ESO Update 52 - AoE Taunts and Jerall Pass

Tank Changes

Inner Fire

Unstoppable

Unstoppable from the Heavy Armor skill line will taunt up to 6 enemies around you.

Pretty much every tank I've seen come to ESO from other MMOs complained about the lack of an AoE taunt.

The longer you play ESO, the more you realize an AoE taunt isn't really needed. You taunt the relevant adds directly, ideally while you're still running into them, and the small adds don't matter. They do 0 damage and die in cleave.

Still, people want it. They want to feel like they're protecting their teammates from every useless little add, even if those adds won't really hurt the DDs.

So this is mostly something fun for people who want an AoE taunt, not something actually useful, unless ZOS puts something else on that skill.

Tormentor and the Taunt Script

Tormentor is going back to AoE taunting with skills like Stampede, and the Taunt script will be able to taunt 6 enemies on Scribing skills like Smash or Vault.

I talked about this back when ZOS took AoE taunting away from Tormentor. I said ZOS's vendetta against AoE taunts was misguided and that both sides were wrong. People asking for AoE taunts were wrong for the reason above, but also kinda right, because games are supposed to be fun, and if AoE taunts are fun for them, that's cool. The ZOS devs were wrong because they claimed AoE taunts would break some fights. As an endgame tank, I can say that's complete nonsense. They had no idea what they were talking about.

More Fun Tanking

ZOS also said they want to make tanking more fun to deal with the tank shortage. For example, letting you build a tank that's more focused on dealing damage itself, instead of only boosting the team's damage.

I have no details on this, so we'll have to wait for the PTS to see what it means. But I do want to talk about the tank shortage in general.

Tank Shortage

Tanks Can't Carry

Tanking in ESO is almost entirely about supporting your group's DPS. In other MMOs a tank might do around half of a DD's damage. In ESO, DDs reach 200k DPS at the top end, while an average tank build does up to 10k, maybe more with something like Magma Fist.

That makes tanking for randoms a nightmare. You can end up in a group doing abysmal damage, and all you can do is boost that abysmal DPS. This is the number 1 reason people give for not tanking in ESO.

Some forum threads about it:

• Possible way to fix tank shortages: more damage
• Lack of Support (Tank, Healer) Players Will Affect the Game Long-Term, And This Needs To Be Fixed
• Real tanks problems = (why no tanks in game)
• Are tanks dying spieces in 2020?
• Tanking Shortage in Random Dungeon Finder - Give tanks a dungeon preview

I made a whole video tracking the average DPS of DDs in random veteran dungeons. Across more than a hundred DDs the results were better than I expected, but there were still some insane runs where the DDs did absolutely nothing. In one of them I spent half an hour in Crypt of Hearts 2.

That's why most tanks I know only tank for people they know. And they can afford to be picky, because tanks are in huge demand.

Responsibility and New Tanks

Another reason people don't want to tank is that it's the role with the most responsibility, and people don't want responsibility when they're chilling in a game.

It's also hard to get into as a new player unless you have people to play with. With randoms you'll get all sorts of complaints about your tanking, and as a new tank you can't tell if the DD is right or a moron, so you might pick up bad habits by listening to them.

You Can't Change Your Tanking Style on the Go

ESO also doesn't let you change your tanking style on the go. You can do a lot of damage as a tank, but you have to set that up before the trial even starts. I've parsed 55k DPS while solo tanking vKA HM and 78k DPS while solo tanking vMoL, and those aren't the only examples.

That only works because it's a core group. After playing with them for a while, I know exactly how each fight goes and how much survivability I can spare. I didn't start the prog at 78k DPS, I started at 20k in a very defensive setup. After every kill where I survived without trouble, I traded a bit more survivability for damage: swapping Heavy Armor pieces for Light, enchants to Weapon Damage, and traits to Bloodthirsty.

None of that works in random groups. If I tank vDSR through group finder, I can't bring a build like that, because what if the group does something stupid? I need the extra survivability, so I bring a regular tank build that provides all the buffs and debuffs and does 5 to 10k DPS.

WoW Comparison

In WoW, the choice between damage and survivability happens mid-fight. On a Protection Warrior I generate Rage, and I decide whether to spend it on survivability with Ignore Pain or on damage with Revenge or Execute.

This is where WoW tanking does a lot better than ESO. I still prefer ESO tanking, because nothing beats fast paced combat built around blocking and dodge rolling, but WoW does this one thing so much better.

In ESO, once you're comfortable in a fight, there isn't much left to push. You're surviving and keeping up all the buffs and debuffs. You might squeeze out a bit more DPS by casting Magma Fist or Elemental Susceptibility more often, but it's a tiny boost.

In WoW, once you've mastered a boss fight, you naturally move on to doing more DPS there. So if the rest of your team is still progging a fight you've already figured out, you can still have fun and feel like you're progressing by improving your rotation. In ESO, once you've mastered a fight, there's not much left to do unless you're in a score push group, and that's a tiny minority of players.

Why More Rewards Wouldn't Fix It

I also thought about simply giving tanks more rewards for queueing in Dungeon Finder, the way WoW does with Call to Arms. But ESO doesn't have rigid specs. Anyone could queue as a tank without actually being one, so it would probably get abused.

And when people explain why they don't tank, it's usually not about rewards. It's about horrible teammates you can't carry, because you can't do damage on your own.

So whatever ZOS is cooking, I really hope it's interesting and fun to play.

Jerall Pass

The Keep

Cave Boss

There are caves under the zone, and in the middle of them there's a boss, basically a big Havocrel. You can kill him for loot, or recruit him to fight for your alliance. He'll attack or defend the keep, depending on whether your alliance owns it. Recruiting him takes a special item, and one of the spots they showed for it is the orange dot on the map above.

New Currency and Vendor

There's also a new currency you earn from quests in Jerall Pass.

You can spend it on scrolls with 2 hour buffs that only work in Jerall Pass. I think I saw something like 900 Critical Resistance on one of them, but that might be a placeholder.