ESO Magicka Templar PvE Build

This guide explains how to use the best Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) Magicka Templar PvE build, skills, gear, champion points, and more!

Magicka Templar PvE Build Elder Scrolls Online

This build has been updated for the Update 41 patch of the Elder Scrolls Online.

Why Should You Play the ESO Magicka Templar PvE Build?

Welcome to the ESO Magicka Templar Build for PvE in The Elder Scrolls Online. This build is intended for players looking to complete group content oriented at the hardest content in the game. Specifically, this build is designed for trials or 12-player content in mind. This build, unlike others, may sacrifice healing and survivability for pure raw damage. We assume you understand ESO, rotations, and mechanics well and are looking for the greatest damage. If not, make sure to check out our solo build here.

In ESO, the Magica Templar is a simple upfront melee magicka-based damage dealer. The strength of the class is healing while doing your main damage ability. Moreover, the Magplar has great damage over time, built-in area damage, and the strongest execute in The Elder Scrolls Online. This is one of the highest damage-producing builds in the game, and we will walk you through how to create it.

ESO Magicka Templar PvE Build Features and Mechanics

  • Class: Templar
  • Attribute: 64 Magicka
  • Primary Weapon: Dual Wield
  • Secondary Weapon: Inferno Staff
  • Armor Types: 1 Light, 6 Medium
  • Mythic: Velothi Ur-Mage’s Amulet
  • Race: High Elf
  • Attributes: 64 Magicka
  • Mundus Stone: Thief

ESO Magicka Templar PvE Build Playstyle

Use the following rotation as the starter point. After, apply your buffs and cast the DoT skills on cooldown for the best, highest DPS. The Damage over Time skills (DoTs) do more damage than your main spammable. Thus, they need to be cast less often and are easier to maintain, for example, The Degeneration from Mages Guild or the Barb Trap from Fighters Guild. Maintain DoTs and use your spammable skill as filler until you reapply the DoTS.

Replace your spammable with your in-class or weapon execute at certain percentages if you have one in this build. Executes are the skills that deal more damage and lower the opponent’s health. Ideally, these will replace your main spammable skill at anywhere between 35% (Radiant Oppression) to 20% (Mages’ Fury). At a high level, execute skills become so strong that the lower the enemy’s health, the fewer DoTs you maintain because it does so much damage.

Use the healing skill when your health drops below 50% or the shield skill when you anticipate damage. Also, always use the suggested food and potions as they significantly increase your damage, survivability, and resource sustain.

If you run out of resources, do a heavy attack and return to your rotation. Remember that a heavy attack on off-balance enemies will return double the resources. Additionally, if you are a beginner or struggle with sustain, you can flex in the Consuming Trap skill instead of a DoT skill. The Consuming Trap floods both resources when a target dies.

Skills

Front Bar – Dual Wield

Front Bar Weapon Style Choices:

  1. Dual Wield
  2. Flame Staff
  3. Lighting Staff

Deadly Cloak (Morph of Blade Cloak | Skill Line : Dual Wield) – This skill reduces area damage, and tirggers area damage at the expense of stamina.

Power of the Light (Morph of Backlash | Skill Line : Dawn’s Wrath) – A powerful single target burst skill that should be reapplied after explosion. It works like a balloon soaking up damage (to a certain point) and exploding for that amount. This skill also activates a key passive, Illuminate which grants minor sorcerery (10% more spell damage) and Prism, more ultimate.

Barbed Trap (Morph of Trap Beast | Skill Line : Fighters Guild) – You can get minor force buff one of many ways, gear, or two commonly used abilities Barb Trap and Channeled Acceleration. Since we play in melee range, using barb trap makes the most since. Moreover slotting on our front bar increase of spell damage by 3% via slayer fighters guild passive. Another advantage is banished the wicked passive gives us ultimate when killing enemies too.

Puncturing Sweep (Morph of Puncturing Strikes | Skill Line : Aedric Spear) – Sweeps still remains a decent main spammable in PvE content. While it’s single target is a bit weaker, it does AoE damage as well and it’s still work using.

Radiant Oppression (Morph of Radiant Destruction | Skill Line : Dawn’s Wrath) – An executable ability you want to use when the enemy is in execute range roughly 35% health replaces Sweeps as main spammable. The strength of this ability is how hard it hits single target. You still need to light attack weave in between applying it. Also be careful to avoid damage as you’ll be vulnerable. In fact, the other morph, Radiant Glory is what I use solo or on the beginner friendly build.

Flawless Dawnbreaker (Morph of Dawnbreaker | Skill Line : Fighters Guild) – Great damage buff just for slotting on your front bar or activate when you won’t be able to recast meteor.


Back Bar – Fire Staff

Back bar options:

  1. Inferno Staff
  2. Lighting Staff
  3. Two Handed

Blazing Spear (Morph of Spear Shards | Skill Line : Aedric Spear) – Spear remains one of the strongest damage over time ability the Templar possess. It does damage up front, damage over time and can proc the Burning Light passive. Moreover, slotting this skill on our front bar will increase overall critical damage by 10%, making it a very strong choice and a damage over time effect you want to maintain throughout the fights.

Ritual of Retribution (Morph of Cleansing Ritual | Skill Line : Restoring Light) – Imagine having a skill that does crazy high AoE damage and provides a powerful group synergy? That’s what you get with Ritual of Retribution and you should maintain this skill alongside of Blazing Spear for huge AoE damage. Keep in mind you’ll need to come in close range and place down so you hit the maximum amount of targets.

Solar Barrage (Morph of Solar Flare | Skill Line : Dawn’s Wrath) – Powerful area based damage and buff. Consider this your flex spot if you need a heal or a shield.

Vampire’s Bane (Morph of Sun Fire | Skill Line : Dawn’s Wrath) – Vampire’s Bane is a very strong single target DoT. Consider this your flex spot on your front bar and swap to Inner Light if you want simpler gameplay.

Blockade of Fire (Morph of Wall of Elements | Skill Line : Destruction Staff) – Great damage over time still and high powered DoT.

Shooting Star (Morph of Meteor | Skill Line : Mages Guild) – Great burst ultimate in stationary fights.


Rotation and Parse

The Magicka Templar is in a great spot in this patch. Templar still excels at execute damage, with the best execute ability in the game, Radiant Destruction. Templar is exceptionally useful in many groups trying to speed up the execution of a fight. Still, the air damage on the plane is not as serious as other options. While we went with the Charged Trait on both daggers, you could just as easily run Nirnhoned/Charged or Nirnhoned/Precise on your daggers. This will increase your beam damage but decrease your damage before execute. Either are still viable.

This build utilizes Whorl of the Depths and Deadly. Deadly increases the damage of your channeled abilities and DoTs, pushing the damage of your Radiant Destruction execute ability. Whorl of the Depths is a very strong AOE proc set that offers a ton of extra critical chance. If you have the perfected version, that extra line of crit will push your beam damage up even further.

Skill Rotation

To start your parse, pre-buff with Solar Barrage>Deadly Cloak, then engage with Shooting Star>Bar Swap>Barbed Trap>Power of the Light>Bar Swap>Vampire’s Bane>Blockade>Degeneration>Ritual of Retribution>Bar Swap>Puncturing Sweeps>Power of the Light and continue using Sweeps as your spammable while applying Power of the Light every sixth skill cast. Like Daedric Prey on the Sorcerer, you get an explosion from Power of the Light as the ability expires, so you’ll want to ensure that skill fully expires before reapplying it, or you’ll lose half of the skill’s damage. You’ll then start to execute the fight by swapping Radiant Glory into your rotation instead of Puncturing Sweeps.

The key to a solid Templar parse is to time your execute correctly. The percentage on a boss where Radiant Destruction begins to overtake Puncturing Sweeps in damage is 40%-43%. You can turn on health percentages in the settings to see the boss’s health percentage, and you’ll change your skill priority once you reach that point. From there, you apply every DoT as it falls off while substituting beam instead of Sweeps.

At around 20%, you’ll reapply your DoTs again, ending with Blockade, then keep beaming, only applying Power of the Light. If you have the ultimate for a Flawless Dawnbreaker, that will give you some weapon and spell damage to further push your beam damage, and you’ll stop applying Power of the light at 10%, beaming until the boss dies. If you can learn to time your abilities to where they are falling off as the boss dies, you’ll hit some crazy numbers in execute.

Passives Skills

Consider taking all of the passives in the below skill trees to increase your ESO Magicka Templar builds performance without slotting any skills:

  • Aedric Spear (class skill line)
  • Dawn’s Wrath (class skill line)
  • Restoring Light (class skill line)
  • Light Armor
  • Medium Armor
  • Undaunted
  • Fighters Guild
  • Mages Guild
  • Destructive Staff
  • Dual Wield
  • Psijic Order
  • Racial
  • Alliance War Support
  • Alliance War Assault
  • Crafting, Alchemy Medicinal Use

Gear – Best in Slot

Use this for the best slot Damage for group Magicka Templar PvE gear:

SlotTypeSetTraitGlyph
HeadmediumDeadly StrikesDivinesMagicka
ShoulderslightSlimecrawDivinesMagicka
ChestmediumDeadly StrikesDivinesMagicka
LegsmediumDeadly StrikesDivinesMagicka
GlovesmediumDeadly StrikesDivinesMagicka
BootsmediumDeadly StrikesDivinesMagicka
BeltmediumDeadly StrikesDivinesMagicka
Weapon OneDaggerPerfect Whorl of the DepthsChargedFlame
SecondaryDaggerPerfect Whorl of the DepthsChargedPoison
Weapon TwoFire StaffPerfected Crushing WallInfusedSpell Damage
NecklaceVelothi Ur-Mage’s AmuletBloodthirstySpell Damage
Ring 1Perfect Whorl of the DepthsBloodthirstySpell Damage
Ring 2Perfect Whorl of the DepthsBloodthirstySpell Damage
Magicka Templar PvE Gear

In PvE, high-end DPS builds, magicka, and stamina builds run similar gear setups, including medium armor. Medium is stronger in trials due to the passive bonuses. If you don’t play with the coordinate trials team, you can swap to Light, though it will suffer overall damage loss.

Monster Helms and Mythic

Veloth Ur-Mages Amulet: mythic item requiring the Antiquies system and Necrom Chapter.  Requires five leads; find them here. Incredibly strong passive damage in the current meta.

Slimecraw: obtained in Wayrest Sewers I Veteran dungeon and Maj Undaunted Vendor. Gives us the highest critical chance for a one-piece item.

FLEX OPTIONS

  1. Harpooner’s Wading Kilt Set = great mythic if avoiding damage and can keep the stacks up.
  2. Mora’s Whisper = This provides up to 10% critical chance but requires collections of Mages Guild Books on your specific character.
  3. Death Dealer’s Fete = is a great option because it boosts max stats with zero downsides.
Gear Sets

Deadly Strikes: These were obtained in Cyrodiil, Bruma Elite Gear Vendor. Incredible damage with damage over time and spammable execute skills.

Perfect Whorl of the Depths: obtained in Veteran Dreadsail Reef trial DLC High Isle. It’s one of the hardest-hitting proc sets in the game.

Perfected Crushing Wall: from Veteran Maelstrom Arena in Orsinium. Increase your overall DPS due to the ability of the wall of elements and more damage.

FLEX OPTIONS

  1. Pillar of Nirn: Obtained in Falkreath Hold dungeon, Horns of the Reach DLC.
  2. Perfected Bahsei’s Mania = You’ll get a flat damage increase if you can manage around 20-50% magicka.
  3. Perfected Mantle of Siroria = Update, 35 made this popular again, so consider using it in parse/stationary trials.
  4. Perfected False Gods = great resource sustain set.
  5. Order’s Wrath = Crafted and best overall option for great damage.
  6. Mother’s Sorrow = a decent overland set, for starters.

Gear – Beginner

This setup is great for beginners who do not have access to trial gear:

SlotTypeSetTraitGlyph
HeadlightIceheartDivines > AnyMagicka
ShoulderslightIceheartDivines > AnyMagicka
ChestlightWithered HandDivines > AnyMagicka
LegslightWithered HandDivines > AnyMagicka
GloveslightWithered HandDivines > AnyMagicka
BootslightWithered HandDivines > AnyMagicka
BeltlightWithered HandDivines > AnyMagicka
Weapon OneInferno StaffWar MaidenPrecise > SharpenedFlame
Weapon TwoLighting StaffWillpowerInfused > AnyWeapon Damage
NecklaceWar MaidenArcaneSpell Power
Ring 1War MaidenArcaneSpell Power
Ring 2War MaidenArcaneSpell Power
Magicka Templar PvE Beginner Gear
  • Iceheart: obtained in Direfrost keep and Glirion undaunted vendor. Great defensive set.
  • Withered Hand: obtained in Alik’r Desert overland or from guild traders (delves, dolmans, world bosses, chest). WHY? If you’re a new player, have low champion points, and lack trial gear, this gives great sustain and healing when killing mobs and is ideal for a newer player.
  • War Maiden: obtained in Vvardenfell or on Guild Traders. WHY? Incredible value for a front set without managing a complex rotation or uptime like Kinra’s.
  • Willpower: obtained in Imperial City, dungeon finder, or guild traders. WHY? Bigger magicka pool = bigger shields and useful on the back bar.

Race

The best racial choice for the Magicka PvE Templar build is below:

  1. High Elf: Gain resource sustain passive, max magicka, and weapon and spell damage. The downside of High Elf is a lack of stamina or flame resistance.
  2. Dark Elf: Gain max magicka, stamina, and weapon and spell damage. The flame resistance is also helpful and considered the strongest overall PVE DPS race.
  3. Khajiit: This race gets recovery, max stats, and critical damage and healing. Consider the Khajiit a great option if you aren’t over the critical cap of 125%.

Attributes

The best choice is 64 magicka, which increases damage, healing, and shields.

Mundus Stone

The Thief is the best Mundus Stone for PvE Builds because it gives Increases Weapon and Spell Critical Strike a chance.


Champion Points

Warfare Constellation Champion Points

ESO Warfare Champion Tree

Below is a step-by-step method for slotting your champion points in the Warfare tree (blue).  We have used the minimum possible to reach four slottable selections; all maxed out.  If you have more CP, consider taking more in the passives for optimal performance.

Below are recommended Warfare Champion Point selections for the Magicka Templar PvE Build:

  1. Precision 10
  2. Wrathful strikes (slottable) 50
  3. Fighting finesse(slottable) 50
  4. Extended might – sub con – piercing 10
  5. Masters at arms (slottable) 50
  6. thaumaturge (slottable) 50

This would be the minimum setup, spending 220 CP (660 total required). The next step is to max out passives that do not require a slottable but increase performance.

  1. Precision 10
  2. Piercing 10
  3. Tireless discipline 20
  4. Eldritch insight 20
  5. Blessed 20
  6. Quick recovery 20
  7. Flawless ritual 40
  8. War mage 30
  9. Battle mastery 40
  10. Mighty 30
  11. Elemental aegis 20
  12. Hardy 20
  13. Preparation 20

This would max out the Warfare tree with all active and passive champion points at 520 spent 1,560 total spent.

Fitness Constellation Champion Points

ESO Fitness Champion Tree

Below are recommended Fitness Champion Point selections for the Magicka Templar PvE Build:

  1. Fortified (slottable) 50
  2. Boundless vitality (slottable) 50
  3. Rejuvenation (slottable) 50
  4. Sprinter 10
  5. Winder chaser – sub constellation – hasty 8
  6. Hero’s Vigor 10
  7. Siphoning spells (slottable) 50

This would be the minimum setup, spending 228 CP  (684 total required). The next step is to max out passives that do not require a slottable but increase performance. 

  1. Hero’s Vigor 10
  2. Tumbling 30
  3. Sprinter 10
  4. Defiance 20
  5. Hasty 8
  6. Tireless guardian 20
  7. Fortification 30
  8. Nimble 6
  9. Mystic tenacity 50
  10. Tempered soul 50
  11. Piercing gaze 30
  12. Savage defense  30
  13. Bashing brutality 20

This would max out the fitness tree with all active, passive champion points at 542 cp spent and 1,626 total spent.

Craft Constellation Champion Points

ESO Craft Champion Tree

Below are recommended Craft Champion Point selections for the Magicka Templar PvE Build:

  1. Steed’s blessing (slottable) – 50
  2. Breakfall 10
  3. Wanderer 15
  4. Steadfast 10
  5. Treasure hunter (slottable) 50
  6. Rationer 10
  7. Liquid efficiency (slottable) 75
  8. Angler’s Instincts 25
  9. Reel technique (slottable) 25

This would be the minimum setup, spending 370CP (1110 total required). The next step is to max out passives that do not require a slottable but increase performance.

  1. Steadfast enchantment 40 cp
  2. Breakfall 40 cp
  3. Wanderer 60
  4. Fortunes favor 10
  5. Rationer 10
  6. Friends in low places 25
  7. Out of sight 30
  8. Fleet of Phantom 40
  9. Soul’s Reservoir 33
  10. Gilded fingers 50
  11. Fortunes favor 40
  12. Inspiration boost 45
  13. Infamous 30

This would max out the crafting tree with all active, passive champion points at 823 cp spent 2,469.

Consumables

Food

Ghastly Eye Bowl

DPS Parse: Increase Max Magicka by 4256 and Magicka Recovery by 425 for 2 hours.

Clockwork Citrus Filet

OVERALL: Increase Max Health by 3724, Health Recovery by 351, Max Magicka by 3458 and Magicka Recovery by 319 for 2 hours.

Witchmother’s Brew

CHEAP: Increase Max Magicka by 2856, Max Health by 3094, and Magicka Recovery by 315 for 2 hours.

Potions

Essence of Spell Power

Grants major sorcery with increases spell damage by 20% for 47.6 seconds. Major prophecy which grants you 2191 spell critical rating for 47.6 seconds. Restore 7582 magicka immediately. Grants you major intellect which increases your magicka recovery by 20% for 47.6. Potions have a 45 second cool down and make sure you have three points into medicinal use passive in alchemy crafting.


Build Summary – Magicka Templar PvE Build

Class: Templar

Race: High Elf

Attributes: 64 Magicka

Mundus Stone: Thief

Weapon One: Dual Wield

Weapon Two: Flame Staff

Armor Set 1: Perfect Whorl of the Depths

Armor Set 2: Deadly Strikes

Mythic: Velothi Ur-Mage’s Amulet

Armor Weight: 6 Medium, 1 Light

Skill Bar 1 – Dual Daggers

  • Puncturing Sweeps
  • Power of the Light
  • Radiant Glory
  • Barbed Trap
  • Deadly Cloak
  • Flawless Dawnbreaker (Ultimate)

Skill Bar 2 – Flame Staff

  • Elemental Blockade
  • Ritual of Retribution
  • Solar Barrage
  • Blazing Spear
  • Vampire’s Bane
  • Shooting Star (Ultimate)

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