Maintenance for the week of September 15:
• PC/Mac: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – September 15, 4:00AM EDT (8:00 UTC) - 9:00AM EDT (13:00 UTC)
• Xbox: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – September 16, 6:00AM EDT (10:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EDT (16:00 UTC)
• PlayStation®: NA and EU megaservers for patch maintenance – September 16, 6:00AM EDT (10:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EDT (16:00 UTC)

Genuinely Confused

SneaK
SneaK
✭✭✭✭✭
I have thousands of hours on ESO, but I’ve taken a substantial break (3+ years) from the game. I’m trying to fire it back up again, but I’m honestly just lost on what I’m doing.

Mainly a PvPer, so all my old builds were geared towards that. I have every class except the new one, I would say I mained a Stamblade and both DKs. Had builds for ball groups but also solo on my mains.

I barely made it out of the starting point cause it seemed like every skill changed and all the champ points are different.

Is there a go to source for the latest and greatest? I don’t know who’s who anymore and the internet is saturated with “guides”.

I guess the big questions are, what is the focus on PvP damage (weapon dmg/crit/pen/max stat), what armor is best for damage (all med, mix for undaunted, light viable?), impen important still, key skills without this new subclassing stuff, target health (seemed to just keep going up)?

Sorry that is a jumbled mess above.
"IMO"
Aldmeri Dominion
Bosmer Nightblade AR 32 - Altmer Templar AR 26 - Dunmer Dragonknight AR 18 - Altmer Sorcerer AR 20 - Khajiit Dragonknight AR 18
(+3 not worth mentioning, yet)
  • MincMincMinc
    MincMincMinc
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    SneaK wrote: »
    Mainly a PvPer, so all my old builds were geared towards that. I have every class except the new one, I would say I mained a Stamblade and both DKs. Had builds for ball groups but also solo on my mains.

    You want a rundown of the stats generally? For the most part the current state of the game is a Stamblade's wet dream. We are in a crit damage Assassination meta almost no contest.

    Max HP - most pvp builds shoot for 30-35k range. This has been fairly common since summerset like 7 years ago as everyone has access to hakeijos. Typically people run 3 heavy 3 medium and one light. People mix in more medium instead of heavy, but thats up to you. Just play around with the monster weights.

    Resists and pen - Most players are in the 25k to 30k resist mark so after breaches you will need around 16k-21k pen to fully cut out someones mitigation.

    Crit damage and resist - Ok now this is the biggest mess up zos has done. Zos has continued to add more and more crit damage sources everywhere, however they have not added an equivalent amount of crit resist sources. Before back in the day we sat at 46% crit resist vs maybe 50% to 75% crit damage on average......Now adays PvP you sit around 33%-57%mit against enemies with 90-170% crit damage

    Weapon/Spell damage - For the most part zos butchered all the solo player sets like fury, briar, ravager, 7th either by reducing their tooltips or placing unrealistic janky cooldowns on the sets. So you are better off going with Modifier stat sets if anything like pen, %dmg. Otherwise you will grab up whatever WD/SD you can once you fulfill the rest of your build.

    Regen - You will get the majority of your sustain from the armor weight passives, racials(imperial on 90% of builds), bear haunch food, and the tripots which give an insane 30% bonus. Most skill lines also have some passive regen or bonuses that are all balanced around a standard. Honestly I dont even run a sustain skill anymore because its not needed. Some people go crazy and run the Wretched vitality 5 piece, but I dont even know what they spend it on.....maybe im just an old stamsorc player that is used to not having anything?

    Crit chance - For the most part building for crit chance isnt a great investment. It is a better hot healing type of stat than it is damage wise. A line of Weapon damage will net you more damage, but less heals. Either you will be running Assassination which by default brings you to 45-50% crit or you will be running the 5 piece mechanical acuity to go between 25% and 100% crit chance. Otherwise you are kinda shooting yourself in the foot playing a nonmeta build sitting around 25-30% with major active.

    Max stam/mag - for the most part useless since capacity isnt needed with enough regen. Dont build for them or go out of your way for passives. Just grab up remaining attributes once you are done with maxHP.

    General pvp set template is
    Monomyth
    1x heavy trainee chest (impen vs reinforced is questioned alot.....IMO im not getting killed by parses, im getting killed from a merciless resolve crit bow doing 80% of my health every 5s, so I run impen)
    Backbar rallying cry which is the only way to really get crit resists

    Then you are left with frontbar 5 piece and your monster......sometimes you can justify an arena
    • Balorgh, Bloodspawn, Nibenay, Roksa
    • Essence Thief, Stuhns, Mechanical Acuity


    Other meta things to know are:
    • Status effects are super important, they essentially give 5 piece proc worth output
    • Subclassing makes slottable passives super important, so much so that you should avoid too many out of class skills if there are inclass alternatives
    • Most people have major and minor expedition now, so dont get left behind. Much like crit damage, zos has continued to add more and more movement speed sources everywhere, so the average has just crept out of control.
    • Assassination is without a doubt the most overtuned skill line. Merciless hits harder than every ult other than take flight every 5s, surprise attack is the best spammable without a doubt since it has 3 very strong bonus effects.
    Edited by MincMincMinc on August 29, 2025 7:22PM
    We should use the insightful and awesome buttons more
  • SneaK
    SneaK
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    Thank you, very much.

    Sounds like crit damage and pen would be the stats to shoot for (NB) so it seems.

    That Monomyth item is ridiculous.
    "IMO"
    Aldmeri Dominion
    Bosmer Nightblade AR 32 - Altmer Templar AR 26 - Dunmer Dragonknight AR 18 - Altmer Sorcerer AR 20 - Khajiit Dragonknight AR 18
    (+3 not worth mentioning, yet)
  • SneaK
    SneaK
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    @MincMincMinc is Spriggans still good?
    "IMO"
    Aldmeri Dominion
    Bosmer Nightblade AR 32 - Altmer Templar AR 26 - Dunmer Dragonknight AR 18 - Altmer Sorcerer AR 20 - Khajiit Dragonknight AR 18
    (+3 not worth mentioning, yet)
  • MincMincMinc
    MincMincMinc
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    SneaK wrote: »
    Thank you, very much.

    Sounds like crit damage and pen would be the stats to shoot for (NB) so it seems.

    That Monomyth item is ridiculous.

    Yes exactly you aim for % modifiers for damage. Whether it is pen, %damage done, or Crit*Critdmg
    SneaK wrote: »
    @MincMincMinc is Spriggans still good?

    No spriggans is so far gone. the two max stam lines because of inefficiencies are basically worth only a single damage line. So its 258wd and 3460 pen.

    The current newer version is shattered fate 7918 pen.............So 4458 pen more than spriggans. Even if you compare the two wd lines to pen lines from spriggans, those are worth 2974pen...........So shattered fate still has 1484 pen which is a basically another pen line.

    Proc wise Stuhns still provides more with 6799 and 258wd(2974pen) which is 9773pen compared to the 7918 of shattered. While also allowing a wd line to exist on the backbar for heals.

    Oakfather is another option, but since rallying cry is an absolute, you really cant run it because zos made light and heavy armor not viable due to the negative rock paper scissor bonuses that make you randomly strong or weak.
    We should use the insightful and awesome buttons more
  • SneaK
    SneaK
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    @MincMincMinc
    One more question…
    As far as damage/healing goes, I see people running both stam/mag abilities with success. When I last played you were stam or mag, I realized that changed, but how so?

    For instance, how would vigor be a go to heal for a mag build, or why would a magdk use claw over embers?

    Sorry if this is annoying. I’ve tried reading into it all but the write ups make it sound complicated.
    "IMO"
    Aldmeri Dominion
    Bosmer Nightblade AR 32 - Altmer Templar AR 26 - Dunmer Dragonknight AR 18 - Altmer Sorcerer AR 20 - Khajiit Dragonknight AR 18
    (+3 not worth mentioning, yet)
  • MincMincMinc
    MincMincMinc
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    SneaK wrote: »
    @MincMincMinc
    One more question…
    As far as damage/healing goes, I see people running both stam/mag abilities with success. When I last played you were stam or mag, I realized that changed, but how so?

    For instance, how would vigor be a go to heal for a mag build, or why would a magdk use claw over embers?

    Sorry if this is annoying. I’ve tried reading into it all but the write ups make it sound complicated.

    Originally the game was designed to be hybrid, but at some point there was the divide i think because of vigor early on that people who ran weapon skills started to heavily lean into needing stam.

    Somewhat more recently zos had converted most skills to simply scale with whatever was highest of your mag/stam or WD/SD.....meaning you could choose any morph you wanted again.

    Strangely enough they didnt finish doing this hybridization so we are still stuck with WD/SD or Weapon and Spell crit instead of just having damage and crit as stats. Same goes for resists.....for some reason they half made a new stat called "armor" but then on your stat sheet it still lists phys and spell resists. There are very niche buffs or effects that do affect singular stats, but most are never used or could have been fixed easily.
    So now it is up to you to find the balance you want. Maybe you run a stam race and want to use the more efficient regen mundus stones so you lean way more into stam. Generally every PvP build will have Vigor and Healing soul(major Vitality) on it though
    We should use the insightful and awesome buttons more
  • NxJoeyD
    NxJoeyD
    ✭✭✭
    SneaK wrote: »
    @MincMincMinc
    One more question…
    As far as damage/healing goes, I see people running both stam/mag abilities with success. When I last played you were stam or mag, I realized that changed, but how so?

    For instance, how would vigor be a go to heal for a mag build, or why would a magdk use claw over embers?

    Sorry if this is annoying. I’ve tried reading into it all but the write ups make it sound complicated.

    Originally the game was designed to be hybrid, but at some point there was the divide i think because of vigor early on that people who ran weapon skills started to heavily lean into needing stam.

    Somewhat more recently zos had converted most skills to simply scale with whatever was highest of your mag/stam or WD/SD.....meaning you could choose any morph you wanted again.

    Strangely enough they didnt finish doing this hybridization so we are still stuck with WD/SD or Weapon and Spell crit instead of just having damage and crit as stats. Same goes for resists.....for some reason they half made a new stat called "armor" but then on your stat sheet it still lists phys and spell resists. There are very niche buffs or effects that do affect singular stats, but most are never used or could have been fixed easily.
    So now it is up to you to find the balance you want. Maybe you run a stam race and want to use the more efficient regen mundus stones so you lean way more into stam. Generally every PvP build will have Vigor and Healing soul(major Vitality) on it though

    Yep, Healing Soul or Healing Contingency. I see HC quite a lot in PvP. It provides a bigger burst heal and offers the 8% damage reduction script that Soul doesn’t.

    One of the tricks I’m seeing more of now as well is damage reduction stacking. When adding a bunch of damage reduction attributes the mitigation formula with apply diminishing returns, but, once attackers apply breach, the nature of the math sees the players base resistance reduced and additionally impacts the diminishing returns factor, relaxing the math. Basically, by stacking more individual damage reduction modifiers they can essentially negate breaches.
  • MincMincMinc
    MincMincMinc
    ✭✭✭✭✭
    NxJoeyD wrote: »
    SneaK wrote: »
    @MincMincMinc
    One more question…
    As far as damage/healing goes, I see people running both stam/mag abilities with success. When I last played you were stam or mag, I realized that changed, but how so?

    For instance, how would vigor be a go to heal for a mag build, or why would a magdk use claw over embers?

    Sorry if this is annoying. I’ve tried reading into it all but the write ups make it sound complicated.

    Originally the game was designed to be hybrid, but at some point there was the divide i think because of vigor early on that people who ran weapon skills started to heavily lean into needing stam.

    Somewhat more recently zos had converted most skills to simply scale with whatever was highest of your mag/stam or WD/SD.....meaning you could choose any morph you wanted again.

    Strangely enough they didnt finish doing this hybridization so we are still stuck with WD/SD or Weapon and Spell crit instead of just having damage and crit as stats. Same goes for resists.....for some reason they half made a new stat called "armor" but then on your stat sheet it still lists phys and spell resists. There are very niche buffs or effects that do affect singular stats, but most are never used or could have been fixed easily.
    So now it is up to you to find the balance you want. Maybe you run a stam race and want to use the more efficient regen mundus stones so you lean way more into stam. Generally every PvP build will have Vigor and Healing soul(major Vitality) on it though

    Yep, Healing Soul or Healing Contingency. I see HC quite a lot in PvP. It provides a bigger burst heal and offers the 8% damage reduction script that Soul doesn’t.

    One of the tricks I’m seeing more of now as well is damage reduction stacking. When adding a bunch of damage reduction attributes the mitigation formula with apply diminishing returns, but, once attackers apply breach, the nature of the math sees the players base resistance reduced and additionally impacts the diminishing returns factor, relaxing the math. Basically, by stacking more individual damage reduction modifiers they can essentially negate breaches.

    Its safe to assume breach is on you 100% of the time to be honest. -8922 resists at all times. Either from a random Aoe Deep fissure. The terrible guaranteed sunder on surprise attack. Or from elesus.
    We should use the insightful and awesome buttons more
Sign In or Register to comment.