Category: Best ESO Builds, Best Dragonknight Builds, Beginner Builds
This beginner build for the Stamina Dragonknight class in The Elder Scrolls Online is a great place to get started. This build focuses on Dual Wield and Bow skills and includes lots of Damage Over Time! This build will do great in PVE and PVP.
What you will learn in this beginner build guide:
- The best item sets to use with the Stamina Dragonknight 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.
Dragonknight Class Overview
The Dragonknight Class is an extremely powerful way to play in The Elder Scrolls Online. Dragonknights have many similarities with other classes in ESO such as dedicated Class Skill lines for DPS, for Healing, and for Tanking. Dragonknights are known for their sturdy nature as melee combat specialists but also have many powerful magic abilities. For a more detailed guide be sure to review our ESO Dragonknight Class Guide.
Stamina Dragonknight Beginner Primary Sets
Our main 5 piece set on this build is Venomous Smite, a medium armor set from the Greymoor Chapter. This set is fairly easy to get and does an insane amount of Damage Over Time when it procs, adding to the DOT focus of this build.
Spriggan’s Thorns helps all of our abilities do even more damage since it increases our total physical penetration.
For the final two pieces of gear on this build Armor Of The Trainee is recommended for the extra Health and Magicka.
Venomous Smite
LVL 50 – CP 160
SET BONUS
(2 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance
(3 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance
(4 items) Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage
(5 items) Dealing Critical Damage inflicts Hunter’s Venom on your enemy for 10 seconds, dealing 2241 Poison Damage to your target and enemies within 6 meters of them every 1 second. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds.
Spriggan’s Thorns
LVL 50 – CP 160
SET BONUS
(2 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina
(3 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina
(4 items) Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage
(5 items) Adds 3460 Offensive Penetration
Stamina Dragonknight Beginner Alternative Sets
For alternatives, I also recommend Eternal Vigor or Gryphon’s Ferocity. I recommend using the Level Up Rewards weapons (Prophet’s Bow, Prohpet’s Dagger, etc.) to make up the remaining 2 open gear slots.
Eternal Vigor
LVL 50 – CP 160
SET BONUS
(2 items) Adds 129 Magicka Recovery
(3 items) Adds 129 Stamina Recovery
(4 items) Adds 129 Health Recovery
(5 items) Adds 337 Stamina and Magicka Recovery while your Health is above 50%. Adds 1011 Health Recovery while your Health is 50% or less.
Gryphon’s Ferocity
LVL 50 – CP 160
SET BONUS
(2 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance
3 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina
(4 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance
(5 items) When you deal Critical Damage, you increase your Weapon and Spell Damage by 450 for 10 seconds. While this effect is active your Critical Strikes heal you for 100 Health. This effect can occur once every 15 seconds and the heal scales off the higher of your Maximum Magicka or Stamina.
Stamina Dragonknight Beginner Gear Loadout
| Weapon/Armor | Set | Trait | Weight | Glyph |
| Main Hand | Eternal Vigor Two Hander | Precise | NA | Absorb Stamina |
| Backup | Eternal Vigor Bow | Infused | NA | Weapon/Spell Damage |
| Head | Eternal Video | Divines | Heavy | Stamina |
| Shoulder | Eternal Video | Divines | Heavy | Stamina |
| Chest | Eternal Video | Divines | Heavy | Stamina |
| Waist | Armor Of The Trainee | Divines | Medium | Stamina |
| Gloves | Armor Of The Trainee | Divines | Medium | Stamina |
| Legs | Gryphon’s Ferocity | Divines | Medium | Stamina |
| Feet | Gryphon’s Ferocity | Divines | Medium | Stamina |
| Necklace | Gryphon’s Ferocity | Robust | NA | Weapon Damage |
| Ring 1 | Gryphon’s Ferocity | Robust | NA | Stamina Recovery |
| Ring 2 | Gryphon’s Ferocity | Robust | NA | Stamina Recovery |
Stamina Dragonknight Beginner Attributes
The best attribute for a Stamina Dragonknight is Stamina because it increase the effectiveness of our skills. Additionally, increased stamina can increase the size of a damage and healing spells. It’s best to pick one attribute pool and “stack” for optimal damage and resource sustain. Therefore, I recommend 64 stamina, 0 health, and 0 magicka. However, make sure you reach 18,000 health or higher, and adjust your attributes if you’re low while food is active.
0 Magicka
0 Health
64 Stamina
Stamina Dragonknight Beginner Race
The most optimal choice for meta end game stamina build is Dark Elf because of the spell and weapon damage and two resource pools. Khajiit is great for critical damage, but is weaker in high-end PvE content. Meanwhile, the Orc and Redguard are two great choices for better resource sustain. Here are thoughts on the best stamina based beginner races:
- Dark Elf: best overall for end game PvE DPS
- Orc: best for end game PvP content and decent in PvE
- Imperial: high stats and it lowers cost of skills
- Redguard: best for resource sustain, though weaker damage
- Khajiit: highest burst damage
- Nord: most survivable race for stamina beginners
For more details on all ESO Races and passive bonuses be sure to check out our Full ESO Race Guide.
Stamina Dragonknight Beginner Mundus
The best mundus stone for a stamina Dragonknight build is the Lover due to Physical Penetration. Unlike light armor builds that favor magicka skills, medium armor lacks offensive penetration. Therefore, this is the best stat for a beginner or playing solo. As you start to play in group PvE content, swap to the Thief especially with coordinated tanks and healers. The cap for Veteran enemies is 18,200, if you go over that, the stats are wasted. Lastly, use the Serpent if you constantly run out of resources as it helps with stamina regeneration.
The Lover
Increases Physical and Spell Penetration by 2744
With 7 Divines armor pieces
Increases Physical and Spell Penetration by 4489
Stamina Dragonknight Beginner Food & Drink
The best drink, food, consumable for the stamina Dragonknight is Dubious Camoran Throne because it gives stats across the board. This drink is easy to get from vendors and increases your max stamina, health, and grants stamina 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 stamina recovery for higher max stats. But, this comes with a big downside and that is weak sustain and not recommended right away. Buy these from guild traders until you can craft with provisioning.
Dubious Camoran Throne
Increase Stamina Recovery by 315, Max Stamina by 2856 and Max Health by 3094 for 2 hours.
These effects are scaled based on your level.
A dessert cocktail of jagga, rotmeth, and sweetbread puree. Definitely Green Pact compliant.
Stamina Dragonknight Beginner Potions
The best Stamina potions for the Stamina Dragonknight are the base potions that give you Stamina recovery. The recover, with medicinal 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 Stamina Potions
Stamina Dragonknight Beginner Skills Loadout
Main Weapon: TWO HANDED – Click on a Skill Name to learn more
Backup Weapon: BOW – Click on a Skill Name to learn more
- Endless Hail
- Poison Injection
- Cauterize or Incinerate
- Igneous Weapons
- Earthshield Mantle
- ULT: Magma Shell or Corrosive Armor
Stamina Dragonknight Beginner Skills Explanation
Front Bar – Two Handed
- Burning Embers: this costs Magicka to cast, but its well worth it due to the upfront healing and heal over time effect. Note: You can recast this BEFORE the DOT runs out to get the burst heal again!
- Disintegrating Dragonfire: AOE damage over time that also debuffs enemies with Major Breach, increasing their damage taken from all abilities.
- Brawler: Use this as a damage shield that increases in size when you hit more enemies.
- Magma Fist: This is your first single-target Stamina-based Attack (better than Whip for a pure Stamina build).
- Heart Of Flame: Use this mainly as a sustain tool to restore Health, Magicka, and Stamina.
- ULT: Ferocious Leap: This is a powerful and cheap ultimate skill that deals AOE damage, stuns, and creates a massive damage shield for your character, helping greatly with survival!
Bar Bar – Bow
- Endless Hail: place a large circle on the ground that deals serious damage, can use as an opener because there’s a delay before damage.
- Poison Injection: Strong single-target DOT that does scaling damage the lower health the enemy is.
- Cauterize: heal over time ability that can heal you or other targets and also increases your Critical Chance via the Major Savagery and Major Prophecy buffs. Morph this to Incinerate if you don’t need the extra healing.
- Igneous Weapons: a powerful damage buff that increases your Weapon Damage and Spell Damage and lasts for a full 1 minute, saving your resources on recasting.
- Earthshield Mantle: This is your defensive armor skill that provides the Major Resolve buff, increasing your Physical Resistance and Spell Resistance, plus an extra damage shield.
- ULT: Magma Shell or Corrosive Armor: Take Magma Shell if you are playing with others or Corrosive Armor playing solo.
Stamina Dragonknight Beginner Important Passives
- Combustion
- Traumatic Burns
- World In Ruin
- Heavy Weapons
- Balanced Blade
- Dexterity
- Wind Walker
- The Storm Voice
- Agility
Stamina Dragonknight 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 Dragonknight Class, I recommend Inexorable Descent which improves your Landslide passive to deal more damage while increasing healing done and damage shield strength and Wildfire Embers which adds a unique damage over time effect that stacks up to 12 times when your Dragonknight DOTs end.
Inexorable Descent
Be as the landslide. Let nothing stop you.
Effect
Improves your Landslide passive to increase the potency of your damage done, healing done, and damage shield strength by 1% per stack.
Wildfire Embers
Fire forged within can never be extinguished. Fan the flames.
Effect
When your Dragonknight damage over time effects end, you apply Wildfire Embers to the target, dealing 1884 Flame Damage over 12 seconds. This effect stacks up to 12 times and increases in damage by 25% per stack.
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!
More Dragonknight Builds For ESO
Want more Dragonknight Builds? Check out our dedicated Dragonknight Builds overview page for even more great options!
