Musclemagic

Yeah, the quake-con video shows that that's true. I was mostly asking about the weapons. If you have the same weapon for both bars, if you would be able to also use different ultimates on those two bars was a side question--the answer's probably yes, but I've still never seen someone using two different ultimates at all so it's just something I think about a lot.

Please, explain the "classic logical mistake" that I made.... There's not a classical logical fallacy made. The only thing that's going on here are presumptions about Spellcharge that I made, that you apparently disagree with. I feel that 9% extra regen per second will be better than 3% cost of each spell. You're right that it is just my opinion. I don't have any idea what "Increase Magicka Recovery in Combat by 9%" actually means when it's applied-- if it's +9% to total mp regen then for a healer (who's going to be stacking a lot of mp regen) it's probably going to be higher than Breton's 3% reduction of each spell cost. You're right that it isn't a FACT, but you don't need to go full-retard about one statement when it's just an opinion that doesn't even matter. They will both be good healers...and they're separate alliances anyway, so there's even less of a point in comparing their details. Breton's better than Altmer all-round if you're not using elemental damage. Yeah, fuck it, Breton's better anyway. I actually believe that every caster should be a breton unless you're doing a fire-DK build...then you should be Dunmer, or a Shock Sorce should be Altmer. Other than that, all players planning on being MP based should play Breton. BUT-- Aldmeri will have the highest amount of medium armor physical DMG characters...so maybe you'd want to be in Aldmeri anyway, so you don't get ass-raped by grand elf's 2H.

Watching any gameplay video, you'll see that "white" (normal hits) damage is not a big source of damage in comparison to spell damage. But, the white numbers are sustainable in the videos I've seen and usually do add up to about 50% of the long-term damage. So, you could focus on white damage if you'd like. But, if you want to maximize dps then you're already synergizing a lot for that fire damage, you might as well always keep the fire destro staff on when you're DPSing because it'll be your best option, and spell power will be a much better option for you than weapon damage in that case as well. I don't think you'd be able to get white hits during the time you're swapping weapons anyway. I guess we'll see, I do really like that idea. ^ Irons said what I was going to say. It's not a problem to split resources, it's a problem that the damage and such is split. Has your current build idea updated recently? If you could post a build-plan of your current ideas then I could pinpoint my problem with it easier. Yeah, all the updates have made it clearer as to how they're balancing everything. I for one really like these updates, I had a feeling it would be something like this but couldn't envision it. I think that heavy armor who's DPS will be best as a 2H templar. Sure, NB get's Haste and Sorce gets Surge, but I think that the increase in healing received goes to waste if you're not a templar. The 4% increased weapon damage is nice. The spell protection and increase blocking is nice as well. On top of this, I think the best ability is Restoring Aura-- high amount of health and stamina regen is exactly what you'll want for heavy armor 2H builds with high mRes. Sun Shield is amazing too, because you don't need the MP regeneration as much with 2H as focus. A DK is better for tanking and survival, for sure, but if you want to focus DPS while wearing heavy I think templar is the best choice. Cleansing Ritual's always nice to have when you're survival-ish. A NB would be best choice for weapon damage, but they can't deal as well with resources so they're better in medium armor, also for imp sneak.... Just my opinion anyway.

Considering that I'm only using DW because of the passives and I don't have any abilities that cost stam, I wouldn't really consider it a hybrid still--even if the physical damage from DW is a major source of damage on light armor. It really is focusing on one damage type. The weapon damage from Destro wouldn't benefit from +spell power anyway I don't think??? Maybe, I didn't really think of that? It's going to be hard to tell what works best for killing what until we see how long fights last, and how much stamina the fighting mechanics will take up. Once we know those two things we'll know how well tanks could do as well as how well a pure-magicka class can do (that's not sorce). It's my opinion that fights will not last very long if someone has a build advantage over someone else... be it that they have no mitigation or cc against a melee, or w/e, I think that the typical caster will die to the typical melee within just 4-5 seconds max of attack time.... I can't really explain why I believe it will be so short in this situation (and vice a verse if a mage gets jump on a medium armor user who's not enchanted for mRes.) but I do believe that it will be this short. I think that killing a tank, on the other hand, who's enchanted for mRes will be extremely difficult for any medium armor user. I think it will be nearly impossible. They don't have the -target mRes and they won't hit very hard physically on all that armor. I believe that there's no way for a medium armor user to kill a heavy armor user at all unless the heavy armor user has a retarded bar with no survival at all. I have no basis for these ideas though.

You just made my day!

If you go templar you have a spammable nuke-heal. If you just use restoration then your only spammable healing ability (in the sense that you can keep using it, as long as they are taking damage it will keep being beneficial) is the absorption bubble. With a spammable heal, your healing is 100% based on how much magicka resource you have, and how much spell power you have. Time is important when it comes to healing, because you can only output X amount of healing over time if you don't have one of those spammable abilities, and even they are limited by global cooldowns so you need to pump up your power as well to increase the amount it heals/absorbs each time. The templar healing ability is much better than the bubble from resto staff because it can actually fill the targets health bar rather than just mitigate additional damage, although both could be used in unison. There's a lot to healing, but yes, the best race is Altmer because they have the highest amount of magicka resource/sustained casting power. Breton is the next best, but their reduction of cost is much lower than the % increase in regeneration so it's not as beneficial even as a templar who gets 4% total MP back with each spell cast. Sorce's can make great healers if you're okay with only using the resto staff abilities because they have huge MP potential (almost as much as Templar) but the thing that really shines out for a caster (light armor/staves) build on a sorce is there spell Dark Exchange which converts the stamina resource into health and magicka--so you can effectively use your stamina to cast magicka costing abilities rather than relying on stamina abilities (which you won't really have, so it's a good way to use your stamina in PVE) It might sound like we know what we're talking about, but all we really know are the current passives and actives for each skill tree... Without knowing every in-game mechanic we can't know what the actual best build is for say pve healing.. For pvp healing I think we pretty much nailed it in the templar thread. Morph Rune Focus into uninterruptable and then use immovable, good damage reduction and anti-cc, use the support pvp skill tree for a lot of extra mp regen and then just use the spammable heal x 3 morph and you can output a mad amount of consistent healing. Without doing a lot of research to figure out exactly how you, personally, want to play...it'll be impossible to know what the best setup for yourself is. You'll need to either just play and figure it out or do the research before asking, otherwise we can't help you. There are so many options in this game that you can build your character for an exact purpose very easily--just a matter of knowing what you want to do first. Let us know what you plan on doing mostly with your character, I'm presuming dungeons--in which case Sorc/Resto Staff/Altmer's probably the best choice and I'd recommend that as your first character for beta. Tell us though what your goals are, and we'll be able to help you more. If you liked my response then like my facebook page.

You're trying to use with two things that don't work together: The game is designed to either go Destro (3 types of Destro staves) + Resto or to go with 2H/DW/S&S with a Bow. This is because of how separate armor & magic resistances are, how separate weapon dmg and spell damage are, and how separate magicka and stamina are. If you deviate from one path (which you can easily go 1 path and be just as well off as going both paths) then the other path is going to be weaker. If you try to make both paths work then you will surely be weaker in both paths (and since you can make one path work perfectly, it's not beneficial in the slightest). The only other option is using DW or 2H and using S&S as other bar instead of Bow, this works fine--especially if you're in heavy armor (best heavy armor DPS --not regular tank-- is templar though.) Searing Strike is very efficient, yes. If you want fire damage to be high, at all, then the only thing you should be using is Destro bar with that fire damage. If you try to use a 2H and your fire spells for damage, they will both be weak and not as good. They try to counter this by being able to use your Stamina to use spells, while otherwise you wouldn't be able to, but the thing is that there are support spells that use stamina that you don't need to do damage with--making it so you don't need to worry about weapon power and such, making you much more powerful than anyone trying to use both and still using all resources. Most people will not realize this, they will take things that cost ST and MP without realizing that the other thing being buffed is a nerf to the first thing. I really think that the best DPS DK would look something like this: DK - Dunmer - Destro/Resto - Light Destruction (fire) Staff - Weakness to Elements Fiery Grip Searing Strike Lava Whip Petrify *Ancestral Guardian Resto - Molten Weapons Obsidian Shield Spiked Armor Dragon Blood Regeneration *Magma Armor If you want to use 2H for dmg, then also use DW(funky but might work), S&S, or Bow rather than destro. Resto might still work as that buff bar, and then switch back to 2H for Stamina skills--that could actually work nicely, but then again..if you're looking for DPS you really want to synergize your fire damage up as much as you can by using light armor and such. If you try to use a physical damage weapon then you're not going to do so hot (pun intended).

The reason I made DW the main bar is because even against people in Medium/Heavy you should at least open on them with Bar 1 to get as much burst on them as possible. The fact that it's spell damage will help that burst damage by quite a lot, and the fact that your physical damage isn't that high is just fine because physical damage will still affect the people in light armor more. I think the biggest problem with my build is that the "caster killer" bar is magic damage--which casters will have a lot of mitigation for. I think the solution to this is to put Mark on bar #1. Without using spells that cost St you should have plenty of resources for dodge rolls and mid-fight sprinting. The only difference between our ideas is that you think physical damage is more necessary due to DW and I think that the passives from DW combined with the use of magic damage outweigh the drawback of it being physical. Using maces will increase the damage by up to 10% on heavily armored targets--but I think you are absolutely correct. You're spot on, I need to be using a Destro staff instead of DW. Even if DW will do damage to light armor, I think the -resistance from destro might overcome that on light armor..but definitely against people in medium or heavy. This is how the game's meant to be played, but I don't think that in this case it's necessary. It's an easy change for these bars though, if it proves to be a better choice, since nothing actually changes: NB, Breton, Light, Destro/Resto Fire Destro - Opener Invis Cloak Veiled Strike Tele Strike Assn's Blade Rapid Mnvr (Possibly Cripple) *Death Stroke Resto - Kite melee Entropy Strife Cripple Terror Magelight (Possibly Shade) *Barrier The game is clearly designed to be used a specific way. Within 1 character we cannot deviate between either mostly physical, mostly spell damage, or mostly tanking without being gimped. I don't know though, thinking more about it... I still think that the DW passives and the addition of physical damage will help more against light-armor targets than using destro staff for lowering their resistances. And then physical damage targets should be NP with bar 2.

Does anyone know if we can use one weapon type for both bars? (Either 2 different Destro Staff bars, or even using DW and then using one of those DW weapons in your S&S bar#2. Maybe even using the same Bow in both bars?) If so, does it limit you to 1 ultimate for that 1 weapon type--if you're using the exact same weapon on both bars?

" you can change your hotbar configurations any time you’re not in combat" Terrible news for this game. This will be patched when they realize that it kills PVE when there are sequences and different dungeon characteristics... There needs to be a drawback or else the game will either be too hard or too easy depending on how well you pre-build for each fight.... How annoyed am I? Very. Oh well, it makes it easier to kill noobs because they'll be messing around all the time with their stuff for specific situations rather than being good for all situations--so when I come at them, they're going to have huge weaknesses that they won't be able to overcome at all. Also, I wonder if there'll only be 1 set of morphs at launch. I think they're having problems balancing things already, so I honestly hope they only have 1 set of morphs until next expansion--that way they could work on balancing and other things a lot easier than cutting down the OP builds people (like us) will find.

DW is physical damage, so it will help kill casters in light armor. I'm not discounting that damage, I know it will be a big % of the dmg-esp against casters. Switching to a destro staff wouldn't really be better because you need to get close anyway for the NB spells in bar #1. The 2nd bar's already a kite bar. I was thinking about taking Mark Target on Bar#1 to help get around people's spell resistance in light though. Increase sprint speed is huge but not enough, and more doge-rolls would only be nice in some situations. Veiled Strike isn't supposed to be reliable, I only picture it for opening. It's damage is as powerful as some ultimates, so it makes sense that it's hard to use. The +stealth radius would be nice from medium, but I still think the crit, -enemy spell resistances, and huge difference in the amount of spells you'll be able to cast with MP is way better--mostly due to having that 2nd bar, but even for bar #1 it is definitely going to be better damage compared to medium just for melee attacks and Death Stroke. For weapon attacks to be strong (which I know they can be) you'd want to use Weapon Power instead of Spell Power--but it's impossible to get away from SP, so if you were to use WP it would just take away from your available SP which will effect the majority of your damage in this case. (And remember, this is all especially true for bar #2.. If you take WP and medium armor then bar 2 is terribly gimped.)

"Game'll be beast." --This isn't even debatable, it's a postmodern philosophical factual statement.

Obviously DK's are the best tanks in the game, which is awesome for both PVP and PVE. I'm interested in hearing about other people's DK builds though, and since nobody else was making a DK thread.. I'll take it upon myself: I don't feel like starting this thread up how I did before, because I don't want to make a DK tank build since they're all the same cookie cutter possibilities without much difference (okay, nb builds don't vary much either, but w/e!) I got a message from someone, it read as follows: I think they'd get more benefit if we made this public, rather than just my own input. This was my jumbled response: I want more DK discussions, so I hope a few of you reply to this thread. Cheers Edit: I love how it says, "David Said" haha...oh fail on my part. It won't go away!

I don't think you can use Veiled Strike while invisible without also being stealthed, otherwise I would agree that taking a St dump that also causes damage would be better--but then it moves into questioning whether Light or Medium would be better even more. Would it do more damage, even though you're not a purebread? I think it has to go either all damage from physical or all damage from spell to really shine, and then use the alternative for all things besides damage. For the build I posted, I do believe that it's worth taking light armor over medium for the spell damage -- and also because I believe light armor will protect more, more often, than medium can. Something like this: Khajiit, DW, Medium DW- Twin Slashes Flurry Teleport Strike Veiled Strike // Haste Invisibility Cloak // Siphoning Strikes *Death Stroke Almost like the original NB build in this thread but with Veiled and Cloak. It would do more physical damage, sure. It would kill light-armor folks super easily, and then I'd probably take maces instead of daggers to get extra dmg on heavy armor targets. But, the problem with this is that bar#2 is hard to balance the resources similarly while still being productive. Rapid Maneuver and Evasion, maybe an anti-daedra/werewolf ability. There's a lot of possibilities that all have positives and negatives, but I think that the light-armor Assassination build I posted above is one of the strongest builds in the game right now because the kiting bar should be extremely difficult for a melee to kill and the chasing bar should be extremely difficult for a caster to get away from. I feel like Death Stroke is more for the +crit, -healing, and then since it's physical it will still do a lot of damage against typical casters in light armor. It will definitely do more damage to light-armor targets than veiled strike or anything--but I don't think it's worth medium armor for it when you can only use it once every few minutes in PVP (unless you're KSing the crap out of people for +7 Ult with that morph and crippling a lot of people along with using agony with the damage still on even when they escape--those 2 together will get you a lot of Ult quickly if you chain cast it.) There's so many possibilities, it's hard to say what will be best for the most amount of situations.. but I bet we'll figure it out before beta's over!

ah, yeah, good call-- all is normal! I did the math on the DK's MP without thinking about passives or anything, it's just 6.5% higher than normal is all--prob due to being a Dark Elf. idk why I assumed gear rather than passives... =| Edit: That makes no sense either, I think it's a dunmer so the effect should apply to both MP and ST, maybe it's.. idk, it's too late to think. Brain = Fried from stress today.

With the recent additions to our knowledge bank, I'd like to propose an improved NB PvP build. It uses light armor, because the Assassination/Magic tree abilities do magic damage rather than melee damage -- and it appears that the class skill tree damage numbers are vastly superior to the numbers of the weapon-tree. Weapon power may strictly affect the stamina based weapon skill damage it seems, and magic power may effect everything else if it requires magicka. Based on the huge amount of magic damage abilities VS the 4 (S&S, DW, 2H, Bow) physical damage trees, I believe that light armor may be better at tanking than heavy in PVP (In PVE heavy will be better due to the volume of melee attacks on the tank.) I believe that the best passives come from DW for damage and Resto staff for survival (while in light armor. If you're in heavy or medium-- S&S blocking is key to survival), so those are the two weapons that make the 2 bars. Because it's magicka based, I think Breton is a good choice because of the +% MP and the lowered cost of spells(even though Altmer MP regen is vastly superior to the % reduction in spell cost in MP management) and the +All Magic Res is nice (although not necessarily great (due to DR) because of the light armor already). Orc is also a good choice due to the +HP/St and HP regen that will increase survival (and incrs sprint time is nice for a low-St build as well.) Orc/Breton are of the same alliance, so the choice between them isn't that important. I personally prefer orc for their commanding presence, and they have a nice Ult (although this build won't use it in PVP.) While leveling I plan to put all my points into health, I can always resource-manage through enchantments and armor/skill choices later...but I plan on doing this with any character I create, so this is not build specific. Anyway, here's the build: NB, Orc, Light, DW/Resto DW - Kill Caster Invis Cloak Veiled Strike Tele Strike Assn's Blade Rapid Mnvr (Possibly Cripple) *Death Stroke Resto - Kite Melee Entropy Strife Cripple Terror Magelight (Possibly Shade) *Barrier Rapid Maneuver in Bar #1 is good when you have someone keeping you further than 22 meters away, because you can sprint @ 20% incrs speed without being able to be snared or rooted until you're 22 meters away and then you can Teleport Strike (with +30% next attack damage morph-as well as the incapacitated incrs dmg from Assn tree passive) into a Death Stroke if it's up and they're high health or into a series of Assassin blades if they're lower health or Stroke's not available yet. Because you're not in medium armor and you're not a Kahjiit or Bosmer, if you want to get a melee-ranged attack off then Invisibility Cloak is necessary. Take the +70% crit chance and then use Veiled Strike, pretty dang sweet. Sadly, Khajiit's passive doesn't work on these NB abilities since they're not considered melee. But, if you plan on using more weapon-skills, then Khajiit's still probably the best choice for that build--no matter what class you are, Khajiit for DW/2H DPS rocks compared to other races. You get +6% crit chance from the Assn tree with Tele, Blade, and Stroke on the bar, as well as +8% HP from having Cloak and Veiled. On the Resto bar you get +8% magicka from having Cripple, it might be worth it to swap Rapid Maneuver with Cripple since Crip has a 28m range and will also help you get within 22m. That +8% magicka is very large for one ability.. Cripple ticking also increase the amount of Ultimate you get. I may end up taking Cripple on both bars, actually. Magelight is great, it will probably prove to be priceless in PVP where there'll be a ton of NB's (especially in light armor, where you could potentially be downed within 3 seconds if there's a 1 seconds GCD), but after the initial attack I think having Summon Shade would be much better because not only does it decrease the damage you take but it does damage to them, I consider it to be another DOT along with Cripple and Entropy ticking. Entropy and Magelight give you some nice passives through mage's guild, Summon Shade would give you +4% additional HP in this bar. Casting Entropy into Strife is a nice combo, as we previously discussed. Barrier gives a nice MP regen buff, as discussed in the Templar thread. I personally believe that for PVE you'll definitely always want Agony on a bar, it would be priceless, but this is just a Cyrodiil build, not dungeon build. For dungeons I'd replace Veiled/Invis with Haste/Siphoning and replace Rapid Maneuver-or-Cripple with that..one ability that does like 11 base dmg and gives you +% power per target, because it's good AOE dmg as well as a nice buff if used correctly, I think it lasts 27 seconds. Sorry if my info's fudged, I'm in class and not looking at any numbers right now.

Pretty sure that this shows that Armor will be for Physical and Spell Resistance will be for magic due to how separate the two are in the attributes tab. I'm surprised how high the numbers are in this video.. He's only level 35 and he has that much? It also looks like the health/mp/st numbers look higher than before, but that could just be due to being geared.

Duels, arenas, battlegrounds, pvp ladder rankings, and more roleplay things.

Add me on PS4 if you want to play some COD or Resogun - Musclemagic

I mained a prot war in high mmr rbgs, I know it was useful in WoW pvp but because it's spammable and low cost I don't think it will be very easy to use in ESO... If it is, then it's flat out overpowered and killing a tank would be near impossible for a caster.

The fact that everyone can play anything means that build design is more important than ever because there will be larger gaps between good and bad builds. Including the freedom of choice between resources/health, morphs, enchantments, etc. the difference between good and bad builds will be huge. The reason I haven't been posting is because 1) the PS4 came out, so I've been livestreaming Resogun and COD. 2) we pretty much made the best possible builds with the current knowledge-at least in my opinion-so until the updated skills are available, there's nothing else to really figure out.

The real question isn't if you can block them. It's, "If you block a powered ranged attack, will the person be knocked like they would be knocked if they're using melee? Does this apply to Resto Staff which uses a magic attack, albeit at short ranged? And, if it applies to Resto, does it also apply to Destro and Bow if they're within countering-range (melee range)?" PVE I'd take Defensive Posture and Puncture for sure, but I don't think a single spell is worth reflecting in PVP for the price of their spell-cast. In a game where there's no big cooldowns that you can expect and there's a lot of small spells, reflecting spells will be much better over-time, (Reflective Scale//Eclipse) than for a single spell at a time, unless you have a way of knowing when someone's going to cast an Ultimate or something. In PVE you'll probably have a better idea of when something worth reflecting is coming your way and you can be prepared for it. In PVP, will anything be worth the cost? Will everything be worth the cost? Can you make a 5 heavy 2 medium S&S Build that's able to continuously spam it and it can beat any caster in PVP? Can you do this with any MP heavy Temp or DK, forcing the opponent to just stop using spells on you entirely? Maybe these abilities don't even work in PVP, but I don't see them doing that.

Haa! I was just teasing! 2h summoner in heavy.. interesting. Not much synergy going on, but in Heavy you won't have many resources so having pets is a good way to go about not requiring a lot. Anything in Heavy isn't really going to be squishy, but that's not a bad thing, I think something like this would work. It's not exactly high damage output, but your 2H swinging for a bit more--would work better with Haste though as a NB.. Summon Shade/Haste instead of two pets.. You'd get 1 pet still anyway, . You'd be able to spam Critical Charge, too, for burst..it's actually pretty good damage per resource. So maybe instead of taking Momentum you take Mage's Fury... Pet 1 Pet 2 Critical Charge Momentum Immovable Yeah, I think either: NB- Shade Critical Charge or Teleport Strike Haste Momentum Immovable OR Sorce- Pet 1 Pet 2 Critical Charge Mage's Fury Immovable The trick would just be getting out of the 3m minimum range for Critical Charge spam. It all depends on what the morph abilities are though. Without the morphs, NB has a clear advantage if shade and sorce pets do the same damage.

It looks like Ebonheart will have to cross either mountains or a river, daggerfall will have to cross mountains, aldmeri probably just has awesome fields and pristine forests... Hmmm..

Yeah, it's only a bit less than most other builds. There's nothing you'll be spamming though, so even if the abilities are about average costs it ends up being less because you aren't wanting to recast them every 2-3 seconds for damage output like you potentially could/should with typical builds. There's no resource dump that you'll really want to be able to spam a lot. I mean, yeah you could spam Strife for finishing power if you have excess resources...and maybe against 2+ melee you'll want to be able to use Terror a lot more often than normal, but I think that in heavy with your heals incoming you probably won't need to use it much in just a 1v1 melee situation. So, idk, it just depends on how much damage melee ends up hitting you for--other than potentially requiring to use Terror pretty often it should be pretty operable. Either it will be like Diablo 3 where it puts a long blacklist timer on an ability once it's switched, or you'll only be able to switch them in towns or something. This is just a guess, but there's no way they'd let it be instant, right? Especially during combat. Meh... I don't think anyone knows unless they've played beta--in which case it would violate the NDA.