I have a breton templar tank/dps.. so those passives are not much extra for me.. but it's still nice to get some extra magicka and spell resist anyway, so who cares..

Though it sure would be nicer if there were less OP passives (like Khajiit monopolizing physical dps, altmer monopolizing spell dps or imperials monopolizing tanking), and more lore friendly ones..

like:
Bretons converting spell damage taken into magicka once every few seconds
Nords dealing more damage when they are low on HP
etc


Or rather, no passives at all... but then I guess 99% people would be breton females..

My tank main, Altmer Templar (all points in health), is technically mismatched as well, but I just play to her strengths. With the increased magicka, I use spells for damage mitigation, heals, and/or CC more often. I make up the stamina deficit mostly through increasing block mitigation and reducing cost. I've built my playstyle to work with it, and so it works.

Op

I'm sorry about your new alts but your previous characters are not mismatched at all!

Imperials are arguably the best race for tanking because of their 12% health, 10% stamina and health back on melee attacks passives no doubt about it BUT those same bonuses make them quite viable for magicka or stamina builds.

More health means they can afford to toss every single attribute point and enchantment into magicka or use green magicka food for maximum magicka instead of blue or purple. More magicka directly increases your spell potency as well as throughput. You can easily reach 40k magicka and still have a viable 18k health pool.

Stamina is a great attribute and it helps mages block-cast longer and break CC. It is also essential in PvP.


Dragonknight and Bretons

Again, not at all a bad combination though you may want to experiment with your playstyle a little. The main perks of being a Breton are more magicka, reduced magicka costs and increased spell resistance. Those all synergise really well with a Magicka based damage dealer. DKs are some of the best damage dealers around and probably the hardiest spell-caster because of the increased spell resistance.

Even if you want to stick to medium armour, more spell resistance makes you hardier and the magicka bonuses will let you invest less in magicka and yet be able to get more use out of the highly useful Dragonknight class skills like Dragon Blood.

Finally, in addition to all the above points, racials definitely can give a unique advantage to a build but the advantage is small enough that every single combination is perfectly viable in both PvE and PvP. It's something to consider and think about when making a character but definitely not disadvantageous enough if you chose a disharmonious one to re-roll over.

I play plenty of end-game PvE and know lots of even better players than myself. Your chosen class/race combination is not that uncommon. There are plenty of imperial sorcerors and Breton dragonknights on the leaderboards and there is no need to fret about it even if you're a minmaxer.

Tomg999 wrote: »

I have some mid-Vet level chars where I used the wrong race for their role, so I am pretty much missing out on the racial passives. I do PVE, mostly solo but of course some groups.
Should I care enough to invest more time in my correctly created alts and level them up? Or just keep going and have fun?

- VR5 Sorc Imperial with Destro staff, light armor
- VR3 Dragon Knight Breton with Sword & Board, Med, armor.

I think you can make that work. Have fun with it!
My suggestion for the Sorc is respec it to take advantage of the Stamina passive the Imperial brings. There are some decent 1.6 Sorcerer stam builds out there.
The DK Breton isn't bad as well if you concentrate on Magicka and perhaps maybe use it as a tank? (you have the 1H/S already) Let Magicka be your focus and the Sword/Board be backup.

I got an Orc DK as my main... originally intended to be a Tank only.. .once I hit V14 and tanked most of the group content it got a bit boring, so I switched to Magicka DPS. Okay, Orc isn't the optimal race for a DK fire mage, but im pulling 15k+ DPS and having a big fat orc running around in a robe is pretty funny.

Don't get caught up in the min/max thing... make the most of what you got. That Breton DK has some potential!

Ill say it once again. Passives are important... sometimes. Most of the time what matters are your skills these on the bars but also your personal skill (reaction time, tactical thinking, understanding of game mechanics, knowledge about your opponent and his character, making fast decisions), but also tehnical things like overall ping, ping spikes, FPS and luck (praise the Nocturnal)! So in the end you can see that racial passives are just addition, not something that decides about strenght of your toons. If all that i mentioned above were the same to all then y, racial passives would decide who lives and whos dead. People tend to forget that its not the character most important - they are. We like to blame our most hated enemy "the balance" when something goes wrong, but the truth is that most of the time its our fault

Op reference your imperial sorc:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/171662/strongest-race-in-pvp

And

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/171130/updated-poll-strongest-class-in-pvp/p1

I'll let you draw your own conclusions on that one.

My personal opinion is that the min/max stats are only a piece of the puzzle. Any race + any class is viable as either magicka or stam builds but you will need to tweak other details based on the race+class combo to optimize. It's the how you do it that is changed by different race + class combos not the if you can do it!

Both of those races are great for either or.... who told you they werent???

Imperial is good for anything because of the health and Stam start boost.

Breton supplies Magicka and resistance for Magicka-hungry DK tanks.

Argonian would have been another story.