My Magblade "Death Knight" semi-RP Build

nathanthehawkerb16_ESO

Just started playing ESO again, usually don't get too far cos I can't find a way to play that I enjoy. Since I'm a huge completionist, and ESO is a giant sandboxy game, that presents a bit of a challenge for me. Anyway, this time I decided to RP a bit like how I would play any other Elder Scrolls game: find a build I like gameplay/aesthetic wise, join appropriate guilds, and in this case level up and don't worry about completionism.

At first, I was going to play an Argonian Templar cos it's the obvious synergy, and base the build off the Undaunted skill tree - using the blood altar(?) skill and bone shield - because I thought it would look like some sorta corrupted Paladin/Cultist who plays with life and death magic.

In the end, I decided against this in favour of going NB and focusing on the siphoning tree. Atm I'm rocking a 2H weapon, - going to pick up axe for bleeds - 5 med 2 heavy (so I can hopefully use stealth) and I base my playstyle around Swallow Soul (damage converted to healing), Lotus fan (gap closer) and Assassin's blade (might take the disease morph but rn I don't need extra heals). Will pick up the 2H passive perk for cleave too. I will also incorporate siphoning strikes (healing + dmg) and I think aspect of terror (cc) or some other defensive for my first bar.

My long term goal is to focus my build around weapon damage, but using Magicka as a primary resource - not sure how viable that is? - so that I can free stamina for movement, and also because more dmg converts into more self healing for me. Kinda looking forward to playing a sorta Death Knight-esque build swinging a massive 2h, cleaving down mobs and healing myself. Probably going to incorporate the Clever Alchemist set too so I can get even more potion buffs, poison my weapon - and I'm also gonna buy the disease enchant.

Not sure what to put on second bar, might keep it as tanking bar tbh, and I can just switch into more heavy gear (hopefully) to play as a self-healing tank.

Any suggestions on how to maximise my weapon dmg/self healing synergy would be appreciated.

Checkmath

Generally this is not viable at all.
The skills you cast with magicka and which deal magic damage scale with max magicka, spelldamage and spellcrit. The skills, which costs stamina and do either physical damage, disease or poison damage scale with max stamina, weapon damage and weapon crit.
Meaning you should decide between either magicka or stamina skills and then focus your attributes and other stats on the same resource which your skills costs/scale with. Otherwise the damage of your skills will be very poor. Also depending on your choice, its important to choose a proper weapon. Staves are for magicka builds and everything else is better for stamina skills. That is because the light and heavy attacks of those weapons also scale with those stats (staves scale with magicka, spelldamage, spellcrit and for the other weapons its the other way round).

Iskiab

Yea, if you focus on magicka you need to use 5 light and focus on spell power. How will you be playing? Tanking in pve or pvp?

In ESO you need to spec very differently for each type of gameplay. I can help you build a spec but need to know how you want to play.

You might also want to check out the necromancer, it’s being released shortly and sounds thematically closer to what you want to do.

nathanthehawkerb16_ESO

Hey thank you both for your responses!

I can't believe I was such a *** to not even look into how weapon/spell damage works, I'll be sure to take all the stam morphs I can, invest more into med armour/weapon tree too. Stamblade it is!

Funnily enough, I stumbled upon necromancer by accident while I was reading up on various skill trees. I think I'll be re-rolling necromancer when it's released and at that point I'll just respec my NB to a more traditional assassin type I guess, perhaps even re-roll that toon too as a khajiit. I don't want to characters which pretty much fill the same niche.

Currently, I don't have a proper playstyle in mind, I'm just doing PvE questing content for now (so my *** build won't ruin anyone's day).

Vajrak

Can you optimize a build for this? ---probably not.

Can you make one that is reasonably viable for MOST of the games content? --- definitely.

Will you top leader boards with it? --- doubtful.

You'll be able to put out respectable damage though, with reasonable self and group healing.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=143079

30k Mag and Stam
58% crit rate
7.7k physical pen
2.7k spell pen
Weapon Damage (fully buffed): 3.8k
Spell Damage (buffed, minus minor sorcery): 3k

~2k heal per second from Rally and Refreshing Path combined, with other skill options for emergency or proc heals (plus crit proc heals)

Can use Brawler instead of Carve if want more bleed damage, and honestly skin your weapon to look like an axe, but use a 2h Sword to up the damage a bit.

Fits what you were looking to do, and will still be able to reasonable output ~22-23k dps. Enough for MOST content in the game, as said.

nathanthehawkerb16_ESO

Vajrak wrote: »

Can you optimize a build for this? ---probably not.

Can you make one that is reasonably viable for MOST of the games content? --- definitely.

Will you top leader boards with it? --- doubtful.

You'll be able to put out respectable damage though, with reasonable self and group healing.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=143079

30k Mag and Stam
58% crit rate
7.7k physical pen
2.7k spell pen
Weapon Damage (fully buffed): 3.8k
Spell Damage (buffed, minus minor sorcery): 3k

~2k heal per second from Rally and Refreshing Path combined, with other skill options for emergency or proc heals (plus crit proc heals)

Can use Brawler instead of Carve if want more bleed damage, and honestly skin your weapon to look like an axe, but use a 2h Sword to up the damage a bit.

Fits what you were looking to do, and will still be able to reasonable output ~22-23k dps. Enough for MOST content in the game, as said.

WOW dude thanks for taking the time to make that for me!

I'll definitely be trying this out!

Vajrak

You're welcome. I hope it fits your RP idea, just remember that it is going to take time to get up to full power (gold gear, cp, etc), so work it up a little at a time. Try soloing Spindleclutch with it to see how you are progressing.