MAGICKA WARDEN - THE ARCANE
7 piece light, destro/resto, fully optimized & battle tested - big shields, big damage, big sustain - 8 inches UNBUFFED
7 piece light, destro/resto, fully optimized & battle tested - big shields, big damage, big sustain - 8 inches UNBUFFED
Build in Action:
*note that as badass as the video is the clips are from my first & second day of playing warden. I've extensively tested this build and several variations in cyrodil and bgs since then, and the build holds up under a lot of different scenarios.
Hello fellow Elder Scrolls Online players, my name is Zilane a.k.a. Rex, and this is an in-depth magicka warden build guide & discussion thread.
It's actually a bit more specific than that. It's about building a light armor magicka warden with necropotence as a foundation, with a focus on solo & duo play in cyrodil and BGs. The majority of this post will be discussing my personal light armor mag warden build, but in the latter half the post will diverge and go into an in depth discussion of ulti, skill, & gear variations with pros and cons. Hence, the discussion portion.
I'm just going to go right ahead and tell you that I'm running necropotence and shacklebreaker with 1 piece grothdar. This is probably a pretty common set up for the mag warden but from the several build videos I've seen running this exact set-up none have been properly optimized, hence I decided that it was worth making this build walkthrough.
So without further ado, I present to you the Arcane:
A light armor magicka warden that embodies the tenets of a pure mage; big shields, big damage, and an unending deluge of magicka to sustain his spellcasting. No metal or leather on this student of aetherius--only cloth can withstand the Arcane Warden's infinite power.
So sit back, relax, and let's nerd the *** out.
BUILD OVERVIEW
First here is my stat sheet with necropotence, netch, and the berserker enchant. This is my front bar, which is going to be a bit stronger than my back bar stats but not by too much. This is with CP so expect a bit less regen and resource pools in non-CP environments, this build works well in both CP and non-CP.
As you can see, a lot of max magicka, good magicka regeneration, decent crit chance, and the offstats look pretty nice as well, a healthy amount of max stamina and stamina regen. Health is low, but that's going to be OK, I promise. Note that I am still missing some CP, 3% max magicka from passives and 1% mag regen from passives that I have not completed yet.
Race, Mundus, and Food:
I am a high elf vampire, really great sustain passives that synergize well with warden class passives. Mundus stone is Atronach, and I am using tri stat food.
Gear:
Five piece necropotence: three jewelry, two body. On the jewelry are triple magicka regen glyphs, I have experimented with various combinations of spell damage and spell cost reduction glyphs but I think magicka regen glyphs are the best way to go because of how much magicka regen bonuses you have stacked up (a total of 52% with potion buff). It's a close call with triple cost reduction glyphs but I personally prefer to have passive regen.
Five shacklebreaker: four body, destro and resto staff. Is shackle breaker really the best choice here? Yes and no, there are a few viable alternatives here: Destruction Mastery, Lich, Amberplasm, Wizard's Riposte, Spinner, War Maiden. They are all much harder to obtain in the exact trait set-ups and pieces you need, and none of them are just straight up better SO, shackle breaker is a great choice here and one we need not feel ashamed of. I will discuss these alternative sets in depth below with a bit of number crunching and analysis.
1 piece grothdarr: or really, any max magicka piece. No full undaunted set-up here, it does hurt that is true, but it's the only way we are going to have two five-piece bonuses active on both bars. You are welcome to give up necropotence on your back-bar and run dual wield front bar to have a full undaunted set, it's up to you.
Every single piece is light armor; you can do 2 heavy 5 light, or 1-1-5 for undaunted, or whatever you want but I prefer the extra sustain from 7 light, and this will synergize well with our main defensive skill, dampen magic.
Traits & Enchants:
Three infused on the body, on your three big enchant pieces which are legs, chest, and helm to maximize your magicka even further, don't worry damage shields will keep you alive and you're so squishy that three impen really won't help you there. Might as well get slightly larger shields, do slightly more damage, and have slightly more magicka to spend. Four impen on the small pieces I feel is a necessary compromise because you DO need to eat some raw crit damage from time to time, but feel free to live dangerously and use divines if you want. All max magicka enchants except for a prismatic on the helm, that's also a small compromise on my part because I do value a little bit of that extra health and stamina. Again, feel free to live dangerously and stack all magicka if you want.
Three magicka regen glyphs on the jewelry as explained.
On the weapons we have front bar fire* (can also use lightning) destro staff with an oblivion enchant, extremely reliable way to add some damage to your burst, I am currently running sharpened but next patch I will most likely run infused.
Back bar we have a resto staff with a berserker enchant and the trait is infused, which buffs your spell damage by quite a bit and reduces the downtime of the berserker enchant to almost nothing (after the next patch it can potentially be up 100% of the time). We don't really need defending here because if we don't keep our shields up we will die anyway, and shields do not benefit from resistances, same reason we give up 3 impen for infused on our armor.
Skills:
I'm going to show you the basic set up, which I feel is the most stable and impactful:
Front bar we have, cliff racer, fetcher, and shalk. The holy trinity of Mag Warden DPS. Inner light to ramp up the max magicka and spell crit, and finally dampen magic.
Back bar we have, ward ally, netch, fortress, bird of prey, and mist form.
For ulti, I generally run permafrost front bar and healing thicket back bar, but at the same time I try to run the bear ulti as much as is feasible. However, the bear AI is garbage and therefore the ulti is too unreliable to use regularly; I'm going to talk about the bear ulti first and then later I'll discuss both permafrost and healing thicket.
Skill Choices & Placement in-depth:
First let's talk offence; you want to stack as many animal companion skills on one bar as possible because each skill from this tree on your bar will buff the damage of animal companion ability by 2%. In this set-up I have four animal companion skills slotted on the front bar, which means all four of those skills are buffed by 8%.
You have inner light to add even more damage on this bar, and you have dampen magic because inner light's max magicka bonus, only active on the front bar, also buffs the size of your shield.
So you have 8% bonus damage from animal companion passive (6 without bear), on your cliff racer, fetcher, and bear, and all four of your damaging abilities gain another 6% damage from the Winter's Embrace passive, and finally bird of prey will add minor berserk, another 8% bonus damage.
So a total of 22% (20% without bear) bonus damage on your cliff racer, fetcher, and bear. A total of 16% (12% without bear) bonus damage to your shalk . Since your tooltip is high to begin with, and it's empowered by your very high max magicka, you are going to hit really really hard.
Let's talk defense; defense is all about the shields. Damage shields will keep you alive and buy you time to line up that sweet sweet mag warden burst combo. You have dampen magic as your primary defensive ability. It's on the front bar so it can benefit from the inner light max magicka buff. Why dampen instead of harness? Because this build is so totally reliant on damage shield to keep itself alive, we want big shields. With 7 piece light you get a grand total of 42% increase in the shield amount, which is already pretty big because we have a lot of max magicka. And we have enough magicka sustain to spam shields for a long time while also throwing in some offensive abilities and our key buffs in-between. This is the primary reason to go 7 light instead of 5-2 or 5-1-1, you get the extra 12% increase in shield amount, as well as additional cost reduction and magicka regen bonuses to support your dependence on damage shields.
If you go to the back bar, you will see Ice Fortress. The Major Ward and Resolve are nice for the times that your shield will inevitably break, but what you really gain from this skill is minor protection which reduces incoming damage by 8%, and applies to damage shields.
What does this mean? It means that with ice fortress active, your damage shield is effectively 8% larger. Very nice, combining dampen magic and minor protection Magicka Wardens can effectively achieve the kind of damage shield efficiency that previously only mag sorcs with Hardened Ward could achieve. I see a lot of light armor wardens ignore this skill and I think it's a huge mistake.
Next we have ward ally. Great ability and paired with dampen magic you will be able to absorb a pretty insane amount of damage. The shield from this skill scales inversely with your current health; lower health means bigger shields. It starts pathetic but ramps up to life-saving when you are low in health. Dampen keeps you healthy throughout the fight, ward ally helps you stabilize if (when) you get low.
Why do I use ward ally instead of healing ward? Because I duo a lot, and ward ally in a duo is *** incredible. Running duo or solo, you will frequently (pretty much always) be outnumbered, which means you are going to be facing a lot of pressure. Healing Ward is very nice. However, outside of the fairly small initial heal, Healing Ward only heals you if you have shields leftover when it expires and if there are two viper-blades and a magsorc going ham on either you or your duo partner, it's going to be very difficult to get the full value of that morph. And what happens if you and your duo partner are both low? Healing ward will save only one of you and then most likely both of you will die.
Enter ward ally. This morph has no healing component, and the shield amount remains the same on an individual target--however, it will always, always go on two targets, one of them guaranteed to be you. The shields will scale off the target's health so if I have full HP and my duo partner has low HP, I will get a small shield, my duo partner will get a large shield. Here's the thing though, you AND your duo partner will seldom be at full health throughout an intense, outnumbered fight. As both you and your partner get lower in health, the value of ward ally ramps up very quickly. Your duo survivability goes way up with ward ally, it's not a huge loss solo, and your duo partner that you just saved with ward ally can throw a vigor on both of you, which will heal the two of you safely under 2 large damage shields.
Netch is a no brainer, major sorcery, magicka return, single cleanse, activates necropotence , major sorcery, no cost. Bird of prey is more of a offensive selection, but it does give you major endurance, increasing your stamina regen, and major expedition which gives you a bit more mobility.
Mist form is a funny skill. When you don't need it you will feel like it's a complete waste of a slot and you wish you had something more useful on your bar, and then all of a sudden that one moment arrives where it would have changed everything--and you put it back on your bar. I think in the end, unless you're running in a larger group that can babysit you, have mistform on your bar. Throw on a damage shield with minor protection up, go into mistform, you can tank a lot of damage; root and snare spam you will need mistform to get to your ally or to a line of sight location.
Quick note, why double shield over one or two heals from the Green Balance tree? I will go deeper into this during the variation section but since I'm so squishy anyway, the heals are not impactful enough compared to the sheer damage soaking power of ward ally, and dampen is pretty much a must to survive big focus fire in light armor. Heals have more value the more you invest into your health--what does that mean? The more resists you stack on your health, more crit resists you add on top of it, the more health you have to begin with, etc. Since we're going so far in the other direction where our health is worth very little, big shields have much larger value than heals which can easily be erased with a couple crits. Neither does the mag warden have access to heals bursty enough to save us when we really need saving like magplar's breath of life.
Once you start speccing into heals you start losing the carefully built synergy between gear, race, and skill selection, then you start thinking, damn should I be an argonian or breton in heavy armor instead? Then you end up with a completely different build.
You have inner light to add even more damage on this bar, and you have dampen magic because inner light's max magicka bonus, only active on the front bar, also buffs the size of your shield.
So you have 8% bonus damage from animal companion passive (6 without bear), on your cliff racer, fetcher, and bear, and all four of your damaging abilities gain another 6% damage from the Winter's Embrace passive, and finally bird of prey will add minor berserk, another 8% bonus damage.
So a total of 22% (20% without bear) bonus damage on your cliff racer, fetcher, and bear. A total of 16% (12% without bear) bonus damage to your shalk . Since your tooltip is high to begin with, and it's empowered by your very high max magicka, you are going to hit really really hard.
Let's talk defense; defense is all about the shields. Damage shields will keep you alive and buy you time to line up that sweet sweet mag warden burst combo. You have dampen magic as your primary defensive ability. It's on the front bar so it can benefit from the inner light max magicka buff. Why dampen instead of harness? Because this build is so totally reliant on damage shield to keep itself alive, we want big shields. With 7 piece light you get a grand total of 42% increase in the shield amount, which is already pretty big because we have a lot of max magicka. And we have enough magicka sustain to spam shields for a long time while also throwing in some offensive abilities and our key buffs in-between. This is the primary reason to go 7 light instead of 5-2 or 5-1-1, you get the extra 12% increase in shield amount, as well as additional cost reduction and magicka regen bonuses to support your dependence on damage shields.
If you go to the back bar, you will see Ice Fortress. The Major Ward and Resolve are nice for the times that your shield will inevitably break, but what you really gain from this skill is minor protection which reduces incoming damage by 8%, and applies to damage shields.
What does this mean? It means that with ice fortress active, your damage shield is effectively 8% larger. Very nice, combining dampen magic and minor protection Magicka Wardens can effectively achieve the kind of damage shield efficiency that previously only mag sorcs with Hardened Ward could achieve. I see a lot of light armor wardens ignore this skill and I think it's a huge mistake.
Next we have ward ally. Great ability and paired with dampen magic you will be able to absorb a pretty insane amount of damage. The shield from this skill scales inversely with your current health; lower health means bigger shields. It starts pathetic but ramps up to life-saving when you are low in health. Dampen keeps you healthy throughout the fight, ward ally helps you stabilize if (when) you get low.
Why do I use ward ally instead of healing ward? Because I duo a lot, and ward ally in a duo is *** incredible. Running duo or solo, you will frequently (pretty much always) be outnumbered, which means you are going to be facing a lot of pressure. Healing Ward is very nice. However, outside of the fairly small initial heal, Healing Ward only heals you if you have shields leftover when it expires and if there are two viper-blades and a magsorc going ham on either you or your duo partner, it's going to be very difficult to get the full value of that morph. And what happens if you and your duo partner are both low? Healing ward will save only one of you and then most likely both of you will die.
Enter ward ally. This morph has no healing component, and the shield amount remains the same on an individual target--however, it will always, always go on two targets, one of them guaranteed to be you. The shields will scale off the target's health so if I have full HP and my duo partner has low HP, I will get a small shield, my duo partner will get a large shield. Here's the thing though, you AND your duo partner will seldom be at full health throughout an intense, outnumbered fight. As both you and your partner get lower in health, the value of ward ally ramps up very quickly. Your duo survivability goes way up with ward ally, it's not a huge loss solo, and your duo partner that you just saved with ward ally can throw a vigor on both of you, which will heal the two of you safely under 2 large damage shields.
Netch is a no brainer, major sorcery, magicka return, single cleanse, activates necropotence , major sorcery, no cost. Bird of prey is more of a offensive selection, but it does give you major endurance, increasing your stamina regen, and major expedition which gives you a bit more mobility.
Mist form is a funny skill. When you don't need it you will feel like it's a complete waste of a slot and you wish you had something more useful on your bar, and then all of a sudden that one moment arrives where it would have changed everything--and you put it back on your bar. I think in the end, unless you're running in a larger group that can babysit you, have mistform on your bar. Throw on a damage shield with minor protection up, go into mistform, you can tank a lot of damage; root and snare spam you will need mistform to get to your ally or to a line of sight location.
Quick note, why double shield over one or two heals from the Green Balance tree? I will go deeper into this during the variation section but since I'm so squishy anyway, the heals are not impactful enough compared to the sheer damage soaking power of ward ally, and dampen is pretty much a must to survive big focus fire in light armor. Heals have more value the more you invest into your health--what does that mean? The more resists you stack on your health, more crit resists you add on top of it, the more health you have to begin with, etc. Since we're going so far in the other direction where our health is worth very little, big shields have much larger value than heals which can easily be erased with a couple crits. Neither does the mag warden have access to heals bursty enough to save us when we really need saving like magplar's breath of life.
Once you start speccing into heals you start losing the carefully built synergy between gear, race, and skill selection, then you start thinking, damn should I be an argonian or breton in heavy armor instead? Then you end up with a completely different build.
Basic Usage
The basic combo is simple, get your buffs up, throw on a fetcher & barswap, light attack resto to proc berserker enchant, cancel with bird of prey and bar swap. Activate the shalk, throw a cliffracer, then light attack cancel your bear. Under ideal circumstance you will hit in rapid succession (or all in one instance if the stars align), cliffracer, shalk, oblivion enchant, light attack, fetcher tick, and bear if you are running it.
Your main defense is dampen magic. You will need to throw this up often, and by often I mean more than every 6 seconds. You don't want to eat a CC right as your shield expires because you will die to any competent player pretty much instantly. Once you get more comfortable with the build and class, you can start casting dampen less frequently. It's a bit of an art knowing how far you can stretch shield efficiency to make the most use of your magicka, but hey, when in doubt throw on a dampen, you have the magicka regen to support this.
Note that because you need a shield up to survive any burst, you will recast shields frequently. Add to that three buffs to maintain, and it will be difficult to line up the "ideal" combo described above. But when you get everything to line up perfectly you will feel the burst, and so will the guy you just deleted.
Also note that casting inner light will empower your next damage done by 20%. IMO it's not worth it, just cast an extra bird instead and that'll do more than the empower.
When you are under extreme pressure, you want to cast dampen magic, cancel with bar swap, immediately cast ward ally, cancel with bar swap, and most likely recast dampen magic. You can repeat this as long as you need to, and since you have big shields and high regen you can often force your attacker to back off and regain resources. If you REALLY want to ramp up your survival however I suggest you throw in a dodge roll cancel there. Dampen magic->bar swap->ward ally->bar swap into dodge roll->dampen magic is a great combo and often buys you enough time to prep and shalk, use a pot, get healed by your duo partner, etc. as well as buying time for healing thicket.
Sometimes offense is the best defense, in which case you might want to use permafrost instead of healing thicket to relieve pressure. Find a good spot, usually a tight choke near some line of sight, and use permafrost with dampen up. Major protection from permafrost, minor protection from ice fortress, and minor maim from the frost damage extends the value of your damage shields to very high levels, allowing you to tank a lot of damage with your shield and focus down a target with a burst combo.
Your main defense is dampen magic. You will need to throw this up often, and by often I mean more than every 6 seconds. You don't want to eat a CC right as your shield expires because you will die to any competent player pretty much instantly. Once you get more comfortable with the build and class, you can start casting dampen less frequently. It's a bit of an art knowing how far you can stretch shield efficiency to make the most use of your magicka, but hey, when in doubt throw on a dampen, you have the magicka regen to support this.
Note that because you need a shield up to survive any burst, you will recast shields frequently. Add to that three buffs to maintain, and it will be difficult to line up the "ideal" combo described above. But when you get everything to line up perfectly you will feel the burst, and so will the guy you just deleted.
Also note that casting inner light will empower your next damage done by 20%. IMO it's not worth it, just cast an extra bird instead and that'll do more than the empower.
When you are under extreme pressure, you want to cast dampen magic, cancel with bar swap, immediately cast ward ally, cancel with bar swap, and most likely recast dampen magic. You can repeat this as long as you need to, and since you have big shields and high regen you can often force your attacker to back off and regain resources. If you REALLY want to ramp up your survival however I suggest you throw in a dodge roll cancel there. Dampen magic->bar swap->ward ally->bar swap into dodge roll->dampen magic is a great combo and often buys you enough time to prep and shalk, use a pot, get healed by your duo partner, etc. as well as buying time for healing thicket.
Sometimes offense is the best defense, in which case you might want to use permafrost instead of healing thicket to relieve pressure. Find a good spot, usually a tight choke near some line of sight, and use permafrost with dampen up. Major protection from permafrost, minor protection from ice fortress, and minor maim from the frost damage extends the value of your damage shields to very high levels, allowing you to tank a lot of damage with your shield and focus down a target with a burst combo.
VARIATIONS - Ultimate Choice
I love the bear ulti, it hits like a truck, it's probably the highest tooltip burst ulti in the game to begin with and then it does double damage to targets in execute range, 25% HP or lower. When the bear works you will delete somebody. BUT the bear AI is kind of garbage, and sometimes due to no fault of your own, it will simply just disappear. You can't recast it, you can't use the ulti to do damage, the bear just disappears. It also takes up both ulti slots. I have pulled off some pretty amazing 1v2, 1v3s with the bear in this build by pulling off rapid kills, timing huge burst combos. But until ZOS gives us a keybind to recall bear to our location (where it drops all aggro and starts pathing back to us), allowing us to quickly micromanage the bear's position, it's a fun luxury ulti and nothing more.
Therefore, the more stable ulti variation, with more utility and reliability--permafrost front bar, healing thicket back bar.
Why permafrost instead of northern storm? Northern storm will increase your max magicka by 8% while slotted, giving you bigger dampen magic shields and increasing your damage overall. Really nice morph and you are welcome to use it, however in solo, duo and other small-scale scenarios you are going to be frequently fighting outnumbered. And often in these scenarios, me and my duo partner will rely on big coordinated ulti drops to get some kills and gain back momentum. Permafrost is much better than Northern storm in terms of its impact once activated. It's got an AOE stun, it's delayed so you can get value from it even if you don't use it in the middle of a million people. The mass aoe stun takes SO MUCH pressure off of you, that with proper coordination it allows you to throw on dampen magic and really go full offensive for a few seconds, during which you and your partner may be able to get some kills you otherwise could not have gotten. Seriously, the CC is invaluable when you are outnumbered, and with smart play you have more than enough damage and shield value without the extra 8%. When you really need to win a losing fight, permafrost will come through where northern storm will not.
Why healing thicket vs. enchanted forest? Enchanted forest returns 20 ultimate if you heal someone below 50% health with it. Since it costs only 75 to begin with this is huge and it would be a viable choice as well. Personally I choose Healing Thicket, which extends the duration of the heal over time by 4 seconds (a 66% duration increase) for a total HOT duration of 10 seconds, and the reasoning is the same as permafrost--I want the cast to have max impact on the fight. Being able to recast healing thicket again quicker is attractive--however, in close, intense fights where the odds are stacked against you, every global cool-down is precious. With one cast of healing thicket, me and my duo partner have 10 seconds of very powerful heal over time to turn the tables and apply some much needed pressure.
Some other ulti choices that are viable and a brief analysis-
Front bar, soul assault, incredible single target damage, fetcher, shalk, bird, dampen and hit soul assault. Great Xv1 tool if that's your cup of tea. Not my personal choice but it will hit incredibly hard as soul assault will be buffed 22% from all your passives. Dawnbreaker, pairs very nicely with everything but it is physical damage and not magical damage so you do lose out on the 8% Winter's Embrace passive and it is dodgeable now so personally do not like it. Destro ulti, of course it's good, it's destro ulti, but solo or duo you lack the mobility to really capitalize on its use and again you lose out on the 8% Winter's Embrace passive as well as the 8% fire staff passive. Meteor is great, but I don't like that it is telegraphed and almost everyone knows to block it now. Personally, permafrost is the clear winner with soul assault & meteor close behind.
Back bar, really the only alternative here is light's champion. Major protection to make you tanky, big heals under that, and major force with your already high crit chance means you can pop a resto ulti, line up a big combo with shalk fetcher & bird, and maybe destroy someone with a couple of empowered crits.
Therefore, the more stable ulti variation, with more utility and reliability--permafrost front bar, healing thicket back bar.
Why permafrost instead of northern storm? Northern storm will increase your max magicka by 8% while slotted, giving you bigger dampen magic shields and increasing your damage overall. Really nice morph and you are welcome to use it, however in solo, duo and other small-scale scenarios you are going to be frequently fighting outnumbered. And often in these scenarios, me and my duo partner will rely on big coordinated ulti drops to get some kills and gain back momentum. Permafrost is much better than Northern storm in terms of its impact once activated. It's got an AOE stun, it's delayed so you can get value from it even if you don't use it in the middle of a million people. The mass aoe stun takes SO MUCH pressure off of you, that with proper coordination it allows you to throw on dampen magic and really go full offensive for a few seconds, during which you and your partner may be able to get some kills you otherwise could not have gotten. Seriously, the CC is invaluable when you are outnumbered, and with smart play you have more than enough damage and shield value without the extra 8%. When you really need to win a losing fight, permafrost will come through where northern storm will not.
Why healing thicket vs. enchanted forest? Enchanted forest returns 20 ultimate if you heal someone below 50% health with it. Since it costs only 75 to begin with this is huge and it would be a viable choice as well. Personally I choose Healing Thicket, which extends the duration of the heal over time by 4 seconds (a 66% duration increase) for a total HOT duration of 10 seconds, and the reasoning is the same as permafrost--I want the cast to have max impact on the fight. Being able to recast healing thicket again quicker is attractive--however, in close, intense fights where the odds are stacked against you, every global cool-down is precious. With one cast of healing thicket, me and my duo partner have 10 seconds of very powerful heal over time to turn the tables and apply some much needed pressure.
Some other ulti choices that are viable and a brief analysis-
Front bar, soul assault, incredible single target damage, fetcher, shalk, bird, dampen and hit soul assault. Great Xv1 tool if that's your cup of tea. Not my personal choice but it will hit incredibly hard as soul assault will be buffed 22% from all your passives. Dawnbreaker, pairs very nicely with everything but it is physical damage and not magical damage so you do lose out on the 8% Winter's Embrace passive and it is dodgeable now so personally do not like it. Destro ulti, of course it's good, it's destro ulti, but solo or duo you lack the mobility to really capitalize on its use and again you lose out on the 8% Winter's Embrace passive as well as the 8% fire staff passive. Meteor is great, but I don't like that it is telegraphed and almost everyone knows to block it now. Personally, permafrost is the clear winner with soul assault & meteor close behind.
Back bar, really the only alternative here is light's champion. Major protection to make you tanky, big heals under that, and major force with your already high crit chance means you can pop a resto ulti, line up a big combo with shalk fetcher & bird, and maybe destroy someone with a couple of empowered crits.
VARIATIONS - Food, Mundus, & Jewelry Glyphs
Tri-stat is good, so is witchmother's. I prefer to have the extra stamina as dodge-roll canceling wards can be a huge defensive move, and the 1k extra health and magicka are nice over witchmother's. But then again having nearly 3000 (or more in CP with pot up) magicka regen with Witchmother & Atro is pretty incredible.
Thief is currently the most value of the mundus stones when compared to set piece bonuses, but this will all change soon with the next patch. For now I prefer to have a bit more magicka sustain with Atro and this will be buffed next patch.
Shadow in CP is more than viable, preferably with the new precise trait on your front bar, Thief is great as well but your shields can't crit so remember that unlike builds that have actual heals you will not benefit defensively from Thief with the Arcane Warden.
The Mage will also be a viable choice next patch but personally I think that this build as is has enough max magicka.
As for jewelry, I'm 100% for triple mag regen, but mix and match as you like honestly, some people swear by cost reduction which mathematically I understand but mag regen is a bit more reliable since you almost always get full value vs. cost reduction giving its full value only when you spam skills without stopping (i.e. no value when CC'd, dodge rolling, repositioning, heavy attacking, between fights, etc). But you ARE often spamming skills over a prolonged period of time, so cost reduction has a lot of value as well.
Thief is currently the most value of the mundus stones when compared to set piece bonuses, but this will all change soon with the next patch. For now I prefer to have a bit more magicka sustain with Atro and this will be buffed next patch.
Shadow in CP is more than viable, preferably with the new precise trait on your front bar, Thief is great as well but your shields can't crit so remember that unlike builds that have actual heals you will not benefit defensively from Thief with the Arcane Warden.
The Mage will also be a viable choice next patch but personally I think that this build as is has enough max magicka.
As for jewelry, I'm 100% for triple mag regen, but mix and match as you like honestly, some people swear by cost reduction which mathematically I understand but mag regen is a bit more reliable since you almost always get full value vs. cost reduction giving its full value only when you spam skills without stopping (i.e. no value when CC'd, dodge rolling, repositioning, heavy attacking, between fights, etc). But you ARE often spamming skills over a prolonged period of time, so cost reduction has a lot of value as well.
VARIATIONS - Skills
So, some flex skill slots we can talk about, as well as minor variation in skill placement. First, bird of prey. The main attraction to bird of prey is the minor berserk, you can give that up for living trellis. Why is living trellis a viable replacement? Well the passive heal is nice, as well as the burst at the end, but what really makes it worthwhile is the Green Balance passive, Nature's Gift, which restores 250 to your smaller resource pool every time you heal someone with a Green Balance ability, in our case stamina. This passive has a 1 second cooldown, which is conveniently the cooldown of the living trellis heal. This comes out to be equivalent to 500 stamina regen, except it's not affected by blocking or sprinting, and you will only get the full value of this passive while taking at least 1 instance of damage every second.
The heal is nice, and when combined with the 500 stamina regen equivalent you can get out of it under pressure, it becomes a viable skill to replace bird of prey with. Incidentally, both buffs last 10 seconds so your rotations won't change too much.
Another flex slot is inner light. Replace it with lotus blossom, gain more healing and therefore more consistent Nature's Gift procs, and retain the spell crit bonus. However, you will lose out on the 7% extra magicka from inner light (5% base skill, 2% mages guild passive) and 2% magicka regen, and it is another buff and therefore global cool down and magicka expenditure you have to account for. Also in exchange for more heals you get smaller dampen magicka shield & slightly less damage, all in all not something I'd recommend but very much viable especially if you are an argonian with passives buffing heals (but then at this point you might as well go heavy armor and that's a totally different build).
Or alternatively, replace inner light with elemental drain; more spell pen, and huge magicka sustain. Elemental drain on a target you are focusing will keep you fed with 300 magicka per second, equivalent to 600 magicka regen. Great magicka sustain, but with the loss of spell crit, 7% max magicka& 2% mag regen. Also, another global cool down to add to your 3 basic buffs on the back bar.
A final variation I will go over is lotus blossom instead of bird of prey on your back bar, and elemental drain instead of inner light on your front bar. Great sustain, some healing which is nice, decent up time on Nature's Gift. However, you give up bird of prey's damage and stamina regen bonus, as well as adding an extra ability to your already crowded rotations.
One final note, if not for Nature's Gift passive, I really wouldn't throw in any heals on this build. It's clunky and has very little defensive value compared to well-timed shields, and robs you of some choice buffs.
The heal is nice, and when combined with the 500 stamina regen equivalent you can get out of it under pressure, it becomes a viable skill to replace bird of prey with. Incidentally, both buffs last 10 seconds so your rotations won't change too much.
Another flex slot is inner light. Replace it with lotus blossom, gain more healing and therefore more consistent Nature's Gift procs, and retain the spell crit bonus. However, you will lose out on the 7% extra magicka from inner light (5% base skill, 2% mages guild passive) and 2% magicka regen, and it is another buff and therefore global cool down and magicka expenditure you have to account for. Also in exchange for more heals you get smaller dampen magicka shield & slightly less damage, all in all not something I'd recommend but very much viable especially if you are an argonian with passives buffing heals (but then at this point you might as well go heavy armor and that's a totally different build).
Or alternatively, replace inner light with elemental drain; more spell pen, and huge magicka sustain. Elemental drain on a target you are focusing will keep you fed with 300 magicka per second, equivalent to 600 magicka regen. Great magicka sustain, but with the loss of spell crit, 7% max magicka& 2% mag regen. Also, another global cool down to add to your 3 basic buffs on the back bar.
A final variation I will go over is lotus blossom instead of bird of prey on your back bar, and elemental drain instead of inner light on your front bar. Great sustain, some healing which is nice, decent up time on Nature's Gift. However, you give up bird of prey's damage and stamina regen bonus, as well as adding an extra ability to your already crowded rotations.
One final note, if not for Nature's Gift passive, I really wouldn't throw in any heals on this build. It's clunky and has very little defensive value compared to well-timed shields, and robs you of some choice buffs.
VARIATION - SHACKLEBREAKER vs. THE WORLD
Necropotence is a must for this build, but do we really need to use shackle breaker ? Is it really the best set to pair with necropotence?
My answer is Yes and No. To keep things simple, I will say there are a few viable alternatives to shackle breaker which will maintain the basic shape and form of this build and the idea behind it, but all of them are a lot harder to obtain than shackle breaker, none I believe are objectively better, but rather have their strengths and weaknesses.
Wizard's Riposte
The stats on it aren't amazing, there's no max magicka bonuses, BUT the 5th piece is theoretically pretty amazing for increasing the effective value of your shields, and there's no cooldown and you can pretty much afflict everyone with it. However I do not recommend it because the health bonus is a bit of a waste since your HP is worth very little in this build already with low resists and crit resists. Finally, permafrost will give you minor maim, and you will use permafrost fairly often. In the case where permafrost isn't needed you also generally don't need 15% damage reduction, you will survive fine on your own. Decent set to use in groups where the value of spreading minor maim multiplies with the number of enemies and friends.
Spinners
Possibly a good alternative; replacing Shackle Breaker with Spinner retains 2k max magicka so your shields will hit about the same, and the penetration will buff your damage by a lot under ideal circumstances, but no stam regen, no mag regen, no max stamina. HOWEVER, here is an interesting idea for a variation--dual wield front-bar, resto back bar. 4 piece necro on body, 4 piece spinner on body. 1 necro sword, 1 spinners sword, necro resto. This way you can run a set-up with a full 2 piece undaunted set. Hooray. Look deeply into this one friends, it is probably the most attractive alternative personally.
War Maiden
Pretty much the same story as Spinners, best set up is 4 necro on body, 4 war maiden on body, dual wield front bar with 1 necro sword and 1 WM sword, back bar necro resto staff. Will perform better vs. shielded opponents compared to spinners, but smaller shields and will not perform as well against everyone else.
Destruction Mastery
Another interesting choice to be made here. Compare 2k max magicka on Shackle to 3400 max magicka on your front bar with this set, with an extra bit of spell crit. Again you give up stamina sustain and some magicka regen, and with a resto back bar you will lose the 5th piece bonus on your back bar, but it will up your damage compared to Shackle and give you slightly bigger dampen shields. You can also run a VMA or DSA resto back bar with this which makes up for a bit of what you lose. Have fun farming dragon star arena for the perfect trait set-up however as well as obtaining a VMA/DSA resto in the right trait.
Amberplasm
Only 1k max mag with this set, but the 5th piece bonus is powerful as it is amplified by so many passives: in total the set provides 426 stam regen (+42%) and 456 mag regen (+52%), plus some crit chance over shackle. Compare to Shackle which gives you a total of 183 stam regen & 196 mag regen, 1k more magicka & 2k stam. It's a close call but I think in the end Amberplasm wins out by a small margin under ideal circumstances (i.e. sprint/block never completely negating stam regen etc). But Shackle Breaker is almost as good (and sometimes better) and it's SO much easier to obtain, I will likely not be farming Amber Plasm any time soon.
Lich
Again, only 1k max mag, but so much effective mag regen after buffs (898 effective mag regen) that you can really play around with food/drink/mundus/jewelry glyph set-ups to achieve similar results. Farming all the pieces sounds like a pain and the stam sustain of Shackle is pretty valuable, but lich is a great replacement as well and it's a lot easier to farm than Destruction Mastery or Amberplasm. Also recommended if you really want to ramp up the mag regen and don't mind giving up stam regen for it. After spinner/war maiden I think I'm most interested in trying out the lich variant.
Willpower, 2 piece undaunted, & DSA destro/resto
This is an interesting alternative, where you will wear 5 piece Necro on body, 3 willpower jewelry, and Master destro & resto staves. However, I do not recommend this set-up over the Shacklbreaker set-up. If you really want to use a full undaunted set, go with Spinner or War Maiden with dual wield front bar.
Let's compare vs. shackle breaker.
First, if you ARE going to use this set-up, I highly recommend Skoria as you want the extra burst. Fetcher, burning status effect from destro, & resto medium and heavies will all help proc it.
With Willpower, Skoria x2, & Master Destro/Resto you get:
2450 max mag
186 spell damage
1000 Health
3-4k Skoria fire damage every 5 seconds (can AOE for about half that)
Vs. Shacklebreaker + 1 piece Grothdar
2933 max mag
2000 max stam
129 stam regen
129 mag regen
129 spell damage
2500 oblivion damage every 3 seconds (with new infused on destro)
roughly 500 spell damage from berserker enchant (with new infused on resto)
You won't be using any of the skills that the master destro/resto enchants buff, and every skill slot is too precious to waste on destructive touch & grand healing. Skoria has a LOT of value outside of just the numbers, since it doesn't require additional resources and ignores a global cool-down in order to do the damage, as well as having an AOE component. But I think in the end the infused oblivion enchant beats out skoria for reliable single target burst with the new infused coming with patch 15, and the raw numbers support Shacklebreaker over Willpower, Skoria, & Master weapons.
Let's compare vs. shackle breaker.
First, if you ARE going to use this set-up, I highly recommend Skoria as you want the extra burst. Fetcher, burning status effect from destro, & resto medium and heavies will all help proc it.
With Willpower, Skoria x2, & Master Destro/Resto you get:
2450 max mag
186 spell damage
1000 Health
3-4k Skoria fire damage every 5 seconds (can AOE for about half that)
Vs. Shacklebreaker + 1 piece Grothdar
2933 max mag
2000 max stam
129 stam regen
129 mag regen
129 spell damage
2500 oblivion damage every 3 seconds (with new infused on destro)
roughly 500 spell damage from berserker enchant (with new infused on resto)
You won't be using any of the skills that the master destro/resto enchants buff, and every skill slot is too precious to waste on destructive touch & grand healing. Skoria has a LOT of value outside of just the numbers, since it doesn't require additional resources and ignores a global cool-down in order to do the damage, as well as having an AOE component. But I think in the end the infused oblivion enchant beats out skoria for reliable single target burst with the new infused coming with patch 15, and the raw numbers support Shacklebreaker over Willpower, Skoria, & Master weapons.
CONCLUSION
Friends, this brings us to the end. It's been a wild journey through aetherius with our good friend the Arcane Warden. I hope this has been helpful, interesting, infuriating, whatever I hope you felt something at least. See you in Tamriel.
have proven that they know the in's and out's of the game. I think ESO should have this program.
) and really has fun in cyrodiil enter Shor again! When the lags start in Vivec is time to come to Shor guys. Maybe you like it so much, that you stay there. We need you!
