Newbie confused by Stamina/Magika abilities

mashugana · June 2016

Are Magika abilities uselss if I put all points in Stam?

If I decide to make a Stam NB, does that mean my NB abilities are useless? It seems like you need to choose Stam or Magika. If you choose Stam, then you only use weapin skills. Or maybe Magika skills still do decent damage but they are just not as good?

I am a very casual PvE player that just wants to survive and enjoy the story.

But if Stam builds use weapon skills then I guess I do not understand the difference between a DB Stam NB and a DB Stam Sorc. Since all the skills come from the wepon, isn;t the class meaningless?

Thanks for any advice.

driosketch · June 2016

One, stamina or magicka is mainly for your damage (and healing) abilities, which scale off max stamina +weapon damage or max magicka and spell damage.

Two a number of class skills have a stamina morph, and Ultimates will scale off whichever is higher.

Third, a stamina NB can probably still pull off 3 cloaks, so you should still look into utility skills.

UrQuan · June 2016

What @driosketch says is correct. This site has a list of all of the class skills including which ones have a stamina morph (I think it's up to date):
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Class+Skills

Most of the time you'll want to slot a couple of utility magicka skills from your class too, even if you're a stamina build. Typically you wouldn't want to bother with magicka damage skills if you're a stamina build, but utilities like cloak can still be very useful, and your magicka pool will be big enough to periodically use them.

Also, even if you were to only slot weapon skills, there would still be a difference between a stamina NB and a stamina sorcerer, because they'll have different passives and different ultimates available.

mashugana · June 2016

That makes sense - thanks. So if I go Stam I can ignore the pure Magika damage abilities but not the others. Also I'll look at the Stam morphs.

Thank you!

newtinmpls · June 2016

I would not quite say ignore; but you are right in that if you are a casual player, then you can get away with quite a sloppy build.

For myself, it's only when doing undaunted vet dungeons that I really find out of my build is workable.

Eocosa · June 2016

As many have said I would avoid magic damage abilities as a stamina user and mostly stay away from the two magic based weapons (destruction and restoration staff), but many class abilities, even magic based ones can be used by a stamina build to great effect!

UrQuan · June 2016

mashugana wrote: »

That makes sense - thanks. So if I go Stam I can ignore the pure Magika damage abilities but not the others. Also I'll look at the Stam morphs.

Thank you!

It's also worth noting that there are some magicka abilities that are damage abilities, but that you really use for their utility rather than their damage. Sometimes a stamina build will want to use those for the utility portion.

For example, the Summon Shade ability is a magicka ability that summons a shade to attack your enemy, doing damage to them. It also has a utility aspect, though, in that it inflicts that enemy with Minor Maim so that the enemy does less damage. In some stamina builds it would be worth using that ability specifically for the utility of Minor Maim.