It’s almost the end of the year and besides getting “Year in Review” emails from Nintendo, Steam (well, a banner on the app that leads to it), etc – I love looking over this info by the way – I am planning next year.
Something something work on Steam backlog.
However I have a plan for doing that, which starts with freeing up some other time, which in turn comes playing ESO less, by doing fewer trials.
Trials, typically called raids in other MMOs, are fun and challenging group content for 12 players. I do enjoy my time in them, but at the same time, there are only 13 of them, and of that, 3 are considered beginner trials (the Craglorn trials, which were the original ones).
The difficulty ladder in ESO is this: easiest are “normal” mode, harder is “veteran”, and within veteran there is the option to enable “hard mode” which usually cranks the difficulty way up.
For example, in the Sunspire trial, there is a frost dragon named Lokkestiiz. On normal mode, the fight consists of a few phases – attack the dragon, he takes off and flies around summoning adds and attacking from the air, then he lands and repeats. So far so good.
On veteran mode, there are portals that spawn, and the mechanics are: someone needs to run into the portal (and take damage), then get healed out in a few seconds. If nobody deals with the portal (didn’t get there in time), or the player that jumps on it dies (they weren’t at full health going in), or they aren’t healed out (low healing, healing started late, healer died, etc.), the group wipes due to large AoE damage.
Technically the portals are there during normal mode, but since it is normal mode they can be ignored – the AoE explosion isn’t significant enough to bother with.
All the while, various adds are spawning and also have to be dealt with.
The main challenge with portals is having the healer call the location quickly enough, having a DPS respond quickly enough, getting healed out quickly enough, while avoiding the other stuff that might also kill you. If it goes smoothly, the DPS is back in the fight in ~8 seconds (2 to run to the portal, 4 to get healed out, 2 to run back to boss). So even in the best where the group is perfect, having to deal with portals will cut the group DPS somewhat since a DPS is not attacking.
In hard mode, two portals spawn at the same time. This puts extra stress on the healer who needs to also balance their resources so they can heal two people out ASAP. It’s also more DPS juggling, now each portal team is two players that have to coordinate between themselves and the others. Typically there are 3 rounds of portals before there is enough damage done to cause the boss to fly (i.e. go to next stage, and when flying there are no portals) – the higher the group DPS, the more likely only two portals teams are needed.
Things go smoothly until somebody dies then all hell breaks loose trying to rez them and also keep covering the portal assignments, since missing a single one is a group wipe.
There are other changes with hard mode in the Lokkestiiz fight, but I don’t want to bore everybody to death. Just go back to the original premise – hard mode adds significant difficulty to veteran mode.
Anyway, the trials all have veteran and veteran hard mode difficulty available. I’ve run them often enough to where I have a veteran clear on every trial (this is not really difficult to get), so for me, as far as progression, there is getting a veteran hard mode clear on every trial, and past that, getting a trifecta.
A trifecta is clearing a trial veteran hard mode, with zero deaths, and also fast enough to be a speed run (exact time depends on the trial, but it is typically 30 mins).
As far as hard modes, I have 8 of them. The easy 8, the last 5 trials are much harder, reflecting power creep of the most recent content.
I’ve been in 2 semi-serious trifecta groups, we did not achieve the trifecta in either case, and disbanded after a few months.
I’ve found, I don’t really enjoy a hard mode and/or trifecta prog. It’s… kind of grueling. The best chance is if a group can meet twice a week, but it’s hard enough to find once a week that 12 people can get together, and there is invariably the occasional sickness, travel, other conflict, etc. creating the need for a fill.
And hey, this is a game, don’t prioritize getting a trifecta over real life… but at the same time, if one person can’t make it every week (say on average), then you’re always training somebody for the toughest challenge available in the trial your group is working on. It is likely the group won’t make any progress towards the goal.
The dreaded scenario is if there is consistently one person missing every week (of 12 people, that just means any given person can’t show up once every 3 months, which to be fair isn’t unreasonable) and there is also a second absence. You enter what raid leaders call “roster prog”, where you aren’t really working on improving strategies for the trifecta, you are progging the roster itself just trying to train new players continuously.
In this case, your group will be effectively spinning their wheels most of the time, and incrementally getting better, only to forget or lose all progress the next time there is a roster prog.
For me, I’m not a spectacular DPS. I barely parse 100K dps and enjoy playing dragonknights or wardens as dps. Top damage dealers are above 120K dps, and the meta has shifted to where the arcanist (newest class, introduced last year) is very desirable because they do top notch ranged AoE damage… and also get a damage shield while doing it! That skill is Fatecarver, and the Pragmatic Fatecarver morph adds a damage shield.
That isn’t all – that skill is also channeled, for 4 seconds. In a game where the combat mechanics revolve around light attack weaving (e.g. tap light attack, cancel animation and use skill) for a somewhat exhausting 2 actions per second, this one skill is a large anomaly. In the time the arcanist gets two button presses in (light attack, then pragmatic fatecarver), every other dps class is expected to do 8. For less damage. And no damage shield. And not as large AoE.
It still takes some practice, I’m not saying arcanists are ezmode and only require 1 button, but a trial lead can make things easier on themselves by looking for a lot of arcanist dps, since by their nature they do great AoE damage (always a plus since half the difficulty is from the number of adds), they are survivable since they can stand further away and avoid a lot of melee damage and various effects from bosses.
I think it is a bit fishy that the newest class, added in last year’s expansion, also happens to be the highest dps in the game right now. It’s almost like rolling out an OP class would help sell units. Imagine if the new class only did 90% the damage of any other class… I’m thinking the expansion would have failed.
Coincidence maybe, but I can’t rule out practical considerations like “we need this to sell”.
And well, I’m not in the mood to shift to an arcanist and practice parsing to join higher end trials.
So, I’m cutting back, doing a trial or two a week, veteran, no goal of hard mode. Play for fun, with some friends I’ve made via discord.
And with my extra free time, start working on the infamous Steam backlog. My goals are modest actually: finish more games. At least 4, ideally 6 or more.
MMO Juggler 