Easy to change skills later?

JCTrick · December 2014

New guy here. I built a High Elf/Dragon Knight to be used as a fighter-ish char. But I keep using a staff for whatever reason and enjoying it.

Is it easy to change skills later in the game if I decide that wielding a staff as a fighter is not smart? (Old Evercrack addict that's not use to more modern MMORPGs)

-Trick

Lynx7386 · December 2014

Yes and no. It's easy to respec, you simply go to the shrine of stendarr (or stuhn, if you're in the pact), located in your faction's capitol city, and you pay a gold fee to reset all of your skill points. The fee is fairly expensive, however.

The hard part is that, if you get way up there in level, and then switch to a weapon or armor type that you have not worked on for a while, you're going to have a rough time skilling it up.

It's definitely do-able though. My nightblade started out using 2handers, then changed to bow in the teens, then to dual wield in the 20's, then from the 30's through to level 50 he used a restoration and destruction staff set, and now I'm back to a 2hander/bow combo doing vet ranks.

Fivefivesix · January 2015

The respec can be expensive depending on how many skill points you have at the time you do it. But Lynx has it right you should put some time in using every weapon so later if you want to switch over it will be easier to level. I didn't use staffs at all while leveling up and when I hit Vet Rank and started to PvP I realised I should have maybe leveled those up lol.

Wolfsspinne · January 2015

Hi, imho it's rather easy to switch your main weapon skill. If you start at the right time.

I'd suggest to use one weapon type all the way from 1-50 and then level the others one by one while doing the other faction's quests.
I did it this way and now that I'm VR9 I have all weapon skills maxed out with one morph of each ability at IV.

As for the "hard" part of using a level 1 weapon skill in vet zones:
Physical weapons are rather easy to use. For you can perform sneak attacks with all of them. Restoration staff takes quite a time to kill a mob but you are in no danger of getting killed, which makes it boring but easy.

The destruction staff is by far the hardest weapon to level. It's great for AoE-damage but sucks against single targets, also it has no reliable defensive potential.
You should have a buddy with you in order to kill mobs effectively with a d-staff.
(Maybe it's the best to have d-staff as secondary weapon and use it only to turn in quests.)

The best way to level armor is wearing 5/1/1 pieces of armor types right from the beginning. You get the best XP yield by wearing 5 small pieces of the armor you want the passives from plus chest and leg piece of the other armor types.

rotaugen454 · February 2015

I put a LOT of time into my main character, and found every skyshard, did every quest, etc, to the point that I had a lot of unused skill points, which I then used to start grinding unused skills. It was a huge time investment, but he has just about anything I would actually use. So, switching the skills isn't mandatory, but there is a time cost.

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO · February 2015

its very easy. on my first toon i leveled 2hand bow on my way to v1, then switched to sword shield and resto and leveled them by vet 3. at this point(beeing at end game for a long long time) I have everything leveled but dual wield. and this was before they nerfed vet difficulty. however it may not be as easy in 1.6 who knows exactly how it will play out.

but you can more or less level your class skills, 2 armors if you go 5/2 and 2 weapons by 50-2 no problem. then you have to ask yourself do i want to play the game 2/3 more time with all leveled skills or switch it up.

if your still early level just make sure to always have something slotted you want to level once something is maxed use something new. that way you can learn most stuff by v14 and wont have to grind even more.

Sheuib · February 2015

I have leveled some weapons at the vet level and I feel it is actually easier to level at the high levels. For one thing you get way more experience per kill then you do at the low levels. Also, craft a weapon for leveling and use the training trait so you get a significant amount of extra xp towards leveling and just switch to a real trait when you get it leveled. The actual amount of bonus xp depends on the quality level of the weapon but if I remember correctly a blue weapon was 22% extra xp towards the weapon skill.

And, you don't have to depend on using the weapon abilities to actually level them. You just need to have them on the bar. I have also read somewhere that 2 abilities maxes out the amount of experience you will get for that weapon so don't go putting all the abilities you got on the bar unless you really just want to use them. And, most importantly remember to have that weapon bar active when you turn in a quest. Nothing more aggravating than to be close to a morph or new skill and have the wrong bar active when you turn in a quest.

NotSo · February 2015

The new character leveling strategy meta to maximize your leveling capacity by:
- having at least 1 skill from each of your 3 class skill trees on your bar in order to level all trees
- cycling individual skills from your 3 class skill trees to unlock all skill morphs
- wearing at least 1 piece of each armor type to level all armor types
- cycling out a weapon type as soon as you max it out (or swapping to another weapon type before turning in quests)
- being thorough in skyshard collecting to accommodate frequent setup changes

I personally have 1 skill from each tree (to include ultimate skill) and the remaining slots are made up of weapon skills (more weapon skills means faster weapon leveling), any class abilities that I particularly enjoy I will put onto my secondary bar (it's usually buffs and oh-sh*t skills).
This is the setup for my VR1.
My main character has everything maxed out.