You are still min-maxing? *giggles*

Do you think, Argonian armies went to war without archers or magicians?
Redguard armies surely had healers, hadn't they?
Orc shamans are notorious for their secret tinctures.
Bosmers might tend to avoid fire, but I am still of the opinion that they have some avid magic scholars.

Where's the fun in min-maxing, anyway?

A character, to me, is just that: A character.
Some are illiterate, some get excited over any scroll they can lay their hands on. All have strengths and weaknesses, some are bold, some are shy.

I like the Imperial race. 5/8 characters are Imperial. Nice passives!

It also helps that it's my favorite race from the lore.

They are semi important to me, but luckily the races I like also happen to be min/max e.g. Breton for my Templar healer, Altmer for my Sorcerer damage dealer and Dunmer for my DK tank (though a Breton or Imperial is slightly better).

Race is very important to me because I am a RPer. If I can not find a background story for the character, they don't get played with the exception of the prerelease character who I still don't have a good background for. If she wasn't V7, I would have deleted her already. My main is V14 that I have a rather fleshed background. I tend to play the races of Man, but I do have a token Altmer.

I rolled Dark Elf specifically to make a vamp, decided however vamps suck and deleted her. Otherwise, the rest of my toons are simply what I wanted to play atm, primarily elves.

i have found that reguardless of race you can do great.

the race just provides passive bonuses... literally.


i know one very silly (you know who you are if you see my name) person who rolled a second DK as Altmer for a DK DPS just because her first DK was an Imperial and she wanted those Altmer specific passives.

even tho she can probably get better overall stats on her Imperial as everyone in the guild has already mentioned many many times.

i hope when she gets that DK to V14 (should be very soon) that she trys the same setup on both her DKS... i will laugh for days if it turns out her Imperial was better all along.

I've only built one character so far, since I just started playing only a month and a half ago, but when I built my character, despite the fact that I was using a skill calculator and trying to learn the stats of the various passives and actives that would be my current character as he is today, there was only one factor in the stats that I didn't care about.
Race is the only thing where I just sort of relaxed and said, "I don't care about stats, I just want to be my favorite race of people."

I always joke around when talking about Elder Scrolls games by saying, "BRETON MASTER RACE!"
Breton's have just always been my first choice whenever playing any Elder Scrolls game, I've played the other races as well, but no race has ever felt right to me other than the Breton race.
The Breton people have always been my favorite race of people. The mysterious origins of being half mer half man. Their obsession with the eb and flow of magic, and their natural talent towards manipulating it. Plus for some reason, I always thought they were just a generally beautiful people.

When I built my first character on ESO, I just chose Breton, no questions asked, no stat consideration, no passive favoritism. I felt lucky later on while playing to find that the passives for being the Breton Race happened to work hand in hand with the play style I have for my character, but it was mostly coincidental.

I'm even thinking of building a Khajiit character soon after I play my Breton for a while longer, but as I've been thinking about building the Khajiit, I've had no thoughts of what that race's passive benefits are compared to any other races benefits. I just want to make a cat person and than stick a build to him which I will calculate later, because those are the statistics I actually care about. If my build happens to work alongside of racial passives, then that would be sort of nice.

Despite the fact that there are a lot of people who want optimal builds and may in fact predetermine their race based on a particular build, I think it is actually much more common for people to ignore their race as part of their skill and stat build.
Our character's race is more or less a visual profile of us within the game, it's the race, personality, and style we want to appear as to others within the game and yes it is completely cosmetic. I think it's actually an interesting personality test to find what race players identify themselves as and for what reasons. I have just found that through watching RPer's and just chatting with people who just like playing the Elder Scrolls games, often pick a race because, "It's my favorite race."

My main is a Breton Sorc Vampire wearing light armor. So went with all the "traditional" routes with her. However my current favorite alt is an Imperial Sorc vampire...who is also sword and board and wears heavy armor because of her racial perks. She "feels" substantially different than my main but I'm having a ton of fun playing her. Now granted I will probably only ever PvE with her and never set foot in Cyrodil (well she might have to see Imperial City some day I guess) but I really don't have any problems with her in PvE despite her unconventional build/race/ class combo. If you're going to PvP you're forced a little more to min/max in order to be competitive. And certainly if you are dead set on doing trials and vet dungeons etc you're going to run into people who expect you to min/max. But I really don't think it's really necessary. Do what's fun. Do what's interesting. Do what makes you feel like logging in.

I don't really care about passives, and don't really pick a race to suite a class, or vice versa. I'm happy to play an Orc mage or a Bosmer crusader. I just pick whichever race I like the best at the moment based on aesthetic or story-related reasons.

angelyn wrote: »

Although passives are helpful for min/maxing, I've always played a dark elf in Elder Scrolls games. The passives turned out to be a nice bonus, since I'm a vamp too. Even so,my main would always be a Dunmer,regardless of passives.

This.... just without the bit about vampires.

I started with Morrowind. Even though my first character was a Breton, the second was a Dunmer... as has been every one since. Of all of the races they are the ones that I find I relate to on the deepest level even if I have issues with some of their less charming personality traits. Vvardenfell still feels like Home to me even after all of this time and I look forward to its inclusion in the game... eventually.

So race is important to me. The decision just has nothing whatsoever to do with the numbers associated with the races themselves.

drschplatt wrote: »

I created a fat, bald, huge, tatted up female Nord night blade because it's freaking funny looking when tubby leaps out of the darkness and stabs someone in the neck. I couldn't care less about racial bonuses. Really, it's not that big of a difference.

I have an imperial destro/resto staff sorcerer that is working out just fine.

I made an Argonian Dragon Knight sword and shield because I thought it was kind of funny that a water based race would be using fire magic.

I might make a huge tatted up nastly looking orc and dress him up in pink light armor and give him a bow just for kicks and giggles.

You are clearly an iconoclast, drschplatt.