A Beginner's Guide to Effectiveness

[Valorin Telvanni]

I've been around in the game for a long time now and experienced a lot of its content. I am more interested in immersion, stories and eyecandy than endgame content and becoming emperor, but eventually me and Mana wanted to be able to also do trials, all those very nice veteran dungeons and stuff like that. And, to be honest, it just feels good to be effective.

Reading skill descriptions lead to research on the internet lead to asking players who love endgame content which lead to actual builds and new insights what skills can do with mobs. I am still not farming any superfancy drop-only gear and keep to crafted sets and so on. This guide just includes what I keep telling people who ask me about stuff in the game. It's not supposed to be any progamer guide to trialgrinding or something. It's for your start into the game and for those who enjoyed the game so far but wish to be more effective.

Should you spot any outright mistake or a wrong statement, just comment. I will look at it and correct it.

 

Read Skill descriptions

Sounds silly, because well, you do that anyway, don't you? No. Most people doesn't seem to read carefully, or seem to miss, what certain skills can do. This is even more true for passives, which can have a lot of impact. A sorcerer passive for example grants a small chance to disintegrate low health targets by any shock damage. This leads to the conclusion that you want a lightning staff with a shock enchantment and lots of shock aoe especially when surrounded by weak mob groups. I am not certain if a shock enchantment can trigger the effect as well, but better safe than sorry (and in case you wonder: someone told me, didn't read carefully...).

 

On Damage, and why it's magicka or stamina, not both

Damage in ESO is basically divided into physical damage and spell damage. Physical damage is done by any skill that is fueled by stamina, spell damage by magicka fueled skills.

- Your base physical damage derrives from you maximum stamina.

- Your base spell damage from your maximum magicka.

This is, why you have to decide for one if you want to maximize your damage output.

Weapon damage is another trait that adds to both, spell damage and physical damage. It doesn't matter which weapon you use to increase it, as long as you don't use skills of it's tree. As soon as you do, it depends on what it is fueled with, magicka or stamina.

 

But my class skills are all based on magicka!

Yes, they are, but many morphs are not. It's a pity you can't know that until you used a skill a while and it can be morphed. There are addons that show a tooltip which include morphs, but you have to at least buy the skill.

It's here: http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info489-HarvensImprovedSkillsWindow.html

 

Light and heavy attacks

Terminology: a light attack is a standard one-mouseclick attack, a heavy attack is when you hold down the mousebutton until you strike. In case of a heavy bow attack you have to release the button as soon as the bow "glows".

First things first: light and heavy attacks are not used to do damage. They may support your damage output but you do damage with skills. So... why use them at all? Because they have these nice functions:

- light attacks start an 8 seconds timer during which your Ultimate points charge up. Means, a light attack every 8 seconds builds up ultimate. Light attacks are also used while weaving/animation cancelling, but I would declare these techniques as "advanced stuff" and leave it to you to find out everything about it on the internet.

- heavy attacks regenerate magicka or stamina depending on the weapon used. Staves regenerate magicka, all the others regenerate stamina. Again a "read descriptions" case: the restoration staff has a passive which buffs your regeneration by heavy attacks, so you want to use it for that purpose if you have one.

Heavy attacks also send stunned mobs to the floor, but I guess you figured that one out already. For that purpose you don't need to hold down the button all the way until you strike automatically. It's enough to hold it down shortly until the heavy attack begins, and then release it.

 

Gear

Good gear makes you survive longer and deal more damage... Guess you knew that already (though gear can't substitute a good set of skills in your bar and you knowing how to use them). In ESO gear has a level of course, but also a quality. Also it can have a trait and an enchantment.

- Level: you want to have gear that matches your character's level... Below veteran ranks gear only comes in even numbers, as in  4, 6, 48... An exception here is lvl 1 gear and that you can't craft lvl 2 gear.

- Traits: those grant an item a specific buff or ability. Like increasing critical strike values (precise) or generating more inspiration, which is basically xp for skills (training) and so on. A trait has to be applied when crafting a piece of gear. An item can only have one trait which can't be changed later.

- Quality: comes in colours. It's white, green, blue, purple and gold. It influences the amount of armour/damage of an item but also the effectiveness of its trait (and I bet a few other things that doesn't come to my mind at the moment...)

- Enchantments: Items can be enchanted by glyphs. You can also find enchanted gear out there. They grant another specific buff like elemental damage, or damage shields, more stamina, magicka, health. Basically armour can be enchanted with attribute buffs, weapons and jewelry with a lot of fancy effects. Unlike traits, enchantments can be changed by just applying another glyph. Weapon enchants have to be recharged by using a soulgem on them (rightclick the weapon and select "charge". If you don't have that option, the enchantment is fully charged, you have no filled soulgem or the item isn't enchanted).

 

Sets

As soon as you levelled up a bit, you might wonder what all those crafting stations, scattered in the zones, are for. They all have fancy names and are used to craft gear with specific buffs. These are called "sets". Some are craftable at said stations, others only drop in certain dungeons, trials, special events or enemies. Of course all the cool kids farm those locations to get a silly head and shoulder set for maximum badassness and high end performance... I did not bother with that so far to be honest and kept to craftable sets.

Almost all sets apply their boni by wearing more than one piece of it. You can see the specific buff you get for wearing a number of parts in the tooltip of the item. For most sets the buff for five worn part is something special, but since you can only have one crafted 5 part set, you have to choose wisely. It's only 7 armour parts and one weapon (two in case of duel wield or 1h & shield). The secondary weapon doesn't count on top of that, only the ones your character holds. That's why all of your weapons should be setgear.

Usually you go for 5 parts of one set and 3 (4 for dual wield and 1h and shield) of another. We can't craft jewelry, so we can't include it here. This is different for dropped sets, by the way, which is a great advantage. And no, unfortunately you can't find any jewelry for craftable sets.

There is, of course, an addon that marks the location of all setgear stations on the map, including tooltips what they do. It's here: http://www.esoui.com/downloads/info668-CraftingStations.html

 

[Valorin Telvanni]

Roles, weapon and armour choices

You might know the basic roles, Damage Dealer, Healer and Tank. You should determine early which one is for you. When you start playing and you are still wearing whatever you pick up, you may have little choice which armour or weapon to wear, but usually you get enough stuff to at least choose a general direction. On a sidenote: Stealing works well for your first equipment, because stolen gear scales to your level and often looks even fancier than normal gear on that level.

Also, you can change the role you chose anytime by redistributing skills and attributes. You just need to level up the skill lines then. Don't worry, nothing is lost if you change things. Once you levelled up a skill line, nothing will kill off your progress in it. You will also be able to get enough skill points in the game to almost buy all the skills there are... Almost.

But what to use for the role you chose?

 

Armour types

Light, medium and heavy armour in ESO all have their own functionality and passice skills providing buffs, beside its armour rating.

In general you can say:

- Light armour is for magicka users, because its passives buff your max amount of magicka, regeneration and your spellcrit and -damage. Magicka based Damage Dealers and Healers wear it.

- Medium armour does the trick for stamina users. Faster regen, better weaponcrit, stamina cost reduction, and on top you are more competent at sneaking. As you might have guessed, this is for stamina based Damage Dealers.

- Heavy armour makes you tough. It provides high armour ratings and its passives give you more health, a bit more damage if you receive a beating, health regeneration, and you are easier to heal. This is, of course, for tanks.

 

Weapon types

I will just give a few general hints here and a bit of skill advise. The numbers tell you where in the skill lines the mentioned skills are, in case you are not using an english client that might be useful. I also won't add descriptions for all of the skills, because you can read about them in the tooltip, but I will include what I think is useful and which I used and tried around with. If there is a skill missing it doesn't mean it's crap, just that I found no regular use for it.

 

Two handed

Slow, but rather effective.

Use  1 cleave and its morphs to soften up groups

2 Critical charge for battlefield mobility and first-contact-damage.

3 Uppercut and its mophs are for your main damage output and disabling mobs. If you morph it to Wrecking Blow, people don't fly around anymore, butthe hit after the blow will do more damage. Do not use anything else than your most potent attack then (which is likely another Wrecking Blow or Executioner).

4 Reverse Slash. Very effective and a must-have skill. I always morph it to Executioner because it provides more overall physical damage and, which is it's main function: much more damage on low health targets. Do not use Executioner on healthy targets, it's wasted, but spam it as soon as it is at, or below, 50% of health. Bosses included. The morph also buffs up ALL Two handed skills to do more damage on low health targets when slotted.

5 Momentum can be used to buff overall damage, increase survivability by its healing effect and later, with a morph, to unroot you or heal even more. It's an "activate before rushing into battle" ability.

 

One Hand and Shield

Weapon of choice for tanks.

1 Puncture taunts an enemy for 15 seconds, during which it focuses its full attention on you while your group is beating it up. Also decreases armour of a mob, which makes it useful for single player gameplay as well. Mandatory for dungeon groups for controlling bosses (it's one of two taunting skills in the game).

3 Defensive posture is also pretty useful because it greatly reduces the damage you receive by reflecting magical attacks (or absorbing them for healing you with a morph).

 

Dual wield

The classic stamina Nightblade choice of weapons. Two daggers in this case for its crit buff (swords are good for more general damage). I use two skills in particular:

1 Twin Slashes: Since bleeding damage affects almost all mobs now, Twin Slashes became useful once more. It's not a skill for every occasion, but applies some Damage Over Time (DOT) which also heals you if you morph is to Blood Craze.

2 Flurry, later morphed to Rapid Strikes. This skill has been overhauled with the Dark Brotherhood patch and is much faster and thus more useful now. It provides fast and steady damage

3 Whirlwind, later morhed to Steel Tornado. Steel Tornado is a group melter. First you debuff groups and apply damage-over-time effects with other skills, then run into the group and keep tornadoing until they are all dead. Mobs still do damage, so be carful (activating a damage shield skill before tornadoing helps).

You may want to try around with the other skills here or ask different people for advice. I change between Steel Tornado and Rapid strikes according to the job that needs to be done.

 

Bow

Bows are mainly for applying damage-over-time (DOT) effects and Area-of-Effect (AOE) damage.

1 Poison Arrow provides a nice DOT to soften up groups or to keep damage on bosses while hitting it.

2 Volley is a skill you want to put on every mob group you encounter before jumping in. The major bow AOE arrow hailstorm.

3 Scatter shot is only useful if you have problems with mob groups in the beginning. You can push back one of them while killing another with different skills.

4 Arrow spray is a group killer and slows down enemies. Especially when morphed to Acid spray it does a lot of damage on groups in front of you. Like... really a lot of damage.

5 Snipe does what the name says. As far as I know it's the skill with the highest range in the game, and it does a solid amount of single target damage and furthermore marks an enemy for more effective shots. Its setback is its slow attack rate.

 

Destruction staff

This is the main weapon for most magicka based damage dealers. They come in three flavors: Flame, shock and Cold. The skills for each flavor stay the same, but most have different effects depending on its elemental quality.

1 Destructive touch is especially useful to keep mobs from attacking you. Depending on the staff used the target is thrown away, frozen or electrocuted. Also deals damage of course.

2 Wall of Elements, and it's morphs (I use Elemental Blockade) are great AOE skills. Don't underestimate, just try.

3 Force Shock is a single target stream of elemental damage. It does some solid damage and I keep on using it.

5 Impulse is the destruction staff group melter. Apply AOE, DOT and debuffs if necessary, move into a mob group, bomb it to Oblivion, or Aetherius... Elemental Ring seems to be the morph of choice, according to some friendly pro-gamers I know.

 

Restoration Staff

Not only for healers, but also for magicka based Damage Dealers at least for its magicka regeneration passive on heavy attacks. If you run dry on magicka, switch to the restostaff and do heavy attacks. Healers should try around with its skills. Here are the ones I find very useful:

1 Grand Healing, later morphed to Healing Springs. AOE heal that is spammable and very, very useful. Don't go without it as a healer.

2 Regeneration is a skill you want to level up early for its Mutagen morph. It's incredibly useful because it "stores" up healing in your group and yourself by healing over time and an additional healing effect on low health allies.

4 Steadfast Ward provides a strong damage shield. Even stronger when the target is wounded. It's cast on the weakest ally (you, if you are weakest), but later, by morphing, it provides a bubble exclusivly for yourself, or for yourself and one ally.

 

 

[Valorin Telvanni]

What about Attributes?

If you are a Stamina based damage dealer they all go to Stamina, if it's Magicka you kill or heal with, it's Magicka.

If you keep on dying you can try some points on health, but as I mentioned before: base damage derrives from Stamina or Magicka and you want it as high as possible. That also goes for healers, because the amount of your healing also depends on that. There are challenges much, much later in the game where you need a specific amount of health to survive, but since that's for endgame and you also have enchantments and buff food to tinker with attributes, it doesn't matter much in the beginning. For now you may be a glass cannon, but mobs will drop like flies.

Distributing attribute points for Tanks is a little trickier in my experience, because you will use stamina and magicka based skills for support and buffs. Stamina though is also used for blocking, running, breaking free and so on. If you are a stamina based tank divide between stamina and health, though a few more points on stamina won't hurt, especially for single player content where you have to do damage. Should you run out of Magicka to fast, a magicka leech glyph on your weapon might help, or a buff from another source. As I said, it's a bit more tricky. For Magicka based tanks it's the same just swap Stamina and Magicka.

 

Your first crafted set gear

Once you are familiar with your skills and you made things work for you, you will eventually trip over the crafting system, which I won't explain here. You only need what it produces for you. Only thing that I want to elaborate a bit, is how research and traits work, because those things are closely related to the set crafting stations (don't get me wrong: crafting is awesome and powerful in ESO and you want to be able to do it yourself!).

 

Crafting stations and traits

Set stations are traitlocked. Means, in order to craft a specific item, you must have a specific number of traits unlocked on it. How many traits you need to be unlocked is defined by the station you want to craft at.

To unlock traits you have to research them, which can be done at crafting stations. You also need an item with that trait, which will be destroyed in the process. Researching has one important catch: it takes a lot of time. The first few traits on an item take a few hours, but the more traits you have unlocked on it, the longer the research times. the ninth trait takes about 2 month or so to research. The timers run while you are offline, so don't worry about that, but you can only research 3 items tops for each craft at the same time, given you maxed out that craft and bought the skill for faster research. It took me almost a year to research all the traits. So you want to begin early.

 

General gear advice

For tanks you can go for full heavy armour, for all others you should have 5 parts of your main armour type and 1 part each of the others. For a Stamina damage dealer for example it's 5 parts medium armour, 1 part light and 1 part heavy. The reason for that is a passive easily overlooked: "Undaunted mettle" from the Undaunted skill tree. It increases all your attributes by a small amount. It unlocks on rank 7, so in the beginning you won't be able to benefit from it, but well, can't hurt to level up all three armour types from the beginning. The heavy part also provides some additional protection.

Concerning traits I usually go with Infused trait for head, chest and legs because only on those parts an enchantment provides its full bonus, and it can't hurt to furthermore buff it up. For all the other armour parts I go with Divines trait do enhance my Mundus Stone buff. For tanks it's advisable to make one minor part (not chest, head or legs) Sturdy for blocking cost reduction.

For weapons, the Precise trait it very useful. Can't have a high enough crit chance... Also sharpened for softer mobs. Tanks might want to go with Defensive instead and an Infused shield perhaps. Shields aren't defined as weapons, by the way. They share traits and enchantments with armour.

If your character is at the very start of his/her adventure, you might want to use the Training trait for all parts.

Don't underestimate the impact of your gear's quality. It might not make much sense to temper gear in the lower levels, but as soon as you hit 20 or something you should think about that. Green gear that turns more and more blue at lvl 36 or so is a good thing to have.

Quality does not only affect armour rating/damage but also the bonus traits provide.

 

General "midgame" build advice

The following section is, like everything here, based on my own experience and all the advice I got from ingame friends who know about this stuff. It's, of course, not complete, and I guess people do things differently for different reasons, but it's what I would go with. Never ran a stamina based sorcerer, so you won't find advice for that here. Same goes for *add list of exotic builds here*.

The sets listed here are for "midgame" content, so to say. Some of them also work for some endgame stuff of course, but well, if you advance that far, you will already be more familiar with that topic and start farming fancy sets that only drop in the most brutal veteran dungeons. I still use crafted set gear, except for the jewelry on my tank, and so far that works very well, even for veteran dungeons and things like the veteran Dragonstar Arena and Trials. To be honest, I am also too annoyed by endless farming to really considering superfancy Pro-gamer sets.

 

Stamina based Tank

I roll very well with:

5 items of Whitestrake's Retribution and 4 parts of Armor Master.The Armor Master setstation is in Imperial City though.

The Whitestrake's set gives you a damage shield that triggers on low health. It saved my ass so many times now, I never would go without it.

Hist Bark can be used as a substitute for Armor Master.

All heavy armour and sword and shield on both bars for most group content. For single player content, and also for some support damage, a secondary weapon is also advisable. For me that is a Greatsword and sometimes a bow for ranged combat, but since you're face to face with bosses anyway most of the time, I'd go for melee first.

Concerning skill choices you should go with skills that buff your resistance traits, regeneration of stamina and health of course. Skills for crowdcontrol in general should always be in your bar. Also take a look at 2 Circle of Protection from the Fighters Guild tree.

Mandatory for a Tank is the second taunting skill. It's 3 Inner Fire from the Undaunted tree. It's a ranged taunt and can be morphed for Stamina use later if you want to try that. To level up the Undaunted tree section you have to do dungeons. So do dungeons until it's unlocked (Delves and Public Group Dungeons work as well). Group content is also the only good way to become familar with tanking.

Mundus Stone is The Serpent for me, for Stamina regeneration.

For more about tanks, magicka and stamina based, you can take a look at Gaius' thread: http://telvanni.guildlaunch.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10888506&gid=399833

 

Stamina based Damage Dealer (especially Nightblades here)

My lovely Killer Bosmer uses:

5 parts of Hunding's Rage and 3/4 parts of Nightmother's Gaze (3 when bow is equipped, 4 when dual wielding)

Instead of Hunding you can also try the Morkuldin set from Wrothgar or Eternal Hunt from Hew's Bane (Poisonous dodgerolling!).

My weapons of choice are two daggers (though I have swords at the moment for some reason... 1 sword, 1 dagger also works well) for dual wielding and a bow. The bow mostly for applying AOE and debuffs, especially on mob groups, Dual Wield for jumping in and slashing until they are all dead. Steel Tornado is the main grinding tool here...

If you are a Nightblade you should slot 1 Assassin's Blade (Assassination) and 2 Veiled Strike (Shadow) early on. Surprise Attack is a main single target damage tool and also reduces its resistance. Also disrupts a target by a stun effect when morphed and you attack from stealth. Veiled strike is your finisher. Do not use it until a mob is on 25% of its health or lower. As soon as it is, spam it, it will also heal you on a kill. There are Morphs for Stamina use for both skills, by the way.

1 Teleport Strike (later Ambush), Assassination tree, is your gap closer and makes you avoid bad stuff and even heavy attacks. It also stuns, and interrupts a target in the process.

4 Mark Target from the Assassination tree is a life saver especially when fighting alone. Just mark one target in a mob group, move in and as soon as it drops, you heal enough to go on killing. Mark another target if there are still too many on their feet.

5 Drain Power (later Power Extraction) from the Siphoning tree is a great AOE damage dispenser, and a real alternative to Steel Tornado. You should also use it at the start of any fight because it gives you a major buff on weapon damage.

Try the following: crouch, mark a target in a mob group, use Teleport Strike (Ambush) and then Assassin's Blade (Surprise Attack) in a quick succession on said target, then use  spam Whirlwind (Steel Tornado) or/and Drain Power (Power Extraction). You can sweeten that up with bow AOE before you jump in, but then you don't have that nice execution from stealth I wanted to show you here... Since your group won't find that too amazing, use bow AOE in the field before jumping into groups. ;)

Try around with the rest. Nightblades have many ways to kill people. And they look good while doing so.

Mundus Stone should be The Thief or The Shadow. People say, if your weapon crit is above 50% go for The Shadow for more crit damage, if it's below, go for The Thief for more crit chance.

This is a more advanced guide for a stamina nightblade build which I used: http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/stamina-nightblade-dps-guide/

 

Magicka based Damage Dealers

You might want to wear:

5 parts Law of Julianos (setstation is in Wrothgar) and 3 parts of Torug's Pact

If magicka supply is one of your main problems you can try Armor of the Seducer, but you'd miss out on a lot of damage.

Staves should be your weapon of choice. There are people who use other weapons as well without using any of their skills, but well, we keep to staves here since they are the only magicka fueled weapons. Start with a Destruction Staff and go for a Restoration Staff as a secondary weapon. I prefer to have most damaging skills on the Destro bar and buffs, healing and so on on the Resto bar.

So... Fire, Shock or Ice? If you are a Dragon Knight or a Nightblade, preferably also a Dunmer because their racial skills enhance fire damage, it's Fire. For Sorcerers it's Shock, mainly because there is a passive in the Stormcalling tree that grants a chance of disintegrating low health targets by shockdamage. Most advice concerning skills with the Destruction staff are already covered in the "Weapons" section.

Try around with your sorcerer skills and take a look at Crystal shards. These do a lot of damage with the downside of having a long casting time, BUT there is a morph which reduces the casting time dramatically. Anytime you cast a magicka using skill, there is a chance that the shards can be cast instantly. You can see that on your character's hands, which will glow with a Crystal Shard effect thingy for a few seconds. In fights watch your hands and only cast Crystal Shards when you see that glow.

Also: use 1 Mage Light from the Mages Guild tree. Morph it to Inner Light for it's spell crit buffs and keep it on both bars. If you really need a slot in your support bar, kick it, but always keep it in your main bar for damage. It doesn't count as slotted if it's not in the bar you are using.

Magicka fueled Dragon Knights are Fire Mages basically. Most damage they do are based on fire, including many DOTs. Being a Dunmer also helps here because of the racial fire damage buff. Your attack bar is mostly filled with fire. 5 Impulse from the Destruction Staff Tree (morphed to Elemental ring)  should be among them. Also keep Inferno (Morphed to Flames of Oblivion) and the Mage Light (morphed to Inner Light) in both bars. For the Flaming whip there is a morph which enhances fire damage even more while slotted, so keep it in the bar.

If you want to know more details or you are looking for a more advanced build, look here:

http://telvanni.guildlaunch.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=11013424&gid=399833

Thanks to @Calaphot again for providing this build.

Nightblades on magicka should carry a Flame Staff and use a lot of their nasty life drain spells. I didn't play much on a magicka Nightblade to be honest, so I can't give specific advice here. I will edit this section once I know more. Mage Light should be mandatory though (Inner Light morph of course) as well as 5 Impulse (Elemental Ring).

For the Mundus Stone you can go with The Thief or The Shadow, or the Mage for more max Magicka.

 

Healer

So far I only experienced Magicka fueled healers. Try using:

5 parts of Law of Julianos (setstation is in Wrothgar) and 3 parts of Torug's Pact

Templar is the most natural class for healers, because they have a class skill tree dedicated to it. I didn't try anything else so far, but somebody told me, that also Nightblade can be good healers due to their life stealing and siphoning abilities. Well, can't provide any specific advice on that though.

What all healers have in common is a Restoration Staff. I would also recommend a Destruction Staff for "self defense" and damage support when needed. I already described the most useful skills in the "Weapons" section of this guide, so you can look it up there.

For my Templar healer I love 1 Rushed Ceremony (Breath of Life morph) from the Restoring Light tree. It's an instant heal for 2 people.. The Ultimate of that tree is also very useful if you run out of magicka or you need a quick overheal. Try around with the rest and be sure to morph 3 Restoring Aura into Repentance. Your tank and stamina DDs will love you for that. Stamina siphoned from the dead. Who isn't into things like that?

Also for delivering more Stamina to your group you should regularly throw Spear Shards, morphed to Luminous Shards. The Synergy allows others to restore Stamina.

For a Mundus Stone you should try The Mage, for more Magicka or The Ritual for more healing (especially if you are low on Champion points since you won't be able to increas your healing by those).

 

Disclaimer:

This is based on my experience and knowledge of game mechanics. I do not claim this to be the only way things can be done. It reflects what I tell people if I am asked ingame. If you are looking for more advanced information, builds for endgame content and things like that, this guide will not suffice.

Also: You may of course post any  further advice on my guide itself as long as it's fitting in, and I am also glad for corrections in case I screwed something up.

Please do NOT post any advanced builds, lists of farm locations for endgame sets or stuff like that. Your knowledge would be pretty much wasted in this section. I hereby declare you responsible for sharing your knowledge in another thread or be silent. The "Research and Debate" section of the Forum is made for things like that. Thank you.