Best DPS armor set combos for PVE/PVP

DezKoth87

Ive been playing ESO on console since it was released and i, personally, have used countless different armor set combos trying to find that perfect collaboration that best fits my needs and play style. A lot of trial and error. My current PVE stamina DPS armor set combos are 2 molag kena, 5 hundings, 5 vicious serpent. Stats at 30k stam, 18k health, 5.2k weapon damage, 70% weapon crit. This works for me, what works for you?

KingRegis

I wear Dog food no believe me my s**t so bad

Asmael

Talking strictly PvE:

5x TBS
3x Vicious Ophidian
2x Kra'gh
2x Maelstrom daggers
1x Maelstrom bow

Not liking the 2p Kra'gh tho, will test with 1p Kra'gh / 1p Kena and 1p Kra'gh / 1p VO and see if it's better.

All gear gold, all armor medium divines with max stamina glyphs, Khajiit, Thief & Shadow mundus, Sharpened on weapons (can use 1x Precise Dagger depending on raid composition), Max health / stam food.

I actually tried 2p Kena on a stamina build, it's actually sustainable-ish if you have 5x VO, but you can forget about it on mechanic heavy fights where you have to block / dodge roll / break free / bash a lot, it's also mediocre on trash fights. 1p Kra'gh combined with another 1p gives similar results without RIP'ing your stamina in the next 5 seconds.

Also tested Alkosh, but it's not that great on a DD, due to positioning restrictions and mechanics inherent to Alkosh (it has a very very tiny AoE) and synergies (especially orbs), having a decent uptime on it is an absolute pain. If synergies weren't the buggy mess they currently are, it would have been good, but too much of a pain to get a decent uptime.

Alternative set I'd like to try: Twice Fanged Serpent, probably no good in most raids since it won't get its full value if someone else is using NMG or Sunderflame, unless you're the only stam DD and tanks don't use any physical resistance reduction set besides Alkosh.

Leviathan: lot of hype around it, haven't tested, sure at 95% it doesn't even remotely compares to other options if you're a Khajiit. Without a minor crit bonus, i'm sitting at 83.5% crit chance on DW bar (so 88.5% with a NB in the group), let's not forget i'm using TBS, which has no crit chance bonus whatosoever. Critical chance over 100% doesn't work and is an absolute waste.

If someone mentions Viper's Sting or Red Mountain in a 12-men trial, I'll kindly ask them to work on their deeps, because these sets are good only if your base DPS is bad.

DezKoth87

KingRegis wrote: »

I wear Dog food no believe me my s**t so bad

So bad, as in it sucks or bad as in good DPS? Whats your race class and resource pool?

Milvan

Asmael wrote: »

(...)
If someone mentions Viper's Sting or Red Mountain in a 12-men trial, I'll kindly ask them to work on their deeps, because these sets are good only if your base DPS is bad.

I agree with you on everything, except that.

Viper is very accessible set now (named sharpened dagger "Knife of Shadows" is easy drop on FG2 second boss) and is great for people that are still farming maelstorm weapons and vicious ophidian parts. Combined with a monster set (Kra'gh, Selene or Velidreth) gives you huge amount of free damage boosted by TBS.

Edziu

@Asmael 3x VO for 5% minor slayer, nope, not worth, tested it on boss in dung

btw dont know whiel you are doing 50k+ dps but if you are doing 30-40k dps its not wort, better agility

my buffed hits was 27.7k with agility from my main skill dps while with VO I had just 27.3k dmge from this skill

if you want VO I think its not worth if you dont want to use it with 5 piece while you arnt nb and you have some problems with stamina on dps ;p

DezKoth87

...adding more details to build. Stamina, redguard, templar, thief mundus stone. Dual wielding nirnhoned swords both bars. 7 pc medium armor, 2 molag kena, 5 hundings raging, and 5 vicious serpent, all devines. No gold pieces or gold enchanments.

Buffed Stats/tri-stat food

Crit 70%
Weapon dmg 5.2k
Res 13.5k
Magika 13k
Health 18k
Stamina 30k - Stam regen 900

Alternative set/two handed and bow

2 molag kena
5 hundings
4 lekis

Edziu

I dont have problem with dps on my build, with good group 30-50k dps in dungs (boss fight up to maybe 2 mins and shorted then 30 sec on some bosses ;p) and guaranteed 30k+ dps on trials with longer boss fights if you have enough skill

khajiit stam nb

5x hunding
2x selene
3x agility
and master bow with master dagger and nonset mace all sharpened

17.5k health
36.7k stamina on dual, 38k on buff bar with master bow (799 stam regen)
10k magica

3.5k weapon dmg unbuffed
60-65% crit

Destruent

Edziu wrote: »

@Asmael 3x VO for 5% minor slayer, nope, not worth, tested it on boss in dung

btw dont know whiel you are doing 50k+ dps but if you are doing 30-40k dps its not wort, better agility

my buffed hits was 27.7k with agility from my main skill dps while with VO I had just 27.3k dmge from this skill

if you want VO I think its not worth if you dont want to use it with 5 piece while you arnt nb and you have some problems with stamina on dps ;p

You can't compare like that, bc 2pc VO gives you 3.14% Crit and therefore doesn't effect your damagevalue at all. You need to do some more calculation to compare agility to VO.

Calculating your average damage for this skill would look like this:

critdmg ~2.0 i guess...(1+(0.5 + 0.1 (NB-passive) +0.12 (trap) + 0.14 (CP, 42 points))*1.1 (major force, 33% uptime))=1.95

Agility: 27.7*2*0.6+27.7*0.4=44.32
VO: 27.3*2*0.63+27.3*0.37=44.499

With 1.9 as critdmg its 42.78 for VO and 42.66 for agility. When using TBS the difference will get even bigger in favor of VO.

Edziu

Destruent wrote: »

Edziu wrote: »

@Asmael 3x VO for 5% minor slayer, nope, not worth, tested it on boss in dung

btw dont know whiel you are doing 50k+ dps but if you are doing 30-40k dps its not wort, better agility

my buffed hits was 27.7k with agility from my main skill dps while with VO I had just 27.3k dmge from this skill

if you want VO I think its not worth if you dont want to use it with 5 piece while you arnt nb and you have some problems with stamina on dps ;p

You can't compare like that, bc 2pc VO gives you 3.14% Crit and therefore doesn't effect your damagevalue at all. You need to do some more calculation to compare agility to VO.

Calculating your average damage for this skill would look like this:

critdmg ~2.0 i guess...(1+(0.5 + 0.1 (NB-passive) +0.12 (trap) + 0.14 (CP, 42 points))*1.1 (major force, 33% uptime))=1.95

Agility: 27.7*2*0.6+27.7*0.4=44.32
VO: 27.3*2*0.63+27.3*0.37=44.499

With 1.9 as critdmg its 42.78 for VO and 42.66 for agility. When using TBS the difference will get even bigger in favor of VO.

as I wrote...I dont know how it look on the best dps with msa weapons etc who are doing 50k+ dps but on my build, as I talking some one of the best possible without msa I dont see any much difference to equip minor slayer :P

(and with crit dmg almos what you wrote, similiar ;P)

EDIT: I dont use TBS, I hear it is better than hunding in this min/max etc for the best dps but also....I with my case its also not much difference and I want to see higher dmg numbers than more crits while it is going to the same results for me, with my build

for me is this thing...get msa wepaons and then can go tbs and VO t see better difference because as for now I dont see any higher difference which will have more visible results

Destruent

Edziu wrote: »

Destruent wrote: »

Edziu wrote: »

@Asmael 3x VO for 5% minor slayer, nope, not worth, tested it on boss in dung

btw dont know whiel you are doing 50k+ dps but if you are doing 30-40k dps its not wort, better agility

my buffed hits was 27.7k with agility from my main skill dps while with VO I had just 27.3k dmge from this skill

if you want VO I think its not worth if you dont want to use it with 5 piece while you arnt nb and you have some problems with stamina on dps ;p

You can't compare like that, bc 2pc VO gives you 3.14% Crit and therefore doesn't effect your damagevalue at all. You need to do some more calculation to compare agility to VO.

Calculating your average damage for this skill would look like this:

critdmg ~2.0 i guess...(1+(0.5 + 0.1 (NB-passive) +0.12 (trap) + 0.14 (CP, 42 points))*1.1 (major force, 33% uptime))=1.95

Agility: 27.7*2*0.6+27.7*0.4=44.32
VO: 27.3*2*0.63+27.3*0.37=44.499

With 1.9 as critdmg its 42.78 for VO and 42.66 for agility. When using TBS the difference will get even bigger in favor of VO.

as I wrote...I dont know how it look on the best dps with msa weapons etc who are doing 50k+ dps but on my build, as I talking some one of the best possible without msa I dont see any much difference to equip minor slayer :P

(and with crit dmg almos what you wrote, similiar ;P)

The difference is rather small, but mathematically 3pc-VO is superior to 3pc Agility.

Edziu

Destruent wrote: »

Edziu wrote: »

Destruent wrote: »

Edziu wrote: »

@Asmael 3x VO for 5% minor slayer, nope, not worth, tested it on boss in dung

btw dont know whiel you are doing 50k+ dps but if you are doing 30-40k dps its not wort, better agility

my buffed hits was 27.7k with agility from my main skill dps while with VO I had just 27.3k dmge from this skill

if you want VO I think its not worth if you dont want to use it with 5 piece while you arnt nb and you have some problems with stamina on dps ;p

You can't compare like that, bc 2pc VO gives you 3.14% Crit and therefore doesn't effect your damagevalue at all. You need to do some more calculation to compare agility to VO.

Calculating your average damage for this skill would look like this:

critdmg ~2.0 i guess...(1+(0.5 + 0.1 (NB-passive) +0.12 (trap) + 0.14 (CP, 42 points))*1.1 (major force, 33% uptime))=1.95

Agility: 27.7*2*0.6+27.7*0.4=44.32
VO: 27.3*2*0.63+27.3*0.37=44.499

With 1.9 as critdmg its 42.78 for VO and 42.66 for agility. When using TBS the difference will get even bigger in favor of VO.

as I wrote...I dont know how it look on the best dps with msa weapons etc who are doing 50k+ dps but on my build, as I talking some one of the best possible without msa I dont see any much difference to equip minor slayer :P

(and with crit dmg almos what you wrote, similiar ;P)

The difference is rather small, but mathematically 3pc-VO is superior to 3pc Agility.

maybe wwith tour tbs adn msa wepaons ;p but at me agi is slighty better, wanna test it again and post screen here for you for sure?

luen79rwb17_ESO

BiS gear seems very subjective nowadays. So many sets, skill setups, passives, racials it's really up to your build and how good you are at your skill rotation and animation cancel.

DezKoth87

You guys are on a totally different level than me. How do you get 50k dmg? Is that per second? What attack is this based on, wrecking blow, biting jabs? So if my biting jab hits for 5.5k per jab....is that how you guys add it up? Somebody please simplify that math for me please?

DezKoth87

What do you guys think about molag kena, briarheart, and toothrow? Good idea bad idea?

Asmael

DezKoth87 wrote: »

You guys are on a totally different level than me. How do you get 50k dmg? Is that per second? What attack is this based on, wrecking blow, biting jabs? So if my biting jab hits for 5.5k per jab....is that how you guys add it up? Somebody please simplify that math for me please?

Reaching those numbers is not done on your own, you'll need to rely on a lot of buffing and debuffing to reach those numbers.

50k DPS cannot be done over a few minutes on your own in a normal scenario, it is possible in an endgame raid using Aggressive Warhorn rotations, constant buffing with Spell Power Cure / Powerful Assault, Minor berzerk from Combat Prayer, keeping all your DoTs up at all time, having high quality gear and sets, and finally, a lot of knowledge of your class and build.

Detailing everything that allows you to reach those numbers would require a preeeetty long explanation.

DezKoth87 wrote: »

What do you guys think about molag kena, briarheart, and toothrow? Good idea bad idea?

For Kena, I'll just requote myself:

I actually tried 2p Kena on a stamina build, it's actually sustainable-ish if you have 5x VO, but you can forget about it on mechanic heavy fights where you have to block / dodge roll / break free / bash a lot, it's also mediocre on trash fights. 1p Kra'gh combined with another 1p gives similar results without RIP'ing your stamina in the next 5 seconds.

Briaheart, with a 66% uptime (maximum achievable), has basically the same stats on average as Hundings, just the extra healing. Definitely not the best set possible for stamina.

Toothrow, as well as all sets that provide this Major brutality / Sorcery buff are a complete waste of time, and you might as well slot an ability to get the Major buff required and include it in your rotation instead of gimping all your stats. Not only those builds deal more damage, because they rely on actually good sets, but they do not require to farm anything else than proper DD sets. Toothrow isn't one of these, it's Hundings with 200 less weapon damage, and no significant benefit.

Helgi_Skotina

OMG all these builds will live 5 sek even against an average player. Can be used by gankers against questers - thats all.

Helgi_Skotina

5xblack rose + 5 viper + 2 selene/velidreth is the meta atm. In duelling meridias blessing is OP.

Milvan

Helgi_Skotina wrote: »

OMG all these builds will live 5 sek even against an average player. Can be used by gankers against questers - thats all.

Helgi_Skotina wrote: »

5xblack rose + 5 viper + 2 selene/velidreth is the meta atm. In duelling meridias blessing is OP.

OP was asking for help for PVE, not duelling. Also, I can barely understand what you wrote.

Grabmoore

Helgi_Skotina wrote: »

OMG all these builds will live 5 sek even against an average player. Can be used by gankers against questers - thats all.

All these comments -as stated in the first answer- are strictly PvE wise.

Since pvp is dead because of the proc meta, there is no reason to talk about it in details. There are the people wearing black rose or reactive and the people wearing viper/widowmaker. In duells at least some people wear different stuff like affliction or falsalla.

Zerok

DezKoth87 wrote: »

What do you guys think about molag kena, briarheart, and toothrow? Good idea bad idea?

Briarheart is very good for high crit builds. I use it currently on my Bosmer stamblade: 5x Night Mother, 5x Briarheart, 1x Molag Kena, 1x Bloodspawn (for unlimited sustain).

Fully buffed, I have ~90% critical hit, ~4400 weapon power, ~34k stamina and ~18k health.

Helgi_Skotina

Milvan wrote: »

Helgi_Skotina wrote: »

OMG all these builds will live 5 sek even against an average player. Can be used by gankers against questers - thats all.

Helgi_Skotina wrote: »

5xblack rose + 5 viper + 2 selene/velidreth is the meta atm. In duelling meridias blessing is OP.

OP was asking for help for PVE, not duelling. Also, I can barely understand what you wrote.

There is written for pve/pvp

Asmael

Helgi_Skotina wrote: »

Milvan wrote: »

Helgi_Skotina wrote: »

OMG all these builds will live 5 sek even against an average player. Can be used by gankers against questers - thats all.

Helgi_Skotina wrote: »

5xblack rose + 5 viper + 2 selene/velidreth is the meta atm. In duelling meridias blessing is OP.

OP was asking for help for PVE, not duelling. Also, I can barely understand what you wrote.

There is written for pve/pvp

There is such a thing as reading more than just the title.

Izaki

Asmael wrote: »

Talking strictly PvE:

5x TBS
3x Vicious Ophidian
2x Kra'gh
2x Maelstrom daggers
1x Maelstrom bow

Not liking the 2p Kra'gh tho, will test with 1p Kra'gh / 1p Kena and 1p Kra'gh / 1p VO and see if it's better.

All gear gold, all armor medium divines with max stamina glyphs, Khajiit, Thief & Shadow mundus, Sharpened on weapons (can use 1x Precise Dagger depending on raid composition), Max health / stam food.

I actually tried 2p Kena on a stamina build, it's actually sustainable-ish if you have 5x VO, but you can forget about it on mechanic heavy fights where you have to block / dodge roll / break free / bash a lot, it's also mediocre on trash fights. 1p Kra'gh combined with another 1p gives similar results without RIP'ing your stamina in the next 5 seconds.

Also tested Alkosh, but it's not that great on a DD, due to positioning restrictions and mechanics inherent to Alkosh (it has a very very tiny AoE) and synergies (especially orbs), having a decent uptime on it is an absolute pain. If synergies weren't the buggy mess they currently are, it would have been good, but too much of a pain to get a decent uptime.

Alternative set I'd like to try: Twice Fanged Serpent, probably no good in most raids since it won't get its full value if someone else is using NMG or Sunderflame, unless you're the only stam DD and tanks don't use any physical resistance reduction set besides Alkosh.

Leviathan: lot of hype around it, haven't tested, sure at 95% it doesn't even remotely compares to other options if you're a Khajiit. Without a minor crit bonus, i'm sitting at 83.5% crit chance on DW bar (so 88.5% with a NB in the group), let's not forget i'm using TBS, which has no crit chance bonus whatosoever. Critical chance over 100% doesn't work and is an absolute waste.

If someone mentions Viper's Sting or Red Mountain in a 12-men trial, I'll kindly ask them to work on their deeps, because these sets are good only if your base DPS is bad.

Minor Savagery gives 3% not 5%. So you'd be just under 100% crit chance.

Izaki

IzakiBrotheSs wrote: »

Asmael wrote: »

Talking strictly PvE:

5x TBS
3x Vicious Ophidian
2x Kra'gh
2x Maelstrom daggers
1x Maelstrom bow

Not liking the 2p Kra'gh tho, will test with 1p Kra'gh / 1p Kena and 1p Kra'gh / 1p VO and see if it's better.

All gear gold, all armor medium divines with max stamina glyphs, Khajiit, Thief & Shadow mundus, Sharpened on weapons (can use 1x Precise Dagger depending on raid composition), Max health / stam food.

I actually tried 2p Kena on a stamina build, it's actually sustainable-ish if you have 5x VO, but you can forget about it on mechanic heavy fights where you have to block / dodge roll / break free / bash a lot, it's also mediocre on trash fights. 1p Kra'gh combined with another 1p gives similar results without RIP'ing your stamina in the next 5 seconds.

Also tested Alkosh, but it's not that great on a DD, due to positioning restrictions and mechanics inherent to Alkosh (it has a very very tiny AoE) and synergies (especially orbs), having a decent uptime on it is an absolute pain. If synergies weren't the buggy mess they currently are, it would have been good, but too much of a pain to get a decent uptime.

Alternative set I'd like to try: Twice Fanged Serpent, probably no good in most raids since it won't get its full value if someone else is using NMG or Sunderflame, unless you're the only stam DD and tanks don't use any physical resistance reduction set besides Alkosh.

Leviathan: lot of hype around it, haven't tested, sure at 95% it doesn't even remotely compares to other options if you're a Khajiit. Without a minor crit bonus, i'm sitting at 83.5% crit chance on DW bar (so 88.5% with a NB in the group), let's not forget i'm using TBS, which has no crit chance bonus whatosoever. Critical chance over 100% doesn't work and is an absolute waste.

If someone mentions Viper's Sting or Red Mountain in a 12-men trial, I'll kindly ask them to work on their deeps, because these sets are good only if your base DPS is bad.

Minor Savagery gives 3% not 5%. So you'd be just over 100% crit chance.

Izaki

In PvE, I'm all with the current meta for stamina DK, stamina sorcerer and magicka sorcerer. (TBS/VO/vMA and TBS/IA/Ilambris)
In PvP, I'm all against the current meta simply because I play a magicka night blade and a magicka sorcerer Seriously though, on my magicka sorc I run a pretty awesome build right now, sitting at around 50k magicka:
5 Kagrenac's Hope, 4 Shroud of the Lich (5 on back bar) or 4 Elegance and 3 Willpower (Dual Wield FTW). I don't even need the Lich though, I can sustain just fine with 1k recovery for some reason I can't fully understand (Resto Staff passives OP). Shields are real and the damage is real too.

DezKoth87

Everybody talking about crit, crit, crit, sharpened, sharpened, sharpened. Does weapon dmg have any use in the game anymore or is it just all about getting around your opponents resistance?

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Its already been said pretty much, but in PVE DPS in a proper group (warhorns), you really only have a few decisions to make on stam.

The go to for pretty much any class for most people: 5 VO, 5 TBS, VMA weapons. If you want to squeeze out some extra DPS, you go to 3 VO and a monster pieces. Kra'gh for most, but possibly Stormfist for Stam Sorc. The vast majority of the player base will do better with the 5/5 combo, as it is much better on resources and movement.

Other than that, you could consider some other 5 pieces in place of TBS. If solo or bad group, I would run Nightmothers. Again, if trying to squeeze out a tiny amount of extra DPS, Leviathan is also an option, but it makes you squishy. In a group full of stam, you want to be sure that the basic support sets are accounted for before you put on TBS (Alkosh, Nightmother, Sunderflame, etc.). All of my stam toons carry a set of TBS, Nightmothers, VO, and a few monster sets. There is no one right answer, as the group you are in impacts the decision.

xRIVALENx

5 Red Mountain, 5 Viper & 2 Velidreth. Has excellent dps and sustain, adding poisons into the mix is just icing on the cake.