Character Management Question

Destai

So I realized I have two characters that I don't find myself playing much. One's currently a Nord StamDK, the other's a Redguard stamBlade. After deleting, restoring, renaming, race-changing, and respeccing these two multiple times, I find myself still struggling to find a purpose for these two. Just curious, what do you guys do with characters that didn't pan out quite how you hoped? Should I just stable them and do crafting dailies and skyshards?

Some additional background:
I mainly played a magPlar through Summerset, and currently play either my magSorc or stamDen.

The Nord I struggle with sustain and just overall feel of the class. I've debated changing him back to Dark Elf and going magicka. I know magicka DK is really hot right now. I want to like Nords but maybe I'm too much of an elf-lover.

The nightblade, I'll play sometimes for TG or DB activities, or just go on a stabbing/stealing tour of Tamriel. This guy's saving grace is there's multiple fantasies that could breathe some life into him. Currently, treating him like a pirate and that's fun. I'm prepared to accept that he won't do a ton of content given this niche.

Taleof2Cities

You don't have to make a decision now, @Destai.

Characters sometimes do sit idle for quite awhile. I still have two (2) characters with active cake buffs from the Anniversary Event.

Eventually, you'll get back to them ... but right now play the characters you enjoy.

zvavi

^this, I have 4 characters I touched the first time in really long time just to run vMA on, I have stamina healer I didn't get to lvling yet. 3 tanks that are shelved because I enjoy tanking on sorc too much. But I might play them all. So they stay in the garage.

Sephyr

If they're just collecting dust (and items because I needed mules), I generally repurpose them once I can fix the space; IE, I just delete the character and start fresh. But when I go to create a character, I often go for some kind of idea on what I want them to do already (often I'll make mockups of characters during PTS cycles and test with the templates). If they're characters that have gotten really unlucky and have gotten the other end of the nerfhammer, I often just hold off on making super big decisions until the next balancing patch on the PTS.

LadyHeloise

Have to admit I have 5/6 characters that I no longer play, but don't have the heart to delete. They don't fit with what I want to do now, or how I want to play anymore and I haven't worked out how to change them for the better yet. They get used for doing dailies in the anniversary event, but that's about it!

fred4

Let's see. Since I'm not ESO+ anymore, most of my characters are used for storage of one kind or another. One has the monster masks. One has x50 transmutation geodes from PvP. One has armor sets that didn't fit into home storage. One is my chef and carries all the provisioning materials. One is my crafter and carries all the trait / style gems. The rest of the materials are in the bank.

I take every character into Cyrodiil once a month and gather / leech 25K AP for the x50 transmutation geodes.

As far as my Nord DK, she is currently my second main. Great character. I struggled for a long time to understand DK and play it properly. What makes it work for me are these things:

(a) Use Take Flight. Fantastic ulti for PvP. Probably not the most effective for high-end PvE, but still a lot of fun.

(b) Use DOTs. Venomous Claw is better than it looks. Noxious Breath is indispensible for the armor debuff and as an AOE (area of effect) attack.

(c) Use 1-hand + shield on your back bar. DK has a blocking passive. 1H+S synergises with that. This is DKs strength. You want to take advantage of that tankiness and it synergises with Nord too. If you only play easy stuff, a bow would probably enable more damage. For harder solo play and PvP I recommend 1H+S. I prefer medium armor by the way. 1H+S turned out the important thing, not wearing heavy armor.

(d) Wear Bloodspawn. The jury is out for next patch, but the Nord's ulti gen + Bloodspawn improves your sustain via ultimate use. Can't really beat it on DK.

In addition Stone Giant works for me. Everyone uses Dizzying Swing in PvP, but Stone Giant + DOTs hits pretty hard and it's got an AOE and ranged component, which plays quite well.

I have two short clips. Don't mind the two downvotes on the vMA clip. There are people who get insane 600K+ scores in vMA and will nuke that boss much faster. For me on the other hand that was fast. About as fast or faster than on my other characters. I really like DK in vMA, because you DOT up the boss and make progress on them, while dealing with adds in the meantime. In this case, though, I opted to simply burn the boss:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fc9ZbDiO2w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk8zOgiB1ds

This is the build: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=230513

You want to take advantage of the Minor Brutality passive on DK, which I cover by using Stone Giant in my build. This left me free to dispense with Fragmented Shield (which every other PvPer uses) and use Race Against Time as a magicka dump instead. I'm wearing Shacklebreaker for mag sustain, since I like that speed skill a lot.

Your heals include Rally, Vigor and Cauterize. Can't really recommend that last skill enough. Having healing skills of different duration works well. Keep Cauterize up at all times. Can't get away from 2H for Rally, by the way.

In PvP Leap + Executioner is your opportunistic kill combo. Since we have Stone Giant and Noxious Breath for AOE already, I do recommend the Executioner morph.

As you can see, this build works well for both solo PvE (vMA) and PvP. It's also tuned for quite a lot of sustain, thus works in no CP unchanged.

Of course a Nord DK would also make an excellent tank. Completely different attribute, skill and gear layout. Not something I'm an expert on, so I'll refrain from saying more.

fred4

Destai wrote: »

I mainly played a magPlar through Summerset, and currently play either my magSorc or stamDen.

Magsorc and stamden, huh? Those are both good PvP classes. So what type of content do you play?

My perspective is that of a PvPer. What DK has going for it there, over those two classes, is the opportunistic nature of Take Flight + Executioner. Your two classes are regarded as better than stam DK because of their burst rotations, but those rotations have a set up time. DK can spot a low health target up to 28m away and opportunistically leap and execute that target, while also extricating themselves from their current fight. I love DK for that option.

fred4

I have to confess I'm also a little bit of a role-player. This makes it hard for me to delete characters or change their appearance. My magplar is the go to character for PvE farming. My sorc is her younger twin sister. I couldn't possibly delete her. I couldn't do that to my magplar. Then there is a character called "Your Ex-Girlfriend". That one has some role-playing history for obvious reasons. In fact, my parkour house was inspired by her (skip to the end, if you only want to know why):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL_RIdK0auY

There's also the investment into horse riding, Undaunted, skyshards, Mage's Guild, Psijic and so on. I wouldn't really delete a character that has even half of those things, lest they become useful one day.

Destai

fred4 wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

I mainly played a magPlar through Summerset, and currently play either my magSorc or stamDen.

Magsorc and stamden, huh? Those are both good PvP classes. So what type of content do you play?

My perspective is that of a PvPer. What DK has going for it there, over those two classes, is the opportunistic nature of Take Flight + Executioner. Your two classes are regarded as better than stam DK because of their burst rotations, but those rotations have a set up time. DK can spot a low health target up to 28m away and opportunistically leap and execute that target, while also extricating themselves from their current fight. I love DK for that option.

Mostly a PVE-er and mild roleplay. I like to build a story and vibe around my characters. My nightblade has one ish, but I think I'm mostly stuck on my DK and Necro. I've been looking for a good dunmer to roleplay a sort of samurai-feeling reverent evil type. I did savior of morrowind on my necro and he's got this cool Halloween feel to him that I don't want to disrupt. My DK I bought a house for him outside of Riften. It just doesn't fit. I only really see Nords making sense as a stamsorc/stamden/stamplar type. I took him back up to Orsinium because I got Hero of Wrothgar up there and didn't reignite it for me on him.