Category: Best ESO Builds, Best Necromancer Builds, DPS Builds
The Stamina Necromancer continues to be one of the most important and versatile classes that you can play in The Elder Scrolls Online. Since its release nearly half a decade ago, Necros have been absolutely essential to raid composition. Whether it be for the sake of Buff Sets, Major Vulnerability, or simply the incredibly strong AOE damage the Stamina Necro provides, this class is a must-have in your toolkit as a Damage Dealer
Primary Sets
Our Primary setup for the Stamina Necro is a bit unique, as this is one of the only classes that gets to utilize the improved Runecarver setup! While this setup does offer a solid amount of AOE damage, its primary value is deceivingly single-target-oriented!
We will opt to run Perfected Arms of Relequen, a Medium Armor set from the Trial Cloudrest, in combination with Runecarver’s Blaze, the Light Armor set from Scrivenner’s Hall!
Since Relequen is primarily a Single Target set, you can get more AOE utility from this setup by replacing it with either Perfected Coral Riptide, a Medium Armor set from the trial Dreadsail Reef, or Perfected Ansuul’s Torment, a Medium Armor set from the trial Sanity’s Edge. Ansuul is far easier to use and only slightly less damage than Riptide, though Riptide will be a stronger option!
We will pair these sets with the Maelstrom Greatsword, to buff our Primary spammable Rapid Strikes, and with the Harpooner’s Wading Kilt, to give us some extra Crit Chance and Crit Damage!
Perfected Arms Of Relequen
LVL 50 – CP 160
SET BONUS
(2 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance
(3 items) Gain Minor Slayer at all times, increasing your damage done to Dungeon, Trial, and Arena Monsters by 5%.
(4 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance
(5 items) Adds 1096 Maximum Stamina, Your Light and Heavy attacks apply a stack of harmful winds to your target for 5 seconds. Harmful winds deal 52 Physical Damage per stack every 1 second. This effect can stack once every half second, up to 10 times and scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.
Runecarver’s Blaze
LVL 50 – CP 160
SET BONUS
(2 items) Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage
(3 items) Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage
(4 items) Adds 1487 Offensive Penetration
(5 items) Your damage over time effects deal an additional 368 Flame Damage on the third damage tick. This damage scales off your Weapon or Spell Damage and always applies the Burning status effect.
Merciless Charge
LVL 50 – CP 160
SET BONUS
(2 items) Dealing damage with Critical Charge causes enemies to bleed for 1054 Bleed Damage over 10 seconds. This effect scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.
Harpooner’s Wading Kilt
LVL 50 – CP 160
SET BONUS
(1 item) Dealing direct damage grants you a stack of Hunter’s Focus for 20 seconds, up to 10 stacks max. You can only gain 1 stack of Hunter’s Focus per second. Each stack of Hunter’s Focus increases your Critical Chance by 110 and your Critical Damage by 1%. Taking direct damage removes 5 stacks of Hunter’s Focus, up to once per second. Removing Harpooner’s Wading Kilt removes all stacks of Hunter’s Focus.
Alternate Sets
Since this build does include some trial set options, I feel it worth mentioning, the difference between Perfected and Unperfected gear is very small. I wouldn’t stress about getting perfected gear, and if that means getting into these trials on normal to farm them out, it’s totally worth doing so! If you aren’t quite ready for trials, you can replace Relequen with Order’s Wrath in the meantime, a Craftable set found in the High Isle zone, and one that is easily the best bang for your buck in terms of Damage Output compared to Ease of Acquisition. The rest of the sets should be pretty easy to get, requiring you to farm out some normal dungeons and/or arenas, or simply farm some leads for the Mythics!
Order’s Wrath
LVL 50 – CP 160
SET BONUS
(2 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance
(3 items) Adds 129 Weapon and Spell Damage
(4 items) Adds 657 Critical Chance
(5 items) Adds 943 Critical Chance, Increases your Critical Damage and Critical Healing by 8%.
Trash Setup
If you’re looking to get a little sweaty in 12 man content, you can change around this entire setup to use in Trash Pulls, to maximize your AOE burst damage in these short encounters! Time spent in Trash makes up the majority of any Trial, so optimizing for these if you have the ability to do so is a great idea! From the trial Rockgrove, Sul-Xan is the uncontested meta in trash situations. Crit is king in these types of pulls, and this set provides nearly 10% extra crit chance, and 12% extra Crit Damage. Since trash pulls are so short, the Crit Chance makes our damage a bit burstier, and allows us to still hit Crit Cap despite sources of Crit Damage not being able to all be consistently applied in that short window either.
In the past, we’ve opted to run Burning Spell Weave in Trash, as it offers the highest damage increase out of any other alternative in a much shorter window of time. However, for Stamina Specs, Briar Heart ends up being a slightly stronger option, offering a Line of Stam rather than mag, as well as a line of Crit Chance rather than weapon and spell damage. Both of these stat lines will be more preferable for a Stam spec for Trash than the lines that Burning Spell Weave offers, making this set slightly more preferable! Briar Heart can be found in the overlands of Wrothgar, requiring the Orsinium DLC. You’ll usually pair these sets with the Velothi Ur-Mage’s Amulet and the vMA Inferno/vMA Bow plus one piece Slimecraw.
Primary Set Load Out
| Weapon/Armor | Set | Trait | Weight | Glyph |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Main Hand | (Perfected) Arms of Relequen | Charged | Dagger | Absorb Stamina |
| Off Hand | (Perfected) Arms of Relequen | Charged | Dagger | Poison Damage |
| Backup | (Perfected) Merciless Charge | Infused | Greatsword | Weapon Damage |
| Head | Slimecraw | Divines | Medium | Max Stamina |
| Shoulder | Runecarver’s Blaze | Divines | Light | Max Stamina |
| Chest | Runecarver’s Blaze | Divines | Light | Max Stamina |
| Waist | (Perfected) Arms of Relequen | Divines | Medium | Max Stamina |
| Gloves | (Perfected) Arms of Relequen | Divines | Medium | Max Stamina |
| Legs | Harpooner’s Wading Kilt | Divines | Medium | Max Stamina |
| Feet | (Perfected) Arms of Relequen | Divines | Medium | Max Stamina |
| Necklace | Runecarver’s Blaze | Bloodthirsty | NA | Weapon Damage |
| Ring 1 | Runecarver’s Blaze | Bloodthirsty | NA | Weapon Damage |
| Ring 2 | Runecarver’s Blaze | Bloodthirsty | NA | Weapon Damage |
Alternate Set Load Out
| Weapon/Armor | Set | Trait | Weight | Glyph |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Main Hand | Order’s Wrath | Charged | Dagger | Absorb Stamina |
| Off Hand | Order’s Wrath | Charged | Dagger | Poison Damage |
| Backup | (Perfected) Merciless Charge | Infused | Greatsword | Weapon Damage |
| Head | Slimecraw | Divines | Medium | Max Stamina |
| Shoulder | Runecarver’s Blaze | Divines | Light | Max Stamina |
| Chest | Runecarver’s Blaze | Divines | Light | Max Stamina |
| Waist | Order’s Wrath | Divines | Medium | Max Stamina |
| Gloves | Order’s Wrath | Divines | Medium | Max Stamina |
| Legs | Harpooner’s Wading Kilt | Divines | Medium | Max Stamina |
| Feet | Order’s Wrath | Divines | Medium | Max Stamina |
| Necklace | Runecarver’s Blaze | Bloodthirsty | NA | Weapon Damage |
| Ring 1 | Runecarver’s Blaze | Bloodthirsty | NA | Weapon Damage |
| Ring 2 | Runecarver’s Blaze | Bloodthirsty | NA | Weapon Damage |
Trash Pull Load Out
| Weapon/Armor | Set | Trait | Weight | Glyph |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Main Hand | (Perfected) Sul-Xan’s Torment | Precise | Dagger | Shock Damage |
| Off Hand | (Perfected) Sul-Xan’s Torment | Charged | Dagger | Flame Damage |
| Backup | (Perfected) Crushing Wall | Infused | Greatsword | Weapon Damage |
| Head | Slimecraw | Divines | Light | Max Stamina |
| Shoulder | (Perfected) Sul-Xan’s Torment | Divines | Medium | Max Stamina |
| Chest | Briarheart | Divines | Medium | Max Stamina |
| Waist | Briarheart | Divines | Medium | Max Stamina |
| Gloves | Briarheart | Divines | Medium | Max Stamina |
| Legs | Briarheart | Divines | Medium | Max Stamina |
| Feet | Briarheart | Divines | Medium | Max Stamina |
| Necklace | Velothi Ur-Mage’s Amulet | Bloodthirsty | NA | Weapon Damage |
| Ring 1 | (Perfected) Sul-Xan’s Torment | Bloodthirsty | NA | Weapon Damage |
| Ring 2 | (Perfected) Sul-Xan’s Torment | Bloodthirsty | NA | Weapon Damage |
Consumables, Race, Mundus
Race
Dark Elf gives us the strongest stat bonuses of any race, offering nearly 2K Max Stam and 258 Weapon and Spell Damage. For any Stam Spec, this is race option will give you the best results for damage dealing. One niche benefit to this race is that Dark Elf is also Meta for Mag Specs as well, as it is tied in Max Spell and Weapon Damage compared to other races, while offering only 1K less Max Mag compared to a Race like High Elf. If you want to have the flexibility to switch between Mag and Stam Specs, this is your go to!
Orc is a pretty close second, offering the same amount of weapon and spell damage, but giving 1,000 less Max Stamina, resulting in a 1-2k DPS loss. Orc does have the benefit though of reduced sprint cost, increased movement speed, and being a bit beefier in content, adding 1,000 Max Health, and healing for 2K health whenever you do damage, occurring once every 12 seconds. Despite being slightly lower in overall DPS output, the perks of being an Orc are a bit more enjoyable than Dark Elf if you’re not concerned with pumping out as much damage as possible.
In solo, four man, or even unorganized 12 man content, Khajiit performs well in situations that leave you below the Crit Damage Cap, offering 12% increased Critical damage and 1,000 Max Stam. Crit Damage is a stat far more important than Weapon and Spell Damage, but only to a certain point. You can’t benefit from having any more than 125% Crit Damage, and this is a value that tanks and healers in 12 man content can get you to pretty easily, but this is a really strong race to choose for the sake of solo, duo, or 4 man content.
For more details on all ESO Races and passive bonuses be sure to check out our Complete ESO Race Guide.
Mundus
The Thief
Increases the Critical Strike rating by 1333
With 7 Divines armor pieces
Increases the Critical Strike rating by 2167
Food/Drink Buff
Bravil’s Best Beet Risotto/Hearty Garlic Corn Chowder/Tenmar Millet-Carrot Couscous: These food options provide the highest increase that we can have to our Stam pool, giving us the most potential Damage. This is also the food that we use on the parse.
Braised Rabbit With Spring Vegetables/Garlic COD With Potato Crust/Sticky Pork and Ravish Noodles: Bi Stat Food that offers Max Health and Stam. This is less Damage than Max Stam foods BUT they offer a TON of survivability at a very small damage loss. This food is most often used in content.
Lava Foot Soup and Saltrice: When you’re having sustain issues in content, this should be your first go to, as it provides the most Stam (and therefore damage) and the most recovery out of any alternative food option after the ones already mentioned. It does sacrifice health, and therefore, a considerable amount of survivability however.
Artaeum Takeaway Broth: If you can’t survive with Lava Foot, but have to solve a sustain problem, this will be the next best option giving less Stam than any of the previous options, but offering some health and Stam Recovery in addition to slightly less Stam than the other options, creating a happy medium.
Potions
Weapon Damage Potions: These will be the typical go to option on a Stam spec. These potions provide the essential buffs Major Brutality, Major Savagery, Major Endurance, and restore Stamina. These buffs are essential to have for your damage, and if you don’t source them elsewhere, must be sourced with these potions. You can craft these by combining Dragonthorn, Blessed Thistle, and Wormwood, or by purchasing the Alliance Battle Draught from Cyrodiil.
Heroism Potions: These potions restore Stam and Mag, give Major Endurance and Intellect, and Minor Heorism, which provides a considerable amount of extra ultimate over its duration. You have to source Major Brutality and Savagery elsewhere though if you run these. On the Cro, you can typically rely on your Main Tank in content to run Igneous Weapons, which will give you your Weapon/Spell Damage Buff. However, the Weapon/Spell Crit buff will have to be sourced on your own, requiring you to use Camo Hunter on both bars. The Cro has very limited Bar Space, so these potions should be rarely used on this class. You can craft these by combining Dragon Rheum, Dragon’s Blood, and Columbine.
Tri Stat Potions: Cheaper version of Herosim Pots, good to use when you need both Mag and Stam sustain, when the forementioned buffs can be sourced efficiently. You can craft these by combining Columbine, Bugloss, and Mountain Flower.
Main DPS Skills
Main Weapon: DUAL WIELD – Click on a Skill Name to learn more
Backup Weapon: TWO HANDER – Click on a Skill Name to learn more
Flex Skills
Listed here are the most common Flex Skill Alternatives that you’ll likely use on this class. I’d suggest replacing Caltrops for these options, moving Boneyard to the backbar if you choose to run a spammable.
- Skills for Healing: Mortal Coil, Resistant Flesh, Resolving/Echoing Vigor
- AOE Skills: Whirling Blades
- Trash Skills: Proxy Detonation
Skills Discussion & Rotation
Rotation
Static Rotation:
- Prebuff: Archer – Cloak – Blast Bones – Shooting Star – Trap
- Opening: Stampede – Blast Bones – Boneyard – Scalding – Blast Bones – Siphon – Carve – Blast Bones
- Rotation: Blast Bones – Boneyard – Stampede – Blast Bones – Archer – Siphon – Blast Bones – Trap – Cloak – Blast Bones – Scalding – Boneyard – Blast Bones – Stampede – Spam – Blast Bones – Spam – Spam – Blast Bones – Spam – Spam – REPEAT
- Notes:
- For the sake of getting your timers to line up a bit more nicely, I’d suggest replacing Caltrops with Scalding Rune for the Static Rotation
- Reapply Carve and Ult Dynamically as needed, choosing to cast 3 skills between Blast Bones instead of two. Ideally though, you are able to reapply either of these in place of a spammable. Hitting Shooting Star right at 200 ult for Exploiter is very important, so prioritize using it as soon as it’s ready, but replace it with a spammable cast when convenient enough to do so.
- If both Detonating Siphon and Boneyard need to be cast in the same 2 Skill Blast Bones Window, cast Boneyard first to ensure that it gets the Corpse for its bonus damage, then cast Siphon if the option is still available.
- If you are above 115K in average DPS, you’ll cast 3 Total Shooting Stars and 1 Dawnbreaker throughout the parse. If you are below 115K, you’ll cast 4 Shooting Stars. If you get a Dawnbreaker back after 4 casts of Shooting Stars, use it.
- At around 500K or less on the Dummy, regardless of what needs to be reapplied, just cast Blast Bones and two times Siphon or Blast Bones and Siphon plus Scalding Rune to burst down the dummy, and shave a second or two off your parse with good crits.
Dynamic Rotation
- Prebuff: Archer – Cloak – Blast Bones – Shooting Star – Trap
- Opening: Stampede – Blast Bones – Carve – Boneyard – Blast Bones – Siphon – Caltrops – Blast Bones
- Priority in Reapplication: Carve – Blast Bones – Stampede – Ult – Trap – Boneyard – Siphon – Archer – Cloak – Caltrops
Notes
- Blast Bones: Blast Bones is the absolute foundation of the Necromancer. When used correctly, Blastbones ends up being our highest damage-dealing ability by an incredibly high margin, being absolutely unmatched in DPS output by any other ability in this toolkit. Nothing is more important than Blastbones.
- Corpse Usage: Corpses play a pretty big role in how we do damage on this class. Our Sudo Spammable Detonating Siphon, only is able to be used if we have a Corpse available to consume. Blast Bones creates a Corpse every time it lands, almost always giving us at least one Corpse to consume. The tricky part is that Boneyard also needs a Corpse to consume to maximize the skill’s damage.
- Sometimes, we will have two Corpses available, thanks to our Skeletal Archer which, when reapplied assuming it’s gone through at least half its duration, will create a second corpse as well. You can track whether or not you have a Corpse available to use by looking at Detonating Siphon. If it’s lit up, a Corpse is available, if it’s dark, there are no available Corpses.
- Bar Swap Canceling Skills: Typically, we want to Bar Swap skills that have long animations. For the Cro, this really only applies the Stampede and Boneyard. If you want to speed up your weaving a little bit, Bar Swap Canceling these skills will help the roto to feel a little less clunky, and likely increase your speed a bit, producing a small damage increase!
- Timer Management: The Stamina Necro’s rotation is likely one of the simplest rotations in the game. If you are new to the concept of a Dynamic Rotation, this is the PERFECT class to learn the concept on. In a perfect world, the goal is to allow a skill to fully expire, and reapply it immediately on its expiration. This isn’t always 100% possible, especially when prioritizing Blast Bones casts, but is achievable with a high degree of consistency on the Cro. Usually, reapplying skills with less than one second left is fine, but we do want to allow our Skeletal Archer to fully expire, even if it means letting the skill fall off for a couple of seconds, since it increases in damage with each tick. If you reapply the skill too early, you reset the timer, completely missing the final and highest damage dealing tick of the ability. Do not reapply this skill early under any circumstances.
Passive Skills
Class Passives
- Reusable Parts
- Death Knell
- Dismember
- Rapid Rot
- Death Gleaning
- Disdain Harm
- Health Avarice
- Last Gasp
- Curative Curse
- Near-Death Experience
- Corpse Consumption
- Undead Confederate
Weapon Passives
- Slaughter
- Dual Wield Expert
- Controlled Fury
- Ruffian
- Twin Blade And Blunt
- Forceful
- Heavy Weapons
- Balanced Blade
- Follow Up
- Battle Rush
Armor Passives
Guild Passives
Racial
Other
Champion Points
Below you will find the recommended Active and Passive Champion Point Stars for this build, broken down into 300, 600, 900, and 1200 CP ranges.
For more information on Champion Points click on a Star name below or browse our detailed Champion Points Guides.
Constellation Descriptions:
Craft TREE
The Green Craft Constellation is focused on crafting and utility-centered upgrades.
Warfare TREE
The Blue Warfare Constellation focuses primarily on increasing player damage, healing and defenses
Fitness TREE
The Red Fitness Constellation is focused on character survival and sustain.
– 300 Champion Points –
GREEN
BLUE
RED
– 600 Champion Points –
GREEN
- 50 Steed’s Blessing (Slot)
- 50 Gilded Fingers
- 10 Fortune’s Favor
- 15 Wanderer
- 40 Steadfast Enchantment
- 30 Rationer (Slot)
BLUE
- 50 Deadly Aim (Slot)
- 50 Master at Arms (Slot)
- 50 Wrathful Strikes (Slot)
- 25 Thaumaturge (Slot) *Use Exploiter if in an optimized group/dummy parse
- 10 Precision
- 10 War Mage
RED
- 50 Boundless Vitality (Slot)
- 50 Rejuvenation (Slot)
- 50 Fortified (Slot)
- 20 Sprinter
- 16 Hasty
- 20 Hero’s Vigor
– 900 Champion Points –
GREEN
- 50 Steed’s Blessing (Slot)
- 50 Gilded Fingers
- 10 Fortune’s Favor
- 15 Wanderer
- 40 Steadfast Enchantment
- 30 Rationer (Slot)
- 50 Breakfall
- 50 Treasure Hunter (Slot)
BLUE
- 50 Deadly Aim (Slot)
- 50 Master at Arms (Slot)
- 50 Wrathful Strikes (Slot)
- 50 Thaumaturge (Slot) *Use Exploiter if in an optimized group/dummy parse
- 20 Precision
- 20 War Mage
- 20 Flawless Ritual
- 10 Quick Recovery
- 10 Elemental Aegis
- 10 Preparation
- 10 Hardy
RED
- 50 Boundless Vitality (Slot)
- 50 Rejuvenation (Slot)
- 50 Fortified (Slot)
- 20 Sprinter
- 16 Hasty
- 20 Hero’s Vigor
- 50 Celerity (Slot)
- 30 Tumbling
- 20 Defiance
– 1200 Champion Points –
GREEN
- 50 Steed’s Blessing (Slot)
- 50 Gilded Fingers
- 30 Fortune’s Favor
- 15 Wanderer
- 50 Steadfast Enchantment
- 30 Rationer (Slot)
- 50 Breakfall
- 50 Treasure Hunter (Slot)
- 75 Liquid Efficiency (Slot)
BLUE
- 50 Deadly Aim (Slot)
- 50 Master at Arms (Slot)
- 50 Wrathful Strikes (Slot)
- 50 Thaumaturge (Slot) *Use Exploiter if in an optimized group/dummy parse
- 20 Precision
- 20 War Mage
- 40 Flawless Ritual
- 40 Battle Mastery
- 10 Quick Recovery
- 10 Elemental Aegis
- 20 Preparation
- 10 Hardy
RED
- 50 Boundless Vitality (Slot)
- 50 Rejuvenation (Slot)
- 50 Fortified (Slot)
- 20 Sprinter
- 16 Hasty
- 20 Hero’s Vigor
- 50 Celerity (Slot)
- 30 Tumbling
- 20 Defiance
- 20 Tireless Guardian
- 30 Fortification
How To Create Powerful ESO Builds
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More Necromancer Builds For ESO
Want more Necromancer Builds? Check out our dedicated Necromancer Builds overview page for even more great options! You can also check out our DPS Build Guides!
About Eigh1 Puppies
Eigh1 Puppies is an ESO Stream Team Member, Twitch Partner, and ESO YouTuber. Eight Puppies has ample experience as an end-game raider in ESO, accomplishing every Trial Trifecta on Tank, Healer, and Damage Dealer and holding current Records in Trials on Console from the Damage Dealing role.
For in-depth build guides, trial guides, and Trifecta POVs for every role, visit Eight Puppies on YouTube. To see trial progression content live, check out Eight Puppies on Twitch. For any questions that you might have about any area of ESO endgame, join Eight Puppies Discord, to get in contact with him directly!
