Many ESO-Players deem Magicka DK to be one of the toughest class-spec combination to beat veteran maelstrom arena. I strongly disagree. I get my highest scores on this toon (550k+). This is a build for first clears, farming the arena and getting a safe and fast weekly on your DK toons.

This build has a lot of advantages over other DK builds: No sustain issues due to heavy attack return and destro staff kills (3600 back on every kill), amazing AoE damage and an easy playstyle that let's you progress fast in the arena.

You can really focus on mechanics and enemies that kill you without having to perform a complex rotation at the same time.

Race:

Altmer gets the most out of it, but breton and dunmer work great too. But to be honest, you can do it with every race, it's just going to be a little more challenging.

Gear:






This might seem like a weird setup, but it is in fact really powerful in solo play, you can actually shieldtank vet dungeons with this.

The vMA Lightning staff and the undaunted infiltrator buff every tick of a channeled Lightning heavy attack by 5k after cps. Infallible aether applies the 8% debuff on the first tick of heavy Lightning attacks and buffs the last tick of it with another flat damage buff, and gives you permanent minor slayer. So this a flat 13% damage increase, plus spell damage and another two crit bonuses, so hell yes!

Undaunted infiltrator seems like a weird set to use, and I get that. But I've seen a lot of people saying "I won't use a set that is obviously trash and gives me stamina on a magicka toon." Go on, reject it, but you will regret it for sure when you die a lot in vMA and run out of stamina. Now that sergeants mail got nerfed, this is the best set to use with Lightning staff heavy attacks, period.

Viable replacements for infallible aether are spider cultist & elegance. Why? They buff your heavy attacks too, and spider cultist buffs elemental blockade and thunderous rage as well. Except for eruption and burning embers, I only use those three damage sources. So as a tradeoff for a little heavy attack damage, you get lots of damage on Blockade and thunderous rage.

As it is very unlikely that you have a vMA lightning staff when going for your first clear, I'll add three alternative setups that work too, in descending order of power:

1.
5 aether, 1 heavy molag kena and 1 medium undaunted infiltrator on the body.
3 undaunted infiltrator jewelry.
Sharpened lightning and restoration staff of undaunted infiltrator with spell damage enchants. Everything else as above. Restoration staff can be of any set though.
2.
4 aether, 2 undaunted infiltrator and 1 light kena on the body.
3 undaunted infiltrator jewelry.
Sharpened infallible aether lightning and restoration staffs with spell damage enchants. Everything else as above.
3.
5 & 5 aether and undaunted infiltrator with 3 undaunted infiltrator jewelry. Any crafted sharpened staffs with spell damage enchants.






Main Bar (vMA Lightning Staff): Dampen Magic (FLEX SPOT), Coagulating Blood/Burning Embers, Elemental Blockade, Dragonscales/Elemental Susceptibility/Destructive Reach, Inner Light, Shooting Star/Thunderous Rage

Back Bar (vMA Restoration Staff): Healing Ward, Molten Armaments, Rapid Regeneration, Eruption, Inner Light, Shooting Star[/spoiler]

The strategy is very simple:
1. Put down eruption and blockade under an enemy that you want to focus (hence, casters that you can't kite). If the enemy has less than 20k health, use only heavy attacks, if it has between 30k&50k, only use blockade and heavy attacks. Use eruption only in between rounds otherwise.
2. Heavy attack it to death.
3. Keep Dampen magic and rapid regen up. Due to the strong heavy attacks, you can actually resto staff heavy attack your health back to full.
4. Use thunderous rage on difficult rounds and bosses/minibosses. That thing melts stuff.
5. Dragonscales are a lifesaver on rounds 5, 7 & 8, so remember to use them there against mages and archers.
6. Put elemental susceptibility on bosses with high armor rating, such as 4, 6, 7 & 8.

Use the alphagear addon and assign the numbers from 1 to 9 to setups for different scenarios. You can change skill setups in one click with it and that helps a.lot in there.


To erase all doubts, here's a full flawless run with the old version of this Build, but it works exactly as in the video with the above setup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjQPiA5XENk

I improved my runs a lot by now, I get the 8th boss down in one go and nuke the 6th boss without even caring about adds to it.

Looking forward to answering your questions/remarks. I wanna see clears on this!

I copied some of it from my original HA DK guide, if you're interested in that, check it out:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/309550/elemental-fury-pve-heavy-attack-dk-build-homestead-ready-vmol-approved/p1?new=1

PS: This build is awesome and cancerous in duels against basically everyone. I'm at a KD ratio of around 10 with 0 impen and the abovementioned setup. Just replace eruption with fossilise and melt people!