Blacksmith or Clothier? (DPS-DW-DK)

[Evan]

Hello,

I just bought ESOTU and am making a Dunmer Dragonknight who will be duel-wield DPS (stamina based).

I was going to go heavy armor but now see that medium is probably the way to go for this build.

SO... Which would be better for a start (i can mabye fill in both eventually)...

1. Blacksmith to make my weapons (most likely swords or daggers)?
2. Clothier to make my medium armor (and armor for my sisters proposed ranger perhaps)?
3. Nevermind about optimizing my character (medium armor) at this point and just stick with heavy armor/blacksmith?

I wonder if i just choose one or the other which would be easier to source from other players? Id guess weapons would be easier to have made for me as its just two things vs a whole set of armor (5-7 pieces?)?

Anyway i'm a total noob at this point and any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks!
- Evan -

[Ewspne]

Your dragon knight kind of sounds like it wants to be a Nightblade (duel-wield dps stamina etcetc)... I would change to medium armour, the passives for it will significantly help you with spamming stamina abilities like nobodys business.

Leveling different professions is easy smeasy. Now I'm not saying I do this but you can walk around any larger market place and steal tons of gear and weapons, go to a crafting table for its type and deconstruct it. This is a super fast way to mash out crafting levels, just don't get caught. If you do we don't know eachother.

Later levels you will find decent enough gear you wont have to be forced into crafting it, although compared to buying from other players crafting is an amazing alternative. Its cheap and easy to do with unlimited supplies if you don't mind taking a few minutes here and there to collect.

Now for your actual question, which one first at this current time? I personally would go with crafting armour. I have had zero problems in the past and moving forward finding weapons for my levels, be it through quest rewards or just grinding out killing mobs for loots. Armour though? Because there are so many different types of them the probability of you getting what you need for your level is pretty small, especially when you can get light, medium OR heavy armour; its not nice enough to give you what you need/want for your class...

I just recently started an argonian healer because I got bored of my elfy dude so maybe I'll see you around sometime!

[Evan]

Thanks for the advice.

I went Dragonknight because I want a dps warrior, like a weaponmaster rather then an assasin. I was thinking probably heavy armor/two-handed but Dunmer get a duel-wield bonus so i'm happy to go DW then as you've confirmed i read that medium armor is the better option for dps.

On top of this my Morrowind character used Indoril Armor which i love and the Dunmer styled medium armor takes a lot of visual que's from that.

I'll take your advice and go Medium Armor with Clothier first, thanks.

Funny you should mention making an Argonian healer. I made one also to be my alt for when my sister isnt playing (so i dont get ahead of her). For now its just a placeholder though.

[Ratio decidendi]

I don't see how it sounds like NB.

If you had a choice, Redguard for stam dps is actually quite comparable to Dunmer especially for sustained (> 2 mins) fights, due to the Adrenaline Rush passive. That assumes v14, with reasonably good gear and rotation. You are right, doing damage, benefits more from medium armour passives for weapon damage and critical; you could utilise 5 medium and 2 heavy, or 5 medium, 1 light and 1 heavy (for maximising Undaunted passive further down the road).

The Dunmer dw bonus - this is counter-intuitive, but hear me out. The 15% xp bonus is actually useless once you've maxed out the dual wield skill line. If you intend to use dual wield primarily, you would have maxed it out at lvl 35-40 anyway, so it makes more sense to choose a race that offers a bonus to a weapon that you don't use as much. ***However, people choose Dunmer for DK because of its Flame Talent passive for increased fire damage. It makes a sizeable difference - again assuming decent gear, rotation and etc.*** Morrowind is also my personal favourite, you should definitely go ahead with the Dunmer.

2 options with professions:
1) Forget about optimisation - You don't really have to focus on one profession at a time. As you do quests and kill mobs, you pick up armours, weapons and glyphs. You could use what you want to use, and deconstruct the others. Things you deconstruct gives you Inspiration Points to their respective professions. By the time you max out your character, you would have maxed out most of Blacksmithing, Clothing, Woodworking and well on your way for Enchanting. At which point, you can then decide what you want to do, and seriously invest your skill points into it.

2) Optimise everything! - Make multiple characters (at least 3). On your main character, you could do Blacksmithing, Clothing and Woodworking, just deconstruct everything you get from quests and killing mobs. Enchanting takes up a lot of spaces because the runes don't stack up as much as the other materials, I personally dedicate a character purely on enchanting. Alchemy and Provisioning can go on another character. You will want to level on ALL 3 of the characters to gain skill points then you can allocate onto the skills.
--> When your main reaches v14, you would have made plenty of gold, then you can invest in materials to finish off the skills you are not maxed in. You can also invest some of the gold into the non-specialised skills of your main to max them as well (just don't spend skill points into un-necessary stuff). Alchemy tree (Medicinal Use) is very useful, extending potions' effects from 31 s to 43 s.
--> Remember to use hirelings when you can - helps save a little bit of gold. If you have leveled enchanting on 3 characters for example, you can get 3 hirelings for example. 3x Rekuta would save you about 2k gold.
--> Deconstruct higher level and higher quality items give you more Inspiration Points - hence you level faster.

Obviously I optimise things more than the above, but that's the general idea. If it sounds daunting, nothing wrong with doing it the easier way.

[Trigger]

heavy armor is best for dragonknight, as heavy armor benefits health, medium armor benefits stamina which is good for nightblade and light armor benefits magicka

[Requimatic]

Honestly, heavy armor in this game is suited for tanks and tanks alone (PvP may be a different story in this regard, though). Medium armor has better DPS passives for melee/ranged, and light armor has the caster passives. You could go ahead and use heavy armor if you like, but it will hurt your damage a bit to do so.

As for what professions you can level: there are so many skill points available that you can max out quite a bit of things. For instance, my 2H Stamina DK uses medium armor, and I'll have enough skills points later on to max out:

Blacksmithing
Clothing
Enchanting
Proper skills in Ardent Flame, Two Handed, Medium Armor, Fighter's Guild...

With -plenty- left over for other things.

I use Dual Wield on my Nightblade, and it's rather fun. Flurry does a ludicrous amount of damage later on, especially with Mark Target or any other negative armor debuffs on your target. In later, high-end content, however, you're going to want Whirlwind (Morphed to the extra range form, from what I gather) as AoE is pretty much spammed. (Again, from what I gather. I haven't made it to said content myself, so I don't know this personally.)

If you've gone ahead and put points in to things you're not sure about, don't fret! You can respec your character at a shrine later on, for a small gold fee. This will refund all of your skill OR stat points (or both!) to redistribute however you like. This includes any skill points gained from Skyshards. I believe that any skills you've gained from reading books (READ EVERYTHING!) are permanent and aren't refunded when you respec, though.

But the most important thing is: find a build that you like. Find one that's fun, and suits your play style. Whether or not it's good in end-game content is something you won't have to worry about until you get there, at which point you'll know what you need and don't need.

[Ratio decidendi]

*From an efficiency stand-point:
Full heavy armour for tanks (regardless of class and race) only, even then, I normally take 5 heavy and 2 medium - the undaunted mettle passive gives you 4% increased attributes, which is too good to pass up.

Few players runs full light armour now due to how glassy it is with the removal of damage softcap and how much weaker block casting has gotten since 1.6. But that said, with good group, you can definitely still do it.

5 piece light is mandatory for any magicka builds (incl. healer) due to its armour passives. Similarly, 5 medium is mandatory for stamina non tank builds because of its respective armour passives.

Players often use 1-2 pieces of heavy armour with light armour to boost the armour stat (comparatively, light armour only gives 1/4 of the 'armour' as heavy pieces of the same level and quality; whereas medium gives 3/4). On my magicka DK, I use 5 light, 1 heavy and 1 medium for the 6% increased attributes from the undaunted passive.

Of course, you can get away with it if you can supplement any weaknesses brought on by forgoing the armour passives.


*If the above is too much for OP:
You can just do whatever you feel like; but you may find yourself being held back from the lack of damage/healing/sustainability in some of the harder contents.