A lengthy Question for "professional-ish" help concerning Builds and Stats

HerrRhodes

So to start off, i want to say that i have been playing ESO since Day 1. I love the game, its fun and i play it a lot with friends. I have also played a couple other MMO's such as GW2, WOW, and SWTOR. That said, I have never been able to comprehend many of the game mechanics such as builds and the importance of different stats. Often when finding gear I simply equip whatever Has the highest attack/defense.

One other problem is that i just started my freshman year in college and just to make sure i didnt screw up my future, i left my Gaming tower at home so i would have one less glaring distraction, allowing me to focus on classwork. However, now that i am in the swing of things, understanding how much actual free time i have and have gotten into a daily "Schedule," I will be bringing my computer with me and playing eso in my down hours.

That last paragraph has brought up a problem though... I havent played in months.

My Character is heavily outdated. I havent played since they released morrowind but want to get back into the fray. So I would like to "Scrap" my character (Respec just about everything) and build up my stats and build in a new "meta" way. As of now, my skills are nothing more than a "hodgepodge" of skills that have a high number that follows the word damage. However i know that this is not what should be done to create a good build.

So can you guys help me build my character?? It would mean a lot to me.

Below I will Be listing all areas i need help with understanding and building.

Thank you.


My character is an Imperial Sorcerer with 270+ champion Points (at the time of posting) with LVL 50 in all skill trees except for werewolf, Two handed, Bow, medium armor, Undaunted, and Both aliance war trees. Primarily Use Inferno Staff in my main hand with Dual wield in my secondary.

I Have All DLC and will be buying Morrowind in the week so i am not limited to any gear.

I would like to create a DPS build that actually has a chance of helping people i play with meaning i will respec everything and start from scratch if need be.


First Question: Should I keep with having two different Weapon types or should I Do something along the line of having an Inferno staff in both hands and why is this better than doing what i usually do?




Second Question: How should i Distribute my attribute points and why does this benefit me? (I am currently sitting at 30 points in Health and 29 in magicka and 5 in Stam. I was thinking "More health = Live longer)



Third Question: In my Main Hand, What type of weapon (not asking for item sets just yet) should i use and what skills should go with it and why is this a good option?? (im just trying to understand the game a little better) And should i put poisions and of what type??? And When should i Use these skills and in what order??



Fourth Question: In my Offhand, Should I use the Same weapon as listed above or do you reccomend a new one? and Why does this work? Depending on your answer what skills should go in this hand and when and how should i use them? Also poisions????



Fifth Question: What Passive Skills Do You Deem Necessary for having a successful SORC DPS Build and Which Skills should i just avoid And Why????



Sixth Question: What Item sets should i Be using?? Light, Med, or Heavy?? Which traits and enchantments should each item have and why? Which sets and where to find them?? And why does this set benefit me???

Head:
Shoulders:
Hands:
Legs:
Chest:
Belt:
Feet:
Neck:
Ring 1:
Ring 2:
Primary Weapon:
Primary Offhand (if using dual weilding or other):
Backup Weapon:
Backup Offhand (if using Dual Weilding or other):


Seventh Question: Champion Points Confuse TF outta me. Which Constellations should i invest my points in and in which skills should focus on and why???



Eighth Question: Which Potions Should I use and how do you make them?? When should i use these potions???? What food items should i craft and use???



Ninth Question: What Addons Should I have?



Tenth Question: Should I Change my race?? (I have crowns to burn baby)



Anything Else You believe is Essential and Why it helps:






I know this is a lot so if you are willing to help i will be eternally grateful.

Thank you for all your Help.

VaranisArano

First Question
First, you'll want to decide on a primary attribute: Stamina or Magicka, for two main reasons.
1. Most skills now scale from max stamina or max magicka. The more stamina you have, the harder skills and weapons that scale from stamina will hit. The more magicka you have, the harder skills and weapons that scale from magicka will hit. You can technically do a hybrid, but its much harder to make that character be as effective as someone who went one or the other. A few skills do scale from max health, but those are mostly used by specific tank builds with really high health.
2. With Morrowind, sustain took a big hit and so it is important to use heavy attacks with your weapons to restore stamina or magicka. Weapons (Onehand & shield, two-handed, Bow, and Dual Wield) will restore stamina and scale from stamina. Staffs (ice, fire, lightning, restoration) will restore magicka and scale from stamina.

With an Imperial, you'll have racial bonuses for health and stamina, so a stamina sorceror might seem a natural choice. However, you can still do a magicka sorceror quite easily. Short of top tier DPS tests, the race doesn't have a huge impact on your ability to do enough dps to complete content. You'll be able to play the vast majority of the game whether you go magicka or stamina.

Second Question
Unless you want to do a hybrid build, put all your attributes towards either stamina or magicka. Caveat: you can leave some in health if that makes you feel more comfortable but typical DPS have right around 18k health for end-game content. The idea here is that more health may or may not let you live longer, but killing your enemies quicker definitely will. You want to have enough of your main combat resource (stamina or magicka) to kill theings and often to heal yourself as well.

Most of the rest of these can't really by answered until you've picked a stamina or magicka build, but I'll try to give some hints.

Third Question
If stamina, use a bow for sure. Then use Dual Wield or Two-handed on your other bar. two-handed is better for PVP, dual wield will give you a lot of self-healing and DPS for PVE.
Stamina Skills: Hurricane (sorc storm calling), Crit Surge (sorc storm calling), Dark deal (Sorc dark magic) (Crit Surge and Dark Deal are great for healing yourself)
Bow: Endless Hail, Poison Injection (These DOTs are a mainstay for all stam DPS, you get a lot of DPS from keeping these going while you do other forms of damage)
Dual Wield: Flurry, Blade Cloak, whatever seems useful
You'll probably want some Fighter's Guild skills for more weapon damage, like Dawnbreaker or Trab Beast

If magicka, use staffs. Which staff you use depends on the build. It will probably be lightning/lightning or fire/lightning. Ice staff is mostly used for tanking with the tri-focus passive.
The biggest choice for a magicka sorc is whether you want to run pets or not. If you do, you'll be double-barring Volatile Familar and the Twilight Matriarch. If you don't, you can fill in those spots with other skills.

Other basic sorc skills: Elemental Blockade and Liquid lightning for DOTs, Hardened Ward or Annulment for your magicka shields (grab a magicka shield, its your best defense), Force Pulse for a spammable, and the Mage's Fury execute.
Mages Guild: Inner Light gives you a bunch of extra magicka, important because your spells get more powerful the more magicka you have.

Poisons are more important in PVP. For PVE, you'll pick an enchantment that fits with what you are doing. If stamina, a weapon damage or poison enchantment can be very effective. If magicka, spell power, shock, or fire can be very useful.

Questions 4-7 really depend on whether you go stamina or magicka.

Question 8
You'll learn alchemy by consuming reagents or mixing reagents. You can collect reagents by farming the plants or buying them. For the vast majority of play, I use the base dropped potions for stamina or magicka.
However, as you get into DPS, you might use potions that grant you multiple effects. The usual ones grant:
1. Stamina, stam recovery, weapon power, and weapon crit
2. Magicka, magicka recovery, spell power, and spell crit
That is assuming that you aren't getting the savagery buff (more critical) or brutality buff (more power) from something else, because the potion buff won't stack.

Food: I would start with a cheapish purple tri-food that will give you more of health, magicka and stamina. If you find you need more recovery you could try Dubious Camoran Throne, a drink that gives max health, max stamina and stamina recovery or Witchmother's Potent Brew, a drink that gives max health, max magicka, and magicka recovery.

Question 9
For trading: Tamriel Trade Center or Master Merchant. TTC will give you a database with all the listings in game. Master Merchant will give you an average price based on your guilds' sales.
For DPS checks: Foundry Tactical Combat (FTC) and Combat Metrics.

Question 10
The meta race for a magicka sorcerer is Altmer, followed by Breton and Dunmer.
The meta race for a stamina sorcerer is Redguard, followed by Imperials, Orcs, Khajiit and the other stamina races.
An Imperial will do just fine as either. Thing is, race doesn't make a huge difference outside of very top tier DPS. Having the meta race might make your life a little bit easier but it won't matter that much.
(I have a Breton Stamina Sorcerer and she does just fine)


So the biggest thing to consider right now is whether you want to go magicka or stamina with your sorcerer. If you want to do a hybrid, there are ways to make that work too, it just really determines the future of the build which one you go with.

Nestor

HerrRhodes wrote: »

My Character is heavily outdated. I havent played since they released morrowind but want to get back into the fray. So I would like to "Scrap" my character (Respec just about everything) and build up my stats and build in a new "meta" way. As of now, my skills are nothing more than a "hodgepodge" of skills that have a high number that follows the word damage. However i know that this is not what should be done to create a good build.

Let me make this easy on you.

Your not heavily outdated, by any stretch. Morrowind introduced more of a need for Sustain is all. Skill Costs went up, and Cost Reduction was removed from the Champ Tree and changes were made to Regen means. You can get around that in a few ways. Heavy and to some extent Light Attacks are one of the primary combat methods to return resources during a fight. You can use Skill Cost Reduction glyphs on your Jewelry (one or two of them) to help. Some people load up the Regen, but that means changing your build in most cases. Which is fine if you want to do that, me, I just make small adjustments and play on just fine. Also, if you were not in the habit of using Tri-Pots before, well, now your going to use them more often.

Of course if your build was out on the bleeding edge before and you want to stay out there, then you may want to make some major changes. I play at 95% so most of the balance changes ZOS comes out with are small bumps in the road.