» Thu Feb 20, 2014 6:34 am Preface:
Greetings,
my name is Malazan, I played in the beta as a Mage 21, Templar 17 and Nightblade 17 together with several friends, including a lvl 21 Dragonknight. All that you read is based on personal experience and calculations only, as well as knowledge from the beta and http://eldersouls.com/elder-scrolls-online/skills. This are my experiences and I will gladly update my anolysis if other people convince me of another view.
Presumptions: (What I think I know but don't know for sure)
-The basic crit Multiplier is 100%, but it is significantly weaker on heavy armored enemies
-Weapon related traits affect Class skills as well (like +x%dmg when wielding Y)
-Class spells (usually) stack better with spell damage than weapon skills with weapon dmg, atleast from what we saw, thus making magic dmg preferred, but most spells scale differently
-Some spells are more magicka-->dmg efficient than others (thats why we pick them..)
-Attack speed only affects auto attacks, spells have cast speed, melee channelled have channel speed.
-For ALL classes except night blade Light armor is more efficient than Medium Armor, and heavy armor is for tanks.
-Light armor wearers should for damage sake put all points into magicka..and Nightblades into stamina.
-Buffs from weapons last through weapon swap.. i can't believe I forgot to test that.
-DK and Mage should play Aldmer, Templar should play Breton, Nightblade can choose between Redguard and Khajit (Khajit win because of Meow.........and more damage)
-You loose a bit of time when switching weapons
Additional note: In this guide I will be focusing on dmg only, assuming that your healer and tank got cc and sword and board debuffing (Puncture for -40% armor/spell resistance is absolutely mandatory for dd's to do their jub properly) covered, in reallity ofc feel free to swap out non-essential skills for skills that are more useful in your situation.
I ALSO did not include, World, Alliance War or guild skills, because neither have i Tried them nor do i know exactly how good they are, feel free to experiment.
You are, if you continue reading, also obliged to accept Lord Sheogorath as your one and only true deadric deity for all of eternity and pledge allegiance to madness, murder and cheese.
Classes:
Lets start with the Mage:
The one and only true caster The current optimal setup, considering you prefer ranged play is: Bow/Bow or Bow/ Fire Staff with (if you prefer to go absolute minmax including going melee switch bow(1) for dw swords, but you loose on 5% crit and about 6% dmg on CS and MF, the bonus is marginal):
1) Crystal Shards(morph -mana cost etc), Mage's Fury(morph to return mana), Poison arrow (morph more dmg, or Flurry morph attack speed),Winged Twillight (morph mana aura) and Clanfear
Ultimate: Storm Attronarch with increased aoe morph
Switch:
2) Lightning Splash (pref morph +2meter diameter, if extremely good aiming take +50% dmg first tick), Volley (pref +fire dmg morph, Or Elemental Weakness staff +magicka on hit morph, Surge (+duration morph) and the summons from first weapon.
Ultimate: Overload with Magicka regen morph.
"But Malazan everyone knows summons svck, you are a noob for even suggesting it, go back to play XYZ" I know some of you are thinking that right now, but let me tell you that summons are perhaps the most underrated factor of the mage. In Coordinated groups they really rarely die (thats why clanfear, otherwise prefer unstable familiar, the martyr), and if they die its because someone screwed up and they took the blame for it by facetanking the damage that the culprit was supposed to take. And they push our sustained damage by quite an amount, 20-33% depending on the situation--> fight length and impact of burst and execution.
And honestly, what ELSE do you want to take? You have all the most efficient skills here and they are more than enough to dump your resources.
The play style if pretty straight forward, Utilize stealth bow attacks when you can, stay on max range, Use CS with targets spread thin(or only few targets) or if need to burst smth quickly (like a healer), use MF to execute thing, preferably BEFORE they are actually below 20% (25-30% usually is perfect), use poison arrow every 10 seconds or with capped stamina, keep summons alive.
In aoe Situations or when you completely dumped your resources switch to 2, use lightning splash and volley at will (preferably use surge first to increase volley damage). When out of resources, start auto attacking.
Use Storm attronarch when you have 2 or more targets. The storm attronarch is one of the most powerful ultimates in the game, it doesn't cost much, and it completely obliterates groups of elites by himself, even on bosses it is amazing. But on pure and only singeltarget Overload wins the race, and here you should also switch out bow for staff because of fancy +40% (thats much!!) dmg Weakness to Elements (and don't forget bonus Magicka regen on every hit). Overload alone makes your filler phases seem not so filler any more. Surge will make you hit like a truck. + Weakness will turn your fireballs to bloody asteroids, by the power of maths you should be doing more damage than with CS spam. What a shame Overload is not on for too long, yet still, surge + WTE synergize extremely well and together with summons will build the basis for our sustained damage in longer bossfights.
Results:
Burst 7,5/10: Our Burst is actually pretty decent, CS has the best best base damage and best magic scaling in the game (and the highest manacosts for that matter..), and spamming it will quickly turn red health bars to black ones.
Sustained damage: 8/10: Mages come with the whole packet, good spenders, good fillers, only our stamina conversion is not that great, but since we focus everything on magic anyway, poison arrow will just suffice.
Execute phase: 10/10: Hands down, we are the kings of executing, we actually gain magicka BACK from executing, and we have the best scaling, most efficient methods to execute stuff. (40% dmg bonus from elemental weakness, nough said.)
Aoe: 10/10: We are the kings of aoe as well, though, not without help to be fair (The synergy hits hard and nasty). Lightning splash is really cheap (-36% costs) gets both 6% highelf bonus and 6% storm passive bonus (and the 40% elemental weakness bonus, which will drive some people mad in raids, were things live long enough to be worth debuffing and we have the only high end aoe that scales with that buff). Oh and Volley is cool too, the fire dmg component actually seems to stack with spell damage, which will come in handy.
Mobility: 7,5/10: We have the luxury of being the only real ranged damage class in this game, and we always have enough stamina (unless you really want that last 2-3% extra damage and actually roll dw) to dodgeroll, break cc and stuff, without reducing our dmg output.
So overall yeah, mage is pretty decent right now, if summons do actually get buffed, I would go as far as calling us op. Problem is, we're sort of scumbagy, we provide 10% more mana reggen for the Party, maybe elemental weakness (though usually the DK is more interested in that) and some knock backs, and our summons soak some dmg from time to time...but mostly we bring damage, and we deliver it in bulks.
Nightblade:
The only true melee class in this game, actually using weapons and not just fancy magics, slicing, dicing, cutting, stabbing and eviscerating everything he can. You should aim for dw/2h combo, to use the best of both, bow doesn't synergize very well with melee weapons, if you still want to use it, feel free to experiment around.
1) Teleporting strike(Ambush), Veiled strike (Good guy Nightblade reduce enemy armor Morph), Flurry (As+), Mark Target (Morph is hard to choose, but I think lower costs benefit the burst character more), Drain Power (even more drain), Ultimate: Death Stroke (soul harvest)
Switch
2) Haste(+Stamina reggen), Momentum (morph to whatever), Cleave(+stamina per enemy hit, Might be worth to swap out with Shade, depending on how good shade is... lets face it our aoe svcks, might as well go full single), Assasins Blade (+range) Reverse Slash (hit two more targets) Ultimate: Soul Shred (more damage)
This build is balanced around highest possible group utility and sustained damage. (Switching Veiled strike for Cloak of shadow +70% crit will make your burst skyrocket beyond 10, but you will loose your good guy status and a lot of sustained damage). The core of this build is to precast momentum, then haste, switch weapons, stealth ambush something for nasty burst, mark target (for the love of god don't get focused by whatever you marked, and if you do, kill it fast, don't bother marking small fish), veiled strike (consumes ambush) Drain power, and flurry, auto attack till veiled strike ends, recast it, autoattack till flurry buff runs off, recast it, and so on, switch back to 2h for recasting haste and momentum, or for executing (if you have a mage in the group do yourself a favour and don't break your bones over trying to compete with executing with him on trash, use this only for bosses, otherwise.. break a leg 
).
This rotation is Hell. You have to watch for haste, momentum, drain power, mark target, shade (if you don't even bother with trying to aoe, which i honestly suggest) flurry and veiled strike. Good thing is you run out of resources for using the last two pretty soon, and then it gets a bit easier. If your goal is pure burst forget auto attacks and just do veiled strike+flurry, the burst is amazing! Naturally use Death Stroke with very high ult for single target and soul shred as only good aoe (still dmg wise inferior to the other aoe ultimates...Zenimax does not want you to aoe)
Results:
Burst 10/10: Glorious, King of bursts, even without Cloak of shadow the whole tp stealthstrike, all buffs combines full flurry assault will melt everything in seconds. Until you have no more resources, and then it's back to sustained damage
Sustained damage: 5,5-7/10: You might think managing 7 buffs/debuffs would be rewarding. Its not, not really (except if shade is supper strong, then it might be cool). We don't svck, but neither its something amazing. Veiled strike scales with magic damage, we don't have magic damage at all so its a bit lack lustre (more than Poison arrow for Mages or any melee abilities from other classes, since melee abilities have high(er) base dmg from weapon), and overall, from what I and my friends experienced, melee skills (meaning weapon skills) just don't ramp up as hard as magic skills. We have the advantage of near full armor penetration with mark, shield debuff and veiled strike, so we will be more effective vs highly armoured targets, but casters gain 42% penetration just from wearing light armor, and some more from destruction staff debuff, so even then we wont be that amazing. Ironically, really, our weapon damage ramps up extremely through drain power, so we will be great on fights with adds..but we wont really be able to damage the adds, because we have no proper aoe tools. Overall, our buffs are more expensive to maintain than for others, and each for himself is weaker than what e.g. mages get. I guess if you are really perfect all your pot usage and know what exactly down to the fraction of a second how and when to utilize your resources, you might be on par with other classes, but it will be much more work!
Execute Phase: 8/10: We're pretty decent, though assassins blade is hurt from lacking magic damage, and by the time reverse slash starts putting out those huge hits the mage will usually already have furyed the mob into the next best plain of Oblivion
Aoe: 3/10: you could try to cleave stuff, or pump al magicka into drain power spam.... but its usually better just to stick to high priority targets.
Mobility: 8/10: while melee, we have the sole advantage of very high stamina pools and high stamina reggen which gives us very good tools to stay out of trouble. We also have higher armor than others, which goes to waste completely because we have to mark targets to keep up in dmg.
To sum it up, Nightblades are the ones you want to bring along if there is something in the dungeon that you want to be very dead very quickly, they do not lack significantly behind in single target sustained dmg if played properly (if played unproperly you will lack behind no matter what you play, but the margin for NB's is greater than for others). They provide much needed armor penetration for increasing the filler dmg for other classes and threat output for tanks, and they are evasive. They would be very grateful for proper aoe tools though and just a teeny-tiny bit more love for weapon skills.
Dragon Knight:
Zenimax answer to the Destro lock from wow. Your prefered play will be dw/ fire staff (though 2h/fire might be more viable in some options, dw offers more single target dps). Your build should look smth like this:
1)Searing Strike (Morph +dmg) Fiery Breath (+fire dmg taken, good guy DK buffing everyone's fire dmg) Lava whip (+passive fire dmg done) Twin slashes (+duration) Flurry (+As),
Ultimate: Dragonknight Standart (+30% dmg done while in effect, not sure if only for you or everyone, either way its awesome, just varying in level of awesomeness)
Switch
2)Molten Weapons (add fire dmg on attack, we don't have enough magicka to spam it every 6 sec), Weakness to elements (+magicka on hit), Inferno (+critchance vs burning), fiery breath (yes i know we have that already but i am out of good skills, and keeping this debuff up 100% of the time is mandatory), Lava Whip (again, because of the fire damage bonus morph passive)
Ultimate: Pick any of the other two depending on Situation, but both are generally inferior to the standart.
The play style is pretty straight forward: Start in staff, precast molten weapons (and refresh when about to expire), use weakness to elements, switch weapon, Keep up fiery breath debuff on all enemies at every time, keep up searing strike dot on as many enemies as possible, keep up twin slashes dot on as often as possible, dump magicka via Lava Whip (preferably in dw for extra 3% dmg from dualwielding swords), dump stamina via Flurry. When out of resources/need to refresh weakness to element (this will, if you play it right, happen at about the same time) switch to staff, refresh debuffs and start auto attacking till you regenerate enough. Inferno is not mandatory, but beneficial if you want to increase aoe output. Remember to keep up fiery breath debuff at all times.
Results:
Burst 3/10: Lets face it, we're a dot class, our burst just isn't that great. We like to go steady.
Sustained damage: 10/10: Hands down, best sustained damage in the game (or should be), our dot power is immense, we perfectly stack with weakness to elements always profiting from 40% dmg bonus, it's relatively easy to play, we have excellent tools to turn magicka into damage and our filler period, while not as stacked as Mages ) is still pretty damn close and way shorter, thanks to overall lower mana costs. And besides, we're basically the best of the (dd) good guys in the game, providing 3-4 buffs for the party all the time.
Aoe 6-7/10: Its OK but a bit too dot reliant, a lot of things wont live long enough for our damage to kick in, nothing to be ashamed of though.
Execute 1/10: We don't have executes, duh. All we get is some minor bonus from dw dmg vs low health targets.
Mobility 5/10: Not so amazing, we are sitting ducks in melee range with light armor, good thing is: even if we can't attack for a while our dots continue burning, so movement dps loss is not too tragic.
Basically, we're the guys who the party always likes because we do more for them than we do for ourself. We buff them, debuff their enemies, help to burn their bosses, don't steal anyone's show during Bursting or Executing. People generally don't deserve us, don't forgett to remind them of that as often as possible.
NOW! so far, the game looks more or less balanced, we have the aoe and execute king, the burst king and the good guy sustained dmg king. Too bad there if one more class, which I prefer calling the common enemy on mankind, because Zenimax clearly decided that balancing 3 classes was more than enough.
Templar:
I will start with why i thinking the templar (mind in the current setting) is generally overpowered. 2 things, a)
a)Restoring Spirit. Restores 4% of your max magicka after every spell. With the basic 24% light armor and Breton cost reduce we get, + the cost reduce we get from jewellery, this will by math reduce our spells cost to about 30-40% of their basic values, which should with high enough mana reggen, stamina usage and pot utilization completely eliminate the need to use any fillers (again, beta maths). This is INCREDIBLY powerful, this alone would almost make templar qualify for OP. I bet my left pinkie that this will get nerfed to 1/2%, because it is simply too strong, especially with...
2)Puncturing strikes morphed to Biting Jabs(i will refer to it as Biting Jabs from now on). THIS is the most powerful ability in the game. It has EVERYTHING. Need high single target dmg? Biting Jabs. Aoe damage? Biting Jabs. Want to execute something? Biting Jabs. Need CC? Biting Jabs. Looks like rain? Biting Jabs. Readycheck? Biting Jabs. Hell even its scaling is AMAZING, it scales about 0,8-0,9 as strong as CS from mage with like 25% of its mana costs, after Restoring spirit ofc (lava whip was about 0,6 and it was bout 60% of the manacosts). I was completely baffled when I tried out that thing and saw how it melted everything. Everything! Even in Beta! Zenimax should just make it do fire dmg so it also ramps up with dragonknight debuffs, and then we will have no more need for other dd's anymore...
Ok, now that that is out of the way and you are not disgusted enough by the cheesiness of this class, lets move on to weapons. I prefer the dw/2h set-up for maximum stamina usuage, but really the weapon choice is not too mandatory here, you spam class skills 90% of the time (you can also go dw/dw or anything else, just dw swords in main hand):
1) Biting Jabs! (could actually be swapped out for weapon 1, but comforts sake is easier), Solar Flare (-healing if you want to dominate single target unquestioned, or aoe nuke if you want to dominate aoe. ) sun fire (again either+ single target or +aoe morph, your call) , backlash (+ even more dmg, oh yeah and we also buff the dmg of the whole party by smth like 40%, no problem, we got this), flurry (acutally go for cc with this morph, you don't need as, you don't have fillers) Ultimate: NOVA (with increased synergy, wipe out entire group by clicking X...well OK the storm attronarch is even more op than this, but still)
2) BITING JABS!! (because we can), Backlash (because we always want to buff our "party" dmg), restoring aura (morph to what you think is best, oh we also give you more stamina and health reggen, np), reverse slash OR charge (depending on what you prefer), Momentum OR Solar flare depends on fight, will explain soon. Ultimate: Radial Sweep (+ dmg morph, as a cheap alternative to Nova, usually nova is preffered)
Note: Additional skill worth considering is Spear shards (morphed to extra stamina + magicka), as a alternative to morphing Solar flare to aoe, if you want to rival mages at aoe without sacrificing your unquestioned single target dominance.
Playstyle: Honestly? Get into the range of the boss, map every key on your keyboard to 1 and smash your face against the keyboard while laughing maniacal. You will still be outpsing Nightblades and be close to mages... But you wont settle for mere mediocrity, will you? After all you choose templar. Al right. First, it seems to be enough for one templar in the group to have backlash, as they overwrite each other, so every additional templar can take smth else, same thing with aura. Refresh Backlash every time it expires. When enemies hit about 50-60% only use Bitting Jabs as dmg ability, the crit bonus is strong enough as to be worth ignoring everything else (exception: very heavy armored bosses). You should use Momentum, if you expect a relatively short fight, where its worth precasting it, otherwise forget it and rather use another flurry for the costs. Choose wisely between charge and reverse slash, reverse slash improves your executing even further, charge gives you more mobility and gap closing.
Single target: Use solar flare to get the buff for the next attack, use sun fire, sol.f, flurry, sol.f, flurry, reusing sun fire when it expires, switch weapons once you run out of stamina and then start alternating between solar flare and biting jabs, leave out solar flare once enemy hp is low enough, switch back to weapon 1 once you near max stamina, or, if enemy hp very low, use reverse slash.
Multi target: (prefer reverse slash with morph to hit 2 more) Just go into weapon 2 and spam jabs, try to hit as much as possible, if you have morphed sol.f to aoe alternate with jabs, spear shards is worth it if you have many enemies, and they are hard to hit with jabs, use reverse slash to dump stamina into executions. OR (if in raid and very strong adds, and you are the Backlash guy), cast Backlash on everything. Have fun. Don't bother casting backlash on mobs that die too quickly, or take no damage for that matter.
Results:
Burst 7/10 There is no difference between our burst between and our sustained damage, still its strong enough to get a 7
Sustained damage 10-12/10: You are OP. If you play it right, you, and everyone else will feel that.
Aoe 8-9,5/10: Depends on your built and ability to position yourself to hit many enemies with jabs. Generally, amazing. But a mage that really knows what he's doing will still be ahead of you.
Executing 7,5/10: You basically ramp up the less hp your enemy has, and if you use reverse slash you can really make the end count.
Mobility: 5/10: the only thing templar isn't so great at. He requires to be in close melee range at most times and usually has his stamina down, and if he has to move quickly he loses dps. Small solace.
The sad thing is you can't even complain about the templar being a scumbag class, as he does bring a lot into the party and is a major addition to every group. At the current state of the game (mind this is everything based on a beta where max lvl is 21, and most of the things here are theorycrafting material), he brings simply more than anyone else.
Done. Finally. For now. Feel free and be encouraged to comment and voice your opinions, critique (as long as its somewhat constructive) is welcome, advises and additional knowledge even more so. And keep in mind that just because my maths support something it must not mean that it is the only option, beta maths in games is about as reliable as Fox News.
, havent tried most abiltiies listed under the second set , so cant comment on those.
