FrancisCrawford wrote: »

Magicka templar is an obvious choice. You get Puncturing Sweeps, Reflective Light and Honor the Dead almost immediately, followed by Elemental Blockade soon thereafter, and those four skills are really all you need for leveling.

I completely agree.

I play a bunch of classes, but am enjoying magplar a lot lately. In many ways Sweeps is the only skill you need. You can even face tank the crematorial guards in vMA with it, where other classes have more trouble. That is not to say magplar is a boring one-skill class. It's got versatility. Play melee / AOE, or play ranged with Crushing Shock or the Psijic spammable. I find characters that combine both playstyles in one build very enjoyable for PvP, solo PvE, and mid-level PvE group content.

I don't have a ready-made beginner build, but here is my current build for illustrating some ideas:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=88365

This is a PvP build, but it plays well in solo PvE too. Swap out Impregnable for Bahraha's Curse in PvE. The build is tanky, but adds good damage via Vampire's Bane (or Reflective Light), Degeneration and Skoria. The Javelin is fairly PvP specific and I replace it with Rapid Maneuvers for riding around in PvE.

What's really fun about this build is the combined cost reduction from Prisoner's and Race Against Time, which allows you to sprint at near zero cost and restore magicka. I also use Forward Momentum, which is for PvP, but I like it in all content, since I hate being rooted or snared.

This exact build is something you can really only contemplate from CP160 onwards, as the sets will be hard to get / not worth getting before that. In the meantime, perhaps get someone to craft you a basic 2-set combination. Shacklebreaker is a PvP set, but I like stamina sustain in all content, so I'll always recommend that. Julianos, Seducer, Fortified Brass are all good crafted sets that give you damage, sustain, and tankiness respectively.

The reason I say magplar is that literally the first skill you unlock is single target, AOE, and a heal in one skill. Wardens heal from spamming birds, but that's single target, and the passive isn't immediately unlocked. Sweeps scales with enemies attacked, birds do not.

As a warden you only get more healing later in the levelling process. Yes, Soothing Spores is the first skill in the healing skill line, but I rate neither Spores nor Honor the Dead as great skills for soloing. Yes, they save you, but they are for emergency use. Too expensive to spam, and they don't progress the fight. IMO skills that heal over time or from / while attacking are much more valuable. This is true in PvP, but also in harder PvE content. It is much more effective to spam Sweeps against Imperial City bosses, or the already mentioned vMA Crematorial Guards, than it is to burst heal. It's not like stamden doesn't have the toolkit, but let me ask you, do you use Vigor? Rally? Green Lotus? All of those are fairly late unlocks.