49 from levels, 100 from skyshards, at least 100 from quests. That's about 250+.

We're talking about MinMaxing here, if someone is going to MinMax (as many in PvP would) they would go out of the way to collect every point they could. Of course no one says you have to MinMax. But for those who do care about such things then giving advice like "avoid Imperials if you plan to go pure range" is correct.

It's not impossible that someone will get all the active skills with the skill points he earns, but I sincerely believe that the average player will stick to a build he is comfortable with, rather than switching out and swapping active skills for every battle.

Ah, now I see where our disconnect is.

I don't believe that most players min/max. I think a select few do it, and that most player just like to have fun. So I'm sure that racial bonuses will be very important to take into account on someone's spreadsheet. But I'm very happy to say that since skill trumps everything in ESO PvP (from everything I've seen so far), min/maxing will not mean much against someone who just outplays the competition.

It might be true that skill can outplay stats, but wouldn't it make sense for a player to want to get as much advantage as he can? Especially if he is not the best of players.

You can be anything with anything. If you wanna do it, then do it. Simple as that.

How viable would Templar's be as heavy armor tanks? don't see much mention of templar's as tanks.

Extremely viable, from my experience. You have good damage output, and a lot of self-healing abilities. I played a healer/tank hybrid during beta and had a blast.

Awesome I've been trying to determine what I want to play. I'm looking at heavy armor dps or heavy armor tank or heavy armor healer, so it has been a toss up between Dragonknight and Templar for me but all I've seen reference templar is pretty much bowplars.

This is a pretty lame argument given that you should be comparing players of equal skill. Trying to sneak in more variables to confuse the outcome means very little.

I'm not "sneaking in" variables. Skill is the only real factor in PvP, as the devs have already stated that it's possible for a skilled low-level player to take out an unskilled high level player, even with the gear disparity. Min/maxing may work for some, but if you spend all your time at spreadsheets (which is going to be hard, given how many variables there already are within builds), you're still not going to be able to beat someone who's just better than you.

But. Let's pretend that there would ever be an encounter between a number of players, all of exactly equal skill. I still don't see racial passives making any difference when compared with active ability selection, and I still don't see an Imperial caster being somehow "gimped" compared to a Breton. They're just going to have different advantages/disadvantages.

I'm sure you would not deny that given two players of equal skill, the one who does not have a useless racial passive in their build is more likely to triumph. Also given how players, even some non-PvP players, weigh racial passives heavily in their race choice (such as in this thread for example), I think your assumption that most players don't MinMax is misguided.

Like I said, you're definitely not required to do so. If you're gimping yourself on purpose to give lesser skilled players a better chance of triumphing over you then that's commendable too.

We're just going in circles now.

Builds are not cookie-cutter. If you make a build where any passive ability is rendered "useless", it's because you deliberately chose to make it useless. But even in the case that you don't make use of one of your racial passives, that doesn't suddenly mean you're at a disadvantage. An Imperial without the potential to heal on melee strikes does not become a less effective ranged character. A Khajiit who doesn't take the stealth buff doesn't become a less effective healer. Both of those potential cookie-cutter builds will still have advantages over races which are supposedly the "best" for those particular roles, but they'll just have to play the characters differently.