What system are you playing on and where? You will probably get some good answers here but the best way its to find a friendly guild, most people will be happy to help you asking and can discuss things more thoroughly as you go.

Well, first of all, forget about stamina and medium armor for a magicka-based Sorcerer; they're both useless for them. Focus on Magicka primarily, health only on a few pieces of gear if you're struggling until you can get Conjured Ward (and especially its morph, Hardened Ward) which is a Sorcerer's primary means of damage mitigation. You can go full-magicka then, because it scales off it. Personally I don't use anything but Light Armor on my Sorcerers, but 2 pieces of heavy can also be good.

As for attacks...Get Force Shock (and later one of its morphs) from the Destruction Staff skill line asap. That will be your main source of spammable damage since Sorcerers don't have one. Cast Crystal Shard when it procs (you hear a sound and the icon starts to glow; that means you can cast it instantly and for reduced cost) and Endless Fury as a finisher when the enemy has low health.

For extra protection, you can get a Restoration Staff for your secondary skill bar at level 15, it has healing abilities and a different ward (which isn't as good as the Sorcerers's ward, but it's easier to get and helps).

Make sure you unlock your racial passives, armor and skill line passives too. Read all books you come across since they sometimes offer skill points, gather skyshards for more skill points.

When crafting, make sure you research all the pieces you've found, to learn their traits, then create special sets that give you useful buffs (Seducer and Magnus's Gift are two good sets for Sorcerers, that can be made reasonably easy) You have to find the crafting locations in the world, and each set requires you to have learned a certain number of traits for the piece of gear you want to craft. Here's a list of what they are and where you can find them: http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Set+Bonus+Crafting+Locations

This is just some basic information and I don't claim to be an expert theory-crafter. I hope it helped some though.

princess_schnitz wrote: »

New to gaming so bear with me here. I was playing as a Breton Dragonknight, I started focusing on dual wield just because I liked it better. I got to about level 20 and it started to become very hard to kill anything. I looked some thing up and realized I shouldn't have been spreading out my magicka health and stamina equally. I also hadn't really gotten many passive abilities and I had been only wearing heavy armor because hey, armor equals the most protection why bother wearing light and medium right? I also spent a lot of skill points on blacksmithing and provisioning.

I decided to do some research and I realized that this whole MMO thing is much more complicated than I initially realized and I decided to start over.

Ergo character number 2, High elf Sorcerer. Now a level 6, been focusing on destruction staff obviously not too far in yet. Been wearing mostly light armor, one heavy maybe or two pieces of medium. At the moment this is what I have on my ability bar:

Endless Fury I
Crystal Shard IV
Flame Touch IV
Unstable Familiar IV

I'm having trouble killing things and also figuring out what to do when I get skill points. I know that what I'm doing is ineffective but I don't know how to pinpoint what is ineffective and how to choose something effective. Also, do I level up magicka or health? How do I not die if I'm leveling up magicka? Just keep eating food every 35 minutes? Do I have to enchant my armor with stamina and health glyphs every time I want to update my armor? Who has time for that crap??

Hey, you're learning right, 2nd character not quite such a disaster as 1st right, and if this is your 1st game you're not doing too badly.
I've been playing single-player crpgs for over 20 years and there was plenty for me to learn with my 1st mmo that I've played for any length of time.
Yes, eat food every time its effects run out. When you get to level 10 you'll be able to make food that increases your health and magicka at the same time (if you put a skill point in to allow you to use the blue recipes) and it will feel like a big power boost. If I was to recommend 2 crafts for your 1st character to learn they would be provisioning just because it is so useful and enchanting because it takes so bleeping long to level up. Won't be a great deal of use to you early on but later you'll be glad of it.
Don't worry about what armour you're wearing until you get some skill points put into the passives to make light armour useful. For the first few levels just wear whatever has the best stats but make sure to wear at least 1 piece of light armour so the skill keeps increasing.

Learn how to cancel animations . There are lots of guides on Youtube . It nearly doubles your DPS and gives you survival and ultimate regeneration . You are probably spamming your attack skills . That way you can't regenerate ultimate . Putting a light attack just before the skill increases your DPS a lot also gives you Major Heroism . It is a 8 second buff that gives you 3 ultimate per second ( correct me if I am wrong ) . Anyways , I usually equip low level items in my alts and do everything with ease . For example , v1 character equipped with 20 level items . It is all about animation cancelling and you should learn it because it is part of the game and it will stay there .

smacx250 wrote: »

One other thing worth mentioning - there is nothing wrong with playing a DK if that's what you'd like. With the next major patch DKs look to be getting some improvements, and it seems that sorcs might be on the road to being brought down a notch (not that any of that really matters except for PvP or end-game PvE). A Breton for a magicka DK should be fine. You can purchase both stat and skill re-specs (allows you to redistribute the points you have already allocated), either with gold or crowns. So if you aren't happy with your current allocations (including weapon and armor), you can change them. Not trying to dissuade you from continuing on your new sorc (I play sorc the most), but did want to let you know that all is not lost with your DK just because you may have gotten off on the wrong foot.

Also, if you do every quest you find on your journeys, kill all the mobs you find along the way, and really scour the maps for out of the way encounters, it will help your character level up and be stronger as you move on to the next zone.

defnitely agree with that
look out for sidequests along the way
you don't have to do all of them, I do and always end up overlevelled, but you should never have to feel underlevelled for the faction quests if you are making sure to do a decent amount of side quests