In Which Gyllerah Has Another Reset

Followup on my earlier post lamenting breaking my Default build for my ESO character–because, as I expect any ESO player with an Armory Station can sympathize with, it happened again. This time to my Healer build.

Which was incredibly fucking frustrating, because I’d been getting such great help from my Guild about recommendations for how to set up to be as helpful a healer as possible for running trials.

So, I had to go to the trouble to fix everything again. This time, though, I took some steps to recover from this for the inevitable next time I screw up which build I’m pointing at in the Armory Station.

Took some goddamn notes

This is the biggest thing I wanted to do for the benefit of Future Me. Guild mates Silvermist (who, I’ve seen, often runs as primary healer in our Guild trials) and Hops gave me some strong recommendations which were pretty much in agreement. Taking some actual notes, exterior to the game, would mean I’d have something to refer to to quickly rebuild from another accidental nuking.

(And this post is my way of organizing these notes and putting them somewhere obvious, so that I can refer back to this later as necessary. Also, so that I can have something to point at for benefit of any other newer Guild members or other ESO players in general.)

So with their help, this is where I landed for my primary and backup bars for the Healer build.

For reference, I play with a controller, and most of our Guild plays with keyboard, but it was pretty easy to map keyboard references to controller.

Primary bar, Restoration Staff active

• X button/Skill 1: Breath of Life IV
• Y button/Skill 2: Illustrious Healing IV
• B button/Skill 3: Combat Prayer IV
• Left Bumper/Skill 4: Extended Ritual
• Right Bumper/Skill 5: Radiating Regeneration IV¹
• Ult (left bumper + right bumper combo): Barrier II²

Notes

1. This was one of the few places Silvermist and Hops were not quite in agreement. Silvermist liked Rapid Regeneration here, Hops liked Radiating. Same ability, different morphs. I took Radiating, just because that’s what the ESO Skill Advisor thought I should have as a Templar with her build set to Beacon of Hope.
2. Silvermist had suggested Barrier as my primary Ult, with Panacea as a backup until I have Barrier fully leveled. I do now have both of these and may flip between them in solo runs just to work on leveling both of them. Note that Barrier is a Support skill line, the first time I’ve slotted one of those, because I’ve done pretty much nothing of import yet with Cyrodiil.

Backup bar, Destruction Staff active

1. X button/Skill 1: Luminous Shards III
2. Y button/Skill 2: Wall of Frost IV¹
3. B button/Skill 3: Vampire’s Bane IV²
4. Left Bumper/Skill 4: Necrotic Orb I³
5. Right Bumper/Skill 5: Channeled Focus I
6. Ult (left bumper + right bumper combo): War Horn I⁴

Notes

1. Currently favoring an Ice staff as my Destruction Staff. Mostly because this seemed in keeping with my current Healer gear including the Winter’s Respite set. I reserve the right to change my mind here, though! And I do have Flame and Lightning staves available to switch to out of my stashed gear.
2. I was already fond of this one running Gyllerah solo. I am fond of setting things on fire. 😀
3. This is an Undaunted ability, which makes this the first Undaunted thing I’m actually slotting. The recs I got were actually for the Energy Orb morph of this, but I don’t have the ability leveled up enough to morph it yet. So I will work on this while running solo.
4. War Horn is the ult for the Assault skill line. Again, first time I’m slotting stuff off the Alliance War skill lines. Recommendation was for the Aggressive Horn morph of this, but I gotta level it up first to get access to the morph. Having it slotted, anyway, will be helpful for that while I run solo.

Bought a couple of Skill Respecification Scrolls

Everybody in the Guild was all “holy crap you didn’t need to spend actual money on this”, and Cync/Kelinmiriel threw me 20,000 gold straight up, which was a lovely gesture. (Thanks, Cync!)

And, to be clear, they were absolutely correct. There are mechanics in the game to let you respec yourself without having to pay actual money. You can go to a Shrine of Stendarr, make a donation of in-game gold, and get access to the UI for it.

But here’s why I went the route of actually plunking down fifteen bucks for just enough crowns to get those scrolls: I’ve tried the Shrine of Stendarr thing twice now, and both times, it seemed buggy. I went through the entire process of resetting a boatload of skills, only to hit X to Submit and have the game throw me an error about not being able to respec my skills with gold unless I’m at a shrine.

While I was literally at a shrine.

I’ve had to do this twice now and this issue reproed both times. First time through, when I was fixing the accidental nuking of my Default build, I got it to work the second time through. I don’t know what caused the first attempt to fail. But it seems kinda obvious that the skill respec UI can lose track of where you are if you don’t submit your changes fast enough, at least in the scenario where you’re working at a shrine.

When I nuked the Healer build, I did in fact try to go to the Shrine of Stendarr in Alinor again to fix it. And the bug happened again. At which point I was out of patience, irritated with myself for blowing up a build a second time so close after blowing up the other one, and just wanting to get things fixed.

So I spent fifteen emergency dollars and bought the crowns, then bought the scrolls. I got two of them just because I wanted to reset both builds. I wasn’t entirely happy with where Default landed, after the prior incident. So I thought I’d just go ahead and fix both builds at once.

My QA Engineer brain though does wonder whether this is a bug that would repro at all Shrines of Stendarr, or whether something is just wonky with the one in Alinor. Next time this happens to me, because I’m sure it’ll happen again, I’ll have to go try the one in Elden Root or something. Just because I’m curious.

And because I am a QA engineer, other possibilities present themselves here too as circumstances causing the repro. Like, for example, the fact that I play with a controller. Or, there could have been timing issues involved with me running the Steam Deck build for some reason. It would be interesting to see if I reproed this scenario either at a different shrine, while playing on my Mac, trying to manipulate the shrine via keyboard, or some combo of all of these.

Installed Caro’s Skill Point Saver add-on

This was at Cync’s recommendation, too. I finally took the time to find and install this thing, both on the Steam Deck and on my Mac setup, so I’ll have access to the functionality both ways that I play.

And I took the time to figure out how the hell to use it. It seems a little clunky when you use a controller to interact with the game; the dialog for saving changes, for example, shows controller button choices, but hitting the buttons doesn’t actually work. I do still have to mouse click on the right things to save stuff. (Fortunately, this is doable on the Steam Deck.)

And now I have backups saved for both the Default and Healer builds.

Relatedly, I also figured out how to save gear and skill configurations in Dressing Room. I’m not sure if I actually need that functionality if I have Skill Point Saver? Dressing Room’s functionality for this seems like a subset of what Skill Point Saver can do.

But on the other hand, under the circumstances, redundancy of backups seems like a good idea. Just to protect Future Me from future rounds of this. ;P

Another potential future thing to do

Somebody on Mastodon suggested to me that I get an extra Armory Station slot and keep that explicitly empty. The idea here would be to set myself up with a free “shrine”. This also seems like a very good idea, but now that I have the Skill Point Saver add-on, dunno if I need to do that.

I will keep the idea in reserve, though!

Plans to level the stuff on the bars

So now that I have the recommended bar configurations actually frigging documented and backed up, the next task for me is going to be working on leveling stuff up to acceptable levels for running trials.

Which means, using them in combat. I actually did a run with this config last night (more to come on this in my next Gyllerah writeup post), running the Village of the Lost public dungeon in Coldharbour, with Ember as my backup.

This let me work on these things:

1. Flipping between primary and backup bars quickly as needed. I wanted to practice opening combat with Luminous Shards off the back bar, and then immediately flipping and throwing Breath of Life off the primary.
2. Since I have the Action Duration Reminder add-on installed, I started trying to pay better attention to the timers showing on my bars, so that I could tell when to fire off an ability again.
3. Since I’ve installed OdySupportIcons as well, this means Ember has a nice big icon floating over her when I have her following me. So I used that to keep tabs on her location, and try to get back in range of her to throw heals for her when necessary. I figured this would be good practice for when I need to be keeping tabs on the tank in a group situation, as well as just getting better at environmental awareness.
4. Running a public dungeon in particular meant I was dealing with larger than normal mobs. I was frequently swarmed by five or six dremora at once. This is not quite as intense as what you’ll get in a trial situation–because my “group” was just two, me and my companion. And there weren’t quite as many hostiles involved either. But there were enough involved that I felt challenged trying to keep up with all the hostiles. Which I figure will also contribute to my ability to parse the action in a trial. Note to self: run more public dungeons.

Up until now I’ve preferred to have the Default build active when I’m running solo, just because I’m wearing my Adept Rider medium armor set in that build, with Winter’s Respite weapons and jewelry to get access to that set’s abilities. When I rearranged the Default build, I set it up this time with Resto staff as the primary bar, and my sword and shield for the backup.

I need to set the Default build’s Resto bar to match what I did on Healer, just to make sure I can level the involved abilities that way, too. And I’ll need to experiment with arrangement for the backup bar, because I want to keep some of the same abilities I’ve been using in solo runs up until now, but I also want to take advantage of things I’ve started unlocking on the One Hand and Shield line, to better protect myself in solo melee fighting.

My instincts are bitching at me for having One Hand and Shield on the back bar instead of primary. But I think I’ll actually keep it that way for now to force myself to practice switching bars quickly in combat, since I do need to do that.

But I also need to make more of a point of using the Healer build in solo runs, because that’s the one I want to use in trials. I can maybe call this a narrative question of Gyllerah trying to be more of a healer now!

All hail helpful Guild mates

Many, many thanks to Cync/Kelinmiriel, Amy/Frostmuffin, Silvermist, Hops, javaren, and everybody else who’s been super helpful in guiding me in learning all this stuff. Your all’s knowledge, expertise, and helpfulness are very much appreciated. ❤️