Just a general thing: if you're questing and doing open world (overland) stuff, you're probably going to want to create a primarily DPS-based skill set with a self-heal skill and save being a tank for group content. Trying to tank in the open world is painful from what I've heard-- nothing can hurt you, but it takes forever to kill trash mobs.

It's really easy to swap skills, though. When you want to be a tank, just load up your bars with tank skills and swap your gear to tanking gear. Boom! You're now a tank You'll still need to level those skills like every other skill in the game. But you're not limited by class. Every class can tank/heal/DPS.

Check Alcast for a lot of detailed information and maybe you'll get a better feel for what suits you. Speaking of magdk, especially, mine is my most fragile toon. The whole mid-range/in your face playstyle feels wonky to me and I've played her for four? five? months now.

Stamina, you definitely want physical weapons. The bow is also a stam weapon. A lot of class skills seem to be magicka until you morph them the first time. That's when you pick the stamina variant. At level 15, you may not have leveled class skills far enough to see the stamina variant yet. Keep playing!

Sorry, this is going to take a lot of edits... Am currently leveling my first stam toon. I'm using mostly weapon skills on her. She's a weirdo, a non-criminal necromancer. So far, the weapon skills are excellent. I've been really impressed with bow and dual-wielding. When you get to the Fighters' Guild questline, the skills seem interesting too. I haven't gotten far enough along to fiddle with them yet. Stuff definitely dies faster when you play stamina.

^ Adding to the above, the last couple of months, these scrolls have been part of the daily log in rewards. So don't sweat it at level 50, either I have five or six in my bank just from logging in

First of all, hi, welcome to ESO! Choosing a class and build can be pretty overwhelming indeed, since ESO characters are a lot more customizable with different skill line options than WoW. However, you are correct that 'you can play how you want' isn't really true. While people can play how they want while soloing, in group content - especially at higher levels and difficulties - we are all expected to perform a certain role with a certain degree of efficiency. So that's where you'll see several distinct builds that are popular, that's where you'll find the 'meta', and you'll notice that putting all your points in stamina and using stamina skils will make your life easier than if you tried to play around with a hybrid.

Which leads us to your 'melee dps with magicka skills' problem. Almost all base class skills cost magicka initially, but after you level up that base skill (simply by having it on your bar while getting xp, you don't need to use it) you'll unlock two different morphs for it. So the base skills that you see in the class skill lines won't be their final form - all skills get to choose from two specialized upgrades that slightly modify the spell, and often one of those morphs will be for stamina. For example for your DK, 'Searing Srike' is a base skill DoT that scales with Magicka. After you level it up however, you can upgrade it to the 'Burning Embers' morph which remains Magicka but adds a heal to the DoT, or the 'Venomous Claw' morph which converts it into a Stamina ability and adds increasing damage over time.

For a full list of abilities and their morphs, visit the ESO Wiki or a similar page so you can see what kind of morphs you can look forward to on your Dragon Knight (https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Dragonknight+Skills). Your class abilities with upgraded stamina morphs will lead to a very different character toolkit than if you focused on magicka abilities, so it's worth exploring classes, either by reading their abilities or by watching a stamina DK build and a magicka DK build so you can actually see the differences and the playstyles.

All characters will find it useful to complement their class skillset with weapon skills, which work similarly in that you need to level up the base weapon skill to unlock two different morphs. The difference is that stamina-based weapons (1h+shield, dual wield, bow, twohanded) will start with stamina skills and will have only stamina morphs, while magicka-based weapons (destruction and healing staves) will start will magicka skills and have only stamina morphs. This makes it slightly easier to guess which weapon is right for you than class skills which may have a very nice stamina morph hidden behind a magicka base skill so you have no idea it's even there . The same thing applies as for class skills though, check out the morphs online so you have an idea what you can look foward to (https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Weapon+Skills).

In addition to class skills and weapon skills, you may also wish to add different Guild Skills to your skillset. The Psijic Order (Summerset), and the Mages and Fighters guilds (base game) have useful abilities, and so does the Alliance War skill line (unlocked via PvP). You can check them out on the Wiki, they all have their own morphs as well (https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Skills). The exact combination of skills you will want to use will depend on your class, role, and personal preference. The Sorcerer class has barely any class skills that have stamina morphs for example, so they'll mostly fill up their bars with weapon skills, while a Dragonknight or Necromancer will have more stamina morph options so they may use more class skills on their bar.

Regarding your personal role preference (close combat 'bulky' stamina dps that's similar to a warrior), I would also recommend Dragonknight or Templar. Both have a pretty good range of stamina morphs for their class abilities and you can combine that with weapon skills and fit your class fantasy the most (while Nightblade and Necro can be great stam choices too, I'm just not sure you'd enjoy the flavour of their class skills as much). If you are building your character for group PvE content, I recommend using a Bow or Dual Wielding, possibly both. However, as a new player you shouldn't feel forced to play the 'best' combinations, so if you want to play a warrior that has a two-handed weapon on both bars and smashes faces while charging around the battlefield, you should go for it!

And just an added note, although you didn't ask about armor, I think it relates to this topic. Light, Medium and Heavy armor also has its own Skill line, which have one active ability but several passives. Since the Medium armor skill line offers many useful bonuses for stamina dps, most stam dps characters will wear medium armor. Perhaps a dual-wielding dragonknight in medium armor doesn't fit your 'bulky warrior' fantasy as much, but note that you can change your character's appearance to be more warrior-like. Visit an Outfit station and apply a heavy armor outfit (outfits are basically ESO's version of WoW's transmog ) so perhaps that will help you fulfil your class fantasy better.

Hope that helps, and I hope I managed to get the information across without going on for too long - it's just a bit complex since there are so many different things to consider in ESO - magicka vs stamina morphs, weapon skill lines, armor bonuses, guild and pvp skills added on top of that, etc - while in WoW you just get a warrior with a determined skillset that all use Rage and you only wear Heavy armor

Like other people have suggested, just because most of the class skills are Magicka based doesn't mean you wouldn't build a stamina version of that class (ESO is kinda wierd like that- a typical build only uses a small handful of actual class skills).

For stamina builds: there's usually only one or two class skills people slot the stamina morphs of, then a few other class skills that require Magicka but not a lot since they're just cheap buff/debuff/cc skills, then the rest of your skills are filled out with weapon/guild/world skill lines.

Edit: also if your new check out some builds from the masters- Alcast & dotz & xynode all have websites you may find useful.

Wow..a lot of great info..thanks guys this is awesome. I will keep playing Dk then and i guess i’ll see you in game

Games differ in how easy or painful respeccing is. One of the biggest respeccing pain points in ESO is tanking vs. DPS. Tanks should have a lot of attribute points in health. DPS should not. Respeccing attributes costs 3000 gold.

Fortunately, when you're leveling up your attributes are actually higher than at level cap, so that gives you some flexibility.

Also fortunately, leveling a character to 50 is pretty fast and easy. So if you wanted to have two similar characters, one tanking and one DPSing, that wouldn't be hard to pull off.

Anyhow, none of the details matter until you first hit CP 160, because only at Level 50/CP 160 does it make any sense to invest serious time or gold in gear.