Target Dummies in the Elder Scrolls Online Are Currently Broken - ESO

Target Dummies such as the Iron Atronach in ESO are not working properly.

By Andrew   •  Published 2 years ago

There is a bug with the target dummies in the Elder Scrolls Online that has been present since the release of the High Isle expansion and update. 

Target dummies are items that can be placed in a player's house to enable them to test their DPS build and find out what their raw DPS output is, as well as providing an accessible way of practicing their skill rotation. The most commonly used dummy is the Target Iron Atronach, Trial, which gives players various raid buffs and a shards synergy to restore their magicka or stamina, thus simulating an optimised trial environment to give a representative DPS score.

However some players might be getting a little bit overly excited by their latest build, if they are not aware of the new bug with the target dummies that is causing them to give out false DPS numbers. 

What's wrong with the Target Dummies in ESO?

Some players reported the issue in a thread on the official ESO Forums. It seems that the game thinks the target dummies have more health than they actually do, which causes them to give the player an inflated DPS number when they do a dummy parse. PC players using the Combat Metrics addon may have already noticed the discrepancy, as this addon still gives a correct number, however players on console and Stadia, who have no access to such addons, would have no way of knowing about the bug. 

This has coincided with the release of the new Oakensoul Ring Mythic item, which gives the player wearing it a lot of strong buffs at the cost of being unable to have a backbar weapon. Oakensoul has been called overpowered by many players in spite of its early changes on the PTS, and this may be true in some situations. However it is quite likely that some players who are using the ring now think that their build is stronger than it actually is due to getting incorrect parses from their target dummy.

A Sorcerer in ESOA Sorcerer in ESO

A PTS Blunder from Zenimax?

This bug was actually noticed very quickly by players who went on the High Isle PTS a couple of months ago to test the new sets, mythic items and balance changes, and to figure out the meta for the new update. Many of these players, myself included, pretty much immediately noticed the discrepancy between the value reported by the target dummy, and the value reported by Combat Metrics. It was talked about quite a lot in those circles, and it was reported to Zenimax quite early on in the PTS as a result of this. 

In spite of this, the bug stayed in the game throughout PTS and then the Live Servers, and nothing was communicated by the developers until yesterday when it was finally acknowledged by Zenimax in the aforementioned forum thread, however there is no ETA on a fix for the problem at the moment.

PC users can simply use the Combat Metrics addon to solve this problem, but for the time being everyone else will just have to keep in mind that their actual DPS is approximately 10 percent lower than what is reported by the target dummies.

We hope you enjoyed this article about bugs and glitches in ESO. The Elder Scrolls Online is a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) developed by Zenimax Online Studios.
Andrew

Andrew

Published 2 years ago

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