How do you make a build exactly?

SocialAssassin

First of all, I want to say "respect" to those that can make those awesome builds. So how do you go about making a build anyways? Is there an Idiot's guide or something? I have tried my best to understand what abilities to use or not to use. I'm sure it comes down to basics and what are those basics. And any advice to someone that wants to make their own build? Thanks

fiender66

You may look at the guides on the web. Seriously, there's a lot of addresses in the section about guides here in the forum. Those by AlcastHQ are a good place to start, IMO

relentless_turnip

Starting with someone else's build like dottz, alcast etc... Is a good place to start, I have always tried to do it myself and made quite a few disasters😂

My first magdk I used elfbane, silks of the sun and valkyn skoria... As you can tell I basically just put on loads of fire sets 😂 this was a heavy armor build, because I liked the way it looked and didn't understand passives properly.

I then discovered UESP build editor. Which allows you to completely build with sets skills and gives you some pretty accurate numbers. I kept getting killed too quickly and decided I wanted to be more tanky and wanted to be in light for extra damage. I also wanted to eliminate buffs as I wanted to get the hang of combat. I ended up using mighty chudan, rattlecage and fortified brass https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=172109

I now run a couple of different builds on my mag DK, but making a build to get used to combat really helped me. Make something give the combat a go and figure out what you need to be successful. If you need any other help let me know!

SocialAssassin

relentless_turnip wrote: »

Starting with someone else's build like dottz, alcast etc... Is a good place to start, I have always tried to do it myself and made quite a few disasters😂

My first magdk I used elfbane, silks of the sun and valkyn skoria... As you can tell I basically just put on loads of fire sets 😂 this was a heavy armor build, because I liked the way it looked and didn't understand passives properly.

I then discovered UESP build editor. Which allows you to completely build with sets skills and gives you some pretty accurate numbers. I kept getting killed too quickly and decided I wanted to be more tanky and wanted to be in light for extra damage. I also wanted to eliminate buffs as I wanted to get the hang of combat. I ended up using mighty chudan, rattlecage and fortified brass https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=172109

I now run a couple of different builds on my mag DK, but making a build to get used to combat really helped me. Make something give the combat a go and figure out what you need to be successful. If you need any other help let me know!

Thanks, I will. And letting me know about the builder.

relentless_turnip

SocialAssassin wrote: »

relentless_turnip wrote: »

Starting with someone else's build like dottz, alcast etc... Is a good place to start, I have always tried to do it myself and made quite a few disasters😂

My first magdk I used elfbane, silks of the sun and valkyn skoria... As you can tell I basically just put on loads of fire sets 😂 this was a heavy armor build, because I liked the way it looked and didn't understand passives properly.

I then discovered UESP build editor. Which allows you to completely build with sets skills and gives you some pretty accurate numbers. I kept getting killed too quickly and decided I wanted to be more tanky and wanted to be in light for extra damage. I also wanted to eliminate buffs as I wanted to get the hang of combat. I ended up using mighty chudan, rattlecage and fortified brass https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=172109

I now run a couple of different builds on my mag DK, but making a build to get used to combat really helped me. Make something give the combat a go and figure out what you need to be successful. If you need any other help let me know!

Thanks, I will. And letting me know about the builder.

No problem 👍

Bashev

SocialAssassin wrote: »

First of all, I want to say "respect" to those that can make those awesome builds. So how do you go about making a build anyways? Is there an Idiot's guide or something? I have tried my best to understand what abilities to use or not to use. I'm sure it comes down to basics and what are those basics. And any advice to someone that wants to make their own build? Thanks

If you want to make a build yourself you should know how the combat mechanics works. What synergize well and what not. That is a lot of information and you should read a lot in order to get understand how the game works. Also in ESO you have to test almost everything as it could be bugged or changed.

SocialAssassin

fiender66 wrote: »

You may look at the guides on the web. Seriously, there's a lot of addresses in the section about guides here in the forum. Those by AlcastHQ are a good place to start, IMO

His page is for some reason not working for me right now. But I'll check it out? When it works lol!

Asardes

It's actually pretty complex. First you need to establish what's the usage of that build. The way to start is to see various guides where people actually take time to explain the passives, abilities, how the gear they picked works. Filling the bar with random abilities, or copying a build without understanding how it works doesn't get you really good results. From my experience many people don't even bother reading in game skill descriptions. Sometimes it's hilarious because they ape old builds that don't even work anymore

WoppaBoem

For any build start playing the class now its passive and skills, when you also read up to all set options you can come up with very nice builds.

validifyedneb18_ESO

Ah, I found myself in this place a few years back.
You either follow a cookiecutter build and have no idea what you're doing, or you have no idea what you're doing with your own build.

1. Gear: Make sure you know how damage is calculated D=A*Xdmg + B*Xmaxstat, A/B~=10.5, X is wep or mag, how crit factors into build, resource return, penetration and the PVE 12k pen cap. While I dont like Alcasts guides much, he does give a very handy list of top sets that you can use as a starting place for what sets to try.
2. Buffs/Debuffs: Due to flat class design, there is a limited number of buffs and debuffs (moreso with debuffs) in the game, with major and minor forms. Optimal combat sees you have as many of these up at once with as close to 100% uptime as possible. When testing solo dps you should be aware for example that if you dont have sources of M/m breach/fracture, you wont be hittind the penetration cap, this is fine as most groups will supply this, unless you want to be more self reliant, but you will do less dps when alone on some classes because of this - unless you change your rotation to accomodate
3. Rotation: I am a strong advocate of dynamic rotations which IMO suite theorycrafting a lot better. Ive seen enough people try to follow Alcasts confusing static rotations before and get completely lost at sub 20k dps. Get a dummy, take your "Spammable" and weave it with light attacks. Take a debuff, weave that in on cooldown, avoid clipping the duration on recast its a waste of resources. Remember that *potions are part of your rotation*, potion effects can be up 100% of the time with the alchemy tallents, these are huge buffs and you should chug one right at the start of combat and then every time their off cooldown. Start weaving in more abilities, start sorting them on bars to reduce the amount of bar swapping required to keep them all up. Sometimes its worth clipping some abilities durations. Eg.. if your backbar has 2 10 second abilities and a 11 second ability, its better to just clip the extra 1 second on the first ability if you need it to be on your backbar. Some abilities are just flat terrible, some bring important debuffs and are non negotiable. Some are there just to look pretty (ie.. we used to use the flawless dawnbreaker FG alt on frontbar for stam builds simply for the 5% increase wep dmg, but never actually use it).
4. Special mechanics: Enchantment cooldowns, backbar AOE enchantment proccing, potions, foods, having atleast 1 destro ability on each bar because of the passive bonus only working if you had an abiliy, proc set cooldowns particularly with backbar sets (ie if you have a frontbar VMA wep so one of your sets is only complete when you're on your offbar, if your offbar is a timed debuff etc.. that only works every 15 seconds, and you swap bars in rotation every 7 seconds, then you're effectively only missing out on the 4pce bonus when on your front bar)
5. PTS: Practice and test, its the only way to get better, and the only way to test all the possibilities out without spending 10 years on live.

Hope it helps, ESO does a damn *** job at teaching you any of this, there are a few good resources, UESP did a breakdown of calculations in the game at one point I think, other than that I rely on spreadsheets and manual calculation. A lot of "is X set better than Y" can be broken down into quite simplistic multiplication and comparison if you know enough to make reasonable assumptions. (ie that 120 wep damage is roughly the same as 1050 stamina, which is about the same as the stam recovery bonus IF you need stam recovery etc.. which you can use to ignore most of the non 5pce bonuses unless they're things you dont need or offstat)

Iskiab

validifyedneb18_ESO wrote: »

Ah, I found myself in this place a few years back.
You either follow a cookiecutter build and have no idea what you're doing, or you have no idea what you're doing with your own build.

1. Gear: Make sure you know how damage is calculated D=A*Xdmg + B*Xmaxstat, A/B~=10.5, X is wep or mag, how crit factors into build, resource return, penetration and the PVE 12k pen cap. While I dont like Alcasts guides much, he does give a very handy list of top sets that you can use as a starting place for what sets to try.
2. Buffs/Debuffs: Due to flat class design, there is a limited number of buffs and debuffs (moreso with debuffs) in the game, with major and minor forms. Optimal combat sees you have as many of these up at once with as close to 100% uptime as possible. When testing solo dps you should be aware for example that if you dont have sources of M/m breach/fracture, you wont be hittind the penetration cap, this is fine as most groups will supply this, unless you want to be more self reliant, but you will do less dps when alone on some classes because of this - unless you change your rotation to accomodate
3. Rotation: I am a strong advocate of dynamic rotations which IMO suite theorycrafting a lot better. Ive seen enough people try to follow Alcasts confusing static rotations before and get completely lost at sub 20k dps. Get a dummy, take your "Spammable" and weave it with light attacks. Take a debuff, weave that in on cooldown, avoid clipping the duration on recast its a waste of resources. Remember that *potions are part of your rotation*, potion effects can be up 100% of the time with the alchemy tallents, these are huge buffs and you should chug one right at the start of combat and then every time their off cooldown. Start weaving in more abilities, start sorting them on bars to reduce the amount of bar swapping required to keep them all up. Sometimes its worth clipping some abilities durations. Eg.. if your backbar has 2 10 second abilities and a 11 second ability, its better to just clip the extra 1 second on the first ability if you need it to be on your backbar. Some abilities are just flat terrible, some bring important debuffs and are non negotiable. Some are there just to look pretty (ie.. we used to use the flawless dawnbreaker FG alt on frontbar for stam builds simply for the 5% increase wep dmg, but never actually use it).
4. Special mechanics: Enchantment cooldowns, backbar AOE enchantment proccing, potions, foods, having atleast 1 destro ability on each bar because of the passive bonus only working if you had an abiliy, proc set cooldowns particularly with backbar sets (ie if you have a frontbar VMA wep so one of your sets is only complete when you're on your offbar, if your offbar is a timed debuff etc.. that only works every 15 seconds, and you swap bars in rotation every 7 seconds, then you're effectively only missing out on the 4pce bonus when on your front bar)
5. PTS: Practice and test, its the only way to get better, and the only way to test all the possibilities out without spending 10 years on live.

Hope it helps, ESO does a damn *** job at teaching you any of this, there are a few good resources, UESP did a breakdown of calculations in the game at one point I think, other than that I rely on spreadsheets and manual calculation. A lot of "is X set better than Y" can be broken down into quite simplistic multiplication and comparison if you know enough to make reasonable assumptions. (ie that 120 wep damage is roughly the same as 1050 stamina, which is about the same as the stam recovery bonus IF you need stam recovery etc.. which you can use to ignore most of the non 5pce bonuses unless they're things you dont need or offstat)

I agree, but you don’t need to have a desto/weapon ability on each bar. They removed that passive from destro staffs. All the passives are either from having one equipped or specific to destro abilities.

validifyedneb18_ESO

Iskiab wrote: »

validifyedneb18_ESO wrote: »

Ah, I found myself in this place a few years back.
You either follow a cookiecutter build and have no idea what you're doing, or you have no idea what you're doing with your own build.

1. Gear: Make sure you know how damage is calculated D=A*Xdmg + B*Xmaxstat, A/B~=10.5, X is wep or mag, how crit factors into build, resource return, penetration and the PVE 12k pen cap. While I dont like Alcasts guides much, he does give a very handy list of top sets that you can use as a starting place for what sets to try.
2. Buffs/Debuffs: Due to flat class design, there is a limited number of buffs and debuffs (moreso with debuffs) in the game, with major and minor forms. Optimal combat sees you have as many of these up at once with as close to 100% uptime as possible. When testing solo dps you should be aware for example that if you dont have sources of M/m breach/fracture, you wont be hittind the penetration cap, this is fine as most groups will supply this, unless you want to be more self reliant, but you will do less dps when alone on some classes because of this - unless you change your rotation to accomodate
3. Rotation: I am a strong advocate of dynamic rotations which IMO suite theorycrafting a lot better. Ive seen enough people try to follow Alcasts confusing static rotations before and get completely lost at sub 20k dps. Get a dummy, take your "Spammable" and weave it with light attacks. Take a debuff, weave that in on cooldown, avoid clipping the duration on recast its a waste of resources. Remember that *potions are part of your rotation*, potion effects can be up 100% of the time with the alchemy tallents, these are huge buffs and you should chug one right at the start of combat and then every time their off cooldown. Start weaving in more abilities, start sorting them on bars to reduce the amount of bar swapping required to keep them all up. Sometimes its worth clipping some abilities durations. Eg.. if your backbar has 2 10 second abilities and a 11 second ability, its better to just clip the extra 1 second on the first ability if you need it to be on your backbar. Some abilities are just flat terrible, some bring important debuffs and are non negotiable. Some are there just to look pretty (ie.. we used to use the flawless dawnbreaker FG alt on frontbar for stam builds simply for the 5% increase wep dmg, but never actually use it).
4. Special mechanics: Enchantment cooldowns, backbar AOE enchantment proccing, potions, foods, having atleast 1 destro ability on each bar because of the passive bonus only working if you had an abiliy, proc set cooldowns particularly with backbar sets (ie if you have a frontbar VMA wep so one of your sets is only complete when you're on your offbar, if your offbar is a timed debuff etc.. that only works every 15 seconds, and you swap bars in rotation every 7 seconds, then you're effectively only missing out on the 4pce bonus when on your front bar)
5. PTS: Practice and test, its the only way to get better, and the only way to test all the possibilities out without spending 10 years on live.

Hope it helps, ESO does a damn *** job at teaching you any of this, there are a few good resources, UESP did a breakdown of calculations in the game at one point I think, other than that I rely on spreadsheets and manual calculation. A lot of "is X set better than Y" can be broken down into quite simplistic multiplication and comparison if you know enough to make reasonable assumptions. (ie that 120 wep damage is roughly the same as 1050 stamina, which is about the same as the stam recovery bonus IF you need stam recovery etc.. which you can use to ignore most of the non 5pce bonuses unless they're things you dont need or offstat)

I agree, but you don’t need to have a desto/weapon ability on each bar. They removed that passive from destro staffs. All the passives are either from having one equipped or specific to destro abilities.

My knowledge is clearly a tad outdated :P
I plan to get back into the swing of things when the new chapter hits the PTS, with any luck, but admittedly last update I barely tested, all I know is apparently DOTs are *** now, but how much that effected builds and rotations? Not a clue :P

Bradyfjord

Another component of making a build is if you're going to pug or not. When running content with people you know, you can trust people to bring buffs and debuffs. You can't count on pugs to do this, although some pugs do.

Bullseyebudx

SocialAssassin wrote: »

First of all, I want to say "respect" to those that can make those awesome builds. So how do you go about making a build anyways? Is there an Idiot's guide or something? I have tried my best to understand what abilities to use or not to use. I'm sure it comes down to basics and what are those basics. And any advice to someone that wants to make their own build? Thanks

Trial and error is your friend, but learning to design your own builds is expensive but rewarding!

Make sure you understand how the game mechanics work, inside and out.

Having a firm grasp on statistics and experimenting consistently with benchmarks is important.

It takes a lot of time to learn and mold a build around your own play style, like months if you really want something refined.

People who pop out builds right after a patch have either been playing long enough to where they know/have a good idea how the meta is going to pan out, or they don’t know what they’re doing.

Move slow, make simple changes, test in a variety of settings; duel, IC, Cyrodiil, dungeons, etc. then change 1 thing about your build and test in comparable settings. Repeat.

Eventually you’ll establish a firm understanding of how each stat functions and where, the rest is up to you.

Pick 1 class and play it into the ground.

FrancisCrawford

1. Read all the obviously relevant skill descriptions, such as those for your class skill lines and your preferred weapons.

2. Look up some suggested builds. Read all the descriptions you now realize you've overlooked.

3. Extend steps 1 and 2 to include traits, champion points, bonuses on plausible sets, etc.

4. Equip any halfway decent set of gear, food, Mundus stone, champion points, etc. Look at your candidate skills and check actual numbers. (Note: This step can be much easier on the PTS.)

5. Have a rough idea of how much gold you're willing to spend for gear, potions, etc.

6. Determine which gear you have easy access to via drops from content you can do, purchases you can make in guild stores, crafting you can do or have done for you, etc.

7. Decide what the minimum defensive and self-healing capabilities you're comfortable with are. (Health level, armor level, shield skills, healing skills, etc.) Choose skills and boosts accordingly.

8. Fill out the rest of your skill bars, gear choices, etc. with a combination of skills and boosts that makes sense to you.

Voila! You have a build!

9. Play. See what works as well as or better than you hoped and what seems unnecessary or of limited use. Change your build as necessary. Repeat this step often.

Iskiab

One thing I’ll add - don’t be lazy.

I see a lot of players who decide at character creation what skills and weapons they’ll use, and they only use those abilities to save time on skill points and leveling skills.

You’re far better off unlocking and leveling every class skill to try them out. Things change, and sometimes what you’re missing isn’t apparent and you could have X skill that could help but you’ve never tried it.

What I do is level to 10, do a BG for rapids, then start the psijiic line. It’ll bring you to every zone (almost) in the game so do mage guild and collect skyshards along the way. Try both morphs too, some things are really underrated.

At max CP at least, everything including public dungeons and world bosses is soloable with only a couple skills. My skill bar is usually loaded up with what I want to level or try, not what I’m planning on actually using.

I’m Mag and usually have one of each class skill line, a resto ability, a DW or 2H ability and am using a destro staff while leveling. Just switch to using good abilities for pvp or at least a couple good ones for public dungeons.

Asardes

Yep, that's a good advice. When I level a char I level all useful weapon skills, level the skills under them, morph them to the most useful morph at that time, then level that to rank IV. I then do a full respec and only spec what I need for starters. Since there are few skill points then, 85 or so I only pay like 4K, but then as I go along I just put the newly earned skill points into those pre-leveled skills.

ShadowKyuubi

So I usually make builds by starting with gear that I like of find interesting. Like Mad Tinkerer's, not a great set or anything, but it got me thinking about making a max pet sorcerer, which eventually lead to the 6 pet sorc build I made. Or how I liked red mountain, so I paired it with flame blossom, so some stupid combos that were hard to pull off.

Usually you have to find a concept that you like, most of my inspiration comes from different gear sets. However, your inspiration may come from a certain ability or concept you want. Then what I do is literally search through the ESO-sets database for sets that may fit in with this concept. I look through every freaking set, just to make sure I find ones that fit well together or fit the concept I want. Then the enchantments/poisons/traits are all fairly standardized.

Joosef_Kivikilpi

SocialAssassin wrote: »

First of all, I want to say "respect" to those that can make those awesome builds. So how do you go about making a build anyways? Is there an Idiot's guide or something? I have tried my best to understand what abilities to use or not to use. I'm sure it comes down to basics and what are those basics. And any advice to someone that wants to make their own build? Thanks

Start with a vision of what you see your character being. Once you have that foundation/skeleton, you can start filling in everything else. I am just completing my Breton Ice Mage tank and holy cow, I absolutely love tanking now because it fills the role in the way that I like playing. Get the vision, then go out and accomplish it.