Need Help - Leveling a Sorcerer

Zilophos

Finally, after literally months of picking at all of the classes (including Warden) I've decided that I want to main a Sorcerer. Ideally, I plan on doing all the content I can , entirely solo, including crafting. I'll move onto more player-driven things later if I have time. Generally speaking, I'm trying to build up into a magicka sorc dps with high survivability early on. I need someone's help figuring out the skill progression, what attributes I should invest into, and all that jazz.

gecimokus

As a mag sorc, with the right food u l reach the optimal health to survive. Somewhere around 18k health.make sure to have hardened ward slotted , and u can be unstoppable.

fractalknight

I have made characters of all of the classes. I think Sorcerer is the hardest to do solo. It can be done, but there are some situations you might not be able to pull off alone. You can always get help or avoid those. The best races would be Altmer or Breton. Breton would make you want to use light armor. Both give you buffs for using magicka. Using heavy armor at first might be helpful in staying alive. Summoning a daedric helper is and being able to slow down attacker is advised if going solo. The problem I have is self healing. As you get to higher levels there is more than one to heal yourself. At first, the only one I can think of the the one where crystals come out of the ground to hold enemies. The healing is a morph, I think. Early on, be prepared to avoid close contact or take lots of damage. I don''t have a way now to tell you names of skills to use. Sorry.

BlackSparrow

High survivability early on = pets. At least get the scamp. They're kind of like cheat mode during the hardest levels (~15-30ish), because they make it so easy to strike out on your own. (For example, my pet sorc was soloing world bosses and group dungeons by level 40... though this was before the world bosses got buffed, but still much better than my other alts!)

Pets don't generally do high DPS, so you can drop them once you've got some other skills under your belt, but they make for good training wheels, at least.

MopeyHat

fractalknight wrote: »

I have made characters of all of the classes. I think Sorcerer is the hardest to do solo. It can be done, but there are some situations you might not be able to pull off alone. You can always get help or avoid those. The best races would be Altmer or Breton. Breton would make you want to use light armor. Both give you buffs for using magicka. Using heavy armor at first might be helpful in staying alive. Summoning a daedric helper is and being able to slow down attacker is advised if going solo. The problem I have is self healing. As you get to higher levels there is more than one to heal yourself. At first, the only one I can think of the the one where crystals come out of the ground to hold enemies. The healing is a morph, I think. Early on, be prepared to avoid close contact or take lots of damage. I don''t have a way now to tell you names of skills to use. Sorry.

I would assert the opposite. Magicka sorcerer makes soloing a cakewalk.

Get the scamp and put it on both your bars. Morph it to the clannfear to get an easy heal right off the bat, plus if there's nobody else targeting your enemy, it will taunt them. Get hardened ward (daedric line) as soon as possible. Dump all points into magicka. Use max health food to get more than 15k at all times. Congratulations, you now have all you need to solo everything outside of dungeons!

If you need CC, use the dark magic skill Encase. Otherwise, you're free to make all other skills damage.

If you dislike the pet, try out Dark Exchange to get magicka and health back, or use a healing staff on your back bar to get Healing Ward.

Magdalina

Sorc are great for soloing, though some of the recent pet changes make for very...clunky gameplay using them. I'm not sure I'd recommend them for solo gameplay as it stands right now. They can hold agro for you(especially Twilight and Clannfear) but they no longer regenerate health whatsoever so you'd basically be stuck with either a resto staff to heal your pets or need to have Twilight Matriarch(the healing morph) up at all times.

What you need for surviveability is shields. Annulment in light armor tree and Hardened Ward in Daedric Summoning(pre last skill). You'll also want Surge, it's a nice damage buff and a nice HoT(Storm Calling tree). You only need like 17-20k health with food, so put most all points into magicka(this will up your damage AND make your shields stronger).

I'd recommend a destro/resto staff setup until you get the shields. With a shield you can generally shield up and do damage safely, getting healed by Surge if things do get to you. Resto staff is great for surviveability but generally suboptimal for most PvE situations, however it's always good to have just in case anyway, even when you have shields and all that good stuff. Healing Ward there is an extremely powerful skill that works great in synergy with other shields. Healing Springs (first skill) and Mutagen(see Regeneration, it's the second one I believe) are also good but more group oriented.

I'd also recommend getting Elemental Drain on your bar for soloing too - pre last skill in destro staff skill tree, lowers enemy's defenses and gives magicka back. You won't need it in the open world since stuff basically dies to 2 heavy attacks there but if you decide to do something more fun like solo a WB or a group dungeon you'll come to really appreciate it.

Far as gear goes Julianos is always good(and easily obtainable via crafting), perhaps something like Julianos 5 pc+3 pc Seducer or something. Basically you want gear buffing your magicka, spell crit and spell damage. Skill wise, don't underestimate the power of DoTs - drop some down, shield up and watch things die. Liquid Lightning in Storm Calling tree is great, Wall of Elements from destro staff is great too for example. I suppose l'll leave the rest for you to figure out for now

smacx250

Personally, I like daedric minefield instead of encase for soloing - it CC's and does good damage. Drop mines, liquid lightning, wall of elements, and then lightning heavy attack, and mob packs are done. Anything that gets close is CC'd and takes good damage. Works fine for delve and public dungeon bosses as well - but use crushing shock/crystal frags/mages wrath instead of heavy attacks when you have the resources to do so. And yes, hardened ward is key! Pets definitely make soloing stuff easier, but personally as far as "fun" goes they long ago fell out of favor for me (I hate to give up the slots for more fun stuff - like streak). I can drop them in when I get in a situation I can't otherwise solo effectively (so far only when soloing Selene). I mostly use power surge (keep it up during combat) and healing ward (oh crap heal) for heals. I don't use any BoP stuff - just things I craft or buy in guild stores. I find it fun, but it isn't "competitive"!

davey1107

Let me go back to some basics, because some of the advice might be over your head if you're very new.

Attributes

Go all one resource...magic for magic toons, and stamina for stamina toons. Long story short, you'll be using armor enchantments to hone your magic and health balance...you don't need to worry about attributes.

Skills/builds

Take a quick look at any of the master builds online...deltias gaming, alcasthq.com, sypherpk. When you see these guys slotting skills, it means they're good and something you can focus on. However, if you're going to go slow and solo the game you have plenty of time and xp to explore all of the skills. If it sounds fun, play with it.

Quick skill line leveling note

If you're super new, this might not be intuitive. Abilities level by being on your bar when you earn xp. But so do your class and weapon skill lines. As a sorc, if you don't have any daedric summoning skills on your bar, the line won't level so you can unlock better skills. Just a beginners tip...try to always put one skill from each of the three class skill lines on your bars. You want these to kinda follow your character level...a level 40 sorc should have all their class skill lines in the 35-45 range.

Skill point bonanza!!

With One Tamriel you can go anywhere and get most sky shards and skill points in the game right away. Don't worry about spending points...there are a bazillion and you won't have to make many tough choices over where to spend...mostly,you'll spend in everything you open.

Craft on main?

One exception to the above is that the six crafting skills can consume a LOT of skill points. Because of this, some people prefer to use an alt (or alts) to split these up. My personal opinion is that it's totally up to you. If you love questing and shard hunting and plan to play your main through these in most/all zones, you can totally be a master crafter in all trades. My main is...and he has every single point spent in class lines, three weapon lines, two armor lines, all six crafts, and a bunch of others. It can be done. But he's played through the three faction quests and gotten every shard.

If you decide to split up the crafting, then wood, smith and cloth should stay together. They share motif knowledge. Alchemy, enchant and provision don't need to stay together...they can, or they can be split up.

If you have no idea which route to take, just start crafting on your main. If he ever gets short on skill points, it's easy enough to move alchemy, enchant and provision off to an alt. That's what I did when I first played, then there came a bunch of DLC skill points and my main took back all the crafting duties.

3rd party tools

To help you on your way, these are the resources I found invaluable. I won't go into detail...explore them as you like. ESO Academy and Tamriel Foundry for most basics. Deltias Gaming. ESO Fashion for seeing armor styles and furnishings. Sunshine Daydream for all things crafting (some amazing help here).

I have an iPad, and I totally relied on two apps, which are iOS and android. The ESO App has maps of all shards, wayshrined, lore books, etc, including ALL dungeon floor maps w bosses (wow). And for crafters, ESO workbench, which has the primary use of tracking and timing that trait research (which takes over a year). Work bench also has a recipe check list, potion builder and enchantment builder. I spent a couple of buck on these two apps, and I use them both all the time.

Welcome to the game! Have fun with your sorc.