This thread is set up to answer some of the most common questions about bar setups. The goal is to make you aware of how you can make your own setups or adjust the ones you find here to your own preferences.
To reach this goal, I will guide you through my step-wise thought process for setting up my own bars with the help of UESP’s “ESO Build Editor”. I will start the explanation with a Templar and then show my standard setup for every class afterwards, so you can see that it follows the same principles.
⚠️ the skills themselves are outdated, but the logic still applies ⚠️
:space: Step 1: Basics
We start off with an empty bar and the first skills I put in are the standard/must-have healer skills, that are independent of the class played:
- Illustrious Healing
- Combat Prayer
- Energy Orb
- Elemental Blokkade
- Aggressive Warhorn (or Colossus for Necromancers) ⚠️ add Echoing Vigor in the current meta
(The position of these skills is based on my own preference and I always keep them in the same spots for consistency)
Step 2: Class skills
Now I will put in the most important and short duration skill from the class that is being played in the 3rd slot on the frontbar. This skill is most often the biggest reason you picked to be that class for the group composition. And I put the second most important class skill in either on the 4th position on the frontbar or the 2nd/3rd position on the backbar. On the Templar this will be Purifying Light (or Power of the Light / Solar Barrage / Vampire’s Bane depending on the situation) in the 3rd position on the front for the Minor Sorcery buff. And Extended Ritual on the 4th position on the frontbar. (On occasion I also place this skill on my backbar depending on the flex slots)
Step 3: Flex slots
The blank slots that are left over now are your flex slots that you need to change depending on the dungeon/trial you’re running. Some skills that I often put in my flex slots are listed below:
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Overflowing Altar Needs to be on either one of the healers or one of the tanks. When I’m group healing this skill often ends up on my bar. Because of its long duration, it is always on my backbar.
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Elemental Susceptibility (⚠️ note that the morph was different when I made this channel) Needs to be on either one of the healers or one of the tanks. Will of course go on the destro bar as well.
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Bone Surge (usually not used nowadays) A nice shield with a synergy that provides the Major Vitality buff to group members and help to drain stamina if you’re running Martial Knowledge. One of the first skills I slot when I have free barspace.
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Selfish sustain skill If I still have barspace left, I slot a susttain skill like Channeled Focus (example for Warden: Blue Betty / Nightblade: Siphoning Attacks / Sorcerer: Dark Conversion / etc for other classes)
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Burst heal Each class has its own examples, on the Templar it would be Honor the Dead / Breath of Life.
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DPS abilities You can always put some abilities that dds would use on your bars if you have the left over space. (In this example I use Blazing Spear as a Templar)
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Situational skills Some skills are mandatory in different situations. For this category think of Efficient Purge, Inner Fire, Dampen Magic, DoTs (if you run Z’en), an Assault skill (if you run PA), elemental damage skills (if you run EC), Guard, etc.
After adding in these flex slots, my bars look like this:
Step 4: Frontbar ultimate
Now, the last blank space is the frontbar ultimate. The main reason to slot any ultimate are the passives they provide when they are slotted but not used.
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Barrier Provides 10% Magicka Recovery when slotted, because of the Magicka Aid II passive from the Support skill line. (This is the ultimate I go for in most cases, unless I’m in a RoJo heavy attack setup where I don’t need the extra sustain. It is also a nice panic button.)
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Meteor Provides 2% Max Magicka and 2% Magicka Recovery when slotted, because of the Magicka Controller II passive from the Mages Guild skill line.
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Radial Sweep This class specific ultimate provides 10% Critical Damage when slotted, because of the Piercing Spear II passive from the Aedric Spear skill line.
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Temporal Guard Provides Minor Protection and activates the Concentrated Barrier II passive from the Psijic Order skill line.
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Dawnbreaker Provides 3% Spell/Weapon Damage and grants 3 Ultimate whenever you kill and enemy, because of the Slayer III and Banish the Wicked III passives in the Fighters Guild skill line.
Other classes can also have passives that increase a certain stat when you have skills from that specific line slotted, so make sure to read all the passives carefully. (Examples can be Nightblade > Siphoning > Magicka Flood or Necromancer > Grave Lord > Death Knell or others)
For this example I will pick Barrier as it is the most common one to use for the support roles.
<:space:717011064851791942> Step 5: Adjusting the bars
When I suggest bar setups, I will post the bar above for example as my standard bar setup. If you want to adjust this setup for yourself to use, think of which skills you want to add, where you want to add them and which flex slots are not that important to take out.
For example if your group is not great at stacking, so some players will constantly walk out of your Illustrious Healing, it might be worth it to slot Radiating Regeneration. To slot this you have to take out a frontbar skill, so in this case I would put Extended Ritual on the backbar and ditch the dps from Blazing Spear.
Another example could be that you need to run Elemental Drain and you have told your co-healer to run Overflowing Altar to help you out with your barspace. This can be a simple 1-for-1 replacement.
To successfully perform this 5th step, you have to make sure to be aware of the effects that your choices in bar setup make on the performance of the build. To research this, I would advise everyone to look at https://eso-hub.com/en/skills, where you can look at all skills and their passives in one place.
Standard bars for each class
These are now removed, since they are outdated, just like the posts above. However, the general logic still applies, so just substitute the skills for current meta skills. Check out the class-specific channels for the standard skill bars.