I’m still working through the issues of getting respectable DPS numbers in ESO, because — of course — I can’t leave it alone. It’s impossible to dictate a single approach to any build, because there are so many factors involved, and so many ways of going about it, and most of it seems to be interchangeable. Is it better to have higher base damage, for every hit? Or it better to have higher critical damage, which fires by chance? Or is it better to have a higher chance of hitting critically? Or is it better to have higher damage on elemental effects? Or… on and on it goes. Videos like this help, but the numbers are also affected by the way you play the game, and are not always absolute.
I bought a better secondary set of gear through a guild store (which turned out to be much less expensive than I thought). I re-enchanted my main weapon with a different glyph, and changed the trait with transmute gems. I re-spec’d my CP. I obtained the “monster set” that everyone recommends for my build (which is really cool, when it proc’s). I’ve changed my rotation to what I want to do, with the understanding of exactly why I have each item on my action bar, and when to use it.
I’m getting 13K without trying. If I really concentrate, and apply all the buffs I can, I can get into the high teens. I’m hitting groups for over 30K, sometimes 40K. While this isn’t winning any awards, I no longer have to feel like I’m effectively shut out of running trials. Most importantly, the game is just fun now. I don’t have to dread walking around the over world. If I pull aggro from a random encounter, I can kill it in a second. It no longer feels like everything is a slog. I solo’d a public dungeon with 7 bosses in it last night. I only died a couple of times, and that’s because I was talking to people while doing it.
Now the situation changes. Now I’m going to start working with one guild to sell stuff to make the money I need to buy nirncrux and work with another guild to get the nirnhoned-trait gear I need to research so that I can unlock crafting my own set of high-end, end-game gear. Maybe by the time I can create that, I can also max out enchanting and jewelry to make the best glyphs and jewelry, and collect the improvement mats to upgrade everything to legendary, and the transmute gems to correctly trait everything (whatever that means).
I’ve maxed out the fighter and mage guild lines. I continue to work on the psijic guild line. I’m still trying to collect all the sky shards in the game. If you really work at it, I’m thinking there really are enough skill points in the game to max out all the crafting stuff, and still have all the skills you would want for fighting. I’ve managed to collect all the crafting except metalworking, and I have more skills than I know what to do with, and I still have, like, half the sky shards to collect, and that’s not even counting all the questing I haven’t done, or half the group dungeons I’ve not done for the first time.
The point is that there are still several more passives — and about 600 more CP — I can throw on this build, and I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I feel like I can lighten up a bit now, and just get on with collecting while I wait for researching to finish. Something tells me that I’m going to wind up buying research scrolls, if I’m going to really see this through…