theorycrafters- what goes into a good build?

Muttsmutt

i'm curious to hear opinions as to what makes a solid, viable build, for each role- magdps, stamdps, healer, and tank.
i'm more interested in PVE but i'm curious about PVP as well.

of course, as you get into more "hardcore" content, there's going to be min/max options for all kinds of situations; and in organized end-game content there is a lot that can vary depending on what your group members are running & optimized for; but i'm talking about more general things, like, for example:
having a source of this or that buff, or hitting a specific threshold for a certain stat, or staying under it, etc.

frankly i believe eso does a good job of offering build variance & class variance for each particular role,
but there are some "strategies" in theorycrafting/builds which are consistent in every serious build, across all build types.
and, of course, i don't mean general basic things like "healers should have more magicka recovery" or "tanks should have block cost", but specific numbers for such things & more.

rabidmyers

procs

Syrpynt

(rant)
Meta is healer-dps hybrid now. Don't even need tank. Just be the strongest healer and then wear proc damage sets and you'll be practically unkillable with enough regen and resources to smite everything fast.

If you play solo PvE or PvP, that is the end-game now.
(end rant)

But some serious advice from a classic theorybuilding concept I use--Find an aspect of your playstyle that you want:
• Critical Fire Mage: Your attacks should be fire mostly, passives buff fire, proc fire, and sets you wear should buff spell critical primarily.
• DoT Bleed+Poison Melee: Axes (bleed passives). Poison vials instead of enchants on one bar. Poison glyph on the other. Bleed set. Poison proc sec. Poison abilities primarily.
• There are hybrid mag-stamina builds but they're a bit glass-cannon if you focus solely on attacking, and the heals are weaker.
• Research sets that give you traits that "mesh" to your playstyle or image. Make sure you aren't losing a single slotted armor/weapon trait to something less than BiS or it will suffer or not perform as well as you anticipate.

Just my experience. Someone else may have better advice than me.

Recapitated

Syrpynt wrote: »

(rant)
Meta is healer-dps hybrid now. Don't even need tank. Just be the strongest healer and then wear proc damage sets and you'll be practically unkillable with enough regen and resources to smite everything fast.

If you play solo PvE or PvP, that is the end-game now.
(end rant)

But some serious advice from a classic theorybuilding concept I use--Find an aspect of your playstyle that you want:
• Critical Fire Mage: Your attacks should be fire mostly, passives buff fire, proc fire, and sets you wear should buff spell critical primarily.
• DoT Bleed+Poison Melee: Axes (bleed passives). Poison vials instead of enchants on one bar. Poison glyph on the other. Bleed set. Poison proc sec. Poison abilities primarily.
• There are hybrid mag-stamina builds but they're a bit glass-cannon if you focus solely on attacking, and the heals are weaker.
• Research sets that give you traits that "mesh" to your playstyle or image. Make sure you aren't losing a single slotted armor/weapon trait to something less than BiS or it will suffer or not perform as well as you anticipate.

Just my experience. Someone else may have better advice than me.

My better advice is don't listen to someone who says tanks are not needed in endgame PvE.

Syrpynt

Vet DLC and trials, you need tanks. But with a dps-healer hybrid you can solo vet dungeons without disable mechanics.

Sorry for one wrong use of "end-game." I think the rest of what I said holds water.

Vevvev

For me it's carefully planning out each ability. Each one should serve a purpose and not overlap any other ability. Like a Dragonknight using Degeneration for the Major Sorcery wouldn't have Molten Armaments equipped as well since it applies the same buff.

The sets should also compliment the abilities you equip for hopefully obvious reasons. Like when I decide to equip Grothdarr and Elf Bane I try to find flame DoT abilities to throw onto my build to take further advantage of Elf Bane's Buff. Another example was back when Dragonknight's Stone Giant skill was a 28 meter magic damage stun that applied Minor Resolve. What I did was I equipped War Maiden and slotted Elemental Weapon, Degeneration, Stone Giant, and the Vampire Bat Swarm ultimate to take full advantage of the spell damage to all the magic damage abilities. Even Volatile Armor dealt magic damage so the ability combination actually worked rather well and then I threw on Burning Embers for an offensive heal.

Another thing I think about when making builds is making them self sufficient since I primarily PVP. A PVP build that cannot heal itself is not a PVP build as the moment you get into a fight and almost kill your foe only for them to heal is a lost fight since now they're at full and you are not. Same basic strategy also applies to solo content in this game when you need to keep yourself alive while also dishing out some damage. Thankfully healing abilities scale off the offensive stats of what resource it takes to cast them, unless stated otherwise on the ability itself. Some people fail to understand this and get angry when they die over and over again because their heals are weak or they are not healing at all.

orion_1981usub17_ESO

1) what aspect(s) of the game do you wish to play.
2) can you survive?
3) can you do your job?
4) can you do your job better wearing something else?
5) what sets are left after eliminating sets via the first four questions, choose the sets that best define you and whom you want to be that from what is available.
6) refine your sets after trying them out with skills you like or need, you may find the first set you thought would be great is eclipsed by other sets for other skills you require for your job.

lucky_Sage

PVE it is mostly just math
PvP a little more to it figuring out best way to get dmg regen and mitigation. With losing any of those with minimal losses unless you play glass cannon then only need dmg

MudcrabAttack

For PVE:

You can't really go wrong with stacking crit rating these days since it was nerfed from CPs, while at the same time they added more crit multipliers.

If you go with a stamina build, stack weapon damage since there are tons of multipliers for it. Relequen still offers the highest single target damage, then advancing yokeda jewelry/weapons for the insane amount of crit. Yandirs might for tons of weapon damage.

Magic builds have more magic multipliers than stamina build have stamina multipliers, but it still tends to be ok to stack more spell damage since it remains a relatively strong stat. Many sets buff spell damage by a lot and remain stronger compared to max magicka sets. Mothers Sorrow or Medusa for the crit bonus since crit matters so much now.

oscarovegren

PvE: statdense sets (crit and WD/SD) and rotation
PvP: Procsets and survival

Nebula_DooM

Muttsmutt wrote: »

i'm curious to hear opinions as to what makes a solid, viable build, for each role- magdps, stamdps, healer, and tank.
i'm more interested in PVE but i'm curious about PVP as well.

of course, as you get into more "hardcore" content, there's going to be min/max options for all kinds of situations; and in organized end-game content there is a lot that can vary depending on what your group members are running & optimized for; but i'm talking about more general things, like, for example:
having a source of this or that buff, or hitting a specific threshold for a certain stat, or staying under it, etc.

frankly i believe eso does a good job of offering build variance & class variance for each particular role,
but there are some "strategies" in theorycrafting/builds which are consistent in every serious build, across all build types.
and, of course, i don't mean general basic things like "healers should have more magicka recovery" or "tanks should have block cost", but specific numbers for such things & more.

While the truth is procs carry in PvP, this will not get you very far as sooner or later procs will get nerfed. What I suggest, what the most important part of build making or theory crafting is patience. There is always gonna be a better build than what you have you just have to take some time out and figure what that is, and even then your build is still not finished. That's the hidden beauty of this game and its mechanics is that no matter how much you think your build is really good, it can be better. That's the next step:

Figure out what is currently wrong with your setup. What's good about it and what's bad about it? Can you drop sustain a bit and put more into damage. In most of my builds, I like to think that Sustain is the near equivalent of Survivability as if you had 0 sustain you wouldn't be able to survive. When you think that your sustain is good, find out how you can increase your damage, through cp, a different set maybe, maybe just the skills on your bars or your playstyle can be the deciding factor. When making builds I like to have an idea in my head of what is it I want to achieve. To achieve this I normally follow these steps: 1st Sets, 2nd Traits, 3rd Attribute Points, 4th Skills, 5th Mundus choice, 6th Champion Points 7th Glyphs. Obviously don't have to follow this pattern but its a good idea to keep these 7 choices in mind.

So after you make your build, what's next? Test, Test, Test. After you are done with testing, bring it back into the lab again. This is the part where its a rinse and repeat process of the 7 choices. And after this back to testing. Like I said before though, the main part of this you should take is patience.

I would also like to highlight Blobsky and Masel. These two guys are phenomenal at understanding the game mechanics.
Blobsky on one hand explains the build making process to a tea while Masel is the mathematician I look to when I need to work out the maths of ESO. Masel made a Youtube series on the maths of ESO (it may be a little outdated though but some stuff is still really relevant).
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChVEG6ckuAgGs5OyA6VeisA - Masel ESO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uArlP9wOoo4&t - Blobsky making a build Youtube Video
I'm 100% sure there are many other amazing theorycrafters too these were the two that I could find videos off however.
Also make use of the forums. There is a lot of information you might not know so check the forums to see if someone has already answered your question.

I really hoped this help. Let me know if there is anything I missed.

StormSlash

You need a good kill combo and good survival/heals, proc sets are not needed but can help carry the less experienced

fred4

Puncturing Sweeps.

Firstmep

More gold then I dare to admit.

Bashev

PvE is pure math.

PvP is playstyle. You define how you want to play then you build your toolkit based on this playstyle.

hexentb16_ESO

Muttsmutt wrote: »

i'm curious to hear opinions as to what makes a solid, viable build, for each role- magdps, stamdps, healer, and tank.
i'm more interested in PVE but i'm curious about PVP as well.

of course, as you get into more "hardcore" content, there's going to be min/max options for all kinds of situations; and in organized end-game content there is a lot that can vary depending on what your group members are running & optimized for; but i'm talking about more general things, like, for example:
having a source of this or that buff, or hitting a specific threshold for a certain stat, or staying under it, etc.

frankly i believe eso does a good job of offering build variance & class variance for each particular role,
but there are some "strategies" in theorycrafting/builds which are consistent in every serious build, across all build types.
and, of course, i don't mean general basic things like "healers should have more magicka recovery" or "tanks should have block cost", but specific numbers for such things & more.

My personal preference is shattering people's expectations with versatile builds. There's loads of players who think you can't tank difficult pve content without a shield and be amazing at both pve and pvp content. So I made a 2h tank build that primarily uses a 2h master weapon but has a shield on the backbar just in case. Loads of players assume I'm dps in dungeons when they see my 2h and damage output against trash mobs. Ball groups think they can mow over me but end up wasting time trying to kill me and failing instead. Of course I cant kill the ball groups solo because they're spamming heals but being a pain in the ass is just as fun.

The most OP builds that cause pvpers to complain are usually made by people who lean into their class's strengths.

Zodiarkslayer

1) Decide on the CORE theme. That is the MOST important. It determines everything. What Role?(Healer,Tank,DD,SOLO, Hybrid) What Attack type?(DoT, Direct, Heavy) What Damage Type?(Magic, Poison, Physical, etc.) What Ressources do you use? Specialist or Jack of all trades?
2) Decide on the best fitting class to achieve that (based on Class Passives mostly) and the best race to supplement it.
3) Identify your areas where you only want to have the minimum requirements and where you want to perform
4) Skills/ Rotation/ Alternatives
5) Best gear/equipment with food/drink, then Mundus, then CP to cater to your strengths
6) Identify weaknesses
7) Jump to 3) until 6 does not apply anymore

Points number 1) and 3) are what makes a build. Everything else is derivative.
Benchmarks for stats are up for debate. Some are openly scaleable. Some are hard capped. All are subject to decreasing marginal utility.
What works, works. It's that simple. But, here are mine:

Max Health: min19k, Tank 45k
Max Ressource: 40k
Off Ressource 10k, Tank 19k
Ressource Recovery: 1000, 2000 for healers, ignore for heavyattackbuilds
Crit Chance: over 50% fully buffed
Crit Damage: As much as you can
Weapon/Spell Damage: minimum 3k unbuffed, 2k for Healers, ignore for Tank
Fully Buffed Resistances: 20k, 25k SpellRes for Healers and 30k for Tanks
I also ignore health recovery, because I build in selfheals everytime.

Starlight_Whisper

What's it's purpose?

- What type of content do you want to play with it?

- What kind of style or gameplay experience? Maybe I want to make people go boooom... Fear my monsterous nerco ultimate?

- What are expectations for group play?
Is your group standing in red and running around like headless chickens or maybe they are best of the best?

- How hard is to use build?
Can a new player understand and use it?

Muttsmutt

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Max Health: min19k, Tank 45k
Max Ressource: 40k
Off Ressource 10k, Tank 19k
Ressource Recovery: 1000, 2000 for healers, ignore for heavyattackbuilds
Crit Chance: over 50% fully buffed
Crit Damage: As much as you can
Weapon/Spell Damage: minimum 3k unbuffed, 2k for Healers, ignore for Tank
Fully Buffed Resistances: 20k, 25k SpellRes for Healers and 30k for Tanks

numbers! good.
anybody disagree with these?

Wing

being very comfortable and in tune with your character and build to within 100 regen.

what i mean by that is people that know their build and character know what kind of regen they need within 100, and can tweak a single enchant to fix the feel of it. being able to identify exactly why you died, if it was your builds fault why and how, and being able to tune and fix it.

i have seen many great players use wonky builds and stats because they know how it will work down to a t, and many poor players use great copy paste youtube and alcast builds that just cannot make it work.

lolo_01b16_ESO

I personally prefer spell damage over recovery on my healers. And on stamina dds you don't really need 40k stam, as this usually means you are sacrificing weapon damage for stamina which is a dps loss.
But generally those numbers seem like a good place to start.

Zodiarkslayer

lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

I personally prefer spell damage over recovery on my healers. And on stamina dds you don't really need 40k stam, as this usually means you are sacrificing weapon damage for stamina which is a dps loss.
But generally those numbers seem like a good place to start.

Well 40k is a comfort place for me personally, since you need stamina for blocking/dodging/break free. In bad groups this is becoming obvious pretty quickly. On the other side dps loss is not so big since MAX Stats are also a part of the damage formula.

Concerning spell damage of healers: It is my strong opinion, that bigger heals do not contribute to bigger performance! As a healer you are litterally a buff bot anyways! And buffs have fixed numbers, that do not scale on spell damage. Very high magicka recovery lets you be more flexible. You can cast buffs and heals much more often. My last healer even had over 3000 with witchmother's potent brew.

Wing wrote: »

being very comfortable and in tune with your character and build to within 100 regen.

what i mean by that is people that know their build and character know what kind of regen they need within 100, and can tweak a single enchant to fix the feel of it. being able to identify exactly why you died, if it was your builds fault why and how, and being able to tune and fix it.

i have seen many great players use wonky builds and stats because they know how it will work down to a t, and many poor players use great copy paste youtube and alcast builds that just cannot make it work.

Absolutely agree, but MinMaxing the build is not part of theorycrafting. It is a practical optimisation while you PLAY THE BUILD.

sabresandiego_ESO

Testing and adaptability is what makes a good theorycrafter. Stubborn people come up with build ideas and develop rigid views. Adaptable people are always testing variations and are accepting of change and willing to adapt to unforeseen results.

NeillMcAttack

Practice!

Muttsmutt

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

Practice!

based on this reply and a few others in similar tone, i realize my wording was poor & did not convey the fact that i'm not looking for advice on how to improve the PERFORMANCE of a build, but rather cornerstone patterns in builds.
nevertheless, i feel like this all serves as a testament to eso's build flexibility, as were this another mmo, i imagine a lot more replies would be a lot more pointedly aimed at meta aspects... which is what i asked for, but that's beside the point.

StarOfElyon

I know Unified Gaming says one should wear an offensive set and a defensive set, and then maybe address sustain through food and jewelry. Basically.

But it didn't work for me on my hybrid character. (actually, nothing works for me)

I couldn't kill anybody so I slapped on two offensive sets (New Moon & Innate Axiom) and switch between the Warrior and the Thief mundus. 100% glass canon with no procs. I still have trouble killing people and I die a lot. ^^;

It's tough.

Here's a battleground match I had a few days ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toLtqGvRlkQ

ImSoPro

Blood sweat and tears

Grianasteri

Always ask yourself, is this build groovy?

If you feel groovy and the groovometer is showing 'groovtastic' status, you should be good to go.

I have 18 characters. Most of them are themed, fun builds, that do not adhere to any meta. With that said, being groovy does not mean the build has to be ineffective. Most of my builds work, I can run vet content with them no problem.

With so many sets, many of them visually stunning in the appearance of the armor and/or the proc effects, it seems such a shame more people do not experiment.

Muttsmutt

Grianasteri wrote: »

If you feel groovy and the groovometer is showing 'groovtastic' status, you should be good to go.

i agree with you and with everybody else who took my question to mean something different than what i had intented, and avised me how to make an enjoyable or themed build. thanks y'all, you're very sweet, but that's not what i asked. :")

i just wanna know the meta please...

Zodiarkslayer

Well, the current META is: pray that you finish the run before you or anyone of your group crashes.

Muttsmutt

Zodiarkslayer wrote: »

Well, the current META is: pray that you finish the run before you or anyone of your group crashes.

funnily enough, this is still functionally synonymous with what the meta seeks anyway- efficiency.