Spectre Monk (using Spectre Eye)
http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=49583
![image]()
With the release of DnB, we have nCP BGs and more nightblades/instant cast abilities than ever before! Magplar has such a hard time distancing itself from the healbots that frustrate players, but I think this is a good route to follow to be non-meta. We will be gearing up with the following:
Sets:
- 2pc Pirate
- 5 pc War Maiden set (One body, jewels, one infused sword, 2 Dmg 1Mag Regen enchants)
- 5 pc Spectres Eye. (4 body, 1 Nirn sword, 1Frost staff)
Additional Sets (all with 2pc pirate):
- 5pc prisoners with 5pc innate Axiom (if zos could give magplar major evasion, this is what I would run)
- 5 pc prisoners/ 5pc trans (the old frost group setup still works, but for support DPS!)
Stats:
- 40k Mag
- 23k Health
- 14k Stam
- 3165k Spell Dmg (not counting the 386 boost to our class spells.)
- 1471 Mag Recovery (240 channeled focus, 300 minor mag steal = 1900-2000 Regen total)
- 699 Stam Recovery
- 45.7% Crit Chance buffed
- 75-80% Crit DMG (any less and youll lose survivability/burst)
- 3000 minimum Crit Resistance
- 5598 Spell Pen (10878 with 5280 debuff)
- Atro Mundas
- tri food
Front bar: 26k spell resistance/21k physical resistance buffed
Backbar: 30k spell resistance/25k physical resistance buffed
Skills:
Dual weld bar (Nirn Main hand + infused offhand):
Unstable core, inner light, punc sweeps, Honor the dead, purfying light. Dawnbreaker of Smiting
UC+purfying light is mandatory since we don't have valkyn burst. You can't run non-meta Templar without these two abilities. Inner light is now important, with everyone dodging reflective light, it's waste of mag since we aren't running valkyn skoria; therefore inner light will give usmore time on offensive without trying to figure out when all our timers are up.
Frost staff bar:(defending)
Degeneration, restoring focus, extended ritual, frost reach (flex), elemental drain. Empowering Sweeps
Basic defense/buff bar. You'll hang on this
Notes:
General notes:
You'll probably spend most of your time on the frost bar. You'll have consistent uptime on defensive buffs and make use of the frost staff blocking. The bars are setup so you can sustain a little DPS at range while using sword bar for burst windows. Since UC gives cc immunity like candy, it actually works very well in between CC attempts when using Dawnbreaker. To supplement the lack of a proper CC, use frost reach as your main
If you get focused, don't overblock, get off an unstable core+purfying light which will lower their health a little to force them on the defensive. Then debuff, swap to offensive+mobility pot and run behind them to
annoy them. That is the key strategy; *** them off and take advantage of it. 2pc pirate is arguably meta for templar; free major protection while jabbing and resist buffs. It's a set that essentially adds defense that templars need badly.
This patch I decided to run Spectres eye. Reason being Magmplar needs major evasion to be competitive. It's dodge chance has a downside of being locked behind a cooldown, but it's practically free and let's you run any armor you want. Plus with all the light attack commandos, sneaky blades and now dodgable birds, you'll see the benefit of dodge chance when you catch that pesky relentless will being dodged while you are trying to defend against terrible proc sets. Also if you Dodged a light attack, you also dodged the cost poison/enchant so that's makes up for the 5pc limitation of Spectres eye.
Attack Notes:
On attack, since you don't have skoria procs, you'll need to use burning light+unstable core burst. Fully buffed, I'm looking at a 9k tooltip for unstable core and 5k tooltip on burning light, with the exception that unstable core is purged/broken on breakfree. This is the highest I have been able to get with this build.
The trick to unstable core is to max the DMG to offset it's cost. At 3.3 per cast, it will do roughly 5k DMG in PvP before resists. This is not much but consider the other benefits:
- it will do that DMG across all nearby enemies. If you tag two players, it will do the same dmg twice, punishing them for grouping together (and punish you for casting twice but "risk/reward" mentality). Great if outnumbered since the burst will happen if you are on your backbar. It passively helps you to open another burst window, though at a smaller damage.
- it's undodgable and unblockable. This plus purifying light will be your main bread/butter. The unblocked dmg will also increase on blocktards, by 10%.
- it helps in proc'ing minor sorcery. Increasing all your dmg.
- it's STILL very invisible. Sorc curse makes you glow purple all over the place. But our spell gets hidden if your enemy has puryfing light tagged on them and the cc immunity stops the dark bubble from appearing. Very underrated.
- Templars have higher crit DMG. If you build to offset typical 2500-3000 crit resistance, this spell will crit a little bit closer to tooltip DMG. Depends on your target of course.
- explodes in 4 seconds. Let's you tag a player twice letting you burst them again in another window of opportunity.
In conjunction with purifying light, your full burst rotation will be applying your debuffs and afterwards applying unstable core/purifying light at a ratio of 2/1. This is still true in DnB, except with greater efficiency. Since we do not have an unblockage hard CC, we can build around the reflect dmg to create interesting scenarios that normally never happened in Morrowind:
- I can apply UC right when the enemy gapclosers/start their burst, and they WILL take 4-5k of reflect dmg that has a chance to crit. They can still do dmg to me, but you can catch them in the middle of their rotation to score 15k dmg from 3 hits in pvp.
- If you tag the player with purifying light and then with UC, you can add in jabs knowing the enemy will be taking a large selection of dmg that they will not know what to do against.
- If they attack, they will take 4-5k per skill if they use animation cancel friendly builds (cough stamblades cough) and will have removed half their health in the same duration they combo,
- if they stop attacking and heal, you will still be adding more dmg for purfying light to soak up and in effect they are delaying the incoming burst,
- or they can run/purge (the counter).
Even if they have CC immunity, you can still apply the pre-CWC delayed burst combo below:
If timed right, you could bar swap back to your frost bar taking your enemies burst, tricking him, before you bar-swap to your sword bar when your burst happens. After it pops, reapply unstable core+purifying light(if it already popped)+jabs or LA+Reflective light weave on frost bar for more defensive/ulti generating sustained dps or to run away to re-position. Most Stam builds either need to block or run away. The good ones try to heal it and push forward; that's why its important to let off another unstable core then swap to your block bar to soak up their hits. "South-paw."
If they block, the old tactic was to stay on frost bar weaving in resource easy attacks. Now, with UC unblockable, we can add some burst which gets added to our purfrying light burst, in hopes they will take it hard. We can slot blazing spears on our backbar to add for dmg through block, and UC is used to add dmg at risk of giving them cc imunity. Another player can still add in their own unblockable hard cc, but only before UC ends its duration. If the blocktank, breaks free, they will have wasted stamina so the soft cc immunity is not wasted; they still take the unblocked dmg! Also frost reach will add a small dot and immobilze them regardless of block, very underrated spell.
Other templars will ruin this setup, but purifying light+ frost LA+ frost reach will keep sustained DPS and hopefully you'll burn their mag if they keep purging the debuffs. Hopefully unstable core will burst after that. Same tactics as for block builds, just watch out for their burning light procs/skoria. Instead of minor protection, I opted for another 2900 resists through pirate setup with hitting my target with UC to cause some of that skoria proc to give back dmg to the attacker. Should be noted, since UC counts as a debuff, its important to stack debuffs to force them to "purge" (with UC, reflective light+purfying light+2 effect poisons+ele drain+1% in siphoner = 7 effects). A templar that over-purges is a dead templar.
Regen Notes:
This builds regen is lower than last patch (due to us choosing Spectre eye+war maiden). We offset this by changing restoring focus to channeled focus and adding 1 Regen stat:
- windrunner passive. Gives you 10% extra Regen without those pesky vamp negatives.
- elemental drain will give you another 300. This Regen ignores block from frost staff block. We reduced our block cost CP to 15%. Still better than s+b IMHO because of the ability to LA weave on this bar+HA mag return.
- You can also do this:
- apply elemental drain+HA frost+bar swap+ sprint. You'll get the mag from drain+ sprint+Prisoners but you'll also get another 2-3k from the HA. Resource return combo!!!
- 300 minor mag steal+1479 regular Regen+ channeled focus is 2019 Regen. Most Light Armor players like 1800-2000 regen for their builds, so this works the same.
Conclusion:
Win off your debuffs+procs+enemy impatience+ sprint mobility (like a true monk). We now add free dodge chance with spectres!!
That's my build. Very fun to play, not OP at all, but enough stats to make it competitive. If you don't watch your resource drain you'll be out of resources, especially if you waste Stam with too much sprinting. Nightblades that are hidden will be the toughest, due to not running detect pots. Ranged sorcs/wardens are hard due to their high shields; just be patient, time the burst, and watch them scurry like roaches.
Works in both nCP + CP. Maybe change one DMG enchant for Regen if you're starving, but not needed honestly.
Bonus Inspirational Image:
Coming soon
Here was the old build information:
CWC:
Here's my unique take on the Templar; the Frost Monk (Updated for CWC).
CWC Info:
Link/Gameplay Vid:
With the release of CWC, we have the addition of a few good sets. We will be gearing up with the following:
Sets:
- 1pc kena (or chudan)
- 1pc Pirate
- 5 pc prisoners set (One body, jewels, one sharp sword, frost staff, all dmg enchants)
- 5 pc Innate Axiom set. (4 body, 1 Nirn sword)
Additional Sets:
- 1pc kena (or chudan)
- 5 pc cowards/5pc Impreg (5000 crit resists; the selfish monk!)
- 5 pc prisoners/ 5pc trans (the old frost setup still works, especially for group play!)
- 5 pc cowards/5pc prisoners (still testing this one out. It can also be coward+trans)
- 5pc cowards/5pc clever alc (Drunk Monk!)
Stats:
- 34k -36k Mag (36k possible only if we slot inner light with major sorcery coming from our team)
- 21k Health
- 13k Stam
- 3165k Spell Dmg (not counting the 386 boost to our class spells.)
- 1199 Mag Recovery (1318 if windrunner kicks in. 2318 if on Prisoners bar. 2858 with minor Magicka drain and channeled focus)
- 880 Stam Recovery
- 45% Crit Chance buffed
- 75-80% Crit DMG (any less and youll lose survivability/burst)
- 3000 minimum Crit Resistance
- 10159 Spell Pen (15439 with debuff)
- Apprentice Mundas
Front bar: 29k spell resistance/22k physical resistance buffed
Backbar: 33k spell resistance/26k physical resistance buffed
If you roll 1pc pirate/1 kena, youll need to bring back on the LA focus back and drop to 22% ironclad/ add 12% hardy to get the same total mitigation as 22k after debuffs.
Skills:
Dual weld bar (Nirn Main hand + sharpened offhand):
Unstable core, efficient purge, punc sweeps, Honor the dead, degeneration/inner light. Empowering Sweeps
Last patch we were using UC for burst and Dawnbreaker for CC. This patch, UC grants CC imunity. Lucky for us, the timebomb portion of UC will still be cast through cc imunity and that dmg is unblocked. You can still roll dawnbreaker, but I elected to use Empowering sweeps to take advantage of Innate Axiom. Dawnbreaker is still good here, for the CC and the dot.
Frost staff bar:(defending)
Reflective light, restoring focus, blazing spear/explosive charge/radiant ward buff slot, elemental drain, purifying light. Replinishing barrier.
Since we got a cost increase to our class purge, it has been somewhat of a burden. It is still a great skill, but consider it costs 3.5k mag to cast, I found myself either casting it too much or too little. So if I cast my purge twice, that would be 7000 mag lost, and the debuffs keep rolling. I decided to roll with efficient purge for the fact it reduces the effectiveness of negative effects by 50%. This means, I cast it once for 4200 mag, and can get all debuffs on me reduced by 50% for no additional resource cost. This means, enemy UC effects will be reduced from 4 to 2 seconds, DOT duration reduced, poisons, etc. This makes it quite efficient, especially since we are going to have to learn to cast our purges "strategically" and this shift will allow me to ignore trying to hold back the rising tide of debuffs and instead concentrate on returning burst.
Notes:
General notes:
You'll probably spend most of your time on the frost bar. You'll have consistent uptime on defensive buffs and make use of the frost staff blocking. The bars are setup so you can sustain a little DPS at range while using sword bar for burst windows. Reflective light, despite it's dot DMG spread out across three projectiles, has more initial hit DMG than vamps bane. And it oddly scales off the master at arms CP star, making it an important ranged spamable; it procs minor sorcery and jump-starts your ultimate generation. With light Attack weaving, you'll do consistent DMG while increasing your ultimate gain.
You'll have around 300 mag recovery through block if you can have someone tagged with degeneration+ elemental drain. If you can master tagging an enemy before they get to you, you'll have this debuff on them allowing you extra sustain+extra DMG through the penetration debuff. Purfying light+ LA+reflective light will DMG before you swap to your two hander bar. Frost enchant+LA Attack weave will proc minor maim so no need for that wizard set (besides with all of our total mitigation it only gives 1% extra anyway.)
If you get focused, don't overblock, get off an unstable core+purfying light which will lower their health a little to force them on the defensive. Then debuff, swap to offensive+mobility pot and run behind them to
annoy them. That is the key strategy; *** them off and take advantage of it.
Attack Notes:
On attack, since you don't have skoria procs, you'll need to use burning light+unstable core burst. Fully buffed, I'm looking at a 9k tooltip for unstable core and 5k tooltip on burning light, with the exception that unstable core is purged/broken on breakfree. This is the highest I have been able to get with this build.
The trick to unstable core is to max the DMG to offset it's cost. At 3.3 per cast, it will do roughly 5k DMG in PvP before resists. This is not much but consider the other benefits:
- it will do that DMG across all nearby enemies. If you tag two players, it will do the same dmg twice, punishing them for grouping together (and punish you for casting twice but "risk/reward" mentality). Great if outnumbered since the burst will happen if you are on your backbar. It passively helps you to open another burst window, though at a smaller damage.
- it's undodgable and unblockable. This plus purifying light will be your main bread/butter. The unblocked dmg will also increase on blocktards, by 10%.
- it helps reflective light in proc'ing minor sorcery. Increasing all your dmg.
- it's STILL very invisible. Sorc curse makes you glow purple all over the place. But our spell gets hidden if your enemy has puryfing light tagged on them and the cc immunity stops the dark bubble from appearing. Very underrated.
- Templars have higher crit DMG. If you build to offset typical 2500-3000 crit resistance, this spell will crit a little bit closer to tooltip DMG. Depends on your target of course.
- explodes in 4 seconds. Let's you tag a player twice letting you burst them again in another window of opportunity.
In conjunction with purifying light, your full burst rotation will be applying your debuffs and afterwards applying unstable core/purifying light at a ratio of 2/1. This is still true in CWC, except with greater efficiency. Since we do not have an unblockage hard CC, we can build around the reflect dmg to create interesting scenarios that normally never happened in Morrowind:
- I can apply UC right when the enemy gapclosers/start their burst, and they WILL take 4-5k of reflect dmg that has a chance to crit. They can still do dmg to me, but you can catch them in the middle of their rotation to score 15k dmg from 3 hits in pvp.
- If you tag the player with purifying light and then with UC, you can add in jabs knowing the enemy will be taking a large selection of dmg that they will not know what to do against.
- If they attack, they will take 4-5k per skill if they use animation cancel friendly builds (cough stamblades cough) and will have removed half their health in the same duration they combo,
- if they stop attacking and heal, you will still be adding more dmg for purfying light to soak up and in effect they are delaying the incoming burst,
- or they can run/purge (the counter).
Even if they have CC immunity, you can still apply the pre-CWC delayed burst combo below:
If timed right, you could bar swap back to your frost bar taking your enemies burst, tricking him, before you bar-swap to your sword bar when your burst happens. After it pops, reapply unstable core+purifying light(if it already popped)+jabs or LA+Reflective light weave on frost bar for more defensive/ulti generating sustained dps or to run away to re-position. Most Stam builds either need to block or run away. The good ones try to heal it and push forward; that's why its important to let off another unstable core then swap to your block bar to soak up their hits. "South-paw."
If they block, the old tactic was to stay on frost bar weaving in resource easy attacks. Now, with UC unblockable, we can add some burst which gets added to our purfrying light burst, in hopes they will take it hard. We can slot blazing spears on our backbar to add for dmg through block, and UC is used to add dmg at risk of giving them cc imunity. Another player can still add in their own unblockable hard cc, but only before UC ends its duration. If the blocktank, breaks free, they will have wasted stamina so the soft cc immunity is not wasted; they still take the unblocked dmg!
Other templars will ruin this setup, but purifying light+ frost LA+ reflective light will keep sustained DPS and hopefully you'll burn their mag if they keep purging the debuffs. Hopefully unstable core will burst after that. Same tactics as for block builds, just watch out for their burning light procs/skoria. Instead of minor protection, I opted for another 2900 resists through chudan/pirate setup with hitting my target with UC to cause some of that skoria proc to give back dmg to the attacker. Should be noted, since UC counts as a debuff, its important to stack debuffs to force them to "purge" (with UC, reflective light+purfying light+2 effect poisons+ele drain+1% in siphoner = 7 effects). A templar that over-purges is a dead templar.
Regen Notes:
This builds regen is lower than last patch (due to us choosing Innate Axiom). We offset this by changing restoring focus to channeled focus and replacing the 1pc kena with 1pc chudan:
- windrunner passive. Gives you 10% extra Regen without those pesky vamp negatives. Now your Regen is closer to 1318.9.
- prisoner set. Gives you 1k if you sprint with gold gear. Yes you need to press shift and yes it probably won't help you in the middle of a fight or if you are CC'd. But it can be proc'ed after you apply unstable core and are running to your target. It gives great base Stam recovery stats which would cripple another mag build without them. (If you sprint you'll have 2283.9 mag Regen! 1318.9 + 965 . )
- elemental drain will give you another 300. This Regen ignores block from frost staff block. We reduced our block cost CP to 15%. Still better than s+b IMHO because of the ability to LA weave on this bar+HA mag return.
- You can also do this:
- apply elemental drain+HA frost+bar swap+ sprint. You'll get the mag from drain+ sprint+Prisoners but you'll also get another 2-3k from the HA. Resource return combo!!!
- 300 minor mag steal+1199 regular Regen+ channeled focus is 1739 Regen in between the "resource-burst combo" mentioned above. Most Light Armor players like 1700-1800 regen for their builds, so this works the same.
Conclusion:
Win off your debuffs+procs+enemy impatience+ sprint mobility (like a true monk). Don't forget to sprint in between combos for mag return on Prisoners bar!!
That's my build. Very fun to play, not OP at all, but enough stats to make it competitive. If you don't watch your mag drain you'll be out of resources, especially if you waste Stam with too much sprinting. Nightblades that are hidden will be the toughest, due to not running detect pots. Ranged sorcs/wardens are hard due to their high shields; just be patient, time the burst, and watch them scurry like roaches.
In nCP, you could swap the kena for a chudan to make up for the LA focus loss. But you can still keep the Kena helm either way.
Bonus Inspirational Image:
![o9PBtJa.jpg]()
Props to the original artist that did the figure; I just googled "monk rpg art" and added the blue swirls to mimic the Prisoner Set procs.
Here was the old build information:
Link/Gameplay Vid:
In my videos I am using Empowering sweeps/toppling charge because I don't have dawnbreaker/forward momentum unlocked.
I named it a "Frost-Monk Templar" because in classic RPG's monk classes trade pure strength stats/heavy armor defenses for high magic defenses, speed, armor negating hits, and abilities to debuff enemies (disarm, slow down, penetrate armor, life steal etc). If you have ever played an unarmed character in any Isometric D&D ruleset RPG, you'll know what I'm talking about. Even Elder Scrolls Oblivion had this class, where you could disarm the enemy with unarmed attacks lol. Sadly we cannot have unarmed builds; so ill use two hander sword for my burst+mobility! (the irony is real.)
Sets:
- 1pc kena
- 1pc Pirate (or chudan)
- 5 pc prisoners set (4 body, 1 two hander)
- 5 pc transmutation set. (One body, jewels, frost staff, all dmg enchants)
Stats:
- 33k Mag
- 21k Health
- 12k Stam
- 3k Spell Dmg
- 1400 Mag Recovery (1500 if windrunner kicks in. 2500 if on Prisoners bar. 2800 with minor Magicka drain)
- 895 Stam Recovery
- 52% Crit Chance buffed (sharpened trait will get you 45% crit buffed which is more ideal. But you try to farm for a sharpened Prisoner two hander and let me know how that works out lol)
- 75-80% Crit DMG (any less and youll lose survivability/burst)
- 3800-4000 Crit Resistance buffed
- 9376 Spell Pen (14656 with debuff) [11532 if you use sharpened without the major breach]
- Apprentice Mundas
Front bar: 26k spell resistance/22k physical resistance buffed
Backbar: 29k spell resistance/25k physical resistance buffed
The resists will change as I continue to review how much total mitigation is. Ive come to realize, 10% into hardy at such low resists, is just as important as stacking in LA focus.
Skills:
Two hander bar (percise or sharpened):
Unstable core, forward momentum, punc sweeps, Honor the dead, degeneration. Dawnbreaker
Dawnbreaker is your only consistent cc due to the fact it's an AOE unreflected/undodgeable cc. You could swap forward momentum for Templar charge, but it's cc is blockable meaning a good enemy will block the cc from ever setting on their character. It's better to run explosive charge since the aoe dmg is undodgeable. But for this build it's using forward momentum for the snare immunity which is more important since we cleared Vamp. I have been running purge in place of FW and placing exploding charge allows some offensive mobilty.
Frost staff bar:(defending)
Reflective light, restoring focus, extended ritual, elemental drain, purifying light. Empowering sweeps.
You will hardly use empowering sweeps. It's only there as a backup cheap Ultimate and to give 15% melee blocking mitigation for ice staff and give your ranged attacks 10% extra DMG on blocking targets. This is your "debuff" bar where you apply penetration, mag steal, and tagging your enemy with purifying light. Restoring Rune at high mitigation/block only gives around 1-3% mitigation after diminishing returns. This is not terrible, considering it only costs you 1300 mag and it also gives you 8% extra healing. You could pick channeled focus, and run destro clench, but you'll lose out on the huge penetration debuff.
Notes:
General notes:
You'll probably spend most of your time on the frost bar. You'll have consistent uptime on defensive buffs and make use of the frost staff blocking. The bars are setup so you can sustain a little DPS at range while using two hander bar for burst windows. Reflective light, despite it's dot DMG spread out across three projectiles, has more initial hit DMG than vamps bane. And it oddly scales off the master at arms CP star, making it an important ranged spamable; it procs minor sorcery and jump-starts your ultimate generation. With light Attack weaving, you'll do consistent DMG while increasing your ultimate gain.
You'll have around 300 mag recovery through block if you can have someone tagged with degeneration+ elemental drain. If you can master tagging an enemy before they get to you, you'll have this debuff on them allowing you extra sustain+extra DMG through the penetration debuff. Purfying light+ LA+reflective light will DMG before you swap to your two hander bar. Frost enchant+LA Attack weave will proc minor maim so no need for that wizard set (besides with all of our total mitigation it only gives 1% extra anyway.)
If you get focused, don't overblock, get off an unstable core+purfying light which will lower their health a little to force them on the defensive. Then debuff, swap to offensive+mobility pot and run behind them to
annoy them. That is the key strategy; *** them off and take advantage of it.
Attack Notes:
On attack, since you don't have skoria procs, you'll need to use burning light+unstable core burst. Fully buffed, I'm looking at a 9.8k-10k tooltip for unstable core and 5k tooltip on burning light, with the exception that unstable core is blockable+purged. This is the highest I have been able to get with this build.
The trick to unstable core is to max the DMG to offset it's cost. At 3.3 per cast, it will do roughly 5k DMG in PvP before resists. This is not much but consider the other benefits:
- it will do that DMG across all nearby enemies. If you tag two players, it will do the same dmg twice, punishing them for grouping together (and punish you for casting twice but "risk/reward" mentality). Great if outnumbered since the burst will happen if you are on your backbar. It passively helps you to open another burst window, though at a smaller damage.
- it's undodgable. Making it fairly consistent burst against most pvp builds.
- it helps reflective light in proc'ing minor sorcery. Increasing all your dmg.
- it's very invisible. Sorc curse makes you glow purple all over the place. But our spell gets hidden if your enemy has puryfing light tagged on them. Very underrated.
- Templars have higher crit DMG. If you build to offset typical 2500-3000 crit resistance, this spell will crit a little bit closer to tooltip DMG. Depends on your target of course.
- explodes in 3.5 seconds. Let's you tag a player twice letting you burst them again in another window of opportunity.
In conjunction with purifying light, your full burst rotation will be applying your debuffs and afterwards applying unstable core/purifying light at a ratio of 2/1.
If timed right, you could bar swap back to your frost bar taking your enemies burst, tricking him, before you bar-swap to your two hander bar when your burst happens. After it pops, reapply unstable core+purifying light(if it already popped)+jabs or LA+Reflective light weave on frost bar for more defensive/ulti generating sustained dps or to run away to re-position. Most Stam builds either need to block or run away. The good ones try to heal it and push forward; that's why its important to let off another unstable core then swap to your block bar to soak up their hits. "South-paw."
If they block, just stay on frost bar. Apply your reflective light+ purifying light. Save unstable core for when they start to drop block or when you want to force a burst window. Use Dawnbreaker to CC right before it pops (especially if you are getting zerged and need to delay their burst). If its a flapping DK with S+B, use jabs and apply unstable core/reflective light anyway. They might reduce the DMG with block, but it's unreflected at least. They will get close, but use forward momentum to be immune, run behind and run your burst followed by CC to make sure they drop block hard. It should all pop making them feel it; you want them to feel the punch. Make sure to Heavy Attack in between it all to add resources to make up for the lost dmg/resources on their block.
Other templars will ruin this setup, but purifying light+ frost LA+ reflective light will keep sustained DPS and hopefully you'll burn their mag if they keep purging the debuffs. Hopefully unstable core will burst after that. Same tactics as for block builds, just watch out for their burning light procs/skoria (which is what minor protection is for since you cant block or dodge skoria!).
Regen Notes:
Regen is minimum of 1400. This might be really low for some players but this minimal can be increased on this build. Here's how:
- windrunner passive. Gives you 10% extra Regen without those pesky vamp negatives. Now your Regen is closer to 1500.
- prisoner set. Gives you 1k if you sprint with gold gear. Yes you need to press shift and yes it probably won't help you in the middle of a fight or if you are CC'd. But it can be proc'ed after you apply unstable core and are running to your target. It gives great base Stam recovery stats which would cripple another mag build without them. (If you sprint you'll have 2500 mag Regen! 1500 + 1k. )
- elemental drain will give you another 300. This Regen ignores block from frost staff block. With 20% block cost reduction+ elemental drain you'll only take around 1000-700 mag per hit. Better than s+b IMHO because of the ability to LA weave on this bar+HA mag return.
- You can also do this:
- apply elemental drain+HA frost+bar swap+ sprint. You'll get the 2500 mag from drain+ sprint+Prisoners but you'll also get another 2-3k from the HA. 5500 mag returned in that combo; resource return combo!!!
- 300 minor mag steal+1400 regular Regen is 1700 Regen in between the "resource-burst combo" mentioned above. Most Light Armor players like 1700-1800 regen for their builds, so this works the same.
Conclusion:
Win off your debuffs+procs+enemy impatience+ sprint mobility (like a true monk). Don't forget to sprint in between combos for mag return on Prisoners bar!!
That's my build. Very fun to play, not OP at all, but enough stats to make it competitive. If you don't watch your mag drain you'll be out of resources, especially if you waste Stam with too much sprinting. Nightblades that are hidden will be the toughest, due to not running detect pots. Ranged sorcs/wardens are hard due to their high shields; just be patient, time the burst, and watch them scurry like roaches.
In nCP, you could swap the kena for a chudan to make up for the LA focus loss. Minor protection is more important in nCP where your total % of mitigation is expected to be higher using it since you wont have Ironclad maxed to 20% (Off top of my head I think its around 4-5%. Not OP, but every bit helps.) I have not tested this build for BG's, only open world CP/nCP.
Bonus Inspirational Image:
![o9PBtJa.jpg]()
Props to the original artist that did the figure; I just googled "monk rpg art" and added the blue swirls to mimic the Prisoner Set procs.
Pre-Morrowind:
Link/Gameplay Vid:
In my videos I am using Empowering sweeps/toppling charge because I don't have dawnbreaker/forward momentum unlocked.
I named it a "Frost-Monk Templar" because in classic RPG's monk classes trade pure strength stats/heavy armor defenses for high magic defenses, speed, armor negating hits, and abilities to debuff enemies (disarm, slow down, penetrate armor, life steal etc). If you have ever played an unarmed character in any Isometric D&D ruleset RPG, you'll know what I'm talking about. Even Elder Scrolls Oblivion had this class, where you could disarm the enemy with unarmed attacks lol. Sadly we cannot have unarmed builds; so ill use two hander sword for my burst+mobility! (the irony is real.)
Sets:
- 1pc kena
- 1pc Pirate (or chudan)
- 5 pc prisoners set (4 body, 1 two hander)
- 5 pc transmutation set. (One body, jewels, frost staff, all dmg enchants)
Stats:
- 33k Mag
- 21k Health
- 12k Stam
- 3k Spell Dmg
- 1400 Mag Recovery (1500 if windrunner kicks in. 2500 if on Prisoners bar. 2800 with minor Magicka drain)
- 895 Stam Recovery
- 52% Crit Chance buffed (sharpened trait will get you 45% crit buffed which is more ideal. But you try to farm for a sharpened Prisoner two hander and let me know how that works out lol)
- 75-80% Crit DMG (any less and youll lose survivability/burst)
- 3800-4000 Crit Resistance buffed
- 9376 Spell Pen (14656 with debuff) [11532 if you use sharpened without the major breach]
- Apprentice Mundas
Front bar: 26k spell resistance/22k physical resistance buffed
Backbar: 29k spell resistance/25k physical resistance buffed
The resists will change as I continue to review how much total mitigation is. Ive come to realize, 10% into hardy at such low resists, is just as important as stacking in LA focus.
Skills:
Two hander bar (percise or sharpened):
Unstable core, forward momentum, punc sweeps, Honor the dead, degeneration. Dawnbreaker
Dawnbreaker is your only consistent cc due to the fact it's an AOE unreflected/undodgeable cc. You could swap forward momentum for Templar charge, but it's cc is blockable meaning a good enemy will block the cc from ever setting on their character. It's better to run explosive charge since the aoe dmg is undodgeable. But for this build it's using forward momentum for the snare immunity which is more important since we cleared Vamp. I have been running purge in place of FW and placing exploding charge allows some offensive mobilty.
Frost staff bar:(defending)
Reflective light, restoring focus, extended ritual, elemental drain, purifying light. Empowering sweeps.
You will hardly use empowering sweeps. It's only there as a backup cheap Ultimate and to give 15% melee blocking mitigation for ice staff and give your ranged attacks 10% extra DMG on blocking targets. This is your "debuff" bar where you apply penetration, mag steal, and tagging your enemy with purifying light. Restoring Rune at high mitigation/block only gives around 1-3% mitigation after diminishing returns. This is not terrible, considering it only costs you 1300 mag and it also gives you 8% extra healing. You could pick channeled focus, and run destro clench, but you'll lose out on the huge penetration debuff.
Notes:
General notes:
You'll probably spend most of your time on the frost bar. You'll have consistent uptime on defensive buffs and make use of the frost staff blocking. The bars are setup so you can sustain a little DPS at range while using two hander bar for burst windows. Reflective light, despite it's dot DMG spread out across three projectiles, has more initial hit DMG than vamps bane. And it oddly scales off the master at arms CP star, making it an important ranged spamable; it procs minor sorcery and jump-starts your ultimate generation. With light Attack weaving, you'll do consistent DMG while increasing your ultimate gain.
You'll have around 300 mag recovery through block if you can have someone tagged with degeneration+ elemental drain. If you can master tagging an enemy before they get to you, you'll have this debuff on them allowing you extra sustain+extra DMG through the penetration debuff. Purfying light+ LA+reflective light will DMG before you swap to your two hander bar. Frost enchant+LA Attack weave will proc minor maim so no need for that wizard set (besides with all of our total mitigation it only gives 1% extra anyway.)
If you get focused, don't overblock, get off an unstable core+purfying light which will lower their health a little to force them on the defensive. Then debuff, swap to offensive+mobility pot and run behind them to
annoy them. That is the key strategy; *** them off and take advantage of it.
Attack Notes:
On attack, since you don't have skoria procs, you'll need to use burning light+unstable core burst. Fully buffed, I'm looking at a 9.8k-10k tooltip for unstable core and 5k tooltip on burning light, with the exception that unstable core is blockable+purged. This is the highest I have been able to get with this build.
The trick to unstable core is to max the DMG to offset it's cost. At 3.3 per cast, it will do roughly 5k DMG in PvP before resists. This is not much but consider the other benefits:
- it will do that DMG across all nearby enemies. If you tag two players, it will do the same dmg twice, punishing them for grouping together (and punish you for casting twice but "risk/reward" mentality). Great if outnumbered since the burst will happen if you are on your backbar. It passively helps you to open another burst window, though at a smaller damage.
- it's undodgable. Making it fairly consistent burst against most pvp builds.
- it helps reflective light in proc'ing minor sorcery. Increasing all your dmg.
- it's very invisible. Sorc curse makes you glow purple all over the place. But our spell gets hidden if your enemy has puryfing light tagged on them. Very underrated.
- Templars have higher crit DMG. If you build to offset typical 2500-3000 crit resistance, this spell will crit a little bit closer to tooltip DMG. Depends on your target of course.
- explodes in 3.5 seconds. Let's you tag a player twice letting you burst them again in another window of opportunity.
In conjunction with purifying light, your full burst rotation will be applying your debuffs and afterwards applying unstable core/purifying light at a ratio of 2/1.
If timed right, you could bar swap back to your frost bar taking your enemies burst, tricking him, before you bar-swap to your two hander bar when your burst happens. After it pops, reapply unstable core+purifying light(if it already popped)+jabs or LA+Reflective light weave on frost bar for more defensive/ulti generating sustained dps or to run away to re-position. Most Stam builds either need to block or run away. The good ones try to heal it and push forward; that's why its important to let off another unstable core then swap to your block bar to soak up their hits. "South-paw."
If they block, just stay on frost bar. Apply your reflective light+ purifying light. Save unstable core for when they start to drop block or when you want to force a burst window. Use Dawnbreaker to CC right before it pops (especially if you are getting zerged and need to delay their burst). If its a flapping DK with S+B, use jabs and apply unstable core/reflective light anyway. They might reduce the DMG with block, but it's unreflected at least. They will get close, but use forward momentum to be immune, run behind and run your burst followed by CC to make sure they drop block hard. It should all pop making them feel it; you want them to feel the punch. Make sure to Heavy Attack in between it all to add resources to make up for the lost dmg/resources on their block.
Other templars will ruin this setup, but purifying light+ frost LA+ reflective light will keep sustained DPS and hopefully you'll burn their mag if they keep purging the debuffs. Hopefully unstable core will burst after that. Same tactics as for block builds, just watch out for their burning light procs/skoria (which is what minor protection is for since you cant block or dodge skoria!).
Regen Notes:
Regen is minimum of 1400. This might be really low for some players but this minimal can be increased on this build. Here's how:
- windrunner passive. Gives you 10% extra Regen without those pesky vamp negatives. Now your Regen is closer to 1500.
- prisoner set. Gives you 1k if you sprint with gold gear. Yes you need to press shift and yes it probably won't help you in the middle of a fight or if you are CC'd. But it can be proc'ed after you apply unstable core and are running to your target. It gives great base Stam recovery stats which would cripple another mag build without them. (If you sprint you'll have 2500 mag Regen! 1500 + 1k. )
- elemental drain will give you another 300. This Regen ignores block from frost staff block. With 20% block cost reduction+ elemental drain you'll only take around 1000-700 mag per hit. Better than s+b IMHO because of the ability to LA weave on this bar+HA mag return.
- You can also do this:
- apply elemental drain+HA frost+bar swap+ sprint. You'll get the 2500 mag from drain+ sprint+Prisoners but you'll also get another 2-3k from the HA. 5500 mag returned in that combo; resource return combo!!!
- 300 minor mag steal+1400 regular Regen is 1700 Regen in between the "resource-burst combo" mentioned above. Most Light Armor players like 1700-1800 regen for their builds, so this works the same.
Conclusion:
Win off your debuffs+procs+enemy impatience+ sprint mobility (like a true monk). Don't forget to sprint in between combos for mag return on Prisoners bar!!
That's my build. Very fun to play, not OP at all, but enough stats to make it competitive. If you don't watch your mag drain you'll be out of resources, especially if you waste Stam with too much sprinting. Nightblades that are hidden will be the toughest, due to not running detect pots. Ranged sorcs/wardens are hard due to their high shields; just be patient, time the burst, and watch them scurry like roaches.
In nCP, you could swap the kena for a chudan to make up for the LA focus loss. Minor protection is more important in nCP where your total % of mitigation is expected to be higher using it since you wont have Ironclad maxed to 20% (Off top of my head I think its around 4-5%. Not OP, but every bit helps.) I have not tested this build for BG's, only open world CP/nCP.
Bonus Inspirational Image:
![o9PBtJa.jpg]()
Props to the original artist that did the figure; I just googled "monk rpg art" and added the blue swirls to mimic the Prisoner Set procs.
