I learned a great deal about ESO last weekend while in beta. The most important thing however, by far, was how wrong about my potential build I was. For the last 6 months I had been planning on being an Argonian Healer with a resto staff and 5 heals. That, my friends, was completely unnecessary. Here's what you need to know.

1) If you're a healer then there is no need to carry more than 2 heals. As long as you have one self heal, and one group heal then you're good to go. You're much better off just spamming the same heals over and over than trying to be cute about it.
2) The trinity will not hold up because EVERY PERSON WILL NEED TO BE THERE OWN TRINITY! This is so important. Regardless of how other MMOs are if you're not ready to heal, do damage, and take damage then you're gonna have some serious issues in PVP.
3) Arrows > Magic.
4) Sneaking makes you completely invisible. Not predator invisible but, invisible invisible.


My new build will be as follows. 2 heals, the gun from the fighters guild, the Templar sun fire projectile, and something from the bow tree to fill it out. However, I'm still debating on being a sorcerer instead because the winged twilights are bad ass.

Not at all lol.

There's NO requirement to take on a list of abilities at all. I've seen everything going popping up, both solo players I encountered, and people in party.

Personally I specialized, used light armor, resto staff, heals, and just 2 damage abilities. ]

I saw effective and workable Dragon Knights with dual wield "tanking", nightblades ganking enemies in unison - they are evil at ambushes, Sorcers simply not needing heals employing pets and knockbacks with heavy hitters. You name it. If you can imagine it, you can find a way to make it work lol.

I have to say visually, the sorcerer I saw in my last party was the coolest. It's kinda nifty when some enemy charged her and she flung them 20 foot back and blasted their face off.

Awesome game.

this is something really does bother me.

i was under the belief we could make any build out of any race. atleast i was led to believe that from the earlier videos and interviews about a year ago and some even as recent as a few months ago. but now i see this is not the case due to some of the more recent info we have seen and heard tells us different.

Then you've been misled. As someone who has played one character extensively, but has tried out several builds briefly over more than one beta, I can state both from personal experience, and from meeting other people alone and partied, you can make almost any build work for you.

What information are you referring to? I haven't seen anything to suggest that you can't use this or that race for healing (or for that matter, for anything else).

I think for most of the game it is true that you can fill any role with any class and change pretty easily depending on if you are carrying around the sets of gear you will need to make a switch on the fly.

End game content is another story. I wasn't a tester that got to do high level raids. It would be nice to hear from some of those guys, but my hunch is that they don't talk here much at all.

Low level dungeons seemed to hinge on good teamwork and communication. It did seem like groups more set-up with classic builds made it a little easier, but I also found that groups made up of good players didn't suffer from non-standard builds.

I'm guessing the OP here has managed to come up with something pretty special for it not to be workable lol.

More likely he's not played it in a manner that fits his build.

To be clear, it is POSSIBLE to make builds that don't work, if you play them badly.

For example, you could create a sorcerer in light armor, equip a destro staff, and fight exclusively by trying to bash things over the head with your stick, charging in screaming "kamikaze". Alternatively, you could use the same approach, but focus on attacks with knockbacks and negation, ensuring that no fool ever reached your presence without being turned to dust and blown away.

I think that trying to judge build viability off of low level dungeon play is a bit premature. In later dungeons, you may not only want a single target and group heal, but also a single target HoT, a group HoT, a shield/bubble spell of some variation, a cleanse/dispel magic spell, etc., etc.. Just because you don't necessarily need those things early on, that doesn't mean you won't need them later.

if your refering to me?

what i am talking about mainly is that now we see there are certain builds that would definately not be very good for a tank or healer or stealth type assassins. and that in the end game near lvl 50 we would notice our build was garbage and that we did not make a good build.

i was led to believe that was not the case. and that if you make a build and stuck with that build you would be equal to endgame just like any other class had.

for example:

i make wood elf archer and in endgame we see its the perfect build due to his class starting skills

i then make a Orc and attempt the same exact build but, when i reach level 50 (even tho i used the exact same skills and build) that Orc was less in skill and damage then the wood elf i had made earlier.

in addition -- you have not seen end game, no one has, accept the devs.

Totally. Some of the best parties I've been in didn't have anything "traditional", perhaps apart from myself. We're talking "tanks" with dual wield (no shield), knockback sorcerers with pets, nightblades with resto staffs etc...

Well it's kinda a bad idea to use light armour on a mostly melee character, however heavy armour is never wrong. So yes, not everything will work.

I wouldn't worry on the race front. At all. There's a wide range of enchants, food buffs and potions. I don't know their strengths because I didn't get to end-game myself but I did copy down the enchant effects someone else had posted. I don't see spoiler tags so... um shut your eyes if you don't like this sort of thing. This may not be comprensive. But you can see it includes most of the effects you can get from racial passives.

Enchant Effects

For Weapons:

Frost - Deals (x) Frost Damage
Foulness - Deals (x) Disease Damage
Poison - Deals (x) Poison Damage
Shock - Deals (x) Shock Damage
Rage - Increase your Power by (x) for (y) seconds
Flame - Deals (x) Fire Damage
Hardening - Grants a (x) point Damage Shield for (y) seconds

Absorb Magicka - Deals (x) Magic Damage and recovers (y) Magicka
Deals (x) Magic Damage and recovers (y) Health
Decrease Health - Deals (x) unresistable damage
Weakening - Reduce target Power by (x) for (y) seconds
Absorb Stamina - Deals (x) Magic Damage and recovers (y) Stamina
Crushing - Reduce targets Armor by (x) for (y) seconds

For Armor:

Magicka - Adds (x) Max Magicka
Health - Adds (x) Max Health
Stamina - Adds (x) Max Stamina

For Jewelry:

Increase Physical Harm - Adds (x) Weapon Damage
Health Regen - Adds (x) Health Recovery
Magicka Regen - Adds (x) Magicka Recovery
Bashing - Increase Bash Damage by (x)
Stamina Regen - Adds (x) Stamina Recovery
Potion Boost - Increase Potion effect by (x)
Increase Magical Harm - Adds (x) Spell Damage

Frost Resist - Adds (x) Frost Resistance
Poison Resist - Adds (x) Poison Resistance
Decrease Spell Harm - Adds (x) Spell Resistance
Decrease Physical Harm - Adds (x) Armor
Reduce Feat Cost - Reduce Stamina cost of abilities by (x)
Disease Resist - Adds (x) Disease Resistance
Shielding - Reduce cost of Bash by (x) and reduce cost of Blocking by (y)
Reduce Spell Cost - Reduce Magicka cost of Spells by (x)
Shock Resist - Adds (x) Shock Resistance
Potion Speed - Reduce the cooldown of Potions below this item’s level by (x) seconds
Fire Resist - Adds (x) Fire Resistance
Crushing - Reduce targets Armor by (x) for (y) seconds