Summoner - 8 pets - Zauberer Baue PvE - ESO

This build goes all in on using pets. If your goal is to have all your summoned minions do your dirty work, this is how you do that.

(Note; as the pet limit in PvP areas is 5, rather than the 10 everywhere else, changes to the build would be so substantial that I would consider it an entirely different build, so I won't be adding a PvP version here.)

Some quick information that is crucial to understand; pets usually count as your damage, excluding certain effects like Pale Order. They also have the same status chance as DoTs, and since they're usually single target, that translates to 3%. In general, it's only a pet if it has a health bar and can be killed, with a few notable exceptions, namely Blastbones. That means for example, that the only actual pet Animal Companions has is the bear.

Our skill lines are Daedric Summoning, Grave Lord, and Shadow. Daedric Summoning gets us Summon Twilight Tormentor, Summon Volatile Familiar, and Summon Charged Atronach, (NOT [Greater Strom Atronach], as they do the same single target damage, and Charged keeps up your concussed bonus damage and hits in an aoe.) which will be our ultimate. We also use Daedric Prey to increase the damage from these three pets. Grave Lord gives us the Skeletal Arcanist/Skeletal Archer (your choice), which gives us Major Brutality/Sorcery, and Blighted Blastbones, which is our pseudo-spammable (which counts as a pet mechanically, not just thematically). Shadow grants us access to Dark Shade, which makes it the only other skill line that gives us a damaging, non-ultimate pet. Shadowy Disguise gives a more reliable form of Major Savagery/Prophecy, and grants us (and our pets) 10% bonus damage. Unfortunately, the free crit will not be granted to any pets, even Blastbones. It will only apply to weapon attacks, which completely wastes it for us, status procs (Including the guaranteed Diseased from Blastbones), and the explosion from Daedric Prey, which is the biggest hit we have for it. And, as a bonus, Shadow Barrier gives us Major Resolve, completing our set of important major buffs. Elemental Blockade is mostly there to trigger our weapon damage glyph, but we will be applying concussed a lot, so we will also supply off-balance with it.

Choosing between Skeletal Arcanist and Skeletal Archer - The decision makes a small difference. TLDR; Archer does up to 40% more damage if you time it well. The Archer's 15% buff sounds exponential, but it is not. Also consider that the bonus happens after the attack - so you start with 100%, then end at 235%, which is a hefty bonus… in theory. The thing is, percentage damage increases stack additively, including this one. Also,  to get the most out of this, you'll have to get good at casting the skill exactly after the last shot, no sooner or later. This is also all single-target damage. The arcanist does AOE damage, and slightly more base damage. Technically, it is classified and single-target, not aoe. This means both have a 3% status chance, but the Arcanist can apply it to multiple targets. It is also easier to pilot, since it doesn't have the ramping damage. The obvious answer is to pick based on whether you need more aoe or single target damage. Realistically, the single target difference will be very small, so I would only use it if hitting multiple targets is completely useless.

For our equipment, we are using two lightning staves. Almost all of our damage is technically direct, though pets have the status chance of dots, being 3% for single target and 1% for aoe. Since all status effects besides burning, poisoned, and hemorrhage are direct, lightning staff boosts those status effects too, making Charged very potent. I tried testing with Precise, but even as a khajiit with the shadow stone, it netted at dps loss (and thief did better than shadow as well in both cases). For the sets, we use the Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet mythic, as it focuses even more of our damage onto our pets, which exactly what we are after. Unleashed Ritualist is essentially mandatory for this build, though we only have it active on the front bar. That way, we can have Morkuldin on our back bar, which we can trigger by hitting with a light attack on the back bar, and shares a 15 second duration with Elemental Blockade. Note, that the attack must HIT while on the back bar. Which weapon makes the attack doesn't matter. You can swap after launching the attack, but before it hits. This can take a little practice, as it's easy to attack with your backbar and seap before it hits, which prevents the proc. Finally, Maw of the Infernal grants our final pet. It has a 33% chance to trigger on attack, so you will still want to try to weave well, especially when this cooldown and your weapon glyph are available. Your chestpiece can be either heavy or medium, and Trainee is the obvious choice. You could also use another piece of Morkuldin, which would give you an additional line of damage on your front bar, though no benefit on your backbar. You do already have a 10% health and 5% damage reduction, so you're not hurting for sturdiness. My advice is to carry a heavy reinforced Trainee and a medium divines Morkuldin and switch as needed.

As with any builds, you'll want to hit the penetration cap. For overland, this isn't really an issue, but for any harder content, we'll need at least 7170, assuming the tank applies major and minor breach. Dismember grants 3271, Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet gives 1650, the Piercing non-slotted Champion perk gives 700, and we have to put one piece of Unleashed Ritualist on the body, so that's one piece of light armor, so that's 939. That means we're still 610 penetration short. If you're a Bosmer, you're not short on penetration, just short in general. For everyone else; some tanks will use sets or skills that add additional penetration, though subclassing has made penetration easier to get, making those sets and skills less powerful. Trials are more likely to have that additional amount. It's not a bad idea to get that extra amount yourself, however. The simplest way to do that is to swap out one more piece of armor for a light piece, since the comparative trade is smaller than all the other options for getting it.

The second, more difficult stat to plan for is critical damage. Besides the variance based on what is brought to a group, the rise in popularity of Assassination and Herald of the Tome means more people are getting free boosts to that, reducing the usefulness of group buffs. That isn't to say those won't be around, but it does make it less reliable. I would lean towards having more, which is the biggest benefit of being a Khajiit (The Thief mundus stone tests better than the Shadow by a notable margin). 

Alright, we have to talk about Morkuldin. The honest truth is that the set just isn't that powerful, even with our build. The main reason I stubbornly stick to it is that there just isn't any other real pet sets, and this one can have about 100% uptime. It's not bad by any means, but I won't pretend it is the most powerful option. The ideal replacement will have to be medium armor, with a 5 piece bonus that can be backbarred. Minor Slayer would be great, but there isn't really any options that work well for that. In light of that, what I actually recommend is Merciless Charge, since the direct damage boost would help a lot. I haven't tested it, nor do I plan to. I didn't make this build to only go 95% into the theme, and you probsably aren't here for that either.

If playing solo, the easiest, most impactful change is to change to Summon Twilight Matriarch, and maybe swapping your Trainee chestpiece to heavy. Zerith-Var is an ideal companion for this build. He is the only companion who summons a pet, and it's a necromancer pet you don't have access too, AND he's the only companion who can apply Major Breach - in fact, since it lasts 8 seconds and applies Major Breach for 6 seconds with every tick, he can have 100% uptime with some quickened gear, which also lets him keep his pet more. I put him in all quickened gear, with heavy armor and a sword and shield, gave him Provoke, Perigean Spirit, Sepucheral Chill, Atoning Spirit, and either Penance of Lorkhaj or Reverse Entropy from the Mages Guild line.

“Why not ‘X'?”

Greater Storm Atronach - I already gave a quick explanation, but I want to provide a few more details. Before testing, I assumed that Daedric Prey would cause the more single-target focused morph to pull ahead, especially since the extra concussed counts as being from us, so it's not affected by pet-specific boosts. I figured that extra 50% would cover up the difference between our total 18% direct boost and our 10% dot boost. However, the tooltips are very misleading about how often they hit. Greater Storm Atronach attacks 10 times, and Summon Charged Atronach attacks 6 times. When you take into account their initial hit, and the extra concussed hits (7 guaranteed vs. an average of 2.22 times), the single target damage looks a lot closer. And, from my testing, the Greater Storm Atronach averaged 1.1% higher single target damage overall. But, since Concussed does more damage if it has already been applied recently, adding all your other lightning damage likely actually results in HIGHER single target damage overall from Summon Charged Atronach. So, good news; one is just better in every situation, so there's nothing to really consider.

Feral Guardian - If I could freely pick between this and Summon Charged Atronach, I might consider it. But since we use Daedric Prey anyway, and we don't have to use up one of our three skill lines to swap one pet for another, as opposed to Shadow actually giving an additional pet, that skill line easily pulls ahead. Besides, a shadow fits better with the Daedra and undead we're summoning.

Aegis Caller - not actually classified as a pet, is not boosted by Unleashed Ritualist. You may decide it thematically fits, and use it anyway, but since it's mechanically not one, I didn't count it.

Shadow Silk - what, you didn't ask? Well, I'll tell you anyway - the spider does, in fact, count as a real pet and is boosted by the relevant effects. Unfortunately, like other synergies, it counts as the synergy user's pet, not yours, so your Unleashed Ritualist won't boost it when someone else summons it. It could be nice if someone else uses it and YOU activate it, but it's such a dead skill and it's tough to make sure one specific person is activating the specific synergy, and doesn't even have 100% uptime due to synergy cooldowns, so it's just not worth it. Of course, typically the tanks want the synergies most, but in this case they are actually usually unable to use it (Note that it says a RANGED ally, which, as far as I could tell, just means you have to be a certain distance from your target), so it's possibly less likely to be mashed by them. In an organized group, if you can pull it off consistently, it would do reasonable damage, but it's tough to test and probably not practical information. The base ability does very little, so someone is essentially giving up one of their skill slots to give you a 50% uptime pet. In a 4 person group, it's possible that having the healer cast it would actually be worthwhile, as long as the other dps doesn't take the synergy. Unless they're using the same build, I guess.