A LIST OF THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE ENTERING VETERAN DUNGEONS VIA THE ACTIVITY FINDER
1. Choose one role
- From game menu select: SOCIAL > GROUP then under group roles turn your role icon grey (all others will be black) double bracket... Not everyone knows this.
- No matter how amazing you are at multi tasking, in vet dungeon queues you pick one (comments disagreeing begin in 3,2,1)
- Don't select all of them to get you in front of the queue, you'll end up wasting your time and everyone else's, plus its a good way to get kicked from the group and thrown back in the queue. Plus lying and getting people to carry you isn't fresh. Be fresh.
2. Know your role
I'll be underlining your role within vet dungeons along with preferred stat pools and what you should have levelled up before entering veteran dungeons. If you do not follow said dot points there is a 48 percent rng chance that Liam Kneeson (that K though) will find you. Preferred stats on players under vet 15 should head to a scaled area like Wrothgar or Hew's Bane or Cyrodiil (minus 5,000 health buff in pvp areas) as the finder puts you in scaled instances.
TANK
YOUR ROLE:
- Taunt high priority targets (bosses, enemies that stun, enemies that heal, mini bosses), face these enemies away from your allies so your team mates don't get to see how hot they are, they're yours. ALL YOURS!
- Inner Fire from the undaunted skill tree and Puncture from the Sword & Shield tree activate taunt
- if you do not have the aforementioned skills on your bar, you are not a tank, go back to step one and change roles
- "Bash" to interrupt enemy healers, and some boss abilities (if the boss looks like it's charging to do something nasty: try and put a sheild in its beech face)
- protect thy healer, keep an eye on his or her health, if their health fluctuates too much, find the little kuta ravaging your healer's health and (ask it nicely to stop) taunt it.
- Either sprinkle heals over time or damage over time, or both.
- Get Aggressive Warhorn (from pvp) and cast it during boss fights. (Gives a 30% crit damage bonus to all team mates).
IMPORTANT STATS
Health
Preferred: 30,000
Minimum: 27,500
Maximum: 32,500 (bit of a waste)
Physical and Spell Resistance
Preferred: 32,500
Realistic: 28-30k (buffed)
Passable: 25k (buffed)
All other stats are up to you and your build. (This is not a build thread). Keep in mind that any points into stam recovery are a little pointless as you don't regen stamina when blocking (thank you pvp, you're the BEST), in which you should be doing most of the time.
LEVEL THESE:
- Sword and board
- Heavy Armour
- Imperial dance emote
HEALER
YOUR ROLE:
- Buff > Damage > Heal > Damage
- In between heals, always be doing damage with instant cast aoes and dots (you can use Radiant Destruction of course but only during low risk stages of the battle or after casting stacked Healing Springs on allies in possible danger)
- Give resources to your team mates (Templars are the boss of this as they have the only abilities in the game that restore large amounts of stamina - for magicka return there's Undaunted's Necrotic Orb and its morph or siphon spirit or Elemental Drain.. seriously though, if you are a healing Templar without Blazing Spear or Luminous Shards you are doing your team a massive disservice.. It should be spammed in fight openings and given to tanks since they have no stamina regen).
- Buff allies, if you've joined a group with low dps, give them some steriods... I mean.. give 'em a damage buff by casting Combat Prayer from the restoration skill line (if they are doing fine, leave it off - if you're familiar with your group and you feel you have the time, leave it on).
- Don't just spam one strong heal, have one or two heal over time's too
IMPORTANT STATS
- Magicka recovery is the only one other than magicka and spell power that is relative to your healer as they determine how powerful your heals will be and how often you get to cast them, an A grade healer will snore through around 1,000 recovery.. I stay around 1,500 to be safe. Do the numbers, start with recovery enchants on your jewellry and slowly replace them with spell power as you get better
- Have at least 18k health so you don't get one shot (remember this is 18k health in a scaled area or if you are vet 15-16).
- Spell crit, crits in pve are love, crits in pve are life. Make sure your spell crit is above 55%, 70-75% at vet 16 is amazing.
LEVEL THESE:
- Light armour
- Restoration Staff
- Destruction Staff
- Dual Wield (advanced templars)
- Magikarp (huh?)
DPS or DAMAGE DEALERS
YOUR ROLE:
- Do damage (durr, gosh)
- No that doesn't mean spamming Snipe or Wrecking Blow or hard casting Crystal Fragments by themselves!!
- Have damage over time effects running at the same time as you spam your favourite damage ability
- Example for a stamina dps rotation: (start on bow bar) BUFF > CALTROPS > ARROW BARRAGE > (bar swap) > SURPRISE ATTACK spam > KILLER'S BLADE
- Always have two dots up BEFORE going into your spam trance and always press light attack in between all non executes to generate ultimate and add dps
- You must have a decent aoe ability on your bar, attacking only one enemy out of the 5-10 attacking your group isn't very clever mky?? Ochre!
- Block when you have to block, dodge when you have to dodge. Dying in a red circle or getting one short by a basic mob's heavy attack is just embarrassing. Don't do it to yourself girlfriend, and better yet don't do it to your healer. Rude.
- If you can self heal in a pug, just do it, less room for error (keeping Vigor for a stam build and a resto for a magicka build is always a safer option).
IMPORTANT STATS:
- Once again, at least 18k health in vet dungeons, healers can't heal one shots. (Why not Zenimax? WHYYYY??!)
- Now for stamina and magicka it's pretty clear to most, if you want to cast spells and unleash your inner pyro: stack only into magicka, if you want to use boring weapon abilties use only stamina
- CRIT! Crit is what? It's love, it's life. In pve anyway. If you're not critting in end game PVE you're not doing enough damage. Ensure you are aiming for that nice happy medium of 70-75% either weapon or spell crit. If you get there without using the thief mundus stone then whack on the shadow mundus, otherwise yes, use the thief.
LEVEL THESE:
- Either light (spells) armour or medium (stamina based) (what's that "u" doing in armour again? I'm an Aussie ochre!)
- Stamina : Bow, Two Handed, Dual Wield
- Magicka: Restoration Staff, Destruction Staff, Dual Wield
3. Bring Soul Gems
Don't be rude, if someone is down pick them up. You need them after all! Once you start getting good at dungeons you'll be buried in soul gems.
4. Don't be shy
If you are enjoying your run with a random group, send them a message or get on the mic. You may finally find that raid group you've been looking for. (Where for art thou?!!!).
5. Have some patience
I think many ESO veterans have walked into a dungeon and watched a random team take 5 mins and one death to take out the first group of enemies (tank lyf) and thought... "wow, this is going to be a rough three and a half thousand years". But they'll never get better if someone doesn't try and help them. Send them a message, ask them to change around their bar. Some people will respond nicely. Others will tell you how your mother feels about you (runs away crying) and that's okay.. because projection is a thing.
Keep in mind even the decent players on ESO have their bad days where they are trying to dodge roll out of a circle of death and that indominable crevice in the ground blocked their escape. Give people a chance before leaving the group.
6. Eat your food and drink your potions
No build in a veteran dungeon is good without provisioning... make sure you have food on you and try to remember to eat a fresh batch when entering a Pick-up Group. It always runs out at the most inopportune of situations.. and yes I will forget my own advice. Also remember that even the potions you pick up from dungeon bosses have their value.. I personally just use the basic magicka potions on my healer, skoria dk, magblade, sap tank and sorc tank. No need to let them go stale in your inventory.
7. Use google
If you and your group are struggling to finish a boss because you don't understand the mechanics and your team doesn't have mics, don't immediately assume it's your or their fault.. Search on google, find the mechanics, message your team mates. It won't kill you, billions of people use it daily.
- I really hope that people get something out of this guide. I'll be honest, it started off a rant. But I believe in this game (no matter how terribly broken it is) and I believe in the community still standing. If we can help each other out from time to time, then all the better. Whilst text chat is still unavailable on console, we rely on the group finder, I believe that with this guide our experiences with the group finder will be more enjoyable. I've posted this in general just to catch a bit more traffic before it gets moved. Hope you enjoyed and learnt something. If you didn't ... well, how dare you?
1. Choose one role
- From game menu select: SOCIAL > GROUP then under group roles turn your role icon grey (all others will be black) double bracket... Not everyone knows this.
- No matter how amazing you are at multi tasking, in vet dungeon queues you pick one (comments disagreeing begin in 3,2,1)
- Don't select all of them to get you in front of the queue, you'll end up wasting your time and everyone else's, plus its a good way to get kicked from the group and thrown back in the queue. Plus lying and getting people to carry you isn't fresh. Be fresh.
2. Know your role
I'll be underlining your role within vet dungeons along with preferred stat pools and what you should have levelled up before entering veteran dungeons. If you do not follow said dot points there is a 48 percent rng chance that Liam Kneeson (that K though) will find you. Preferred stats on players under vet 15 should head to a scaled area like Wrothgar or Hew's Bane or Cyrodiil (minus 5,000 health buff in pvp areas) as the finder puts you in scaled instances.
TANK
YOUR ROLE:
- Taunt high priority targets (bosses, enemies that stun, enemies that heal, mini bosses), face these enemies away from your allies so your team mates don't get to see how hot they are, they're yours. ALL YOURS!
- Inner Fire from the undaunted skill tree and Puncture from the Sword & Shield tree activate taunt
- if you do not have the aforementioned skills on your bar, you are not a tank, go back to step one and change roles
- "Bash" to interrupt enemy healers, and some boss abilities (if the boss looks like it's charging to do something nasty: try and put a sheild in its beech face)
- protect thy healer, keep an eye on his or her health, if their health fluctuates too much, find the little kuta ravaging your healer's health and (ask it nicely to stop) taunt it.
- Either sprinkle heals over time or damage over time, or both.
- Get Aggressive Warhorn (from pvp) and cast it during boss fights. (Gives a 30% crit damage bonus to all team mates).
IMPORTANT STATS
Health
Preferred: 30,000
Minimum: 27,500
Maximum: 32,500 (bit of a waste)
Physical and Spell Resistance
Preferred: 32,500
Realistic: 28-30k (buffed)
Passable: 25k (buffed)
All other stats are up to you and your build. (This is not a build thread). Keep in mind that any points into stam recovery are a little pointless as you don't regen stamina when blocking (thank you pvp, you're the BEST), in which you should be doing most of the time.
LEVEL THESE:
- Sword and board
- Heavy Armour
- Imperial dance emote
HEALER
YOUR ROLE:
- Buff > Damage > Heal > Damage
- In between heals, always be doing damage with instant cast aoes and dots (you can use Radiant Destruction of course but only during low risk stages of the battle or after casting stacked Healing Springs on allies in possible danger)
- Give resources to your team mates (Templars are the boss of this as they have the only abilities in the game that restore large amounts of stamina - for magicka return there's Undaunted's Necrotic Orb and its morph or siphon spirit or Elemental Drain.. seriously though, if you are a healing Templar without Blazing Spear or Luminous Shards you are doing your team a massive disservice.. It should be spammed in fight openings and given to tanks since they have no stamina regen).
- Buff allies, if you've joined a group with low dps, give them some steriods... I mean.. give 'em a damage buff by casting Combat Prayer from the restoration skill line (if they are doing fine, leave it off - if you're familiar with your group and you feel you have the time, leave it on).
- Don't just spam one strong heal, have one or two heal over time's too
IMPORTANT STATS
- Magicka recovery is the only one other than magicka and spell power that is relative to your healer as they determine how powerful your heals will be and how often you get to cast them, an A grade healer will snore through around 1,000 recovery.. I stay around 1,500 to be safe. Do the numbers, start with recovery enchants on your jewellry and slowly replace them with spell power as you get better
- Have at least 18k health so you don't get one shot (remember this is 18k health in a scaled area or if you are vet 15-16).
- Spell crit, crits in pve are love, crits in pve are life. Make sure your spell crit is above 55%, 70-75% at vet 16 is amazing.
LEVEL THESE:
- Light armour
- Restoration Staff
- Destruction Staff
- Dual Wield (advanced templars)
- Magikarp (huh?)
DPS or DAMAGE DEALERS
YOUR ROLE:
- Do damage (durr, gosh)
- No that doesn't mean spamming Snipe or Wrecking Blow or hard casting Crystal Fragments by themselves!!
- Have damage over time effects running at the same time as you spam your favourite damage ability
- Example for a stamina dps rotation: (start on bow bar) BUFF > CALTROPS > ARROW BARRAGE > (bar swap) > SURPRISE ATTACK spam > KILLER'S BLADE
- Always have two dots up BEFORE going into your spam trance and always press light attack in between all non executes to generate ultimate and add dps
- You must have a decent aoe ability on your bar, attacking only one enemy out of the 5-10 attacking your group isn't very clever mky?? Ochre!
- Block when you have to block, dodge when you have to dodge. Dying in a red circle or getting one short by a basic mob's heavy attack is just embarrassing. Don't do it to yourself girlfriend, and better yet don't do it to your healer. Rude.
- If you can self heal in a pug, just do it, less room for error (keeping Vigor for a stam build and a resto for a magicka build is always a safer option).
IMPORTANT STATS:
- Once again, at least 18k health in vet dungeons, healers can't heal one shots. (Why not Zenimax? WHYYYY??!)
- Now for stamina and magicka it's pretty clear to most, if you want to cast spells and unleash your inner pyro: stack only into magicka, if you want to use boring weapon abilties use only stamina
- CRIT! Crit is what? It's love, it's life. In pve anyway. If you're not critting in end game PVE you're not doing enough damage. Ensure you are aiming for that nice happy medium of 70-75% either weapon or spell crit. If you get there without using the thief mundus stone then whack on the shadow mundus, otherwise yes, use the thief.
LEVEL THESE:
- Either light (spells) armour or medium (stamina based) (what's that "u" doing in armour again? I'm an Aussie ochre!)
- Stamina : Bow, Two Handed, Dual Wield
- Magicka: Restoration Staff, Destruction Staff, Dual Wield
3. Bring Soul Gems
Don't be rude, if someone is down pick them up. You need them after all! Once you start getting good at dungeons you'll be buried in soul gems.
4. Don't be shy
If you are enjoying your run with a random group, send them a message or get on the mic. You may finally find that raid group you've been looking for. (Where for art thou?!!!).
5. Have some patience
I think many ESO veterans have walked into a dungeon and watched a random team take 5 mins and one death to take out the first group of enemies (tank lyf) and thought... "wow, this is going to be a rough three and a half thousand years". But they'll never get better if someone doesn't try and help them. Send them a message, ask them to change around their bar. Some people will respond nicely. Others will tell you how your mother feels about you (runs away crying) and that's okay.. because projection is a thing.
Keep in mind even the decent players on ESO have their bad days where they are trying to dodge roll out of a circle of death and that indominable crevice in the ground blocked their escape. Give people a chance before leaving the group.
6. Eat your food and drink your potions
No build in a veteran dungeon is good without provisioning... make sure you have food on you and try to remember to eat a fresh batch when entering a Pick-up Group. It always runs out at the most inopportune of situations.. and yes I will forget my own advice. Also remember that even the potions you pick up from dungeon bosses have their value.. I personally just use the basic magicka potions on my healer, skoria dk, magblade, sap tank and sorc tank. No need to let them go stale in your inventory.
7. Use google
If you and your group are struggling to finish a boss because you don't understand the mechanics and your team doesn't have mics, don't immediately assume it's your or their fault.. Search on google, find the mechanics, message your team mates. It won't kill you, billions of people use it daily.
- I really hope that people get something out of this guide. I'll be honest, it started off a rant. But I believe in this game (no matter how terribly broken it is) and I believe in the community still standing. If we can help each other out from time to time, then all the better. Whilst text chat is still unavailable on console, we rely on the group finder, I believe that with this guide our experiences with the group finder will be more enjoyable. I've posted this in general just to catch a bit more traffic before it gets moved. Hope you enjoyed and learnt something. If you didn't ... well, how dare you?