Stamina Arcanist
For U50/U51, by @sacr3dbac0n/The Frying Pan.
Class Mastery in U50 brings new passive bonuses to pure class specs. Now, pure arcanist is very strong in comp groups where critical damage is already covered. The build also gives rapid crux generation, so you can beam longer and do more damage.
It’s optimized for real dungeon content instead of pure dummy parses (see video for a baseline parse). So, mileage will vary.
The Class Mastery passives for pure-class setups bring very powerful bonuses to the table. At the same time, it begs the question: “Why would I deliberately give up subclassing in U50/U51?”
Put it simply, pure class specs are often stronger in high-performance, maximally optimized groups where subclassed setups shine in sub-optimal groups like PUGs (pick-up groups). It comes down to one simple stat: crit damage.
Whereas in a highly optimized U50/U51 group, crit damage is already fully covered. We’re operating under the assumption that uptimes on crit dmg buffs/debuffs are beyond an uptime threshold. Whatever that threshold is, they all need to combine to get 125% effective crit dmg in your CMX (Combat Metrics) encounter log. At a baseline (and before Mora Scribe’s), you should be at:
Arcanist Critical Damage Table
| Bonuses from Group: | Expected uptime | Crit Dmg % | Uptime-Weighted Contribution (Crit Dmg %) |
| Lucent Echoes | 100% | 11% | 11% |
| Minor Brittle | 80%-90% | 10% | 8%-9% |
| Major Force | 100% | 20% | 20% |
| Subtotal | – | – | 39%-40% |
| Bonuses from Self: | |||
| Base | 100% | 50% | 50% |
| Minor Force | 100% | 10% | 10% |
| Fighting Finesse | 100% | 8% | 8% |
| 6 pc Medium | 100% | 12% | 12% |
| Fated Fortune | 100% | 12% | 12% |
| Mora Scribe’s (front bar) | 80%-85% | 12% | 9.6%-10.2% |
| Subtotal | – | – | 101.6%-102.2% |
| Total (capped at 125%) | – | – | 140.6%-142.2% |
You should expect reliable uptimes on Lucent Echoes (11%) and Minor Brittle (10%) from your tank. With the arcanist healer, you’ve got an extra 20% from Major Force. With those, you’re up to 133% and if you don’t have Major Force, Mora Scribe’s on boss and Sul-Xan in trash will take care of the rest. So that’s a max of 145% crit damage.
In practice, effective value will naturally be lower; 100% uptime on Minor Brittle isn’t always achievable. It’s closer to 80%-90% in reality (assuming boss time-on-target is 100%).
Subclassed setups still have a place in sub-optimized groups where crit damage isn’t always provided.
We’re designing around a high-performance 4-player comp, though, so all sub-optimality must go out the window. We need to take specs that have maximum DPS under those conditions and assumptions. For that, it’s Class Mastery.
With all that said, let’s look at the Class Mastery we’re picking and why. First, Unbound Potential. Well, this one is a no-brainer. It’s 30% more damage done when you generate Crux, which is always.
However, the second mastery you should pick is not so obvious. Spoiler: it should be Abyssal Emergence
Why Abyssal Emergence though? On paper, you’d think that the more consistent option (Fate Realigned) is better, but in almost every case, it’s not:
Let’s break it down. Fate Realigned procs on Implacable Outcome. So every time you consume Crux, it refreshes that 300 w/s dmg. Essentially, you’ll always have this bonus at 100%.
On the other hand, Abyssal Emergence gives 666 w/s dmg when we cast our ult. The higher w/s dmg bonus is at the cost of lesser uptime, though; the proc is gated by ultimate and ult gen.
Both refill Crux on proc, but let’s ignore that for now.
So which is better? To put it simply, it’s a break-even problem. First off, assume Fate Realigned maintains full uptime. Next, assume the Abyssal Emergence uptime is equal to the ratio between the bonus duration and the time it takes you to get your ult (t_ult). Set them equal, and solve for t_ult. That’s your break-even.
That means we need to get our ult back in less than or equal to 33.3 s to beat Fate Realigned. In other words, we need 5.25 ult/s to meet that 33.3 s.
We won’t be able to reach that 5.25 ult/s w/o other unique sources, though (like Major Heroism or Nightblade Class Mastery). Consider our baseline gen on light attack at 3 ult/s. Add the Implacable Outcome Arcanist passive (4 ult every 8 s), and that corresponds to 4 ult/8 s = 0.5 ult/s. But wait, we have Banner w/ Minor Heroism. Let’s add that contribution (1 ult/1.5 s = 0.67 ult/s) so that brings us to ~4.17 ult/s. If everything’s perfect, we get our Languid Eye back in 42 s. Not bad. So we’re close to the threshold, but not quite there.
That’s not the full story, though. All this assumes an ideal world where you’re always on the boss. This is never the case in a dungeon, though. With power creep, damage windows are often compressed even further in most dungeon encounters.
For that reason, burst damage is king. The faster we can burst through windows with a massive ult dump, the better we can skip most mechanics that cause deaths. It’s the reason we coordinate all our ults at the same time and fully spec into bonuses that stack and not overlap, so that nothing is wasted. Major Slayer, Aggressive Warhorn, Glyphic – it all adds up. The DD ults are just as important.
So that’s the main reason we use Abyssal Emergence – the burst DPS. We’re so close to the break-even for the ultimate cost opportunity between the two anyway. The burst damage from it is just better. Getting your Crux instantly refilled lines up the burst window even further.
To further illustrate the subclass vs pure, here’s my rating on the topic:
Pure vs. Subclassed Arcanist
| Pure Arcanist | Subclassed Arcanist | |
| Crux generation | Excellent | Lower |
| Beam uptime | Higher | Lower |
| Crit damage access | Lower/less relevant | Potentially higher |
| Best environment | Optimized groups | Less optimized/more general comps |
| Rotation | Simpler/Beam centric | Can vary |
| Burst damage | Excellent | Lower |
At the end of the day, they both have a place. Their strongest use cases, though, are very different: pure Arcansit benefits most from optimal comps where it’s missing crit dmg is already covered.
We choose Sul-Xan as our trash set because Brittle uptimes are bad on all the adds. The 12% crit dmg goes a long way, and the crit (+2160 rating/~9.85%) sweetens the deal.
Mora Scribe’s is a similar story. We’ll have the crit dmg already covered, but the crit rating is huge for bosses since pure Arcanist suffers from low rating. Without the Mora Scribe’s, you’d be sitting at around 50% crit chance, but with it (+1536/~7%), you’ll be much closer to the optimal 60%-65%.
We choose Mora Scribe’s over Sul-Xan for bosses since not every dungeon boss provides an add to kill every 30 s.
For trash, we’re also using a lightning staff instead of daggers. Why?
Put it simply, crit rating is probabilistic. Flat damage applies consistently. In trash, that matters because enemies live for only a few GCDs: flat damage is more reliable at crossing kill thresholds, while a large crit can simply turn into overkill.
But why? Let’s prove it. Assume that about 80% of your magicka Dragonknight trash damage is channeled or direct damage. Consider also nominal crit ratings for the precise lightning staff vs. nirnhoned/precise daggers:
At 125% crit damage:
So,
This means that once crit dmg is accounted for, the extra ~2.4% crit rating of nirn/precise daggers only gains ~1.6% average damage compared to a precise lightning.
Meanwhile, if 75%-80% of your damage is direct/channeled, the lightning staff’s Ancient Knowledge applies 12% to that part:
At an 80% qualifying damage share, Ancient Knowledge contributes up to 9.6% points of weighted damage before accounting for other additive damage done modifiers.
Which means that the DW dagger’s higher w/s dmg needs to make up for approximately:
After accounting for DW’s ~1.6% crit advantage, its higher w/s dmg would need to provide another ~7.9% damage increase to match the simplified 9.6% lightning advantage.
DW only gets about ~600-500 more w/s dmg than the Lightning Staff. This alone is not enough. For normal ability scaling, roughly 10.5 max magicka/stamina provides the same scaling contribution as 1 w/s dmg.
Say you have 7000 w/s dmg and 30k resources. Your effective offensive power is:
That’s a 2.8% gap.
But it’s not the full story, as each damage ability has different w/s dmg scaling coefficients. In other words, that modifier doesn’t necessarily scale equally across the board. And when you consider that the DW daggers and lightning staff have almost the same crit rating, the picture worsens because lightning has that 12% flat damage modifier. This matters in trash that needs to die fast; the crit machine matters less than flat damage modifiers. It’s especially relevant for builds like the Magicka Dragonknight and Arcanist where direct/channeled damage accounts for a huge portion of your trash damage.
Disclaimer: this is NOT to say that crit rating is unimportant in trash. It does matter. These builds already reach roughly 60%-65%+ crit rating before the weapon comparison, so the question is whether investing even further into crit is better than adding a large direct/channel modifier.
Rotation is pretty simple:
Trash Setup: keep ult gen up, ultimate when you have it, but not before bosses.
Prebuff (Recuperative Treatise + Cruxweaver) → Precast Trample → Stampede → Flail → Languid (if available) → Fatecarver
Boss Setup: Same idea, but minus Trample. Cancel Fatecarver and ult if your Languid comes back early. It’s better to break beam than to waste ultimate. Class Mastery refills your Crux on ult anyway, so you can immediately resume beaming.
Buffs (Recuperative Treatise + Cruxweaver) → Cloak → Stampede → Flail → Languid → Fatecarver → Flail → Fatecarver (until ult is ready or Stampede expires)
In summary:
Strengths:
Huge cleave, great Fatecarver uptime, rapid Crux gen, strong ult economy, straightforward rotation
Weaknesses
Fatecarver vulnerable to mechanics/stuns/etc., pure-class value can depend on group comp, low crit chance.
Thanks for reading.
Image credits and licensing
“Arcanist Class Mastery Skill Line” via ESO Hub, incorporating game components © ZeniMax Online Studios. Cropped/resized where applicable.
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