DPS/DD build advice for solo PvE and PvP

thenewton

Hi guys!

I just got my healer warden to ~cp165 on my first toon for the first time ever and I am having a blast (following Alcast's PvE Blossom build to a T), however I have noticed that I would really like to solo dungeons (normal maybe some vet) and do well in solo arena as well as use the toon for gold farming on public dungeons (so that I don't need a buddy to keep me alive) and mat/cp farming around Spellscar and viable in PvP, my questions are:

Do you think I should start a new toon? - If so, what build would you recommend for this? - Leaning towards this one

- OR -

Should I just change my healer with different gear and change skills when I want to do high DPS for more solo orientated stuff? - I've tried this but I'm just not happy with the damage or survivability, maybe I am doing something wrong?

I guess what I am trying to say is, can someone point me to a build that does insane dps with good self sustain (although if you deal enough damage fast enough who needs sustain right?) for dungeons, arena, and SOME PvP (not much but it would be nice to be able to sustain myself and deal some pretty killer blows)

Thanks guys!

jypcy

I have a mag warden that’s built around heavy attacks in its rotation. I don’t know what your cutoff for “insane” dps is— I don’t think you’ll be hitting 50k ST with it— but sustain is good, damage is good, survivability is good... my first time in maelstrom on a magden and I got flawless with him using this build.

I’d need to be at my computer to give more complete details, but for pve I’m running infallible aether, willpower, and arena weapons (vDSA/vMA). For PvP I’m running infallible aether and shacklebreaker. Basics of the rotation are casting shalks more or less on cooldown and filling the delays between cast and explosion with buffing up/casting dots and heavy attacks.

Not sure what skills you’ve chosen as a healer main, but I’m guessing not many will conflict with what you’d pick as a mag dps so it should be viable for whichever build you go with. Necropotence and siroria are other good sets for magden and definitely better if you want to have a light attack rotation.

thenewton

jypcy wrote: »

I have a mag warden that’s built around heavy attacks in its rotation. I don’t know what your cutoff for “insane” dps is— I don’t think you’ll be hitting 50k ST with it— but sustain is good, damage is good, survivability is good... my first time in maelstrom on a magden and I got flawless with him using this build.

I’d need to be at my computer to give more complete details, but for pve I’m running infallible aether, willpower, and arena weapons (vDSA/vMA). For PvP I’m running infallible aether and shacklebreaker. Basics of the rotation are casting shalks more or less on cooldown and filling the delays between cast and explosion with buffing up/casting dots and heavy attacks.

Not sure what skills you’ve chosen as a healer main, but I’m guessing not many will conflict with what you’d pick as a mag dps so it should be viable for whichever build you go with. Necropotence and siroria are other good sets for magden and definitely better if you want to have a light attack rotation.

I'm still kind of new to the game so my gear plan at the moment is Julianos for dps (when I get the rest of the set) and I use Kragnac's Hope (own full set) for healer.

I too run willpower jewellery, and Earthgore pauldrons (can't do vet dungeon for helm yet) I also don't have that much gold or crafting ability to spend on gear, so do you think changing class to one that is better equipped to deal dps and sustain (but because the class is naturally good at dps and not so much the gear, especially at the lvl1 to cp160 grind - etiher magicka or stamina build will do) might be better? I'm not high enough level to run vet dungeons or vet trials either, thank you!

jypcy

Warden is fairly good for soloing content because it tends to be high on survivability with a good deal of passives focused on tanking and healing. Magsorc is often lauded as easy mode soloing, though, and I’d tend to agree with that. If you don’t mind leveling a new character simply for solo grinding, magsorc is probably the way to go.

Sparr0w

Craft a set of Julianos & get some Necro. Run lightning staves for AoE & the bear if you want.

If you want a new character, either MagSorc or MagBlade are your best bets, though purely solo I find sorc to be a little better (depending on what happens with them next patch)

jypcy

Sparr0w wrote: »

Craft a set of Julianos & get some Necro. Run lightning staves for AoE & the bear if you want.

If you want a new character, either MagSorc or MagBlade are your best bets, though purely solo I find sorc to be a little better (depending on what happens with them next patch)

That’s a good point. I’d guess that the PTS and next patch’s initial patch notes go live this coming Monday. Maybe wait the weekend before investing too much time in a new character.

qbit

I used to solo normal dungeons. It quickly became too tedious and time consuming to not group. Some dungeons can’t be soloed due to mechanics or switches requiring multiple people. Especially vet content I’d imagine has more mechanics that cannot be soloed. It’s cool to challenge yourself. Just telling you my experience of trying to solo dungeons, but I was doing it to be anti social. Not sure your motivations. So far I’ve not had a bad group or toxic players or any kicks etc. It’s usually only a 15 to 20 minute wait as a DPS in dungeon finder even when picking specific dungeons for pledges.

thenewton

qbit wrote: »

It’s usually only a 15 to 20 minute wait as a DPS in dungeon finder even when picking specific dungeons for pledges.

"Only a 15 to 20 minute wait" Goodlord you poor thing I admire the patience, this is the main reason I chose healer, I wanted to do dungeons but dps took so long, as healer I get a dungeon within seconds to at most 2 minutes, I'm kind of doing it too to be "anti social" as sometimes I just want my headspace and not think about other players, if that makes sense? Thanks for the heads up!

thenewton

jypcy wrote: »

Sparr0w wrote: »

Craft a set of Julianos & get some Necro. Run lightning staves for AoE & the bear if you want.

If you want a new character, either MagSorc or MagBlade are your best bets, though purely solo I find sorc to be a little better (depending on what happens with them next patch)

That’s a good point. I’d guess that the PTS and next patch’s initial patch notes go live this coming Monday. Maybe wait the weekend before investing too much time in a new character.

Awesome thank you! So I'll see what happens in the meta with the change and after Monday you'd say its safe to head into a new build?

Sounds like MagSorc will be my next toon! Would you suggest pet or no pet?

qbit

thenewton wrote: »

qbit wrote: »

It’s usually only a 15 to 20 minute wait as a DPS in dungeon finder even when picking specific dungeons for pledges.

"Only a 15 to 20 minute wait" Goodlord you poor thing I admire the patience, this is the main reason I chose healer, I wanted to do dungeons but dps took so long, as healer I get a dungeon within seconds to at most 2 minutes, I'm kind of doing it too to be "anti social" as sometimes I just want my headspace and not think about other players, if that makes sense? Thanks for the heads up!

Yeah I’ve thought about that but I’m still on my first toon. I picked magsorc since I liked that on Skyrim. Then learned it was nothing like Skyrim and everyone hates us. Lol. I kid. But I do enjoy laying down the DPS with a group.

qbit

thenewton wrote: »

jypcy wrote: »

Sparr0w wrote: »

Craft a set of Julianos & get some Necro. Run lightning staves for AoE & the bear if you want.

If you want a new character, either MagSorc or MagBlade are your best bets, though purely solo I find sorc to be a little better (depending on what happens with them next patch)

That’s a good point. I’d guess that the PTS and next patch’s initial patch notes go live this coming Monday. Maybe wait the weekend before investing too much time in a new character.

Awesome thank you! So I'll see what happens in the meta with the change and after Monday you'd say its safe to head into a new build?

Sounds like MagSorc will be my next toon! Would you suggest pet or no pet?

I build for pet and no pet magsorc based on Alcast builds. When you get the skill points you should consider building to switch between them. Then you can solo with the pets or worry your trial group and then switch away from pets with a “just kidding”. They both have merit but I find pet build less exciting. I stay in practice with them assuming they will help in vMA (never played that on normal even).

But I’d definitely wait to see what they do with shields for sorcs because they’re really important. They may ruin PvE usefulness depending on sheiks changes. But they use the word “coubterplay” so it may not affect PvE much. I’m legit worried though.

jypcy

thenewton wrote: »

jypcy wrote: »

Sparr0w wrote: »

Craft a set of Julianos & get some Necro. Run lightning staves for AoE & the bear if you want.

If you want a new character, either MagSorc or MagBlade are your best bets, though purely solo I find sorc to be a little better (depending on what happens with them next patch)

That’s a good point. I’d guess that the PTS and next patch’s initial patch notes go live this coming Monday. Maybe wait the weekend before investing too much time in a new character.

Awesome thank you! So I'll see what happens in the meta with the change and after Monday you'd say its safe to head into a new build?

Sounds like MagSorc will be my next toon! Would you suggest pet or no pet?

Yeah, likely there won’t be enormous changes; I expect magsorc will still be best for soloing content. But it’d be unfortunate if you started a sorc this weekend, spent hours in character creation, hours leveling it, a bunch of gold on gear, and were really enjoying its play style, and then learned on Monday that things you like about the class are being heavily nerfed. This is mostly hyperbole, but you never know

Edit: and as far as “safe,” there still might be changes throughout the 4-5 weeks of PTS, but historically the major changes are introduced with week 1 of PTS and there are mostly only smaller tweaks after that. So if you like the sound of a sorc (or any class) and any changes in the initial patch notes don’t negatively affect your opinion, then yeah I think you’ll be fairly safe to go ahead with it. You can look up a decent overview of the sorc skill lines here: https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Sorcerer+Skills

And as it stands, I hear pet sorc is best for soloing and has a really easy rotation to be effective. I play nonpet whenever I dust mine off so can speak from experience that that works as well, but it might take a bit longer to get as effective results with nonpet as you can with pet.

thenewton

Ok awesome thank you guys for the responses! I think I'll make a magsorc character still even though there may be changes, I'm sure even if nerfed it won't completely kill of the archtype so its worth a shot!

Regarding pets or not I suppose I can do what I been doing with my heal magden and switch skills and gear depending on how I want to play at that time, cheers guys!

PS: You guys were talking about rotation and I am still so new to this I didn't even think about how rotations may be affecting my dps lol I'm and idiot

jypcy

If it helps, I think the best way to think about rotation is simply, “What’s the most effective pattern in which I can use my skills?”

A simple example is shalks: there’s a 3 second delay before the skill takes effect, so casting it every second is an ineffective use of it in your rotation. On the flip side, it might be more effective for you to cast a dot that lasts for 8 seconds only every 12 seconds because of other skills that are more effective to cast if used in those intervening 4 seconds. It’s complex stuff that can take a lot of testing, but hopefully that helps with the basic concept and why it’s important!

thenewton

It makes sense now you broken down the whole time element of it thank you!

AcadianPaladin

My healer is a templar instead of a warden but I can identify with your question. No one would doubt mine is a 'full main healer', yet she can solo many WBs and some normal dungeons. Here's what I think makes it work:
1. Spell damage is your friend. It helps both your damage and your heals. Therefore, I give it priority over crit.
2. Your defense is your ability to heal through anything so you should not have any survival problems.
3. Slot skills that help your group when you are healing while helping with dps as well - a couple that any healer can slot are blockade and elemental drain. The templar has a couple that 'heal & damage' simultaneously as does the nightblade. Not sure about warden. In my case, 4 of my skills are support/heal with damage, 1 is 'selfish' dps, and 5 are pure heals/buffs.

Waffennacht

You can solo the content you listed with your warden

Your difficulty will come from low CP.

Slot the bear, slot leeching vines (when you solo you'll get tons of health back.via life steal)

Slot bird of prey for mobility. Slot dampen Magic. Blockade and winter's Revenge.

Blue betty. I like elemental weapon and Fletcher flies. You then can add what you feel is needed, I'll typically slot Innerlight

thenewton

Waffennacht wrote: »

You can solo the content you listed with your warden

Your difficulty will come from low CP.

Slot the bear, slot leeching vines (when you solo you'll get tons of health back.via life steal)

Slot bird of prey for mobility. Slot dampen Magic. Blockade and winter's Revenge.

Blue betty. I like elemental weapon and Fletcher flies. You then can add what you feel is needed, I'll typically slot Innerlight

Thank you! I been running something similar when I change from healer to dos, I agree low CP and gear, do you know what level PvE mobs are capped at?

Slack

For pvp: slimecraw, necropotence, burning spell weave.
Triune jewelry, 2x magical harm and 1x reduce spell cost enchant
Prismatic on the helmet, chest and legs.

Front bar: inner light, force pulse, flame clench, fissure, shimmering shield and northern frost.

2nd bar: elusive mist, enchanted growth, pollen, blue Betty, ice fortress and healing thicket

Gear 5/1/1
Infused flame staff
Shield and sword on back

It offers a lot of burst, but not so much sustained damage.

Rotation is simple: Fissure, LA, Clench, LA, Force pulse
An unaware target is usually dead by then, if not, repeat


In no CP you have (as dunmer and all buffed up):
Health: 21.500
Magicka: 37.700
Stam: 12.000
Spell damage: 3030
Effective spell damage (according to Eso uesp) : 6919


Should also be working fine in solo pve, in group content not so much as you'd lack sustained damage.