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[BUILD] Paladin of Stendarr - DPS Support Build

James-Wayne
James-Wayne
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Introduction
I’ve always loved playing god-like roles with immense power of healing and destruction, the ability to take life as well as grant it is very appealing to play so I present my DPS Support build for The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited. This build has it all for the perfect Paladin, single target and area of effect magic attacks, burst heals and long duration support abilities.

Paladin of Stendarr - DPS Support Build

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NOTE: Character stats based on VR16 PvE

Character
This build is about an Breton knight who serves under the name of Stendarr protecting the many temples spread throughout High Rock and Hammerfell. Life was fairly peaceful and quiet till the year of 2E 582 where the Daedric prince Molag Bal initiated the Planemeld to merge the worlds of Nirn and Oblivion. While visiting the Temple of Stendarr in Chorrol, Molag Bal’s forces broke through and stole his soul, whisked away to the prisons of Coldharbour. It was time to fight back the evil forces, return to Cyrodiil to rescue the lands surrounding Chorrol and take the fight right to the heart of the Imperial City!

Class
Our class of choice for this build is the Templar. The Templar is the perfect fit for the DPS Support role mainly due to the wide range of skills in dealing damage, battle aids and restoration. The Templar is the only class to be able to pull this style of build off.

Race
I won’t dive into racial choice to much as most will work with this build but if you follow Stendarr, the God of Mercy then preferably choose Breton for the magicka passives, Altmer for the spell passives or Imperial to assist with health and stamina so you don’t have to worry about them.

Attributes
Ultimately you need a minimal of 18k health for most areas but I recommend 20k health so you’re not too squishy. Once you get loads of champion points you could go everything into magicka here but try and keep close to the health requirement first. It’s best to setup everything else (including food buff) and adjust these values last once you know where you need it as they are the easiest and cheapest to move around. If you get 25k with PvP buffs, great because if you have terrible ping rates like I do in Australia you will need it!

Morph
The Knights of Stendarr don’t take keenly to demonic races like Vampires and Werewolf’s so ensure you get yourself a cure before embarking on their grand mission to rid the world of evil, they won’t be required in this build.

Psst. Wanna know a secret… I got bitten the other night by an unsuspecting Vampire of the night and have discovered my magicka, stamina and health recovery is much improved so if you feel like keeping this pale skin of a corpse then where a hooded mask so other knights are less likely to notice anything because the extra power feels kind of nice, just watch out for fire I found out the hard way.

Mundus
The Mage is great for the extra magicka as is The Apprentice for the extra spell damage or The Thief for the critical damage bonus but choose based on what you think you need more in. This Paladin prefers the effects of The Thief over all others.

Food
Melon-Baked Parmesan Pork VR15 Health and Magicka is all you need for the long fight against the forces of evil but you could also use The Skald-King’s Patty Melt VR10 if you thought you needed the additional fat content in your health diet on a lower budget otherwise The Emperor’s Venison Fricassee at VR10 is quite a balanced tasty meal too that also doesn’t hurt the purse.

Potions
I prefer the tri-pot Panacea of Spell Power that grants major sorcery, major prophecy, major intellect and regenerates Magicka. Preferably look out for VR15 versions otherwise the cheaper VR5 version will also suffice. This ensures you can keep up the major sorcery buff 100% of the time during combat.

Items
This set is based on VR16 but most of the pieces can be crafted so its workable for lower levels and achievable for even the average/casual player which now that I have a family includes myself. This setup is not meant to be the ultimate DPS setup (it’s close thou) but with what you are provided it does enable you to do all solo PvE content, grouped PvP content, swap roles from DPS to Healer which makes you versatile in dungeon raids and arena challenges. This build is not setup for single PvP.

Weapons
Mace & Shield are our defensive weapons; we are a Paladin after all with defending being the best choice for glyph on the mace and reinforced on the shield for the most mitigation. Our offensive weapons are dual swords for a boost to our spell damage, both with nirnhoned traits.

Armour
We are going with 5 light to get the passives and running all magicka glyphs. We’re also going with one heavy chest and one medium legs for the Undaunted passive bonus, if you don’t have the undaunted passive you can go with two heavy for the most mitigation. Use reinforced on the heavy with divines on all the other pieces.

Jewellery
If you have enough magicka recovery then use spell damage for glyph choices with arcane being the better choice for the trait.

Sets
Torug’s Pact: This two piece crafted set which provides spell damage is a great option for your double two piece setup using a nirnhoned trait on your blades to further boost your spell penetration which also provides additional magical resistance.
Seducer: You need two additional pieces for your head and shoulders which will provide magicka recovery till you can acquire the more powerful spell pieces of Molag Kena. You will also want to craft Seducer for your Mace and Shield for the extra magicka and magicka recovery.
Kagrenac’s Hope: Crafted from deep within ‘The Earth Forge’ this magical set provides lots of buffs to your magicka, magicka recovery, health and spell damage. It also provides assistance in resurrecting your fallen knights plus with the passives Battle Resurrection and Master Ritualist you get a 50% boost to resurrection speed which is massive! The Templar also has other resurrection passives which makes them the perfect class for raising the dead.
Willpower: Only drops from Imperial City content but will provide magicka and spell damage at the VR16 rate. To be optimal ensure you hunt for these from within the Imperial City Vaults of Bone Shard & Ethereal or wait for the stupidly high prices to drop from Guild stores.
Molag Kena: This evil descended through the Planemeld and has taken over control of The White Gold Tower in the heart of The Imperial City. The shoulders and monster head piece that can be collected from defeating this evil will be well worth your time so with these equipped weave in some light attacks before every onslaught to decimate your opponents!

Skills
The below skill bars are what I’ve found to be a great combination to complement each other, they help the tank roles and they help the DPS roles as well as an entire group plus they give you defense and offensive abilities for playing solo if you choose to however there are lots of other great skills to use so adjust where you need.

If you wanted to focus mainly on DPS you would chose dual wield on both bars for maximum spell damage with skills to compliment lots of damage on both bars. The defensive bar enables you to defend yourself against most encounters and recover resources very quickly while helping groups so you can get back in the fight quicker with your offensive bar.

Defensive Bar (One Hand & Shield)
Repentance: Provides regeneration to all attributes when slotted and grants an health and stamina boost to yourself and allies that only cost body’s so ensure you ‘let the bodies hit the floor’ before pulling the trigger plus it gets a bonus from focused healing and benefits from the mending passive.
Balance: Sacrifice your health for a magicka boost at no additional cost with an grant to health recovery.
Channeled Focus: Provides a rune of celestial protection while recovering magicka, just keep close to provide longer protection & restoration
Extended Ritual: Heal over time while removing one negative effect plus adds Purify so group members can remove any harmful effects. Why heal through negative effects when they can be removed which makes it easier on yourself and your group.
NOTE: Breath of Life or Cleanse are good options here as is Elusive Mist if you’ve chosen to be a vampire, see options below.
Blazing Spear: This ranged AOE is great to stun enemies and to use the damage over time tick to assist with the DPS. The tanks and stamina players in your groups will also love you for this support so drop it on top of them, friend or foe.
NOTE: You could also use Inner Light in this slot if you felt like you didn’t want to cast it every time you swap bars, great for solo content.
Aggressive War Horn: This provides 10% magicka, health and stamina for 30 seconds to you and your group so is great to start off a fight. It also provides 30% increase to critical damage which is great to finish a fight and when paired with Radiant Destruction from your offensive bar watch your enemies hit the floor hard!

Additional Skill Options
Breath of Life: Massive heals!!! Nothing more needs to be said here.
Cleanse: Remove any nasty negatives effects while healing the group at the same time, win win all round.
Elusive Mist: When you need to get out of a sticky situation this skill will grant you Major Expedition while becoming invulnerable to control effects and reducing all incoming damage.
Invigorating Drain: Grants ultimate when active and steals health and stamina from your prey while providing a stun.

Offensive Bar (Dual Wield)
Puncturing Sweep: This is your number one damage making machine because with huge amounts of spell damage and magicka this can hit like a truck per hit, four times over 1 second… with the burning light passive and critical bonus it will destroy your opponents very quickly! That’s not all because you also restore health on every hit based on the damage you do!!
Purifying Light: This skill I call ‘The Punisher’ because it can push your DPS way above 20k when you unleash a number of these for yourself, your tank and your other group members and when it goes pop it provides a heal for yourself when in melee range plus everyone else that’s close enough to one, even if you don’t reach the maximum magic damage so it’s always healing your group. This skill must be on this bar as this is the bar with the most spell damage which means this skill will hit hard when it goes BOOM!! It’s also a great tool to use to let your other team mates know which mobs you are going after or which mobs they are going after, paint the target gold!
Radiant Oppression: Your terminator skill! This is strictly to be used as your fatality move so only use when enemies health is below 35% also usable when you need to reach those trash mobs from a distance like healers and archers. Due to this build having high spell damage and magicka your execute will be doing insane damage!
Structured Entropy: Suck the life force from your enemies while providing a boost to your health & spell damage plus it helps mages guild passives.
Inner Light: This skill is amazing and can be a key to your burst DPS. It also provides you 10% Spell Critical and 5% Max Magicka as well as the mages guild passives.
Ice Comet: I prefer running with Ice Comet for the massive amount of damage with reduced movement speed especially while playing solo but check out other options below you may wish to swap in for different scenarios. Ice Comet also provides an extra 2% with the Magicka Controller passive.

Additional Skill Options
Proximity Detonation: The nuclear bomb of the Elder Scrolls Online world. It’s a long grind to acquire in PvP but it produces a massive amount of area damage so will be a worthy addition to your skill set.
Crescent Sweep: Crescent Sweep does massive area of effect damage you can keep up most of the time, great for solo content.
Solar Prison: Solar Prison produces huge damage against players and bosses alike plus it has a synergy effect which is great when running with groups. They both do magic damage so pick your super weapon based on solo or group play!

Champion System
You currently need about 300 champion points to really make a difference and be competitive but I’m basing this on 120 champion points to help those players who are not that far into it or simply do not have the time to play as much as others. The newly introduced seasonal cap for champion points will in future make these guides much easier to write.

This guide gives you an idea of where to spend them so as you get more just keep adding them on or feel free to tweak where you wish. As reference for the first 100 Champion Points in each constellation you get an additional 1331 Health and 1091 each for both Magicka and Stamina so having 300 points isn’t going to boost your attributes enough to worry about them it’s more about the passives.

The Warrior
You need to put points into Elemental Defender, Hardy and Thick Skinned as those are flat increases but your shield skills will absorb most of this type of damage so you don’t need much here. As your wearing 5 pieces of light armor a few points here is worthwhile as your other two pieces should be a combination of heavy and medium or something close so the boost is nice for your physical resistance. 30 points here provides you with the only two decent passives from this tree.

Put further points after 30 into The Steed which has much better protection passives you need later on such as Shield Expert and Reinforced. Quick Recovery under The Lord is also great to add some points too.

The Lady
Hardy: 10
Elemental Defender: 10
Thick Skinned: 5
Light Armor Focus: 5

The Steed
Spell Shield: 5
Resistant: 5

The Thief
Not much here for a magicka based character but you can spread 30 points into The Lover tree to grant you the Synergizer passive then finish off with everything else into The Tower mainly focusing on Magician which helps your offensive bar. Up to 5 points each into Tenacity and Warlord will be handy too once you have at least 30 points into Magician.

The Lover
Mooncalf: 5
Healthy: 5
Arcanist: 20

The Tower
Magician: 10

The Mage
First put 30 points into The Apprentice tree so you get the passive to increase your spell critical rating by 12% which is mandatory. Personally I prefer Elfborn as this increases your spell and healing critical output but put some points into Spell Erosion as coupled with your nirnhoned items you can produce some serious magic damage to a knee.

Thaumaturge on the Ritual tree is an amazing perk to invest in as a Magicka based Templar as most skills that you use to DPS with are magic skills so after you have your critical rating keep adding points here till you have a 25% boost to your magic damage. It’s a shame this tree isn’t much good for anything else, Magicka Templar is the only class this affects.

The Apprentice
Elfborn: 20
Spell Erosion: 5

The Ritual
Thaumaturge: 15

Conclusion
This is the end of the build outline for my DPS Support, Paladin of Stendarr! If you have any questions or comments please leave them in the comments below. I should have a video with the build outline and play through of Maelstrom Arena up sometime soon but in the meantime thanks for reading, go holy burn some daedra sending them back to Oblivion for the Knights of Stendarr!

@James-Wayne
Edited by James-Wayne on November 27, 2015 12:48AM
PERTH, AUSTRALIA | PC | NA | @Aussie-Elders

TENTH ANNIVERSARY - Thanks for sticking with us for 10 years.
James-Wayne you earned this badge 9:56AM on 4th of February 2024.
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  • puffy99
    puffy99
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    bump- good writeup!
  • Shader_Shibes
    Shader_Shibes
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    Great write up!

    One thing though, Willpower can drop from undaunted pledges also, from last boss i believe.
  • Topinaskorpb16_ESO
    Topinaskorpb16_ESO
    Soul Shriven
    What is reason behind not using any skill that use stamina? Seems weird when you have 2 resources but only use one.


    Im really new to ESO thou :blush: so I would welcome some explanation on this.
  • James-Wayne
    James-Wayne
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    What is reason behind not using any skill that use stamina? Seems weird when you have 2 resources but only use one.


    Im really new to ESO thou :blush: so I would welcome some explanation on this.

    Your certainly welcome to swap in a Stamina based skill for support purposes however as I don't have a lot of Stamina in this build its no good for damaged based skills (as stamina based skills mainly calculate their damage amount from Stamina and Weapon Damage) so I keep the Stamina for Roll Dodging and Blocking.

    Hope that helps.
    PERTH, AUSTRALIA | PC | NA | @Aussie-Elders

    TENTH ANNIVERSARY - Thanks for sticking with us for 10 years.
    James-Wayne you earned this badge 9:56AM on 4th of February 2024.
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  • Topinaskorpb16_ESO
    Topinaskorpb16_ESO
    Soul Shriven
    Indeed! I had no idea that amount of stamina/magicka affects damage of skills that use said resource! Thanks a lot for reply!

    In that case I think im gonna stick with your build then! You seem like you know what you are talking about! :blush:

    Really thanks for this build, I choosed templar because I wanted to be something like this. Paladin with 1-h hammer and shield.

    Althou...I would much rather use 2H hammer for offensive bar, would that be big dps loss? Is 2H more of stamina build weapon? I dont really need to be on top of the charts but I dont wanna suck either :smiley: .
  • James-Wayne
    James-Wayne
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    Dual weapons does boost your weapon/spell damage higher so if you want the most DPS from a magicka class based skills bar then dual all the way however if your not one to worry about absolute best DPS right down to the last drop then 2H will be just fine as the difference isn't that huge. Just remember if your magicka based using most of the skills from the 2H skill line won't be that effective as they do scale from stamina and weapon damage.

    Always remember it's your character so set yourself up how you want it to be and most importantly have fun because that's all that matters.
    PERTH, AUSTRALIA | PC | NA | @Aussie-Elders

    TENTH ANNIVERSARY - Thanks for sticking with us for 10 years.
    James-Wayne you earned this badge 9:56AM on 4th of February 2024.
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  • Baconlad
    Baconlad
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    Is you spell power that high WITH major/minor spell power buff? Just curious as I am not sure how you got such high spell power/ crit/ magick/ magick regen! Now granted I am not using molag kena (hope to get this with next patch through PvP. And I don't have torugs yet but four piece Mara. I do like the idea of the sword and shield though, that is great. Nice build bud!
  • WillhelmBlack
    WillhelmBlack
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    Are your stats above with 501 CP? I have the same sets and I'm at 2200 spell damage unbuffed and 37.5k max Magicka. My regen is also terrible so I have to use Atronach instead of Thief, I did try thief and the damage was great but ran out of juice too soon. I currently sit at 350 CP, will my stats bump up that much when I hit cap?
    PC EU
  • James-Wayne
    James-Wayne
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    Baconlad wrote: »
    Is you spell power that high WITH major/minor spell power buff? Just curious as I am not sure how you got such high spell power/ crit/ magick/ magick regen! Now granted I am not using molag kena (hope to get this with next patch through PvP. And I don't have torugs yet but four piece Mara. I do like the idea of the sword and shield though, that is great. Nice build bud!

    I'm not currently using Molag Kena with those stats above and I can't remember the exact setup when I took the screen grab but from memory I do believe it was with a 20% Major Sorcery buff, please just use as a guide.

    However lets take a look at the break down of what you can get with this setup. Your setup may differ but if you have these items with the correct glyphs at the VR16 level of a Templar you should also be able to achieve this too.

    VR16 - Spell Damage
    1335 Main Weapon (GOLD)
    267 Offhand Weapon (GOLD)
    224 Kagrenac’s Hope Set Piece 5 (GOLD)
    129 Torug’s Pact Set Piece 2 (GOLD)
    129 Willpower Set Piece 3 (PURPLE)
    174 Willpower Amulet (GOLD)
    174 Willpower Ring (GOLD)
    174 Willpower Ring (GOLD)
    2606 Sub Total - Out of Combat

    20% Major Sorcery (Potion or Entropy Skill)
    5% Minor Sorcery (Illuminate Templar Passive)
    651 Sub Total - In Combat

    3257 Total Spell Damage

    NOTE: If you own purple quality jewellery but apply gold glyphs you will in fact use the higher gold value on the purple item. Only set item stats will remain at the purple value, hope that makes sense.

    Those stats are not with 501 Champion Points either... I probably need to make things more clearer in my next build guide so thanks for the feedback guys.
    Edited by James-Wayne on December 11, 2015 3:48AM
    PERTH, AUSTRALIA | PC | NA | @Aussie-Elders

    TENTH ANNIVERSARY - Thanks for sticking with us for 10 years.
    James-Wayne you earned this badge 9:56AM on 4th of February 2024.
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  • barachiel.angel_ESO
    barachiel.angel_ESO
    Soul Shriven
    Great build! Any suggestions for customizing this for an Imperial?
  • James-Wayne
    James-Wayne
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    Great build! Any suggestions for customizing this for an Imperial?

    I run Imperial for my Stamina Sorc and Dragonknight Tank so I know they are a great race of choice. Due to Imperials passive of Tough (Increase Max Health) and Conditioning (Increase Max Stamina) you pretty much do not need to worry about these two at all, everything should be on Magicka from the start. These two passives will give you a nice boost so you can focus on Magicka. As your cost of spells will be higher (then what you have with Breton passives) you can boost this area using Champion Points, something you can not do the other way round (ie you can not boost health/stamina with CP passives, you get a boost each point but its not a passive boost per say).

    You could drop Structured Entropy and just run potions for the boost (costly option) that way you can free up a skill slot for another offense skill. You could slot in a Stamina based skill to help you out in the crowd control area, Caltrops perhaps as Templar doesn't have any good (working anyway) crowd control abilities. There are changes coming to Templar abilities soon so we'll wait and see what changes we get.

    PERTH, AUSTRALIA | PC | NA | @Aussie-Elders

    TENTH ANNIVERSARY - Thanks for sticking with us for 10 years.
    James-Wayne you earned this badge 9:56AM on 4th of February 2024.
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