Let's Talk About Characters Options

[mALX]

Tanking build hints from the Foundry:



http://tamrielfoundry.com/2014/03/tanking-primer/

[hazmick]

Been a while, but Haa Rei is back in Tamriel. We tried to do the Imperial City DLC, but the PvE element is Veteran Level 16, and our Argonian friend is only Vet 5. The difference 11 million xp can make... The City itself looks pretty fun though, so we'll just have to grind until we get there. I still have more or less the whole Aldmeri Dominion questline to battle through, but it's fun so far. We're currently in Auridon, which is a Vet level 6 area.

In order to try and make it less mind-numbingly difficult I did a big overhaul on Haa Rei's skills. I realised that I'd been all but ignoring the fact that he's a sorcerer, so I opened up the Dark Magic skill tree.

The first spell you unlock - Crystal Blast - is really handy, and seems to have a good magic use to damage ratio. We've actually been using it in place of a weapon for the most part. We're trying to unlock the Dark Exchange ability, which trades stamina for health and magicka.


So Haa Rei's current skill set up is: Unstable Clannfear, Velocious Curse (soon to be replaced with Dark Exchange), Summon Twilight Matriarch, Bound Armaments, Crystal Blast.

He uses the Greater Storm Atronach and Pack Leader Werewolf ultimate abilities, and wields either a bow or a restoration staff. I plan to unlock more dark magic spells so I don't just have the same skill set when I switch weapons.

I'm also going to experiment with destruction staffs. Restoration staffs are nice and all, but all of its abilities are about healing other people, which is completely useless for a solo player. Up until now I've just been using res. staffs because Argonians get a boost in weapon xp for them.

[Rihanae]

After travelling a while with Ciyenna we have uncovered some memories from her past.

Ciyenna Mae has been a bow for hire since the age of 14, the age her mother died.

Her mother was constantly suffering physical abuse by Ciyenna's step father, and Ciyenna could do nothing, apart from hiding in her bedroom with her 10 year old sister Mahri.

The abuse was constant, and consistent for years, all though their four year marriage. Ciyenna had grew up knowing she was helpless to help her mother.

So she did something about it.

One day whilst cleaning the attic Ciyenna came across her birth fathers precious bow, a keepsake Ciyenna had assumed her mother had kept as a keep sake. A reminder of happier times.

The next time her step father would attack her mother would be the last. Once again her step father was savagely beating her mother, but instead of hiding out of fear, she drew the string of her fathers bow and threatened him a single time. Her step father said that 'a little girl like her couldn't hit air with a weapon like that.'

She shot him in the head. Her first kill, and she felt no remorse.

She immediately went to her mother, but unfortunately this last beating was the one that would kill her. Ciyenna held her mother in her arms, with her eyes tearful. 'If only i was stronger... if only i was braver...' Ciyenna said.
It was then she decided she didn't want this for anybody else. She wanted to help people in need. So after two years of marksman training and raising Mahri, under the guidance and adoption of an old bowman in their village named Jak, she became a successful, and locally renowned, bow-for-hire.

[Grits]

My long wished for (two years, according to the first post!) pear-shaped Argonian with blue feathers and a charming smile has finally hatched in the Ebonheart Pact. He is a Restoration Staff wielding Sorcerer, but his main focus is resource management and research. All I know so far is that he is quite young, free born, adventuresome, and it seems equally happy in sand, snow, and ash. He had a number of poetic names in mind for himself when he came of age, but the one that stuck was Stays-Up-Late. Stays made a last ditch effort to be known as Greets-the-Dawn instead, but the others felt that translation implied the virtue of early rising when instead Stays had been persistently naughty and ignored his bedtime.

Stays is still a bit naughty. He loves to steal things from the Dark Elves. Not because of the tension between the races based on generations of slavery, but because he thinks they sound funny when they get all uptight.

Stays-Up-Late is helping Jerric’s crew with their equipment research. Jerric and Lil both have many months’ worth of traits to study on items cluttering up their inventory. (Darnand only has two at the moment, and besides he is unwilling to admit that a Saxhleel teenager could do a better job keeping him organized than he can.) The plan is for young Stays to research their last traits as his first and then pass back easily identifiable items for them to hold on to for the weeks or months until they can research them. I’m sure there’s an Add-On that allows you to mark items in the PC game, but as far as I know we console players have to deal with the shuffle every time we enter the bank or merchant menus. Hopefully Stays will make this less of a pain.

I think I got a cute screenshot of him, but I won’t be able to tell until I get the sneakernet between PS4 and laptop sorted out. I am utterly charmed by the ESO Argonians.

[Grits]

Somehow I didn’t get that you can use gold at the shrines in the different capitals to respect skills and attributes. I thought you had to buy scrolls from the Crown store with real money. *palms face*

Yesterday Jerric (Templar, sword and shield with dual wielding backup) moved most of his points to Stamina. It was hard to decide between Stamina and Magicka. He loves the Templar spells, but he loves to bash with a shield even more. So he decided he’s a warrior with a side of mage rather than a mage who carries a shield around for some reason.

So far he hasn’t faced any bosses by himself, but the difference with the usual riffraff is amazing.

Lil respeced her skills and harvested a few points from Alchemy and the sillier-looking bow abilities that she dislikes. She put them into passives and changed one of her spell morphs to make damage scale from her Stamina (instead of Magicka). Hopefully she will be able to do some more exploring now. As a dedicated Stamina archer she is having the hardest time. The spells from her Nightblade class that I am counting on for her are still out of reach.

Oh, and the plan for Stays-Up-Late to help with trait research is working out beautifully. The level one items made by Stays are easy to see grouped together in inventory, so holding onto them for months is no problem.

[hazmick]

Heh. Took me ages to figure out those shrines too.

Haa-Rei is a stamina build (Sorcerer, bow, 2H weapons) and the improvement over his previous magicka set-up was amazing. There are a few spells that let you use stamina to cast them instead of magicka, so it's worth looking in detail at all the abilities and their upgrades. Such is the case with the Thundering Presence spell (Increases physical and spell resistance, damage and movement speed and applies shock damage to nearby enemies).

One of the 2H weapons abilities acts as a healing spell, and with the recent addition of the Clannfear healing ability Haa-Rei's survivability has gone right up.

[SubRosa]

Such is the case with the Thundering Presence spell (Increases physical and spell resistance, damage and movement speed and applies shock damage to nearby enemies).

Is this Thundering Presence something that all Nords temporarily receive after eating chili?

[hazmick]

Is this Thundering Presence something that all Nords temporarily receive after eating chili?

Or perhaps after one too many meads.

[Grits]

Ha! Jerric claims Thundering Presence as a Nord's birthright. (Others blame the cabbage biscuits.)

[Acadian]

Silly question perhaps:

Does stamina increase bow damage?

Edit: Oh, and it seems that Buffy's bow quite a short range unless I'm missing something?

This post has been edited by Acadian: Aug 13 2016, 04:09 PM

[Grits]

Yes, Stamina increases your bow damage and Magicka increases your staff damage, if you use one. That was a big adjustment for us.

The bow does have a short range. It gets a little better.

Gaah, I have to go right now! Good luck and good hunting!!!

[mALX]

Silly question perhaps:

Does stamina increase bow damage?

Edit: Oh, and it seems that Buffy's bow quite a short range unless I'm missing something?

I think the bow distance increases with your skill leveling up; because I'm sure Misa can shoot further now than she could when she first started using the bow.


Also, I think the strength of your character may have something to do with it. Example = check your race passives and see if any add strength. Both my Imperials and Nords have some race passives that increase their strength; buillding up your race passives is important for your character to reach their potentials for their builds.


C = opens up the character menu
K = opens up the skills menu

(so you can stay on top of your stats if you want)

J = opens up the Journal to scan through your quest log.


Oh, and by the way - if I'm not mistaken, you can get a longbow as a quest reward in some quest in the Aldmeri, because Pantsless Calia got one in Auridon!

Let me look in my inventory and see if it isn't bound to Calia, if it isn't bound I'll enchant it and send it to you.






This post has been edited by mALX: Aug 13 2016, 07:37 PM

[hazmick]

As far as I know, bow range doesn't scale off anything and is the same for everyone. The Snipe skill has an increased range, and there are some passive bow skills and at least one item set that increase range a little bit too.

Bow range is short because it's an MMO with PvP. It would be beyond ridiculous if it used Skyrim range and let players attack each other from so far away with the game's soft lock targeting system. Once Buffy gets used to it, and used to using skills, you'll both be more comfortable with it.

[Acadian]

Thanks, and I agree. Buffy's tended to rely on either illusion or conjuration to back up her bow. The NB's magicks are similar in ways to illusion whereas the sorc has conjuration. So without deleting NB Buffy, I've just created a Sorc Buffy and am nearly through the tutorial. Absolutely loving it so far.

Conjuration better suits her when forced into can't pause/skirmish archery (ESO) whereas illusion works great in support of the ultra range sniping that Skyrim offered. Between her tendency to panic when things get closer, her lack of skirmish instincts and my old slower fingers, I think conjuration will make for a better primary support skill for Buffy's bow. So far so good and ESO looks like a keeper!

[hazmick]

As a Sorc Archer, Haa-Rei's scales have been saved more times than he can count by his summoned creatures.

Buffy might want to look into the other Sorcerer skill lines too - some really handy skills in there. For example: Encase and Dark Exchange from Dark Magic, and Lightning Form and Surge from Storm Calling. Some of them can be morphed at higher level to use stamina instead of magicka, so there'll be little or no need to put any attribute points into magicka.

[Acadian]

Thanks! The new character is up and running now. She's swapped key things via the bank with her predecessor and is nearly to the same point now. Loving it so far. Yes, I'm using the dark magic tree also. Hadn't thought about the elemental tree since her bow is her damage dealer but I will take your advice and review those skills.

I even figured out how to move Superian from one char to another. And the summon has a big bonus I hadn't thought of - very handy for nuisance pests on the road while riding.

[mALX]

Those conjures are amazingly tough! I've played my son's Sorc and never lost one - took him into some heavy battles, too.

I tried to build a sorc on my own and didn't do well, so I won't try to give advice on that, lol.

[Acadian]

Yes, already Buffy is feeling more. . . 'relaxes' and less panicky with something in front of her. So her skirmish efforts are focused on moving around to ensure the summon is engaged even as she's shooting, and then she can keep shooting instead of stopping shooting to fumble for spells. And there are some disabling, buffing and disabling magicks available to her as a sorc.

[Grits]

I’m glad to hear that the Sorcerer class is a good fit for Buffy! Darnand fights in a similar way only with his staff instead of a bow. He uses his clannfear’s healing ability (it’s one of the morphs) a lot.

Lil has high hopes for her NB Summon Shade ability, but she is still not very close to getting it. I’ve been trying out some of the melee/blade-y NB abilities with different characters, and they are great! Just not at all what Lil would ever do. It’s been rough going as an archer NB.

[mALX]

I’m glad to hear that the Sorcerer class is a good fit for Buffy! Darnand fights in a similar way only with his staff instead of a bow. He uses his clannfear’s healing ability (it’s one of the morphs) a lot.

Lil has high hopes for her NB Summon Shade ability, but she is still not very close to getting it. I’ve been trying out some of the melee/blade-y NB abilities with different characters, and they are great! Just not at all what Lil would ever do. It’s been rough going as an archer NB.

Misa (NB) actually does as well with the bow as she does with the duel wield; and we've come across some bosses in the Undaunted Pledge dungeons that could only be beaten with ranged combat (bow or spells). She only has one active perk in bow on the hotkeys, but I did do the passives on it (and her bow is an awesome one, but the enchantment on it is the same as the one on her blades).