Is it possible to have a viable character that utilises no class skills/passives?

Madrax573

There are a lot of discussions around the various classes and 'built/play your own way' etc

So I was wondering if it was possible to build a viable character just using non-class skills/passives?
If so what would that look like...

GrumpyDuckling

Viable for much of overland content, sure, but getting into dungeons/trials you're just hurting your group. In PVP and Veteran Maelstrom Arena you're making the game much more difficult, but you could still see some successes.

It wouldn't look pretty and choosing a class would be pointless, so it would come down to which weapon skill line and which world skill lines you would want to pursue.

kylewwefan

I think you could go with no class skills fairly easily. But you probably still want some passives.

Even without the passives, would probably be completely viable. We’re very close to this now. Psijic skills, Mages guild, Fighters guild, Assault; can easily replace class skills.

Mostly you need a couple dots and a spammable.

RaptorRodeoGod

I mean, just take a Stam Sorc build, and find something to replace Hurricane and Bound Armaments with. Probs something like Deadly Cloak in place of Hurricane, and maybe Evil Hunter in place of Bound Armaments

Royalthought

werewolf

SodanTok

^ Werewolf (unless you consider werewolf as some subclass) is obv choice.

Other than that, any class will work. As mentioned, Stamsorcs are nearly doing that already. The DPS will go away rapidly tho, but well if you can do 50k dps on normal build the DPS you will drop without class skills/passives will still be enough for any content

Hail, caltrops, trap, poison injection, rending slashes, weapon spammable. Done.

juhislihis19

stamDK is one.

Rending Slashes bleed > Venomous Claw
Dawnbreaker > Leap
Reve Bash > Petrify
Rally/FM > Igneous Weapons
Spiked Armor > Immovable, but you could choose the latter as well (you're losing out on 12% healing received tho)
Heroic Slash or any spam skill really > (pre-PTS) Noxious Breath

VaranisArano

Viable for what, exactly?

For normal dungeons:

Healers would be pretty easy, just resto staff, destro staff, and some of the Undaunted skills like necrotic orbs for resource return. You'd have to be on top of your HOTs since you don't have much in the way of burst heals.

Tanks, similarly, can run one hand and shield. I'd use Silver Leash for your pull. An Ice Staff back bar would be pretty useful for an AOE CC or Time Stop. The biggest issue might be self heals and group buffs- I'd probably look at Blood Altar. I'd miss the class skills that give resistances, so I'd compensate with gear if need be.

DDs are the really interesting one, of course and assuming non-werewolf, and for that I'd want to test it out. My Stam sorc would adapt the easiest, since its mostly trading hurricane for blade cloak, and using Vigor proactively instead of crit surge (I'd probably go back to wearing Briarheart for the extra healing if I needed to). Other than that, I think I'd end up with a generic "Mage" build for my magicka builds. Ultimate would be vamp, werewolf, dawnbreaker, or meteor or weapon ultimates. It would be losing some of the class specific buffs.

I suspect they'd be "viable" as in "technically able to complete content in the hands of an experienced player." I would not say they are very "practical" for most players.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/5056134


Stam is easy

Front bar two hander,

Camo hunter, rally, reverse slice, brawler, wrecking blow, ulti flawless dawnbreaker

Front bar dual wield,

Camo hunter, shrouded daggers, steel tornado, blood craze, bloodthirst, ulti is flawless dawnbreaker or rend

Back bar bow,

Trap, caltrops, vigor, endless hail, poison injection, ulti ballista.



Mag is harder and will do less dps.

Front bar fire staff

Inner light, degeneration (entropy), elemental ring, clench, force pulse, ulti meteor

Back bar lighting or fire

Inner light, eledrain(maybe consuming trap), harness magic, scalding rune, wall of elements, ulti elemental rage.


Both those builds will get you survivability and at least 20k dps.

RaptorRodeoGod

Stam DPS I suspect could benefit from the vMA dual weild decently compared to not having it; it might make Rend worth slotting over Flawless Dawnbreaker. Pair Relequin and Leviathan with it maybe?

Grandma

stamsorc!

Madrax573

Thanks for the input.

I'm keen to give it a shot just got to decide do I do it on a current leveled char or start a new one - I guess it depend on if I want to find out if it's just viable or if it can be a 'playstyle' from the start....

Cortimi

Yes, it's called a StamDK post Elswyr. Passives are pretty much a joke, there is no class spammable, and every single thing you "would" do with a class skill can be done the same or better with an alternative skill line.

Burst ulti? Dawnbreaker, getting buffed
Defense ulti? Barrier, or SnB ulti
Weapon spammable? Weapon skills are only choice
Dots? Cleave is better than Claws, Poison Injection
Shield? Bone Wall
Heal? Vigor and Rally

So there you go.

paulychan

https://youtu.be/62nz-WG5Vek

Xvorg

Madrax573 wrote: »

There are a lot of discussions around the various classes and 'built/play your own way' etc

So I was wondering if it was possible to build a viable character just using non-class skills/passives?
If so what would that look like...

Skills, yes... passives... not very much.

You can try a magicka build that relies on destro staff and psijic/mages guild skills, but you will need some class passives, though there are some you could just ignore.

Morgul667

Play stamsorc and youre almost there

Xvorg

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/5056134


Stam is easy

Front bar two hander,

Camo hunter, rally, reverse slice, brawler, wrecking blow, ulti flawless dawnbreaker

Front bar dual wield,

Camo hunter, shrouded daggers, steel tornado, blood craze, bloodthirst, ulti is flawless dawnbreaker or rend

Back bar bow,

Trap, caltrops, vigor, endless hail, poison injection, ulti ballista.



Mag is harder and will do less dps.

Front bar fire staff

Inner light, degeneration (entropy), elemental ring, clench, force pulse, ulti meteor

Back bar lighting or fire

Inner light, eledrain(maybe consuming trap), harness magic, scalding rune, wall of elements, ulti elemental rage.


Both those builds will get you survivability and at least 20k dps.

Psijic skills are pretty good for that, in fact Degeneration + crushing weapons on a LA build could work nicely (pelinals + elegance + Bow + everything towards spell dmg so major sorc buffs your weapon dmg). The rest of the skills could be a stun (draining shot) a DoT (injection) and RAT/Channeled or Meditate.

On a NB, using mark and leeching strikes is even better.

Maybe I'll try something like that next patch since there's no much to do against ubernecro

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

Xvorg wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/5056134


Stam is easy

Front bar two hander,

Camo hunter, rally, reverse slice, brawler, wrecking blow, ulti flawless dawnbreaker

Front bar dual wield,

Camo hunter, shrouded daggers, steel tornado, blood craze, bloodthirst, ulti is flawless dawnbreaker or rend

Back bar bow,

Trap, caltrops, vigor, endless hail, poison injection, ulti ballista.



Mag is harder and will do less dps.

Front bar fire staff

Inner light, degeneration (entropy), elemental ring, clench, force pulse, ulti meteor

Back bar lighting or fire

Inner light, eledrain(maybe consuming trap), harness magic, scalding rune, wall of elements, ulti elemental rage.


Both those builds will get you survivability and at least 20k dps.

Psijic skills are pretty good for that, in fact Degeneration + crushing weapons on a LA build could work nicely (pelinals + elegance + Bow + everything towards spell dmg so major sorc buffs your weapon dmg). The rest of the skills could be a stun (draining shot) a DoT (injection) and RAT/Channeled or Meditate.

On a NB, using mark and leeching strikes is even better.

Maybe I'll try something like that next patch since there's no much to do against ubernecro

what are you talking about? when i wrote that post up, there was no psijic skills but even so, the bars i have there are enough for what i said, to be able to survive and do at least 20k dps, prolly more. you dont need a stun in pve as a dps.

RavenSworn

You got my juices going op, I was thinking of something like that while back.

Werewolves are the most obvious choice and going Stam is the best course of action given how many weapons there are.

With no class passives though, race might mean more than usual. You can always choose any Stam race such as orc, kitty, redguard or bosmer but imo, kitty might be the way to go.

You literally have almost all the buffs from weapon and guild skill lines, with the exception of berserk I believe.

Gonna go and have a try at this in the pts. Might come up with something weird but hey, viable means being able to do content, but this is definitely not optimal.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

RavenSworn wrote: »

You got my juices going op, I was thinking of something like that while back.

Werewolves are the most obvious choice and going Stam is the best course of action given how many weapons there are.

With no class passives though, race might mean more than usual. You can always choose any Stam race such as orc, kitty, redguard or bosmer but imo, kitty might be the way to go.

You literally have almost all the buffs from weapon and guild skill lines, with the exception of berserk I believe.

Gonna go and have a try at this in the pts. Might come up with something weird but hey, viable means being able to do content, but this is definitely not optimal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4E9NYVwibg

Madrax573

I started an Imperial NB (NB simply as I don't have NB character so if I decide to not to continue it then I do)


Currently lvl 18 and TBH I haven't noticed any difference in the leveling process..

The only class thing I did was get shadow up to lvl 12 for the ultimate. Once I have a skill/guild line up enough for an ult then it will be removed and the skill points spent elsewhere. And getting WW is the logical choice for that.

RavenSworn

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

RavenSworn wrote: »

You got my juices going op, I was thinking of something like that while back.

Werewolves are the most obvious choice and going Stam is the best course of action given how many weapons there are.

With no class passives though, race might mean more than usual. You can always choose any Stam race such as orc, kitty, redguard or bosmer but imo, kitty might be the way to go.

You literally have almost all the buffs from weapon and guild skill lines, with the exception of berserk I believe.

Gonna go and have a try at this in the pts. Might come up with something weird but hey, viable means being able to do content, but this is definitely not optimal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4E9NYVwibg

Nice nice!

I was playing around in the pts and I have to say, race plays a huge part, esp if you decide not to take class passives. Redguard is the best currently, with its fantastic sustain racial. Argonian with pits are great but honestly not that much in terms of overall dps.

I have a feeling though, if you do decide to take up 'some' of the class passives, esp the ones that are generic, you might have a better time honing out and make it even better. Imagine taking a DK with their ult resource gain or the sorc reduced ult cost, some of the passives really will boost your dps without you touching any of the active abilities.

I had 20k dps on a tooth row Briarheart selenes combo, go figure. I'm not much of a rotation kind of guy so it was all over the place but its still not too bad imo. With better rotation and gear you can go do base vet dungeons even.

I switch around using two Mace's and two swords coupled with a bow(naturally) and I find that the swords with sharpened seems to be better.

Hope this helps, I might even do this when the necro comes up lol. Should be fun.