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ESO and viable weapons/builds.
IamLightning
Member Posts: 93
Hey all, im contemplating coming back, but ive been hearing bad things about the variety the game has to offer. Are Staffs really the best option on all classes? Also is there any variety in pve or pvp builds or do you have to cookie cutter to be effective?
Comments
Short answer, yes & no.
It really depends on what you're trying to do in the game. For general / casual play, there is a lot of variety. However, for high-end play (trials, pvp) you're options get severely withered down unless you want to be playing with a severe handicap. For starters, trial groups want people who can put out a minimum of 700+ dps, which is very difficult to do without a staff build.
In PvP, most people run staff / light armor, because you do such high damage that u can just blow people up in a couple hits. You can try other builds, but anyone with the aforementioned staff build will just delete you in a second. It's really frustrating, and while they have been working on fixing this issue, it's still a ways off from being fixed.
I love how the game has such diversity of builds, but only one that is viable.
Something does need to be done about destruction staves, but that doesn't mean you aren't viable using other weapons. I do fine in pvp with bow/resto staff. In a lot of cases it's just a matter of adjusting your style to the situation. But yes, staves atm are the most powerful build. I find it's most noticeable in VR dungeons where AOE makes an incredible difference.
I wouldn't let this stop you from getting back into ESO though.
I am playing it right now, only level 31 so far. My experience has been that staff builds are far superior to anything else. Most people run them in PvP and you get killed in about 3 seconds or you kill the other guy in 3 seconds.
Now, for a single player game it's pretty damn fun and the quests are good if you take the time to get involved with them. Will I renew my sub? nope! This is a single player game with PvP as the end game and it's PvP isn't that fun.
Name an MMO that was perfectly balanced from launch and never needed tweaking.
Sure, it's the flavor of the month right now, but I bet it won't always be. The nerf bat will swing and when it does there will be a scramble to change builds to next flavor of the month. It's the same old song that happens in most if not all PVE games that have PVP. it is very hard to tweak one and not screw up the other if the skills are the same in both.
There's a huge difference between 'not being perfectly balanced' and having 'one build to rule them all'.
The game has flaws, and yes all games have flaws, but that's not reason enough to ignore them. The big problem with this particular flaw, is that it is shared cross-class. Resto/Destro across the board unless you are tanking in a dungeon.
It's annoying in PvE, but it absolutely is killing PvP atm. And it's fairly visible to see in-game (they've recently reduced the campaigns, and not even half of the now 5 are populated). I use other builds when I can because it's fun, but when I switch back to staff the difference is insane. I barely have to try to decimate enemies, whereas some fights are fairly tricky w/ other builds.
Fact of the matter is, it doesn't matter what game you play, someone will be there to tell you what is the "Best" build, and then attempt to tell everyone else how that build is "required".
Here's the deal:
I have a group of friends who do casual PVP and Dungeons. Each person uses builds that aren't staff builds, unless our priest is healing. We are able to do the dungeons and even PVP encounters without much fuss.
Playing with staff/staff isn't required at all, unless you're joining trial guilds that have sticks shoved up their posteriors attempting to compete for the leaderboards. PVP? I'm not sure, but i've seen lots of small scale PVP where it's not, and even keep sieges where it's not required.
Log in, play what you want. Don't listen to people who tell you otherwise. Again, i've seen people tell me that I HAVE to play ONE WAY in every game that i've played since 2001. I've never listened, and always done well regardless.
You do the same.