My warden bash build. Not saying it's the best but I have had fun with it and it can be both dangerous and tanky.

I paired Deadlands Demolisher with Veiled Heritance and ran a 2H Vateshran back bar.

Yeah skara is the bash expert, ask him

Honestly can't recommend bash builds in this meta due to how overtuned block is. You're better off running Master dw Maarselok so your damage bypasses block and you get damage ticks for free. Dot proc builds are equivalent to bash builds but without breaking your hand spamming bash.

If you really want to play a bash build in U39 then you can try the following.

Deadlands plus..

• Veiled Heritance with Malacath for consistent damage. This is the most balanced bash build.
• Shattered Fate with Master dw and Maarselok since offensive penetration applies to all damage types
• Mechanical Acuity with Crystal Weapon, Power Slam, and Overload for a burst combo with shield charge
• Aetherial Ascension and Gaze of Sithis with Hardened Ward as your spammable for tanky troll bash
• Mechanical Acuity, Onslaught, Sea-Serpent Coil

The last one is some of the highest damage in the game. Here's 37113 damage in 0.893 seconds in Cyrodiil.



This was against a very good Top 1% player. The best advice I can give is figure out how to do enough burst with Acuity to kill them in 1-2 seconds so they don't have time to react and start block healing. Once they are on the defensive then it's nearly impossible to kill a good player with bash due to block mitigation.

Stam Sorcs don't typically run Hardened Ward nor do they block. There's a cast time on Dark Deal and when you interrupt with bash, you get +150% extra damage. So your bashes will sometimes do 4-5k damage against Stam Sorcs with rare 6-9k crits.



This also applies to interrupting Templar Beam.

Race

1. Khajiit (crit damage)
2. Orc (sprint speed and extra wd/sd)
3. Nord (tanky)
4. Imperial (sustain and health)
5. Wood Elf (movespeed, stam recovery, small amount of penetration)

Any of these races will do just fine although Khajiit is obviously best for Mechanical Acuity.

If you are Nord then you can build a bash tank by going heavily into armor with Aetherial Ascension, Sithis, 1pc armor shoulder, Lady mundus. 50k armor with 6k+ bash damage. Spell Wall frontbar, BRP Quick Cloak w/ Thrive in Chaos backbar. 1 Reinforced 6 Impen or 5 Reinforced 2 Impen. Overall, your damage is lower but Nightblades can't hurt you (5-9k bow proc). Just watch out for Corrosive and Onslaught. The 2-4pc bonus on Aetherial Ascension is better than Trial by Fire and Aetherial Ascension's 100% uptime is worth it, even if we're in a status effect meta for Trial by Fire. You have Dark Deal to offset the 20% increased cost to Break Free.

Always 6 Heavy 1 Medium for tanky builds or when using Malacath. Sprint is too slow with 7 Heavy. 5+ medium for Acuity.

When not using Master dw then use BRP dw. Both should use Infused flame and poison enchants for 2 second procs. You need dots. 1H weapon should always be Charged trait for Minor Breach. Frontbar double dot poison is best. There is some poison status effect overlap with backbar poison enchant but that's fine.

The uptime on Poison status effect is ~75% from Infused dw backbar Quick Cloak and 1H Charged frontbar. The Charged trait on 1h applies to the Quick Cloak proc of backbar enchants. If you run double dot poison front and Infused poison on one of the backbar weapons then you have 90%+ uptime on Poison status effect.

Frenzied Momentum and Merciless Charge are both good. If you want big Onslaught and Power Slams then go Frenzied Momentum. If you have lots of dots and bashes, Merciless Charge is better.

Power Slam scales with max(wd/sd) + bash damage not from armor. This means Deadlands, Veiled Heritance, bash jewelry, 1h+shield Deadly Bash passive, bash cp, all buff Power Slam damage. Aetherial Ascension, Major Resolve, etc does not buff Power Slam. If you have 6000 wd/sd from Sea-Serpent Coil or Frenzied Momentum + 3x799 bash damage jewelry + 935 bash damage from Deadlands + 500 bash damage from Deadly Bash, then your Power Slam actually has 6000 + 3832 = 9832 wd/sd equivalent. That's how you get the big 10-15k Power Slam crits when Onslaught is active.



Damage mundus should be Shadow with Acuity and Lover for everything else. Lady mundus for tanky bash.

Orzorga's Smoked Bear Haunch for everything unless you're intentionally 20k max health for maximum damage funsies. In general, try to have ~35k health in Cyrodiil and 32-33k in Battlegrounds.

Gaze of Sithis is really good on Bash Sorc when using Hardened Ward. The extra health is needed when not Imperial race.

The new Bound Aegis is very tempting but there's too much overlap with Hardened Ward and Resolving Vigor. Use Ransack if you really need the Minor Protection but it's not recommended because Power Slam gives more damage. Never slot both Ransack and Power Slam because there's not enough slots for both.

If you are not spamming Power Slam then you should use Pierce Armor. Bash and Light Attack doesn't proc Minor Breach very often, even with Charged 1H trait. So Minor Breach from Pierce Armor is actually useful.

For tanky bash builds, your frontbar in no particular order is Shield Charge, Ransack / Power Slam, Hardened Ward, Resolving Vigor, Camo Hunter / Lingering Flare. These are brawler builds and you can melee for 15-20 seconds at a time.

For burst bash builds, it depends on if you backbar dw or 2h but frontbar always needs Crystal Weapon, Power Slam, Camo Hunter, Overload. These are not brawler builds so you must buff, charge in, do damage, then run away. Rinse and repeat.

Be aware of the bug where Bash Critical is not hybridized and only uses Weapon Critical.

Always use Energy Overload for the sustain over Power Overload. The damage isn't much different. 1.08465 versus 1.19311 MaxPower. It translates to ~9% less Overload damage which is only 1-2% less total damage. Bash, Crystal Weapon, Power Slam, and dots (poisons, rending slashes, hurricane, quick cloak, etc) are most of your damage.

Rebind bash to Right Click or Mouse Wheel. Something that is easy for you.

With these tips, you will still struggle to kill good players.

• Arcanist shield is very difficult to punch through
• DK dot pressure is difficult to mitigate even with Hardened Ward
• Nightblade burst heal is way overtuned with dodge roll and block jumping
• Templars are naturally tanky with all their hots and block healing
• Mag Sorc is a mixed bag. A good Mag Sorc will destroy all bash players unless they're troll tanks. A bad Mag Sorc will die quickly because they panic from the continuous bashing and gap closing with shield charge.
• Don't bother trying to kill a 40k+ health Warden block healing with Polar Wind
• Necro is a free kill. Rip Necro.

The best counter for killing other bashers is lots of mitigation and shield wall.

Good luck.

Also, don't forget your jewelry enchants!