So about a month ago I decided that I would look more in-depth into the class skills and abilities in ESO in order to find a good class for me. I had just gotten don't playing Guild Wars 2, a game that left me somewhat paranoid about choosing a class wisely. I had to reroll classes 4 times in GW2 due to my inability to find a viable pve/pvp class that fit my play style. Needless to say, I wanted to avoid a similar conflict in ESO.

I wanted to play a kind of bruiser build (cross between tank and dps) with a combination of self-sustaining and damaging abilities. I managed to narrow my search down to Templar and Dragon Knight, but that's when I began to have problems.

Worries with Dragon Knight:

1. Lack of high-damage single-target or aoe abilities makes me worry about its dps capabilities

2. The melee theme makes it seem a lot like the Warrior class from GW2, a class that was absolutely terrible in pvp (Warrior was my biggest failure in GW2)

3. Seems to be the least popular class based on polls and general consensus, nobody seems hyped to play DK.

Worries with Templar:

1. Lack of Magma Armor or general armor-boosting abilities makes me worry that it will get wrecked by high-damage nightblades

2. General consensus seems to be that it is best suited to healing, making me worry that I will be forced to play a healer in high-level content( I have no interest in playing a healer)

3. Most viable races seem to be Altmer and Breton, whereas I would prefer to play a race in the Ebonheart Pact.

Maybe I'm worrying too much?

My question is, what class do you guys think I would do better with? I seem to have hit a brick wall. Keep in mind that regardless of the class I choose, I want to play viably in high-level pve and pvp. Technically any class can play any role, but that doesn't means it is viable.

Any help would be appreciated.

your worries are now my worries lol.

nightblade it is then

sorry i couldnt help

Glad I could help

I've played both and enjoy them equally.

For DK I went with a bow, using her class abilities to make her less squishy and bolster her melee. It was fun and seemed to work well in PvP, though I never got much time to play it.

My Templar is more of a D&D style Paladin. All in your face with a mace and shield with some slight healing backup and is certainly tank-ier than the Dragon Knight is.

The bottom line is that your class isn't going to matter nearly as much as your weapons and armor skills. Sure they can be handy but the meat and potatoes of your DPS and Survivability seems to be your weapons and armor. I could be wrong but that's the way it seemed to me.

I have the same problem, i cannot decide if Templar or Dragon Knight will better suit my game style. Like the OP, i want to be able to deal some damage but also not end up being a glass cannon.

I was struggling between the two, and may go back to that indecision again before the game is out.

I was coming at it from a support class standpoint, trying to decide if a Templar or DK would be best to support a group, and settled on Templar just because of the healing power. Either one seemed to be capable from a damage standpoint, as I was planning to go 2H.

Then pick up heavy armor. Or pick up medium armor and figure out how the heck enchantments work and enchant them to be tank viable Or mix your medium armor (for the stamina buff) with some heavy armor (for the health buff) and pick up a 2 handed battle axe as a sorceror.

Oh hohohohoooo.

Do not fear at all, templar may have a healing tree, but it's by far saying that its only job will be suited for healing.

Their freaking javelin throws people down, they have a "sorcerer like" tree (dawn's wrath), oh and their piercing jab skill? 75% crit increase if the target is low on health, meaning melee templars will not be behind anything, not with the self heals to back it up

Dk of course has raw stat bonuses though and good class CC, both single and aoe which a templar does not, but at the cost of little self sustain other than raw resistances.

Nb has good finisher, invisibility, disables, good all around.

As of right now, in the previous betas I ran the dungeons without a 'tank' class for the longest time (aka no DK's)
They might have DPS, but not AS MUCH as a sorc or a NB it seemed.

HOWEVER

I met ONE DK with a 2handed sword
HOLY CRAP this dude was going freaking H.A.M on people, I'm sure he and I could have solo'd the dungeon (save for bosses)
(I am healer btw)

He was doing crazy damage, rooting all the enemies and face-tanking basically everything... I think he went down only ONCE, and that was when he rushed into a pack+boss BY HIMSELF and survived for a good few seconds (doesn't sound like much, but it really is impressive)

IMO if you're a great DK - you will be the star of the show, if you're an ok DK, you're going to be meh.

Plus, you have to remember the stigma's that will follow when people are LFG
People might not want DK's (and do what I did, go for 3 dps +healer)
That being said, when you say templar you DO have a slight stigma that you will be a healer/partial healer.

Pros and Cons to both really...I just wanted to tell you about my ONE experience with a DK.

Also, if that DK in question reads this - you were using the blue sword druegsomething, and I was "bigplays" the healer - we ran spindleclutch in the last 20 minutes of beta last betaweekend
Damn dawg, you were kick-ass.

Yeh I guess there's also that, you still need a healer, but not so much a dedicated tank, anything in heavy armor seems to tank rather well, but it will miss out on the easy debuff/taunt from 1h+shield.

Heavy armor still seems to be a requirement if you are to take hits though.

I am having the same problem. I worry that the only true Melee tree of the Templar is the Spear tree. And, even that tree is rather range...y.

Personally, I think I will end up going DK. But, we will see.

Nightblade.

But if you must play either DK or Temp i'd go DK.... Dat Molten Armaments man...

DK - 1- Depends of witch weapon and build you did. Ardent flames skill tree offers a large amount of fire based damage and great passives to amplify it, also if you picked 2-handed and enchanted it with fire and has the passive arcane fighter your fire dmg will skyrocket since the enemy will be always on fire (if i'ts no immune), And if you also implement it with Earthen hearth molten weapons and other 2 handed skills you damage will be quite high.

2- Can't see it as a warrior class on GW2 and i do understand you, i was a warrior that quit the game because playing a melee class was boring, but that's not the case even more because you don't have stupid 60 seconds Cd in simple block.

3- That's odd i saw this http://www.ign.com/wikis/elder-scrolls-online/Classes and other polls like that saying the contrary, most people are more hyped to play a fire breathing knight with dragon themed powers. Most forum polls are based only on small populations and that don't qualify as a solid trend.

Templar -

1 -Magma armor is a ultimate, you wont be spamming that "feces" and i don't think it will be preferred on pvp or pve since dragon standard is currently the most loved ultimate on the DK line. And hey you will have Nova, okay the cost is twice the cost of magma armor, but an Aoe that takes 40% enemy dmg, snares, do dmg and stun is a damn nice ultimate which can be morphed to a bad ass party synergy named Gravity crush. Well Heavy amor already gives a big bump on your defenses but if you are kinda meh there is a Sun shield that blocks almost 30% of your max health, store dmg than blows reverting the dmg to an aoe explosion and even become more strong at the peace people hit you, if you are not happy with that you can combo Sun shield with Backlash that store 33% of the dmg taken explodes in aoe and heals you, and if this is not good enough you can use blinding light that make people have a 50% miss chance for 4 seconds, and give yourself a good healing and rebuffing times .Oh and if you scream "but meeeh there are spells" Eclipse reflects them . So you will have some mitigation in the form of heals and damage absorption and that makes a good tanker =P.

2 - General consensus never played the damn game =P. Templar is not more suited to healing as any other class is suited to it, most people say this because in their mind Resto staff uses stamina and templar skills uses mana so they will have twice the resources to spam heals, well that's a lie, Resto uses magicka and because of that Templar heals overlap Resto heals making it somewhat redundant, you will probably pick one or 2 specific heals from each and run with it.
Don't think " oh i will have heals resto heals on this bar and templar heals on this one" sorry this will gimp yourself even more, the most useful is making the second bar filled by utility skills, such as mages guild equilibrium (transform hp > magicka), and on pvp the second bar is for a high dmg weapon skills or godly lances of destruction if a NB (wich for me stands for newbie =P as i see NB more used by a lot of noobs, it's a joke don't hate me) tries to kill you while secluded.

Another point about healing is that DK's, as a example since is one of your chosen classes, obsidian shield is a skill for your party with more focus on yourself, and that's fine because people love to focus the guy brandishing around his healing staff, and you can also protect yourself with ash cloud (aoe snare + miss on attack) or petrify (stuns + vulnerability) witch is also a good trait as support class.
So the conclusion is there is no "Class more suited to x job" what you have is classes that play a role sooner than others and in a unique way. The game is made for the weapons skills supplement the class weakness, you can even play a healer that when targeted simple vanishes into the shadows or steals the attacker movement speed, making it really [censored] annoying to kill and granting mass invisibility to team as a ultimate can turn the tide of a battle.

3 - Why? Because of the hefty racial skills ? I don't see "more viable" since Breton gets magic passives, altmer also, while Nord have good passives for be into the fray of the battle, such as more armor bonus and 2 handed 15% xp bonus or even Dunmer for their Fire affinity (and that helps DK skills) and their Dual xp rate or maybe because the talking dinosaurs have increased health regeneration and receive more healing from all sources? . So i don't understand why do you have a problem with finding a suited race on Ebonheart, if so just pre-order an play whatever race in whatever alliance.

Played with 3 Toons on beta a DK( Tank), Templar( Tanking-healer) and NB ( 2 handed, heavy amor) all 1 - 15.

Is that to say DK will have no place in pve while Templar will have a place only in healing?

No.

DKs are still tanks and support.

Low levels dungeons, i.e. the easier ones ( I mean, this is the first dungeon if you're doing beta weekends), shouldn't be used as a comparison

This information is nice, and it does help. Of the 2, which class do you prefer and why?