UESP Forums

ESO is releasing soon and it's time to start planning about character builds. We are aware we can mix and match any armour, weapons, skills etc with any class.. But there must be a catch.. What mixture is ideal?

I've been planning on making a heavy armoured-2h weaponry Altmer Lightning Sorcerer ---> so I have hard hitting melee combat along with solid Mage power. After some research, I read that for a sorcerer, you'd want light armour because of the magicka boost it gives... So should I continue with my build plan? I believe the Altmer racial bonus provides a decent amount of magicka as it is...

I'd like other's inputs on this. Feel free to post your own builds here too!

I would take stuff you read with a grain (or pound) of salt. Heavy armor helps your survivability a lot more than light armor does. Light armor helps you cast more spells. Which of these is more important to you? If you're meleeing (especially without a shield) then I'd say heavy armor sounds like a great choice. There are pros and cons to anything you pick, and as long as you're aware of the tradeoffs, I don't see what the issue is. It sounds like your build will be amazing for dps.

Great to hear! I was worried at first but this makes great sense. thanks

People saying x class wants y... usually aren't thinking much about what a class CAN do.

Do what you wish IMO just pay close attention to WHAT all you're doing.

I'm currently planning on playing a heavy armored ninja nightblade primary bar.
all 7 armor slots are heavy so grabbing a passive weapon damage boosts of 7% from armor, 5% from wielding a 2h sword, 13% from ultimate's passive effect. Using the actives it can jump to +(11*x)% (where x is number of enemies hit by the aoe), another 7% (from armor), and +(10+(20/2))% with an added 30-36% bonus on whoever I smack.

Added bonus is that one of those skills breaks snares and another grants immunity to disabling effects and knock backs. Only downside is that it will need to make the weapon swap a set up for GTFO maneuvers and surviving.

edit: note I have still yet to fully understand how overcharge works or what stats can all be overcharged... It seems silly to be able to get as much +% damage as this build appears capable of doing on paper at a single point in time. Most of it's damage will of course be from light and heavy swings and reverse slice (over executioner for extra splash damage in groups as the +15% on executioner would only apply to a finishing blow effect from the skill only if the tooltip is right. (says abilities not attacks).

The character I've been working hardest on is a dunmer sorcerer. I didn't really get far at all with her in the last beta, because I kept getting distracted by messing with the character creator and making my other characters. But I have used the skill calculator on esohead to help me come up with three possible builds.

This links to her build on esohead.

That actually includes everything needed for all three builds, just in case I decide to switch between them willy nilly. Although I would like to narrow it down to two, as that would be more convenient for the weapon swap. Also I am not sure how many skill points between level up, skyshards, and various quest rewards we will end up with. Some people seem to be estimating anywhere between 150 to 300, so I think I'm good there, even with plenty of points left over for a crafting profession.

So my first idea was to try to make a self healing build. It would have the following skills.
1. Blood Craze
2. Rapid Strikes
3. Critical Surge
4. Inner Light
5. Winged Twilight Matriarch
It would involve wielding two daggers for a 10% critical chance bonus from the dual wielding perk "Twin Blade and Blunt", and wearing 7 pieces of medium armor for a 21% critical chance bonus from the medium armor perk "Dexterity". These two perks combined with keeping the mages guild ability "Inner Light" toggled on for a 20% critical chance bonus, would result in a whopping 51% critical chance bonus. This would all be to maximize the healing done by the 20 second storm calling spell "Critical Surge" which, for the duration, causes critical hits to heal the player for 65% of the damage they do.
Rapid Strikes also increases attack speed by 18% for 6 seconds, which would give me more opportunities to land a critical hit.
Then of course there is Blood Craze, which causes a DoT(Damage over Time) to the target, which also heals the player.
And last but not least, my Winged Twilight Matriarch would heal me when my health falls low.
Now of course the Matriarch and the Inner Light ability will keep 15% of my magic points tied up, but my only other need for magic points here is to cast Critical Surge every 20 seconds I'm in combat. The only time I can think I would be in combat long enough to need to re-cast, is in a boss battle, which will most likely be group content, with the tank soaking up the damage anyhow.

Another possible solo build, still has some quite a bit of self healing in there, but is slightly more focused on preventing damage in the first place.
1. Blood Craze
2. Thundering Presence
3. Critical Surge
4. Bound Aegis
5. Winged Twilight Matriarch
Very similar to the above, only number 2 and 3 have changed. Thundering Presence lasts only 9 seconds, and Bound Aegis ties up 10% of my magic pool. So that leaves 20% of my magic pool bound in the summon and aegis, and two somewhat expensive buffs to keep applying every 9 and 20 seconds. At first I was thinking I would make this set with 5 pieces of medium and 2 pieces of heavy armor, but now I am wondering I I would need to make that 2 pieces of light. I'll have to actually get in there and see how much I'm falling short of my magic needs before I can really come to that conclusion. It would still however use the two daggers for the critical strike bonus as stated above.

Finally my more heavy damage group build, where hopefully there is a dedicated healer and tank, or at least enough people hitting things and taking there own damage that I don't have to worry about it too much.
1. Blood Craze
2. Rapid Strikes
3. Critical Surge
4. Velocious Curse
5. Winged Twilight Matriarch
The only difference between this and the fourth build is number 4, I actually set this one up, just because I like daedric curse(which can be morphed into velocious curse) so much. It is just so satisfying to watch the , tick...tick...tick...tick...BOOM! This would use two swords for the straight up 5% damage bonus from "Twin Blade and Blunt", and 5 pieces of medium with 2 pieces of light armor. This may be to many timers to keep track of and and keep applied(velocious curse every 3.5s, rapid strikes every 6s, blood craze every 7s, critical surge every 20s) but I'll test it out and see if the lack of timers on enemy health bars, or my own, makes it too hard to keep track of. At least with velocious curse gives me a nice little explosion to let me know I need to lay on another.

Now my main worry with these, is that in all other MMOs, I've always looked for someone else to tell me what I'm supposed to do with my class, I've never really tried to come up with my own "rotation". If anyone has any suggestions or pointers that would be much appreciated, though I am hoping to hold onto the theme and feel of the character.

Just focus on a priority system where every few seconds you have something going off and managing all your resources. I don't see any real 'rotations' surfacing in the mean time except some form of two phase things where people are in some sort of inefficient resource burning phase and transition into a low dmg resource regen phase (i.e. a nightblade who swaps to DW with siphoning strikes after burning through all their magicka and stam)

I am going to go for a dunmer fighter, with sword, shield, bow, good stealth and ability to heal. I like the idea of doing a bit of conjuration and destruction too, as well as alchemy. That's the basics anyway, of course the reality of the game will force some adaptions

no doubt will be regularly pwned by monsters and more well thought out characters but i will be RPing to the max so expect to find me swigging matze on a friday night watching the sun go down over *insert nice Tamreil view here*

not emperor material maybe

After the beta I realized that my idea (Altmer Lightning Sorcerer, 2h sword with heavy armour) was a really awesome combo. Very hard hitting with a good amount of protection (Heavy armour + lightning shield ability).

Although, after testing an imperial, I really liked it also. I'm going to play a dual wield sword heavy armour imperial, who will work hard with blacksmithing because its an unreal profession !

EDIT

Along with that fact, I need to decide on a class. I've been thinking Ardent Flame Dragonknight.... But i also like the idea of Dawn's Wrath Templar?

Which one will be best in your opinion. I'm looking to be a melee fighter and deal a lot of damage. With Dawn's Wrath, I think it would be cool tossing some magic fire in there too, although imperials aren't the best magic wise.

I'm not a big fan of stacking one skill's abilities too much. Not enough synergy most the time.

Thought Ardent flame will be something I start pulling together for an anti-vampire build.

I've been knocking about the idea of an Altmer Heavy Armor (with a few pieces of Light for magicka bonuses...maybe at a ratio of 4/3) 2h hammer/destruction staff (alternating as befits the situation) Sorcerer. Dangerous at range, and dangerous up close.

The sorcerer's range of spells, and the general utility and damage of them seems superior (to me, at least) to those of any other class, and while you don't really have any close combat skills or spells, if you put enough skill points into armor/your weapon of choice--and perhaps with some skills from the Fighter's guild skill line--I think a sorcerer battlemage character could be quite effective.

Although I've yet to test any possible builds, because I don't have a gaming PC or a beta key, so...yeah.