[Megathread] The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited

[Witchblade77]

I keep trying to get into this game but the combat kinda throws me off and gets stale after a bit, ill admit ive only made it to 15 but so far it seems like my abilities just dont have any weight to them, does it get better later on? Like is there a rotation or is it just faceroll and hold down lmb?

in addition to what's described above, ESo is weird in that you don't get abilities unlocked autimaticaly as you level. you have to deliberately level skill lines from which you want abilities, but typicaly picking up the first available ability and placing it on your active bar. as you gain experience, so do your skill lines, which in turn unlocks more of that skill line where you can put your skill points into other abilities. if its sounds confusing, that's only half because of my being terrible at explaining things. the other half is honestly the game itself

you do indeed eventually get a rotation, but at early levels, your skill bar is mishmash of more or less random stuff that's only there to let you eventually pick up abilities that ARE good and are going to be part of your eventual rotation.

and rotation in this game is key. you can go through a lot of content just spamming right mouse button. but anything at end game, especially vet difficulty? good rotation far more so then gear - will make, or break you.

[Witchblade77]

Yup the game has a VERY high skill cap and the difference in output between a great player and a good player, let alone a good player and a bad player is night and day. And it doesn't help that they keep pumping out content for people at the very end of the skill cap.

yep.

there is a small but VERY vocal minority of players that just cannot shut up about "the game is too easy" , "we need more challenging content" "its an MMo, there needs to be hard group content" etc etc and they haven't been at that stage where you are just learning for so long, they don't know what NOT doing 70k+ dps feels like.

I was running new dungeons with my guildies today, on alt who normally doesn't have ESO plus and this is a casual, primarily housing/story oriented guild, so most of us are sort of... mediocre to decent players. not completely awful, but nowhere near 70k+ either. and we were having some trouble with some of the boss mechanics. normaly, I look up Xynode's guides when i need a dungeon mechanic explanation, cause he is pretty thorough, but he hasn't updated for newest ones yet, and I ended up going to what i could find... which was alcast. who didn't even mention mechanic we weren't sure how to handle, becasue his group killed the boss too fast to even see it. /sigh. we did figure it out eventually, but its just.

and the worst part is - in order to make those dungeons more accessible on normal at least, I'm fairly certain they decreased the health on bosses and a lot of the trash, as well as made it so that only one person who knows mechanics is pretty much enough for a win. the downside is... people who are NOT doing the mechanic, think something is too easy, because they are not even realizing that most of the work is being done FOR them

and honestly? i don't have a solution for that. i do think that the reason why they have 2 DLC's as dungeon DLC is becasue years ago, they promised 4 content updates a year. and dungeons are faster and easier to design, so they have more time to work on the stories for the other 2 content updates. that and it throws a bone to "give us challenging content!" people. blah.

[Kathandira]

I don't know either, but I would guess that a lead dev or someone higher up must be having a real hard-on for more and more difficult dungeons. At some stage they will reach a point where people are going to be dropping out of the DLC dungeons entirely, an investor will see 0% participation in them and they will start asking serious questions. If they would introduce a solo-mode for them, I could see them as worthwhile investments, but as they are now? Not a chance. And it's a shame because they have good stories and some of them have some fun fights too, but I don't play this game to play Dark Souls Online.

It's one of the two main reasons I dropped ESO PLUS and cooled off the game, the other being the moronic, extreme and constant faffing with the abilities. I guess 15 years in MMOs I have had enough of that shit.

My take on ESO Dungeons is that on Normal, once you learn the mechanics, they are basically faceroll easy. Even the DLC ones. Same with the Trials. I took a decently long break from the game recently. I logged back in and some friends asked if I wanted to run a few randoms. We got Normal Fang Lair. On my magplar, I basically solo'd it while they were lagging behind looting everything. I'm not some 50-60k DPS either, i'm in the 30's, so i'm like a mid tier DPS.

On Vet, that is a different story. Its not so easy to just solo Vet DLC Dungeons. You actually need a group who contributes and knows what they are doing.

- - - Updated - - -

yep.

there is a small but VERY vocal minority of players that just cannot shut up about "the game is too easy" , "we need more challenging content" "its an MMo, there needs to be hard group content" etc etc and they haven't been at that stage where you are just learning for so long, they don't know what NOT doing 70k+ dps feels like.

Rather than dungeon difficulty being increased or decreased, I feel they really just need to squish the gap between top tier DPS and bottom tier DPS. It is quite insane that there is such a gap between the 10k DPS players and the 60k DPS players. Power Creep has gotten way out of control, and every time they attempt to raise up the bottom tier DPS, they only end up increasing the top tier DPS as well. Then swiftly comes the nerf hammer. DPS Balance in the game needs to be reined in.

[Very Tired]

Man, they really have to learn how to do patches. Literally all I want to do is log on for my daily writs, only to find out this new patch takes around 6 or so hours to download. And it's right in the middle during the short amount of time people have with free ESO+.

[Witchblade77]

My take on ESO Dungeons is that on Normal, once you learn the mechanics, they are basically faceroll easy. Even the DLC ones. Same with the Trials. I took a decently long break from the game recently. I logged back in and some friends asked if I wanted to run a few randoms. We got Normal Fang Lair. On my magplar, I basically solo'd it while they were lagging behind looting everything. I'm not some 50-60k DPS either, i'm in the 30's, so i'm like a mid tier DPS.

On Vet, that is a different story. Its not so easy to just solo Vet DLC Dungeons. You actually need a group who contributes and knows what they are doing.

- - - Updated - - -



Rather than dungeon difficulty being increased or decreased, I feel they really just need to squish the gap between top tier DPS and bottom tier DPS. It is quite insane that there is such a gap between the 10k DPS players and the 60k DPS players. Power Creep has gotten way out of control, and every time they attempt to raise up the bottom tier DPS, they only end up increasing the top tier DPS as well. Then swiftly comes the nerf hammer. DPS Balance in the game needs to be reined in.

oh they absolutely do (and btw, top dps as of this patch is 100k+ now, so... meep) the problem is, like you said, they are really bad at doing it. and lets be honest here, the real problem? is weaving. weaving is the reason why the gap keeps growing. years ago, when they fist talked about weaving and how it became an unexpected result of them trying to make combat dynamic and fast - they also said that they were going to work on ways to allow players who do not weave, or enjoy slower styles of combat - to be viable too. and then they buffed the heck out of light attacks, while nerfing heavy attacks and here we are. today. but weaving is now part of the game, its something that players expect and ZoS is not even trying to fix heavy or medium attack builds. they just keep messing with class skills so that all the meta builds have almost none of those and when you see one stam or magika dps - you pretty much have seen them all, as their bars look damn near identical.

ZoS is absolutely hopeless at balancing their own game, so instead they increase the content difficulty.

and speaking of the gap. I don't find DLC dungeons faceroll easy at all. SO and I have been 2 manning them for a while together, and we can reliably do IC dungeons, Frostvault and that's pretty much it. everything else has a boss that gives us unpassable trouble. in ruins of Mazzatun we couldn't get past mighty chudan. in shadows of hist - it was the dude with orbs, i think he is the boss before last. in scalecaller - it was actualy the very first boss we couldn't get past. in ruins of malathar - it was a god.. damn.. ORB. haven't tried new dungeons with him yet, but given my experience last night, I already can see which bosses are going to give us the most trouble and possibly be impossible. we haven't even attempted the wolfhunter dungeons becasue i've done them with both pugs and guild groups and know exactly which bosses are going to make it impossible. with Bloodroot forge and the keep, about same. and for the reference - a lot of people find City of Ash 2 to be very pug unfriendly and too long. takes hubs and I just over 20 minutes to duo it and none of the bosses give us any trouble. we got to the point where Valkyn Skoria only teleports once when he is almost dead, and I know for a fact that neither of us ever does anything above 20k single target. which leads me to beleive that from my experience DLC dungeons are magnitude above that.

you know that part of my rant that you didn't quote? still valid. that group you were running with that was lagging behind? was probably doing more to help than you noticed. either that or you are better player than you give yourself credit for and part of that whole skill gap thing.

[Kathandira]

oh they absolutely do (and btw, top dps as of this patch is 100k+ now, so... meep) the problem is, like you said, they are really bad at doing it. and lets be honest here, the real problem? is weaving. weaving is the reason why the gap keeps growing. years ago, when they fist talked about weaving and how it became an unexpected result of them trying to make combat dynamic and fast - they also said that they were going to work on ways to allow players who do not weave, or enjoy slower styles of combat - to be viable too. and then they buffed the heck out of light attacks, while nerfing heavy attacks and here we are. today. but weaving is now part of the game, its something that players expect and ZoS is not even trying to fix heavy or medium attack builds. they just keep messing with class skills so that all the meta builds have almost none of those and when you see one stam or magika dps - you pretty much have seen them all, as their bars look damn near identical.

ZoS is absolutely hopeless at balancing their own game, so instead they increase the content difficulty.

and speaking of the gap. I don't find DLC dungeons faceroll easy at all. SO and I have been 2 manning them for a while together, and we can reliably do IC dungeons, Frostvault and that's pretty much it. everything else has a boss that gives us unpassable trouble. in ruins of Mazzatun we couldn't get past mighty chudan. in shadows of hist - it was the dude with orbs, i think he is the boss before last. in scalecaller - it was actualy the very first boss we couldn't get past. in ruins of malathar - it was a god.. damn.. ORB. haven't tried new dungeons with him yet, but given my experience last night, I already can see which bosses are going to give us the most trouble and possibly be impossible. we haven't even attempted the wolfhunter dungeons becasue i've done them with both pugs and guild groups and know exactly which bosses are going to make it impossible. with Bloodroot forge and the keep, about same. and for the reference - a lot of people find City of Ash 2 to be very pug unfriendly and too long. takes hubs and I just over 20 minutes to duo it and none of the bosses give us any trouble. we got to the point where Valkyn Skoria only teleports once when he is almost dead, and I know for a fact that neither of us ever does anything above 20k single target. which leads me to beleive that from my experience DLC dungeons are magnitude above that.

you know that part of my rant that you didn't quote? still valid. that group you were running with that was lagging behind? was probably doing more to help than you noticed. either that or you are better player than you give yourself credit for and part of that whole skill gap thing.

I admit, being a Magplar is Normal dungeons is basically cheating, lol. Puncturing Sweeps on a trash pack basically keeps you at full health each tick. On bosses, if I stand in my Rune, and jab I'm basically a tank, healer, and DPS all in one. I just drop Channeled Focus, Elemental Drain, Shards, Solar Barrage, Purifying Light and spam jabs and can solo most things. Just keep things refreshed and keep jabbing. It seriously feels game breaking.

But I totally agree that there are certain un-soloable bosses. Two great examples are the boss in FG2 which chains you to the ground, and the White Wolf in Moonhunter Keep. Bosses that take 1 person out of action generally reset when you get pinned if you try to solo them. Another one is the first boss of WGT. Resets when you get locked in a cage.

[Edge-]

Man, they really have to learn how to do patches. Literally all I want to do is log on for my daily writs, only to find out this new patch takes around 6 or so hours to download. And it's right in the middle during the short amount of time people have with free ESO+.

Their launcher has been, and continues to be, hot-garbage.

Download 1GB of patch data? ENJOY INSTALLING 20GB WORTH OF DATA BECAUSE REASONS!

[Very Tired]

I didn't end up able to log on yesterday because of this giant download. Missed stockpiling all the jewel crafting stuff so I can still complete the daily writs after I lose the skill. Giant middle finger from the game.

[Fkiolaris]

My take on ESO Dungeons is that on Normal, once you learn the mechanics, they are basically faceroll easy. Even the DLC ones. Same with the Trials. I took a decently long break from the game recently. I logged back in and some friends asked if I wanted to run a few randoms. We got Normal Fang Lair. On my magplar, I basically solo'd it while they were lagging behind looting everything. I'm not some 50-60k DPS either, i'm in the 30's, so i'm like a mid tier DPS.

On Vet, that is a different story. Its not so easy to just solo Vet DLC Dungeons. You actually need a group who contributes and knows what they are doing.

- - - Updated - - -



Rather than dungeon difficulty being increased or decreased, I feel they really just need to squish the gap between top tier DPS and bottom tier DPS. It is quite insane that there is such a gap between the 10k DPS players and the 60k DPS players. Power Creep has gotten way out of control, and every time they attempt to raise up the bottom tier DPS, they only end up increasing the top tier DPS as well. Then swiftly comes the nerf hammer. DPS Balance in the game needs to be reined in.

I really have to disagree on your evaluation on where you stand with 30k dps. In terms of the linear dps scale you might be in the middle (even though Witchblade says the max is 100k now!), but in terms of player distribution on that scale, with 30k you are definitely in the upper levels by far. I mean I am a bang average player at best (and I am being kind to myself here), and often enough I would get in a dungeon PUG, I would be the one with the lowest CP by far and still pull 40% of the dps (anywhere between 15k-23k). For example, to get my valkyn skoria helm, I had 250ish CP and the next player (healer) had about 550, the dps had 800 and tank 1000- I pulled 45% of the group's dps at about 15k. So yeah, with 30k, at least in my experience, you are nowhere near the middle and that's why the DLC dungeons even on Normal can be a complete pain for most people. You are 100% correct though that knowing the mechanics can make all the difference in some of them.

[Kathandira]

I really have to disagree on your evaluation on where you stand with 30k dps. In terms of the linear dps scale you might be in the middle (even though Witchblade says the max is 100k now!), but in terms of player distribution on that scale, with 30k you are definitely in the upper levels by far. I mean I am a bang average player at best (and I am being kind to myself here), and often enough I would get in a dungeon PUG, I would be the one with the lowest CP by far and still pull 40% of the dps (anywhere between 15k-23k). For example, to get my valkyn skoria helm, I had 250ish CP and the next player (healer) had about 550, the dps had 800 and tank 1000- I pulled 45% of the group's dps at about 15k. So yeah, with 30k, at least in my experience, you are nowhere near the middle and that's why the DLC dungeons even on Normal can be a complete pain for most people. You are 100% correct though that knowing the mechanics can make all the difference in some of them.

I blame weaving. The only way I was able to get to the 30’s was by getting good at it. But that is at the cost of actually enjoying the task of dpsing. It is so button mashy, that it sucks the fun right out of it. It is also reliant of latency. If you experience input lag, or network lag, it will ruin your dps something fierce.

I play on console, so I don’t have add ons to better gauge timers and such, which just adds to the loss of enjoyment pushing higher numbers

[Witchblade77]

I really have to disagree on your evaluation on where you stand with 30k dps. In terms of the linear dps scale you might be in the middle (even though Witchblade says the max is 100k now!), but in terms of player distribution on that scale, with 30k you are definitely in the upper levels by far. I mean I am a bang average player at best (and I am being kind to myself here), and often enough I would get in a dungeon PUG, I would be the one with the lowest CP by far and still pull 40% of the dps (anywhere between 15k-23k). For example, to get my valkyn skoria helm, I had 250ish CP and the next player (healer) had about 550, the dps had 800 and tank 1000- I pulled 45% of the group's dps at about 15k. So yeah, with 30k, at least in my experience, you are nowhere near the middle and that's why the DLC dungeons even on Normal can be a complete pain for most people. You are 100% correct though that knowing the mechanics can make all the difference in some of them.

so. much. this. 30k dps regardless of possible max IS very good and better then vast majority of players. for a lot of guilds, that is their requested numbers to make it into vet trial groups. and yes, weaving is 100% the reason this (or 100k) is possible and it IS incredibly unfun IMO. but some people like it and because some people like it, ZoS is embracing it :/

edited, apparently patching issues is something that they are working on fixing, cause its on their official performance fix timeline. according to the article, they are going to completely rework how patching works as well as remove redundant files, which will require fresh reinstall of the game, but honestly? if it genuinely fixes patching and loading screens? I'll take it.

[PelinalWhitestrake]

Welp
This book is vero thanks to today's DLC
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Annotated_Anuad

[derpkitteh]

Welp
This book is vero thanks to today's DLC
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Annotated_Anuad

so the tsaesci are human shapeshifters that alter their selves to look snakelike?

that's a cool mix of both the ideas. this is acceptable to me.

[PelinalWhitestrake]

so the tsaesci are human shapeshifters that alter their selves to look snakelike?

that's a cool mix of both the ideas. this is acceptable to me.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Chevalier_Renald
This is the same guy that will help Hjalti to become talos tiber septim

[derpkitteh]

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Chevalier_Renald
This is the same guy that will help Hjalti to become talos tiber septim

so i'm guessing that their breed of vampirism is something unique to akavir, like all the other unique provincial vampire strains. he has no outward vampiric traits.

i still think the "shedding skin" comment points to some form of shapeshifting ability, though it could just be in reference to changing his role in life(from champion of akavir to champion of tamriel.)

i feel like it could also be possible that they became vampiric in some way in the dawn era and while they did change into men, they retained some of their et'ada abilities to change their forms. or, retained some of their et'ada abilities in some other way.

[Fkiolaris]

I just read the class balance notes for the latest patch and I really have no words for the class development team of the game. Somebody needs to explain to them that a) massive changes every 3 months please almost nobody, b) you can't be making massive changes like that based on what a small percentage of high-end players do or not and c) Blizzard tried this whole crap with ability standardisation (they called it "Class Identity"), very few people liked it and it's one of the main reasons so many players left wow and got to ESO.

Way to turn someone's excitement about the game to complete apathy in 3 months ZOS. Bravo, even WoW took longer than that

[rarhyx]

couldn play for the past ~2 months
what did i miss?

[Kathandira]

I just read the class balance notes for the latest patch and I really have no words for the class development team of the game. Somebody needs to explain to them that a) massive changes every 3 months please almost nobody, b) you can't be making massive changes like that based on what a small percentage of high-end players do or not and c) Blizzard tried this whole crap with ability standardisation (they called it "Class Identity"), very few people liked it and it's one of the main reasons so many players left wow and got to ESO.

Way to turn someone's excitement about the game to complete apathy in 3 months ZOS. Bravo, even WoW took longer than that

I agree that the frequency of changes is a terrible way to go about things. It demonstrates their inability to really put careful thought behind the way combat should work.

[ro9ue]

Crafting bag needs to be baseline. That is all.

[Edge-]

Crafting bag needs to be baseline. That is all.

If it was, they'd lose a big reason to sub up : P

It's seriously one of the best sub perks I can think of. Fully optional and doesn't directly contribute to power, but is a huge convenience boost. It's a good motivator to get folks to sub while playing on top of giving them access to the free DLC's (that many will already own via the cash shop stipend).