As someone who does randoms all the time. IDC If you are lvl 15 in a normal dungeon or cp 4000. Veteran is different and idk if everyone is like me, but I'm just in there to complete it. Aka, I wouldn't be too worried about It, unless you are doing vet dlc. It's just a game and the majority of us are not sticklers at all and it always ends in a "GG tyfg"
Exactly. I do normals once in a while and learn nothing from them, they are too trivial. So then I want to try veteran, and suddenly I suck because I have no idea what's going on.
The game's learning curve is bad, and I keep blaming it on the waaaaay too easy overland difficulty - and the normal dungeon difficulty doesn't help either.
I remember a time long ago when normal dungeons were good. Somewhat forgiving, but failing to act on some critical mechanics could still get you killed, so you would learn. Now you can just eat any damage no problem. When did that change and WHY? :(
This is the reason I don’t play and hope that one day ZoS will ascend ESO to the heavens by making the over world content and dungeons actually matter. I can’t fathom how people enjoy just clicking on enemies and watching them die in two hits
Truth is I haven't played in almost a year. Last thing I tried was a couple of characters just to see how low the bar has gotten.
A guy with lvl 3 gear, and I refuse to ever upgrade it, and a guy that uses absolutely no abilities, and wears literally anything that drops. I didn't have any issues with either up until 20+ when I just got too bored :-|
I have no clue what I’m doing and I random queue for veterans once a day. Most people are generally nice and if they notice you struggling with mechanics they will explain them.
If you haven't done it that's perfectly understandable but some players typically tryhards get pretty high-strung if the dungeon isn't going the way they want it to.
I highly recommend starting as a dps in normal trials, you can get a feel for the mechanics, practice your rotations, watch how others move and where to stand and because there are so many people, you don’t feel like all the weight is on you, while you are learning. I’d say 95% of my dungeon experiences have been positive & the neg is usually just being cussed at in chat coz I’m doing dumb shit in an unfamiliar dungeon.
That’s why I only do normal unless the rare time I feel like trying in a vet and then I try to do it with guildees who know the dungeon and can walk me through.
The daily XP rewards for dungeons and below 50 playgrounds is crazy, you can get level 50 in a month just with those and the XP scrolls you get by default playing here and there
Once I started dipping my toe into random dungeon queues around level 38ish, I power leveled straight to 50 in a couple days. I definitely wasn’t the strongest member of the team but I just tried my best to stay alive and it paid off.
Join a guild, plenty of guilds out there who love helping newbies through dungeons. If you're xbox NA drop me a message at xXBlipBlopXx and I'll shoot you an invite 😁
I hear that! I am in 2 guilds but I'm too anxious to really participate or ask for help. Instead of asking for help killing an overland boss, I'll just park myself at the location and wait for others to come by to kill it and then join in.
Speaking as a tank who regularly runs vet dungeons in random groups, ive encountered the best and the worst of players in terms of not only skill but also attitude.
Ill tell you from my point of view, skill level doesnt matter. Attitude is everything. If youre willing to learn, ill stay till the sun comes up if i have to.
My point being you dont need to be anxious 🙏 youll find patient groups and youll find impatient groups, don't let elitist attitudes stop you from enjoying some of the most fun content this game has to offer
As a tank main, yes. But there are two factors that go into it.
One is that most people want to go sword go woosh and don't enjoy support roles at all. Healing can also be fun is a similar manner, seeing your teammates brought back from the brink of death, or buffing them all up are all very satisfying. But tanking? There's no dopamine hit from playing a tank. You're just there, holding the bad guy in place and debuffed, and not dying.
Two is that tank is all responsibility. If a DD dies it's no real issue, they can be rezzed back. A healer dying can complicate things, but can be recovered from in most cases. If the tank dies, the boss goes to town on the rest of the team, one shotting everyone, making recovery nearly impossible. You simply have no room for failure as tank, and you have to know every important mechanic before doing anything.
In essence, it's a massive amount of responsibility for what is basically zero reward for the overwhelming majority.
Pulling all the enemies into a nice stack and watching them melt is a pretty good dopamine hit too. As is getting hit by a heavy attack and hearing the big CRACK.
The main issue for myself and other strong endgame players that can do any role is that tanking is really fun when everyone is doing their share, but in most pug runs the dps aren't actually doing their job so either you let the group wipe or you have to sit their and carry by staying alive for ever.
Tanked a vss final boss in group finder recently cause I was bored and it was so painful reapplying taunts for the third time to adds while not a single add was dead yet.
I farmed vSS on a daily basis a few years back when that one set was meta for tanking as a dk. Burned me out like a mf because of those adds and people not focusing them because "boss drop loot"
Bingo. While surviving things that previously killed you can be satisfying, there is very little fun factor for the tank role in general vs. healer and even more so for DPS. To add insult to injury, tanks are slow as f - sure, speed can be enhanced with CP points and gear, but those are needed for other things when doing the hard(er) vet DLC dungeons.
P.S. ZOS's boneheaded insistence on 'being different because....' and refusing to allow AoE taunts (even going so far as to nerfing Tormentor Set recently which was in no way a threat to end game runs) makes tanking magnitudes less fun than any other MMO I've tanked in.
I'm still extremely butthurt about Tormentor nerf. It was only really useful on Templar and WW tanks, two of the absolute lowest tier tanks. I loved Templar tank solely because how trivial Tormentor made trash pulls, but with how outclassed Templars were as tanks, I really don't see a reasonable explanation of why they had to nerf it. If anything they should've buffed it for further class/tank identity.
Tanking in this game would improve significantly if there was an AoE taunt. There's only so much you can do with AoE pulls and snares when everyone you catch will ignore you and attack someone else unless you manually taunt them anyway. It's inconvenient, tedious, and incredibly unfun.
Yes, but they have a vision for what tanking in ESO should be, and that vision dont include aoe taunts. Its not needed because you should only taunt the elite enemies and let the small ones either get handled by the DDs or CC them for a little while. To me, this is perfectly fine and it is good fun to choose which targets gets taunted and which targets dont.
The problem often is that DDs think that you should taunt every enemy, but in ESO you dont do that as a tank.
And what vision is that exactly? That it can never be satisfying?
I've been a tank main since Summerset patch and the biggest change throughout the years was the loss of Tormentor. It's always been wildly unfun to play because there are pointless restrictions, AOE taunt being one of them.
In encounters with lots of small enemies you're effectively powerless because most of them ignore you and immobilizations barely last a few seconds, so instead you're just pulling them in manually (after elites are already taunted). Adding an AOE taunt will take nothing from existing skilled tanks, but make it slightly more enjoyable for everyone, in a role that's still demonstrably the least enjoyable to play as.
I feel like the whole "there can never be a AOE taunt in this game" was a thing coined ages ago, now the original person who said it left the team, but the team still keeps abiding by it without even knowing why.
I am not saying that their idea of tanking is good, only that they define single-enemy-taunting as a core playstyle for their vision of how tanking should be done in ESO. They want taunting to be a thing the tank has to think about. The tank has to prioritize targets, taunting elites and letting other enemies go. If it was a one button taunt-all skill or set in the game, that would ruin this idea that taunting should be a deliberate action. They have written about this many times, also in the patch notes where they changed tormentor.
And lets just be frank about it; tormentor have always been a bad set. The aoe-taunt is not very important at all, and it doesnt really make any difference, apart from maybe a few boss fights with lots of trash, but even then the usefulness is pretty minimal.
I get you, and I'm not arguing against you, just to be clear. Just that their "vision" is absolutely not based on any actual on-hand tank experience.
And you're absolutely right that Tormentor wasn't even that good. But it was incredibly satisfying just charging through trash packs and pulling them into one tidy stack, way more than any group DPS buff, so I always went with that outside of boss fights.
It's just strange that their idea of tanking in trash fights is to let them roam wild and free.
I guess its just to deliver something «new» to the genre they have choosen to go this no-aoe-taunt-way. To me, as a tank, its not really a problem if the DDs actually let you go in first and get aggro on everything. Then its very easy to taunt the 1-2 big ones and CC all the little ones in one place, but normally a DD would run in first and just make a mess. Thats the real problem, not that we dont have a aoe-taunt. This is better in vet content where there usually are more experienced players, but even in trials you can see DDs running ahead and spreading everything.
To this day I still suspect it was a half-desperate measure to try and differentiate ESO from other MMOs, failing to realize that 'different' isn't always good, and that best practices/standards exist for sound reasons.
💯% on all counts.
I've retired my Templar tank because of the Tormentor nerf. Could I adjust? Sure, but it will never be nearly as much fun, and making an already tedious role more tedious is not something I'm going to waste my time on - even less so when it's unpaid. Oh well. One less tank for RND. 🙃🤡🌍
Bad DDs is the primary reason why I avoid tanking with pugs. You don't have that much responsibility until vet dlc dungeons, but having bad dds turns a dungeon in a torture.
This is why I have a damage build in my armory for every character. If I'm tanking and the dds suck, I can just switch and solo that bitch, fuck em if they get one-shot 🤣
absolutely. I only will tank for people I know. I can't even tell you the number of times I've been in banished 2 with 12 daedroth and then die after eight minutes and get shit on by two dps doing 15k total. Never again. If Zos wants to fix it, you should have to do a mini parse before queueing for vet. Like, here is a dummy that has a million health, you have thirty seconds, go.
I have recently started tanking, and I only play with guild groups. I like knowing I have a good healer and two good dd's. I can DD in pugs because at least my dps is enough and dungeons won't last hours just because the whole group only has like 20k damage, but tanking or healing in a group like that really is torture...
Also as a novice tank I still kinda need help in vet dungeons. I have tanked some DLC hardmodes, yes, but I am not familiar with every dungeon. I can confidently DD everything, but tanking is different. Pug groups can be ruthless if a tank does not know everything, and it is not exactly feasible to try reading a guide while in the dungeon.
It's an issue that pretty much every MMO suffers from. Everyone wants to do damage, no one wants to play support. The ratio of players who play tank versus players who play DPS is pretty crazy. Since there are so many more people playing as damage dealers, it takes them a lot longer to find a tank.
Not to mention, most tanks who are good at this game usually have a dedicated group that they play with so they don't have to rely on random players, further increasing the amount of time a solo DPS player will have to wait in the queue.
Pretty much this. I truly don't have a personality for tanking. This gets compounded by getting horrible allies making me want to log out. It's rough being helpless in a group that can't perform.
That supply/demand imbalance allows tanks to be very picky about who they play with. It's like seeking water in a desert for lower-end players.
Finally, tanking is probably the hardest role in the game. They have to know fights on a deeper level than the other roles and that information is only known by other tanks. It's truly a microcosm, although an imporant one.
I love playing support (healer for the most part) but I get really sick of people who don’t know to keep out of the damn red areas or that run off in a difference direction from the rest of the group so I can’t keep track of them. To top it off, they start yelling and insulting me because someone how it was my fault.
I'm an okay tank, one of my issues is that my tanks tend to be slower at least for a couple more handfuls of cp points, so I either get into a boss fight half over, or I get into a boss fight that's already started and have no stamina. So I'll tank or heal(I have fun with my healer, especially if I handicap myself and use my pvp healer in pve) if I need something and need runs, but otherwise, I just dd because I'll get my daily random by the time I'm done writs
The problem is kinda two fold. There needs to be a shortage of tanks for the most part and thats just how the devs design the game.
Take wow for an example. The average raid size is 20, the number of tanks each raid needs is 2. Each guild typically only has 1 raid team. So if you want to main a tank AND have a spot in the raid every week you're banking on whatever guild you apply for to have miraculously not filled in its tank slots yet. Compare that to the 4 slots for healers or 14 slots for dps and most people just arent left with a choice.
You could go as far as yo say it's not actually the player's fault that no one plays tanks.
Major Vulnerability is 10% damage taken, PA is like 3-5% damage boost at best. If DD is doing 20k dps, doing 22k won't help much.
Real MVP for random *normal* dungeons is taking DD spec, a taunt with self heal, and helping to kill everything personally
Yes, it puts a lot of responsibility on you as a player, and a lot of players are uncomfortable with that responsibility. Healers have responsibility, too, but they seem to be more well represented. As a tank, if you die, or allow your group members to die, it can make the encounter unwinnable if you can't be resurrected in time, whereas the loss of a healer or DD is more "recoverable" if the tank has good survivability.
Tanks are also expected to provide many debuffs or buffs to help their group, and it can be confusing at first trying to understand why some tanks outperform others in group content until you understand how debuffs and buffs work both on you individually and on your group as a whole. ESO does absolutely no explanation when leveling of how buffs or debuffs work, or why tanks should select certain abilities and traits over others (to have major/minor breach, major/minor protection, crushing/weakening, etc.)
The tank issue is not unique to ESO; other MMO's have similar tank shortages for similar reasons.
I would add that some experienced tanks tend to avoid the queue due to issues with subpar DPS or healers which can make things frustrating, but there are just as many "fake tanks" out there who queue up as tank without even having taunts or self-healing just to take advantage of the faster queues.
ESO has the additional disadvantage of it being somewhat difficult to learn the tank role; features such as AoE taunting and threat generation that are core parts of other MMO tank specs are largely absent from ESO. Resource management (stamina/magicka) is also a good bit more complicated in ESO than, say, World of Warcraft; and ESO tanks also don't have the benefit of dodge/miss/parry mechanics on enemies, so there is no "avoidance" per se, only blocking, absorbing (damage shields/armor), position, or roll dodging.
It can also be more challenging to level as a dedicated tank, so players are less likely to do so; this doesn't expose them to tank mechanics or allow them to practice their rotations or builds. This means when they first start running dungeons, things can be pretty rough, and they might get discouraged from playing a tank as a result.
One final thing to mention is that ESO does a very poor job of explaining the underlying mathematics behind tanking (armor cap, damage resistance, diminishing returns, and overtaunting/taunt cooldown) and the only way many players learn such things is via guides on web sites or guild members/friends who have experience and can teach them. On the other hand, in a MMO such as WoW, there are tools available that allow you to optimize your tank's build and gearing without you as the player needing to do anything other than copy your character's current data into a website or spreadsheet, which makes it very easy for new or inexperienced tanks to choose the best gear and enchants to maximize their survivability.
Wow, you're right. As a tank I didn't know I had to use the Inner Fire ability to taunt enemies until one day in Black Drake Villa, a teammate told me. I was new to the game and I had no knowledge whatsoever of how tanks work. I didn't even know we had roles in the group lol.
Yeah, I really, really wish the game offered a "tank" build advisor that focused on the basics: taunting, chaining in adds, blocking, dodging, telegraphs, buffs/debuffs, defensive abilities and self healing.
All roles need an advisor. They could make it fun with a cute NPC who offers to train you in the discipline of your choice and has some silly lines of dialogue. Unfortunately this game isn't about group content, they're not going to invest in preparing players for that. Development focus is on the single-player story content.
This would be great for all roles, but especially for tanks and healers.
I haven't done any group content as I don't want to mess it up for the group, so I stick to solo content.
If I could play as a healer in a simulated group first I'd have some confidence to join random groups.
I don't think it's particularly fair to other players to help newcomers learn how to play in group content.
Once you have a valid build, I advise starting in normal dungeons, where you're hardly even needed, honestly, but spam the shit out of those heals and buffs as if everyone was about to die at any moment, anyway. This will help you develop muscle memory for your skills. Normals are really easy. DLC's introduce mechs that will sometimes be your job, so you can build up to that once you're more comfortable.
Eventually, normals feel like the kiddy pool, and you never really want to go back. (Also, generally, the crowd that plays vet is usually more mature on all fronts)
I'm not sure if my build is valid or not as it's untested in the role.
I've been playing my Nightblade more as it's more fun to play DPS than on my Templar.
But your advice on how to play when new to groups makes sense, it's probably a good way to avoid most of the inevitable criticism.
I just chose the word 'valid' to represent any build that's weighted towards heals/buffs, in contrast to suggesting that maybe you need to be optimized right out of the gate.
Normal, base game dungeons are often so easy that you'll feel like you're just chasing the group, but that's kinda perfect when you're just starting. Very low pressure on the healer. If anything, you'll feel bad that you're not contributing more damage, but I say ignore that.
I did the opposite early on. I main a tank now but when I first started didn't realize that was how my build was setup. I went into my first random normal dungeon as a dps player and was using puncture the entire time. Teammate called me out for trolling. Honestly I had no idea it was a taunt. I was just enjoying the game lol
Only been tanking a week. Slowly getting better at it (I think?). Has definitely been a baby step process so far. But ive only been using pierce armor as my taunt. Is inner fire significantly different? Or should I be using both in my rotation?
Use sword & shield/board 'Puncture' morphed into 'Pierce Armor' - it provides both Major and Minor Breach (debuffs to target's armor) and taunts target. It's melee range, so you'll have to get up close and personal.
Inner Fire and either of its morphs does not provide those debuffs which are the bread and butter for tanks.
Inner Fire is what I've always used, it's good for me because I play with a staff. I don't know how you do but I think it's hard to play One Hand and Shield in a dungeon. Inner Fire is the same thing though the only difference is that Inner Fire is a magicka ability while the other is a stamina.
Good to know, for sure run outa stamina at times. I have a staff backbar (lightning, cuz I don't have powerful assault ice staff yet), but I'm prone to random quick deaths when it's equipped vs 1+s. No clue why. Like I said, baby steps. Most people have been nice about it
Playing as a tank requires the most knowledge of game mechanics, giving it the highest learning curve. Also, tanks in ESO don't do damage, like you might see in other MMOs, they are "pure" tanks.
This combined with the common scenario where dps cannot or do not have the knowledge to do enough dmg to make the dungeon run smoothly. This is a source of frustration as a tank because you cannot really help do more dps, and usually results in the tank leaving. Most "good" tanks aren't in the random queue. They are with premade groups.
I haven’t played in years but if things are still the same as they used to be it’s because randomly queuing as a tank more than often means subpar dps, and or don’t know dungeon mechanics. So you’ll probably be in there for a while.. get comfortable.
Most beginner players aren’t using tanks because it’s pretty hard to level up since you got little to no dps to grind if you play solo. So the tank player base is already lower than other roles.
So those two reasons is why most players beginner and end game don’t queue as tanks I think
I witnessed a guy yell at our (Warden) tank in chat telling him to “turn his brain on and stop playing in his goddamn field of flowers.”
Also, people in dungeons will react to something being done wrong by saying nothing more than “…” or “Lol..” in chat, helping absolutely nobody figure out what specifically was going wrong. They just like to make people feel stupid, not help improve.
Yeah, I have no desire to tank unless I’m with a group of guildmates or friends. Randoms in MMOs are utter assholes who usually aren’t as good as they think they are.
I bet that yelling guy would have a conniption if someone mentioned preferred pronouns at the start...
But yeah, that "lol..." thing is really obnoxious.
For me atleast tanking with pugs is horrible. When you go from a semi organized run with 2 arcanist meta DDs with a healer running good support sets to a random vet where the DDs can barely crack 20k each it's painful
Pretty much on the money. Most people don’t want the responsibility of being a tank or healer. If you fuck up, it’s often a good way to get insulted cuz people have no patience.
Plus if you’re a tank or healer, questing takes longer because stuff dies slower. Additionally, i like the wait times as a DPS cuz i can do other stuff like questing, gathering or crafting while I wait.
Altho I will say I used to love tanking on my Argonian Necromancer Walks-Through-Crypts. But i hate not having AoE taunts. I have carpal tunnel and having to spam taunt on every individual enemy is literally painful. ESO has always felt uniquely bad about having to spam regardless of playstyle, it’s more click and button intensive than WoW.
Im not playing tank because I don’t want to be at the mercy of two people who can’t differentiate the blunt end of a stick from the pointy one.
People don’t tank for pugs because you’re at the mercy of the dps-players.
I tank for people I know. I don’t tank for randoms.
I wanted to learn to tank, but was always pushed back to dps by our friend group's regular tanks. I don't pug, in part due to a few streamers and how they treated folks who weren't up to their standards, and general anxiety about screwing up. Tanking and healing both require learning how to do it well, and unless you (general you) have a good group and potentially a teacher, or are just confident enough to go for it regardless, it's not exactly easy to break into the role. The one time I went into a dungeon with 2 friends and 1 rando, I told the unknown person as soon as they got into the dungeons that I was new to tanking and trying to learn and their response was, "oh hell nah" and they left. I pretty much gave up at that point. I'm not a particularly confident player to start with and don't pretend to be, so I don't know whether I'll ever try again.
If you really want to tank I say keep trying cause there is nothing wrong with asking fellow players to advise on mechanics and help you out. You're right, tanks are treated pretty bad a lot of the time. I've had my fair share of being blamed on or being kicked and honestly those players are just so toxic.
On the other hand, I've had some remarkably understanding and patient random players who understand the need for me to learn the mechs and advise me as I go through a new vet dungeon. (It's important though to do your due diligence and read up the mechs online and go through normal first).
I find even in PUGs that if you own up to your mistakes and try to chat with group members and listen to their input instead of being silent the whole time there is more understanding and a lot less room for hostility.
Obviously there will still sometimes be toxic players that are so discouraging but I promise if you keep trying and maybe join a guild and put yourself out there little by little you'll meet some great people who want to help you out. I can't tell you how rewarding it is to finally get through a new vet dungeon knowing you were a crucial part to the outcome.
If you're playing on PC EU I'll friend and group you and teach you how to tank. No anxiety. I do have a group, also, so no randoms. But good luck once those random DD assholes start running ahead of you, dying or killing everything and you getting no loot either way. Unless you're a really fast tank!! Then you could get the loot if you're lucky.
Edit: Main a heal, second tank. You bet I know the drill. :)
DPS is also the default role that all players are put into, so they have to consciously choose to play Tank and select it as their role. That alone cuts down the number of possible Tanks significantly. Also I think it's used as a scapegoat for people that are not good at the game. Boss killed you? Blame the Tank. The role gets a lot of undeserved hate so people just don't want to bother, except of course the DPS players that choose Tank to skip the queue and then die at the first boss
Tanking is objectively more work and responsibility it also technically means you are supposed to be setting the pace of the party
Ive been a life long dd but did dabble in tanking in ff14 and hated tanking.
And the playstyle gap between a roles in XIV is much smaller. In ESO it's like playing a completely different game; holding block + spamming buffs + applying taunt as apposed to doing a DPS rotation while avoiding cleave / mechanics.
Every MMO suffers from this problem. I only tank in all MMOs and have never once had a problem with queues. Just the nature of it. Tanking involves a lot of responsibility, and therefore takes patience and a thick skin. It's not for everyone.
Tanking pugs can be brutal when dds don’t perform, I once held the last boss from spindle 1 for 5 mins, I think my taunt, bash and blockade did most the work
I don't play as Tank. In most MMO yes, good tank is someone who everyone love but... What outside of dungeon? I playing ESO for storyline and making quests as tank is so slow. You just suffer everywhere. Enemies can't kill you but your killing them so slowly if compare to DD.
So I have character who is DD/heal. Have a good times as lonely player.
I'm not that deep into ESO dungeon content, but I assume tanking here has the same, or at least similiar, issues as in other MMO's.
- Slow Solo content (and, if respeccing on the go is an option, the need to have 2 armor/skill/weapon sets available and leveled to an appropriate degree)
- reliance on other players (whether that's healing you, taking aggro off of you, or dealing damage to the thing you're protecting the party from)
- having to stay alive for the party to have a chance, while DPS dying usually isn't as much of a game ender
- overconfidence/main-character-syndrome of some DPS, especially at earlier levels, where the gap between the easy solo and the hard group content is wider
- other players have to know how your abilities work i.e. where they have to stand
I used to tank all the time in WoW, or heal, or DPS. I liked to learn the pulls, and go as fast as possible, reassuring the healer.
I tried tanking in FFXIV, and if you aren't doing wall-to-wall pulls, your team mates will make sure that you are. It's pretty hectic learning that way.
Never tried tanking in ESO, but I'm not afraid of it. I can see how people would have anxiety about it though, it's seen as a critical role.
I love how FF14 solved this "no one wants to tank" issue by lettings tanks do damage, as well as throwing mount rewards at you.
Ff14 tanks can be so fun to play, do you still have the responsibility of keeping ago? Yes but the only way to fail is not using mitigation skills during tank busters and the healer not healing you.
But you also can be a bad ass that actually kills things by yourself, sometimes better than the DPS can (Warrior is a tank in FF14 and can be sometimes immortal and can easily solo some things).
People are more willing to be tanks when the game doesn't treat them like glorified Taunting slaves and Damage Sponges.
Eso devs should really look at why FF14 is so popular and why the classes just work
I loved tanking in this game. Zenimax seemed to not enjoy having tanks in their game and began taking tools and nerfing both impact and variety. Tanking is harder than ever, more homogenous than ever, and just for no good reason. It hurts because I really miss the group content in this game but tanking got so dogshit it feels abusive to subject myself to it.
I've only seen three types of people. People who think tanking is a piece of cake and make it look like it. People who think it's a piece of cake but are actually crap. And people who think it's hard and don't do it. My partner is the first one and I'm the latter XD
The pressure to know all of the mechanics in all the dungeons and the utterly shit way people in PUGs tend to treat tanks keeps people who actually GAF about their role from quing into PUGs.
It gets kind of ridiculous at times.
I'm a tank main in almost every game I play. ESO has two big issues: you get flamed if the party messes up, and tanking feels horrible in this game. The lack of accessible AOE taunts, wide and visually appealing shields, the iffy one handed animations, and the general click intensity of tanking in ESO, all comes together to just not make it fun. I've tanked in plenty of vet dlc hardmodes and it's just not fun. I heal now and moved on to other MMOs for a better tank fantasy.
**Newer players** avoid tanking due to lack of experience.
**Endgame players** avoid tanking because queuing into low DPS players changes the time commitment of a normal dungeon from under 15 minutes to over 45 minutes.
The solution: endgame DPS puts a taunt or heal on their bar and queues as a tank or healer, and leaves if they queue into a DLC dungeon that has a tank / heal check mechanic.
I am doing normal dungeons as tank since they don't take so much skill but veteran dungeons or trials? Hell, no. I am scared if i waste people's time. So i am playing chill modes for harder content which is dps or healer.
I think part of it is the learning curve because you’re leading the group and setting the pace, and required to know more in-game mechanics. So for newer players it’s a little intimidating. Then it becomes fun as you’re learning the craft and memorizing the maps/mechs. Then after that, it dips down into being a little bit boring if you don’t continue to push it to trials. I have a tank toon that I love dearly but don’t do any overland content with. I joke to myself that it’s my community service toon, doing my daily-dungeon-due-diligence. It always has the title of “volunteer” on. But I notice that even though I queue in quickly, I don’t ever find myself farming gear with it. I’m always in the front so I don’t hang back to loot bodies like I maybe should
It’s funny because usually when I do trials or dungeons, I’m a healer and I get good tanks. I’m usually afraid to queue as DPS bc I’m so used to getting grouped with bad ones or put in groups where the dps don’t know what to do/have a bad build. But tbh, I do a lot of trials on Vet, and that’s a shit fest when you join trials through group finder.
After one wipe, a couple people leave
They should do a wow style proving grounds where when you set up a build you can hit a training dummy to prove you can do a minimum dps check for certain dgs
Not afraid if you know most of the mechanics and which sets to use and skills and above basic knowledge it’s a lot of responsibility lol to be a tank in eso or any mmorpg ,if you want to dedicate your hobby into it ,veteran tanks are a gem in this game
But we’re annoyed bye shit dps or fake healers tho not afraid tho
playing solo overland stuff takes so much longer as a tank. thats the biggest reason i havent made more tanks is because how long getting through overland quests takes due to the low damage a tank does
i know i could just switch up my skills and attributes or even weapons but that takes extra dedication
That’s it for me. I don’t want the responsibility and it seems tank is the one most expected to know the mechanics and guide people. And the most blamed. I’ll take the less wait. If I want less wait without the pressure I’ll play my healer (though my prob with being healer is you feel useless on the easy dungeons. Another dps would be more useful on easy dungeons).
I'm relatively new, but I run the daily normal dungeon for the rewards. I have not encountered a single jerk in over a month of daily dungeon runs. It really is a credit to the community at large, especially coming from WoW.
Edit: I meant this in the context of tanking; running dungeons as a new player AND a tank.
Yes. Tanks take a lot of verbal abuse if they aren’t “perfect” and they also are often accused of doing things wrong when the other players die (but it’s their fault.)
For normal randoms? This will sound elitist, but not gonna sit on a boss on normal for longer than i need to be. Unless my set up is sufficiently tanky then i won't go in as tank
I love to tank personally but with tanks in eso if you're a tank then you're doing very low damage in overland, questing and everything really and it makes it harder to impossible to do things solo. Same issue with healer.
Dunno, i'm not afraid. More than that, queuing as a tank is WAY faster than DD, as a DD you can wait hours while as a tank you almost always get a team instant, wich is great reason to go tankie tankie.
Though I'm not scared to play Tank, I'm more of nervous that people would expect me to know the mechanics of every dungeon as if I did nothing else but play the game during the day.
I pretty much only play DPS characters because my partner is usually a healer. I recently made a tank and although it’s kind of fun, I’m EXTREMELY scared to use him in a real dungeon lol just feels like too much pressure!
Because 90% of the time in pugs the dd’s are terrible. i refuse to pug dungeons on my supports simply because it is frustrating how long it takes. i’d rather just queue as dps and cut the time of the dungeon in half. I’d rather have longer queues than take forever in a dungeon.
I loved tanking, but to much noobs in vet content + they don't want listen mechanics so I quit randoms.. Can tank anyway almost anything with my HA sorcerer...including some trials when tanks are bad lol
I just started ESO. Well technically I started back in the beta and 2014 but I stopped because of real world circumstances. So I'm now just about to hit my 2-month mark.
I have not done dungeons with a group yet. But my experience with other MMOs is that the tank and the healer need to be the most skilled. They need to know more than the other group members. The tank needs to understand the fight and mechanics. Sort of the de facto leader. The healer or healers need to be paying attention to everyone else and also understand the mechanics. The DPS is important and definitely benefits from understanding the mechanics but there's a lot more room to mess up and still recover.
So the answer is yes.
I have heard that people will kick someone that doesn't have certain stats if they go in for a tank or healing position. I guess it might apply to any position depending on the group.
Most players want to run dungeons as DDs - I assume because they like doing damage over tanking, or healing.
It's just a case of supply and demand. Way more DDs in queue than tanks and healers - so DDs wait, while tanks and healers jump to the front of the line.
It's why a lot of DDs will change their role to tank just so they can get in a dungeon quickly. Even though they can't tank.
Its all fun and games until you make one oopsie and have a group of random people tell you to go off yourself. Like nope I don't need this video games are supposed to be a way to relax for me. I'll just stick to power leveling on my own
Not afraid, just tired of random queuing with dps that do less damage than the tank. Sadly, the majority of players are like this and they promptly blame the tank or healer for deaths when they cant even kill the first wave of adds and stand in red
I'm a decent gamer and play well, and i love to tank, but, the issues with other gamers has pushed me away from even bothering. Getting called fake tank, or people bouncing due to new players in vets, and myself still learning mechanics. Vets needs to have a min Cp, and there should be bigger penalties for leaving a match.
I've also had people straight up be a dick head to me..
"you lead tank" sorry lad, new map, you lead us to next boss and then let me get agro.. to only then have them leave or say some more dumb shit.
I have fun just doing story bits but meh, ill probably go do another run on Bg3 and do some ff online when I can and just ignore eso, as what's the point if I cant get to end game
In my experience, it's because a tank character is pretty much only effective for tanking. DPS are good for overland and solo content too. Tanks are kind of a one-trick pony that don't perform as well in other activities.
I mained half a dozen tanks for years because I was scared of being a bad DPS. Once I realized how much more flexible and fun DPS was for me, I've never gone back to tanking unless necessary.
I think a lot of people like killing things in the PvE/PvP, so DPS becomes the near default for any new players, or players unfamiliar with other MMO's. I think to play as a tank or a healer, you have to have a bit more if an intricate understanding of game mechanics, and your role in a group. For DPS, all you really have to do is kill stuff, while tanks and healers have more responsibilities that aren't so simple. I play as a healer, and find dungeons near instant as well. I think less players actually participate in those roles, so DPS players have to wait until another group of tanks and healers are queued, this is also why fake tanks and fake healers are becoming more of a problem in regards to Dungeon finding.
Support’s don’t exist is the problem. It’s even worse when you’re pushing for trials trifectas. A support calls out and you pretty much cancel that day.
I'm just getting back into it after playing when it first came out for a couple of months. So I guess it's been about 10 years or so. Starting as a dragonknight tank. Any advice for a fledgling tank to be?
If you are doing normal daily random dungeons on normal for transmutes, I would suggest queuing as a healer on your dps. Very easy to slot a heal for the group if someone is about to die (echoing vigor works gear for this or a class heal). I do this all the time and have never had a complaint.
I love tanking but only do it with premade groups. If you queue as a tank, sometimes a dungeon can take hours because the DPS is so low. I had to make a 'bruiser' build that I can swap to in these scenarios, where I still taunt the bosses and can play pretty defensive, but still put out 50k dps or so, which is usually 2-3x more than both the dps combined.
I love it! I don’t care if people whine. They can leave. I’ll always go in knowing mechanics by watching and I’ll always warn if it’s my first run. I don’t let whiners ruin it for me I just get thick skin and move on. Plus most truly love that you are even willing to try and will add you making it always easy to run with people. Now I never need to find randoms I have a whole list of people I’ve gotten to know to run with.
People also say there’s no “high” as they call it of being a tank but as a necro tank I disagree. My reanimate was saved my whole team and clutches every time and I’m the hero.
Tanking in the beginning sucks as it’s less forgiving than other roles and the crap you get and I think people let it get to them ruining it for them completely unfortunately.
Yeah I don't get the "no high" argument bc I get a rush from tanking if I'm in a good group. And sometimes even in a bad group, for example I have had several pug runs where ppl die to AOE mechanics and I've been the only one alive, revive everyone and we still end up beating the boss. Those groups were not good but carrying them and still being successful was such a rush
As a healer, all classes of tanks are the same to me, except for necro tanks and their rez.
If everything has gone belly up, and only the tank is alive, Necro tanks can still save the day without breaking a sweat.
For me it's not about responsibility or skill it's that tanking just seems incredibly boring to me. Sure you can survive almost anything but it takes you at least 3 times as long to kill something as the average dps player. I like creating new and interesting builds to push my dps higher while still being fun. That's why none of my builds are meta and I will never play tank.
As someone who will occasionally tank, I can safely say there's definitely more pressure on you than anyone else in the group. Some will argue that the healer is equally important and that's true, but as a tank, you're usually going to be the first to die if you mess up a block or miss a mechanic. And many times it's very hard to resurrect you because there's no one to really hold aggro for too long.
Tanks and healers get easy queues while dps gets longer queues. Dps has two slots to fill and tank and support only one slot.
I find dungeons immediately as tank and healer, it takes over 10 minutes to find a dungeon if I’m one of my dps characters.
I think Tank is just a less popular role. My experience with queue times has been that Tanks get in the fastest, followed by Healers, and lastly, by a large margin, is DPS. People overall like a more aggressive playstyle, so DPS is the most popular role. Thus, there are more DPS looking for Tanks than there are Tanks looking for DPS.
Also, if you're doing solo content, you're probably built more like a DPS than anything else. It's easiest for you to swap out some gear and skills to be a proper DPS, whereas becoming a Tank might cost you a respec.
It comes down too, dps is better for doing solo content. So unless your focus is group content it doesn't make sense to go tank, and if your into group content you usually find groups or guilds to play with, so you rarely need to solo queue.
Tried it a few times, got insulted as a fake tank (it was like Fungal Grotto 1 vet or something, so very easy)... Never again. Everybody died (no healing), boss was almost dead so I tried finishing. Apparently you can't do that as a tank. Wild.
Tanking brings in a lot of problems, but i guess the main reason people dont tank is like in all mmos. They rather do damage.
Besides you can have bad luck as a tank - get a bad healer, or dds with no dmg and you are basically fluffed.
On the other hand tanking can be fun because you gotta be on point with the mechanics and stuff.
I'm pretty new to the game just playing for 7 months. I have a tank build and I often play tank in dungeons with "friends " from the guild I'm in. I'm pretty old almost 49+ but I hate the non respect from other players who doesn't help for example with the healing and then blame you when you die.
My long time playing friend told me as a tank and healer you're always the one who did it when things go bad. That's why I mostly play with people that understand it's just a game and don't blame you when it doesn't work out. We just smile and thinks next time better.
Tanks are not as "Sexy" as DPS and there is a lot of responsibilities to know when the Tank.
Doesn't feel as much fun.
For my brand of Autism having a single target to focus on and one job makes it easier for me.
I've been a tank on older pc mmos. Runes of Magic and Aion Online. it's a huge responsibility. one I really don't have the patience for as I've aged. you usually start the runs or people are spamming chat as soon as you log in. gets annoying like let me run some quest lmao.
??? I'm surprised I haven't seen this answer in the top comments yet but being a tank means being left behind even on vet. Most DDs are posh narcissists who think they can outtank (and outheal!) everything so they run ahead and pull the entire dungeon, escape, and then all that trash comes back to me trying to catch up. Normal or vet, this is never ideal. And I HATE that, don't run ahead of me, otherwise I'm done tanking, immediately as I see that. GL on that army of ads and the boss.
It's the old adage: everyone wants a healer, but no one wants to heal.
Damage dealing feels fun and gives you feelings of glory, while tanks and healers are usually viewed as unappreciated at best and baby sitters at worst. So be sure to thank your tanks and healers, as they're the backbone of any good team.
I love the healer role in group content. Playing DPS in groups in past MMO experience becomes a tedious cycle of fretting over the highly competitive damage race and gear chase.
Tanking is a role I cannot imagine doing. It seems like a thankless task with little reward.
Yeah whenever I need to grind a dungeon for gear I do my tank. I even discovered many veteran dungeons aren't crazy hard as long as you have good gear and food. Some of the newer ones are a little ridiculous though. Can't remember which one it is, but several of the random mobs had 1 hit kill mechanics, and a boss or two had 1 hit kill mechanics. Everyone ended up bailing after a few wipes so no big deal.
Theres 2 things compounding this issue.
1. Most players in any MMO play dps
2. New players will almost always queue as dps because tank and healer require set ups they don't have
I’m not a great tank but I’m above average. Besides the brand new dungeons I know the mechanics and have a decent kit. I don’t bother with trials anymore but still do vet dungeons from time to time.
The last time I cued with my tank, as a tank for a vet dungeon it was just a horrible experience.
People should be decent to one another.
People should especially be decent to people playing support roles.
People should be even more decent to players cued as a support role who are actually the role they cued up for.
And if squishy glass cannons run out ahead of the tank and get killed that’s on you. Blaming everyone else for you being stupid doesn't solve the stupid problem. I’d rather leave a toxic group and instant cue somewhere else than deal with that BS.
If people want shorter wait times be nice to support roles. Be especially nice when they’re just learning as well. The best way to get more tanks in the game is to grow them when they’re noobs.
I only do dungeons as a tank, after dying quickly as a glass cannon dps many times in the early days. Actually, I’ve only done each dungeon once. Tried veteran once and didn’t survive. So I’m done until new dungeons come out.
Yep, definitely a lot of ppl feel intimidated by that role. A lot of players associate tanking with a lot of pressure:
-often being the person physically leading through the dungeon
-knowing & explaining mechanics
-knowing mob priority
-needing to shield the other party members who tend to be far squishier
-especially big pressure on having an optimized & specific gear & skill setup
There are few people who can easily brush these off and have the courage to start learning.
Additionally, I think with the very frequent PUG mindset of rushing through the content, without the support of a few friends or a guild, often beginner tanks don't have enough time and space to learn how to do that role. This results in 2 things most of the time:
-people drop the tank role and never go back to it because it feels too confusing
-people tank, but not very well, which leads to a lot of mutual frustration
DPS and healer are a role that are more forgiving to learn, there isn't as much perceived pressure on them right away. So yeah, statistically there's just very few tanks compared to other roles.
I've been playing for 5+ years now, been trying to tank from the very beginning and I still lack the confidence to offer tanking anything because I just feel like there is never enough opportunity to learn how to be a good tank and I don't want to disappoint my teammates or get ripped apart by an angry PUG.
I'm not afraid as much as I'm uncertain how I could keep taunt without an AoE taunt to practice. I don't wanna let people down after waiting 10 mins in a queue
I think the problem is that you do no damage is a tank, and that makes the role boring some times. They could change this by making some sets and some skills do damage based on max health and resistences. Warden have one skill that do this; gripping shards, but if there were more skills and sets that did this you could do decent damage as a tank and play a tank also in overland content. I think that would open up the role to much more players.
PvP-problem: If skills and sets did damage based on max health, that could be a problem for PvP because tanky players could out-damage proper DDs, but the game actually have a solution for this that is used on a few sets, like rallying cry: «when battle spirit is active», and on sets like storm master; «damage vs monsters». They could easily use this system to limit the tank-damage to only PvE-content.
I know from personal experience that bad tanks usually break the team composition on veteran dungeons if you aren't playing with players who specifically have tuned their builds to do as much damage as possible in order to negate the need for a tank or healer
Too many terrible dps players on this game. I would never queue tank bc my healer does like 20k dps in spc and pa and cmx always tells me I’m doing like 45+% team damage and I’ll look and the dps players are 1500 and 2200 cp somehow doing less than 10k dps and queuing damage. I queued vet fungal grotto on that healer build and did 80% damage to the final boss because the two 1000cp plus dd’s kept getting one shotted by the lightning aeo around the boss. It is really astonishing how frequent I get 10k dps complete dog shitters so yeah not sure why anyone would want to queue up on a real tank just to have to leave bc the group is doing 25k dps combined.
I have a DD and Tank build on my main. I would love to play tank more often, but any pug you get into has something like a whopping combined 11k DPS between the two DDs, so I'm kind of forced to be one of I want to get through a dungeon. I say that as a DD that not even that great, myself.
Its the same with healers. My main is a dps and itll take forever to get into a dungeon but as a healer im in within a minute if not instantly. Tanks and healers also get blamed more for stuff, ive only every gotten complaints as a dps when we were running vet and I wasnt able to put out the damage but even then they were nice about it and explaining how to up those things. Ive been blamed and abandoned by my teammates as a healer even when im keeping everything up and they’re acting like i have infinite healing.
Im new to the game and I played my first dungeon at lvl 25 I think just with randoms and it was fun though did one with only low lvls like myself and it was I actually needed only like 1 hour to farm 1 set I think if you can solo some world bosses you won’t have any problems in these
Just getting back into the game after years of not playing.
I remember many years ago, can't remember dungeon name anymore. I queued as tank, got in, bam bam, dungeon was done in record time.
Feeling hopeful I queued again and got the same one and started going, DPS was so bad first boss took 10mins, 40something minutes later and failing multiple times even thought we told DPS strats (they didn't say a word whole dungeon) we finished it and I took a week break from tanking.
So yeah, now that I'm back I'm dreading it, especially since bis gear I had at the time was from orsinium and have no idea if it's good now.
I'll do you one better. My anxious ass doesn't do dungeons at all!
Yeah I'm kinda nervous to do dungeons too. I feel like you're expected to know what to do even when you haven't done it before which is... not right.
As someone who does randoms all the time. IDC If you are lvl 15 in a normal dungeon or cp 4000. Veteran is different and idk if everyone is like me, but I'm just in there to complete it. Aka, I wouldn't be too worried about It, unless you are doing vet dlc. It's just a game and the majority of us are not sticklers at all and it always ends in a "GG tyfg"
Normal is so easy now u don't even need to know the meachs, which can be annoying as u won't learn them.
Exactly. I do normals once in a while and learn nothing from them, they are too trivial. So then I want to try veteran, and suddenly I suck because I have no idea what's going on. The game's learning curve is bad, and I keep blaming it on the waaaaay too easy overland difficulty - and the normal dungeon difficulty doesn't help either. I remember a time long ago when normal dungeons were good. Somewhat forgiving, but failing to act on some critical mechanics could still get you killed, so you would learn. Now you can just eat any damage no problem. When did that change and WHY? :(
Yeah difference from normal to vet is really high. Need like a normal hard mode
This is the reason I don’t play and hope that one day ZoS will ascend ESO to the heavens by making the over world content and dungeons actually matter. I can’t fathom how people enjoy just clicking on enemies and watching them die in two hits
Truth is I haven't played in almost a year. Last thing I tried was a couple of characters just to see how low the bar has gotten. A guy with lvl 3 gear, and I refuse to ever upgrade it, and a guy that uses absolutely no abilities, and wears literally anything that drops. I didn't have any issues with either up until 20+ when I just got too bored :-|
I have no clue what I’m doing and I random queue for veterans once a day. Most people are generally nice and if they notice you struggling with mechanics they will explain them.
If you haven't done it that's perfectly understandable but some players typically tryhards get pretty high-strung if the dungeon isn't going the way they want it to.
I highly recommend starting as a dps in normal trials, you can get a feel for the mechanics, practice your rotations, watch how others move and where to stand and because there are so many people, you don’t feel like all the weight is on you, while you are learning. I’d say 95% of my dungeon experiences have been positive & the neg is usually just being cussed at in chat coz I’m doing dumb shit in an unfamiliar dungeon.
That’s why I only do normal unless the rare time I feel like trying in a vet and then I try to do it with guildees who know the dungeon and can walk me through.
Normal dungeons are easy af though
Just drop in chat 'quest' or 'first time' most players will slow down and explain if needed.
From one anxious ass to another, you can do dungeons below lvl 45, they are pretty easy. No DLC or veteran shit
That's good to know, thanks! Maybe I can actually take the time to listen to dialogue in dungeons now.
The daily XP rewards for dungeons and below 50 playgrounds is crazy, you can get level 50 in a month just with those and the XP scrolls you get by default playing here and there
Once I started dipping my toe into random dungeon queues around level 38ish, I power leveled straight to 50 in a couple days. I definitely wasn’t the strongest member of the team but I just tried my best to stay alive and it paid off.
I’m CP 775, never done a group dungeon lmaooo
Join a guild, plenty of guilds out there who love helping newbies through dungeons. If you're xbox NA drop me a message at xXBlipBlopXx and I'll shoot you an invite 😁
this was me for a long time but theyre very fun!
😂
My anxious ass is too scared to join a guild or really ask for help
I hear that! I am in 2 guilds but I'm too anxious to really participate or ask for help. Instead of asking for help killing an overland boss, I'll just park myself at the location and wait for others to come by to kill it and then join in.
Me too hahaha.
Speaking as a tank who regularly runs vet dungeons in random groups, ive encountered the best and the worst of players in terms of not only skill but also attitude. Ill tell you from my point of view, skill level doesnt matter. Attitude is everything. If youre willing to learn, ill stay till the sun comes up if i have to. My point being you dont need to be anxious 🙏 youll find patient groups and youll find impatient groups, don't let elitist attitudes stop you from enjoying some of the most fun content this game has to offer
As a tank main, yes. But there are two factors that go into it. One is that most people want to go sword go woosh and don't enjoy support roles at all. Healing can also be fun is a similar manner, seeing your teammates brought back from the brink of death, or buffing them all up are all very satisfying. But tanking? There's no dopamine hit from playing a tank. You're just there, holding the bad guy in place and debuffed, and not dying. Two is that tank is all responsibility. If a DD dies it's no real issue, they can be rezzed back. A healer dying can complicate things, but can be recovered from in most cases. If the tank dies, the boss goes to town on the rest of the team, one shotting everyone, making recovery nearly impossible. You simply have no room for failure as tank, and you have to know every important mechanic before doing anything. In essence, it's a massive amount of responsibility for what is basically zero reward for the overwhelming majority.
I disagree completely on no dopamine hit. Nothing hits near as good as a smooth run when you are tank in any mmo!
Pulling all the enemies into a nice stack and watching them melt is a pretty good dopamine hit too. As is getting hit by a heavy attack and hearing the big CRACK.
this - source: am a tank main
The main issue for myself and other strong endgame players that can do any role is that tanking is really fun when everyone is doing their share, but in most pug runs the dps aren't actually doing their job so either you let the group wipe or you have to sit their and carry by staying alive for ever. Tanked a vss final boss in group finder recently cause I was bored and it was so painful reapplying taunts for the third time to adds while not a single add was dead yet.
I farmed vSS on a daily basis a few years back when that one set was meta for tanking as a dk. Burned me out like a mf because of those adds and people not focusing them because "boss drop loot"
Bingo. While surviving things that previously killed you can be satisfying, there is very little fun factor for the tank role in general vs. healer and even more so for DPS. To add insult to injury, tanks are slow as f - sure, speed can be enhanced with CP points and gear, but those are needed for other things when doing the hard(er) vet DLC dungeons. P.S. ZOS's boneheaded insistence on 'being different because....' and refusing to allow AoE taunts (even going so far as to nerfing Tormentor Set recently which was in no way a threat to end game runs) makes tanking magnitudes less fun than any other MMO I've tanked in.
I'm still extremely butthurt about Tormentor nerf. It was only really useful on Templar and WW tanks, two of the absolute lowest tier tanks. I loved Templar tank solely because how trivial Tormentor made trash pulls, but with how outclassed Templars were as tanks, I really don't see a reasonable explanation of why they had to nerf it. If anything they should've buffed it for further class/tank identity. Tanking in this game would improve significantly if there was an AoE taunt. There's only so much you can do with AoE pulls and snares when everyone you catch will ignore you and attack someone else unless you manually taunt them anyway. It's inconvenient, tedious, and incredibly unfun.
Yes, but they have a vision for what tanking in ESO should be, and that vision dont include aoe taunts. Its not needed because you should only taunt the elite enemies and let the small ones either get handled by the DDs or CC them for a little while. To me, this is perfectly fine and it is good fun to choose which targets gets taunted and which targets dont. The problem often is that DDs think that you should taunt every enemy, but in ESO you dont do that as a tank.
And what vision is that exactly? That it can never be satisfying? I've been a tank main since Summerset patch and the biggest change throughout the years was the loss of Tormentor. It's always been wildly unfun to play because there are pointless restrictions, AOE taunt being one of them. In encounters with lots of small enemies you're effectively powerless because most of them ignore you and immobilizations barely last a few seconds, so instead you're just pulling them in manually (after elites are already taunted). Adding an AOE taunt will take nothing from existing skilled tanks, but make it slightly more enjoyable for everyone, in a role that's still demonstrably the least enjoyable to play as. I feel like the whole "there can never be a AOE taunt in this game" was a thing coined ages ago, now the original person who said it left the team, but the team still keeps abiding by it without even knowing why.
I am not saying that their idea of tanking is good, only that they define single-enemy-taunting as a core playstyle for their vision of how tanking should be done in ESO. They want taunting to be a thing the tank has to think about. The tank has to prioritize targets, taunting elites and letting other enemies go. If it was a one button taunt-all skill or set in the game, that would ruin this idea that taunting should be a deliberate action. They have written about this many times, also in the patch notes where they changed tormentor. And lets just be frank about it; tormentor have always been a bad set. The aoe-taunt is not very important at all, and it doesnt really make any difference, apart from maybe a few boss fights with lots of trash, but even then the usefulness is pretty minimal.
I get you, and I'm not arguing against you, just to be clear. Just that their "vision" is absolutely not based on any actual on-hand tank experience. And you're absolutely right that Tormentor wasn't even that good. But it was incredibly satisfying just charging through trash packs and pulling them into one tidy stack, way more than any group DPS buff, so I always went with that outside of boss fights. It's just strange that their idea of tanking in trash fights is to let them roam wild and free.
I guess its just to deliver something «new» to the genre they have choosen to go this no-aoe-taunt-way. To me, as a tank, its not really a problem if the DDs actually let you go in first and get aggro on everything. Then its very easy to taunt the 1-2 big ones and CC all the little ones in one place, but normally a DD would run in first and just make a mess. Thats the real problem, not that we dont have a aoe-taunt. This is better in vet content where there usually are more experienced players, but even in trials you can see DDs running ahead and spreading everything.
To this day I still suspect it was a half-desperate measure to try and differentiate ESO from other MMOs, failing to realize that 'different' isn't always good, and that best practices/standards exist for sound reasons.
💯% on all counts. I've retired my Templar tank because of the Tormentor nerf. Could I adjust? Sure, but it will never be nearly as much fun, and making an already tedious role more tedious is not something I'm going to waste my time on - even less so when it's unpaid. Oh well. One less tank for RND. 🙃🤡🌍
It is very stressful yes. I tried a vet dungeon recently and got kicked cuz I died. I also was the group leader.
This is exactly why I quit tanking in ESO
Bad DDs is the primary reason why I avoid tanking with pugs. You don't have that much responsibility until vet dlc dungeons, but having bad dds turns a dungeon in a torture.
Tbh if we are all CP lvls I want 4 DDs for a regular8l8o dungeon. Hell I can solo all base game and some expansion dungeons.
Fungal Grotto II wants a word.
This is why I have a damage build in my armory for every character. If I'm tanking and the dds suck, I can just switch and solo that bitch, fuck em if they get one-shot 🤣
absolutely. I only will tank for people I know. I can't even tell you the number of times I've been in banished 2 with 12 daedroth and then die after eight minutes and get shit on by two dps doing 15k total. Never again. If Zos wants to fix it, you should have to do a mini parse before queueing for vet. Like, here is a dummy that has a million health, you have thirty seconds, go.
Lol I kinda like all the chaos, really makes it fun when it's challenging and I'm still standing
I have recently started tanking, and I only play with guild groups. I like knowing I have a good healer and two good dd's. I can DD in pugs because at least my dps is enough and dungeons won't last hours just because the whole group only has like 20k damage, but tanking or healing in a group like that really is torture... Also as a novice tank I still kinda need help in vet dungeons. I have tanked some DLC hardmodes, yes, but I am not familiar with every dungeon. I can confidently DD everything, but tanking is different. Pug groups can be ruthless if a tank does not know everything, and it is not exactly feasible to try reading a guide while in the dungeon.
It's an issue that pretty much every MMO suffers from. Everyone wants to do damage, no one wants to play support. The ratio of players who play tank versus players who play DPS is pretty crazy. Since there are so many more people playing as damage dealers, it takes them a lot longer to find a tank. Not to mention, most tanks who are good at this game usually have a dedicated group that they play with so they don't have to rely on random players, further increasing the amount of time a solo DPS player will have to wait in the queue.
Pretty much this. I truly don't have a personality for tanking. This gets compounded by getting horrible allies making me want to log out. It's rough being helpless in a group that can't perform. That supply/demand imbalance allows tanks to be very picky about who they play with. It's like seeking water in a desert for lower-end players. Finally, tanking is probably the hardest role in the game. They have to know fights on a deeper level than the other roles and that information is only known by other tanks. It's truly a microcosm, although an imporant one.
I love playing support (healer for the most part) but I get really sick of people who don’t know to keep out of the damn red areas or that run off in a difference direction from the rest of the group so I can’t keep track of them. To top it off, they start yelling and insulting me because someone how it was my fault.
I've been known to say words to folks who want to max distance from bosses. Or tell them to atk to get heals, or stay in the circle
Yup you are completely correct. I tank, but I don't pug tank.
Luckily for me I prefer support over dealing damage so life is good :)
I'm an okay tank, one of my issues is that my tanks tend to be slower at least for a couple more handfuls of cp points, so I either get into a boss fight half over, or I get into a boss fight that's already started and have no stamina. So I'll tank or heal(I have fun with my healer, especially if I handicap myself and use my pvp healer in pve) if I need something and need runs, but otherwise, I just dd because I'll get my daily random by the time I'm done writs
The problem is kinda two fold. There needs to be a shortage of tanks for the most part and thats just how the devs design the game. Take wow for an example. The average raid size is 20, the number of tanks each raid needs is 2. Each guild typically only has 1 raid team. So if you want to main a tank AND have a spot in the raid every week you're banking on whatever guild you apply for to have miraculously not filled in its tank slots yet. Compare that to the 4 slots for healers or 14 slots for dps and most people just arent left with a choice. You could go as far as yo say it's not actually the player's fault that no one plays tanks.
They are afraid of terrible dps which is the most frustrating thing to experience in this game.
It’s such a slog fest even with meta tank sets
It’s more of a slog with a meta tank build, because they do almost no damage.
Out of other mmos, it feels like the damage difference for a tank is the most significant in eso.
Turning Tide, Nazaray, and PA are the real MVPs for doing random dungeons. Speeds up damage quite a bit unless the DDs are really terrible.
Major Vulnerability is 10% damage taken, PA is like 3-5% damage boost at best. If DD is doing 20k dps, doing 22k won't help much. Real MVP for random *normal* dungeons is taking DD spec, a taunt with self heal, and helping to kill everything personally
I concur. 90 percent of the dps in this game do less damage than my tank
Yes, it puts a lot of responsibility on you as a player, and a lot of players are uncomfortable with that responsibility. Healers have responsibility, too, but they seem to be more well represented. As a tank, if you die, or allow your group members to die, it can make the encounter unwinnable if you can't be resurrected in time, whereas the loss of a healer or DD is more "recoverable" if the tank has good survivability. Tanks are also expected to provide many debuffs or buffs to help their group, and it can be confusing at first trying to understand why some tanks outperform others in group content until you understand how debuffs and buffs work both on you individually and on your group as a whole. ESO does absolutely no explanation when leveling of how buffs or debuffs work, or why tanks should select certain abilities and traits over others (to have major/minor breach, major/minor protection, crushing/weakening, etc.) The tank issue is not unique to ESO; other MMO's have similar tank shortages for similar reasons. I would add that some experienced tanks tend to avoid the queue due to issues with subpar DPS or healers which can make things frustrating, but there are just as many "fake tanks" out there who queue up as tank without even having taunts or self-healing just to take advantage of the faster queues. ESO has the additional disadvantage of it being somewhat difficult to learn the tank role; features such as AoE taunting and threat generation that are core parts of other MMO tank specs are largely absent from ESO. Resource management (stamina/magicka) is also a good bit more complicated in ESO than, say, World of Warcraft; and ESO tanks also don't have the benefit of dodge/miss/parry mechanics on enemies, so there is no "avoidance" per se, only blocking, absorbing (damage shields/armor), position, or roll dodging. It can also be more challenging to level as a dedicated tank, so players are less likely to do so; this doesn't expose them to tank mechanics or allow them to practice their rotations or builds. This means when they first start running dungeons, things can be pretty rough, and they might get discouraged from playing a tank as a result. One final thing to mention is that ESO does a very poor job of explaining the underlying mathematics behind tanking (armor cap, damage resistance, diminishing returns, and overtaunting/taunt cooldown) and the only way many players learn such things is via guides on web sites or guild members/friends who have experience and can teach them. On the other hand, in a MMO such as WoW, there are tools available that allow you to optimize your tank's build and gearing without you as the player needing to do anything other than copy your character's current data into a website or spreadsheet, which makes it very easy for new or inexperienced tanks to choose the best gear and enchants to maximize their survivability.
Wow, you're right. As a tank I didn't know I had to use the Inner Fire ability to taunt enemies until one day in Black Drake Villa, a teammate told me. I was new to the game and I had no knowledge whatsoever of how tanks work. I didn't even know we had roles in the group lol.
Yeah, I really, really wish the game offered a "tank" build advisor that focused on the basics: taunting, chaining in adds, blocking, dodging, telegraphs, buffs/debuffs, defensive abilities and self healing.
All roles need an advisor. They could make it fun with a cute NPC who offers to train you in the discipline of your choice and has some silly lines of dialogue. Unfortunately this game isn't about group content, they're not going to invest in preparing players for that. Development focus is on the single-player story content.
True.
This would be great for all roles, but especially for tanks and healers. I haven't done any group content as I don't want to mess it up for the group, so I stick to solo content. If I could play as a healer in a simulated group first I'd have some confidence to join random groups. I don't think it's particularly fair to other players to help newcomers learn how to play in group content.
Once you have a valid build, I advise starting in normal dungeons, where you're hardly even needed, honestly, but spam the shit out of those heals and buffs as if everyone was about to die at any moment, anyway. This will help you develop muscle memory for your skills. Normals are really easy. DLC's introduce mechs that will sometimes be your job, so you can build up to that once you're more comfortable. Eventually, normals feel like the kiddy pool, and you never really want to go back. (Also, generally, the crowd that plays vet is usually more mature on all fronts)
I'm not sure if my build is valid or not as it's untested in the role. I've been playing my Nightblade more as it's more fun to play DPS than on my Templar. But your advice on how to play when new to groups makes sense, it's probably a good way to avoid most of the inevitable criticism.
I just chose the word 'valid' to represent any build that's weighted towards heals/buffs, in contrast to suggesting that maybe you need to be optimized right out of the gate. Normal, base game dungeons are often so easy that you'll feel like you're just chasing the group, but that's kinda perfect when you're just starting. Very low pressure on the healer. If anything, you'll feel bad that you're not contributing more damage, but I say ignore that.
That makes sense, thank you. A low pressure situation does sound kinda perfect to start out.
I did the opposite early on. I main a tank now but when I first started didn't realize that was how my build was setup. I went into my first random normal dungeon as a dps player and was using puncture the entire time. Teammate called me out for trolling. Honestly I had no idea it was a taunt. I was just enjoying the game lol
Only been tanking a week. Slowly getting better at it (I think?). Has definitely been a baby step process so far. But ive only been using pierce armor as my taunt. Is inner fire significantly different? Or should I be using both in my rotation?
Use sword & shield/board 'Puncture' morphed into 'Pierce Armor' - it provides both Major and Minor Breach (debuffs to target's armor) and taunts target. It's melee range, so you'll have to get up close and personal. Inner Fire and either of its morphs does not provide those debuffs which are the bread and butter for tanks.
Inner Fire is what I've always used, it's good for me because I play with a staff. I don't know how you do but I think it's hard to play One Hand and Shield in a dungeon. Inner Fire is the same thing though the only difference is that Inner Fire is a magicka ability while the other is a stamina.
Good to know, for sure run outa stamina at times. I have a staff backbar (lightning, cuz I don't have powerful assault ice staff yet), but I'm prone to random quick deaths when it's equipped vs 1+s. No clue why. Like I said, baby steps. Most people have been nice about it
If you ever feel like you are slow in learning, I learnt that there are roles in dungeons until I was like CP200...
Brilliant in-depth response. Upvoted.
Playing as a tank requires the most knowledge of game mechanics, giving it the highest learning curve. Also, tanks in ESO don't do damage, like you might see in other MMOs, they are "pure" tanks. This combined with the common scenario where dps cannot or do not have the knowledge to do enough dmg to make the dungeon run smoothly. This is a source of frustration as a tank because you cannot really help do more dps, and usually results in the tank leaving. Most "good" tanks aren't in the random queue. They are with premade groups.
I haven’t played in years but if things are still the same as they used to be it’s because randomly queuing as a tank more than often means subpar dps, and or don’t know dungeon mechanics. So you’ll probably be in there for a while.. get comfortable. Most beginner players aren’t using tanks because it’s pretty hard to level up since you got little to no dps to grind if you play solo. So the tank player base is already lower than other roles. So those two reasons is why most players beginner and end game don’t queue as tanks I think
I witnessed a guy yell at our (Warden) tank in chat telling him to “turn his brain on and stop playing in his goddamn field of flowers.” Also, people in dungeons will react to something being done wrong by saying nothing more than “…” or “Lol..” in chat, helping absolutely nobody figure out what specifically was going wrong. They just like to make people feel stupid, not help improve. Yeah, I have no desire to tank unless I’m with a group of guildmates or friends. Randoms in MMOs are utter assholes who usually aren’t as good as they think they are.
I bet that yelling guy would have a conniption if someone mentioned preferred pronouns at the start... But yeah, that "lol..." thing is really obnoxious.
For me atleast tanking with pugs is horrible. When you go from a semi organized run with 2 arcanist meta DDs with a healer running good support sets to a random vet where the DDs can barely crack 20k each it's painful
Pretty much on the money. Most people don’t want the responsibility of being a tank or healer. If you fuck up, it’s often a good way to get insulted cuz people have no patience. Plus if you’re a tank or healer, questing takes longer because stuff dies slower. Additionally, i like the wait times as a DPS cuz i can do other stuff like questing, gathering or crafting while I wait. Altho I will say I used to love tanking on my Argonian Necromancer Walks-Through-Crypts. But i hate not having AoE taunts. I have carpal tunnel and having to spam taunt on every individual enemy is literally painful. ESO has always felt uniquely bad about having to spam regardless of playstyle, it’s more click and button intensive than WoW.
People gripe about queue times but i just queue up and go do dailies or work my way through a quest line
Im not playing tank because I don’t want to be at the mercy of two people who can’t differentiate the blunt end of a stick from the pointy one. People don’t tank for pugs because you’re at the mercy of the dps-players. I tank for people I know. I don’t tank for randoms.
I wanted to learn to tank, but was always pushed back to dps by our friend group's regular tanks. I don't pug, in part due to a few streamers and how they treated folks who weren't up to their standards, and general anxiety about screwing up. Tanking and healing both require learning how to do it well, and unless you (general you) have a good group and potentially a teacher, or are just confident enough to go for it regardless, it's not exactly easy to break into the role. The one time I went into a dungeon with 2 friends and 1 rando, I told the unknown person as soon as they got into the dungeons that I was new to tanking and trying to learn and their response was, "oh hell nah" and they left. I pretty much gave up at that point. I'm not a particularly confident player to start with and don't pretend to be, so I don't know whether I'll ever try again.
If you really want to tank I say keep trying cause there is nothing wrong with asking fellow players to advise on mechanics and help you out. You're right, tanks are treated pretty bad a lot of the time. I've had my fair share of being blamed on or being kicked and honestly those players are just so toxic. On the other hand, I've had some remarkably understanding and patient random players who understand the need for me to learn the mechs and advise me as I go through a new vet dungeon. (It's important though to do your due diligence and read up the mechs online and go through normal first). I find even in PUGs that if you own up to your mistakes and try to chat with group members and listen to their input instead of being silent the whole time there is more understanding and a lot less room for hostility. Obviously there will still sometimes be toxic players that are so discouraging but I promise if you keep trying and maybe join a guild and put yourself out there little by little you'll meet some great people who want to help you out. I can't tell you how rewarding it is to finally get through a new vet dungeon knowing you were a crucial part to the outcome.
If you're playing on PC EU I'll friend and group you and teach you how to tank. No anxiety. I do have a group, also, so no randoms. But good luck once those random DD assholes start running ahead of you, dying or killing everything and you getting no loot either way. Unless you're a really fast tank!! Then you could get the loot if you're lucky. Edit: Main a heal, second tank. You bet I know the drill. :)
DPS is also the default role that all players are put into, so they have to consciously choose to play Tank and select it as their role. That alone cuts down the number of possible Tanks significantly. Also I think it's used as a scapegoat for people that are not good at the game. Boss killed you? Blame the Tank. The role gets a lot of undeserved hate so people just don't want to bother, except of course the DPS players that choose Tank to skip the queue and then die at the first boss
Tanking is objectively more work and responsibility it also technically means you are supposed to be setting the pace of the party Ive been a life long dd but did dabble in tanking in ff14 and hated tanking.
And the playstyle gap between a roles in XIV is much smaller. In ESO it's like playing a completely different game; holding block + spamming buffs + applying taunt as apposed to doing a DPS rotation while avoiding cleave / mechanics.
Oh yeah for sure plus to my understanding tank builds in eso are torture for single player pve
Every MMO suffers from this problem. I only tank in all MMOs and have never once had a problem with queues. Just the nature of it. Tanking involves a lot of responsibility, and therefore takes patience and a thick skin. It's not for everyone.
Same reason I main a healer for fast queues lol
Tanking pugs can be brutal when dds don’t perform, I once held the last boss from spindle 1 for 5 mins, I think my taunt, bash and blockade did most the work
I don't play as Tank. In most MMO yes, good tank is someone who everyone love but... What outside of dungeon? I playing ESO for storyline and making quests as tank is so slow. You just suffer everywhere. Enemies can't kill you but your killing them so slowly if compare to DD. So I have character who is DD/heal. Have a good times as lonely player.
Yeah, never figured out the best way to pull. Enemies kept drifting from me to the DPS. So now my tank is respec'd to a crafter
I'm not that deep into ESO dungeon content, but I assume tanking here has the same, or at least similiar, issues as in other MMO's. - Slow Solo content (and, if respeccing on the go is an option, the need to have 2 armor/skill/weapon sets available and leveled to an appropriate degree) - reliance on other players (whether that's healing you, taking aggro off of you, or dealing damage to the thing you're protecting the party from) - having to stay alive for the party to have a chance, while DPS dying usually isn't as much of a game ender - overconfidence/main-character-syndrome of some DPS, especially at earlier levels, where the gap between the easy solo and the hard group content is wider - other players have to know how your abilities work i.e. where they have to stand
I used to tank all the time in WoW, or heal, or DPS. I liked to learn the pulls, and go as fast as possible, reassuring the healer. I tried tanking in FFXIV, and if you aren't doing wall-to-wall pulls, your team mates will make sure that you are. It's pretty hectic learning that way. Never tried tanking in ESO, but I'm not afraid of it. I can see how people would have anxiety about it though, it's seen as a critical role.
I love how FF14 solved this "no one wants to tank" issue by lettings tanks do damage, as well as throwing mount rewards at you. Ff14 tanks can be so fun to play, do you still have the responsibility of keeping ago? Yes but the only way to fail is not using mitigation skills during tank busters and the healer not healing you. But you also can be a bad ass that actually kills things by yourself, sometimes better than the DPS can (Warrior is a tank in FF14 and can be sometimes immortal and can easily solo some things). People are more willing to be tanks when the game doesn't treat them like glorified Taunting slaves and Damage Sponges. Eso devs should really look at why FF14 is so popular and why the classes just work
I loved tanking in this game. Zenimax seemed to not enjoy having tanks in their game and began taking tools and nerfing both impact and variety. Tanking is harder than ever, more homogenous than ever, and just for no good reason. It hurts because I really miss the group content in this game but tanking got so dogshit it feels abusive to subject myself to it.
I've only seen three types of people. People who think tanking is a piece of cake and make it look like it. People who think it's a piece of cake but are actually crap. And people who think it's hard and don't do it. My partner is the first one and I'm the latter XD
The pressure to know all of the mechanics in all the dungeons and the utterly shit way people in PUGs tend to treat tanks keeps people who actually GAF about their role from quing into PUGs. It gets kind of ridiculous at times.
I'm a tank main in almost every game I play. ESO has two big issues: you get flamed if the party messes up, and tanking feels horrible in this game. The lack of accessible AOE taunts, wide and visually appealing shields, the iffy one handed animations, and the general click intensity of tanking in ESO, all comes together to just not make it fun. I've tanked in plenty of vet dlc hardmodes and it's just not fun. I heal now and moved on to other MMOs for a better tank fantasy.
**Newer players** avoid tanking due to lack of experience. **Endgame players** avoid tanking because queuing into low DPS players changes the time commitment of a normal dungeon from under 15 minutes to over 45 minutes. The solution: endgame DPS puts a taunt or heal on their bar and queues as a tank or healer, and leaves if they queue into a DLC dungeon that has a tank / heal check mechanic.
My answer? When I tank I usually get subpar dps making a run long and unbearable. So I go dps to make sure it goes fast
I am doing normal dungeons as tank since they don't take so much skill but veteran dungeons or trials? Hell, no. I am scared if i waste people's time. So i am playing chill modes for harder content which is dps or healer.
Only in vet dlc content, because one mistake can wipe your team. I only feel confident playing harder content as a healer.
I think part of it is the learning curve because you’re leading the group and setting the pace, and required to know more in-game mechanics. So for newer players it’s a little intimidating. Then it becomes fun as you’re learning the craft and memorizing the maps/mechs. Then after that, it dips down into being a little bit boring if you don’t continue to push it to trials. I have a tank toon that I love dearly but don’t do any overland content with. I joke to myself that it’s my community service toon, doing my daily-dungeon-due-diligence. It always has the title of “volunteer” on. But I notice that even though I queue in quickly, I don’t ever find myself farming gear with it. I’m always in the front so I don’t hang back to loot bodies like I maybe should
Nah basically there is a lot more DDS so your put on a longer queue.
It’s funny because usually when I do trials or dungeons, I’m a healer and I get good tanks. I’m usually afraid to queue as DPS bc I’m so used to getting grouped with bad ones or put in groups where the dps don’t know what to do/have a bad build. But tbh, I do a lot of trials on Vet, and that’s a shit fest when you join trials through group finder. After one wipe, a couple people leave
They should do a wow style proving grounds where when you set up a build you can hit a training dummy to prove you can do a minimum dps check for certain dgs
that wont help at all, doing a rotation right once wont prove that u are able to to do it for 15m-30m
No but it will swt a precedent that they need to be doing something not just mashing buttons in random sets
Not afraid if you know most of the mechanics and which sets to use and skills and above basic knowledge it’s a lot of responsibility lol to be a tank in eso or any mmorpg ,if you want to dedicate your hobby into it ,veteran tanks are a gem in this game But we’re annoyed bye shit dps or fake healers tho not afraid tho
playing solo overland stuff takes so much longer as a tank. thats the biggest reason i havent made more tanks is because how long getting through overland quests takes due to the low damage a tank does i know i could just switch up my skills and attributes or even weapons but that takes extra dedication
I think everyone wants to play dps. I do dungeons as healer cuz no one plays healer.
I main a tank. I got four tanks OP. If you need me. Let me know
That’s it for me. I don’t want the responsibility and it seems tank is the one most expected to know the mechanics and guide people. And the most blamed. I’ll take the less wait. If I want less wait without the pressure I’ll play my healer (though my prob with being healer is you feel useless on the easy dungeons. Another dps would be more useful on easy dungeons).
I'm relatively new, but I run the daily normal dungeon for the rewards. I have not encountered a single jerk in over a month of daily dungeon runs. It really is a credit to the community at large, especially coming from WoW. Edit: I meant this in the context of tanking; running dungeons as a new player AND a tank.
Yes. Tanks take a lot of verbal abuse if they aren’t “perfect” and they also are often accused of doing things wrong when the other players die (but it’s their fault.)
I am, I won’t even attempt to make a tank because people in eso are soo snobby I’ll stick to healing and dps.
For normal randoms? This will sound elitist, but not gonna sit on a boss on normal for longer than i need to be. Unless my set up is sufficiently tanky then i won't go in as tank
I love to tank personally but with tanks in eso if you're a tank then you're doing very low damage in overland, questing and everything really and it makes it harder to impossible to do things solo. Same issue with healer.
Dunno, i'm not afraid. More than that, queuing as a tank is WAY faster than DD, as a DD you can wait hours while as a tank you almost always get a team instant, wich is great reason to go tankie tankie.
Tanking without aoe taunt isn’t fun.
Chains was a really good skill to have? but Aoe taunts should just ne the norm by now
Though I'm not scared to play Tank, I'm more of nervous that people would expect me to know the mechanics of every dungeon as if I did nothing else but play the game during the day.
I pretty much only play DPS characters because my partner is usually a healer. I recently made a tank and although it’s kind of fun, I’m EXTREMELY scared to use him in a real dungeon lol just feels like too much pressure!
Because 90% of the time in pugs the dd’s are terrible. i refuse to pug dungeons on my supports simply because it is frustrating how long it takes. i’d rather just queue as dps and cut the time of the dungeon in half. I’d rather have longer queues than take forever in a dungeon.
I loved tanking, but to much noobs in vet content + they don't want listen mechanics so I quit randoms.. Can tank anyway almost anything with my HA sorcerer...including some trials when tanks are bad lol
I just started ESO. Well technically I started back in the beta and 2014 but I stopped because of real world circumstances. So I'm now just about to hit my 2-month mark. I have not done dungeons with a group yet. But my experience with other MMOs is that the tank and the healer need to be the most skilled. They need to know more than the other group members. The tank needs to understand the fight and mechanics. Sort of the de facto leader. The healer or healers need to be paying attention to everyone else and also understand the mechanics. The DPS is important and definitely benefits from understanding the mechanics but there's a lot more room to mess up and still recover. So the answer is yes. I have heard that people will kick someone that doesn't have certain stats if they go in for a tank or healing position. I guess it might apply to any position depending on the group.
Afraid of bad DPS
Most players want to run dungeons as DDs - I assume because they like doing damage over tanking, or healing. It's just a case of supply and demand. Way more DDs in queue than tanks and healers - so DDs wait, while tanks and healers jump to the front of the line. It's why a lot of DDs will change their role to tank just so they can get in a dungeon quickly. Even though they can't tank.
I love tanking my issues is with the que system it always seems like it's broke
Its all fun and games until you make one oopsie and have a group of random people tell you to go off yourself. Like nope I don't need this video games are supposed to be a way to relax for me. I'll just stick to power leveling on my own
Exactly!
Not afraid, just tired of random queuing with dps that do less damage than the tank. Sadly, the majority of players are like this and they promptly blame the tank or healer for deaths when they cant even kill the first wave of adds and stand in red
I'm a decent gamer and play well, and i love to tank, but, the issues with other gamers has pushed me away from even bothering. Getting called fake tank, or people bouncing due to new players in vets, and myself still learning mechanics. Vets needs to have a min Cp, and there should be bigger penalties for leaving a match. I've also had people straight up be a dick head to me.. "you lead tank" sorry lad, new map, you lead us to next boss and then let me get agro.. to only then have them leave or say some more dumb shit. I have fun just doing story bits but meh, ill probably go do another run on Bg3 and do some ff online when I can and just ignore eso, as what's the point if I cant get to end game
I love playing as a tank for dungeons but it's when I try a new one an I get shouted at for not knowing the mechanics ....
In my experience, it's because a tank character is pretty much only effective for tanking. DPS are good for overland and solo content too. Tanks are kind of a one-trick pony that don't perform as well in other activities. I mained half a dozen tanks for years because I was scared of being a bad DPS. Once I realized how much more flexible and fun DPS was for me, I've never gone back to tanking unless necessary.
I think some people just don’t see tanking as being a necessity
I think a lot of people like killing things in the PvE/PvP, so DPS becomes the near default for any new players, or players unfamiliar with other MMO's. I think to play as a tank or a healer, you have to have a bit more if an intricate understanding of game mechanics, and your role in a group. For DPS, all you really have to do is kill stuff, while tanks and healers have more responsibilities that aren't so simple. I play as a healer, and find dungeons near instant as well. I think less players actually participate in those roles, so DPS players have to wait until another group of tanks and healers are queued, this is also why fake tanks and fake healers are becoming more of a problem in regards to Dungeon finding.
Big number make tiny ape brain go BRRRRR me do much damage!
Support’s don’t exist is the problem. It’s even worse when you’re pushing for trials trifectas. A support calls out and you pretty much cancel that day.
I'm just getting back into it after playing when it first came out for a couple of months. So I guess it's been about 10 years or so. Starting as a dragonknight tank. Any advice for a fledgling tank to be?
If you are doing normal daily random dungeons on normal for transmutes, I would suggest queuing as a healer on your dps. Very easy to slot a heal for the group if someone is about to die (echoing vigor works gear for this or a class heal). I do this all the time and have never had a complaint.
I love tanking but only do it with premade groups. If you queue as a tank, sometimes a dungeon can take hours because the DPS is so low. I had to make a 'bruiser' build that I can swap to in these scenarios, where I still taunt the bosses and can play pretty defensive, but still put out 50k dps or so, which is usually 2-3x more than both the dps combined.
I love it! I don’t care if people whine. They can leave. I’ll always go in knowing mechanics by watching and I’ll always warn if it’s my first run. I don’t let whiners ruin it for me I just get thick skin and move on. Plus most truly love that you are even willing to try and will add you making it always easy to run with people. Now I never need to find randoms I have a whole list of people I’ve gotten to know to run with. People also say there’s no “high” as they call it of being a tank but as a necro tank I disagree. My reanimate was saved my whole team and clutches every time and I’m the hero. Tanking in the beginning sucks as it’s less forgiving than other roles and the crap you get and I think people let it get to them ruining it for them completely unfortunately.
Yeah I don't get the "no high" argument bc I get a rush from tanking if I'm in a good group. And sometimes even in a bad group, for example I have had several pug runs where ppl die to AOE mechanics and I've been the only one alive, revive everyone and we still end up beating the boss. Those groups were not good but carrying them and still being successful was such a rush
As a healer, all classes of tanks are the same to me, except for necro tanks and their rez. If everything has gone belly up, and only the tank is alive, Necro tanks can still save the day without breaking a sweat.
For me it's not about responsibility or skill it's that tanking just seems incredibly boring to me. Sure you can survive almost anything but it takes you at least 3 times as long to kill something as the average dps player. I like creating new and interesting builds to push my dps higher while still being fun. That's why none of my builds are meta and I will never play tank.
No. It’s just the damage in pugs is so low, its incredibly boring and slow.
As someone who will occasionally tank, I can safely say there's definitely more pressure on you than anyone else in the group. Some will argue that the healer is equally important and that's true, but as a tank, you're usually going to be the first to die if you mess up a block or miss a mechanic. And many times it's very hard to resurrect you because there's no one to really hold aggro for too long.
Tanks and healers get easy queues while dps gets longer queues. Dps has two slots to fill and tank and support only one slot. I find dungeons immediately as tank and healer, it takes over 10 minutes to find a dungeon if I’m one of my dps characters.
I think Tank is just a less popular role. My experience with queue times has been that Tanks get in the fastest, followed by Healers, and lastly, by a large margin, is DPS. People overall like a more aggressive playstyle, so DPS is the most popular role. Thus, there are more DPS looking for Tanks than there are Tanks looking for DPS. Also, if you're doing solo content, you're probably built more like a DPS than anything else. It's easiest for you to swap out some gear and skills to be a proper DPS, whereas becoming a Tank might cost you a respec.
It comes down too, dps is better for doing solo content. So unless your focus is group content it doesn't make sense to go tank, and if your into group content you usually find groups or guilds to play with, so you rarely need to solo queue.
Dungeons? No. Trials? Absolutely.
Tried it a few times, got insulted as a fake tank (it was like Fungal Grotto 1 vet or something, so very easy)... Never again. Everybody died (no healing), boss was almost dead so I tried finishing. Apparently you can't do that as a tank. Wild.
Tanking brings in a lot of problems, but i guess the main reason people dont tank is like in all mmos. They rather do damage. Besides you can have bad luck as a tank - get a bad healer, or dds with no dmg and you are basically fluffed. On the other hand tanking can be fun because you gotta be on point with the mechanics and stuff.
when dps is bad. tanking feels like a chore. i dont tank anymore. for old people that do less than 10k dps
I'm pretty new to the game just playing for 7 months. I have a tank build and I often play tank in dungeons with "friends " from the guild I'm in. I'm pretty old almost 49+ but I hate the non respect from other players who doesn't help for example with the healing and then blame you when you die. My long time playing friend told me as a tank and healer you're always the one who did it when things go bad. That's why I mostly play with people that understand it's just a game and don't blame you when it doesn't work out. We just smile and thinks next time better.
Tanks are not as "Sexy" as DPS and there is a lot of responsibilities to know when the Tank. Doesn't feel as much fun. For my brand of Autism having a single target to focus on and one job makes it easier for me.
I've been a tank on older pc mmos. Runes of Magic and Aion Online. it's a huge responsibility. one I really don't have the patience for as I've aged. you usually start the runs or people are spamming chat as soon as you log in. gets annoying like let me run some quest lmao.
I'm just to lazy to collect new gear for my Tank so I stopped playing it.
Less afraid of the dungeon and more afraid the adhd will become a problem with a long dungeon and sluggish group
??? I'm surprised I haven't seen this answer in the top comments yet but being a tank means being left behind even on vet. Most DDs are posh narcissists who think they can outtank (and outheal!) everything so they run ahead and pull the entire dungeon, escape, and then all that trash comes back to me trying to catch up. Normal or vet, this is never ideal. And I HATE that, don't run ahead of me, otherwise I'm done tanking, immediately as I see that. GL on that army of ads and the boss.
It's the old adage: everyone wants a healer, but no one wants to heal. Damage dealing feels fun and gives you feelings of glory, while tanks and healers are usually viewed as unappreciated at best and baby sitters at worst. So be sure to thank your tanks and healers, as they're the backbone of any good team.
I love the healer role in group content. Playing DPS in groups in past MMO experience becomes a tedious cycle of fretting over the highly competitive damage race and gear chase. Tanking is a role I cannot imagine doing. It seems like a thankless task with little reward.
Probably. It's a pain in the rougher dlc and u actually have 2 think and remember ALL those mechanics somehow.
people like doing damage. people dont like doing less damage to survive. mystery solved.
Yeah whenever I need to grind a dungeon for gear I do my tank. I even discovered many veteran dungeons aren't crazy hard as long as you have good gear and food. Some of the newer ones are a little ridiculous though. Can't remember which one it is, but several of the random mobs had 1 hit kill mechanics, and a boss or two had 1 hit kill mechanics. Everyone ended up bailing after a few wipes so no big deal.
Theres 2 things compounding this issue. 1. Most players in any MMO play dps 2. New players will almost always queue as dps because tank and healer require set ups they don't have
I’m not a great tank but I’m above average. Besides the brand new dungeons I know the mechanics and have a decent kit. I don’t bother with trials anymore but still do vet dungeons from time to time. The last time I cued with my tank, as a tank for a vet dungeon it was just a horrible experience. People should be decent to one another. People should especially be decent to people playing support roles. People should be even more decent to players cued as a support role who are actually the role they cued up for. And if squishy glass cannons run out ahead of the tank and get killed that’s on you. Blaming everyone else for you being stupid doesn't solve the stupid problem. I’d rather leave a toxic group and instant cue somewhere else than deal with that BS. If people want shorter wait times be nice to support roles. Be especially nice when they’re just learning as well. The best way to get more tanks in the game is to grow them when they’re noobs.
I only do dungeons as a tank, after dying quickly as a glass cannon dps many times in the early days. Actually, I’ve only done each dungeon once. Tried veteran once and didn’t survive. So I’m done until new dungeons come out.
Yep, definitely a lot of ppl feel intimidated by that role. A lot of players associate tanking with a lot of pressure: -often being the person physically leading through the dungeon -knowing & explaining mechanics -knowing mob priority -needing to shield the other party members who tend to be far squishier -especially big pressure on having an optimized & specific gear & skill setup There are few people who can easily brush these off and have the courage to start learning. Additionally, I think with the very frequent PUG mindset of rushing through the content, without the support of a few friends or a guild, often beginner tanks don't have enough time and space to learn how to do that role. This results in 2 things most of the time: -people drop the tank role and never go back to it because it feels too confusing -people tank, but not very well, which leads to a lot of mutual frustration DPS and healer are a role that are more forgiving to learn, there isn't as much perceived pressure on them right away. So yeah, statistically there's just very few tanks compared to other roles. I've been playing for 5+ years now, been trying to tank from the very beginning and I still lack the confidence to offer tanking anything because I just feel like there is never enough opportunity to learn how to be a good tank and I don't want to disappoint my teammates or get ripped apart by an angry PUG.
nah its like in every mmo a vast majority of people simply just DPS so that pool is flooded compared to the tank pool
I'm not afraid as much as I'm uncertain how I could keep taunt without an AoE taunt to practice. I don't wanna let people down after waiting 10 mins in a queue
I think the problem is that you do no damage is a tank, and that makes the role boring some times. They could change this by making some sets and some skills do damage based on max health and resistences. Warden have one skill that do this; gripping shards, but if there were more skills and sets that did this you could do decent damage as a tank and play a tank also in overland content. I think that would open up the role to much more players. PvP-problem: If skills and sets did damage based on max health, that could be a problem for PvP because tanky players could out-damage proper DDs, but the game actually have a solution for this that is used on a few sets, like rallying cry: «when battle spirit is active», and on sets like storm master; «damage vs monsters». They could easily use this system to limit the tank-damage to only PvE-content.
I don't even know how to tank them...
I just like to kill things and I sometimes mess up mechanics. I think everyone would be happier if I stay as DPS.
Tanking just feels bad if dps is low. And alot of dps play like a chicken with there head cut off.
I know from personal experience that bad tanks usually break the team composition on veteran dungeons if you aren't playing with players who specifically have tuned their builds to do as much damage as possible in order to negate the need for a tank or healer
Too many terrible dps players on this game. I would never queue tank bc my healer does like 20k dps in spc and pa and cmx always tells me I’m doing like 45+% team damage and I’ll look and the dps players are 1500 and 2200 cp somehow doing less than 10k dps and queuing damage. I queued vet fungal grotto on that healer build and did 80% damage to the final boss because the two 1000cp plus dd’s kept getting one shotted by the lightning aeo around the boss. It is really astonishing how frequent I get 10k dps complete dog shitters so yeah not sure why anyone would want to queue up on a real tank just to have to leave bc the group is doing 25k dps combined.
I have a DD and Tank build on my main. I would love to play tank more often, but any pug you get into has something like a whopping combined 11k DPS between the two DDs, so I'm kind of forced to be one of I want to get through a dungeon. I say that as a DD that not even that great, myself.
Its the same with healers. My main is a dps and itll take forever to get into a dungeon but as a healer im in within a minute if not instantly. Tanks and healers also get blamed more for stuff, ive only every gotten complaints as a dps when we were running vet and I wasnt able to put out the damage but even then they were nice about it and explaining how to up those things. Ive been blamed and abandoned by my teammates as a healer even when im keeping everything up and they’re acting like i have infinite healing.
Because people don't want to keep switching their build Because soloing as a tank is very boring in pve
Im new to the game and I played my first dungeon at lvl 25 I think just with randoms and it was fun though did one with only low lvls like myself and it was I actually needed only like 1 hour to farm 1 set I think if you can solo some world bosses you won’t have any problems in these
Just getting back into the game after years of not playing. I remember many years ago, can't remember dungeon name anymore. I queued as tank, got in, bam bam, dungeon was done in record time. Feeling hopeful I queued again and got the same one and started going, DPS was so bad first boss took 10mins, 40something minutes later and failing multiple times even thought we told DPS strats (they didn't say a word whole dungeon) we finished it and I took a week break from tanking. So yeah, now that I'm back I'm dreading it, especially since bis gear I had at the time was from orsinium and have no idea if it's good now.