Contents

• Paradoxdruid’s Quickstart Guides
  • Table of Contents
  • Beam DPS Quickstart Guide (Update 49)
    • The Basics
    • Gear
    • Skills
    • What to do
• Other Useful Guide Pages

Paradoxdruid’s Quickstart Guides

If you are just getting started on building a trial-ready character, these quickstart guides feature a bit more detail on some of the specifics that would be a good first step. You can see the full guides with much more details at Paradoxdruid’s ESO Guides: Builds and Rosters

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

Table of Contents

Guide Section	Why Do I Want To Read This?
• Beam DPS Quickstart Guide	I want to see how to build a Beam-based DPS that’s trial-ready, including stats, mundus, food, race, skill bars, subclassing, and commonly worn armor sets to get up and running fast. (Start here!)

Beam DPS Quickstart Guide (Update 49)

There’s lots of ways to do good damage. But you want a cheatsheet on something effective, so you can get back to playing?

The Basics

• Race: Dark Elf, Orc, Khajiit are the best races for DPS. Unsure? Pick Dark Elf.

• Mundus: The Thief provides important crit chance

• Attributes: 64 points in Stamina
  (damage is based off your highest stat, so you want all points in one category; high stamina is also important for trial mechanics that involve blocking, roll-dodging, or breaking free)

• Food: Max Stamina/Stamina Recovery/Health food ( Dubious Camoran Throne or Artaeum Takeaway Broth) is best for content. For parsing on the trial dummy, use Max Stamina/Stamina Recovery food ( Lava Foot Soup and Saltrice)

• Subclassing: Having useful skill lines from multiple classes greatly enhances your damage potential. Here, we’ll use three all-around useful skill lines:

  • REQUIRED: Arcanist: Herald of the Tome
  • REQUIRED: Nightblade: Assassination
  • PICK ONE:
    • Necromancer: Gravelord
    • Templar: Dawn’s Wrath
    • Sorcerer: Storm Calling

Gear

• The most versatile starting gear is:
  • 1 piece Slimecraw monster set (or any +crit chance monster piece). Usually in Light armor weight, for added penetration.
  • Velothi Ur-Mage’s Amulet
  • 5 piece Deadly Strike (buy from guild traders or farm PvP) on the front bar (2 daggers)
  • 5 piece Ansuul’s Torment on the body/rings
  • a Maelstrom Inferno Staff backbar (for single target-fights Maelstrom Greatsword )
  • (For purely single target fights, Null Arca with Tide-Born Wildstalker is stronger)
• At the beginning, craftable Order’s Wrath or Tide-Born Wildstalker can replace Ansuul’s Torment.
• Enchantments:
  • all body pieces Divine trait with +Stam glyphs
  • all jewelry Bloodthirsty with +Physical Harm glyphs
  • daggers Nirnhoned/Charged, one with Flame glyph one with Poison glyph. Nirnhoned/Precise is better in AoE-heavy fights.

Skills

• Front-Bar:
  • Quick Cloak
  • Cephaliarch’s Flail
  • Pragmatic Fatecarver
  • Camo Hunter (not cast, slotted for passives) / can replace with Banner-Bearer (Shock/Cavaliar’s Charge/Courage)
  • CLASS SKILL:
    • Necromancer: Detonating Siphon
    • Templar: Radiant Glory
    • Sorcerer: Lighting Flood
  • Incapacitating Strikes
• Backbar:
  • Inspired Scholarship
  • Elemental Blockade (or Stampede if using greatsword)
  • CLASS SKILL:
    • Necromancer: Grave Lord’s Sacrifice
    • Templar: Solar Barrage
    • Sorcerer: Hurricane
  • Fulminating Rune
  • Camo Hunter (not cast, slotted for passives) / can replace with Banner-Bearer (Shock/Cavaliar’s Charge/Courage)
  • Languid Eye

What to do

• Arcanists have long range and high cleave; always aim your beam to maximize targets hit. It also strikes targets immediately behind you, so you can press up against them and damage them as well (“butt beam”)
• Always get to 3 crux before beaming. With Inspired Scholarship running, that means 2 casts of Flail, then beam. Beam is over 50% of your damage. ABB. Always Be Beaming.
• Arcanists cannot block-cast well; both Flail and Beam can’t be block cast. In trial mechanics that require block casting, be mindful of this fact.

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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
• 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