If you are the minmax type, the smartest thing to do would be pick 6 skills and stick with it. The rest of skills points all go into passives from various trees.

So, why should I learn more than 6 skills?

Should correct yourself and say 12... you do have another bar with weapon swap.

Because in many (most) trees the passives do not affect you at all unless you have a skill from that tree slotted. Thusly, you would only be limiting yourself

Ditto.

Also, my understanding is that in order to access skills further up the "tree" in a particular skill line, you'll have to invest in a train up at least some of the lower-level skills in that line. But I could be wrong.

Because options are cool and refreshing.

And no, weapon swapping is a bad way to create an illusion of options.

The way ESO handles these 5+1 actionbars are one of my worst gripes about the game, I absolutely hate it.

Even then I rather have some back up healing spell I can switch out and maybe heal a dungeon while doing a bit less dps?

This is all assuming we have all 12 skills. If you get the hang of it you can effectively have more skill buttons, of course you can't do it mid combat, but you can quickly add a healing spell to the hotkey bar or even the rarely used AOE spell (looking at you volley...).

Yeah but if you can respec, you can refund all those pre-req points, unless there is a mechanic in place to disallow such a thing. i.e. respecing would also reset level to 0?

Well it's a learning experience from beta. I'm sure eso will have respec to use only to your liking and how you want to play right after launch. I'm learning too. Basically I wrote down my stuff about what I skills I use. No I will not share them with you.

Good point. I'm not sure how they're addressing this. I imagine it would be unbalancing to do it the way you suggest (basically forcing everyone to respec repeatedly at different points in order to stay at peak performance.)

I just don't get this 6 skills restriction at all. Is it for same reasons as Diablo 3? Console support?

I don't even need the skills hotkeyed, just need to be able to use them with a click. Placing restrictions like this just dumbs down combat IMO. Especially if ESO combat is about "reacting to different situations". You can't react if youre stuck with 6(or12) skills!

You still have to have the skill line raised high enough to spend points in the skills you want. it's a skill point refund, not an experience refund.

Yeah passives only work with skills you actually use. So if you only use 6 abilities then there is no point in getting other passives, thats if you can even access them in the first place.

Some players may indeed never want to change their build. That is up to them. I am betting they will at least adjust at times because there is no one perfect build out there.

Many have already expressed their concerns about when sites like elitistjerks hit ESO but I already know how impossible it will be to make spreadsheet builds in an open skill system. It cannot be done. There are too many variables in game. The best they can do if outline very specific scenarios where some set up is best by the number but it still ignores in game variables far too much to be useful beyond the advice it yields.

Sadly what happens in open skill games is something entirely different. You find out there are 2 kinds of min/max'rs: One is a person who loves to min/max for concept and function. The other is a person who thinks min/max means maximum exploitation. The second flat out finds mechanics that scale far outside of intended purposes. They create the "Super-secret-won't-tell-anyone" builds that can one shot people in pvp. Once the loopholes they find are fixed they move onto the next best exploit build. This has happened in every single open skill game I have ever played.

How can ESO avoid this? The soft class system lessens it's impact actually. Leveling in this game is so slow you will not find many simply rolling an alt for the next FOTM exploit build. You will see at least 4 because of classes and likely a couple within each class. Pve and pvp discussion will be entirely separate beasts. I am hoping ESO will keep on top of this sort of balance issue and won't harshly affect those sticking with concept builds.

Well its good to learn different abilities that you can use for Magicka and Stamina until you keep it how you want it. I find some quite good that I wish it had more than 6 to use for 1 class.

Maybe you want two specs?

Also passives require things for them to activate. Class tree passives and racial passives are pretty much the only persistent passives that last though weapon/armour/skill swaps. Even then some class tree passives grow in power depending on how many skills from that tree you have slotted, or only activate from skills in that tree.

Skills also require more than 1 point to get to the maximum level and class skill trees require at least 1 point in to level up the tree.

there is also ways to get additional skill points so maybe we will have skill points to spare.

Not every situation calls for or benefits from the same 6 skills. Various monsters are likely to be resistant to your currently slotted skills, and you'll often need to switch out your slotted skills for others better suited for the encounter. Skills will often be switched out depending on whether your running solo, or fulfilling a specific role under a group dynamic. Some situations call for pure DPS, whereas other situations may be better accomplished with stealth or skills better suited to a battle of attrition. Some monsters may have attacks of which your character may be significantly vunlerable, so you may need to include some healing/protection skills which you normally don't wander around with.

Sure, you can stick to a very narrow set of skills. But then you'll be extremely specialized, and will then find that you can only effectively fill one specific role, and may rely heavily on other players. Your versatility will be extremely limited if not non-existent.

you could only learn 6(12) skills but you would be limiting yourself i think. some skills will be better in certain situations. some will be better for solo, some good in groups, some good in pvp then you might want to take additional skills to make your self more versatile for group play. however if you feel you only want 6 skills as some way to rebel against the system set in place then have fun with that

I can personally assure you that having backup skills for certain situations is a very good investment, sure you have ur base 6 per weapon type, but when the situation arises having that extra healing spell or that CC spell can be really life changing.

It's real easy to see why you will need a bunch of different skills to effectively play in different aspects of the game.

In PvE, you might be in a dungeon where one boss allows you to go completely glass cannon spec, while another might need an additional healer.

When you are questing on your own, you will need to balance your survivability with damage.

In PvP you might be in a zerg can want to go completely ranged attacking, while some times you might be in a small skirmishing group and want more crowd control to help even the playing field when you encounter the enemy.

I'm not at all a fan of this jack of all trades type character. TES has allowed all kinds of characters, specialized ones included. Is the idea that they're trying to reach a more casual audience by allowing them do everything with a single character because they have no time to make multiple?

There's even less of a reason to group if I could heal myself, cast destruction magic and melee all effectively. There seems to be no reward for specializing at all.

The magicka/stamina cost will prevent any type of effective jack of all trades, sure you can have 5 different skills, that all do damage and are magical/stamina costing, but you will lose vs a guy who carefully chose what skills he has on his bar and how to use them to prevent the most damage while dealing more.

Also self healing means sacrificing damage most of the time, and it won-t be very effective outside of open world.

Wait I just had a thought. Isn't it possible if you go with same weapon, like say Dual Weld, can you use dual weld on 1 6 slots and have another dual weld on another 6 slot in case one doesn't work but you can switch out. Can that be done?

pretty sure it can but would require different weapons

Three main types of play in the game single player PvE (questing), group PvE (dungeons) and PvP, you could also divide this in dungeons / raids and large or small action PvP.

Summons are very nice then soloing but limited use in group play for one.

Maybe you shouldn't!

*groan*

You're limited to two weapons at a time and all abilities cost either magicka or stamina. You gotta make a choice about how you spend those resources during combat. You also have to make a choice about which abilities to equip beforehand. It's not a multi-classing free for all.