Off Balance - Magicka Templar PVE Build
Written guide and video updated for The Lost Depths DLC: Q3 2022
This PVE Templar magicka DPS build was made for players of all skill levels. Of course, the more advanced player will get more out of it but this will perform well in anyone’s hands so long as you follow it correctly and understand HOW it works. This does involve a little knowledge of the skills applied and their passives attached to them in order to act on instinct if needed when something goes wrong. This is capable of solo, 4 player, and 12 player content throughout the game YES including the really hard stuff!
The reason this is called “off-balance” is simple and that is that this is centered around pumping out as much area of effect damage as possible, solo AND group based WHILE offering a major support factor to the fight without upsetting your DPS. Here we are using a lot of lightning damage to further push concussion for those off-balance procs AND add as much AOE damage as possible while still pumping out high single target damage, alongside good sustain AND survival.
We also offer sustain and healing bonuses AND actual heals to the group and we don’t have to ever alter our rotation for it to be effective! Everything you need in one tidy package!
Debuffer! You can keep minor vulnerability up all of the time if your rotations are clean (+5% damage for the group) due to that being part of the concussion status effect.
Survival! You heal from your damage (sweeps and beams) so you actually stay alive by doing damage and have a shield for emergencies!
You can keep a healthy up time on off-balance to improve your and your group’s increased heavy damage resource gain (70% extra damage and 100% extra back from resources) while also returning the favor to the dragonknights in the group by allowing them the effect required for their backflip whips! 😉
Your sustain and ability to apply HIGH AOE with the lightning staff as and when needed…heavy attack into a bunch of adds and everything dies fast while at the same time you REGAIN magicka for a fully heavy attack, AND remember while a target is off balance your heavy attacks gain DOUBLE resources!…very handy.
The heavy attack part of the rotation (if required) not only does high single-target AOE damage but also keeps up your sustain by default.
Overwhelming applies a really good amount of free DPS just for using your class abilities and at the same time offers even MORE concussion status effects = off balance
Many builds out there focus mainly on weapon abilities and negate the point of the class. This utilizes the class abilities almost equally if not a little more than weapon skills making it more of a reason to BE a Templar rather than just putting force pulse on everything, get those sweeps in! 🙂
This is a VERY “balanced” build, using “off-balance” to make it so!
Fashion First!
As demonstrated in the video, our fabulous ESO fashion setup and dress choice for this character is as follows:
Head: Light Tsaesci
Shoulders: Light Scaelcaller
Chest: Heavy Assassin’s League
Legs: Heavy Thieves Guild
Hands: Light Dragonguard
Belt: Medium Dro’mathra
Feet: Light Silken Ring
Front bar: Abnur Tharn Staff
Back Staff: Telvanni Staff
The Three colors we are using are Legate Black (any black will do), Obsidian Black, and Frozen Blood Red.
NOTE: This is the Original Off balance Fashion, for the most RECENT one, check the fashion time stamp in the video!
Skills
1) Purifying Light
2) Barbed Trap
3) Radiant Glory / Radiant Oppression
4) Puncturing Sweeps
5) Inner Light
Ultimate – Flawless Dawnbreaker
Destruction Staff (lightning/flame)
1) Inner Light / Harness Magicka
2) Unstable Wall Of Elements
3) Ritual Of Retribution
4) Channeled Focus
5) Blazing Spear
Ultimate – Elemental Rage / Shooting Star
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 is 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
- Thaumaturge
- Deadly Aim
- Biting Aura
Backstabber is not required nor is fighting finesse unless crit damage buffs and bonuses are not supplied by your group.
- 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 or combat in general just quality of life.
- 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.
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
Front bar – Light attack, Purifying Light…Then Light Attack, Puncturing Sweeps x5, Barbed Trap, weapon swap
Back bar – Blazing Spear, Light Attack, Ritual Of Retribution, Light Attack, Unstable Wall Of Elements, weapon swap…
Start again!
NOTE: The update changed the timers of some skills, so technically Ritual of Retribution only needs to be cast every SECOND rotation, not every time. The damage from the skill scales dramatically off of it’s duration so do not cast it too early over a previous one to get the most out of it.
Advanced: While the above rotation is perfect and will allow for great damage output in all situations, if you want to be a little more technical… Instead of Trap Beast every rotation (which does benefit because the dot starts again and the initial POP counts as extra damage)… what you can do is fire Trap Beast every SECOND rotation for full up time and in place of it cast an extra purifying light. If you maintain this and keep an eye on buffs and bonuses you can actually squeeze in Purifying Light every time it hits zero and get a LITTLE bit more damage.
However, as mentioned in the video this extra micro managing can be complex for most and only really increases your overall damage by about 1-3k TOPS. So it is actually a lot safer to just stick to the basic rotation, but the choice is yours.
Poisons, Potions, & Food
You can use Tri-stat pots if you are using degeneration OR if you are really fancy and going for the squishier mode as mentioned in the video…you can make spell pots.
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
Spell pots:
Lady Smock + Water Hyacinth + Cornflower + Lorkhan’s 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 & traits!
We are using the Thief Mundus stones alongside 64 Attribute points into Magicka
We are a High Elf but other races are also usable. Dark Elf, Khajiit, or Breton are good substitutes. However As explained (and shown) in the video, Orc is actually a VERY nice alternative if you want to be a Brawler-Plar!
Gear Setup
| Slot | Gear Set | Weight | Trait | Enchantment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Head | Grothdarr / Maw Of The Infernal / Zaan / Kjalnar’s Nightmare | Light | Divines | Magicka |
| Shoulders | Grothdarr / Maw Of The Infernal / Zaan / Kjalnar’s Nightmare | Light | Divines | Magicka |
| Chest | Arms Of Relequen / Azureblight Reaper | Medium | Divines | Magicka |
| Waist | Overwhelming Surge | Light | Divines | Magicka |
| Hands | Arms Of Relequen / Azureblight Reaper | Medium | Divines | Magicka |
| Legs | Overwhelming Surge | Light | Divines | Magicka |
| Feet | Overwhelming Surge | Light | Divines | Magicka |
| Ring 1 | Arms Of Relequen / Azureblight Reaper | Jewelry | Bloodthirsty | Spell Damage |
| Ring 2 | Arms Of Relequen / Azureblight Reaper | Jewelry | Bloodthirsty | Spell Damage |
| Necklace | Arms Of Relequen / Azureblight Reaper | Jewelry | Infused | Spell Damage |
| Weapon 1 | Overwhelming Surge | Sword | Charged | Flame |
| Weapon 2 | Overwhelming Surge | Dagger | Charged | Poison |
| Weapon 3 | Maelstrom | Lightning / Inferno Staff | Infused | Weapon / Spell Dmg |
NOTE: AS EXPLAINED in HUGE detail in the video. Yes, you can use a flame staff on the BACK bar (not the front) IF you can guarantee that off-balance is 100% controlled by someone else in your group already. If not, stick with lightning staff. We can provide it all day long by default. So if it is not there, the build is designed to do that…If it IS there, then sure, swap out the BACK bar only.
Bear in mind if you are gauging “potential” as most people claim to do on the dummy, then of course the dummy has a 10% increase to all flame damage (dragon knight engulfing flames) AND also 100% control of off-balance ALREADY. So THAT is a situation where demonstrating flame makes sense. Again, if your group does NOT have off-balance covered, stay with lightning.
Gear Locations
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