Top 10 Most Powerful Stamina DPS sets in the Elder Scrolls Online - ESO

This article is a look at what we think are the ten best sets for Stamina Damage Dealers in the Elder Scrolls Online right now. We will elaborate on each set and explain why they are useful. Some of the sets are widely usable, whereas others have more niche applications.

The effectiveness of sets can vary based on your class, what content you are doing and your playstyle, and this article would get extremely long if I were to try to thoroughly explain how each set performs in each possible situation, so please don't take the ordering of the sets too seriously. 

This article is primarily intended to give you a list of ideas if you're unsure what options you have for improving your Stamina DPS build, or are making one for the first time. 

Leviathan is a relatively strong stamina DPS set that makes a good starting point for beginners. The set quite simply grants you heaps of critical chance, which is always a useful stat for PvE DPS builds in the Elder Scrolls Online. It's a little outpowered by the sets further down this list, but some of those are a bit more difficult to obtain, so this one is good if you are starting out or are unable to obtain the stronger sets on the list for whatever reason.

There's not too much more to say about it, it's easy to use and it's a Medium Armor set which makes it a natural fit for stamina DPS builds. The set is a part of the base game, meaning no DLC are required to obtain it. It drops in the dungeons Crypt of Hearts I and Crypt of Hearts II.

Another set that's great for beginners, Hunding's Rage is a well-rounded DPS set that gives you critical chance, stamina and 300 weapon damage at all times. It is best used in combination with a set like Leviathan that gives you critical chance, or some other set with a more advanced proc effect (pretty much any of the other sets on this list will work fine with it). 

It's a base-game crafted set that requires 6 researched traits on the piece that you want to craft. You can find the crafting stations in Bangkorai, Reaper's March and The Rift. If you're not able to craft it then you can normally find it for sale on guild stores. 

This set is quite hard to rank on this list as it's very niche, and for that reason I wasn't even 100% sure if I should put it on here at all. But I decided to put it here as it's a useful set that often gets overlooked entirely. 

Azureblight Reaper is something that you would generally use on trash pulls in a dungeon or trial if you are trying to optimize your group DPS output. When you damage an enemy 20 times with a damage over time effect, they will explode, dealing disease damage to themselves and other nearby enemies. After two seconds the same enemy can begin building up the stacks again. The cooldown for this is also specific to the enemy and not the set, which has two main implications:

To get this set you will need access to the Scalebreaker DLC, and it drops in the Lair of Maarselok dungeon. It is a Medium Armor set.

Also known as Advancing Yokeda (why do so many of the Craglorn trial sets have two names?), the Berserking Warrior is basically an upgrade from the Leviathan set. You have to build up 10 stacks of the set's effect, each one giving 241 critical chance (on top of the base amount you get from the set's 2 and 4 piece bonuses) to get the full effect from the set. It's very easy to build up these stacks however, you simply need to do martial damage, which includes physical damage, poison damage, disease damage and bleed damage. This won't be a problem at all on a stamina DPS build. 

At the full 10 stacks, you get around 900 more critical chance than with Leviathan, which in percentage terms is around 4.5% more. 

The only minor caveat with this set is that it drops in Heavy Armor, so for optimal results you will need to run it on jewelry and weapons. The set drops from the Hel Ra Citadel trial, which is a part of the base game. 

Pillar of Nirn is a Medium Armor set that's mostly used for trash fights where the enemies are stacked tightly together. When you damage an enemy, you will cause that enemy and other enemies nearby to take a good amount of bleed damage. The exact amount depends on your weapon or spell damage value. There's a 10 second cooldown on the effect. 

It's generally not too useful to use this on bosses unless there are multiple bosses in the same place or several adds. It's nevertheless a good set to have available if you want to provide more options for your group. 

Pillar of Nirn drops in the Falkreath Hold dungeon, which is part of the Horns of the Reach DLC.

Sul-Xan's Torment is a very strong set for boosting your critical chance and critical damage, but it won't work well in every situation. 

An enemy that you recently damaged will drop a vengeful soul when it dies. You need to touch the soul to pick up the full buff from the set, which will give you a large amount of critical chance and an extra 12% critical damage for 30 seconds. 

When you're not used to using the set it is easy to forget to pick up the buff, so that's something to keep in mind when you're using it. 

This is a Medium Armor set that drops in the Rockgrove trial, part of the Blackwood DLC. If you do the trial on Veteran difficulty, you can instead get Perfected Sul-Xan's Torment which gives you even more critical chance.

Kinras's Wrath is without a doubt one of the strongest sets for DPS at the moment. Aside from the Oakensoul Ring, it's the only way to get the Major Berserk buff with a solid uptime. The only problem with the set is that you will lose the buff if you are unable to do a light or heavy attack for 5 seconds, so in fights where there is a lot of start and stop to damage and more burst damage is required, this set is not such a good fit. In general though, Major Berserk is one of the most powerful buffs in the game so this set is a very good one to use. 

You can get it from the Black Drake Villa dungeon, which is part of the Flames of Ambition DLC.

Tzogvin's Warband is arguably the best set in the game for augmenting your critical strikes. The set will give you an extra helping of critical chance each time you deal critical damage, up to 10 times. When you have all 10 stacks, you also get Minor Force which increases your critical damage too. 

If you are using this set then you will no longer have cause to run a skill like Barbed Trap to gain the Minor Force buff. 

The main downside of this set is the same as with Kinras's Wrath. In situations where you can't deal persistent damage to enemies due to a mechanic or because the boss moves around a lot, you will lose these stacks. In these cases it's generally better to use something else.

Tzogvin's Warband drops in the Frostvault dungeon. You need the Wrathstone DLC to play this dungeon.

Arms of Relequen is simply a brilliant set for buffing your single target damage. Your light and heavy attacks will put an extra physical DoT on the enemy, stacking up to 10 times. As long as you are weaving light or heavy attacks, you will get a very nice damage boost from this set when you are parsing on one target. 

Relequen is a Medium Armor set that drops from the Cloudrest trial, which is part of the Summerset DLC. You can also get Perfected Arms of Relequen by doing the trial on Veteran difficulty. This gives you some extra max stamina, but it's not essential to getting good results from the set.

Coral Riptide is the newest set on this list. It basically functions as a stamina version of Bahsei's Mania, which also happens to be one of the strongest sets for Magicka DPS. The set is quite simple as it does not feature any stacking mechanics or complicated proc effects, you simply get more weapon damage based on how much of your max stamina you are missing, down to 33%. 

You can get a very large increase to your weapon damage with this effect, up to a maximum of 740. However it will probably take some practice to get the most out of the set, as you need to be constantly managing your stamina pool to stay at or under 33% as much as possible, otherwise you will lose weapon damage. For the best possible results, you should also try to "dump" stamina before fights start by casting an expensive skill, this will mean that you have the buffs from the set right away at the start of an engagement.

You can pair this set with something like Tzogvin's Warband for a very strong parse setup. 

Coral Riptide drops from the new Dreadsail Reef trial, which is part of the High Isle expansion. If you do the trial on Veteran difficulty, you can instead get Perfected Coral Riptide, which has the added benefit of 129 additional weapon and spell damage. 

We hope you enjoyed this article about stamina DPS sets in ESO. The Elder Scrolls Online is a massively multiplayer online game developed by Zenimax Online Studios.