Contents

ESO Update 49 Mid-tier Build Guides

This is a work in progess; last updated 2026-02-21.

These capture the mid-tier meta for Update 49 (U49), aimed at groups who regularly do vet and vet HM content; venturing in trifecta progs. Wait, you’ve got it all wrong! Yeah, maybe I do, that’s totally fair. And in any case, there’s lots of good approaches and strategies, and not a one-size-fits-all approach that will always apply. Thanks for all the feedback I’ve received to date!

For all the guides, see the full Paradoxdruid’s Guides site

Update 49 DPS Loadouts

See also Why Do I Use These Skills? for details on why different skills are selected.

DPS Builds

Fatecarver (Beam) Builds

Spammable (Non-Beam) Builds

See Guiding Principles and Buff Calculations for explanations of set selections.

Meta Beam Arcanist (Dawn’s Wrath variant)

Beam Dawn skill bar

Class Lines
  • Herald of the Tome (Arcanist),
  • Assassination (Nightblade),
  • Dawn's Wrath (Templar)
Skill Bars

FB: Quick Cloak, Radiant Glory, Cephaliarch's Flail, Pragmatic Fatecarver, Camo Hunter, Ult: Incapacitating Strike

BB: Inspired Scholarship, Stampede, Solar Barrage, Fulminating Rune, Barbed Trap, Ult: Languid Eye

Beam skill bars

Typical Sets
  • See Beam Gear Guides
  • AOE: Ansuul's Torment/Deadly Strikes/Velothi/1 light Slimecraw/Maelstrom Inferno
  • Single
  • Target: Null Arca/Tideborn/Velothi/1 light Slimecraw/Maelstrom Greatsword
Notes
  • If running Banner (Shock/Cavaliar's Charge/Courage), replace Camo Hunter and Barbed Trap, and replace Fulminating with Merciless Resolve (for passive Major Savagery)

Meta Beam Arcanist (Draconic Power variant)

Beam Draconic skill bar

Class Lines
  • Herald of the Tome (Arcanist),
  • Assassination (Nightblade),
  • Draconic Power (Dragonknight)
Skill Bars

FB: Quick Cloak, Engulfing Dragonfire, Cephaliarch's Flail, Pragmatic Fatecarver, Camo Hunter, Ult: Soul Harvest

BB: Inspired Scholarship, Stampede, Carve, Fulminating Rune, Barbed Trap, Ult: Take Flight

Beam skill bars

Typical Sets
  • See Beam Gear Guides
  • AOE: Ansuul's Torment/Deadly Strikes/Velothi/1 light Slimecraw/Maelstrom Inferno
  • Single
  • Target: Null Arca/Tideborn/Velothi/1 light Slimecraw/Maelstrom Greatsword
Notes
  • When Take Flight is up, cast it, then Engulfing Dragonfire 3 times, otherwise, normal beam rotation
  • Replace Camo Hunter and Barbed Trap if running Banner (Shock/Cavaliar's Charge/Courage)

See Parse Examples for the Beam Arcanist

Meta Beam Arcanist (Aedric Spear variant)

Beam Aedric skill bar

Class Lines
  • Herald of the Tome (Arcanist),
  • Aedric Spear (Templar),
  • Assassination (Nightblade)
Skill Bars

FB: Quick Cloak, Blazing Spear, Cephaliarch's Flail, Pragmatic Fatecarver, Camo Hunter, Ult: Soul Harvest

BB: Inspired Scholarship, Stampede, Carve, Fulminating Rune, Barbed Trap, Ult: Languid Eye

Beam skill bars

Typical Sets
  • See Beam Gear Guides
  • AOE: Ansuul's Torment/Deadly Strikes/Velothi/1 light Slimecraw/Maelstrom Inferno
  • Single
  • Target: Null Arca/Tideborn/Velothi/1 light Slimecraw/Maelstrom Greatsword
Notes
  • Replace Camo Hunter and Barbed Trap if running Banner (Shock/Cavaliar's Charge/Courage)

See Parse Examples for the Beam Arcanist

Meta Beam Arcanist (Gravelord variant)

Beam Gravelord skill bar

Class Lines
  • Herald of the Tome (Arcanist),
  • Assassination (Nightblade),
  • Gravelord (Necromancer)
Skill Bars

FB: Quick Cloak, Detonating Siphon, Cephaliarch's Flail, Pragmatic Fatecarver, Camo Hunter, Ult: Incapacitating Strike

BB: Inspired Scholarship, Stampede, Gravelord's Sacrifice, Fulminating Rune, Barbed Trap, Ult: Languid Eye

Beam skill bars

Typical Sets
  • See Beam Gear Guides
  • AOE: Ansuul's Torment/Deadly Strikes/Velothi/1 light Slimecraw/Maelstrom Inferno
  • Single
  • Target: Null Arca/Tideborn/Velothi/1 light Slimecraw/Maelstrom Greatsword
Notes
  • Replace Camo Hunter and Barbed Trap if running Banner (Shock/Cavaliar's Charge/Courage)

Meta Beam Arcanist (Stormcalling variant)

Beam Storm skill bar

Class Lines
  • Herald of the Tome (Arcanist),
  • Assassination (Nightblade),
  • Storm Calling (Sorcerer)
Skill Bars

FB: Quick Cloak, Lightning Flood, Cephaliarch's Flail, Pragmatic Fatecarver, Camo Hunter, Ult: Incapacitating Strike

BB: Inspired Scholarship, Stampede, Hurricane, Fulminating Rune, Barbed Trap, Ult: Languid Eye

Beam skill bars

Typical Sets
  • See Beam Gear Guides
  • AOE: Ansuul's Torment/Deadly Strikes/Velothi/1 light Slimecraw/Maelstrom Inferno
  • Single
  • Target: Null Arca/Tideborn/Velothi/1 light Slimecraw/Maelstrom Greatsword
Notes
  • Replace Camo Hunter and Barbed Trap if running Banner (Shock/Cavaliar's Charge/Courage)

Beam Arcanist Gear Guides

AoE Fight Gear Sets

Gear Set Location(s) Traits / Enchants Notes
Ansuul’s Torment Body Divines / Stamina Can use craftable Order’s Wrath if unavailable, or Aegis Caller
Deadly Strikes Belt / 2 Rings / 2 front-bar Daggers Belt: Divines / Stamina,
Rings: Bloodthristy / Increase Physical Harm,
Daggers: Nirnhoned / Flame &
Charged / Poison		 Purchasable at guild traders
Velothi Ur-Mage’s Amulet Necklace Bloodthirsty / Increase Physical Harm  
Slimecraw (or other crit line monster helm) Head Divines / Stamina Light armor weight
The Maelstrom’s Inferno Staff backbar Infused / Increase Weapon Damage  

Single Target Fight Gear Sets

| Gear Set | Location(s) | Traits / Enchants | Notes | | ——————————————- | ———————————— | —————————————————————————————————————————– | ———————————————————————————- | | Slivers of the Null Arca | Body | Divines / Stamina | Can use craftable Order’s Wrath if unavailable, or Aegis Caller, or Pillar of Nirn | | Tide-Born Wild Stalker | Belt / 2 Rings / 2 front-bar Daggers | Belt: Divines / Stamina,
Rings: Bloodthristy / Increase Physical Harm,
Daggers: Nirnhoned / Flame &
Charged / Poison | Craftable | | Velothi Ur-Mage’s Amulet | Necklace | Bloodthirsty / Increase Physical Harm | | | Slimecraw (or other crit line monster helm) | Head | Divines / Stamina | Light armor weight | | The Maelstrom’s Greatsword | backbar | Infused / Increase Weapon Damage | |

Chill Warden

warden skill bar

Class Lines
  • Animal Companions (Warden),
  • Winter's Embrace (Warden),
  • Herald of the Tome (Arcanist)
Skill Bars

FB: Quick Cloak, Deep Fissure, Writhing Runeblades, Tentacular Dread, Venomous Knife, Ult: Wild Guardian

BB: Inspired Scholarship, Stampede, Arctic Blast, Winter's Revenge, Blue Betty, Ult: Wild Guardian

Warden skill bars

Typical Sets

Null Arca / Aegis Caller / Shattered Paths Signet / 1 piece light Slimecraw / Maelstrom Greatsword

Notes
  • Relies on the Shattered Paths Signet mythic to enable a status effect
  • centered build.
  • Venomous Knife: Poison / Assassin's Misery / Major Savagery & Prophesy

Dragon Assassin

dragon skill bar

Class Lines
  • Earthen Heart (Dragonknight),
  • Ardent Flames (Dragonknight),
  • Assassination (Nightblade)
Skill Bars

FB: Quick Cloak, Killer's Blade, Molten Whip, Magma Fist, Merciless Resolve, Ult: Soul Harvest

BB: Igneous Weapons, Stampede, Incinerate, Searing Claw, Shatterspike Mantle, Ult: Flawless Dawnbreaker

Dragon skill bars

Typical Sets

Null Arca / Tideborn Wildstalker / Huntsman's Warmask / 1 piece light Slimecraw / Maelstrom Greatsword

Notes

Runeblades (Ardent Flames variant)

Rune Heart skill bar

Class Lines
  • Herald of the Tome (Arcanist),
  • Assassination (Nightblade),
  • Ardent Flames (Dragonknight)
Skill Bars

FB: Flame Lash, Escalating Runeblades, Tentacular Dread, Merciless Resolve, Killer's Blade, Ult: Incapacitating Strike

BB: Inspired Scholarship, Stampede, Searing Claw, Incinerate, Barbed Trap, Ult: Shifting Standard

Runeblades skill bars

Typical Sets

Null Arca/Tideborn/Velothi/1 piece light Slimecraw/Maelstrom Greatsword

Notes
  • Can also use the new Warmask mythic.

Runeblades (Earthen Heart variant)

Rune Heart skill bar

Class Lines
  • Herald of the Tome (Arcanist),
  • Assassination (Nightblade),
  • Earthen Heart (Dragonknight)
Skill Bars

FB: Quick Cloak, Relentless Focus, Escalating Runeblades, Shattering Knife, Magma Fist, Ult: Incapacitating Strike

BB: Inspired Scholarship, Stampede, Tentacular Dread, Igneous Weapons, Barbed Trap, Ult: The Languid Eye

Runeblades skill bars

Typical Sets

Null Arca/Tideborn/Velothi/1 piece light Slimecraw/Maelstrom Greatsword

Notes
  • Can also use the new Warmask mythic.
  • Shattering Knife: Multitarget / Assassin's Misery / Off Balance or Flex

Runeblades (Stormcalling variant)

Rune Storm skill bar

Class Lines
  • Herald of the Tome (Arcanist),
  • Assassination (Nightblade),
  • Stormcalling (Sorcerer)
Skill Bars

FB: Quick Cloak, Relentless Focus, Escalating Runeblades, Shattering Knife, Killer's Blade, Ult: Incapacitating Strike

BB: Inspired Scholarship, Stampede, Tentacular Dread, Hurricane, Barbed Trap, Ult: The Languid Eye

Runeblades skill bars

Typical Sets

Null Arca/Tideborn/Velothi/1 piece light Slimecraw/Maelstrom Greatsword

Notes
  • Can also use the new Warmask mythic.
  • Shattering Knife: Multitarget / Assassin's Misery / Off Balance or flex

Blastbones

Blastbones skill bar

Class Lines
  • Herald of the Tome (Aranist),
  • Assassination (Nightblade),
  • Gravelord (Necromancer)
Skill Bars

FB: Quick Cloak, Escalating Runeblades, Blighted Blastbones, Detonating Siphon, Merciless Resolve, Ult: Incapacitating Strike

BB: Inspired Scholarship, Stampede, Tentacular Dread, Unnerving Boneyard, Barbed Trap, Ult: The Languid Eye

Blastbones skill bars

Typical Sets

Null Arca/Tideborn/Velthi/1 piece light Slimecraw/Maelstrom Greatsword

Notes
  • Can also use the new Warmask mythic.

Support Zen/Colo DPS

ZEN skill bar

Class Lines

Herald of the Tome (Arcanist),

Gravelord (Necromancer),

Assassination (Nightblade)

Skill Bars

FB: Quick Cloak, Relentless Focus, Traveling Knife, Escalating Runeblades, Barbed Trap, Incapacitating Strikes

BB: Inspired Scholarship, Stampede, Soul Burst, Tentacular Dread, Fulminting Rune, Glacial Colossus

Zen skill bars

Typical Sets
  • Zen/Null Arca
  • Zen/Kosh
Notes
  • Provides Major Vuln
  • Can wear Encratis monster set
  • Zen DoTs: Knife, Soul Burst, Fulminating, Barbed Trap, Bleeding, Burning, Poison
  • Traveling Knife: Multitarget / Lingering Torment / Off Balance
  • Soul Burst: Bleed / Lingering Torment / Major Savagery
  • Can replace Barbed Trap with Structured Entropy (Mage's Guild) for ranged fights

Why Do I Use These Skills?

Beam Skills

Disclaimer: As always, the “right” abilities will depend on group composition (what skills and gear the other players are running), what content you are doing (mechanics, boss specific needs, are you going to need to chain things), and other factors. This is just a starting point!

Front Bar

Icon Name Explanation
cloak Quick Cloak This important close-range DoT provides the important Major Evasion buff (-20% damage from AoEs), and procs both of the enchantments on your frontbar daggers.
flail Cephaliarch’s Flail Your essential skill for building Crux. You should almost always follow the pattern (with Inspired Scholarship running) of “Flail, Flail, Beam”. It also heals you if it hits an enemy, and gives a +5% damage taken to enemies hit.
fatecarver Pragmatic Fatecarver Your core skill and typical over 50% of your total damage. ABB: Always Be Beaming. It gives you a strong damage shield as well. To survive extended AoE damage (vAS, vSS Lokke, etc), you can cast beam, tap Bash to cancel the beam, and immediately recast Beam to refresh the shield repeatedly.
camo
banner		 Camouflaged Hunter or
Banner Bearer		 Slotted purely for the passives and never cast. You get Minor Berserk for +5% damage attacking enemies from behind, and +3% Weapon Damage for having it slotted. Can be replaced by Banner Bearer (typically Shock/Cavalier’s Charge/Heroism). In fights like vSS, where you can never get behind the boss, it’s less useful.
  Variant slot:  
  venom Radiant Glory: A powerful channeled attack that you will use instead of Fatecarver during execute phase, generally swapping around 15% boss health remaining.
  engulfing Engulfing Dragonfire: A powerful channeled attack that you should use always prioritize using 3 times in a row after casting Take Flight ultimate (which causes Engulfing Dragonfire to always deal maxmimum damage while active), and do not cast this ability otherwise.
  trap Luminous Shards: A weak DoT and resource refresh; can be pre-cast before boss spawns, but usually present simply for passives and not cast.
  siphon Detonating Siphon: A powerful DoT cast on a corpse– without adds, make sure to prioritize using the corpse generated from Grave Lord’s Sacrifice; also passively boosts damage +3%.
  flood Lightning Flood: A strong magicka DoT; slotted front bar for a small increase in Weapon Damage from passives.
incap Ultimate: Incapacitating Strike or Soul Harvest This serves two purposes. Passively slotted, it gives you +10% Crit Damage, and provides Minor Savagery (+6% Crit Chance). Second, it’s a good “need damage now” skill or if you know you won’t save enough ultimate to use Standard of Might before the fight ends. The morph choice depends on the content. When doing content with many enemies, such as dungeons and certain trials, soul harvest is the preferred morph due to its unique passive of giving 10 ultimate upon dealing a killing blow.

Back Bar

Icon Name Explanation
scholarship Inspired Scholarship A critical buff that passively provides Major Brutality (+20% damage done), generates a free Crux every time you spend Crux, and gives extra direct damage hits.
  Weapon Skill: This is the most important backbar skill to keep up because it procs your infused backbar weapon damage enchantment (regardless of sets/arena weapons).
  stampede Stampede: If using Maelstrom Greatsword, this skill gives a guaranteed Crit hit, a decent DoT, but more importantly gives up to +12% direct damage done from Maelstrom set. Note that the small ground-based DoT is what needs to deal damage to proc your enchantment.
  blockade Blockade of Fire: If using Maelstrom Inferno Staff, this skill gives a very, very high damage DoT (often in the top 3 or 4 sources of total dps).
  Variant Slot:  
  venom Solar Barrage: A decent DoT that more importantly adds +5% damage to your Beam and most other skills. Should always be kept up. Casting it will also grant your group the very powerful Minor Sorcery buff (+10% Spell/Weapon damage).
  carve
contingency		 Carve or Ulfsild’s Contingency: Both are good DoTs to add more damage to your build. Carve can only be used with Greatsword Backbar. Contingency should be scribed Fiery/Lingering Torment/Flex.
  gls Grave Lord’s Sacrifice: A decent skill that generates a corpse for Detonating Siphon, as well as increasing Siphon’s damage and all DoT damage by +15%.
  hurricane Hurricane: A strong AoE DoT skill with ramping damage that also gives speed and resistances.
fulminating Fulminating Rune A good DoT that also provides a good synergy to your team. This skill is a group dps net gain over other options if group members take the synergy. Its cost is tied to the lower of your maximum resources, which can help balance out sustain issues especially if using a Greatsword backbar.
barbed trap
banner		 Barbed Trap or
Banner Bearer		 A very strong DoT and source of hemorrhage status damage. Can be replaced by Banner Bearer (typically Shock/Cavalier’s Charge/Courage).
  Variant Ultimate Slot:  
  languid eye Ultimate: The Languid Eye: A very strong AoE DoT effect. Generally worth casting instead of Incapacitating Strikes / Soul Harvest if there are a large number of targets.
  languid eye Ultimate: Take Flight: A very strong ult that increases your damage by 20%. It also causes Engulfing Dragonfire to always deal maximum damage. When you cast Take Flight, you have time to cast Engulfing Dragonfire 3 times in a row for maximum impact.

Buff Calculations

Other Useful Guide Pages

Other Page Why Do I Want To Read This?
• Full Guides Site I want to return to the full guides site with supports, rosters, and metrics
• Quickstart DPS Guide I want a quick checklist of everything I need to get my trial-ready DPS up and running
• U49 Parses I want to see how some of these builds perform on the target dummy, dummy optimized and in-content setups.
• Top DPS Skills and Gear I want to see the the most used skills and gear for DPS players on each boss, pulled from esologs.com data