline and offer help where needed , its get good or get out mentality... and im 100% with you on drop them types like an bad habit , once they use something to hold you back not give help they no longer an guild as an guild is only as strong as its weakest link and strive to fix that not cast you out

Angnos wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

not one of my HMs have we WIPED for any reason other then to reset run ( going for ND or faster time ) , what they saying is wiping due to lack of group functioning like an group not RESETING to get something 100% down to an T

I genuinely don’t understand you right now. What are you trying to say? Is there a translation error between us? Are you telling me that your prog group was filled with prodigies who knew all the mechanics before entering the HM trial? And that you immediately started with ND and/or faster times? Either you got carried hard, or you’re just lying.

every HM ive been in you must 1st have done vet so yes and we was also encouraged to watch mech video and had placement graphs to look over lol 😂 you know we prepared ourselves and had knowledge about what we was going into do

oh and as an healer whos doing the careering??? do you have your healers pre set up their builds ? like you make it sound like your HM prog groups go in there completely blind to what they are going into if thats the case get an new leader that will inform you of things that help improve your success

DenverRalphy wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

heimdall14_9 wrote: »

Angnos wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Not for nothing, but if someone is wiping for two hours on the first boss in SS or DSR the problem is likely not the amount of DPS.

I sometimes get the feeling that some people here are stupid. Or are acting stupid just to bait others. I’m talking about being a raid leader as a whole here people:

Angnos wrote: »

I think a lot of people don’t realize how hard it is to be a raid leader. You have to set up a roster, find 11 other players who are available on a specific date, and look for replacements when people don’t show up or sign off late (sometimes only an hour before the raid). There is also pressure to show progress during a trial, because people often won’t come back a second time if you’re wiping on the first boss of Sunspire or Dreadsail Reef for two hours.

Sunspire and Dreadsail Reef are examples. And I am talking about HM not veteran or normal difficulty. I think most raid leaders and raid members know that if a raid (Prog) takes too long to complete, people will leave the group, and you end up with a rotation of new players. That’s why it’s important to make progress and clear content in a reasonable amount of time. That is the responsibility of the raid leader. And why there are requirements (DPS parse/Trial clears/Logs) to join a group.

if you are talking about HM prog then it makes it even worse to be wiping out to 1 boss for 2hrs and is way more then mechanical and dps issues combined

"Tell me you haven't been a part of an HM/Trifecta prog without saying that you haven't been a part of an HM/Trifecta prog"

not one of my HMs have we WIPED for any reason other then to reset run ( going for ND or faster time ) , what they saying is wiping due to lack of group functioning like an group not RESETING to get something 100% down to an T

I find this claim to be somewhat difficult to believe. Base game vet dungeon HM's maybe. Trial HM's? I'd say 'no way' but I'll just leave it at extremelly skeptical.

i had an harder time getting some DLC dungeon HM SR ND then in some trials as its an smaller community then trials and i guess some groups prepare themselves differently and conducts their grouping differently too

Angnos wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Not for nothing, but if someone is wiping for two hours on the first boss in SS or DSR the problem is likely not the amount of DPS.

I sometimes get the feeling that some people here are stupid. Or are acting stupid just to bait others. I’m talking about being a raid leader as a whole here people:

Angnos wrote: »

I think a lot of people don’t realize how hard it is to be a raid leader. You have to set up a roster, find 11 other players who are available on a specific date, and look for replacements when people don’t show up or sign off late (sometimes only an hour before the raid). There is also pressure to show progress during a trial, because people often won’t come back a second time if you’re wiping on the first boss of Sunspire or Dreadsail Reef for two hours.

Sunspire and Dreadsail Reef are examples. And I am talking about HM not veteran or normal difficulty. I think most raid leaders and raid members know that if a raid (Prog) takes too long to complete, people will leave the group, and you end up with a rotation of new players. That’s why it’s important to make progress and clear content in a reasonable amount of time. That is the responsibility of the raid leader. And why there are requirements (DPS parse/Trial clears/Logs) to join a group.

Don't go blaming me for your lack of clarity. As a raid lead you should know you need to be clear and accurate.

Most raid leads should know that there are few dps checks in the game, and ZOS chooses to favour heal checks, as well as there being half a dozen reasons that the boss isn't being cleared before dps being the issue - I find, as a raid lead, the problem is typically players not fully understanding the mechs, or standing somewhere they shouldn't, or not having the survibibility needed because they specced 3 damage lines and gave up a shed load of passives that would have kept them alive.

A dead DD does 0 dps.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Most raid leads should know that there are few dps checks in the game, and ZOS chooses to favour heal checks, as well as there being half a dozen reasons that the boss isn't being cleared before dps being the issue - I find, as a raid lead, the problem is typically players not fully understanding the mechs, or standing somewhere they shouldn't, or not having the survibibility needed because they specced 3 damage lines and gave up a shed load of passives that would have kept them alive.

I don’t know what difficulty tier you’re raid leading, but I don’t think it’s DLC hard modes. Otherwise, you wouldn’t say this: or not having the survibibility needed because they specced 3 damage lines and gave up a shed load of passives that would have kept them alive. Yes, surviving mechanics is important, but that is combined with good DPS. The longer the fight takes, the greater the chance that a tank, healer, or damage dealer makes a mistake or gets overwhelmed by the mechanics (mobs)

The rest I agree with; there is more to a trial than just doing damage.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Angnos wrote: »

I don’t know what difficulty tier you’re raid leading, but I don’t think it’s DLC hard modes. Otherwise, you wouldn’t say this: or not having the survibibility needed because they specced 3 damage lines and gave up a shed load of passives that would have kept them alive. Yes, surviving mechanics is important, but that is combined with good DPS. The longer the fight takes, the greater the chance that a tank, healer, or damage dealer makes a mistake or gets overwhelmed by the mechanics (mobs)

The rest I agree with; there is more to a trial than just doing damage.

If you are disagreeing with my statement then I have to question whether you even play computer games. Lets break it down and see where your argument contradicts mine:

• there are few dps checks in the game - you don't seem to dispute this
• ZOS chooses to favour heal checks - nor this
• players not fully understanding the mechs - nor this
• standing somewhere they shouldn't - nor this
• not having the survibibility needed because they specced 3 damage lines and gave up a shed load of passives that would have kept them alive - nor this and seem to agree, yet also contradict yourself

So what exactly is your argument? That you need good dps? Yeah, I never said otherwise. The difference I think is this, correct me I've my presumption is wrong: You think good dps is someone doing 150k on a dummy; whereas I know someone doing 50k - 75k (trial dependent) dps in content is enough to get a trifecta.

The game has options. There are many ways to get a boss down and a trial cleared. Yes, the longer the fight takes the more chances of human error - that length isn't dependent on DPS - it's sustained DPS. As I said, a dead DD does 0 damage.

And wait until you find out I take my non-subclassed Templar MT into end-game trifecta runs with zero detriment or issues. You're head will explode.

I think you have the wrong presumption. For me, a 150K dummy parse means that, if the group is decent, he hits 75K in trials. And sure, you can do trials with lower DPS If you have a group that condones it, who am I to say anything about it?

And wait until you find out I take my non-subclassed Templar MT into end-game trifecta runs with zero detriment or issues. You're head will explode It doesn’t really make my head explode, because you’re raid leading yourself. Making your own rules and requirements. Or you have friends who condone you joining their group. In any other group, you have to follow their rules.

This whole discussion doesn’t really matter in the end, because you can just make your own group with your own rules. That’s why I’m stopping to talk/discuss further in here(thread): because we’re now talking about things that each raid leader does differently or sees differently. And not anymore about the topic itself.

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

• There are very few DPS checks in the game.

Really? Let me think… Bahsei's Flesh Abomination, Xoryn's Crystal Atronach, Tideborn Taleria's Tidal Mage, Shade of Z'Maja, Lord Falgravn Phase 3, Hall of Fleshcraft Veteran's Abomination of Flesh, etc., the list goes on, but almost every HM-trial has DPS checks, not the other way around.

And how many tombs you want on Lokke?

Rev Rielle wrote: »

I use them and I see their value. But I dislike them, simply because they create too much division/stress among players and the community. The game would be better off without them.

Before there were dummies (even the basic skeleton ones), people got themselves a tank to hold the boss in place and Breach, and parsed on Bloodspawn in Spindleclutch II.
As someone else said, deleting all rulers doesn't make size go away. Knowing what a DD can do in terms of rotation and dps, has always been important, and players have always found a way to find out.

Taarente wrote: »

Let’s stop pretending that a DPS number from hitting a piece of wood—while swimming in guaranteed buffs you will never reliably have in real content, is any meaningful guide to a player’s actual capability.

A fully buffed trial dummy parse doesn’t show how you play. It shows how well you can follow a script under laboratory conditions.

If you’re going to post a parse and claim it represents you, then show an unbuffed skeleton dummy parse instead. That at least answers the honest question: what can you do on your own, without perfect uptime, perfect positioning, and imaginary supports?

Because that 180k “god build” everyone loves to flex is far more likely to land somewhere around 30k on a good day, with favourable wind, cooperative enemies, and the stars aligned.

One real downside of this culture is how these inflated numbers get used to gatekeep. Trial-dummy parses become a shortcut for judging players, even though they say very little about awareness, survivability, mechanics, or consistency under pressure. We end up filtering for rehearsed DPS rather than actual reliability, and that’s bad for groups and the game.

Parses aren’t useless, but let’s stop confusing rehearsed numbers with real performance.

finally someone who gets it, i do fine in trials, i hate parsing dummies i fall asleep it tedious and boring real fights with dodging, blocking is fun, i have always said you may parse 120k on dummy but i see you dead more than i see you fighting, so your 120k probably falls way short after all a dead dps does no dps

Of course dummies are not real content. The idea of parsing on a dummy is that it gives you everything, so you can compare apples to apples. If you have one person parsing on a 3m dummy with no buffs versus another person who’s parsing with a healer to buff them versus another who is cheesing with Thrassian’s/Highland Sentinel/whatever the cheese is this patch, then you can’t logically make comparisons.

I have seen way too many times the “I can get a 170k parse!” person dead the whole time.

But as a corollary… I have also seen way too many times the “DPS doesn’t mean anything as long as you know mechanics!” people who screw up every single mechanic without fail. A lot of people who run endgame are tired of seeing people whine about how it’s gatekeeping to bar people for low DPS because they can still do mechanics, but then those people have low DPS and die to mechanics, requiring the high-DPS to stop DPSing to res them.

The biggest problem is ESO’s endgame community is not healthy at all. We used to have the sweaty scorepushers and the mid-tier raiders and the teaching guilds and the causals and everything inbetween. But patch after patch of insufferable balance drove most of that middle away, so now you have only the hypersweats who don’t enjoy anything but minmaxing everything, and the people who want to learn but have nobody with the patience to teach them. The middle got fed up and left the game. And yes, nobody is required to teach others if they don’t want to. It sucks, but it’s life.

As for both sides, the sweats are extremely demanding to an insane degree. They require specific subclass lines from every player, specific sets between bosses and trash, and micromanage every little thing. I saw once someone post a “slow Bahsei HM” that required the tank in daggers, a single portal team, and dictated setups for each player down to specific skills for each pull. That is not “slow,” that’s scorepush strats. But on the other hand, I also see players wanting to get into endgame who then consider every suggestion as horrendous toxicity, when it’s really something like “hey, you’ll get a lot better damage overall if you swap from Hundings to Relequen.” I’ve seen a lot of people who almost seem like they don’t want to improve, they just want to get in. And of course, both sets of players have a lot of experience with the toxic side of the other, so they start to push out players on the other side because they don’t want to deal with potential toxicity. That’s why so many groupfinder pugs are “KWTD No HA!” and so many people on the forums are like “get rid of parsing and addons!”

It’s been sad watching it over the years. My social guild has completely backslid from being able to comfortably do vet to now struggling through normals with half a group. I have another social guild though that has started to do some training, so it’s not like it’s impossible to find, but it is a lot harder than it was to run casually without judgement, and a lot of the training guilds and content creators have closed up in the past few years. It will take time - and dev care - to get that mid-tier community back.

one thing I do want add is the framing of the parse, I build my own builds I dont follow meta and I am a firm believer that a a build you build plays better then a cookie cutter version, many see this big parses on you tube videos and then follow the build guide and get no where near the same parse.

what the youtubers fail to tell you is, on a dummy parse remove things like self heals, shields, even skills that give the buffs debuffs the dummy has are removed, and what your left with is witnessing a build parse thats not real

go test it in IA - or a public dungeon, feel the build.

3 rules to making a build,

1. does this do what I want it to do (does it heal , does it do enough dps to get me through content, etc)
2. does it feel right - I cant tell you how many skills I hate even though they hit hard , the controller feedack lacks and it feels weak,
3. lastly , and this is the most important one, is it fun to play.

I have built some terrible builds just for giggles, prisoners, cowards gear and fuans lark mythic, terrible on paper terrible in reality, tanky fast, zero damage, but oh so much fun especially imp city, when a group of enemy faction spot you and head to wards you only to discover the more adds you run through the bigger the "add Shield" gets, seriously stop the dummy parses as the default for a good build and go have fun instead

SugaComa wrote: »

what the youtubers fail to tell you is, on a dummy parse remove things like self heals, shields, even skills that give the buffs debuffs the dummy has are removed, and what your left with is witnessing a build parse thats not real

go test it in IA - or a public dungeon, feel the build.

3 rules to making a build,

1. does this do what I want it to do (does it heal , does it do enough dps to get me through content, etc)
2. does it feel right - I cant tell you how many skills I hate even though they hit hard , the controller feedack lacks and it feels weak,
3. lastly , and this is the most important one, is it fun to play.

One thing to note though is different builds are for different things, and a “one size fits all” build is usually not good for things like group content.

We see this a lot: “I can’t slot [skill] because I need my self-heal!” But if you’re in a group, you have healers for that. The DPS generally have only DPS skills because there are supports whose jobs it is to heal them or shield them. That’s another reason people have low DPS is because they go into groups built like a solo player, so a lot of their potential damage is blocked by them still having heals slotted that they don’t need, so long as the healers are doing their job.
(And in all technicality, coming to a group and telling your healer “I don’t trust you to do your job so I’m going to reduce my damage output specifically because I don’t trust you” is not a friendly way to start things, especially if you’re then going to complain that people shouldn’t judge you for your DPS)

There is a continuum of builds. I very much enjoy my pureclass build even though it’s markedly weaker than subclassed stuff. My dungeon group lets me run what I like - obviously it’s still effective enough and I’m skilled with it enough to get trifectas, but for my trial trifecta prog I have to subclass because it is necessary. It’s not as fun of a build though, and trials have been really unfun since subclassing dropped. I can handle that one, but there was another group I had to do that had me subclass into a different pair of lines and I had to ragequit that one since I hated the build so much.

For overland, go nuts. The fact overland is super easy means you should totally do something that is 100% for fun. I plan specifically to have my characters take thematically-appropriate sets with proper visuals and everything, and efficacy is the last concern. I throw my main in Yolnakriin (because he’s fire and dragon themed) and Ironblood (he’s designed to be a stone wall and the proc turning you metal is really cool), with all 64 points in health. I took that through an Arc 2 yesterday just for endeavors and it takes *ages* since he has a wet noodle for a weapon. But I like that build. But it is a meme build, so I’m not using it in content.

Build the way you want. But also realize that some builds may not be appropriate for all content, and that you may need to compromise. You shouldn’t have to build completely in a way you hate, but sacrificing heals for more damage in a group that has healers giving that to you is not unreasonable.

here is an example of what i'm talking about

null arca, heartland and the new mythic on PTS
64k on the 3m dummy



i swapped null arca for twice fanged serpent and sub assault for deep fissure
77k on the 3m dummy



there is a reason no one is using twice fanged serpent. if you don't think there is a meta to the 3m, the 6m and the 21m dummy then you don't know what you're talking about.