How to Choose a Weapon in ESO
This ESO weapons guide is going to cover how to choose a weapon in the Elder Scrolls Online. Looking back through my past guides, I have touched on this topic a bit, but based on many questions I have been getting, it’s clear that I have not gone into enough depth with it and that there is a need for weapons to have their own guide.
This guide will cover each weapon type, what resource their abilities use, main use, and what roles can take advantage of the weapon types.
There is a key detail that I think people need to consider when choosing their weapons: abilities deal more damage and do more healing based on your power and resource pool. So magicka-costing abilities deal more damage with more spell damage and magicka, and stamina abilities deal more damage with your weapon damage and stamina pool. Now this does not mean that a magicka character cant take advantage of a stamina ability or vice versa. With the release of the Ascending Tide patch, all abilities in the game dynamically scale, meaning that it doesnt matter if an ability costs stamina or magicka, it will scale with your highest damage (weapon / spell damage) and highest resource pool (magicka / stamina). So, you need to weigh the utility options of an ability that uses the opposite resource before incorporating it into your build!
Also, all light, medium and heavy attacks dynamically scale with your highest of resource, regardless if the weapon is stamina or magicka focused!
Two-Handed
Resource: Stamina
Main Use: Stamina PvP
Resources that can use: Stamina and Magicka
Heavy Attacks Restore? Stamina
Why Magicka? Magicka can make use of some of the passives from the Two-Handed skill lines. If you look at the passive heavy weapons, that is the main reason a magicka character would choose a 2h. With the Flames of Ambition patch, the different dual wield weapons can give magicka characters increased penetration, critical damage, spell damage or critical chance based on the weapon chosen.
One-Handed and Shield
Resource: Stamina
Main Use: Tanking and PvP (magicka and stamina)
Resources that can use: Stamina and Magicka
Heavy Attacks Restore? Stamina
Why Magicka? Slow mobility magicka users are generally the ones you see utilizing Sword and Board, due to the fact that Sword and Board allows them to block a heavy amount of damage and blocking acts as a really strong source of mitigation, allowing these slow moving units to live longer and reach their targets to deal damage.
Dual Wield
Resource: Stamina
Main Use: Stamina PvE
Resources that can use: Stamina and Magicka
Heavy Attacks Restore? Stamina
Why Magicka? Magicka can make use of some of the passives from the Dual Wield skill line. If you look at the passive Twin blade and blunt, that is the main reason a magicka character would choose dual wield. With the Flames of Ambition patch, the different dual wield weapons can give magicka characters increased penetration, critical damage, spell damage or critical chance based on the weapon chosen.
Bow
Resource: Stamina
Main Use: Stamina PvE and PvP
Resources that can use: Stamina
Heavy Attacks Restore? Stamina
Why not magicka? Simply put, there are not many passives or active abilities that magicka can get any use out of.
Destruction Staff
Resource: Magicka
Main Use: Magicka PvP and PvE
Resources that can use: Magicka (Most healers and tanks also will even use a destruction staff)
Heavy Attacks Restore? Magicka
Why not stamina? Simply put, there are not really any passives or active abilities that stamina can get any use out of.
Restoration Staff
Resource: Magicka
Main Use: Healing, Magicka PvP
Resources that can use: Magicka or Stamina (PvP)
Heavy Attacks Restore? Magicka
Why stamina? Stamina characters for PvP, if they have enough magicka sustain, can take advantage of the restoration staff as a defensive ability bar. Due to the dynamic scaling, Rapid Regeneration is a strong ability that stamina characters can take advantage of, due to its cheap magicka cost and strong healing, in addition to the great ultimate this weapon provides. However, this is definitely a more niche use case, but I just wanted to mention it here.
