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!

Stamina Arcanist PvE Build The Elder Scrolls Online

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

Why Should You Play the ESO Stamina Arcanist PvE Build?

The ESO Stamina Arcanist PvE Build is an incredible class to play in the group. This build has ranged abilities and, as a result, great flexibility in weapon choices. Arcanist’s Crux system makes a unique playstyle with three well-equipped skill trees and complete tools for good damage, healing, and survivability. Yet, the Arcanist’s downside can be a weak resource sustain that forces you to play hybrid build and can be hard to manage for beginners. However, as long as you have the class passives unlocked and after a couple of minutes, that should not be too much of an issue.

ESO Stamina Arcanist PvE Build Features

  • Class: Arcanist
  • Attribute: Stamina
  • Primary Weapon: Dual Wield
  • Secondary Weapon: Dual Wield (Destruction Staff)
  • Armor Types: 6 Medium, 1 Light
  • Race: Dark Elf
  • Mythic: Velothi Ur-Mages Amulet
  • Attributes: 64 Stamina
  • Mundus Stone: Thief

ESO Stamina Arcanist PvE Build Playstyle

Fatecarver Arcanist Skill ESO
Fatecarver Arcanist Skill ESO

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.


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:

SlotTypeSetTraitGlyph
HeadlightSlimecrawDivinesStamina
ShouldersmediumPerfected Ansuul’s TormentDivinesStamina
ChestmediumDeadly StrikesDivinesStamina
LegsmediumPerfected Ansuul’s TormentDivinesStamina
GlovesmediumPerfected Ansuul’s TormentDivinesStamina
BootsmediumPerfected Ansuul’s TormentDivinesStamina
BeltmediumPerfected Ansuul’s TormentDivinesStamina
Weapon OneDaggerDeadly StrikesNirnhornedFlame
SecondaryDaggerDeadly StrikesChargedPoison
Weapon TwoInferno StaffPerfected Crushing WallInfusedWeapon Damage
NecklaceVelothi Ur-Mage’s AmuletBloodthirstyWeapon Damage
Ring 1Deadly StrikesBloodthirstyWeapon Damage
Ring 2Deadly StrikesBloodthirstyWeapon Damage
Best PvE Gear for Stamina Arcanist Build

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

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

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 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

ESO Fitness Champion Tree

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

ESO Craft Champion Tree

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

Lava Foot Soup-And-Saltrice

Type: Foods

SUSTAIN but NO HEALTH: Increase Max Stamina by 4575 and Stamina Recovery by 457 for 2 hours. (effects are scaled based on your level)

Artaeum Takeaway Broth

Type: Foods

OVERALL: Increase Max Health by 3326 and Health Recovery by 406 and Max Stamina by 3080 and Stamina Recovery by 338 for 2 hours. (effects are scaled based on your level)

Flexible

Type: Potions

This build has both buffs active at all times freeing up potion options. You can run heroism potions or tri-pots for more ultimate or survivability.

Essence of Weapon Power

Type: Foods

RUN IF YOU DON”T HAVE BUFFS: Grants major brutality with increases weapon damage by 20% for 47.6 seconds. Grants major savagery which grants you 2191 weapon critical rating for 47.6 seconds. Restore 7582 stamina immediately. Grants you major endurance which increases your stamina recovery by 20% for 47.6. Potions have a 45-second cooldown. IMPORTANT: make sure you have three points into medicinal use passive in alchemy crafting. (INGREDIENTS: Blessed Thistle, Dragonthorn and Wormwood)

Build Summary – ESO Stamina Arcanist PvE Build

Class: Arcanist

Race: Dark Elf

Attributes: 64 Stamina

Mundus Stone: Thief

Weapon One: Dual Wield

Weapon Two: Flame Staff

Armor Set 1: Perfected Ansuul’s Torment

Armor Set 2: Deadly Strikes

Monster Helm: Slimecraw

Mythic: Velothi Ur-Mages Amulet

Armor Weight: 6 Medium, 1 Light

Skill Bar 1

  • Cephaliarch’s Flail
  • Pragmatic Fatecarver
  • Quick Cloak
  • Barbed Trap
  • Camouflaged Hunter
  • Flawless Dawnbreaker (Ultimate)

Skill Bar 2

  • Elemental Blockade
  • Fulminating Rune
  • Anti-Cavalry Caltrops
  • Inspired Scholarship
  • Camouflaged Hunter
  • The Languid Eye (Ultimate)

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