The Basics

Levelling skills

Skills increase in power with level, until level IV/4. After this, you can spend a skillpoint to morph it. Skill morphs usually add to the base skill’s effect, often increasing the power, range of targets, or adding useful functionality. Each skill has two morphs. You select different morphs based on use case - some are useful for PvE DDs, some for tanks, some for healers, some for PvP, etc. Morphed skills have to be relevelled from level 1 -> 4 again. You can switch morphs at shrines in big cities, e.g. near the Wayshrine at Vivec Temple, Vvardenfel. Level progress on your morphs is saved, so you only need to level a morph on a char once.

Skills only receive XP points if they are on your active bar at the moment you gain that XP. However skill itself does not have to be active, or even match a weapon currently equipped (if its a weapon skill) - meaning you can have restoration staff abilities or two-hander abilities on a destruction staff bar, and tho you cannot activate them they will level up if you receive experience on that bar. Take advantage of that while doing your daily random normal dungeons (you get big daily bonus the moment final boss dies).

Gear level cap and quality

Gear level cap is same for all expansions, and is lvl 50 + 160 Champion Points. As soon as you reach this mark it is safe to farm more gear/reconstruct it from your stickerbook.

You should not really care about gear quality of even level too much until you get to CP160 - 2-4 sets of training or just random gear of level close to yours is fine. For craftable options check beginner-sets

Highest available quality is legendary, marked by golden color of items. However, different gear pieces have different priorities when it comes to upgrade. Generally its: WEAPONS »> JEWELRY > BODY PIECES. That means, that upgrading weapons takes absolute priority over anything else, as it will directly and significantly affect your healing power and damage by affecting your Weapon/Spell damage stat (around 200 difference between epic and legendary). Other equipment pieces have less effect, and it is acceptable to keep it in epic quality (purple) until you get more gold.

Note, that enchantment quality is independent from gear quality, and you can use legendary quality enchantments on epic quality gear. Enchantments are also significantly cheaper in legendary quality so there is no real reason to not use them to their maximum.

Where to slot which skills?

Short answer: it doesn’t matter which skill goes where between 1-5. Place each skill where it’s the most comfortable.

That said, if you play with skills on mouse buttons, or controller, you might want to move skill buttons around so things are more convenient. Many people remap the 1-skill or 5-skill to their mouse button. For players on controllers, it’s easier to aim the skills on shoulder buttons since thumbs can be on the analog sticks while casting. Aiming D-Pad skills quickly gets much easier with practice. All in-game keybinds can be remapped in the keyboard-shortcuts menu (PC). This is character-specific. The addon “Votan’s Keybinder” is useful for making keybinds across characters consistent.

It is also advisable to bind core combat abilities like dodge roll and break free to a single button. Getting rid of double tapping will reduce dependency on stable low ping and make your experience more enjoyable.

Upon reaching lvl 15 you will unlock a second weapon slot, aka weapon bar with 5 more regular skill slots and another ultimate slot.

Front and back bar

Those are simply terms to describe your primary (where you spend more fight time) and secondary (where you spend less time) weapons. There is no difference which weapon slot you use for which weapon on your character sheet.

Weapon type choice

For trials (12 man): Restoration staff front bar and Destruction staff backbar. For dungeons and arenas (4 man): Restoration staff frontbar and Destruction staff backbar or any DPS combination of your choice like Destruction staff 2x or Daggers 2x front/Destruction staff back (if your group does not require lots/any healing). For overland/questing: any combination of your choice. It truly doesn’’t matter there.

For PvE it is important to have 2-handed weapon backbar, regardless of your frontbar because of how weapon enchantments in the game work.

Reason 1: Only 2-handed weapons retain full value of enchantment. Effect of 1-handed weapons is halved. For Crusher (Reduce target armor effect) and Weakening (Reduce target weapon/spell damage) it is important to get a full value. Reason 2: Only 2-handed weapons have a ground-placed AoE DoT ability (Area of Effect Damage over TIme) in their skill lines. Those abilities can proc enchantments from the weapon they have been cast with each damage tick - this is important for keeping enchantment constantly active.

So, for example, having a Weakening enchantment on your backbar Destruction staff, and using Elemental Blockade ability on cooldown on a boss will maximize enchantment uptime without any significant effort or tracking.

Destruction staff is the most common choice for backbar 2-handed weapon because of utility skills and range, but if you do not need Elemental susceptibility/Elemental Drain/Frost reach during the fight you’re about to do you can use ANY 2-handed weapon including bow/2-handed axe/2-handed sword/2-handed maul. With recent changes to Chilled status effect and re-introduction of Exploiter CP node Lightning or Ice Staff is a preferred weapon, but if you don’t have access to it feel free to pick any other weapon, its not a massive deal.

Armor weight

Current best combination for PvE is 7 light armor (best sustain), or 6 light + 1 medium (best healing power vs sustain balance). Heavy armor in PVE currently has no use if you can avoid it. However, it is completely fine to use if if you’re still farming for correct weight of monster set and only have it available, or using Saxhleel Champion set with a Pearls of Ehlnofey which will forcibly put you in 6 light - 1 heavy setup.

Most PvP setups on the other hand use heavy armor body sets to provide more resistances and survivability. Common combinations are 5 heavy + 2 medium, 5 heavy - 1 medium - 1 light, or 4 heavy - 3 medium.

Traits

Trait is a characteristic of your equipment unit, which gives it special bonuses. There are many of them and we will not list them all, but if you’re unfamiliar with concept we recommend reading this first: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Traits

You can find advice about commonly used traits vs gear combinations for PvE healing here enchants-and-traits

To be able to reconstruct or craft gear with specific traits you need to have them researched. To make it easier, here is the priority list:

armor traits: divines (PvE, light and medium armor), infused (PvE, light and medium armor), sturdy (PvP, heavy and medium armor), reinforced (PvP, heavy and medium armor), well-fitted (PvP, heavy and medium armor)
jewelry traits: arcane (PvE), infused (PvE and PvP), Swift (PvE and PvP), protective (PvP)
restoration staves: powered (PvE and PvP), decisive (PvE)
destruction staves: infused (PvE and PvP), charged (PvE and PvP), decisive (PvP), defending (PvP)
1 hand and shield (PvP only): defending/powered/decisive for 1h and sturdy for shield.

Gear repairing

Fully broken gear will not activate set bonus, so make sure to repair it in time. You can do that by interacting with NPC merchants or by using repair kits (obtained from daily crafting quests or buyable from guild stores).

Stacking and positioning

A stack is when all non-tank group members stand on top of each other (ESO has no inter-player collision). The idea of a stack in group play is to stay in one place as much as possible, instead of running around like hyperactive 5 year-olds. This way, buffs and healing from healers can reliably reach the group, and tanks can reliably keep damage away from the group.

Stacks are usually positioned behind the boss target. Tanks face the boss away from the group, and healers stand a bit back from the group so they can aim AoEs. When moving, stacks become difficult to maintain, but players should try and stay close to each other. The best way to achieve this is if everyone knows where the group is moving, and runs there in a straight line. Communicating in advance where the stack is going to be and where is key for this.

Generally group positioning and skill placement will look like this:

Casting and moving

Casting skills does not prevent you from moving at normal speed in ESO, unlike other games. However, while sprinting, you cannot cast skills. Attempting to do so will cast the skill and slow you to a run, and you have to toggle sprint again.

Some skills need to be aimed, and this becomes even trickier while moving. Some general tips to help out (keep in mind, none of that is mandatory, but try it out to see if you like it):

Change your settings to enable quick-cast/single-tap AoE casting. This seems more difficult at first, but learning how to use this is essential to the fast-paced gameplay in harder content, as AoE double-taps will be slower.
Aim ground AoEs at the ground using the preview circle. The further away you aim, the more control you need, so try to aim AoEs near your current location.
For controller-players: In most grips, (especially since ESO’s weaving makes claw-grip difficult to use well) you need your thumbs to aim with the analog sticks. This means that skills on the right D-Pad can be harder to aim, as the right thumb is off the R-stick. Try to put important aimed skills like spammables and aimed AoEs on the shoulder buttons.

Skill timers

Having skill timers on your skill bars is probably one of the most important things to have in ESO. This is to quickly see which skills need refreshing, so you don’t leave your group without that heal/buff. On console you can enable these timers in your settings (combat tab > ability bar timers). On PC you even have more advanced addons like Fancy Action Bar to get even better timers, which can track specific (de)buffs instead of the general skill (Action Duration Reminder is a bit outdated now). However it is important that your eyes are not glued to the skill bars, as you still need to be mindful of your surroundings and react to any mechanic/attack/AoE. Therefore you can also put your skill bars more towards the center of your screen (depending on your UI options).

Skill cast priorities

There is no set in stone rule for that, however different skills have different functions and different durations. Generally we aim to have all skills active in PvE (mostly proactive play) and situational casts in PvP (reactive gameplay). WIth all the different durations it might be challenging, especially if 2 or more skills expire at the same time.

From PvE perspective the priority list would look like:

Long duration (10+ sec) healing over time abilities (HoTs) - like Healing Springs, Overflowing Altar, Echoing Vigor etc - they are major part of your healing done. If you see them expiring, it is better to recast them 1-2 sec earlier than let them run out and create a gap with no healing. There is no need to recast them too prematurely tho, because it is a waste of your resources.
Cleanse skills - like Efficient Purge - in some encounters fast cleanse is very important for a clean fight (vHoF first boss for example). If there is nothing to cleanse skip this part.
Short duration damage buffs (10 sec or less) - like Combat Prayer - make sure to aim that one into different sides of the group and recast twice - due to 6 people cap.
Short duration HoTs (less than 10 sec) and defensive/sustain buffs - like Budding Seeds, Expansive Cloak, Radiant Aura, Enchanted Growth - those are still very important skills but group will not die if you recast them when they expire or even a second after.
Long duration damage buffs and any kind of debuffs - minor class buffs like Minor Prophecy/Sorcery/Brutality/Savagery, Fetcher Infection, Elemental Susceptibility, Elemental Blockade.
Filler healing casts - Radiating Regeneration for example - in all encounters except vAS this skill does not bring anything to the group, and is considered a low-cost filler so priority on it is very low.
Any other damage abilities.

Of course every encounter has its specifics and sometimes certain skills will have higher priority or a specific time to be cast at, but this list should be a decent guideline for majority of content.

Turning off unwanted UI elements

There is only one rule for organising your UI: “Keep it simple!”

Just track the things that are important to you (Combat Prayer/Major Courage/RO cooldowns/Warhorns/etc.) and don’t focus on things you have 0 control over and don’t care about (Minor Courage/Minor Force/etc.). On console there is of course not a lot you can do here, but on PC this is very important.

Another thing that usually clutters UI’s are the combat texts. These numbers can be useful, but really make sure to filter what you would show there. While seeing incoming damage numbers or healing you output can be nice, seeing every combat event does more harm than good. Make sure you limit it as much as possible to keep your screen clean.

Same thing goes for trial alerts, mini maps, group dps table and other fluff. It is personal preference what you would like to see, but make sure you take a moment to think about it so you don’t have 3 boss HP bars, and several addons tracking same buff or 2-3 alerts of same mechanic from different addons. In the end, the gameplay is the most important. Imagine missing an AoE, because you have some bulky addon blocking the way, that would be annoying to anyone.

Tuning AoE visibility

Spotting enemy AoEs is very important and listed below are a few game settings that will help you to spot them faster, so you can react quicker and die less.

AoE brightness: Increase the brightness to maximum (don’t burn out your eyes ofcourse). This makes the AoE easier to see. On PC you can also increase the brightness even more, if you want to, with the addon “TheShining”.
AoE colour: This is a personal preference. However, make sure you select a colour that contrasts the colour of the arena. For example don’t take a brown/green/greyish colour, but instead try out colours that pop like hot pink/neon blue/bright yellow. (Additionally for PC players you can get the addon “RGB AOE” to make them stand out even more).
Camera angle: It is recommended to play the game in 3rd person, because you can see the ground around you.
FoV (Field of View): It is recommended to turn this to maximum, so you can see more of the arena. With a high FoV you can even react to AoEs behind your character.

How sets work

Sets are how ESO gear works. When wearing 2+ items from the same set, you get additional bonuses for each item you wear. The exact bonuses depend on the set, and can vary from stat boosts to unique effects. The most powerful bonus is usually on the last item. Most sets have 5 pieces, some special sets have 3,2 or 1 pieces. You can wear more than 5 pieces of one set, but you won’t get any additional bonuses.

At any given point, a character has 12 gear pieces active: 7 body pieces, 3 jewellery pieces, and 2 weapon pieces. This is enough for at least two 5p sets (plus smaller special sets) which is why most standard builds combine two sets.

Barswap & Sets : Each character can equip two groups of weapons - one group on the frontbar and one group on the backbar. Each group can hold upto 2 items worth of weapons. Bows, Staves and Two-Handed Melee count as 2 set pieces per weapon, One-Handed weapons and Shields count as 1 piece each. Having a weapon equipped on one bar doesn’t mean it counts towards active set items. Only the weapons on your currently active bar count towards set bonuses. This enables the concept of frontbarring and backbarring, i.e. having one 5p active on the frontbar, and a different set active on the backbar. Together with that come more complex and powerful gear setups - see combining-sets for a detailed guide.

Setup swapping

There is no ‘1-size-fits-all’, best setup. Instead it is better to swap your setup depending on the fight. Some fights for example are single target bosses, while other fights have multiple important targets and rely on AoE damage and debuffs.

Tools: PC players have the easiest time in swapping setups by using the addon ‘Wizards Wardrobe’ (or the older addons DressingRoom/AlphaGear), in which they can swap the setup with 1 hotkey. For console players a more recent addition to the game, the Armory station, has a similar function. The downside to this is that you cannot use this tool in every scenario (you cannot swap inside the instance unlike PC players). However, Armory allows you to switch everything between builds, including Mundus, vampirism/lycantropy/no status, champion points and skill morphs, while addons can only change CP if its purchased, gear if its in your inventory and skills in morphs you currently have.

Because of the ease of setup swapping it is highly recommended to play around with your build and optimize it for the different scenarios. An example of this can be to have both a full healer setup (to use in trials and veteran dungeons) and an off healer setup in which you implements some damage skills (to use in overland questing and easy dungeons).

Potions and food

Both of these consumables can offer stats buffs, without taking up a skill slot/cast, and are thus important to keep in mind. Food/Drink consumables are long term stat increases, which just need to be consumed once before a dungeon/trial/arena/etc. For the various useful consumables, check out the food-and-drink page. Potions are short term non-unique stat buffs (so you don’t have to use a skills for the same buff) and offer a small burst of stats, making them a very important factor in your sustain. Potions also have a unique GCD, so you don’t need to slow down your rotation to gain the benefits. For the various useful consumables, check out the potions page.

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