Best Elder Scrolls Online Classes: Beginner’s Guide for 2023 (2023)

Elder Scrolls Online is a multiplayer online RPG that is played by millions of players throughout the whole world. Besides already established fans of previous Elder Scrolls games, there are a lot of new ones that come to try it out. However, one of the biggest problems every new player faces is definitely what character should they start playing at the beginning of their journey. For this article, we decided to bring you our Elder Scrolls Online beginner’s guide, and try to advise you on what should you do at the start of your journey into Tamriel.

Before we start, we will first establish which characters exist in the ESO game, and then offer our advice on which character you should play based on your preferences. Maybe we will show you which builds you should use, but that we will leave for later. We can start now!

Editor’s Note: This guide has been updated to reflect the current state of the game. This is still the recommended guide for new players joining the community.

How To Know Which Class You Should Start With?

As we already mentioned, picking a class before starting a game is pretty hard, especially if this is the first time you are playing this kind of game. You need to read bio’s, potential builds, and characters’ skill kits but most importantly, you need to think about what would you like to do in the game. This last question is the first one you should answer for yourself. If you like to help your teammates, take a sorcerer that heals and provides utility spells for your teammates. Do you like going insane and charging through the enemies and yelling “chargeeeee”? Pick a tanky character.

When you answer that question, definitely go and check out YouTube videos or articles (like this one) and perspectives of players who were also in your place before starting playing ESO. When you realize your preferences, you managed to solve 90 percent of your dilemmas. After that, definitely read up on your own about the classes and you are ready to start.

Which Classes Exist in Elder Scrolls Online?

Elder Scrolls Online has different lore-friendly classes that you must choose to begin the customization of your character. Every single character has lore attached to their background and before you pick someone, you can read their biography. There are six of them, and further in the article, we will list them all.

These are available ESO characters:

Dragonknight

First, we will start with a class called Dragonknight. This class is masters-at-arms, which means they are brawlers but with some magic capabilities. There are three specific class skills you can choose for Dragonknight:

• Ardent Flame – this skill set is good if you want to stun your opponents and deal damage over time.
• Draconic Power – if you want to deal damage and immobilize surrounding enemies, definitely check out this skill. It also provides tankyness if you prefer the juggernaut type of build.
• Earthen Heart – players choose this one to deflect damage, debuffs, and immobilization of the enemies. The tankiest build path in this class.

Sorcerer

After that, we have a Sorcerer. This one is the opposite of Dragonknight. Like in most games, Sorcerers are usually used for dealing high amounts of damage or giving support to their teammates. They can summon animals.

They also have three specific skills you can choose:

• Daedric Summoning – this skill provides damage per second and crowd control. Sorcerers damage, interrupt and stun enemies with their pets.
• Dark Magic – if you go this build path, you will get a support type of character, this character removes enemies’ effects and provides ally health and magicka, buffs that enhance teammate’s skills. It can also stun and knock out enemies.
• Storm Calling – this is a damage per second line with the area of effects skills.

Nightblade

Nightblade is a class more suited for stealth-type gaming which can be used for surprise attacks.

These are specific skills you have available for this class:

• Assassination – as the name says, your character becomes a real assassin with abilities like high damage, anti-heal (reduce of enemies’ healing), and an ability to teleport and deal a critical strike to the opponents.
• Shadow – this skill gives you the ability to damage enemies in the area, as well as blinding them, fearing them, and snaring them.
• Siphoning – build path that provides your teammate’s buffs and healing with your character dealing damage over time.

Templar

Templar is the next class on the list and it provides a player defensive stats.

Skills that are available for Templar are:

• Aedric Spear – this one is a menace; it provides you the ability to damage enemies over time and you can interrupt and stun enemies.
• Dawn’s Wrath – as the name of the skill says, you will damage enemies with your fire strikes and provide debuffs and buffs for your teammates – Attacking Support line.
• Restoring Light – a true support line with your character being really tanky and providing healing to your teammates. Usually relies on passive skills.

Warden

Warden is the next one and is similar to the Templar class. This is a natural type of class that provides you with different natural skills that depend on what skill you pick. A class that can acquire an animal companion. Skills that are available for Warden are:

• Winter’s embrace – if you pick ice, you will be able to slow the movements of your enemies and deal damage over time.
• Green Balance – as the name suggests, green means life and with balance, this skill makes your character great support.
• Animal Companions – you can summon different animals to attack enemies, every animal brings different types of damage.

Necromancer

Well, we know what this character can do – Necromancer is using death magic and is focused on reanimation.

These are the skills available:

• Grave Lord (Elementalist) – your Necromancer imbues the dead with natural elements like Frost, Fire, and Lightning and then are used to attack enemies.
• Bone Tyrant (Bone Armor) – when you summon dead you can break them and make shields and barriers with the bonus of extending your life.
• Living Dead (Soul Mending) – you can reanimate fallen teammates and restore their health. True support of this class.

Which Classes You Should Pick at the Start of The ESO Journey?

After playing and watching other streamers take on all Elder Scrolls Online characters, the answer to this question is … Templar. Without a doubt the easiest class to play for beginners. Templar is truly the master of efficiency that uses Puncturing Sweeps to damage the enemies. With the right gear that gives you buffs like cooldown reduction, you can use Templar’s abilities repeatedly and slay your enemies. Do not get us wrong – just because these abilities are used repeatedly in a short period of time, it doesn’t mean that the Templar’s abilities are weak.

They are really strong, and this is another reason why Templar is great for not just beginners but also experienced players. To be fair, tanks in these kinds of games are always a great starting point for any beginner player. They are easy to learn and you can master the abilities of Templar itself, and learn how the skillsets of other characters work. All in all, we recommend taking Templar as your starting character – after some time, if you get bored of it, you can change it and it will be so much easier to learn other characters.

Another great character for the start of Elder Scrolls Online is Sorcerer. Even though it seems like this character can be pretty tough to learn it truly isn’t. Most of the Sorcerers have lightning skills as their base elements and can be vicious in dealing tons of damage to enemies. Sorcerer’s skills are really straightforward if you think about it because you can just move around the area and throw your abilities at opponents.

As we said earlier, Wardens are not the only class that can summon animals, Sorcerers, specifically, if you go Daedric Summoning build path. You can have two pets that follow you all the time and add another one with the Ultimate ability. The animals also have passive skills that are really important to Sorcerer and buffs it tremendously. Another great starter class that should be considered.

The rest of the classes are not nuclear physics – if you learn the game while playing your starter classes, you will easily master other characters as well. Again, it all depends on what you value and your preferences. When it comes to items, maybe we do a guide for the next article, but until then, enjoy “Games” tab located on our Home page.