ESO Stamina Arcanist PvE Build

This guide explains how to use the best Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) Stamina Arcanist PvE Build, skills, gear, champion points, and more!

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

Why Should You Play the ESO Stamina Arcanist PvE Build?

The ESO Stamina Arcanist PvE Build is an incredible class to play in group content. What makes the Stamina Arcanist so strong is its ability to put out huge area of effect (aoe) damage, while maintaining very high single target dps as well. The Arcanist plays at a slightly lower actions per minute than most classes, due to its long channel times, but playing the Arcanist can easily take you from beginner to expert, as most high level groups want Arcanist dps right now.

Because Arcanists put out so much damage at range, you can kind of play the Arcanist however you want to. Arcanist’s Crux system makes a unique playstyle with three well-equipped skill trees and complete tools for good damage, healing, and survivability. The Arcanist probably has the most complete kit in the game, sourcing almost all of their own buffs with ease. With Update 42, Cephaliarch’s Flail received a slight cost increase, but you really shouldn’t notice much of a change in the build at all.

ESO Stamina Arcanist PvE Build Features and Mechanics

Below are some of the features found using the ESO Stamina Arcanist PvE Build in the Elder Scrolls Online:

• Class: Arcanist
• Attribute: Stamina
• Primary Weapon: Dual Wield
• Secondary Weapon: Destruction Staff
• Armor Types: 6 Medium, 1 Light
• Race: Dark Elf
• Mythic: Velothi Ur-Mages Amulet
• Attributes: 64 Stamina
• Mundus Stone: Thief
• Best Grimoires: Ulfsild’s Contingency, Traveling Knife, Torchbearer

Use the following build rotation as the starter point for the Stamina Arcanist playstyle in PvE. 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 Barb Trap from Fighters Guild. Maintain DoTs and use your spammable skill as filler until you reapply the DoTS.

As an Arcanist, you’ll need to generate and consume Cruxes to constantly enhance your stats, so keep close attention to it. The Flail skill is your main spammable, range, and crux builder. Next, you’ll be beaming with Exhausting Fatecarver and its 4.5-second channel. Your goal is to build up 3x Cruxs, debuff with Dread, and build up 3x more Cruxs and beams. The trick is to reapply all your DoTs and heals just before the beam does all the work for you.

Fatecarver Explained

At certain percentages, replace your spammable with your in-class or weapon execute if you have one in this build, or you can add it for longer boss fights. Executes are the skills that deal more damage and lower the opponent’s health. Ideally, these are meant to replace your main spammable skill at anywhere between 35% (Radiant Oppression) all the way 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.

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.

Use the healing skill Resolving Vigor, 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.

Skills

Front Bar: Dual Wield

Front Bar Weapon Options: They are all good choices depending on your playstyle and needs. Experiment with what works best.

1. Dual Wield
2. Two-handed
3. Bow

Pragmatic Fatecarver (Morph of Fatecarver | Skill Line : Herald of the Tome) – Your damage over time both single target and area that is influenced by Crux’s. Build up three and fire off.

Barbed Trap (Morph of Trap Beast | Skill Line : Fighters Guild) – This skill is merely on our bar to buff our damage via the Fighter’s Guild passives. The skill barbed Trap also does insane single target damage when playing in melee range. I flex in Structured Entropy for a range dot that heals. When doing VMA, flex in Silver Leash to pull mobs. Another great option for serious content is Deadly Cloak for aoe reduction.

Cephaliarch’s Flail (Morph of Abyssal Impact | Skill Line : Herald of the Tome) – Use this do debuff enemies and increase your damage done by 5%. This ability also is a crux builder and acts as a spammable to generate Crux.

Quick Cloak (Morph of Blade Cloak | Skill Line : Dual Wield) – This is used for speed, damage reduction, and damage.

Camouflaged Hunter (Morph of Expert Hunter | Skill Line : Fighters Guild) – This skill is merely to buff our weapon damage via fighters guild passives and give us a critical buff on our front bar. The Arcanist plays best with lower dots and focusing on just building Crux and doing damage with fatecarver. The simpler the better

Flawless Dawnbreaker (Morph of Dawnbreaker | Skill Line : Fighters Guild) – passively, this ability boost our damage and can be used during execute phase when you won’t reach your back bar ultimate number or during high mobility encounters.

---

Back Bar: Flame Staff

Front Bar Weapon Options: They are all good choices depending on your play style and needs. Experiment with what works best.

1. Inferno Staff
2. Two-handed
3. Bow

Inspired Scholarship (Morph of Tome Bearer’s Inspiration | Skill Line : Herald of the Tome) – used for buff and extra damage with class skills.

Anti Cavalry Caltrops (Morph of Caltrops | Skill Line : Assault) – Strong damage over time and area damage skill. Consider this your flex skill if you need a heal or defensive skill.

Fulminating Rune (Morph of The Imperfect Ring | Skill Line : Herald of the Tome) – This ability acts as your group AoE damage and synergy skill. If allies activate the synergy, it does a lot of damage and good damage over time.

Camouflaged Hunter (Morph of Expert Hunter | Skill Line : Fighters Guild) – This skill is merely to buff our weapon damage via fighters guild passives and give us a critical buff on our front bar. The Arcanist plays best with lower dots and focusing on just building Crux and doing damage with fatecarver. The simpler the better

Blockade of Fire (Morph of Wall of Elements | Skill Line : Destruction Staff) – Damage over time that is benefited by VMA back bar weapon.

The Languid Eye (Morph of The Unblinking Eye | Skill Line : Herald of the Tome) – Incredible ultimate for huge damage with a small AoE circle. You want to make sure the enemy is stationary before using this to get the most damage. Also consider the mother Morph, Tide King if you keep missing the targets.

---

---

Scribing Skills & Grimoires – ESO PvE Stamina Arcanist Build

Ulfsild’s Contingency, Traveling Knife, and Torchbearer are the best Grimoires (skills) for the ESO PvE Stamina Arcanist Build  Contingency grants powerful area-based damage and buffs. Traveling Knife gives you a ranged bleed attack that does damage on the return. Torchbearer also gives you a good spammable when in melee range or if your class is single-target heavy. You can also use the Bow Vault skill as an immobilization or mobility tool. Below are the suggested combination of Grimoires, focus, signature, and affix scripts:

• Ulfsild’s Contingency (Mage Guild) – Flame Damage (focus script), Class Mastery (signature script), Vulnerability (Affix Script)
• Traveling Knife – Bleed (focus script), Lingering Torment (signature script), Berserk (Affix Script)
• Torchbearer (Fighters Guild) – Flame Damage (focus script), Class Mastery (signature script), Breach (Affix Script)

The Scribing System utilizes one of 11 new skills from the Gold Road Chapter called Grimoires.  With Grimoires, you can customize spells via Scripts.  The scribing feature requires the purchase of the Gold Road Chapter (sponsored link).  To learn more about scribing, check out our full guide here.

Passives Skills

Consider taking all the skill passives in the skill tree listed below:

• The Herald of the Tome (class skill line)
• Apocryphal Soldier (class skill line)
• Curative Runeforms (class skill line)
• Duel Wield (weapon skill line)
• Destruction Staff (weapon skill line)
• Light Armor
• Medium Armor
• Undaunted
• Mage’s Guild
• Fighter’s Guild
• Psjiic Order
• Racial
• Alliance War Support
• Alliance War Assault
• Crafting, Alchemy Medicinal Use

Rotation and Parse

Stamina Arcanist should still be the strongest overall class in trials. Unlike its magicka counterpart, Coral Riptide is very easy to run on the Arcanist and stay around the 30% stamina threshold and can be used on Parsing or in Trials when you can coordinate dumping stamina. You can pre-burn your stamina with Camo Hunter, allowing you to start the fight with a maxed value Coral or stick with Ansuul’s. If you just don’t want to deal with the stamina management, however, Ansuul is still a fantastic option, especially in dungeons where you may not have all of the sustain buffs you would receive in a trial.

The key to parsing with Arcanist is to beam as much as you can while ensuring you build to three crux before every beam. Since you’ll usually run the Exploiter CP on an arcanist, you’ll want to get into your beam as quickly as possible so you can be beaming when off-balance procs on the boss. To do this, try to have three crux when running up to the boss if you can, but you’ll want to hit Flail before you begin your initial beam.

Skill Rotation

Opener when you have three crux: Prebuff your Quick Cloak and Inspired Scholarship, then engage with Flail>Bar Swap> Wall>Languid Eye>Bar Swap>Fatecarver>Trap> Bar Swap>Fulminating Rune>Anti-Cavalry Caltrops>Bar Swap>Flail>Flail>Fatecarver. From there, you should be in a flow, building crux to three before beaming, and applying your DoTs as they fall off.

There are a few things to know about the mechanics of this rotation. First, Inspired Scholarship will give you a crux while beaming, so you only need to Flail twice to get back to three crux before your beam. Second, a few skills are particularly difficult to Light Attack weave or bar swap off of. If you can, don’t bar swap directly after a Flail or Fatecarver, as there is a slight delay. You’ll also want to ignore your Light Attack directly after a Fatecarver channel. Instead, you can spam press your next skill while your channel finishes to immediately cast an ability as Fatecarver ends without canceling the channel.

Gear – Best in Slot

This is the highest damage possible using the ESO Stamina Arcanist PvE Build:

Slot	Type	Set	Trait	Glyph
Head	medium	Perfected Ansuul’s Torment	Divines	Stamina
Shoulders	light	Slimecraw	Divines	Stamina
Chest	medium	Deadly Strikes	Divines	Stamina
Legs	medium	Perfected Ansuul’s Torment	Divines	Stamina
Gloves	medium	Perfected Ansuul’s Torment	Divines	Stamina
Boots	medium	Perfected Ansuul’s Torment	Divines	Stamina
Belt	medium	Perfected Ansuul’s Torment	Divines	Stamina
Weapon One	Dagger	Deadly Strikes	Nirnhorned	Flame
Secondary	Dagger	Deadly Strikes	Charged	Poison
Weapon Two	Inferno Staff	Perfected Crushing Wall	Infused	Weapon Damage
Necklace		Velothi Ur-Mage’s Amulet	Bloodthirsty	Weapon Damage
Ring 1		Deadly Strikes	Bloodthirsty	Weapon Damage
Ring 2		Deadly Strikes	Bloodthirsty	Weapon Damage

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.

Mythic & Monster

Velothi Ur-Mage’s 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.

MYTHIC FLEX OPTIONS

• Harpooner’s Wading Kilt Set = great mythic if avoiding damage and can keep the stacks up.
• Mora’s Whisper = This provides up to 10% critical chance but requires collections of Mages Guild Books on your specific character.
• 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.

Perfected Ansuul’s Torment: Obtained in Sanity’s Edge, Necrom Chapter Trial. It is the best overall damage-dealing set that comes in medium armor. If you struggle with resources, you can swap to a light armor setup but it will be less damage.

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 FRONT BAR

1. Pillar of Nirn: one of the game’s hardest-hitting, easiest proc sets.
2. Perfected Sul-Xan = (TRIAL) insane damage if you can reliably pick up the essence/soul (blue orb) left behind
3. Perfected Coral Riptide: Great damage if resources are lowered.
4. Perfected Whorl of the Depth = another very hard-hitting proc set though comes in light armor.
5. Briarheart = Overland can be bought from traders great option for healing and weapon damage boost
6. Order’s Wrath = Best overall crafting damage option
7. Perfected Merciless Charge = great flex option; swap in the skill Stampede.
8. Agility = extra 2pc set.

Race

The best racial choice for the Stamina Arcanist is below:

1. 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.
2. Orc: Gain weapon damage and max stamina, though there is no magicka bonus.
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 stamina, which increases damage, healing, and DoTs.

---

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

Craft	Warfare	Fitness
Treasure Hunter	Fighting Finesse	Bloody Renewal
Liquid Efficiency	Biting Aura	Boundless Vitality
Rationer	Thaumaturge	Rejuvenation
Steed’s Blessing	Wrathful Strikes	Fortified

Warfare Constellation Champion Points

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 4 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 Stamina Arcanist:

1. Precision 10
2. Fighting fitness (slottable) 50
3. Wrathful strikes (slottable) 50
4. Extended might – sub con – piercing 10
5. thaumaturge (slottable) 50
6. biting aura (slottable) 50

This would be the bare 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

Below are recommended Fitness Champion Point selections for the Stamina Arcanist:

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

This would be the bare 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

Below are recommended Craft Champion Point selections for the Stamina Arcanist:

1. Steed’s blessing (slottable) – 50
2. Breakfall 10 
3. Wanderer 15
4. Steadfast 10
5. Treasure hunter 50 (slottable)
6. rationer (slottable) 30
7. liquid efficiency (slottable) 75

This would be the bare minimum setup, spending 240CP (720 total required). The next step is to max out passives, that do not require a slottable but increase performance.

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

This would max out the crafting tree with all active passive champion points at 723 cp spent 2,169 total spent.

Consumables – ESO Stamina Arcanist PvE Build

The best consumables for the Stamina Arcanist PvE build are Braised Rabbit with Spring Vegetables and Essence of Health tri-stat potions. Braised Rabbit with Spring Vegetables gives a massive amount of health and stamina, stats that give you both the most survivability and damage of any other consumable. Arcanists have very good sustain. If you struggle with stamina sustain, you could switch to Artaeum Takeaway Broth or Dubious Camoran Throne as a cheaper option. These both give up some stamina and health for stamina sustain.

For your potions, both of your major weapon/spell damage and critical chance buffs are sourced through the build, so you can run tri-pots. This gives you a large burst of resources when you need them. You can of course switch these out for heroism potions, but with Update 42, many groups can source Minor Heroism through group scribing skills instead.

• Braised Rabbit with Spring Vegetables: Increase Max Health by 5395 and Max Stamina by 4936 for 1.5 hours. Ingredients: Greens (1), Seasoning (1), Small Game (1).
  • Artaeum Takeaway Broth: Increase Max Health by 3326, Health Recovery by 406, Max Stamina by 3080, and Stamina Recovery by 338 for 2 hours. Ingredients: Fish (20), Melon (5), Powdered Mother of Pearl (5), Torchbug Thorax (5).
• Essence of Health (tri-stat): Restore 7329 Health, 6618 Magicka, and 6618 Stamina immediately. Grants Major Fortitude, Major Intellect, and Major Endurance, which increase your Health Recovery, Magicka Recovery, and Stamina Recovery by 20% for 31.7 seconds. (effects are scaled based on your level) Ingredients: Bugloss, Columbine, Mountain Flower.

Build Summary – ESO Stamina Arcanist PvE Build

---

Looking For More ESO Builds?

Thank you for reading the ESO Stamina Arcanist PvE Build Guide. We provide the latest news and create guides for ESO. Also, watch me play games on Twitch or visit my YouTube channel!

• Builds
  • Solo PvE
  • Group PvE
  • One Bar
  • PVP
• Complete Beginners Guide
  • Skill Points Guide
  • Champion Point System Guide
• PvP Beginner Guide
  • How to farm Alliance Points (AP)
  • How to farm Tel Var Stones
• Addons, UI, and Keybinds Guide for ESO