No pictures this time, there really hasn’t been much different to show.  Which is actually a little irksome.  All the items are identical, you just get a palette swap.  I mean, there’s racial variety (if you have the knowledge to make it) but a level 1 Khajiit breastplate looks near identical to the one I’m wearing now.  Plus it’s made out of spandex.   I guess I should take a picture of that…

A separate trend I am noticing is that people strafe bookshelves.  Many dungeons and houses have bookshelves, sometimes a dozen or so per room.  Most players just move around from shelf to shelf to get the automatic skill point gain (I’ve raised dual wield to 15 without every equipping 2 weapons).  I’ve read all the books on the shelves, now, or at least I have yet to see a new one.  The actual books you find on tables, those are unique and I read them too.  I would hazard to say that well above 50% of my play time has been on exploration activities – reading/looking/listening.  I hit level 23 last night and from the blogosphere, quite a few people are much higher level with a similar time investment.  I am thinking if I had an alt, in the same faction, I could probably level 4-5 faster.  Sort of like SWTOR I guess.

Still playing a templar, still focusing on tanking.  Still wondering why.  In the “olden times” if you played a tank or a healer, you couldn’t really get anywhere alone.  It was joined at the hip with other players since neither role did any damage.  Healers in ESO are a bit different, in that you can still raise healing skills outside of DPS abilities.  Tanks though, that’a slightly different conversation.  New games allow you to level as a tank/healer without issue – ESO takes a slight turn here.

Healers use macgika and so do ranged DPS.  Healers can slot 3 DPS attacks and 2 healing and level up both Destruction and Healing together.  After level 15, they can actively swap between both too, which is good.  Equipment (light armor) is shared between DPS and healing.  It’s doable, very doable.

Tanks are a bit different.  They run on health and a tiny bit of magicka/stamina.  DPS run on magicka and stamina, depending on the skills – class skills use the former, weapon skills the latter.  Armor is different too, as tanks use heavy and DPS use medium.  Skill slotting is similar to Healers, you can swap to dual wield or two-handed pretty easily.  The downside is that a) you have the wrong armor which lowers damage and b) you don’t have the magicka/stamina to actually use your skills.

I’ll give an example.  Trolls.  These buggers hit hard and have a lot of hit points.  A DPS wins through sheer damage output, which is about double mine as a tank, so the fight takes on average, half as long.  I don’t have twice the hit points, what with a +15hp boost per level.  10 levels is equal to one piece of food right now.  I don’t mind lower damage, but I would like higher damage absorption or faster health recovery.  Make the fights take longer but let me survive them.  Now, if I have a healer around, then I can tank a zone.  I get that.  But in 90% of the cases, outside of dungeons, I don’t have one.  Side note – having an “open tap” system, where kill credit is shared, actually increases the odds of someone helping you.  The polar opposite of WoW and “single taps”.

I think this might be related to my strategy on leveling the tank too.  I slot abilities that are next to useless playing alone (like a shield buff to reflect spells) in order to get them to rank 5 and see their morph potential.  I’m about 90% of the way there right now.  I don’t mind that part as I expect it to open up in a couple more levels.  Once they do morph, it takes longer to go to rank 6 than it does to go from ranks 1-5, so there’s no huge rush on that front.  It goes “unlock base skill, slot, raise to rank 5, morph, drop from slot, pick another skill”.

I like the concept of my tank, I do.  The implementation I’m a little iffy on.  I seem to keep coming back to this point.  I enjoy the exploration aspect and the lore but am having a lot of trouble enjoying the actual mechanics of the game.  The meta just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.