Hot Sauce - Magicka Dragonknight PVE Build
Written guide updated for The Scribes of Fate DLC: Q1 2023
Love Fire Mage type playstyles but find constructing a Magicka Dragonknight too complicated? Or perhaps you have trouble tracking all the individual up times on too many skills?
Struggle no more!
This is “Hot Sauce!”, a fully functioning viable PVE ONE BAR Magicka Dragonknight, designed for ALL PVE content, taking full advantage of all that fire, but made so much simpler!
This build is designed to take advantage of the fire and fury side of the class while making it far less complicated than usual. ONE bar means making tough choices about what to have and what not to have on a build. However this setup has managed to maintain that damage over time, constant fire/burning theme with EXTENDED durations to the skills allowing for more freedom to spam stuff in between without the dots falling off too soon!
Maintaining multiple dots can feel complicated, and tracking can be a pain, but with this build the fire damage over time skills, all have 5 extra seconds on their already LONG uptime, INCLUDING your Ultimate! This gives you freedom in mechanics and inside your weaving and spamming periods to not have to worry about what comes next too soon.
We are of course utilizing some of the new gear from this quarter’s DLC however you do not have to.
The build is designed to PLAY the same regardless of your gear choices (explained in the video) allowing for options without sacrificing playstyle, feel or theme.
There are setups for beginners, some more advanced, some that buffs the group depending on damage type, and yet ALL have the SAME rotation no matter what.
MOST one bar builds right now are lightning staves, this one is NOT! We burn everything! And for doing so, we get back resources, help the group do more damage, and maintain our identity! FIRE ALL THE WAY!
Key bonuses for the setup
- Easy rotation with long damage over time up times
- Healing from doing damage especially during off balance periods
- Constant burning and poison status effects to increase your damage and gain back resources
- Increased flame damage for your whole group on target
- Increase POISON and DISEASE damage for your whole group on target (depending on choices)
- ONE BAR meaning it is more accessible for players wanting to perform high but with less complications
- High resistances
- High sustainability and benefits from heavy attacking just in case you are running low
- FIRE…i think that counts as a benefit ! 😉
Fashion First!
As demonstrated in the video, our fabulous ESO fashion setup and dress choice for this character is as follows:
Head: Medium Ancient Daedric
Shoulders: Heavy Ancient Daedric
Chest: Heavy Syrabanic Marine
Legs: Heavy Sapiarch
Hands: Light Ancient Daedric
Belt: Light Dreadsail
Feet: Light Waking Flame
Weapon: Spellscar Lithoarms Staff
The only color we are using are Obsidian Black (any black will do).
Skills
Destruction Staff (Inferno)
1) Burning Embers
2) Unstable Wall of Fire
3) Engulfing Flames
4) Flame Lash
5) Eruption
Ultimate – Standard of Might
Champion Points 2.0
The NEW Champion Points 2.0 introduced in the Q1 2021 DLC: Flames Of Ambition is quite possibly the BIGGEST change/addition to The Elder Scrolls Online since One Tamriel! And these were further altered in the Blackwood Chapter, giving us a lower base for capping out some of the essentials and also adding some more slotables!
Before it was a case of “I have limited points as a CP, so HOW should I spend them”? Now that is NOT the case as SUCH! Now, it is a case of, buy ALL the things, but which SLOTABLES should you take?
Everything before was a passive bonus with huge diminished returns, awkward calculations, and was messy to all players for the most part. The new system underlines NO diminished returns, no majorly confusing passives, and the ability to buy EVERY single passive available for tanking, DPS, and healing on the SAME character with enough points to spare for buying slotables. Being able to slot 4x special slotables from each tree when there are an abundance of them means you are only limited by your CHOICES, not by your CP.
Buy all the passives, CHOOSE which slotables to take vs the situation, and the rest of the points are spare. Or are they? Well here is the crunch…Once you go over 1800ish (depending on slotable choices, some are more expensive in the Craft tree) you basically have every single passive available PLUS 4 slotables per tree…
If you JUST wanted to focus on combat alone (all red and blue passives and 4 slotables for each one) you only actually need around 1600cp to be completely maxed in those areas. And if you wanted to go FULL glass cannon, only really focusing on one damage type you can achieve your max potential for that as low as 900 or so! You won’t have any resistances or healing bonuses from the Warfare (blue) tree doing this, but you can at least cap out the hard-hitting stuff, right? And this is considering slotables too so there is no harm in actually deliberately specing for a couple of damage resistance slotables instead even at THIS stage.
For tanking it is even easier! Push for your slotables and stack your resistance passives and it is game over! The rest are just a bonus!
So what’s next? Well, if you have higher champion points you can buy more slotables and switch stuff per situation as and when needed. If you don’t, then if you want to swap it will cost you gold for respecing. So in a nutshell, 1650-1800 (depending on build) is you’re pretty much done! Anything else is convenient due to not needing to spend gold swapping things you already have access to! How cool is that?
SLOTABLES!
No matter what, THESE are the most important parts of the Champion Points 2.0 system. So this is your main FIRST goal when pushing for the build. You need to slot these even if they are not max level. However, there are swap-outs for situations as explained in the video.
BLUE (Warfare) are important for resistance, heals, and damage. Red (Fitness) are important for resources, health, and Crowd Control counters. Green (Craft) are literally quality of life! (aka your choice so not THAT important for combat).
It doesn’t matter what level you are at anymore, you can play ALL content regardless of your champion points level because during Flames of Ambition all players/characters had their base stats improved to make everyone somewhat more balanced at lower levels.
However, as mentioned above, the slotables are your main goal. Unlock the prerequisite passives to unlock access to your slotables if there are any…fill them up, and then just grab the remaining passives as you go.
300, 600, 900 champion points are not really important as checkpoints anymore for optimization. Just fill as you go, because ALL characters can have ALL passives with NO negative effects unlike before!
What should I aim for with this build?
- Master At Arms
- Wrathful Strikes
- Deadly Aim
- Backstabber
You can exchange Backstabber for Fighting Finese.If you find you are in multiple large pull situations with many adds while using Whirling Blades, you should swap to Biting Aura.
- Rationer
- Liquid Efficiency
- Treasure Hunter
- Steed’s Blessing
These really are up to you but these are most useful IN content for loot and movement if not in combat.
What you do with this tree is NOT make or break for mechanics nor combat in general just quality of life.
Some people like to steal, craft, use less potions, whatever, it’s your choice.
- Boundless Vitality
- Rejuvenation
- Fortified
- Siphoning Spells
These are designed to increase your health/armor and at the same time manage your resources.
High recovery and return for being active in combat and GETTING kills really helps you in content.
So a good balance of flat, contributing slotables are helpful as a DPS build.
The video below explains how the changes work in more detail. Of course, over time, additions will be and have already been made to the system but the main BASE of it is the same.
Rotation
Technically speaking there is no strict rotation to this. It’s more about maintenance.
Your damage over time skills have such huge durations, all you really need to do is track them. As explained in the video there is a specific way to do that.
Go into your options and go to the Combat settings. In there you will be able to turn ON “ability timers”.
Once they are on, any duration skill you fire will have a timer on your bar!
So technically speaking. Apply your damage over time, leave them running, and spam “light attack, Whip” over and over and over until any of the damage over time skills are close to running out, and simply reapply them!
That’s it! Whip all day, keep the dots up, DONE!
Poisons, Potions, & Food
Food is very simple, the highest level food you can consume with 2 stats only, MAX health and MAX magicka. There are 3 variations of recipes but all are the same in the stats they give so your choice of which one you use.
Tri-pots:
Columbine + Mountain Flower + Bugloss + Lorkans Tears
Food:
Minstral Banana-Bunny Hash – Small game(1) + Bananas(2) + Seasoning(3)
Melon-Baked Parmesan Pork – White Meat(1) + Melon(2) + Cheese(3)
Solitude Salmon-Millet Soup – Fish(1) + Tomato(2) + Millet(3)
If you would like to make your own potions, I now have a fully functioning potion maker on the website. Here you can TEST any combination of potion or poison you like and check the outcome without having to know the combinations in-game! Check here for the App, working on Android and IOS – Potion Maker
Gear Setup
Below is a chart showing the overall gear set-up, noting the optimal set requirements in terms of weight, enchants, and of course, traits!
We are using the Thief Mundus stone alongside 64 Attribute points into Magicka.
We are a High Elf, but also a Khajiit, Dark Elf, or Breton are good substitutes and if you want to be a bit of a brawler, even Orc is ok.
Optimal Setup
| Slot | Gear Set | Weight | Trait | Enchantment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Head | Runecarver’s Blaze | Light | Divines | Max Magicka |
| Shoulders | Slimecraw | Light | Divines | Max Magicka |
| Chest | Elf Bane | Heavy | Divines | Max Magicka |
| Waist | Runecarver’s Blaze | Light | Divines | Max Magicka |
| Hands | Runecarver’s Blaze | Light | Divines | Max Magicka |
| Legs | Runecarver’s Blaze | Light | Divines | Max Magicka |
| Feet | Runecarver’s Blaze | Light | Divines | Max Magicka |
| Ring 1 | Oakensoul Ring | Jewelry | Bloodthirsty | Weap / Spell Dmg |
| Ring 2 | Elf Bane | Jewelry | Bloodthirsty | Weap / Spell Dmg |
| Necklace | Elf Bane | Jewelry | Bloodthirsty | Weap / Spell Dmg |
| Weapon 1 | Elf Bane | Inferno Staff | Precise | Poison |
Gear Locations
Slimecraw – Wayrest Sewers I
Runecarver’s Blaze – Scrivener’s Hall
Elf Bane – Cyrodiil
Oakensoul Ring – Mythic
Arms of Relequen – Cloudrest
The Morag Tong – Cyrodiil
Overwhelming Surge – Tempest Island
Flame Blossom – Bloodroot Forge
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