Hybrid Warden DPS Advice

Wolfen_Steiner · May 2017

The general consensus I've arrived at is that hybrids are still a niche which are only somewhat decent in certain situations, but I remain undeterred by this. I have the dream of playing a frosty melee guy with a giant attack bear. I've been looking at the Pelinal's Aptitude set, and stacking Weapon Damage. I'm set on my main hand weapon being a 2hander, of which I'm leaning towards the sword for the extra 5% damage. My main bar will have Critical Rush and Rally for certain. I've also been using Reverse Slice as my spam ability. The final two spots on the main bar are occupied by Gripping Shards and Arctic Blast for the frosty flavor. The ultimate is the bear of course. For my second bar, I've got a frost staff with Elemental Drain for the magicka regen as well as some other utility buffs like Bird of Prey and Leeching Vines, but this bar isn't fully fleshed out yet. I don't have much experience with staffs so I could use some recommendations.

I'm also curious as to how I should allocate my attribute points. I feel like some should should go into magicka just for the increased pool and the damage that entails, but I'm not sure how deep I should go into it, or if I even go into it at all. I've been using medium armor for the weapon damage but I've seen some other hybrid threads talking about using heavy armor for the regen. Is that a better direction to go in? I'm also curious about what other sets I should pair with Pelinal's Aptitude. I've been leaning towards three pieces of Assassin's Guile for the Weapon and Spell Critical. I'm also not sure what I should go with for jewelry either, but I'm leaning towards Agility. Any advice at all would be mostly appreciated!

Stannum · May 2017

DPS hybrid = Oxymoron

Asmael · May 2017

I had a pretty severe derp moment on the PTS (read: I already tested many things, my mind blew up), so I gave a shot to a vMA flurry hybrid pelinal DK build. That sounds super silly, and it absolutely is.

5x Pelinal
2x grothdarr
3x Willpower
2x vMA daggers
1x vMA inferno staff

DW - Burning embers, Engulfing flames, Inner light, Rapid strikes, Rearming trap // Flawless Dawnbreaker
Inferno staff: Eruption, <flex>, Inner light, Volatile armor, Elemental blockade // Standard of Might

5m / 1l / 1h for Undaunted passives, all attribute points into magicka, Witchmother's brew, Thief mundus. Maximum magicka enchants on the gear, Arcane jewelry, sharpened weapons, CPs pretty much like you'd set them for a magicka DD.

It kinda plays like the usual stamina DK rotation:

Rapid strikes > Burning embers
Rapid strikes > Engulfing flames
Rapid strikes > Rearming trap (swap)
Elemental blockade > Volatile armor
Eruption OR <flex> (swap)

Use light attacks inbetween, or HA if you need resources back. I was testing with the usual spell power / spell crit / magicka potions.

Fun fact: Volatile armor actually gets empowered by Maelstrom daggers (the more you know...). I was getting 20k DPS with this and definitely wouldn't recommend it unless you have a lot of gold to waste.

Wolfen_Steiner · May 2017

That's nice but I'm a Warden lol

And..

Stannum wrote: »

DPS hybrid = Oxymoron

The hybrid is the split between magicka and stamina damage instead of going fully into one or the other

DRXHarbinger · May 2017

Asmael wrote: »

I had a pretty severe derp moment on the PTS (read: I already tested many things, my mind blew up), so I gave a shot to a vMA flurry hybrid pelinal DK build. That sounds super silly, and it absolutely is.

5x Pelinal
2x grothdarr
3x Willpower
2x vMA daggers
1x vMA inferno staff

DW - Burning embers, Engulfing flames, Inner light, Rapid strikes, Rearming trap // Flawless Dawnbreaker
Inferno staff: Eruption, <flex>, Inner light, Volatile armor, Elemental blockade // Standard of Might

5m / 1l / 1h for Undaunted passives, all attribute points into magicka, Witchmother's brew, Thief mundus. Maximum magicka enchants on the gear, Arcane jewelry, sharpened weapons, CPs pretty much like you'd set them for a magicka DD.

It kinda plays like the usual stamina DK rotation:

Rapid strikes > Burning embers
Rapid strikes > Engulfing flames
Rapid strikes > Rearming trap (swap)
Elemental blockade > Volatile armor
Eruption OR <flex> (swap)

Use light attacks inbetween, or HA if you need resources back. I was testing with the usual spell power / spell crit / magicka potions.

Fun fact: Volatile armor actually gets empowered by Maelstrom daggers (the more you know...). I was getting 20k DPS with this and definitely wouldn't recommend it unless you have a lot of gold to waste.

@Asmael

Try out, 5 Hulking Drugar, 5 Necro (non DK or Temp Hybrid) with Stormfist.

4 Stamina Enchants, 3 Magika.

2x Weapon power glyphs, 1x Spell Damage glyph.

Tri Stat food.

Completed VMA flawless on a Nightblade (Mamblade possibly) DPS test skewed between 22-25k.

Rotation goes along the lines of,

Shades.
Hail
Relentless (next is light attack between all rapids)
Rapids-trap
Rapids-Twisting
Rapids-Cripple
Rapids-.....
Stuck at this part. possibly spammable (sup attack may work) whilst dots work. Need help with this from the commmunity on here that are keen to make a hybrid work, using rapids with VMA weapons (possibly axes as the weapon crit isn't that helpful imo on a hybrid but the bleed will be more powerful) and Cripple and twisting provides huge / monster damage and stormfist seems to be the go to set providing both physical and magic / shock damage.

DHale · May 2017

Hybrid in ESO means you will do half the dps you could do.

Faulgor · May 2017

I'm currently working on some hybrid builds as well.
My line of thought is to focus on light and heavy attacks for physical damage, because those don't scale a lot with stamina and light attacks got a big buff with Morrowind. Especially 2H, which now deals even more cleave damage.

5pc Pelinal is a must have.
Then you can either go for a monster set (Iceheart is great for hybrids imo) and another 3/4 piece, or another 5pc and 1 Velidreth/Kena monster piece. Briarheart is a good choice for your 2nd 5pc, imo.
5m/1l/1h if you have the undaunted passives, all attribute points into magicka and magicka/weapon power glyphs.

So you have a destro staff of your choice on your back bar, put down your dots, switch to your 2H main bar and whack away. Of course you could also use Reverse Slice, but it will be kind of lackluster.

Wolfen_Steiner · May 2017

DHale wrote: »

Hybrid in ESO means you will do half the dps you could do.

The more I try to make it work, the more I realize this is true. So much for flexibility in playstyle.

Gan Xing · May 2017

I'm also testing things out, but in general, I have found this

DHale wrote: »

Hybrid in ESO means you will do half the dps you could do.

to be true.

Because you are dipping in both magicka and stamina bars, if they aren't that high, you won't get too much damage. Pelenial is awesome, but you don't get much magicka or stamina from it. Shacklebreaker is nice, but again, you don't get too much from it (5 piece gives 2000 magicka and stamina)

One streamer (Kristofer) is toying around with 5 shacklebreaker, 4 Imperial physique, 1 kena, and then something for weapons (prolly Maelstrom/Master weapons), going heavy into Magicka, and then heavy into weapon damage (with jewelry glyphs).

It looks nice and can do some decent burst in PvE, but hasn't been performing well in PvP.

I'm using this as a base and gonna try to branch out from this, and try some other possibilities, esp with my planned builds.

I want to use Sword and Shield and a stave for forward damage on sword and shield, while providing a little defense, range damage with stave, while providing a way to get out/survive. Most will suggest I focus on being a magicka user and min max in that area, but I (like you all here) want a hybrid warden, able to dish out pain with the stam abilities that they provide us and with the magicka abilities as well.

Bladerunner1 · May 2017

Since you mentioned using a two hand weapon, stacking weapon damage and wearing Pelinals all in one paragraph, I'd recommend adding a sharpened ravager greatsword, ravager jewelry and a ravager heavy armor piece. You'll have a ton of weapon damage and so much health from Ravager that you'll be able to use the hybrid food that buffs stamina, magicka and magicka regen without worrying about buffing health.

Anything you do with the greatsword can proc Ravager easily, especially when surrounded by lots of mobs. The Ravager buff lasts 10 seconds even after swapping to a non-ravager set weapon.

On the other weapon bar I'd recommend using a Pelinals weapon or weapons. This way you can also slot a full monster helmet set. Grothdarr might not fit the ice theme, but Iceheart would. You could even try Molag Kena to get bursty results, like burst heals, burst Brawler shields or burst Damage. The other armor could be medium Pelinals to get the 12% weapon damage buff.