Ultimate Magicka Warden Beginner Build in ESO

Category: Best ESO Builds, Best Warden Builds, Beginner Builds

This beginner build for the Magicka Warden class in The Elder Scrolls Online is a great place to get started in your journey. This build focuses on frost-based damage, self-healing and crowd control, making for a very fun play style in both group and solo content all the way from level 1 to level 50 and possibly beyond.

What you will learn in this beginner build guide:

• The best item sets to use with the Magicka Warden Beginner Build, and why they are important.
• How the skills work, synergies with the gear, and your rotation.
• The best consumables, race, and mundus, and most importantly, why you should select them.

This guide has been updated for The Elder Scrolls Online Update 50.

Beginner Magicka Warden Primary Sets

Winter’s Respite is a great all-around Magicka-focused set which includes Magicka Recovery and Max Magicka while also healing you and any group members any time you apply a ground-based effect.

The Frostbite set is another great frost-damage-oriented set that works very well on the Magicka Warden since most of our magic-based skills are frost-based.

Winter’s Respite

---

LVL 50 – CP 160

---

SET BONUS
(2 items) Adds 129 Magicka Recovery
(3 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka
(4 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka
(5 items) Casting abilities that leave an effect on the ground will create a circle of healing frost for 10 seconds. You and your group members restore 2358 Health every 1 second while inside the circle. This effect can occur once every 10 seconds.

Frostbite

---

LVL 50 – CP 160

---

SET BONUS
(2 items) Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage
(3 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance
(4 items) Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage
(5 items) Increases your damage done with Frost abilities by 8%. Increases your damage done against Chilled enemies by 4%. Increases your damage done against enemies afflicted with Minor Brittle by 2%.

Beginner Magicka Warden Alternative Sets

For alternatives, I also recommend Mother’s Sorrow or Crafty Alfiq. Remember that your armor pieces can go into any gear slot, meaning you only need to use 10 slots total for this build. I recommend using the Level Up Rewards weapons (Prophet’s Staff) to make up the remaining 2 open gear slots.

Mother’s Sorrow

---

LVL 50 – CP 160

---

SET BONUS
(2 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka
(3 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance
(4 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance
(5 items) Adds 1528 Critical Chance

Crafty Alfiq

---

LVL 50 – CP 160

---

SET BONUS
(2 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka
(3 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka
(4 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Magicka
(5 items) Adds 2550 Maximum Magicka

Beginner Magicka Warden Gear Loadout

Magicka Warden Beginner Attributes

The best attribute for a Magicka Warden is Magicka because it increase the effectiveness of our spells. Additionally, increased magicka can increase the size of a shield and healing spells. It’s best to pick one attribute pool and “stack” for optimal damage and resource sustain. Therefore, I recommend 64 magicka, 0 health, and 0 stamina.

Magicka Warden Beginner Race

The best overall race for a Magicka Warden beginner is the High Elf. This race gives a balance between resource sustain and damage. However, it’s not a commonly used race for end-game serious PvE DPS. If that’s your goal eventually, use the Dark Elf. If you struggle with resource sustain and want to spam cast spells, choose the Breton. And if you want something that looks different, take the Khajiit for burst damage, and Argonian for survivability.

For more details on all ESO Races and passive bonuses be sure to check out our Full ESO Race Guide.

Magicka Warden Beginner Mundus

The Thief is the best mundus stone for the Magicka Warden build because you cannot reach a “cap.” Critical damage (Shadow mundus) and offensive penetration (Lover) both can reach a hardcap where you see no benefit. Most Veteran enemies have 18,200 armor, thus Shadow becomes ineffective if using light armor. Meanwhile, the hardcap for critical damage is 125% which can be reached in trials with medium armor equipped. This is why the Thief is superior as an all around mundus stone, giving you the best benefit regardless of the content.

The Thief

---

Increases the Critical Strike rating by 1333

---

With 7 Divines armor pieces
Increases the Critical Strike rating by 2167

The Lover

---

Increases Physical and Spell Penetration by 2744

---

With 7 Divines armor pieces
Increases Physical and Spell Penetration by 4489

Magicka Warden Beginner Food & Drink

Witchmother’s Potent Brew is the best beginner Magicka Warden food or drink because it increases your max magicka, health, and grants magicka recovery. As a new player, you desperately need resource sustain as well as damage, which is why this is selected. Later as you advance, other food is used like “bi-stat” which forgoes magicka recovery for higher max stats. But, this comes with a big downside and that is weak sustain and not recommended right away.

Witchmother’s potent brew

---

Increase Max Magicka by 2856, Max Health by 3094, and Magicka Recovery by 315 for 2 hours.

These effects are scaled based on your level.

Ingredients: Nightshade, Bervez Juice, Rice, Small Game

Magicka Warden Beginner Potions

The best magicka potions for the Magicka Warden are the base potions that give you magicka recovery. The recover, with medicine use passive from alchemy, can run 47.5 seconds. With potion cooldown only last 45 seconds, you can maintain 100% up time on an additional 20% recovery. As you advance, tri-potions (all three stats), spell power potions (buffs and recovery), or even heroism potions (ultimate generation buff) can be used. However, consider using these right now depending on your level and don’t be shy about drinking them.

---

Basic Magicka Potions

---

Spell Power Potions

Beginner Magicka Warden Skill Loadout

Main Weapon: LIGHTNING STAFF – Click on a Skill Name to learn more

1. Force Pulse
2. Deep Fissure
3. Fetcher Infection
4. Inner Light
5. Bird Of Prey
6. ULT: Northern Storm

Backup Weapon: FROST STAFF – Click on a Skill Name to learn more

1. Elemental Blockade
2. Winter’s Revenge
3. Enchanted Growth
4. Blue Betty
5. Ice Fortress
6. ULT: Healing Thicket

Beginner Magicka Warden Skill Explanation

Front Bar – Lightning Staff

1. Force Pulse: ranged spammable attack that can deal damage to nearby targets if under status effect.
2. Deep Fissure: damage skill that strikes twice and has a delay, also debuffs enemies armor with minor and major Fracture.
3. Fetcher Infection: ranged damage over time that also triggers minor vulnerability to target.
4. Inner Light: This is passively slotted to increase max magicka and provide the critical buff.
5. Bird Of Prey: passively grants minor berserk and it can be activated for increased movement speed and removal of snares.
6. ULT: Northern Storm: AOE damage around you and a snare and also grants major protection reducing your damage by 10%.

Back Bar – Frost Staff Explanation

1. Elemental Blockade: used as strong AOE damage over time that triggers status effects
2. Winter’s Revenge: damage over time that reduces movement speed and triggers chilled status effect.
3. Enchanted Growth: burst heal that increasing your resources sustain via minor buffs.
4. Blue Betty: grants magicka recovery and spell power buff.
5. Ice Fortress: armor buff that reduces your damage and also grants minor protection.
6. ULT: Healing Thicket: low cost burst heal, 28 meter range and it heals you if you move out of its small circle.

Beginner Magicka Warden Important Passives

1. Bond With Nature
2. Savage Beast
3. Flourish
4. Evocation
5. Concentration
6. Prodigy
7. Glacial Presence
8. Maturation
9. Piercing Cold
10. Advanced Species
11. Grace

Magicka Warden Class Mastery

Players that reach level 50 in ESO while also fully reaching Rank 50 for their class skill lines and not subclassing can use 2 Class Mastery passives to improve their build. For the Warden class, I recommend Wild Adaptation which increases your Weapon and Spell Damage for each status effect on your target and Glacial Obstinance which upgrades Bond with Nature to active also on Winter’s Embrace abilities and grant 15% Weapon and Spell Damage.

Wild Adaptation

---

The battlefield is your grove. Tend to it.

Effect

Gain 333 Weapon and Spell Damage for each status effect on your target, up to a maximum of 1665.

Glacial Obstinance

---

Tap into the wellspring of permafrost’s resolve.

Effect

Upgrade Bond with Nature to also activate when casting Winter’s Embrace abilities and to grant 15% Weapon and Spell Damage for 10 seconds if you are at full Health after the heal.

How To Create Powerful ESO Builds

Crafting the Perfect Build for you in The Elder Scrolls Online can be frustrating. Which skills are best for each class? What about passives? The best race? The best armor type and weapons? The best trait and glyphs? There are literally THOUSANDS of different options!

This is why we created the ESO Zero To Hero Build Academy – A Simple, yet Powerful build system that teaches the fundamentals of ESO Theorycrafting, step-by-step.

Build your character exactly how YOU want by following this simple process from start to finish and FINALLY start enjoying ESO the way you want to play it!

Our Guides are designed with New and Intermediate players in mind! Stop wasting hours searching the internet for the best ESO build information – get what you need NOW to succeed!

Join ESO Zero To Hero Academy today!

More Warden Builds For ESO

Want more Warden Builds? Check out our dedicated Warden Builds overview page for even more great options!