New player - Confused about armor sets

Maiels12 · July 2018

Hi everyone! Thank you for your time and patience. i just reached 160CP and decided I need a set of armour and after some research I just got more confused. I wanna be a StamDK PvE Build - so one suggestion, as an example, was this: Hundings + Sunder/Morag/Sunder/VO (Agility if no VO).

All of those are 5 piece sets, how am I supposed to get all those attributes when I can not wear all of them at once? Or maybe I got things wrong? I can not get my head wrapped around how sets work...can anyone help? And if you only get like 3/5 why even bother to combine sets?

Thank you again...this thing really got me confused.

Dimski · July 2018

5-5-2 is the new standard. Two handed weapon count for two slots.
A 2 piece set for head and shoulders
A 5 piece set for the rest of the body
Another 5 piece set for jewelry and weapons.

There are other ways to combine things.

VaranisArano · July 2018

You would run 5 pieces of Hundings. The, you would get one of those sets, whichever one fits what you can acquire and fits your playstyle.

danno8 · July 2018

I think the person who suggested those sets to you was giving you multiple options, not instructing you to wear 5 sets at one time.

You have 12 gear slots to work with so combining sets together can get you multiple bonuses. 5 piece sets generally have bonuses at the 2,3 ,4 and 5 piece mark. 2 piece sets (like monster helms and shoulders) offer a bonus on both the 1 and 2 piece mark.

The 5 piece final bonuses are often stronger than the 2, 3 or 4 set bonus, and the 2 piece bonus on a 2 piece set is often stronger than the 1 piece bonus. That is why you combine them.

Krayl · July 2018

There are a lot of great gear sets for stamina builds.

My suggestion would be this:

1.) Get someone to craft you Hunding's Rage set. It's about up there with most other sets as far as effectiveness.

https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Hunding's+Rage+Set

2.) Get Selene's monster set - Veteran Selene's Web is fairly easy if you get another good dps to go with you. Monster helm will drop 100% of the time from the final boss, and the shoulders can be randomly drawn from Gilirion the Redbear's chest using keys from doing pledges.

https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Selene+Set

There are some sets that might be slightly better, but this one is fairly painless to get (as opposed to say Velidreth in vet Cradle of Shadows)

3.) Farm an overland set and/or buy pieces for it. I recommend Spriggans because it's a good way to get some penetration when you won't have as much from CP and other sources.

https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Spriggan's+Thorns+Set

My suggestion would be to farm Spriggans Jewelry doing Dolmens, and then find 2 other body pieces either doing delves, world bosses, or buying them on the guild store. At the same time find vet Selene's groups for helmet and do pledges to get keys for shoulders.

Then have someone craft you Hunding's to fill in whatever pieces you need; probably weapons. those are the hardest to get to drop in the proper traits, so having them crafted is a good way to go.

Just my 2 cents as far as something that will take some work to get together but is totally achievable with some effort. Then from there you can work on getting "best in slot" stuff.

eso_nya · July 2018

U should get hundings because its craftable so easy to get (pref: weapons + 3x armor)
Than pick one of the list that is most easiest for u to get for 2x armor and jewelry.
Spriggans: drops in bangkorai
sunder: dungeons: coa 1 and 2 (dont go to coa 2 for farming xD)
vo: the 3 craglorn trials (very nice for sustain&speed, u might lack some penetration when u r on your own tho)
another option would be leiviathan (coh 1 and 2)

Personal advise would be to go for hundings + spriggans + kragh monster set (dungeon fg1), because it is by far the easiest/ungridiest setup u can get. (check uesp for unique spriggans parts, iirr there r some rewarded for quests)
Use those until u have a spot in a vtrial core group. if that happens, use whatever your raidleader tells u to use.

Minno · July 2018

always get a monster set or use a 2pc set bonus for your helm/sholders.

Then do either of the following:
- 5pc set on body with 3pc jewels 2pc weapons (either one 2h or two 1h weapons to complete that set). Be careful with this setup, some sets might "reactivate" on bar swap either leading to an annoying sound (jourvalds) or activating a cooldown (daetric trickery).
- 5pc set on body, 3pc jewels and 2pc weapon activated on your backbar. then use a weapon that grants its 2pc bonus on your main bar. This only works with sets whose effects can extend when you barswap (for example, running Transmutation in pvp can be activated on your backbar letting you run a different set on your main hand). This is how lots of people were building prior to the recent 2h weapon changes.
- having two 5pc sets activated on your main hand using sword+Shield or dual weld, and only one set activated on your backbard running a staff/2hander weapon (typically for defensive sets where you need it always activated but only need your offensive set activated on your main bar where most of your offensive abilities are located.) You waste the 2h weapon potential to let you have two 5pc sets, but more versatile for gear selection if you don't exactly get the gear drops you would of wanted.

But use the build editor to plan out your sets. This way you can save gold on testing out sets and where they should be located!!

MashmalloMan · July 2018

Something worth noting in addition to everyone's comments. Your back bar is always like a buff/dot bar, you don't want to spend too much time there so you front load all of your high dmg on the front bar. Slotting Flawless Dawnbreaker ult for 8% wep dmg for example. A spamable skill and so forth. This means you want to always have your 5-5-2 setup front bar. When you switch to your back bar, since your there for a short duration, slotting one of the "skill upgrading" weapons on the back bar is very strong. This means that 1 of your 5 peice sets would lose its 4/5 peice traits because the weapon on your back bar has it's own set effect.

The go to weapon back bar is a VMA bow to buff your endless hail by 2k+ dps. That means you want to try and setup your gear in a way that you benefit from it 24/7. Having 2 sets that have persistant effects like Hundings and Spriggans, means you will lose those big bonuses when you weapon swap, that's why pretty much every good pve build will have 1 set that is persistent as a 5 piece, lets say hundings on chest/legs/gloves/belt/boots and then the other set would be weapons/jewelry with a duration buff.

Sets like Advancing Yokeda(heavy set - needs transmutation for jewelery) and Veiled Herritance(heavy set - needs transmutation for jewelery) are best used as weapon/jewelery so that when you weapon swap you keep the bonus by the time you swap to your front bar.

Some examples for sets that are only needed on front bar - remember rule of thumb is you will be on back bar for 3-5 sec:
Advancing Yokeda (heavy - transmutation needed for jewelery - 5sec buff)
Veiled Herritance (heavy - transmutation needed for jewelery - 5sec buff)
Ravager (heavy - transmutation needed for jewelery - 10sec buff 10sec cd, proc chance from 8% melee dmg)

Twice Fanged Serpent (medium - 3sec buff, better penetration then spriggans)

Night Mother's Gaze (medium - 6sec buff, major fracture buff) Will not stack in raid/group content so only good for solo content and classes that don't have access to Major Fracture like Stamina Sorcerer.
Sunderflame - (medium - 8sec buff, minor fracture/breach) Same as night mothers gaze ^.

Briarheart (medium - 10sec buff, 15sec cd *minimum 5sec downtime* DLC)
Mechanical Acuity (medium - 5sec 100% crit, 18 sec cd *minimum 13sec downtime* DLC Crafted Set, can be traded)

Really.. the only option for skill buffing weapons as stamina pve dps is:
VMA Bow for endless hail (DLC)
Master Bow for 300+ weapon dmg to targets affected by poison injection.

This is from the point of view of endgame pve dps, you don't have to follow it. Just remember how sets work in this way. If you are going to invest in a good weapon for your back bar that breaks the 4/5 bonus, try to make the set you lose when you swap carry it's buff over.

Personally I'm running Relequen/Veiled Heritance/Storm Fist w/ VMA bow back bar. I can reach 42k DPS on a target dummy on a good parse as a stam sorc, self buffed.