Magicka Warden Beginner Build for ESO – New Player Guide

“Adept Warden”

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Resource Management
• Setup CP 160
  • Gear
  • Skills
  • Champion Points
  • Important Info
• Rotation
• Summary

Welcome to the Magicka Warden Beginner Build PvE “Adept Warden”. This build is balanced for 160 Champion Points. It should be your next step to work on this setup after completing the Magicka Warden Beginner Guide. The focus on this setup will be to get you ready for veteran dungeons with basic gear and to make sure that you have enough sustain and good survivability. With this setup you can start farming your gear for the end game Trial & Dungeon Builds on this website.

It will also explain some more advanced game mechanics which you don’t have to master right away, but should be aware of.

If you have more questions, you can also ask someone in our community partner discord about this Magicka Warden Beginner Guide.

• Basic Gear Setup
• 160 Champion Points
• Good Sustain
• Good Survivability
• How to play Magicka Warden

The Magicka Warden Beginner Build Details

Resource Management

Resource management is one of the most important things for all builds, you need to learn how to be able to sustain yourself. I will mention a few tricks in this section of the guide.  Heavy Attacks are a great tool to restore resources, while we don’t really need them for this build, if you really get into a situation where you dry out, use one or two heavy attacks. Also don’t forget to use your Magicka Potions! (Potion gives you Major Intellect, increasing Magicka Recovery by 20%).

Witchmother’s Potent Brew Drink

This drink is one of the key things that Magicka setups use to increase magicka recovery and thus their sustain. It gives max health, max magicka and magicka recovery as stats. You can obtain this for a quite cheap price in most guild stores. Always make sure that you have this drink active. It scales with your health, so you can even use this while you are low level.

Heavy Attacks

Heavy attacks restore a huge amount of resources when you successfully hit the target. Make sure to do a heavy attack from time to time when you drop low on magicka. Also, when an enemy is off balanced, you will get twice the amount of magicka back from a heavy attack.

Absorb Magic Enchantment

Using an Absorb Magic Enchantment on our frontbar will also increase sustain. Every time the magic damage enchantment damages an enemy, we also get a small junk of magicka back. Having an infused staff even increases the effect and shortens the cooldown.

Magicka Recovery Glyphs (optional)

I do recommend running one magicka recovery glyph on your jewelry, if you want you can also use a second one if you still think your sustain is too low.

Gear Setup CP 160

Here you will find three basic Magicka Warden Beginner Guide Setups. As soon as you hit CP 160 it would be good if you get a Monster Set, the headpiece is a guaranteed drop when you finish a veteran dungeon, in our case Vaults of Madness. It is one of the easier dungeons to complete in veteran mode. If you do not have a Monster Set yet, just use some random gear pieces there.

Shoulders drop from the reward chests at each of the Undaunted enclaves in every major city of the base game. Depending on where the monster sets drop, it also drops from the chest from whom you received the quest.

• I will also explain down below what other sets that you should start farming, sets that can always be handy to have somewhere in the bank.
• Additionally, Divine is the ideal trait for body pieces, but if you can’t find/afford it, don’t worry about it too much. You can still find a Divine piece at a later time or transmute it to your desired trait!

Beginner Setup 1

This would be the ideal setup, but it takes some time and requires you to spend some time farming dungeons.

If you have someone to help you

This setup is without a Monster Set, but requires you to either know someone that can craft this, or have the spare money to buy these parts in a guild store.

If you want to farm it yourself

This one is without a Monster Set and you can find all these pieces in Overland content

Where can I get the gear?

Law of Julianos: Craftable
Willpower: Guildstore
Mother’s Sorrow: Malabal Tor, Guildstore
Skooma Smuggler: Glenumbra, Guildstore
Necropotence: Rivenspire, Guildstore
Shroud of the Lich: Crypt of Hearts I & II
Armor of the Seducer: Craftable

Monster Sets (Recommended)

Ilambris: Crypts of Hearts 1 (Head), Undaunted Pledges (Shoulder, Gilirion treasure chest)
Grothdarr: Vaults of Madness (Head), Undaunted Pledges (Shoulder, Glirion treasure chest)

Sets that you should also farm

In addition to the basic setup that is listed up there you should also farm some other sets that you will need sooner or later.

Ilambris Monster Set

Ilambris is the most popular Monster Set for Magicka Nightblade setups that isn’t locked behind a DLC. It provides a lot of extra magicka and fire and shock damage. It works for both Single Target and AoE (Area of Effect) damage, which is very handy.

Grothdarr Monster Set

Grothdarr is a very good alternative to Ilambris, as the AoE effect of it moves together with you. But you also have to stand close to the targets in order for the Monster Set to have an effect!

False God’s Devotion Trial Set

False God’s Devotion is currently the best Trial Set that you can get from normal trials, but it requires you to have the DLC Elsweyr.

Skills

This skill layout will be very close to the normal skill setup that we use in endgame builds like the Magicka Warden Ice & Fire Build. You might not have all the necessary skills yet, but I suggest that you start working on obtaining those specific skills as soon as possible.

Skills Explanation

• Degeneration: This ability will trap your target for 10 seconds and deal a total of 1230 Magic Damage in that time. What we want from this though is Major Sorcery, which increases your Spell Damage by 20% for 20 seconds. If you find yourself in lack of a healer, you can swap out this ability with Enchanted Growth, which is why I will also recommend skilling the Passives in this skill line!
• Deep Fissure: This skill will be reapplied most often because it is causing a ton of damage! It will also reduce the Spell Damage of a target by a lot by applying Major Breach on the target, so see your damage numbers fly!
  
• Screaming Cliff Racer: A skill that doesn’t only causes damage, but also sets your target Off Balance. This is important as that helps you to do even more damage depending on how far the target is away.
  
• Fetcher Infection: This is a very strong ability and every second cast of this ability will deal 50% increased damage to debuffing the target with Minor Vulnerability (8% more damage taken).
  
• Eternal Guardian: This is the only Ultimate you will need. It’s not only there for as long as it doesn’t die, you can also activate it ever 75 Ultimate points to deal additional damage! This is your only “Execute”, as it deals more damage if the enemy is below 25% of its health.
• Unstable Wall of Elements: This needs to be on the ground all the times as it deals a lot of damage with a strong explosion.
• Winter’s Revenge: Additionally to reducing your enemy’s Movement Speed by 30% for 3 seconds, it is also an AoE which deals a lot of damage over 12 seconds. The higher your Spell Damage and Max Magicka, the higher your damage!
  
• Harness Magicka: If you receive a lot of damage and don’t receive no or not much healing, this will be your main protection.
• Inner Light: Increases your total Max Magicka by 7%, 5% from the skill and another 2% from the Magicka Controller passive.
• Blue Betty: You need to keep this up in order to restore Magicka. It does this over 25 seconds and additionally grants you Major Brutality and Major Sorcery, increasing your Spell Damage by a total of 20%! Also, if you are inflicted by a debuff on yourself, it will also remove 1 negative effect every 5 seconds. So yes, this is a very important skill!

Skill lines you have to work on

You want to make sure to max out all the following Skill lines and grind up all the skills and morphs of:

• All Warden Class Skill-lines
• Destruction Staff
• Light Armor
• Mages Guild
• Undaunted (Passives only)
• Psijic Order (optional)
• Provisioning (Gourmand & Connoisseur)
• Alchemy (Medicinal Use)

Yes, that is a lot of Skill-lines, it will take a fair bit of time to completely level up all of those, but it will be worth it. If you want more information about each of the skill lines, make sure to visit ESO-hub.com. The website has all the skill lines up to date for ESO (Elder Scrolls Online).

Champion Points

Below you can find the Champion Points setup for this build. Work your way from top to bottom in your allocation. For more information on Champion Points, please visit the Champion Points Overview Page on ESO-Hub.com.

Hovering over each perk will give you insights on what it does. Presets are also provided for each of the allocations below.

Click the tab below to open the allocation.

Important Info for Magicka Warden Beginner Build PvE

Buff-Food

Witchmother’s Potent Brew (Max Health, Max Magicka, Magicka Recovery)

This Drink is scaling with your health, so you can use it with any level!

Mundus Stone

The Lover (Increased Spell Penetration)

Race

All Magicka based races work with this setup. More about each race can be found on the racial overview page.

High Elf
Breton
Dark Elf
Argonian
Khajiit
Orc

Potions

You can use those potions, they drop from Monsters, so you should have plenty of them. You can also buy those potions in the guildstore, they are very cheap.

Passives

In the end you want to have all these passives active with this build:

• Animal Companions: Bond With Nature, Savage Beast, Flourish, Advanced Species
• Green Balance: Accelerated Growth, Nature’s Gift, Emerald Moss, Maturation
• Winter’s Embrace: Glacial Presence, Frozen Armor, Icy Aura, Piercing Cold
• Destruction Staff: Tri Focus, Penetrating Magic, Elemental Force, Ancient Knowledge, Destruction Expert
• Light Armor: Grace, Evocation, Spell Warding, Prodigy, Concentration
• Mages Guild: Mage Adept, Everlasting Magic, Magicka Controller, Might of the Guild
• Undaunted: Undaunted Command, Undaunted Mettle
• Racial: All
• Alchemy: Medicinal Use
• Provisioning: Gourmand, Connoisseur

Attributes

All Attributes go into Magicka

Rotation

Before every fight, activate your Blue Betty if it isn’t already activated!

Unlike some other classes, we do have a rotation that we want to upkeep for maximum damage. We also don’t have any skill that we can use in Execute Phase only (25% and below) so just keep this rotation.
It might be hard for you to keep this rotation up when you run out of Magicka, so just Heavy Attack when you have to and always use Synergies! And don’t forget to use your Magicka Potions.

Winter’s Revenge > LA > Unstable Wall of Elements > Weapon Swap

Deep Fissure > LA > Fetchers Infection > LA > Screaming Cliff Racer > LA > Deep Fissure > LA >  Degenerate > LA > Screaming Cliff Racer > LA > Deep Fissure >  Screaming Cliff Racer > Weapon Swap

Restart

• Reapply Blue Betty every 3rd rotation to not loose the advantage of regenerating Magicka.

LA stands for Light Attack!

Summary

So, what do you need to do?

Aside from farming gear, you will also need to level skill lines. If you haven’t yet maxed your class skill lines, now would be a good time.
Also, you will need to maximize Mage’s Guild, Undaunted and if you have the DLC it would be best if you got the Psijic Skill line, as you will need that for future builds.

For Mage’s Guild you will need to either do their Daily Quest, or go search lorebooks, for Fighter’s Guild you need to do their Daily Quest or kill Daedra and Undead. For Undaunted you need to complete dungeon achievements or do the Daily Quests at the Undaunted Enclave in the major cities. For the Psijic Skill line you need to start the Summerset Main Quest until the point you get to Arteum and then do a questline until Level 10.

If you want to know more, you can check out the Fighters Guild, Mages Guild and Undaunted Video.

You really should start with Undaunted Pledges as soon as possible, which is usually Level 45. You will receive keys for every Pledge which in turn will grant you access to receive the Monster Shoulder pieces.

Gear is the most important thing that you can get now and if you don’t want to spend hundreds of Transmutation Crystals on transmuting your gear, you will want them in the ideal trait. This can take a while.

If you want to deal the most damage possible, you will want to consider learning everything about weaving. Especially with Wardens, Light Attack weaving is essential. It basically means that you cancel the Light Attack animation with a skill. In theory you make a Light Attack and then almost immediately afterwards you cast a skill. Since this is depending on your latency, it will take you some time to figure out when exactly this “almost immediately” is.

You might also want to get involved with guilds, in order to get easier and more regular access to trials (especially for veteran trials later on), crafters and even a guild store. Since you can have up to 5 guilds, no guild needs to fulfill every requirement. You can even have a guild for just chatting. Still, having a guild for each purpose is a good idea and will cover all your bases.

Getting Skill Points are also very important, depending how thorough you were with Skyshards, quests and dungeons.
Leveling a character is more than just reaching Level 50 and oftentimes requires you to get more than by just grinding your way up, which is why grinding levels as a beginner is usually a bad idea.
If you should find yourself in need of more skill points I suggest you complete the group events of the Public Dungeons that you can find in ESO. If you need help in finding out where to get skill points and which you are still missing, try out Urich’s Skill Point Finder!

Another important thing is Crafting. Sure, depending on how social you are, you can always find someone to craft you gear, or depending on how skilled you are at earning gold you can also just what you need, but the true power and also getting rich in-game is by learning how to craft and learning all the traits. You might sometimes hear people saying how important it is to do you writs and it is true, it is easy money and gets you a lot resources.
The only thing it requires though is for you to not throw away what you loot and of course most ideal would be if you had the endless crafting bag of ESO Plus, but you can also get around that by storing all crafting materials on characters meant solely for storing.
Learning how to craft yourself will make it way cheaper for you to upgrade your gear, craft your own supplies and learning the traits will help you when you find gear with not so ideal traits because you can just transmute them into the trait of your choice.

PvP can also be a very powerful tool. It doesn’t only help you with getting better at avoiding things and survival, you can also make a lot of money with Alliance Points or even Tel’var Stones. At the end of every campaign you can receive a Transmutation Geode which holds 50 Transmutation Gems if you have gained at least 25000 Alliance Points in that Cyrodiil campaign.
Since you are still very low in Champion Points I would suggest choosing the non CP campaigns.
If you want to make as much AP as possible though, I recommend playing Battlegrounds.

It is advisable to get a daily routine of things to do, if you want to gain Champion Points quickly without actually farming them. Try using EXP boosts such as scrolls or drinks when doing these.
A way to establish one could be this:

• Daily Dungeon queue
• Daily Battleground queue
• Crafting Writs
• Undaunted Daily quests

What’s next?!

• Magicka Warden META Group Build
• Magicka Warden SOLO Build

Related Topics:

• How To Weave Guide
• ESO-hub.com
• New Player Beginner Guide
• Champion Points & Power Leveling Guide
• Race Guide
• Alchemy Guide
• Provisioning Guide