Hm.. tricky to answer. Builds aren't really a thing at such low level as you'll be outgrowing your gear too quickly. Also not really sure what you want to do with it. PvP? questing levelling, dungeons..? is it for solo or group play? if group, what role? DD/Tank/heals?

But generally, though, I'd pump everything into magicka.

As always, buy a skill from each class line and slot it to start levelling that line.

Get pets. They are good for solo pve - and having them (more the better) slotted helps level up your summoning line quicker to get that all Important Hardened Ward (usually magsorc's main defence)

Until then, use the dmg shield from the light armour line for defence.

Main skills to aim for to start with would be mages fury (lightning) - daedric curse (summoning) - morph to velocitous, and crystal shard (dark magic) - morph to frags. Thiese will probably be your bread and butter single-target dmg abilities forever.

If you want AOE, lightning splash and wall of elements (destro staff).

Force shock from the destro line is a commonly used anytime..

If you're keen on staves, destro on your front bar, resto on your back bar works fairly well.


(btw, when you say mage, I assume you mean a Magicka Sorc)


*Edit
Not sure if you're aware too, but toggle abilities (like pets) have to be slotted on both bars otherwise they unsummon once you switch weapon.
When you unlock the lightning ulti (overload) - it gives you a third skill bar. To set it up, activate overload then go to your skills menu and drag some different skills in. Then switching overload on/off will also switch to a different skill bar (but beware of pet unsummons etc).

Sorry, my character is a Nord. I forgot that matters.

I don't know what things like AOE and whatnot means, but I'm mostly a solo player. Sometimes I join others for dungeons or dolmens/delves, but that's about it.

AOE = Area of Effect - stuff that hits multiple enemies.

Rhyagella wrote: »

Thank you @Biro123 and @Asardes for helping me out, I appreciate it.

So, alongside concentrating on the aforementioned abilities above, would it be wise to do upgrade stamina and magicka so that they are even, or should I be leaning more toward magicka > stamina > health?

Nope. Spreading you abilities in stamina and magicka would seriously gimp your build. I've leveled a hybrid build - Nord DK - and was a pain to kill anything. I was relieved when I could afford to buy the Hakeijos that allowed me to enchant my armor and keep on tanking, although I had moved every attribute point in stamina. So put everything in stamina from the beginning, level as a DD, then, if you fancy it, take up tanking. Only for the most challenging endgame content, like veteran trials, do you also need to put some points in health and magicka.

Why is nobody explaining how the game works at all? Just contradicting each other entirely and probably leaving the OP very confused.

Basically, any class can pretty much fill any role, be that damage dealer, tank or healer. Races also have racial passives which lean towards certain styles of play. Also, to be effective you need to choose whether you will be a stamina or magicka build.

Generally speaking stamina builds use mostly abilities from the melee weapon skill lines and any class skills which have stamina morphs (as most of these skills start off being scaled off of magicka) and are melee close combat fighters using medium/heavy armour. Magicka builds generally use light armor and staves (although can make use of other weapons) and fight from long range using spells.

For you a nord leans towards a stamina build with a lot of tankiness due to max health, health recovery and damage reduction racial passives. This doesnt mean to say you can't be a magicka sorcerer, it just means you miss out on ths racial bonuses which other races have which maximise magicka such as high elf and breton.

Before anybody can help you with builds you need to decide what type of playstyle and role you want to have. Do you want to be a melee damage dealer or tank, or do you want to use spells and fight from a distance like a 'typical' sorcerer.

If melee then you're off to a good start, put everything into stamina and take a look at weapon skills and which ones sound cool to you. If magicka then you may want to consider starting again with a more suitable class but you don't have to.

Really good build advice can be found on sites such as deltiasgaming, sypherpk and alcasthq.

Sorry long post but hope this helps.

In this game racials tend to determine the roll and wether a stamina or magicka build is optimal, rather than class.

Nord: excellent tank, decent stamina DD
Imperial: excellent tank, good stamina DD
Orc: good tank, good stamina DD
Redguard: excellent stamina DD
Bosmer: good stamina DD (especially PvP)
Khajiit: excellent stamina DD (especially PvE)
Breton: excellent healer, good magicka DD
Argonian: excellent healer, decent magicka DD
Altmer: excellent magicka DD, decent healer
Dunmer: excellent magicka DD, decent healer, decent tank

So
- if you want an optimized magicka sorcerer DD pick Altmer or Dunmer
- if you want an optimized stamina sorcerer Tank pick a Nord, Imperial or Orc
- if you want an optimized stamina sorcerer DD pick Khajiit or Redguard

Since you already picked Nord I recommended the role for which it's best optimized by its racials. If you decide later to do hard content racial choices will matter.

As stamina sorcerer you can be both tank and DD.

- A tank taunts and draws aggro from enemies (puncture, inner fire), debuffs them (heroic slash), locks them in place (encase) or slows them down (caltrops), so the DDs can kill them faster and without being attacked themselves. A tank has to have high resistance (hurricane, bound armaments) and preferably have access to stamina sustain (dark exchange) and self heals (critical surge). Tanks wear at least 5 pieces of heavy armor and have 1H+S at least on their main bar for better blocking and skill usage.

- A DD kills enemies. As stamina DD you will use mostly weapon skills to deal damage, and class skills for utility. For example a stamina sorcerer has to keep up mostly the same buffs as he would as a tank (hurricane, bound armaments, critical surge) and the rest of the bar should be taken up by actual DD skills. For example steel tornado and rending slashes from dual wield skill line, or endless hail from bow skill line. Ideally you should keep bow on your back bar and either dual wield or two handed on your main, with their respective skills.

A tank/DD hybrid is possible for solo content, and even for normal dungeons. But for veteran dungeons and trials you must have at least 2 different sets of gears. I have a Nord Stamina DK main char. He's mainly a PvE tank but being a full stamina build he can pull respectable damage with 2H/Bow combo when he wears his mostly medium armor DD sets. That's mostly what I play in PvP too, since I tried tanking a few times and I'm being ignored for not doing damage and I have a really hard time killing stuff. Stamina builds are pretty similar, since they mostly use weapon skills which are common for all classes. Before one Tamriel I would run the silver pledge and some gold pledges as an off-tank. Meaning I wore my DD gear with 1H+S on main bar, and 2H maul on the back bar. I PuGed most of those pledges, so the DDs and healers were often times very weak. I had to beat the dungeon mostly trough my own efforts - tanking, DPS-ing and self healing at the same time. I've found medium armor much better for this mixed role, because it has more sustain and more damage (that applies to heals from rally and vigor). Since the patch came I only aim for veteran hard mode dungeons for max key gain, so mixed roles or PuG-ing is out of the question now. I spend all my time in dungeons as a full tank now.

Rhyagella wrote: »

I didn't know you could swap gear, unless you're manually switching between sets by re-equipping? Either way I suppose I'm gonna have to try this too when I upgrade my bags to accommodate the extra gear. I'll try/do anything to get a better footing in dungeons and dolmens, especially for my hybrid toon. I've been kicked out of groups like crazy as soon as I'm invited and I'd like to not to face that anymore since I want to do more of the game content now.

If you are on PC there is an addon called Alpha Gear that lets you define gear and skill sets and bind them to a key. Of course you can only swap when you are out of combat. I use it all the time. For example as tank I have different setups, one for trash fights and some bosses, one for the other bosses, and a few special setups that are based on the latter, and where I only swap a few skills. http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1150-AlphaGearAlphaTools.html

Rhyagella wrote: »

The stamina sorc build:

Race: Nord (with focus on stamina and skills you mentioned here)
Class: Sorceress
Weapon Bar (1st Slot): Sword and Shield for buffing and debuffing etc
Weapon Bar (2nd Slot): Destruction Staff or 2H for dealing damage

It's not advisable to use a destruction or restoration staff on a stamina build, since the power of those skills scales of maximum magicka and spell damage. Similarly, it's not advisable to use bow or 2H weapon on magicka build since those skills scale of maximum stamina and weapon damage. You can use 2W on magicka build, but only for the twin blade and blunt passives with swords equipped. You can also use 1H+S on magicka build mostly for the block cost reduction and block mitigation passives from that skill line, because the active skills scale of stamina and weapon damage as well. But those kind of builds are a minority.
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Weapon+Skills

To sum that up:

Restoration Staff, Destruction Staff - magicka builds only
Bow, Two Handed, Double Wield, One Hand and Shield - stamina builds only

i think u doing it right,
as a nord go for a stam build, race really decides that for you.

for leveling use 1 skill of each your class plus 2x weapon skills.
example:
bar1: aoe dps
w1: twin slashes/wirlwind when u get it
w2: flurry
c1: clanfear
c2 : lightning form
c3 : ult: negate

bar2: single target or tank
w1: puncture
w2: low slash/charge
c1: clanfear
c2: encase
c3: ult overload

armor 5xheavy or med 1x1x

you can rely on clanfear to heal and tank most content btw

magicka is about the same with other weapons