Welcome to Lost Yogi’s ESO DPS Guide in late 2022 / early 2023.
You are probably here to find out how to do more damage in ESO.
When I started out, I didn’t know my head from my… but slow and with help from guild members who later became friends, I learned all the small but significant stuff that makes for a great Damage Dealer. If you are asking google “ESO what is DPS?” Here is your answer.
I am by no means the best DD in the Elder Scrolls Online, but I can carry my own and most importantly, I can solo most content and go on great adventures without being afraid of lacking DPS.
That’s how this ESO DPS Guide came about, which might just answer some of the most common questions as well, like “What is good DPS in ESO?“, “How do you get 100K DPS in ESO?“
My DPS while using only 1 button is around 50k on my Magicka Templar, so you may outdo me once you read these 15 tips on ESO DPS.
And if you want EASY MODE, check out my 1bar DPS builds:
Magplar 1bar 50k+ DPS video link.
PetSorc 1bar 50K+ DPS video link.
Increase your level Increase your ESO DPS.
This might be obvious, but unless you are level 50 and got 160 Champion Points, some of the ESO DPS tips here won’t be worth using.
If you upgrade your level 46 gear, you will grow out of it really fast wasting a lot of ESO Gold.
The reason this is the first tip is that you could spend a lot of time running around upgrading gear and so on when you should actually spend your time leveling up.
Once you have 160cp Points you should start focusing on the rest of the tips.
However, you can practice your skill rotation, light attack weaving, buffs, and debuffs while leveling.
Champion Points.
This takes us to Champion Points and how you can use them to boost your DPS. One thing is the importance of hitting 160 champion points, but it’s just as important how you spend them. Don’t worry if you made a mistake it’s possible to change it.
It takes a full post to describe the Elder Scrolls Online’s Champion System, but as they are all benefits you can’t do anything that will hurt you.
However, you can spend those hard-earned points in ways that don’t help your DPS.
If you are Magicka Damage Dealer you should focus on that, while Stamina Damage Dealers should go the physical/Poison way.
It’s possible to earn 3600 Champion Points.
Upgrade your gear.
Once you hit 160 Champion Points, you have access to the highest gear level. When you have the right set pieces you should upgrade those to Legendary.
The most important gear you should upgrade is your weapons!
The difference from Epic to Legendary equals 200+ Spell or Weapon Damage.
This is where you wish you spend some time crafting since upgrading gear becomes significantly cheaper if have leveled your crafting skills.
The difference is 20 upgrade materials down to 8.
Use set bonuses.
You might have noticed some items show a set of bonuses.
You will get those bonuses when you use more than one item from that set, all the way up to 5 items which usually gives the biggest benefit.
People start out with crafting a 5 piece set because it’s the fastest way to get one or they buy some cheap sets in Guild Stores.
Once you have something that works, you can start farming gear for real.
Everyone wants the latest gear from the newest Trials.
I however specialize in easy-to-farm yet powerful builds, you don’t need to participate in endless trials to get them.
Have you seen my 91.7% Spell Crit Build?
Level up & Upgrade your skills.
We can’t do an ESO DPS Tutorial without talking about leveling up and upgrading your skills.
When I started back in 2014 I didn’t do a lot of stuff that would have helped me tremendously. One of those things was I didn’t level up and upgrade my skills. That meant I didn’t realize my Sorcerer had built-in self-heal.
These days you can google all skills and morphs of those skills, so you only spend time on what is needed and can benefit best from it.
In my build videos and post, I specify what skills and morphs you should use. I would however level all skills to the point where they can be morphed while I level up since ESO changes over time, and you could very well need one of those skills soon.
Debuff Boss mobs.
Major/Minor Fracture and Major/minor Breach, will debuff the mobs for everyone, while you also can benefit personally from Champion Points and gear passives that will Debuff mobs. All of these Debuffs will benefit you and your ESO DPS.
Major Fracture reduces the enemy’s physical resistance by 5280, while Minor fracture reduces physical resistance by 1320. And they stack debuffing the mob by 6600 in total.
Skills that give Major Fracture:
- Dragonknight: Ardent Flame skill – Noxious Breath (Morph) AoE
- Necromancer: Grave Lord skill – Unnerving Boneyard (Morph)
- Nightblade: Assassination skill – Mark Target
- Warden: Green Balance skill – Scorch
- One-Hand & Shield Skill line: Puncture skill (Both Morphs)
- Assault skill line: Caltrops skill – Razor Caltrops (Morph) AoE
Major Breach reduces Spell Resistance by 5280 while Minor breach reduces spell resistance by 1320. Again giving a total debuff of 6600.
On top of that you can get 4884 spell penetration from wearing 5 pieces of light armor (if you level that light armor skill line to 50, and spend the skill points in it).
Skills that give Major Breach:
- Necromancer: Grave Lord skill – Unnerving Boneyard (Morph)
- Nightblade: Assassination skill line – Mark Target
- Warden: Animal Companions skill line – Scorch
- One-Hand & Shield skill line: Puncture Skill – Pierce Armour (Morph)
- Destruction Staff skill line: Weakness to Elements (Both Morphs)
Weapons with the trait Sharpened give you 1638 (with 1 hander) or 3276 (with 2-handed weapons) more in spell penetration and Armor penetration.
This is with Legendary weapons as they should always be once you reach 160 Champion Points.
| Upgrade level | 1Handed | 2 Handed |
| White | 1428 | 2856 |
| Green | 1480 | 2960 |
| Blue | 1532 | 3064 |
| Purple | 1584 | 3168 |
| Gold | 1638 | 3276 |
Last but not least, your Champion points can give you more Spell and Armor Penetration depending on how many points you put into them.
While Crit is King in PvE here at the end of 2020, Spell & Armor penetration is King in PvP
Weave light and heavy attacks.
Weaving light and heavy attacks in between skills or vice versa is a powerful way to Boost your DPS in ESO. This is also one of the hardest things to master, but once you do, your ESO DPS will go up 2 or even 3 times what you do without weaving attacks.
In this ESO DPS Guide, I try and cover all areas of Boosting your ESO DPS, but this point deserves its own video. I will make that soon and put it below this point.
But when we talk about weaving attacks, the simple explanation is to use a light attack, then use skills, light attack, and the next skill.
This brings us to your combat or skill rotation.
Best Skill Rotation.
What is the best skill rotation in ESO? depends on what class you play and what your role is. Even if you are a Damage Dealer, your rotation may include a debuff that benefits the entire group, making your rotation a little different than the Damage Dealer standing next to you even though you are the same class, race, and build.
As a general rule, you should start out with buffing up, if you have any skill that does that. Next is the Debuff of the mob, then the first Damage over time skill (DoT) and a light attack, next DoT and a light attack, until all DoT’s are applied. Then it’s between 1 and 3 Direct attacks with a light attack in between each, and then you start over with buffing up.
What skills you use depends on your build, if it’s Magicka or stamina based and what class skills your class offers.
Even Morphs of set skills can alter your rotation, and your ESO DPS as some skills get extra durations when morphed.
Your skill rotation will be described in the build video if you use a premade build from me or any other YouTuber. Check your build video or post for specifics.
Buff Foods & Drinks affect ESO DPS.
If you play Magicka Damage Dealer you will benefit DPS-wise from a higher Magicka Pool, and with Stamina Damage Dealer your DPS will be higher, the higher your Stamina Pool is.
The biggest bump up to those pools you can get from almost no effort is to use a Food buff.
Food buffs your max pool while drinks buff your regeneration.
Legendary Food and Drinks can do both buffing your max stats and your regeneration.
It’s fairly cheap to get good food buffs and you don’t need to best just Epic food will be a major boost to your DPS.
Best DPS Races in ESO.
The best DPS races for ESO are as follows:
Stamina Damage Dealer should be Orc, while Magicka Damage Dealer should be Altmer (High Elf). If you play a Magicka Dragonknight Dark Elf is preferred.
While there are races that are better for Tanking builds or Healer builds, you have a multitude of races to choose from when it comes to Damage Dealers.
But if you are into “minimaxing” Orc is the best ESO DPS choice for stamina builds here at the end of 2022, while High Elf is the best Magicka ESO DPS.
Utilize Class Buffs.
As part of this ESO DPS Tutorial, we need to look at Class buffs both active and passive. While I won’t get into each class here, as it will be specified in each build, let’s just focus on the main thing.
All classes got both passive and active skills that benefit your DPS.
The Templar passives give 10% more crit damage if you put points into it.
Look at your class builds and check if you have utilized your class ability buffs, both passives and active alike.
Barswap like a Pro.
This might just be the most important point of this ESO DPS Guide.
When you reach level 15 you will be able to swap weapons while in combat.
You will get a new weapon slot (it’s been in your inventory from the beginning) where you can place a secondary weapon, with the flick of a button (your choice of a button) you can switch between the two weapons and their skill bars.
This means you can use more skills in a fight and have room for skills like Inner light, or camouflaged hunter for passive benefits.
This also means your rotations get a bit more difficult, but once you’re used to it, it feels very natural.
In some ways, you are bound by the weapon skills you want to use, as bow skills need to be on the skill bar that corresponds with your bow, but other than that you can set it up as you like.
Most people set up so they have to bar swap as little as possible, while others choose to more or less just use one bar for damage and only swap to the back bar if they need healing.
Practice makes what??
Glyphs or Poison?
You can BOOST Your ESO DPS by adding a Glyph or Poison to your weapon. While Poisons are always best in PvP, Stamina users often use Poison in PvE while Magicka Damage Dealers tend to use Glyphs.
While Zenimax keeps changing what is best, we the players keep testing what we should use. This is not free or without using long hours, luckily I love doing it, trying to squeeze the last drop of ESO DPS out of my builds.
While I won’t do a totally new video, just because of a small change that gives you slightly better performance with another glyph or poison in ESO DPS, I will update my builds on the smallest of changes if needed.
That’s why you should always check my written guides when you see one of my build videos on YouTube.
Best Traits on weapons & Gear.
At almost every point in this ESO DPS Tutorial, this also depends on what you want to do in ESO. If you are into PvP your armor should be impenetrable, while your traits on weapons should be Sharpened.
In PvP though, it depends a little on your build, but if you use a weapon and spell damage glyph you should go with infused on that weapon.
If you dual wield as a Magicka Damage dealer, you should have Nirnhoned in your primary hand and Sharpened or precise in the other hand.
The back bar is usually an infused Destro staff with Weapon & spell damage glyph.
This was it, for this Lost Yogi’s ESO DPS Tutorial / Guide.
I hope you learned a little or maybe a lot, that will make your life in The Elder Scrolls Online easier.
ESO DPS F.A.Q
What is DPS? DPS is short for Damage Per Second.
What is a DD? DD is short for Damage Dealer.
How do you increase damage in ESO?
Take a look at the 15 ways to boost your DPS listed in this article.
Chances are you missed or ignored some of them, and in ESO it’s all the little things that add up to the big DPS.
My guess is you are not very proficient in weaving light attacks.
How to do more damage in ESO DPS?
If you have fulfilled all 15 ways listed above, and you are still not at the top of the Damage competition, you need to practice.
These 15 ways to BOOST your DPS in ESO, are the only parameters you need to worry about, there is no secret ingredient I let out or a club where we share trade secrets after hours.
What Class does the most damage in ESO?
Over the course of almost 7 years of lifespan the elder scrolls online have had, Sorcerer has been the Class doing the most damage in ESO on average.
ESO is pretty well balanced, and it’s more at the battle of Magicka build not being able to keep up with Stamina Damage Dealers.
How much does Stamina increase Weapon Damage in ESO?
Stamina pool converts to Weapon damage of 1/100, wichs means if you have 40.000 Max stamina you will do damage as if you had 400 more Weapon Damage.
Why is my ESO DPS so low?
That question is what I have been trying to help you with within this article, I wrote this ESO DPS Guide, to have a place to send people asking me in-game.
Now you found it as well, and I do hope it helped you to figure out why your DPS was so low.
I hope you get to 100k DPS and beyond.