Last night, a group of us dared to hop on the Public Test Server (PTS) and try out the new Elder Scrolls Online Veteran Rank (VR) 14 dungeon City of Ash. This dungeon did not disappoint in scale or quality and I wanted so share some thoughts. So here’s our ESO Patch 1.5 City of Ash Preview.
The Team
The team was Elloa from ElloaWendy on YouTube (healer), Aggelos from Tales of Tamriel (DPS), and pro streamer Kypster (DPS) and myself (tanking). Keep in mind, that we hadn’t really played together before nor could I copy my character over to the Ebonheart Faction. So I used the pre-made template for the suggested dungeon and it took a lot of tweaking before my tanking was half way decent. I had to change out my armor to all light (like I use in game) with some jewelry for reduced block cost. Once I got that straight, my tanking improved.
Elloa was playing an Argonian Templar healer using a lot of the Templar class specific abilities. For not having a VR 14 on the live client, she did very well. Aggelos was also playing an Argonian Templar but using DPS via the Two-Handed Sword skill line. Besides not dodging a few big bright red circles, he also did well. Last but definitely not least, we had the Nightblade DPS beast mode Kypster. I’ve never seen so many Veil of Blades drop before and he was an absolute DPS rock-star. Overall the team started off strong and we made it to last boss before I had to log. So let’s talk about the dungeon itself.
Scale
The physical size of the dungeon was about right. I think it took us a couple of hours to get to the final boss even on the first run. Keep in mind we were playing on fully maxed characters with best in slot gear so this might be the case when live launches. Either way, I liked the pacing of the dungeon. It had a decent amount of “trash” pulls or non-elite mobs in between major boss fights. Moreover the boss fights felt epic with tons of adds, fire and destruction happening all around you.  It’s an epic accomplishment to down that first boss and move on.
That’s when things get even cooler. The dungeon itself has you going from indoors to crawling around in a creepy cavern. The opening scene has the massive tree picture from the newly released wallpaper which was awesome to recognize. At one point, I remembered a certain area where lava was shooting out and the colors were so vibrate I thought I was climbing Mt. Doom in Mordor. Either way, the environment and scale of the dungeon were the best to date.
Quality
I was quiet impressed by some of the boss mechanics and quality of the dungeon. When I think of fun encounters (even though I’m a PvPer) usually these are more than a tank and spank fight.  You need to move around, constantly be on guard, and communicating to be successful. every boss we fought had something like this. Whether it be three bosses at once or a phase where all you could was run, everything was fun.
By the end of the night, we reached the final boss but I needed to leave so we called it. I had a great time testing out this dungeon with zero bugs found. Moreover, I think the size, time, and boss encounters are just right. This will be similar to the Crypt of Hearts VR 12 dungeon just with ramped out difficulty. So if you haven’t tried out dungeons yet, now’s a good time to start before patch 1.5 drops.
Thanks for reading this and stopping by the site. Have you tried City of Ash on the PTS? If not, what’s your favorite dungeon?