What do you think are the strongest abilities for the classes you play?

seventyfive

Past few days I've theory crafted builds for almost all classes (6 out of 7) with similiar stat-dense gear setups.

First of all, I think all of these 6 classes have some really strong abilities.

I want to hear the forum-goers opinions on the strongest abilities of the classes they play themselves!

Building all classes with similiar gear has made me see some things in new light, and I'm happy to hear your creative highlights of abilities.
Make sure to include the context you're coming from, I would love to get some hardcore PvE:ers perspectives as well, since I am fully focused on player combat.

CameraBeardThePirate

For Necro PvP:

Blastbones - Despite its inconsistencies, it's still a very hard hitting AoE ability that produces corpses for the rest of your kit. The bread and butter of Necro. Damage won't show up on a scoreboard, he can't proc sets, and he will be drunk ~15% of the time, but he's a good boi. (PS: give us back Stalking Blastbones)

Expunge/Hexproof - Incredibly powerful and cheap purge. One of your strongest defensive tools for PvP, if you can find the barspace for it.

Venom Skull - Specifically this morph, as Ricochet Skull is still bugged and less powerful even if it were working at 100% capacity. The travel time holds it back in ranged builds, but this ability rips people in half in PvP on melee builds.

Intensive Mender - While Guardian is a strong morph, the recent buff to Intensive pushed it over the top in a group setting. This thing can heal for almost a million healing in your sweatier BGs if your group stays together the whole time - it just won't show up on the scoreboard since it counts as a pet.

Enduring Undeath - This one won't see much use, but on a healer, it's one of the strongest heals for the cost that you can find. Incredibly efficient ability that direct heals and HoTs in an AoE radius for comparatively very low cost.

Deaden Pain - This one is practically a must slot in PvP. It scales off of health, so it'll almost always have a good tooltip. With Intensive Mender you can get about a 60% or higher uptime on Deaden Pain, which is pretty nuts.

moosegod

100s of hours as StamNB: cloak is the best skill in the game.

I see lots of worried comments on the forums that ZOS is ruining cloak in the next update but those sorts of comments come anytime there is a big change to skills/mechanics. I have yet to test it but the proposed change doesn't sound like a doomsday nerf. I think it will still function fine and possibly could be easier to use, especially since you can sustain it through siphoning strikes and a HoT to keep siphoning.

I also think this will encourage more gank builds to lower their hp below 50% by spamming siphoning strikes while constantly invisible and take advantage of sets like True-Sworn Fury and Titanborn Strength and the vampire skill that scales with missing HP.

Also my favorite skill on NB is Shadow Image. Being able to teleport AND cloak makes the class so slippery. You can have your shadow on one floor of a keep in Cyrodiil and then teleport to the other floor as an escape. It also counts as a pet so you can run Necropotence for a huge mag pool.

albertberku

For NB it is Shade for sure, and i believe Cloak is borderline useless in PvP. All needed is 2 players in the same group with Detect Pots, and the whole group would know where you are all the time, without you knowing who has the Detect Pot active. And Cloak is really working against the caster in those situations, where you dont want to use any heal skills not to get out of cloak, and ironically the game shows the caster themselves that they are in cloak, but other faction players can see and target you without any indication that they can do that.

Only real use case for cloak is when you 1v1 and can survive 15 seconds burst, after that you can just chill for 30 secs, and get your resources back to 100. Anything other than that, any kind of 1vX, there is going to be at least one player that is running behind you and light attacking you all the time, no matter if you are in cloak or not. Casting cloak makes you only more vulnerable at those times.

Zallion

For pvp, 2 must haves slots per class.

Warden: Deep fissure - great delayed burst and both penetration debuffs, what’s not to love. Polar wind - arguably the best heal in the game, scales with health, burst heal and HOT in one button, and heals allies.

Templar: Radiant oppression - arguably strongest execute in the game and a must have on every Templar build, this ability has been carrying (what’s left) of the class. Extended Ritual - big purge to yourself and to your teammates - this ability is so clutch in group play it cannot be overstated.

Sorcerer: Streak - amazing CC as well as mobility tool, half decent damage on its own too, this is what makes a sorc a sorc. Hardened ward - one button heal and shield, one of the best survivability abilities in the game if properly built for it, and a bit overturned atm.

Nightblade: Shadowy Disguise - aka Cloak - the best ability on any class in the game probably. Both an offensive and defensive tool. Engage and disengage at will, tons of buffs for slotting, a staple of the class. Merciless Resolve - one of the strongest if not the strongest burst abilities in the game.

Dragonknight: Shattering rocks - incredibly strong cc with a heal component. Molten whip - the seething fury damage boost is huge and the whip burst at 3 stacks sets up so many good combos and is very fluid to play, it’s like a mini merciless resolve but with sick glowing fire eyes.

Necromancer: Blighted Blastbones - great burst skill and both defile procs, but very janky and unreliable at times, still a must have for its burst potential. Spirit guardian - other morph is awesome too, but I like this one for it’s built in damage mitigation.

Arcanist: Runeguard of Freedom - a very very strong heal ability - essentially a preset burst heal with tons of buffs including cc immunity, an absolute must have. Impervious Runeward - big heal/shield skill and the main survival tool for the class. These two skills in combination make the class super tanky, unfortunately the class lacks damage aside from the beam which is kinda bad to use in pvp.

Turtle_Bot

PvP Magsorc main here (although I play magsorc very different to most, running a more stamsorc like playstyle but with mag abilities, i.e. not mag stacking). I also PvE too, but nothing super serious like trifectas or score pushing (have done trifectas in the past, just not anymore).

1. Hardened Ward - The ability is currently overtuned and is carrying magsorc on its own (no seriously, run a magsorc in PvP without ward and see how it goes).
2. Streak - Still a very strong ability on sorc thanks to combining hard CC (stun) and mobility into 1 bar slot (crucial on a class that traditionally struggles for bar space due to requiring a lot of out of class abilities to get access to named buffs).

Honorable mentions:

- Crit Surge - Really nice HoT while dealing damage, unfortunately does very little if not dealing constant damage or not building for crit chance, which is very awkward on a class that lacks both sticky DoTs (pets don't proc this) and a source of Major Prophecy/Savagery in the class kit.
- Overload - Really nice pressure ultimate and the main source of sustained pressure sorcerer has, unfortunately plagued by bugs, lack of target tracking like other ranged attacks and doesn't interact with sets that work with ultimates such as balorgs. It also lost its unique 3rd bar many years ago that killed sorcs bar space, especially when running pets.
- Ball of Lightning - Not the worst skill, but has seen much better days, CC immunity only lasts half as long as other similar generic skills (RaT), generic passive speed is also very high currently too making its short range teleport not as effective as it used to be. Also currently bugged where it counts as a pet for things like expert summoner and other effects that do different things based on pets being active or not,
- Atronach (ultimate) - The best PvE ultimate Sorcerer has, group wide major berserk, stun, nice DoT + area denial. Gets better next patch due to not counting as a permanent pet for expert summoner and the class set beacon of oblivion, which helps no-pet sorcs a lot for PvE, but still counts for the sorcerer scribing class script which hurts no-pet sorc a lot in PvE due to the loss of a decent amount of cleave. It is also very limited when solo since it loses the berserk buff (requires an ally to use the synergy to get berserk and does not have a self synergy option) which is a lot of damage, and being a ground based AoE it's easy enough to move out of its reach in PvP where enemies will move out of dangerous areas.
- Vibrant Shroud - Nice AoE heal on par with blessings of protection, that provides some nice buff/debuff access, unfortunately it's AoE is very narrow and it is currently overshadowed by both hardened ward and heal soul (healing morph of scribing skill wield soul).
- Pets/deadric prey - Sorcs best PvE build, hard carrying the class in PvE content, especially for single target content to the detriment of non-pet builds that just cannot compete.

Non-ability aspects:
Class script:
- non-pet - really nice bonus cleave that sorcerer was severely lacking.
- pet - really nice heal over time on par with crit surge when pets are active.
- Overall ZOS did really well with the design of this class script, they just need to address the issue with atronach ultimate like they have done for expert summoner passive and beacon of oblivion class set in this patch.

Dishonorable Mentions:

- Mages Fury - outdated "execute" that has no scaling and the lowest starting threshold of any execute in the game (only active on targets below 20% health) that also suffers from a multitude of bugs. Only good for stealing already guaranteed kills in low tier PvP.
- Lightning Splash - Worst AoE DoT ability in the game, with the lowest damage and highest cost thanks to all of its damage being tied up in the synergy and providing zero secondary effects/buffs/debuffs. Special shout out to the long cast animation that actually delays the cast giving it an interruptible cast time despite the tooltip stating its an instant ability.
- Boundless Storm - remains at the old 5m melee radius even though the standard for melee attacks got updated to 7m, the tick rate also got reduced to 2 seconds despite it being a self cast DoT and the only good DoT that the class had access to that would proc things like crit surge.

Non-ability aspects:
Class sets:
- Monolith of Storms - One of the worst designed sets I have ever seen, that even giving it huge base damage cannot save it. Completely conflicts with the abilities required to proc it, where it wants to be a front bar proc set that works with a spammable ability, but the abilities on the skill line that would consistently proc the set and maintain its proc are back bar DoT abilities (like hurricane and lightning splash) or the execute that is only usable on targets under 20% health, or the ultimate (overload) that would require giving up the class's best ultimate (atro). It's also a ground based summon/AoE DoT/tether that does nothing when there is only 1 active so at minimum it requires 2 casts to do anything. On top of all this, it cannot be stacked by multiple wearers, so you can't even get around it's design issues by having multiple players wearing the set to make it easier to activate/maintain. Needs a complete redesign from the ground up.

xylena_lazarow

DK PvP - whip is overrated

Burning Talons - spammable AoE with strong dot, annoying root, and bursty synergy

Shattering Rocks - unblockable stun that also heals you

Hardened Armor - very cheap spammable hp scaling shield that also provides mandatory buffs

Poop Fist - jk it's the worst skill I've ever seen in any video game

SkaraMinoc

Dark Deal/Conversion is probably the biggest enabler in the game.

Zodiarkslayer

For SOLO PvE

Arcanist: Pragmatic Fatecarver. On Demand Shield for <1k Mag/Stam per sec. That's nuts, even without all the damage of the beam.
Dragonknight: Cinder Storm enables you to survive almost anything, plus it procs the Mountain's Blessing passive. And its the only ability that is universally useful for both Mag and Stam DK. Other than that DK is a pretty balanced class.
Necromancer: I only play MagCro as a heavy attack build. It's pretty strong, but it is not a "classic" Necro build, so take wht I say with a grain of salt: Ruinous Scythe! On demand AoE Off Balance and Hemorraghe. Totally OP, in my opinion.
Nightblade: Soul Harvest and Merciless Resolve come to mind first. But if you think about it, Siphoning Attacks slotted on the backbar is a game changer. It's like the glue that keeps your SOLO build together.
Sorcerer: Both classic Mag and Stam builds would use Crit Surge and a morph of Bound Armour. But Hardened Ward is much more useful for MagSorcs, especially when you build for it. Oakensoul heavy attack build plus Hardened Ward = God Mode. It still is.
Templar: Rune Focus. Healing+Armor+passive activation+Sustain (and you can use BiStat food, because of the much improved sustain). And it's dirt cheap. But it only takes the lead, because Puncturing Sweeps isn't usable by StamPlars.
Warden: Deep Fissure. Major and Minor Breach in one ability. That is a real enabler when you are SOLO.

seventyfive

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Dark Deal/Conversion is probably the biggest enabler in the game.

This is my pick as well if I had to choose just one single ability in the game. Not the fancy eye grabber with big damage numbers, but especially with the healing passive of that particular skill line, it's almost a full burst heal, at a cheap cost (the Dark Deal morph is particularly cheap), and then, after you've already gotten a good cheap heal, you get an enormous amount of resources, and can be morphed to grant either of the resources to adapt to any build.

EDIT: Oh and I should mention for anyone unfamiliar as well that you get either 1 (for 20s) or 2 (10s each) minor buffs on top of that, and one of the two is minor berserk. Hilarious!

Malyore

seventyfive wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Dark Deal/Conversion is probably the biggest enabler in the game.

This is my pick as well if I had to choose just one single ability in the game. Not the fancy eye grabber with big damage numbers, but especially with the healing passive of that particular skill line, it's almost a full burst heal, at a cheap cost (the Dark Deal morph is particularly cheap), and then, after you've already gotten a good cheap heal, you get an enormous amount of resources, and can be morphed to grant either of the resources to adapt to any build.

EDIT: Oh and I should mention for anyone unfamiliar as well that you get either 1 (for 20s) or 2 (10s each) minor buffs on top of that, and one of the two is minor berserk. Hilarious!

That 0.8 second cast time always snags me whenever I'm tryna swap bars after using dark deal. It's actually gotten me killed a few times even in pve. It doesn't feel like other cast time abilities somehow. I dunno if it's just me tho

MidniteOwl1913

I like merciless resolve, it's almost like having another ultimate...

Turtle_Bot

Malyore wrote: »

seventyfive wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Dark Deal/Conversion is probably the biggest enabler in the game.

This is my pick as well if I had to choose just one single ability in the game. Not the fancy eye grabber with big damage numbers, but especially with the healing passive of that particular skill line, it's almost a full burst heal, at a cheap cost (the Dark Deal morph is particularly cheap), and then, after you've already gotten a good cheap heal, you get an enormous amount of resources, and can be morphed to grant either of the resources to adapt to any build.

EDIT: Oh and I should mention for anyone unfamiliar as well that you get either 1 (for 20s) or 2 (10s each) minor buffs on top of that, and one of the two is minor berserk. Hilarious!

That 0.8 second cast time always snags me whenever I'm tryna swap bars after using dark deal. It's actually gotten me killed a few times even in pve. It doesn't feel like other cast time abilities somehow. I dunno if it's just me tho

Dark Deal/Conversion is a full 1 second cast time, not 0.8 seconds, that's the big difference between it and abilities like snipe, frags, jabs, flurry, etc. and is what makes it so awkward to weave/bar swap properly with it.

0.2 seconds doesn't sound like much, but when that is the difference between weaving (or using other actions such as bar swapping/blocking/etc.) or not in-between that 1 second GCD on casting abilities, it becomes very noticeable and significantly messes with the flow of combat.

Urzigurumash

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

DK PvP - whip is overrated

Whip is strong enough to make DK the most monochromatic class of all, strong enough to have deleted every other DK playstyle from the competitive ecosystem. It was once stated quite loudly and repeatedly on this forum - Whip will save StamDK. In fact it deleted the subclass, since then nobody except the person playing it has known they were stacking Stam on a DK.

Urzigurumash

For Arcanist PvP, clearly the answer is

SkaraMinoc

Turtle_Bot wrote: »

Malyore wrote: »

seventyfive wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

Dark Deal/Conversion is probably the biggest enabler in the game.

This is my pick as well if I had to choose just one single ability in the game. Not the fancy eye grabber with big damage numbers, but especially with the healing passive of that particular skill line, it's almost a full burst heal, at a cheap cost (the Dark Deal morph is particularly cheap), and then, after you've already gotten a good cheap heal, you get an enormous amount of resources, and can be morphed to grant either of the resources to adapt to any build.

EDIT: Oh and I should mention for anyone unfamiliar as well that you get either 1 (for 20s) or 2 (10s each) minor buffs on top of that, and one of the two is minor berserk. Hilarious!

That 0.8 second cast time always snags me whenever I'm tryna swap bars after using dark deal. It's actually gotten me killed a few times even in pve. It doesn't feel like other cast time abilities somehow. I dunno if it's just me tho

Dark Deal/Conversion is a full 1 second cast time, not 0.8 seconds, that's the big difference between it and abilities like snipe, frags, jabs, flurry, etc. and is what makes it so awkward to weave/bar swap properly with it.

0.2 seconds doesn't sound like much, but when that is the difference between weaving (or using other actions such as bar swapping/blocking/etc.) or not in-between that 1 second GCD on casting abilities, it becomes very noticeable and significantly messes with the flow of combat.

This is true. I ran Relequen for awhile and trying to maintain stacks was noticeably slower because of the 1 second cast time on Dark Deal versus 0.8 seconds.

Zallion

Urzigurumash wrote: »

For Arcanist PvP, clearly the answer is

I see what you did there

dark_hunterxmg

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

I like merciless resolve, it's almost like having another ultimate...

Add crystal fragments to your statement. Tool tips at 20k+ for the proc and available more often by casting other skills.

StarOfElyon

LISTED IN ORDER THAT I MADE MY CHARACTERS:

Templar: Radiant Oppression

Necromancer: Blastbones

Dragonknight: Take Flight

Sorcerer: Hardened Ward (or Overload)

Nightblade: Merciless Resolve (or Cloak)

Warden: Polar Wind

Arcanist: Fatecarver (I guess)

Xirks

Psijic / Scribing / Vamp abilities > Class abilities

freespirit

Templar - Easily Radient Oppression, all of my accounts heavily feature Templars, I play solo a lot and it just hits so hard.

Pet Sorc - Love Daedric Prey! 🙂

ViggyBoi

for plar, easily jesus beam with cleansing ritual being a close second

for sorc, streak is one of the most fun and versatile abilities in the game without feeling too overtuned (unlike hardened ward kek) but i think dark exchange is also a sleeper. So many times playing other classes i wish i had access to an ability like this. free resources + upside and now its also a pretty decent heal at the cost of the cast time. Back before all the changes to the passives I dreaded having to mash this skill to get use out of it but now it feels real good.

StarOfElyon

StarOfElyon wrote: »

LISTED IN ORDER THAT I MADE MY CHARACTERS:

Templar: Radiant Oppression

Necromancer: Blastbones

Dragonknight: Take Flight

Sorcerer: Hardened Ward (or Overload)

Nightblade: Merciless Resolve (or Cloak)

Warden: Polar Wind

Arcanist: Fatecarver (I guess)

I forgot to mention Healthy Offering. How does the "high risk high reward" class have the best burst heal in the game?

Turtle_Bot

StarOfElyon wrote: »

StarOfElyon wrote: »

LISTED IN ORDER THAT I MADE MY CHARACTERS:

Templar: Radiant Oppression

Necromancer: Blastbones

Dragonknight: Take Flight

Sorcerer: Hardened Ward (or Overload)

Nightblade: Merciless Resolve (or Cloak)

Warden: Polar Wind

Arcanist: Fatecarver (I guess)

I forgot to mention Healthy Offering. How does the "high risk high reward" class have the best burst heal in the game?

It's very easy to overlook this when the class also has:

- the best burst ability (that is stronger at base than all other abilities in the game except for 1 single ultimate)
- one of the best escape/utility mechanics (the only one in the game that demands a hard counter for it)
- one of the best burst ultimates
- the best spammable
- access to the most modifiers
- some of the most flexible bar space
- unique synergies with many already strong non-class skill lines

Major_Mangle

StarOfElyon wrote: »

StarOfElyon wrote: »

LISTED IN ORDER THAT I MADE MY CHARACTERS:

Templar: Radiant Oppression

Necromancer: Blastbones

Dragonknight: Take Flight

Sorcerer: Hardened Ward (or Overload)

Nightblade: Merciless Resolve (or Cloak)

Warden: Polar Wind

Arcanist: Fatecarver (I guess)

I forgot to mention Healthy Offering. How does the "high risk high reward" class have the best burst heal in the game?

It has the same scaling as Honor the dead and resistant flesh, so it´s by no means the strongest burst heal in the game by definition (unless you consider the necro and templar one the "strongest" as well).

Check for yourself if you don´t believe me
https://esoitem.uesp.net/viewSkillCoef.php

StarOfElyon

Major_Mangle wrote: »

StarOfElyon wrote: »

StarOfElyon wrote: »

LISTED IN ORDER THAT I MADE MY CHARACTERS:

Templar: Radiant Oppression

Necromancer: Blastbones

Dragonknight: Take Flight

Sorcerer: Hardened Ward (or Overload)

Nightblade: Merciless Resolve (or Cloak)

Warden: Polar Wind

Arcanist: Fatecarver (I guess)

I forgot to mention Healthy Offering. How does the "high risk high reward" class have the best burst heal in the game?

It has the same scaling as Honor the dead and resistant flesh, so it´s by no means the strongest burst heal in the game by definition (unless you consider the necro and templar one the "strongest" as well).

Check for yourself if you don´t believe me
https://esoitem.uesp.net/viewSkillCoef.php

Considering all the damage and crit chance that Nightblades can pack while other classes have to worry about sustain and defense, their burst heal performs the best. I'm judging by what I can observe in PvP.