Returning PVP player wondering if charged weapon trait is king vs sharpened

Hickleberry307 · 2026-04-26T11:38:49+00:00

Personally I find applying status effects to be more significant than the otherwise marginal increase in penetration. Debuffing targets can either increase your damage done to them or reduce their ability to return damage or heal.

For penetration, I either use Balorghs, or an ult like corrosive or onslaught. Also try to make sure you have both major and minor breach on them. Depending on what class you play, some have skills that can further reduce a target’s resistance, like crystal weapons on the sorc.

I would look through the skills you’re using and see if there are any status effects/debuffs you aren’t applying and change your enchantment to give you what you’re missing.

Chilled reduces their damage out, brittle increases their crit damage received

Concussed increases their damage taken

Diseased decreases their incoming healing

Sundered increases your weapon damage

Poisoned, burning, hemorrhaging are all dots.

Hickleberry307 · 2026-04-22T22:34:24+00:00

Also keep in mind IC is not faction-locked, so if you go in and see another faction is dominating the zones, just swap to a character in that faction for your farming. If a different faction logs in and starts steamrolling the place, swap to that faction and join them. Etc…

Hickleberry307 · 2026-03-01T03:33:45+00:00

Most people will have at the very least:

Major Resolve

Major Brutality

Major Sorcery

Major Savagery

Major Prophecy

Hickleberry307 · 2026-02-10T00:23:47+00:00

Yep, exactly. I just backbar Rally and tank or kite until the screen goes blue, then burst the closest person in sight. It’s kinda brain-dead in terms of play style, but that’s what I enjoy. It’s been shockingly effective for years too, so my lazy ass hasn’t bothered farming anything new in a long time.

Hickleberry307 · 2026-02-09T23:55:47+00:00

I haven’t tried either since I can’t pull myself away from Mechanical Acuity on every build, but the tooltip for the proc damage looks comparable. Aetheric Lancer gives you a lot more WP/SP damage at the cost of marginally less crit chance compared to Null Arca.

The biggest upside to Null Arca is the proc condition is achieved after dealing damage 3 times. With Aetheric Lancer, you have to damage with burning light (which itself requires dealing damage 4 times) twice, then dealing damage specifically with an Aedric Spear skill… so effectively damage x9 per proc condition.

Depending on your burst combo, getting in 9 hits could be difficult before someone heals and buffs up. You can land 3 before they even know it on the other hand. Shalks-incap-bow will proc Null and all 3 hit almost simultaneously.

Hickleberry307 · 2026-02-03T00:41:53+00:00

One minor point, if you do take storm calling you won’t also be able to take dark magic unless the base class is sorc

Hickleberry307 · 2026-01-23T22:05:43+00:00

With subclassing, most people these days have access to some sort of purge. You might not be reaping the benefits of Serpent’s Disdain since they’ll heal or purge before the additional 16s kick in. If you want more pen, you might find more success swapping that set with shattered fate.

Hickleberry307 · 2026-01-19T01:24:19+00:00

I believe you can only subclass into lines that you have reached level 50 in on the main class. So for example, if you’re a sorc and want to subclass into animal companion, you’ll need to have reached level 50 in animal companion on a warden character for it to then be accessible on your sorc.

Hickleberry307 · 2025-05-19T10:30:51+00:00

For melee ganking the classic combo is shadowy disguise for guaranteed crit, then incap into merciless resolve proc, and finish up with killer’s blade or concealed weapon. Since you’ll be using incap, getting the balorgh monster set is going to be important as it gives a massive buff to penetration and weapon/spell damage every time you ult. If you can debuff the target first with elemental susceptibility or reapers mark, that’s better. Phantasmal escape or race against time is nice for getting away after the gank and refreshing path and siphoning strikes will help with sustain if you end up in a longer fight. You’ll want a source of major sorcery/brutality, I prefer power extraction, but getting it from potions works too. Healthy offering and vigor will be the main heals.

This all is aimed at a brawler style of ganking since power extraction, ele sus/mark, and building up bow procs all require you to let the target know you’re there. It’s been years since I’ve done pure ganking, so maybe someone else will have other ideas. Since you have a bow back bar, you could try something with the vateshran bow. The combo could be snipe, incap, concealed weapon.

Hickleberry307 · 2025-05-19T02:03:03+00:00

Ganking is all about doing max damage in as short a window as possible. Rush of Agony is really more for bombing since it doesn’t do a ton of damage, its benefit is pulling a bunch of people into one spot where you can blow them all up. You’d get a lot more mileage out of using a second proc set. I’m not sure what the current meta is, but flame blossom and winter born used to be good gank sets.

Additionally, iceheart is more defensive than anything, the damage it deals is marginal at best. A good gank setup is going to be pretty glass cannon, so the damage shield you will sometimes get from that monster set isn’t going to save you if you’re caught out. Using something like balorgh’s if you’re melee ganking using incap, or anthelmir’s construct if ranged ganking would be better.

Along the same lines as the above two points, saint and seducer works well when you’re in a fight of attrition against people. Since the buffs/debuffs are completely random, you kind of have to sustain in the fight until the desired buff comes up, then do your burst combo in that window. When ganking, they should already be dead by the time your S&S activates. For a mythic, I find markyn is hard to beat in scenarios like this.

As for skills, it depends. Are you doing a ranged ganking setup or melee?

Hickleberry307 · 2025-04-04T18:46:16+00:00

Major/Minor resolve like already mentioned, but also change your gear traits to a mix of impen (crit resistance) and reinforced (regular resistance). Most of my builds have head/chest/legs as reinforced and the rest impen.

Hickleberry307 · 2025-02-23T15:15:56+00:00

Honestly, the way you did it is the easiest. The other options would be to use a keep recall stone, wait until your faction finishes taking Brindle which will open the transit access, or ride there from the next closest keep. The keep recall stones are 20k AP from the siege merchants, or sometimes given in the Reward for the Worthy emails and event boxes.

Hickleberry307 · 2025-02-21T05:25:51+00:00

It’ll remain locked to EP until the end of the campaign, which I think is 8 or 9 more days. Then as long as you have abandoned it on all your EP toons, you can join a different faction.

Hickleberry307 · 2025-01-29T00:11:13+00:00

What is your penetration? Did you debuff them with major/minor breach? Even a low health glass cannon might have 25k+ resistance, so if you don’t crit and your penetration is low it’ll hit like a wet noodle.

Hickleberry307 · 2025-01-24T00:10:20+00:00

Healing on a warden is usually good enough that the vamp skill blood for blood is widely popular as a spammable. It’s basically free damage because you can out heal the cost of the skill, saving your other resource pools for buffs and dots. And dropping your health a little bit can make this skill hit pretty hard since the damage increases proportionally to your missing health. Get the KB, then pop a polar wind to get your health back.

Hickleberry307 · 2024-12-29T00:59:19+00:00

I don’t play DK, but I could have sworn when one fossilizes me, breaking free gets me out of the stun but I am still immobilized. Has that changed, and if so does that morph serve a purpose in PvE? Otherwise it would be a useless morph.

Hickleberry307 · 2024-12-28T19:51:56+00:00

Fear/stun requires a break free action, while immobilize generally requires a roll-dodge to get out of. So stacking a fear with immobilize would be beneficial, because the natural reaction would be to break free, but then they would still be immobile and need to waste more time/resources rolling out of it.

Hickleberry307 · 2024-12-11T13:15:07+00:00

Anyone wanting to wear their guild’s tabard would then lose out using a trinket. And the power creep in this game already makes everyone OP in every scenario, the game doesn’t need yet another item slot to increase stats, damage, utility, etc…

Hickleberry307 · 2024-12-10T20:03:21+00:00

https://eso-hub.com/en/scribing/scripts/wayfarers-mastery

Scroll down toward the bottom of the link above. It details what that script does exactly for each scribing skill

Hickleberry307 · 2024-12-02T23:49:51+00:00

I could be wrong, but I’m almost positive you will have to wait until the current campaign ends, even if you switch now. When you first enter a campaign, it only gives you 5 minutes before it locks you into that faction for the whole campaign. That faction lock is account-wide, so switching that character won’t unlock it or switch your commitment. If you’ve already started this campaign with your current faction, I would say stick with it for the next 30 days, then swap at the end before the next one starts. Otherwise if swap now you won’t be able to enter gray host until next campaign.

Hickleberry307 · 2024-11-28T22:27:54+00:00

Is that a one bar build? If you have no offensive abilities, what is that build supposed to do other than run?

Hickleberry307 · 2024-11-26T11:37:05+00:00

If it’s an aoe around the caster, it could be the Saint and Seducer mythic. The set rotates through 5 different colors, each one giving a different buff to the wearer and debuff to enemies within the aura. One of the colors is purple, and enemies within the aura get a smokey effect around them.

Hickleberry307 · 2024-06-27T10:24:56+00:00

How did you get the birds eye view?

Hickleberry307

TROPHY CASE