I’ve developed a very interesting build that uses the Undaunted Infiltrator and Undaunted Unweaver sets in tandem. The concept is fairly similar to Xynode's Easy Sorc, but it's a bit different (it's not a Sorc build, for one, and it uses different sets) and I'm more focused on PVP.
The Basics
The concept is fairly simple: You want to buff up your heavy attack damage as much as possible, and then proc off balance on the enemy in order to just melt them with lightning heavy attacks. This build actually can really melt people. And you can basically ignore Magicka sustain in your build entirely, because you'll actually gain Magicka during your damage combo. You also can potentially build for a good bit of defense without giving up very much damage.
The basis for the build is as follows:
You run the Undaunted Infiltrator and Undaunted Unweaver sets. When procced, each of these sets adds just over 1100 damage to each tick of a channeled lightning heavy attack. There are 4 ticks. So, between the two of these, you add about 9000 damage to your lightning heavy attacks--which are do damage in an AOE. When an enemy is off balance, the damage they take from heavy attacks goes up 70% (80% if you've got the exploiter passive). Therefore, on an off balance enemy, these two sets combine to add over 15,000 damage to your heavy attacks--and that number is higher the more additional damage buffs you have on your heavy attacks. Regardless of class, the concept is to do one of two things: (1) proc the two sets and then pump in large AOE damage from a distance with your heavy attacks, or (2) get in and proc off-balance on someone and absolutely melt them. Since you're a heavy attack build, your sustain will be great. And the fact that you'll be topped up on magicka a lot will really help your defense, along with the fact that you can build for a lot of defense without losing much firepower.
At the moment, I'm using it on my Magplar, but I think the MagDK may be even better for it due to Molten Armaments. I'll describe below what I've built so far (along with some possible alternatives), then also describe what I plan to do with this on my MagDK once I've leveled him, and also give a brief description of how this has worked in the BGs I've played with it.
Magplar Build
The idea with the Magplar is basically to use Restoring Focus as a cheap and effective way to proc Undaunted Unweaver, and use Toppling Charge to stun and proc off balance (as well as proc Undaunted Infiltrator if need be) all in one. The basic combo would be Restoring Focus --> Purifying Light or Reflective Light --> Toppling Charge --> 1 or 2 heavy attacks --> maybe Radiant Oppression. And in terms of defense, if you're put on the defensive, you'll typically have a really high magicka pool left and Extended Ritual, Living Dark, and Honor the Dead, so it's very survivable.
My item setup is not 100% ideal yet. But in an ideal world, I think you'd have an Undaunted Infiltrator staff, two pieces of Undaunted Infiltrator jewelry, and an Undaunted Infiltrator chest piece. You'd then have Undaunted Unweaver hands, belt, legs, and boots, along with an Undaunted Unweaver jewelry piece. You then want one light and one heavy piece for a monster set. I'm using one piece Pirate Skeleton and one piece Lord Warden, just for the permanent resistance bonuses, but that's up to you, and there are many other solid options. Since it's PVP, I think having all the armor be impenetrable is ideal (though I've only got four impenetrable pieces on this build at the moment). In terms of enchants and jewelry/weapon traits, this is kind of up to you. I've tested it with: (1) all magicka glyphs on my armor except one health glyph; (2) all spell power glyphs on my jewelry; (3) all arcane traits on my jewelry; and (4) a precise weapon. However, a huge component of your damage is from the two sets, and that damage isn't affected by spell damage or magicka. So you could add some protective or healthy traits to the jewelry, and/or some more healthy or prismatic defense glyphs on the armor, and not lose a ton of damage. You could even run stamina recovery glyphs to help with breaking free and whatnot. You could also put Bloodthirsty glyphs on, since that would scale with the damage from your sets. In terms of the weapon trait, Precise is just what dropped for me, but I actually think Precise and Sharpened are clearly your two best bets, since they'll actually affect the Infiltrator and Unweaver set damage. On the back bar, I’ve got Precise since, again, that’s what dropped, but Defending may be better.
In terms of Mundus, I think The Lover is the best. Again, spell penetration actually affects the Infiltrator and Unweaver set damage. So do the crit damage and crit chance bonuses from The Shadow and The Thief, but I think The Lover is a bit better.
In terms of race, I'm a High Elf with this. I think that's probably the best one, since it helps your overall damage more than any other race (though I think Khajiit is probably very close), actually helps a lot with stamina sustain from the Spell Recharge passive, and I believe that same passive's 5% damage reduction applies when heavy attacking. But there are other options that would be good as well. Dark Elf would work. Khajiit would work because the critical damage scales with the set damage. And Nord would actually be decent to add some bulkiness.
In terms of food, I think tri-stat food is best. You certainly don't need magicka recovery from your food/drink.
For potions, it will ultimately depend on what you've got on your bar. You could cover Major Prophecy, Major Sorcery, and immovability with your skills--in which case you'd use tri-stat potions. But you could also leave a gap in your skills that you fill with a potion if you’d like. I’ll note that I think Major Prophecy is more important than Major Sorcery here because it scales with the set damage.
I'm not listing CP here, since I've tested this exclusively in BGs and so I haven't put much of any thought into the CPs.
For skills, here's what my bar looks like (with some discussion of alternatives below):
Front Bar: Restoring Focus, Toppling Charge, Honor the Dead, Reflective Light, Radiant Oppression, Eye of the Storm
Back Bar: Extended Ritual, Radiating Regeneration, Honor the Dead, Living Dark, Elusive Mist, Life Giver
There's a lot of flexibility there though. The only real must-haves are Restoring Focus, Toppling Charge, Honor the Dead, and Extended Ritual. A few thoughts on the skills below:
- I like to double bar Honor the Dead because I find it helps me react to burst damage just that little bit quicker, but you can definitely slot something like Purifying Light on the front bar instead.
- Especially if you slot Purifying Light, you could perhaps switch out Reflective Light for Inner Light, but I probably wouldn't (the reason I say you'd especially do that if you've got Purifying Light is that you definitely want at least one ranged Magicka ability you'll use on the front bar, to proc Undaunted Infiltrator).
- You could also swap out Radiant Oppression for Structured Entropy. Major Sorcery isn't actually a huge boost to your heavy attacks on this build, so it's not strictly necessary to have it, but it's a very good ability. I do get some use out of Radiant Oppression, but Structured Entropy could be better overall.
- Rapid Regen is probably better than Radiating Regeneration for PVP. But I also use my Magplar to heal dungeons, and don't want to switch the morph.
- Elusive Mist is surely better than Race Against Time--I'm just not a vampire. But I think I probably will make this character a vampire, in order to use Elusive Mist.
- The front bar ult is really up to you. I like Eye of the Storm and I think it synergizes very well with this build since you can cast it, then use Restoring Focus and Toppling Charge to proc your two sets and gap close and stun right as Eye of the Storm starts going off. But Crescent Sweep would be good, as would Devouring Swarm and the Mage's Guild ult.
- You could potentially get away with going sword and board on the back bar, and replacing Life Giver with Spell Wall. You'd no longer be able to run Regen, but that would open up a spot for sure for Structured Entropy and you'd at least get a bit of a heal over time from that.
Magicka Dragonknight build
For the most part, this build would be the same as above. I think it would be even stronger than the Magplar, but I've not yet tested it out and there would be downsides compared to the Magplar.
The main difference is just the skills. MagDKs would obviously use Molten Armaments. This would add massive damage to the already hard-hitting heavy attacks. I've not yet leveled my MagDK, but I think the damage on this would be extremely high. The way you'd proc off balance is Empowering Chains --> Fossilize --> Lava Whip (either morph).
The MagDK's damage would be much higher, but it would have a more drawn out process to create off balance. Whereas the Templar can gap close, stun, and proc off balance all with one skill, the DK would require three skills to do all of that. Therefore, the MagDK would have to play a little less aggressively, because if you get aggressive against a group, you could be punished before you've really had a chance to do much. Of course, the MagDK can actually do almost as much damage heavy attacking at a distance as a Magplar could against an off balance enemy (50% bonus from Molten Armaments vs. 70% bonus from off balance).
The MagDK also doesn't have quite as strong of survival tools this patch. Again, though, you can stay back and still deal massive damage, so it may not be harder to survive overall.
Finally, the MagDK would have a bit more of an annoying time proccing Undaunted Unweaver. There's no real obvious cheap stamina ability for the MagDK to spam in PVP to proc the set. You could use Vigor, even though it'd be a pretty weak heal on a magicka character. The best option may just be Noxious Breath though. You'd often just be using it on nothing, but it can get really cheap, and if you use Molten Whip, then having Noxious Breath as part of your setup would make your burst stronger. Your stamina sustain would take a hit from having to use Noxious Breath a bunch, but you'll get 990 stamina each time you use Fossilize and Molten Armaments. You could take a stamina recovery glyph in a jewelry piece as well if you find it's an issue--the lost spell damage won't be a huge deal.
Here's what I'd think the skills could be:
Front Bar: Noxious Breath, Empowering Chains, Molten Whip, Fossilize, Molten Armaments
Back Bar: Efficient Purge, Rapid Regen, Coagulating Blood, Volatile Armor, Elusive Mist, Life Giver
There are other ways to do it, but there's a bit less flexibility than on the Magplar, since your combo requires basically everything I listed on the front bar. If the Empowering Chains --> Molten Whip --> Fossilize combo is too unwieldy, one thing I might try is replacing Fossilize with Stone Giant. Stone Giant is a worse ability, but it may be that Molten Armaments is enough damage to basically melt people from afar if I can just stun them. And if they happen to be close, I could still proc off balance (albeit maybe a bit less reliably than you can with Fossilize since you don’t have the immobilize after the stun). This wouldn’t be as good in a 1v1, but it’s possible it’s better in a group context where you don’t necessarily want to be jumping in and taking time using two abilities before really doing your damage.
How It Has Worked For Me
I've played this with my Magplar. The results have been pretty good. I'm far from the best player—so I do come across players who are simply better than me. But I have had very good games with it. And I’ve managed to win 1v1’s against players that I can absolutely tell are better than me.
A few thoughts on it:
- The damage is good. If people are pretty squishy, they can basically be deleted by a Purifying Light/Reflective Light --> Toppling Charge --> 1 heavy attack and then maybe a couple ticks of another heavy attack or Radiant Oppression. People who are tankier can sometimes survive and get away if I attack them at full health, but not if I’ve got any support with me and typically not if they don’t have some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card (as in, cloak, streak, etc.) or catch me with a stun when my stamina is low. If they can’t find some way to get away or to keep me stunned for a while, it’s extremely difficult for someone to live through two off-balance heavy attacks and an execute. If they live through it, then they’re a pretty tanky build and have dumped away a lot of resources to survive, while I’ve literally gained magicka. I can't wait to see what the damage from the MagDK is like, since it's going to be significantly higher.
- The magicka sustain is incredibly good. You get over 7.2k magicka back from a heavy attack against an off balance opponent in no-CP. This means your damage combo literally gains you magicka. And if you kill people with your heavy attack—which you will—you’ll get another 3600 magicka back from the destruction staff passives. The only time you can really run out of magicka is if you’ve really been put on the back foot by people for a very long time. Overall, it’s the best magicka sustain I’ve ever had on any build that does even remotely similar damage.
- The stamina sustain is actually really good for a magicka build. You’ve got Restoring Focus. You’ve got the High Elf passive that will almost always restore stamina, since your magicka will be high. And you’ve got the Undaunted Unweaver set giving you over 2k extra stamina to work with. You’ll be using Restoring Focus more than is necessary (in order to proc Undaunted Unweaver), so the net stamina return on it isn’t quite optimal, but this is still one of the best magicka builds I’ve played in terms of stamina sustain. And honestly, given how a lot of your damage doesn’t scale with the spell damage stat, I’m thinking of possibly adding a stamina regen glyph or two to my jewelry, just to basically make this build incredibly strong against CC.
- The survivability is good. It’s a light armor build and doesn’t have a massive amount of health, so obviously it’s not the highest survivability possible. But with the defensive monster set combo I’m using along with Restoring Focus obviously always being up, the resistances are actually pretty good. Toppling Charge gives you minor protection for 6 seconds. You’ve got Extended Ritual, Living Dark, Regen, and Honor the Dead—all great defensive abilities. The resto ult is a fight reset basically. And I think Elusive Mist will add a lot of survivability once I get it. The key, though, is really the sustain. It’s basically impossible to catch me without a boatload of magicka to use to survive. There were players that were better than me that were able to get the drop on me and kill me a few times, but it typically would take them a very drawn out fight to do it when I’m pretty sure they’d have done so quicker against me on another build. There have also been some people that have been able to burst me down quickly, but that’s mostly just been lethal arrow and poison injection causing desyncs. I did play one stamden who repeatedly burst me down quickly, but that player was really good, and it was also in my first game on the build when I had no impen gear, no defensive monster set (so my resistances were over 5k lower), and wasn’t using the resto ult. As I mentioned above, though, I think one could build in more survivability into this build without actually giving up a ton of damage.
Final Notes
This is a very long post, but I do have some thoughts on this for PVE as well. I don’t think the Magplar would be very good with it since the benefit of being able to gap close, stun, and set off balance with one ability doesn’t really matter in PVE. However, I think the MagDK would be quite good. You’d use a Maelstrom lightning staff, with an Undaunted Infiltrator staff on the back bar. You'd proc Undaunted Unweaver with Beast Trap--which is a great ability anyways and is on the Easy Sorc build too. This would be similar to the Easy Sorc build, but with fewer shock abilities to proc off balance, but Molten Armaments for a permanent 50% heavy attack damage bonus. That should equal more single-target damage against bosses than the Easy Sorc can achieve, and probably still more AOE damage against groups of trash mobs, especially if someone else is using lightning damage. I think it would be very strong.
I also note that the Easy Sorc build uses Infallible Mage. I've read that that set only affects the damage on the last tick of the lightning staff's damage. I don't have it to test, but I did watch Xynode's latest Easy Sorc video, and I believe he said that too. If so, I do wonder whether a build using Infallible Mage is outdamaged by a build with Undaunted Unweaver, despite Infallible Mage having better bonuses otherwise for DPS. If not, then, if you're able to get it, Infallible Mage would be optimal over Undaunted Unweaver, and this would basically become a DK version of the Easy Sorc. Either way, you could slot Mystic Orb instead of Daedric Tomb (which Xynode suggests as an alternative anyways), Eruption instead of Liquid Lightning, Volatile Armor instead of Boundless Storm, Inner Light instead of Bound Armaments, Dampen Magic instead of Hardened Ward, and Molten Armaments instead of Mage's Wrath. In other words, the skill setup would basically be the same except you slot Molten Armaments instead of the execute.
but my luck has been less than stella so far.
