ESO Skill Review - Impulse

In this week’s installment of our Elder Scrolls Online Skill Review, we are looking at the Destruction Staff skill Impulse, and its morphs Elemental Ring and Pulsar.

What kinds of builds are these skills a good fit for, and how effective are they?

Impulse is the basic version of the skill. When you use the skill, it deals a decent amount of AOE damage to all nearby enemies. Impulse also gives you an additional effect depending on which type of Destruction Staff you are using:

Given that this is pretty much an AOE spammable to use when there are multiple targets nearby, the fire and shock versions are by far the most useful.

Elemental Ring is very similar to the basic version of the skill, Impulse.

Its only real difference is that instead of the explosion being centered on you, you will be able to aim it at a ground location within 28 meters and cast the explosion there instead.

When using any ground targeted skill like this, I strongly recommend setting "Quick Cast Ground Abilities" to “On” in the Gameplay settings, as this will make you cast your AOE skills more quickly, thus increasing your damage.

As for how useful this version of the skill is, I think it’s extremely niche. There aren’t many instances where you need to do AOE damage to targets that are far away and unable to be reached by you. But if that’s something that’s happening a lot in whatever activity you are currently doing, then you can give this version a try.

But other than that, there is really no reason to use this morph over the other one…

Pulsar is centered upon the caster just like the basic version of the skill, Impulse.

Unlike the base version though, it offers us some very nice additional effects.

The first extra thing it does for us is apply Minor Mangle to all enemies who are hit by the skill, which reduces their maximum health by 10%. Note that powerful enemies (which includes all bosses) are immune to this debuff, because this would be a little bit broken otherwise. However this still makes the skill extremely useful for both PvE and PvP, and we’ll get into that in a moment.

The second extra effect of this morph is to triple the chance to inflict status effects on enemies who are hit by it. This synergizes especially well with the fire version of Pulsar which deals extra damage to low health enemies if they have the Burning status effect, but it remains useful no matter which version you’re using - more status effects is never a bad thing.

So how is this skill utilized in ESO?

Well, in PvE, especially in more advanced dungeon or trial groups, it’s very common for DPS players to have a “trash setup”, which is effectively an altered version of their build that helps them to clear out trash packs quickly and cleanly. Pulsar is perfect for this as it deals good AOE damage and reduces the max health of enemies, allowing your group to dispose of them more quickly.

It’s generally good to put down your AOE damage over time abilities on clusters of trash enemies, and then spam this skill while your damage over time skills are active. Remember to use light attacks between your skill casts for a little bit of extra damage!

In PvP the skill is useful for a similar reason - reducing the max health of your enemies obviously makes it easier to finish them off. It works especially well with bomb builds which are very AOE heavy. Bomb builds work by dealing massive amounts of AOE damage to groups of players very quickly before they can react, and fitting a cast of this skill into your attack sequence reduces the amount of damage you need to dish out to achieve your goal of finishing off a group of players.

Magicka Nightblades work especially well for builds like this, because they can sneak into unwary groups using Shadow Cloak, do massive AOE damage and stun players with their Soul Tether ultimate, and then spam an AOE skill like Pulsar to finish off the enemies. There will probably need to be other damage sources mixed in to enjoy high levels of success though, such as Proximity Detonation and item sets like Vicious Death.

Ultimately if you are a magicka damage dealer, Pulsar is definitely worth unlocking. It’s not useful against bosses, but it is useful in any scenarios where lots of AOE damage is needed, it’s certainly a viable skill that helps your group out too by making everything a little bit faster.

We hope you enjoyed this article about Impulse and its morphs in ESO (Elder Scroll Online). ESO is a massively multiplayer online game developed by Zenimax Online Studios.