My latest character was a Nightblade and I had a real blast playing her. However, I could not help but compare the Nightblade class to the Rogue of WoW(Don't hate me, please?).

I wasn't really intending to copy the rogue from WoW but I just decided to check out all the class specific trees Nightblade had to offer and it just happened. Picked up Shadow Cloak(Vanish?), Veiled Strike(Cheap Shot?), Blink Strike(Shadowstep?), that life leeching ability and Assassin's Blade... the finish move or whatever. Ended up with a pretty authentic rogue except all my skills used mana.

Anyway, I found all those skills really neat but I felt like I was missing some weapon-based skills there and in order to incorporate them I would have had to remove one or two of my class spells. It just felt awfully limited, in the end.

What is the reason behind this design anyway? I can understand having limited skill slots, of course.... but I would have liked it if we had at least 2-3 additional slots. Is it because this game is being tailored to fit consoles? I was really tired of TES games being tailored to suit consoles in the first place; do we really have to go down that path with ESO as well? :c

As for my earlier anology I nearly forgot where I was going with that.... think what I was trying to say is that the rogue class in WoW manages to have a very diverse toolbox of skills and if anything I would have expected Nightblades to have something similar since they are a hybrid of magic and stealth. As a rogue in WoW you have bleeds, you have controls and you have your proper nukes as well as nifty stuff like vanish and smoke bombs. All that while remaining true to the character's role.

How much of that could a Nightblade achieve with merely 5 skills? I know you can swap skills in between combat but that just seems a little bit too inconvenient. I'm not going to bother switching my skills every 30 seconds. There's also weapon swap at level 15 but unlike GW2 you dont have weapon skills and class skills separately which makes it a bit odd to me.

Same goes for sorcerers. How could I feel myself as a wizened wizard with just 5(10) spells at my disposal at one time?

Honestly, two extra slots would make a huge difference for me.

I kinda know what you mean but at lv 15, you can unlock a 2nd weapon. I haven't got there yet myself tho.

Feels gimp to me

Love the game btw, dont take this the wrong way

Feels like I dont need to bother with any skills past the first few... who cares

Load an attack a heal some CC and a resource recovery skill, thats it

Since ESO will also be a console MMO, there can't be more buttons to press at one time than what you can fit on a console controller.

I find it quite refreshing that you have to think about what goes well together, rather than just filling your 40 slots and mash whatever.

I've also noticed that many skills seem a little bit redundant and could be made into one single skill that, when used twice consequently, does two different things in a row.


For example, Nightblade's Shadow Cloak and Veiled Strike could be incorporated into one skill. The moment the Nightblade uses Shadow Cloak and goes invisible, his Shadow Cloak ability morphs into Veiled Strike for the duration of Shadow Cloak.

Or that move Dragon Knights have which pulls your target to you with a chain could have a combo follow-up, either a knockdown or some hardhitting strike.

I understand. I said I like the idea of limited skill slots.

However, I am not exactly certain that 5 skills are going to make people 'think'. If anything, it is going to limit people to a few select builds that will offer 'optimal' performance in a given environment, be it PvE or PvP, and everybody will be copying the top PvP/PvE champs.

On the other hand, having 7-10 slots could possibly diversify the amount of builds.... at least a little more.

I really like ESO limited system. It feels really fresh to me, and it allows for A TON of experimentation. Yeah, you have to make intelligent decisions about what to pick and what to leave, but that's the beauty of it. Having 10 skills and 2 ultimates should be more than enough really. When I played WoW, in PvE I usually only cycled through 3-5 abilities. In PvP you'd use more, but rarely more than 12.

I think people just "think" they're limited when they're really not.

As mentioned, a console player can't fit 7-10 skills on his gamepad, and the devs made the decision to make the game experience across the platforms as similar as possible. So everyone is limited (if you see it as such) to 5 + consumable/ultimate.

And yes, it's a MMO so some combination will always be a tiny bit better than other combinations no matter what. Choose not to care about those few percentages and you'll be fine

Here we go again... my god...

Left click, right click, dodge. Morphs, loadout switches.

Enjoy dying non stop when you hit level 50 and having no one want you in groups because you have no skills.

You need to tailor your loadout based on the encounter.

It's a simple design decision and it goes well with action combat.

It has nothing to do with consoles, Wildstar, TESO, and GW1/2 are not designed for consoles. Several PC only rpg and mmorpg use the limited skill set function for decades now.

Overall you end up with 12, not counting MB1 attacks. Deck building games are nothing new.

AS I dont care much for PvE I will NOT be changing my load out for each and every encounter.

Loading higher lvl skills is a no brainer... and in PvP you will still need CC Heal and a few DPS.. and thats all she wrote.

2 weapons allows a small amount of variation... but small is all it will be

P.S. dont be rude, you have no idea how skilled I am at this or any other game so no need to go there. try a little politeness in the future.

I just wish that spells like Summon Minon, didn't have to remain on the bar. It should be a passize active spell.

You can play world of warcraft with an Xbox controller

It is just the way they wanted it to be like neverwinter does this as well.

You think in PvP you just use the same skills in 2v2 as 4v4 as 20v20?

I don't care how skilled you are, my post had nothing to do with player skills, it was about you not having CHARACTER skills you will need. If you think you can pick up the first few skills and never get anything else and be effective you are completely mistaken.

Not really much point in having more since you cannot hope to get more than one or two abilities used in a fight before you have to just use basic attack. The real limitation here is the stamina pool and the gimp DPS we do vs what mob NPC's do.

I don't believe it has anything to do with consoles. TERA (and I believe some other games as mentioned earlier) has a full controller-suport, and many people play with controller. They still manage to use all skills (what, more or less 24 depending on your class, all active) and I have never, ever heard that some controller-user would complain. Actually they say it is easier to play action-game with controller. TERA has full action-gameplay, no auto-targeting of any kind and lots of movement. And yes, people using controller do very well, and they are not a minority.

Where I have seen limited slots like this is The Secret World. There you have tons of skills and you are meant to tailor your skills to every encounter. It may sound fine, but it is awful. But they have a dedicated player-base who loves the system + tab-targeting and clunky movement. What ever you say about it, answer is "what is your build". I have a fair believe some in Zenimaz likes that system and so it got implemented in ESO. But they knew better than put tons of skills too (you need to be a NASA-engineer to manage them in TWS) and now you have this system you have. Some like it, I don't. But it has nothing to do with consoles.

Totally true.

I'm VR+ on PTS, you are doing something horribly wrong, horribly wrong. The only class with resource issues is 40+ Templars.

I'd also like more.

I think its balanced this way specifically because the game has so much diversity.

You can become a mage, fighter, healer, tank if you had enough slots. But the game isn't balanced on cool-downs as much as resources. So where other games give you many spells in a rotation, this game lets you spam until you run outta juice. There is no need for much redundancy, and restricts your focus (for balance).

I like it this way, makes you make decisions about your play style/build; and gives you freedom to change it, just not mid fight.


ALSO you have 5 x 2 with secondary weapon, that's like having two builds accessible at once.

There are at last count around 300 skill points. Your build is less about the skills you have then the ones you've chosen for a given fight. I expect many add-ons that manage swapping skills in and out of your action bar.

Every other player has the same number of skills so you're not gimped.

This is like wanting to play poker with a 52-card hand, IMO.

Console design is an easy excuse, but... the numbers don't add up quite right for that, at least by my counting. Depending on how I do it, I'm always one or two buttons off from any of the "magic numbers" that would indicate console-design. So my guess as to the actual reason for it?

Because it had to be *something,* and ideally something small enough to recreate the limitation otherwise lost by the open design. Other games limit you to class-only abilities, and limit their use via cooldowns; this game does neither. 5+1 x 2(weapon swap) was just the number that 'felt right' - being neither too few or too many - for the Devs during alpha design and testing.

Adding two more slots would greatly improve it for me--but it would cause some balance issues I imagine. Controllers might not have enough buttons either for console