Greetings Gaiscioch and fellow dungeoneers! I've decided to revise my dungeon crawl event. The event will now run Mon-Fri evening on a rotating schedule. This post will (hopefully) be linked to the events and serve as a reference point for anyone that wishes to sign up. In addition please note the following special announcement:
IF YOU ARE SIGNING UP FOR THIS EVENT, PLEASE RESPOND TO THIS THREAD WITH A LIST OF YOUR CHARACTERS AT VET LEVELS AND THE ROLES THEY CAN FULFILL. ALSO PLEASE NOTE WHICH CHARACTER YOU PREFER, IF ANY, TO PLAY.
This will help me determine what role I need to fill in as that day, as well as give me a chance to plan out role I might be missing. For these runs we will be doing the 4-man dungeons in the typical 1 Tank, 1 Healer, 2 DPS form.
For those of you that want to prepare for the dungeon ahead of time, Jairone has been writing guides for all the vet dungeons in the game and they can be found right here on the Gaiscioch forums. In addition, you can utilize Deltia's Gaming as another great source of guides for the vet content. I'll also point out a few helpful things here in this thread.
STATS:
Ok, so ESO is very friendly in terms of playing your character how you want. I fully support that and will never tell anyone they are playing their character wrong. I have no problem offering my personal advice if you ask or even during specific fights offering suggestions on certain skills that work well for the fight. One thing that I will highly stress is minimum stats. Not only will this help you survive, it will help the entire group be successful. Really the only truly important stat is health. Certain fights have mechanics where the entire team will take unavoidable damage. For squishier people (looking at you light armor DPS!) this can potentially mean you are one-shotted. This is never fun for anyone when this happens. So, in light of that I am going to recommend the below health numbers.
HEALTH: ~20,000 at VR14 - ~15,000 at VR1 (this equals about 360 HP per vet rank)
Yep, that's a lot of health. I tend to be over conservative, but just remember that you can't heal or DPS if you are dead on the floor. Now, you can go below these numbers if you are confident with your build, play style, and confident in general at running vet dungeons (avoiding red, dodging, kiting, etc.). In addition, if you have a self cast damage shield (sorc hardened ward for example) you can also shave a little off. On my Sorc as a DPS I run about 18.5-19.5k at VR14 depending on PvP buffs. At VR 14 going below 18k health can be risky for the entire group. Also note, these numbers are for the healer/dps only. Tanks of course need much higher health pools (my tank sits at about 29k at VR14).
GENERAL ADVICE
- AVOID THE RED! Serious! For solo questing and open world PvE you can mostly just ignore this and stand in the red and not worry at all. In dungeons, you will die. Dodge roll out of these circles and areas and your healer will thank you.
- TRY TO STAY CLOSE! Ok, so this can be really hard at times. Lots of stuff is going on in these fights. For large groups, the closer you can all stay the easier it is to heal everyone. In addition, for large groups the DPS should be using AoE skills. The closer the group is, the closer the baddies are, the easier they are to kill. Some dungeons and fights have lots of ranged baddies so this can be tricky.
- HEALERS FIRST! By this point everyone should recognize the baddies healer beam. Follow that beam, interrupt the caster and kill it! Healers in vet dungeons heal quite well and will make fights much more difficult. They are almost always the top priority.
- CASTERS, ARCHERS, MELEE, OH MY! After healers are dead this is the general target priority. Swirling hands are casters, archers... well they have a bow. And melee are big guys with two handed swords or dual wield. If they have a shield, save them for last. Tank aggro order is different as they should grab melee first and foremost then stand by the enemy healer to interupt.
- RUN TOWARDS THE GROUP! Tanks often can't keep all the baddies attention and at some point a bad guy will notice you and want to kill you. Either kill him first, or if you need to run closer to the group. Running away will get you nothing, especially no heals.
- DODGE/BLOCK is your friend. Make use of that stamina and dodge roll big attacks or block them. Pure magicka DPS should try to always have enough stamina for one dodge roll or ....
- BREAK FREE! If you are CC'd break free immediately. Of course you need stamina for this so always try to maintain enough stamina to break free. Certain dungeons this can be a challenge as lots of CC is getting tossed about (Fear in Elden Hollow for example).
- DON'T STAND IN FRONT OF THE BOSS! So the tank should generally try to turn the boss away, but certain mechanics will result in the big guy staring you down for a few seconds. If during this time he does the "cleave" attack (almost all bosses have a frontal cone attack of some type) you will likely die. Only the tank should be getting hit by this. If the boss is looking at you, consider it the same as if you were standing in red and GET OUT!
- KITE TO TANK! Sometimes due to mechanics or a missed taunt, the big bad boss will turn to you and take out his anger on you. As a healer or DPS this is bad. Don't run away! In fact, its often better to charge the boss, dodge roll through him and get to the tank. This will get the tank and boss re-united and hopefully the tank can get a taunt in. Don't ever think "This big boss isn't so bad! I can take a few hits while the healer keeps me alive and the tank gets aggro back." NO! Stay alive by kiting the boss back to the tank. Tanks, don't over taunt (too many taunts in certain period will drop aggo and boss is un-tauntable for a short while) and try not to drop aggro. If you do, use undaunted ranged taunt or sword/shield taunt to re-acquire ASAP!
That's all I have for now in terms of general advice with the exception of one final thing. It's so important it's getting it's own headline.
COMMUNICATION
We will use RC channel Dungeons for most these events. If that channel is occupied we will of course find a different one. While I will not require anyone to be in RC, I cannot stress enough its importance. First, I will explain in detail each boss fight and all the mechanics before starting it. Second, many fights require people to call out when bad things happen. Typing it out is a huge slow pain. Even if you can't talk in RC, at least try to get in to listen. Second, if you are doing the quest for that particular dungeon you might need a pause to wait for a quest NPC. Or maybe you see a chest, or you want to swap a skill out. Please let the group know about these things. It is miserable as a tank to charge into the next group of trash mobs only to turn around and see your group in the distance opening a chest. So, openly and frequently communicate so the group knows when a fight is about to start, when a break is needed, when questions need to get answered... just in general the more communication going on the better.
Thanks for reading and I look forward to you joining me for a fun filled evening of dungeoneering! Please remember to respond to this thread with your list of characters and the roles they can fulfill!
Drinks-with-Two Fists - VR14 Templar Tank(preferred)/DPS
Kitturn Darkheart - VR14 Sorcerer DPS/Healer