New to the game, need class advice

Earelith · January 2015

Hello all. I just bought the game and have no idea yet of classes, skill lines, e.t.c. just a general idea. I know there are class skill lines, weapon skill lines and armor. I am going to level up solo and then do pve content (mostly dungeons). I may occasionally enter some pvp in cyrodil but in a very casual mode.

I want to make a mage class, dealing decent damage with spells, have some crowd control to increase my survivability as will level solo. I also would like to be able at sometime to re-arrange my skills to create a healer(I don't know if that possible). I also prefer to have the cloth armor, a classic mage class, not battlemage.

I also like sword and board casters a lot. For example in Aion I liked a lot the Cleric class. It was slow on leveling, but had healing and great survivability. Is it possible to have a sword and board magic user here? Or sword n board favor a lot tank roles?

I am really torn btween a cloth/Staff mage/healer and sword n board Healer/mage

Is it possible to have both in one character?

Can you please advice me, which skill lines, weapons, to advance while leveling, so I can be a mage with possibility to reroll to healing when want to do grou content.

Thanks in Advance.

NotSo · January 2015

Classic mage can only (almost only, read below) be achieved by dedicating yourself to the destruction staff skill line so you could technically be any class.
Restoration staff can cover your heals later but if you want destruction staff on your main bar and something besides restoration staff on your second bar, you might be restricted to templar.
But if you want heavy crowd control, sorcerer has that covered.
Right now most cloth armor wearers are bolstering their defence above most heavy arnor wearers with armor spells and damage shields but that could be changing in the next few months when update 1.6 releases.

Sword/shield cleric type is what I'm building now with a khajiit templar, it's working really well and can easily take down the vr5 bosses in cyrodiil (at level 10, I'm level 44 now).
Though I've seen some very magicka caster heavy sword/shield sorcerers as well (in mixed armor types), relying on high stamina regen and using Dark Deal channel ability to convert stamina into magicka and health.

Jennifur_Vultee · January 2015

The Dark Magic skill line has decent crowd control Encase, I personally morphed it to Shattering Prison so it explodes when it expires causing damage. As far as the skill lines go you aren't limited to one but can pick and choose what you like from all three class skill lines. A lot of mages use a fire staff because so much stuff in game has a weakness to fire but try all three staff types to get a feel for them and see what works best for you. ^^

If you want to wear light armor then do, it has light armor perks that will buff your magicka. At level 15 you gain the ability to swap weapons and skill lines on the fly, even in combat so yeah being a healer as your second weapon/skill set is totally doable. I do recommend manually swapping out your weapon and skills before level 15 though so you can start leveling your restoration staff and the restoration skill line spells that go with it.

Earelith · January 2015

Thank you both. NotSo I am really interested in the cleric build you are trying now

I am still unsure how classes and skill level up. For example, if I choce one skill from Templar, 1 from sorcerer and equip Destruction staff, Restoration Staff and cloth armor, will all this level up as I level? And then when I want to reset my skills, I can chose whatever I want from these lines?

AlexDougherty · January 2015

Earelith wrote: »

Thank you both. NotSo I am really interested in the cleric build you are trying now I am still unsure how classes and skill level up. For example, if I choce one skill from Templar, 1 from sorcerer and equip Destruction staff, Restoration Staff and cloth armor, will all this level up as I level? And then when I want to reset my skills, I can chose whatever I want from these lines?

Class skills are bound to the class.
Weapon, Armour, Guild and world skill lines are open to everybody.

Sorcs have some decent AoE attacks and ranged attacks, but are lacking in melee (they do have some good melee if your prepeared to focus on that), their summons help a bit but are weaker at higher levels. The focus is Deadra and Lightning.
Templars have decent melee abilities, and some ranged abilities, but their third line being healing weakens them a touch. Also have problems with magicka management. The Focus is Light and healing.
DragonKnights have great melee abilities, and some great shields, they do have weaknesses, but are viewed by most as the default class. The focus is Fire, earth and Draconic influences.
Nightblades have some great siphoning abilities (stealing health) but their cloak is broken. Can make a great DPS but requires true dedication and flexibility, or you get stomped by a DK/Templar. Focus is Shadow and siphoning health.

Light Armour gives you Magicka and spell resistance, important for higher level.
Medium Armour gives you Stamina.
Heavy Armour gives some stamina and spell resistance, but is mainly for defense value (gets capped).

Weapon skills fall into four categories, One-handed and shield (defense), pure melee (dual weild and twohanded), ranged (destro staff and bow) and Restoration staff (healing). Choose which style is most important to you, which I guess is ranged and destruction staff and focus on that, you get a second weapon slot at level 15, choose something that rectifies any weaknesses you have (sword and shield in all probability).

NotSo · January 2015

Not going to be back on my computer for another week but I'll try to tell by memory (been gone for 16 days now).

So the best thing you can do while leveling up is to pull at at least 1 skill from each of your 3 class skill lines; this will allow you to progress those trees regardless on if you actually cast the abilities on your ability bar.
Your weapon skill line will level on its own simply by being equipped but you can help it along faster by having a weapon skill as well.
That sets you at 4 skills minimum out of 5 on the bar so go ahead and take an extra you feel you need (I grabbed another weapon skill) and your ultimate skill slot which you probably can't fill yet because ultimates don't unlock until skill tree level 12 or so.

Currently my secondary skill bar is holding extra skills that I use as utility and I don't cast them in combat so I'll just talk on my main bar.

I use sword/shields first skill ("puncture" i believe) because it is a cheap skill and decreases the targets armor, the morph I use gives me bonus armor when used.
I also use sword/shields 4 skill, defensive stance. This lets you reflect a magicka based projectile back at enemies. This also is the win button against a lot of hard hitting caster bosses, though I grabbed it to protect me from other players in Cyrodiil.
In the holy spears (forgot name) skill line, I'm chose (forgot name again) the ability that drops an aoe on the ground with disorient effect, this also has a player synergy that allows other players to activate to gain 25% max stamina (You cannot activate your own spell synergies).
In the holy sun fire skill line (forgot name

), I use the first skill (forgot name) and morphed it to hit 2 nearby enemies, good splash damage considering you are a self sustained tank.
In the healing skill line, I've got the restoring aura ability that boosts stamina and healing regeneration by 85% (maybe? I forget) for about 15 seconds. Most folks don't worry about healing regen and you might do better with the first skill in this skill line, but I made my own gear sets to boost all regeneration types to help stay sustained in fights so the % buff benefits me a lot more than somebody with low regen , it is also an aoe based spell so it helps out a lot of friendlies.
My ultimate ability is Nova, it's good aoe damage and you can keep on tanking inside it's aoe.

My second ability bar has a couple level 11 daggers equipped on there just so I can access the bar, it holds the healing trees first skill as a panic ability and it has Rapid Maneuver from the alliance war skill line (you can unlock this by spending a little time in Cyrodiil) I use it to run everywhere on foot because I like my pack horse to carry my stuff. No other abilities on this bar but fill to your leisure.

I've been recrafting the same armor set every ten levels just to carry me up (I skipped level 30 because Cyrodiil basically gives you an even stat boost)

I keep restoring aura and defensive stance active at all times, I weave puncture with every heavy attack, and I open with the aoe spear and sun fire spash damage thingy (keeping this active on all enemies as well for its dot damage).

EDIT;
armor levels relatively fast with 7 pieces equipped but also try to have 1 piece of your two off armors to level those as well, you never know when that active armor skill will come in handy.

I wear 5 pieces heavy with 1 light head and 1 medium chest.

Axe in one hand and a buckler (small shield) in the other, got a relatively barbaric feel going on. The goal I'm aiming for is a full supportive pvp tank that can keep my dps allies going while pulling heat from enemy players. Going to take a while before I can find an optimum playstyle for pvp specifically.
screenshot_20150102_082140_by_notsoaccurateno1-d8f1pc7.png

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Lynx7386 · January 2015

Comes down to this:

Lightning (or dark magic) Mage: Sorceror
Solar/Light Mage: Templar
Fire Mage: Dragonknight
Shadow Mage: Nightblade

any of them will work. Sorc will also give you pets, while templar gives better heals, dragonknight has better utility and survivability skills (shields, spell reflect, roots, etc.), and the nightblade has better burst damage abilities at close range.

Earelith · January 2015

wow, thanks a lot guys. That was really helpful and exactly what I was looking for

Cody · January 2015

1H and shield mages are very powerful due to the ridiculous block-casting mechanic : they have high defense, while being able to put out almost all the damage they can at the same time.

and unfortunately, people in all light armor can tank:(

Earelith · January 2015

Cody what do you mean? That I can have the right mouse button pushed while I hit a spell on my bar and it will cast it? That seem OP lol. Although I guess that you need lot of stamina to have high uptime on block right? And that will come with the cost of magica

But all these are just my thoughts and mostly based on my experience on single player TES games..don't know yet how it is on ESO

NotSo · January 2015

Sword/shield passively costs less stamina to block attacks.
As far as block casting goes, any skill with an instant cast time will cast while block remains up. Some cast time skills can be timed right to allow blocking to continue for the rest of the duration but it needs very specific timing based on your current latency, some players use macros that work almost 100% of the time with the right latency even tho macro usage for this exploit is a ban-able offense.

Block casting is something that will hopefully be patched out of the game by 1.6