Active Skills in ESO: What Does It Mean?

In The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO), active skills are the abilities you place on your action bar and trigger by hand in combat, as opposed to passives, which work all the time. Most cost Magicka or Stamina, and together with one Ultimate per bar they make up your rotation. Choosing and morphing active skills is the heart of building a character in ESO.

How It Works

ESO has three kinds of skills: passive, active and ultimate. Each action bar holds five active skills, bound to keys 1 to 5 by default on PC, plus one Ultimate slot. At character level 15 you unlock weapon swapping, which gives you a second bar with five more active skills and a second Ultimate. Ultimates use a separate resource, Ultimate, that builds up during combat and is usually spent all at once. No skill line has more than one Ultimate.

Active skills improve through use. Each one ranks up from I to IV as you gain experience with it slotted. After a morph, the new version can rank up four more times, but it cannot be morphed again. At rank IV you can spend a skill point to morph it into one of two versions with different extra effects. You cannot have both morphs of the same skill, but the game's respec options let you refund skill points and choose again.

Slotting matters for progress too: a class skill line only levels while at least one of its skills is slotted on the bar you are using when you earn experience.

Where Active Skills Come From

• Class: each of the seven classes (Dragonknight, Sorcerer, Nightblade, Templar, Warden, Necromancer and Arcanist) has three skill lines.
• Weapon: Two Handed, One Hand and Shield, Dual Wield, Bow, Destruction Staff and Restoration Staff. Any class can use them; a weapon line levels while you hold that weapon when gaining experience, and faster with its skills slotted.
• Armor: Light, Medium and Heavy Armor lines are mostly passive, but each also has an active skill, such as Annulment for Light Armor and Unstoppable for Heavy Armor.
• Guild: NPC guild lines such as the Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, Undaunted and Psijic Order.
• World: lines like Soul Magic, Vampirism and Lycanthropy.
• Alliance War: PvP lines leveled in Cyrodiil.
• Scribing: introduced with the Gold Road chapter, it lets you build custom skills from grimoires and scripts. It is now a free upgrade in the Crown Store.

Recent Changes

Update 46 added Subclassing: once you have a level 50 character, you can replace up to two of a character's class skill lines with lines from other classes. Update 50 then added Class Mastery, a set of class passives for characters who level all three of their own class lines and do not subclass.

Tips

• Slot skills you want to level even if you do not use them often; they gain experience while on the bar.
• Keep at least one skill from each class line slotted early so all three lines level together.
• Put buffs with longer durations on your back bar and your main damage or healing skills on the front.
• Read both morphs before choosing; one often suits group play and the other solo play.
• Use a training dummy in your home to test rotations.

Patch notes for skill changes are posted on the official Elder Scrolls Online site.

FAQ

How many active skills can I use at once?

Five per bar plus one Ultimate. With weapon swapping, unlocked at level 15, that becomes ten active skills and two Ultimates.

When can I morph a skill?

When the skill reaches rank IV. Morphing costs one skill point.

Can I use skills from another class?

Yes, through Subclassing, which lets you swap up to two class skill lines once you have a level 50 character and complete the unlock quest.