There has been much debate and whine over the fact that ESO is missing mundane classes like the warrior, ranger, thief etc. and whether ignoring class skills would be a viable option. But I had this question nagging at the back of my head that I do not think has been addressed properly yet. Namely whether classic wizard types wielding staves, ritual daggers or orbs of power are viable. Although I suspect what the answer might be...

In fact, I'm afraid. From what I've seen the only class that represents an arcane caster seems to be the Sorceror. Yet even with the amount of morphs the repertoire of magelike spells(ie not spells like dragon knight's Spiked Armour) seems awfully low.

Currently WoW offers 8 different playstyles when it comes to casters. Arcane, Fire, Frost, Destruction, Corruption, Demonology, Shadow, Elemental.

ESO is different in numerous ways to WoW, of course. But it feels like there's only so much you can do with the Mage's Guild and Destruction Staff perk tree and the three class trees you're offered. In the end it doesn't feel like there's is -that- much variety because with only 5(10) slots you need to be wise about your choices. 10 skills, 10 of which won't be spells either I'm sure, don't seem like enough in order to feel oneself as a formidable and flexible caster either.

I get the feeling it will get even worse once you realize that in order to fulfill a certain role you'll need certain spells. In PvP you'll need survivability and CC. There are only so many abilities that do that and invariably everybody will be using the same skills. If you want to do dps in PvE there will be a certain few spells that will excel at it the most and you'll be using those.

Ideally I would have liked to play a caster type that uses illusions, invisibility and short range teleportation to compensate for low health and bad passive defenses while being capable of draining life and dealing out some serious nukes with destruction spells. A concept that was perfectly viable in previous TES games! At least in Morrowind before they removed a whole lot of magic effects.

And I do not see why it shouldn't have been viable in this game. You can cast some spells, dual wield, use a bow and wear heavy plate in ESO and be an adept at all of that at the same time. Yet being a multifaceted caster that has invested in multiple schools of magic instead of dabbling in melee and archery skills doesn't seem entirely feasible. At least after having tested some characters in the beta I felt like in order to come even close to my desired playstyle I'd need to mix nightblade with sorceror but that's impossible.

I'm just wondering if anybody has come up with any casterish builds thus far, be it using Sorcerer or Nightblade or even Dragon Knight as the latter seems to have a shred of potential to be an interesting pyromancer.

Spells from the various schools of magic are represented in the class skills as well the destruction and healing staves.

If you want to play a mage character, you are not limited to the sorcerer class. A dragonknight can make an excellent fire mage with class abilities and the destruction staff. A nightblade can make for a powerful blood mage (siphoning and restoration staff).

Did you try playing a nightblade, with focus on the destruction staff and mages guild abilities?

I made a Magee blade it worked really good especially with the assassin blade morph to impale

I really need to take a look at a fire mage dragonknight, especially now that Flame Talent is being changed to 2/4/6% added fire damage.

A dark elf fire dragon night could be very nasty.

to be fair, Morrowind, Oblivion AND Skyrim (the only three ES single player titles I've played) wandered back and forth across the spectrum of underpowered and overpowered magic, and in some cases, managed to do both at the same time - I know, Impressive right?

Morrowind base magic was *fairly* powerful but heavily limited by a non-regenerating mana pool - This tended to make making a dedicated mage...difficult, as you had to dedicate a significant portion of your character design to finding ways of increasing and/or regeneration your mana pool. However, Enchanting was, in a word, STUPIDLY overpowered, and proper use of the enchantment system to logical extremes was quite capable of breaking the game.

I honestly don't remember Oblivion magic very clearly (it's been a long time, and for some reason, my oblivion experience didn't imprint quite as solidly as my morrowind experience), but based on anecdotes from friends of mine who enjoy breaking game systems, they LOVED oblviion's custom spell creation system, precisely because it could become almost as broken as the enchantment system in Morrowind.

Skyrim, of course, according to most people, swung too far in the opposite direction, and while I found Skyrim magic to be a pleasant adjustment, with regenerating mana pools but significantly scaled back magic power, I know many people HATED skyrim's magic system for not allowing the versatility they wanted AND for not power-scaling appropriately, ending up overall feeling very underpowered.

ESO...is very, very different in it's skill base.

For one - the people complaining about "NOT BEING ABLE TO MAKE NON-MAGIC USING CHARACTERS" are, as many have already suggested, focusing too much on the power source for their powers. They think because a skill uses the mana pool, that makes it a magic spell, and it really doesn't, if you think about it. Mana has just expanded into a catch-all term for "class skill limiting pool". Some of those class skills are *actually* magical, others considerably less so, again, depending on how you look at it.

but, I realize that's not really what you were getting at...

You wonder why you can't currently make a dedicated caster with the particular pool of spell-like skills that you're interested in. The best answers I can give you currently are...

1 - the game's not even released yet...

2 - odds are they'll be including new classes, and quite possible expanding on various class skills and abilities, at some point in the future, so your problem *today* may not be a problem further on down the road - I know that's not very reassuring now, but it is something...

3 - truth be told, and this may sound flippant and unsympathetic, but ESO is NOT WOW. The kind of dedicated mage class that you enjoyed playing, that fit quite well within the world of WOW, may not be appropriate for the world of ESO - I'm not saying it is, or isn't, but the people designing this game have apparently decided on a strange but not entirely inappropriate fusion of Elder Scrolls lore and established gameplay, and the necessary balance and gameplay mechanics that most people expect from an MMO. That was kinda awkwardly phrased, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that you may have to give up on your idea of the classic wow-mage existing in the ESO world - it's possible it'll never be designed that way, either because the devs don't want it to exist that way, or because they can't afford to make something like that because it'd screw up some other balance issue.

4 - if you're really interested in playing ESO, another option you have is start to use the EXISTING character build system, and see if you can't come up with a new way of looking at mages. I'll give you an example...

there's an...interesting...pen-and-paper RPG out there called Deadlands : Hell on Earth. It's this bizarre fusion of old west, supernatural, and post-apocalyptic action-horror RPG genre. I hate it. I really hate it. It's a great game. It's fun, it's innovative, it has an intriguing lore. I hate it. I hate it because I have the hardest time, FITTING my mind around western/supernatural/post-apocalyptic action/horror - it's just too many genres for my brain to handle. I can't really imagine a character I like, because I find myself at war with too many character concepts, too many conflicting themes and stereotypes and whatnot for me to deal with.

But the people that *can*, change their concept of what fits, allow themselves to enjoy a new game with new rules and new ideas and new limits, and create characters and experiences and ways of interacting with the world that they would never have realized if they had refused to adopt a new mindset.

take what you KNOW about mages, what you LOVE about mages, and since you *can't* make them in ESO, at least not currently, the way you'd like - see if you can't redefine YOUR idea of mages. Now, in ESO, you can make a mage that sneaks, and uses a two-handed hammer rather than a staff. He can be a Lizard! A LIZARD!!! and use bows and ride horses and backstab people and THEN set them on fire with the power of his mind. That's a pretty cool mage, too. Sure, maybe you can't teleport short distances and use your AOE damage/stun ability - but you CAN do other things, and they're still magical - you can still call yourself a mage. Hell, my Nightblade can call himself a shadow mage, with his teleporting shadow dagger spell, if that's what I want to call it - now, in ESO, "mage" is mostly just a name, and maybe a bit of a "style" - it's no longer a class quite the way it used to be, and sure, that can be maddening and infuriating, or it can be liberating and amazing!!

truth be told, it'll probably be a little bit a both at times - but that's the best suggesting I can make at the moment...

since you asked

When it comes to character concepts I follow a fairly simple principle - in order to excel at something you have to invest a lot of time and effort into it and then you also have to maintain it. If you want to be a good swordsman you have to go out there and practice every day to progress and keep your skills sharp and your body fit.

If you want to be a good caster that can actually make use of magic in the heat of battle, I'd imagine you'd have to do the same. To me magic has always been something exclusive - not everybody can learn and understand it; those who can have to invest more time and effort into it than you'd have have to in case of martial arts.

As a roleplayer I've run into quite a few horrible marysue characters where the concept entailed training really hard to excel at every style of combat known to man and become a master swordsman as well as an archmage and whatnot all at the same time while looking like a hollywood star.

Realistically, in a gritty medieval inspired world like ESO your average joe couldnt' possibly know anything about using magic. What are the odds he is born into a family where one of the parents is a wizard? Or born somewhere nearby a magic academy in a rich enough family to afford the luxury of learning arcane secrets? Compare that to the number of young strapping lads that are taken away by the army to wage wars against rival tribes, clans, nations etc, as well as the need for farmers and crafters like blacksmiths and carpenters etc none of whom could possibly have enough time to invest into magic properly even if they had the resources for it. Which they don't!

What I'm trying to say is that hybrids are meant to be the exceptions and not the norm. In ESO hybrids are going to be the norm and not the exception which is just silly. And I wouldn't have had as much problem with this if it were some other universe where magic is more widespread. But as shown by previous TES games most people inhabiting Tamriel aren't spellcasters. They're simple farmers or soldiers and mages are an exclusive minority. Or at least they have been.



That said Nightblade is becoming increasingly more attractive to me. Too bad there is no morph for Shadow Cloak to leave behind an illusion. What could Nightblade possibly use as her main attack in case she wanted to be mostly caster oriented though?