[ARCHIVED] Magicka Warden PvP Build ESO – Ice Smelter

[ARCHIVED]: This build has been archived, which means it is no longer being updated. However, this web-page will be left up for those who still would like to refer to it.

Build Written By: Nirnstorm – PC NA/EU – YouTube – Twitch

Role: Damage Dealer

Patch: Stonethorn

Table of Contents

1. Video
2. Introduction
3. Setup
   1. Gear
   2. Attributes
   3. Skills
   4. Vampire vs. Mortal
   5. Champion Points
   6. Other Important Info (Food, Mundus, Race, Potions, Poisons, Passives)
4. Resource Management & Rotation
5. Contact Info
6. Update Log

Video

Introduction

Welcome to one of Dottzgaming.com’s Magicka Warden PvP builds, Ice Smelter, for the Elder Scrolls Online written by Nirnstorm!

This build uses the power of all three types of elemental damage to deal massive amounts damage to your enemies, cover huge areas with aoe damage, and allow you to take down tanky targets, all while being able to tank out a lot of damage yourself and heal through it.

Keep in mind that PvP builds are very personal. This is what worked for ME. If you don’t like something about it, change it to fit your playstyle.

Setup

Gear

Gear Explanation

Malubeth: This set is a great way to help you survive while under pressure. As long as you are close enough to your enemy to proc it, the set is super reliable with a very high uptime, and it allows your heals over time to get you back to full health against very high incoming damage. If you don’t like Malubeth, and would like to use a more damaging monster set, I recommend using the Balorgh set.

Necropotence: The strongest set in the game for max magicka stacking. Since we have our betty netch skill to constantly keep the 5^th piece bonus active, this set fits our build perfectly and allows us to have 100% uptime of a lot more max magicka, which will give us more damage and stronger shields.

Ice Furnace: This sets deals a sizable amount of damage to all enemies in an 8 meters range whenever you hit a target with frost damage. This big explosion can repeat itself every single second when you damage a target. Since we use a lot of frost-damage skills on this build, Ice Furnace procs nearly every second whether we are going offensive or defensive and deals huge amounts of damage to all the enemies in our area.

Master’s Ice Staff: This set allows us to use destructive touch on our back bar not only as a mean of immobilizing our enemies, but also as a buff skill. Every time we use it, we gain 600 spell damage that buffs our damage output as well as our heals, which helps us both survive better and kill tanky targets at the same time.

Attributes

All points into Magicka.

Skills

Main Bar – Destruction Staff: Arctic Blast / Deep Fissure / Bird of Prey / Force Pulse / Inner Light / Shooting Star

Back Bar – Destruction Staff: Dampen Magic / Blue Betty / Living Trellis / Destructive Clench / Ice Fortress / Northern Storm

Vampire vs. Mortal

We no longer play as a vampire with this build. Since vampirism has been changed recently, it now contains a lot more downsides than upsides in builds like our. By turning into a vampire, we would receive more damage from multiple sources and lose a lot or all our health regeneration, in addition to making all our skills be more expansive to cast. Meanwhile, we don’t gain nearly anything from the turn.

If you really want to play as a vampire with this build, you certainly can. However, keep in mind you will be taking more damage this way and surviving as well as sustaining could become MUCH harder.

Champion Points

CHAMPION POINT 810 SETUP
THE MAGE (BLUE)

• Blessed – 37
• Elfborn – 40
• Spell Erosion – 38
• Elemental Expert – 64
• Master-at-Arms – 72
• Staff Expert – 19

THE THIEF (GREEN)

• Warlord – 66
• Siphoner – 1
• Sprinter – 3
• Arcanist – 49
• Tenacity – 19
• Shadow Ward – 66
• Tumbling – 66

THE WARRIOR (RED)

• Ironclad – 61
• Resistant – 20
• Light Armor Focus – 17
• Thick Skinned – 34
• Hardy – 49
• Elemental Defender – 49
• Quick Recovery – 37
• Expert Defender – 3

Other Important Info

Buff Food

Bewitched Sugar Skulls (Max Health, Magicka and Stamina)

Mundus

The Lady: Increased Resistances

Race

1: Breton: This is my favorite race for this build. Since having the cost reduction and max mag from the passives is amazing and surpass all other races, and the extra spell resistance is great to tank incoming damage.

2: Dark Elf: This race, while still gives you the very needed extra max magicka, also gives you max stamina and more spell damage. It will be slightly more difficult to sustain with this race, but your damage will surely be higher, and your stamina management will be a lot easier too.

Potions

Tri-Stat (Restore Health, Magicka and Stamina)
Bugloss, Columbine and Mountain Flower

Passives

• Animal Companions: All
• Winters Embrace: All
• Green balance: All
• Light Armor: All
• Heavy Armor: All that don’t require 5 pieces worn.
• Medium Armor: All that don’t require 5 pieces worn.
• Destruction Staff: All EXCEPT TRI-STAT FOCUS! (Important not to have it unlocked).
• Undaunted: All
• Mages Guild: All
• Psijic Order: All except the last.
• Assault: All
• Support: Combat Medic, Battle Resurrection
• Alchemy: Medicinal Use
• Racial: All

Resource Management & Rotation

Offensive rotation: For your offense, you want to hit the enemy player/s with as many skills as possible at once, to generate a very big burst, and have all of them buffed by the master’s staff’s effect.

The default rotation:

1. Arctic blast ->
2. Deep Fissure ->
3. Bar-swap ->
4. Frost Clench ->
5. (Optional: Northern Storm ->)
6. Bar-sawp ->
7. Force Pulse ->
8. Force Pulse ->
9. Repeat.

Try to weave in a light attack during with every single of these steps.

Defensive Rotation: First of all, you should always have Frost Cloak applied, to give you the Major Resolve buff, which increases your resistances.

You always want to try and keep the Living Trellis and Arctic Blast buffs active on you, to gain heals over time and more as you take damage. Whenever you are being pressured, you can use Arctic Blast for a burst heal (in addition to it’s heal over time) or recast Living Trellis to get it’s end effect triggered and heal you more. These skills both have a heal over time AND a burst heal part to them, so as long as you cast both, you will keep gaining more and more heals.

When taking big pressure, while having your heals over time applied, you can cast your Dampen Magicka, and let your heals-over-time get your health back up while you shield prevents incoming damage from bringing it further down.

To top it all off, when you are being very pressured, you can use Northern Storm to apply the Major Protection buff to yourself and reduce your incoming damage even more.

Important Note: Try to pay attention to your Malubeth beam. Once Malubeth is on, assuming you have a few heals-over-time applied to you, you can usually get away with going a bit more offensive even if your health is low, since the beam -as long as you don’t let it break- will take care of healing you and keeping your health up until it is broken or the time for the proc runs out.

As with all builds, offensive and defensive power will be maximized if you maintain your buffs on yourself and debuffs on your opponent(s).

Contact

If you have any questions about the build, join our discord server and ask @NirnStorm about the build! You can also ask questions on Nirnstorm’s personal discord, which can be found here.

Update Log

3/15/2020 – Build created
6/26/2020 – Skills and gear updated
9/16/2020 – removed mage as mundus option