Best ESO Champion Points for PvE DPS

There are many champion points you can slot for DPS, but how do you know which ones are the Best ESO Champion Points for PvE DPS?

This build has been updated for the Updated 42, the Gold Road Chapter of the Elder Scrolls Online (ESO).

Champion points (CP) are a large part of your DPS in the Elder Scrolls Online. CP isn’t a one-size-fits-all system, either. To do the best DPS, you must actively change your Champion Points according to your build and content. Because of this, it might not be immediately apparent which CP you should use for your build. This also isn’t a guide on everything you need to know about CP in the Elder Scrolls Online. This guide is focused on tailoring your CP to meet your DPS build, and reading through it will give you everything you need to know about choosing the best ESO Champion Points for PvE DPS.

Here’s everything you need to know to quickly change and optimize your Champion Points for PvE DPS in the Elder Scrolls Online.

What Are the Best ESO Champion Points for PvE DPS?

The best champion points for PvE DPS in ESO are Wrathful Strikes, Fighting Finesse, and Backstabber because these increase damage for all classes and playstyles. You only get four slottable CP choices on ESO’s Warfare (blue) tree.

That means you want to pick the slottables that can most buff your damage. This is usually a combination of CP that buffs all of your damage across the board and CP that buffs specific damage types. For example, the CP Deadly Aim buffs single-target attacks by 6%. A 6% damage boost is pretty nice unless your single target attacks only make up 5% of your damage. That would equate to a 0.3% overall damage increase, meaning there are likely better CP options.

There are a few categories we’re going to use to use to describe your CP options. Knowing these will make selecting the best ESO Champion Points for PvE DPS a breeze.

Weapon Damage Champion Points

Wrathful Strikes – Grants 41 Weapon and Spell Damage to your damaging abilities per stage.
Untamed Aggression – Increases your Weapon and Spell Damage by 3 per stage.

These CP buff your overall damage due to the flat weapon and spell damage they offer.

You can’t go wrong with slotting Wrathful Strikes at the most basic level. 205 flat weapon and spell damage to your damaging abilities is a nice boost to your damage, and you’ll almost always want to run this CP regardless of your build. This value also gets multiplied by the buffs you have in content, such as Major Brutality and Sorcery.

There’s another place that gives a slottable with a flat weapon and spell damage boost. Untamed Aggression gives slightly less weapon and spell damage, but it also boosts healing. Running this in solo builds might make more sense, but Wrathful Strikes is generally better for damage. There aren’t many scenarios where you want to run both because of the strong CP choices elsewhere in the tree.

Critical Damage Champion Points

Fighting Finesse – Increases your Critical Damage and Critical Healing done by 4% per stage.
Backstabber – Increases your Critical Damage done by 2% per stage against enemies you are flanking.

Fighting Finesse and Backstabber are great tools to get to the critical damage cap of 125%. You likely won’t run either of these in really organized groups, but especially in dungeon content and unorganized trials, you’d want to run one of these.

You’ll almost always run Fighting Finesse. It’s essentially the same crit damage as Backstabber, but you don’t have to meet the condition of needing to be behind your enemy.

If you know you’ll always be behind your target, Backstabber is technically more critical damage. Still, the 2% difference is so small with such a great loss of damage if your target is facing you that Backstabber is generally not worth it. You also frequently face mobs in trash packs, even if you know your boss is turned away.

This next category looks at the best Champion Points for PvE DPS that buff specific damage types.

Specific Damage Champion Points

Deadly Aim – Increase your damage done with single target attacks by 3% per stage.
Thaumaturge – Increases your damage done with damage over time effects by 3% per stage.
Master-At-Arms – Increases your damage done with direct damage attacks by 3% per stage.
Biting Aura – Increases your damage done with area of effect attacks by 3% per stage.

Changing your damage-type CP is where you begin to optimize for your build, rather than the content and group buffs. Every skill can typically be buffed by two of these four damage types, and you want to select the CP that buffs the greatest overall percentage of your damage.

You can view exactly which damage types each ability deals on the ESO wiki. The exact damage type is available under “Skill Coefficients,” shown below.

For Arcanists, Fatecarver often makes up over half your overall damage. Fatecarver is an area of effect, damage over time ability, so running Biting Aura and Thaumaturge would be best since they both buff Fatecarver. You can do a trial dummy parse and see which abilities make up most of your damage, then look at them on the wiki to determine which CP you want to run.

Deadly Aim buffs your single target damage, including many of your DoTs. Things like status effects are tagged as single target DoTs, making Deadly Aim often more broadly impactful to a build. It still isn’t always the best choice, though.

Thaumaturge buffs all damage over time abilities, including channels. Most abilities are DoTs or not, so Thaumaturge is a bit easier to figure out.

Master-At-Arms buffs all direct damage. This is where it can get a little confusing. Direct damage is different from single-target damage. It isn’t always intuitive which one applies to which skill, so you’d need to look up individual skills for Master-At-Arms.

Biting Aura buffs area of effect abilities. It isn’t always run, but Arcanists, in particular, will always utilize Biting Aura. Aoe builds geared more toward trash damage will also often run Biting Aura.

Miscellaneous Slottable Champion Points for PvE DPS

Exploiter – Increases your damage done against Off Balance enemies by 2% per stage.
Force of Nature – Increases your Offensive Penetration by 660 for every status effect your target has.
Weapons Expert – Increases your damage done with Light and Heavy Attacks by 4% per stage.
Bastion – Increases the effectiveness of your damage shields and damage against shielded enemies by 3% per stage.

Exploiter is a huge damage buff while Off-Balance is procced on a target, lasting 7 seconds with a 15 second cooldown.

The exploiter is much more often run in trial groups than in dungeon content. There’s often an easy source of Off-Balance for enemies in a trial, but more organized dungeon groups can also choose to proc Off-Balance if they want to. Expect to rock Exploiter in more content, especially with Gold Road and all of the Off-Balance available through Scribing.

Force of Nature is your go-to CP for under the PvE penetration cap of 18,200. Getting to the penetration cap is such a massive DPS increase that you’ll almost always want to run this when you’re not getting penetration through other means.

Weapons Expert is worth mentioning for heavy attack builds. You will always run this CP if you’re playing a one-bar heavy attack build, and you’ll never run it any other time.

Bastion best fits under this category despite not being a blue CP. Bastion is in the red tree and directly buffs your damage against shielded targets. There aren’t many situations where you’ll want to run this, but you’ll always run it on Xalvakka since the group has to DPS through the boss’s shield when it splits.

Passive Champion Points (Unslottables)

In addition to your four slottable CPs, many CP options don’t need to be slotted to give you a buff.

Piercing – Grants 350 Offensive Penetration per stage.
Tireless Discipline – Grants 260 Max Stamina per stage.
Eldritch Insight – Grants 260 Max Magicka per stage.
Precision – Grants 160 Critical Chance per stage.
Battle Mastery – Increases your chance to apply a Martial status effect by 30% per stage.
Mighty – Grants 100 Weapon and Spell Damage to Martial attacks. Affects Physical, Poison, Disease, and Bleed Damage.
Flawless Ritual – Increases your chance to apply a Magical status effect by 30% per stage.
War Mage – Grants 100 Weapon and Spell Damage to Magical attacks. Affects Magic, Flame, Frost, and Shock Damage.

These are all solid choices if you have the CP to spare. While they won’t be as large of a damage buff as your slottables, when you start getting extra Champion Points, you can start filling in these passive damage Champion Points to gain a sizable DPS boost.

Precision and Piercing are the two here to get first. Once you fill those out and have your slottables, the passives in the Extended Might sub-tree will be a notable DPS increase, especially with the Update 41 buffs to status effects.

Extended Might ESO Champion Points for DPS

Choosing the Best ESO Champion Points for PvE DPS

The most impactful Champion Points are first the ones that get you to buff caps. If you’re under 125% critical damage and 18,200 penetration, sorting those buffs out before others is usually an overall DPS increase. From there, sourcing weapon damage through Wrathful Strikes is also a sizable DPS boost, followed by specific damage type Champion Points.

The biggest thing to remember is always thinking about your build and CP. Get an addon or two if you’re on PC to track penetration, critical damage, or Off-Balance, and you can begin to optimize your build on the fly. The players who routinely hit high numbers are the ones who understand how to optimize their buffs and builds to fit the group and content. Getting comfortable with the Best ESO Champion Points for PvE DPS is a major step to optimizing your damage.

Changes in Update 42 Gold Road Chapter DLC

Patch 10.0.5 brought ten new item sets, three new mythics, and the Scribing feature. There were minor balance changes due to introducing 11 new skills via Scribing called Grimoires. With new skills that can be changed via scripts, however, many skills have delays or long animations.

Here is a brief summary of the biggest changes from Update 42:

Scribing – the new system gives you access to 11 new, unique, customizable skills you can use!
Grimoires – 11 new skills that can be changed via Scripts with stuns, immobilization, pulls, and knockbacks.
Class Balance – the main changes are to the Templar blazing spear with minor changes.
Skill Styling – select new color variations on popular existing skills from the Weapon, Guild, and World Skill Lines.
New Zone West Weald – Located just west of Cyrodiil and east of the Gold Coast, West Weald remains a stronghold of Imperial prosperity.
Lucent Citadel New Trial – 12-player trial with the portal located in northern West Weald, with new gear and achievements.
New Gear Sets – overland, crafting, trials, and mythics.
HDR Support – Windows HDR Color Settings adjust various brightness settings.
Mail Improvements – many changes to player, system, and system alert mail functions.
New Achievements – many new achievements were added to the chapter and base game Update 42.

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Best ESO Champion Points for PvE DPS