Returning Player, Updating Builds is Scary and Confusing, Help?

NolansGoons · July 2023

I've never been numbers-savvy in this game, and knowing what sets/abilities are good for who when is very daunting when they seem to change (to great uproar) every couple months. Not to mention every time I look up build guides, every result is followed by some reddit or forum thread about how the guy who made the initial result is dogwater and their builds are unreliable...
So the point is, I could just use a bit of guidance on where I could go for safe trustworthy build info, or at least some some touchstones for some evergreen build foundations for at least getting through vet dungeons and maaaaaybe norm trials with the guildies.
My usual go-to character for high-level stuff is my dunmer dragonknight who is specced and geared into mag (for now), even though now all her abilities seem to drain a bit of stam now for some unknowable reason... I'm also partial to using a fire staff at least on the front bar on her, even though I'm not hearing good things about the state of destro staves at the moment...

Dagoth_Rac · July 2023

Unless you are going for veteran no-death/hard-mode/speed-run stuff, sets and abilities aren't that important. Most of these supposedly "out-of-date" or "dogpile" builds usually just means they are only top 5% of all builds rather than top 1% of builds. You'll almost certainly be fine wearing any of them. Gear and abilities aren't even all that important in ESO. A good player in garbage gear and garbage skills will completely annihilate a bad player using the most amazing gear and skills in the game.

Have a reasonably tight rotation that you feel comfortable with and have committed to muscle memory, plus know the mechanics of the dungeon/trial. If you have that, any gear should be fine outside of achievement/score runs. Simply completing content, even on veteran, does not require super high end builds.

merpins · July 2023

If you're PVE dps, just pick up Pillars of Nirn + some other set that fills out your build. It could be another good proc set like Relequen, or it could be something else that is good for your class, like Deadly for Arcanist or Templar. Then you can go 1 piece slime craw and a mythic, this is generally the Kilt or Sea Serpent's Coil, or possibly the crit mythic that requires you to get all the shalidor books... or you can do a monster helm set like Zaan or Kjaalnar's Nightmare.

That's about the gist for PVE dps. It's not too difficult since most builds use Pillars or Nirn or Arms of Relequen or both, regardless of if you go stam, mag, or hybrid. I don't play DK in particular, but I think they generally use Pillars and Whorl of the Depths, a newer PVE dps set from a trial. Pillars is easy to get since it's from a normal dungeon though.

Necrotech_Master · July 2023

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Unless you are going for veteran no-death/hard-mode/speed-run stuff, sets and abilities aren't that important. Most of these supposedly "out-of-date" or "dogpile" builds usually just means they are only top 5% of all builds rather than top 1% of builds. You'll almost certainly be fine wearing any of them. Gear and abilities aren't even all that important in ESO. A good player in garbage gear and garbage skills will completely annihilate a bad player using the most amazing gear and skills in the game.

Have a reasonably tight rotation that you feel comfortable with and have committed to muscle memory, plus know the mechanics of the dungeon/trial. If you have that, any gear should be fine outside of achievement/score runs. Simply completing content, even on veteran, does not require super high end builds.

this, when i was leveling my arcanist i spent all of my time in IC, using only randomly dropped gear

was able to solo a banner boss at lvl 15 (though the fight was difficult and i did die at least once)

so even in a pve perspective, its more about knowing the skills/rotation than what gear your wearing

Marcus684 · July 2023

I'm in the same boat as you, and IMHO Skinny Cheeks seems to have good builds that have helped me improve my DPS tremendously. I'm no top-tier DPSer as I tend to go low-effort, 'cuz I prefer to treat games as fun rather than a painful 2nd job, and Skinny Cheeks 1-bar Oakensoul builds have really opened up the dungeon/trial world to me, and they include lots of options for sets and skills if you don't have everything unlocked.

Turtle_Bot · July 2023

Skinny Cheeks tends to have a lot of good simple builds that can get through 99% of content.

The most important part is rotation though, even the most meta build will perform bad if the rotation is bad.

ixthUA · July 2023

Top builds often get nerfed a lot, or they lose the top spot after new sets are released.
I would suggest two things.
Dont chase meta, as it changes every year.
Understand what makes sets/builds good, it will give you freedom to make own builds.

Deter1UK · July 2023

NolansGoons wrote: »

I've never been numbers-savvy in this game, and knowing what sets/abilities are good for who when is very daunting when they seem to change (to great uproar) every couple months. Not to mention every time I look up build guides, every result is followed by some reddit or forum thread about how the guy who made the initial result is dogwater and their builds are unreliable...
So the point is, I could just use a bit of guidance on where I could go for safe trustworthy build info, or at least some some touchstones for some evergreen build foundations for at least getting through vet dungeons and maaaaaybe norm trials with the guildies.
My usual go-to character for high-level stuff is my dunmer dragonknight who is specced and geared into mag (for now), even though now all her abilities seem to drain a bit of stam now for some unknowable reason... I'm also partial to using a fire staff at least on the front bar on her, even though I'm not hearing good things about the state of destro staves at the moment...

Yes , well the internet is full of people with opinions laced occasionally with hormones or testosterone.

All the big build guide writers are helpful - but they all have their own play style which can colour their builds

Take a consensus if you can - what do they ALL reccomend as second best?

For insance: Craftable sets can probably give you everything you need unless you are score chasing

This chart may help:

https://www.skinnycheeks.gg/top-dps-sets