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Learn about Stream Team member Eigh1 Puppies and how he goes about teaching and competing in some of ESO’s toughest PvE challenges.
Endgame PvE streamer and commentator extraordinaire Eigh1 Puppies tears down the barriers between ESO’s toughest activities and its average players with educational livestreams designed to raise the floor for everybody. Learn more about this positive force for the game’s most-demanding content in our latest Community Spotlight!
Hey Eigh1 Puppies! Tell us about your ESO journey! How did you first come to the game?
I first came to ESO when I was in high school. Some of my best friends were super into TES V: Skyrim, and I was only into FPS games. When ESO came out for Xbox, they convinced me to give it a shot and I fell in love. I remember days where the three of us would get together in one of our basements with our TVs and Xboxs and play the game together!
You mostly focus on streaming and teaching PvE activities—what is it about these challenges that you most enjoy?
One thing that’s unique about my PvE content is that I play on both PC and console. I have nearly every trifecta* in the game on both platforms, and I stay on both for unique reasons. I have always enjoyed teaching on console for the challenge and the bond it creates.
The challenge is the massive information gap that console PvE players face without the tools that PC has, such as the ESO Logs or Combat Metrics (CMX) add-ons. I first had to raid on PC with these tools to understand how to teach players to improve in concepts like damage that are scenario-specific (for example, trash damage, sustained boss damage, and burst damage), then I went through streams and watched my fellow console players. It’s much more difficult to help players improve on console as opposed to PC, where you can see what skill was used in a specific second, why, what it did, and if that was the right decision.
The bond with my teams is what has kept me on console as of late. I’ve led my three teams for about four years now and have grown close to many of these players. I had the chance to meet a few of them at QuakeCon, and it’s cool to see the relationships you build in a game like ESO play out before your eyes in an IRL setting.
I enjoy PC for the raw competition. I get very competitive, especially when it comes to my damage, and I enjoy hitting top public logs in whatever content the PC team is progressing, as well as watching the live DPS numbers play out.
I’m itching to start score pushing and going beyond simple public logs and scores as my “competition,” though. So, until the itch goes away, I’ll be focusing my streams more on hardcore score pushes with players who don’t need to be taught anymore. I will still be putting out teaching content on YouTube, though, and I am more than happy to answer any questions chat has while I stream. That element of my content will always be present! ?
Are you looking forward to the Infinite Archive? Are you planning to stream or commentate on it?
I am very excited for Infinite Archive. I’ve played only a couple hours of it, and it’s going to be interesting to min-max. My head is filled with different build adaptations for each Arc as you progress. I have 13 different setups for different boss stages and fights already! I’m hyped to try to push a top leaderboard score in there when it goes live!
What’s the difference between a good PvE raid leader and a great one?
I think a defining difference between a good raid lead and a great one is the ability to know your limits. Not even limits in skill, but more so in management—especially when you get into the most difficult content in the game. A raid lead spends an ungodly amount of time in researching fights, coming up with group compositions (comps) that suit their team’s needs, figuring out Ultimate rotations, getting comfortable enough to do their role well in addition to directing the fight with mechanic and call outs, to name a few.
The best thing a great raid lead can do is recognize when they might be putting too much on their own plate and allocate some of these responsibilities to other players. They should also understand that there is ALWAYS a better way to do a fight, plus be open to the idea of change, regardless of how much time or research they spent developing comps and strategies. Finally, they must be incredibly open to feedback from the group.
If your group is struggling with a boss or encounter, what do you do to help people focus up or boost morale?
This is a tough one. Everyone knows when a fight or progression is going horribly wrong. People start to check out, and it’s hard to get a team back on track. I find that sometimes the best thing is to do a visual reset, whatever that may entail. Sometimes, we’ll be on the last boss, progressing a hard mode, and people start dying to mechanics that they never die to. That’s when we travel out and reset.
This doesn’t always fix everything, and sometimes the night is just shot. If you’re not going to call it early, try to have fun and make light of how bad things are going. I love to get loud, creative, and dramatic whenever I’m leading and this happens. Exaggerating goofy mistakes in a funny and creative way can sometimes lighten the mood, especially if you’re the one who makes the mistake as the raid lead. People eat that up. XD
What’s more important in a top-tier PvE group: individual skill or teamwork?
What most people would view as teamwork, I attribute more to individual skill. When you’re looking at groups like we saw in the QuakeCon event, you might think, “Wow, these folk operate like a well-oiled machine.” And that’s true, but it’s also not. Everybody has a job, and everybody executes that job to perfection. Even the raid lead, who has the additional job to make sure that the team is aware of certain things happening and to coordinate team Ultimates, must also do whatever they’re doing in the actual fight flawlessly.
So, in the sense that success relies on all 12 doing their jobs well, you might call that teamwork, but I look for players to improve their individual skill so that they’re benefiting the team.
What do you recommend for newer players who have never tried ESO’s endgame PvE content and want to try it out?
Just dive in. Especially with this new Group Finder tool coming with Update 40, so many groups are progressing content at so many different levels, it won’t be hard to find something that’s suitable for you. Get into Discord (even on console), get into guilds, get in touch with players (my DMs are always open even if I don’t always respond quickly), and just get into the content.
Decide what you enjoy about the endgame. If you want to push it casually with friends and have some fun, then enjoy the game that way. For players who hunger for more, I suggest becoming your absolute strongest critic. Always have an open mind and always assume there is a better strat, comp, or rotation—because there always is. When you’re not sure how you can continue to improve, seek advice from players who can help you spot areas that could use improvement.
Eigh1 Puppies (middle) commentating at QuakeCon
How long did it take for you to truly get comfortable live commentating?
Commentating is something I’ve always naturally enjoyed. When I was a kid, I’d comment on Madden or Call of Duty games my friends were playing and try to sound like the announcers. I look up to Tony Romo a lot as a commentator. He’s so funny, engaging, and knowledgeable that it makes him entertaining to watch, and I have tried to mimic his style in my ESO commentating quite a bit.
The whole thing started as a joke. A couple of teams in Discord were beefing, and someone threw out the idea of having them compete head-to-head to settle their drama. Somebody else said, “Yeah and Eight Puppies can commentate,” and I seized on the idea. I spent the entire day developing scenes on OBS, fine-tuning ideas about how I wanted to present this, going over what I wanted to talk about, and getting my buddy Defy to cohost. Then I threw on my suit and just pretended I was kid again, having fun!
So, there wasn’t ever really a moment where I was uncomfortable. I remember at QuakeCon, Gina and Finn asked just before we went on stage if I was nervous. I was sweating the night before. I was reading logs, practicing what I was going to say about each team and the content they were pushing, and planning for different scenarios that might evolve out of the competition. But when we got there, I was surprisingly calm. It was just fun!
What’s the most important skill for somebody who wishes to commentate for ESO’s PvE or PvP activities?
In my opinion, it’s knowledge and experience in your field. You can’t just talk about what’s going on. You must help people understand why it’s significant: why such a thrilling moment is so exciting. This is especially true in such an intricate and seemingly chaotic environment like an ESO Trial. You need to know enough to explain a dangerous situation quickly and fluently. You need experience being in that situation to reflect the excitement or panic in your own demeanor, and then you have to be a little dramatic—enough to help the audience feel the excitement that you do in that particular situation.
Where can the community find your streams and content?
I stream all my Trial runs at Twitch.tv/eigh1_puppies. Here you can see us progress the most difficult content in the game in a live setting. Any player is welcome to ask any question at any time and get an answer from a helpful community of players with tons of experience!
I post build guides @Eigh1Puppies on YouTube. Here you can find some in-depth DPS guides that teach players everything there is to know about a class, share a variety of setups that work for x, y, and z situations, and discuss the basic rotations of a class and how to adapt those rotations to real content scenarios.
Finally, I’m also on Twitter, Instagram, and Patreon as Eigh1_Puppies as well. ?
Any shoutouts you’d like to make to the #ESOFam?
I’d be remiss if I didn’t shout out to some ESO PvE creators who do not get enough attention. Ninja Pulls does phenomenal work on YouTube, especially in teaching endgame PvE for newer players (they’re on Twitch and Twitter as well). Charles (Twitch and YouTube) and Hyperioxes (Twitch and YouTube) are a couple of the best players in the world competing for world records daily on Twitch. They post incredibly scenario-specific videos for YouTube that help players reach that top tier level of play. They’re both open to sharing strategies and compositions that they develop as part of their world-record runs. Additionally, RY ESO (YouTube) has multiple high-level DPS videos and is another fantastic creator to check out.
I also want to thank my teams from a guild some may know as Pantheon or Mental Barrier for their incredible hard work, progress, and success over the years. They’ve provided invaluable support to me in my journey as an ESO Content Creator. I love each of these players on such a personal level, and I would not be where I am without them today. This includes the folks currently on the team now, plus those I played with in the past whom I remember so fondly (Mchap, I’m talkin’ about you, brother <3).
Many thanks to Eigh1 for taking the time out of his busy schedule to answer our questions and share his methods with the #ESOFam. If you have your own PvE-focused livestreams or guides, or have seen some content you think the rest of the ESO community would also enjoy, don’t hesitate to share it all with us via X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook!
*Editor’s note: Trifectas are extremely difficult endgame achievements for both Dungeons and Trials.
