Nightingale's Warden DPS Guide - Frost Knight

FROST KNIGHT (124k+ DPS Warden)

Altmer Warden

Magicka

64

Health

0

Stamina

0

Mundus

The Thief

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Witchmother's Potent Brew

Essence of Spell Power

Introduction

As a Frostden, you will be applying chilled as much as possible to gain as much damage as you can and therefore you will also attain maximum uptime on the minor brittle group buff. minor brittle boosts you and your group's critical damage done to enemies by 10% and additionally it procs our frostbite set if we are running it.

Recommended race: Altmer (High Elf), Altmer is the best race for this build since it offers the best damage and additional off-stat sustain. But don't feel the need to race change! Alternative races include Dunmer (Dark Elf), Breton and Khajiit.

Recommended food for most players will be Witchmother's Potent Brew. this is because it’s cheap and good for most situations. If you want a better version of Potent Brew (though a bit more expensive) you can go with Clockwork Citrus Filet. You can also use Ghastly Eye Bowl for both dummy parsing and content if you don't need the extra survivability. I would recommend Artaeum Pickled Fish Bowl for Breton.

Recommended potions will be typical tri-restoration potions (Health, Magicka, Stamina) for general situations or Essence of Spell Power (Magicka, Major Prophecy, Major Sorcery) potions for group content.

Recommended Mundus will be The Thief.

GearSlot	Set	Weight	Trait	Enchantment
Head	Slimecraw	Light	Divines	Magicka
Shoulders	Pillar of Nirn	Medium	Divines	Magicka
Chest	Pillar of Nirn	Medium	Divines	Magicka
Leg	Pillar of Nirn	Medium	Divines	Magicka
Arm	Perfected Arms of Relequen	Medium	Divines	Magicka
Waist	Perfected Arms of Relequen	Medium	Divines	Magicka
Feet	Perfected Arms of Relequen	Medium	Divines	Magicka
Necklace	Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet	-	Bloodthirsty	Increase Magical Harm
Ring 1	Perfected Arms of Relequen	-	Bloodthirsty	Increase Magical Harm
Ring 2	Perfected Arms of Relequen	-	Bloodthirsty	Increase Magical Harm
Frontbar 1	Perfected Destructive Impact	Ice Staff	Charged	Poison
Backbar 1	Pillar of Nirn	Ice Staff	Infused	Frost

Gear Review

For what (Perfected) Arms of Relequen lacks in AoE and target swapping, it is easily able to make up for it in incredibly powerful single target damage. This isn’t always your best option but it will be for specifically single target fights where you can easily maintain stacks.

Master's (Perfected) Ice Staff is a frontbarred weapon that makes our Frost Reach cheaper in addition to granting 600 weapon and spell damage after casting it for 4 seconds. this makes our spammable also a buff we have to keep up. when perfected you get an additional 103 weapon and spell damage while you are on your front bar which is nice. generally during our front bar rotation we want to make sure the ability bar timer for frost reach never goes below 16 seconds, this will help keep the buff up before needing to swap to our backbar to re-apply our DoTs.

Pillar of Nirn has a very strong area of effect bleed damage that procs easily from your backbar weapon.

Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet is an incredibly powerful mythic item that reduces our light and heavy attack damage by 99%, however, in turn it grants us permanent minor force, some extra penetration and an extremely notable 15% increased damage to "monsters", which just means any enemy in the game that is not a player. It should be noted that you still want to weave light attacks when you use this mythic as that helps to animation cancel your skills and is otherwise free damage, even if it's only 70 per hit.

Whorl of the Depths is solid in single target but especially in AoE, very easy proc condition and natural synergy with frostden via it being frost damage. The single target DoT is tiny, but the AoE Whirlpool rips enemies to shreds and will be summoned if the enemy you applied the single target DoT to dies early.

Frostbite works incredibly well with our thematic and easy build shown below. It is also a pretty cheap overland set from blackwood. It boosts ALL of our frost damage by 8% contrary to what the tooltip states. This means it buffs proc sets and enchantments as well as light attacks and skills. Additionally, all of our damage is boosted by an additional 6% when we damage an enemy with chilled and brittle on them. Separately it is 4% for chilled enemies and 2% for enemies with minor brittle. This set increases our burst with frost damage skills in particular which gives it an edge in trash situations with frost pulsar spam.

Order’s Wrath gives a ton of critical chance as well as 8% critical damage and healing. It’s incredibly good for beginners and it’s still great for endgame.

Maelstrom Staff gives us increased frost wall damage.

Iceheart was heavily nerfed back in Harrowstorm, however, post-Blackwood, its tooltip has more than doubled meaning that it is now especially useful for our theme build on the budget setup, dealing both decent damage and shielding a bit of incoming damage as well. It would be recommended to have 1 of of these pieces in medium and 1 of them in light.

1 piece Slimecraw this is used as it is the best monster helmet you can use for your last remaining item set slot it provides very slightly more critical chance than 1 piece of something like Iceheart or Zaan.

Front bar

Destructive Reach

Cutting Dive

Scalding Rune

Subterranean Assault

Barbed Trap

Wild Guardian

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Back bar

Winter's Revenge

Unstable Wall of Elements

Arctic Blast

Fetcher Infection

Elemental Susceptibility

Wild Guardian

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Skills Review

Frost Reach is an incredibly powerful spammable that deals a solid amount of burst damage, but also applies a 20 second DoT and chilled/minor brittle. The Perfected Master Ice staff has incredible synergy with this that makes it give +600 weapon and spell damage for 4 seconds after casting frost reach.

Cutting Dive is a strong single target DoT and Spammable with a 10 second duration, primarily use this as a dot, as frost reach does stronger burst damage and gives the master’s ice staff bonus for 4 seconds after casting.

Fetcher Infection is a strong single target DoT that applies minor vulnerability to it's target for it's 20 second duration.

Subterranean Assault This morph does slightly more dps than deep fissure and is a lot easier to sustain. It must be recast every 6 seconds as it is a massive proportion of your damage. it can proc the poisoned status effect which leads to more damage overall as well. This morph is worse in solo arenas since you lose out on aoe major and minor breach, but should still be pretty solid damage regardless.

Arctic Blast does good damage every 2 seconds, but it's true power is it’s chilled proc rate with the charged staff. Arctic Blast will proc the chilled status effect every 2 seconds while on the front bar which is a huge amount of damage now that the chilled status effect has solid burst and no cooldown. It also is a large burst heal that can be used to save yourself.

In order to deal as much damage with this build as possible, you need to double slot the bear ultimate (Wild Guardian) to ensure maximum uptime, if you don’t want to use it, you can use Icy Rage instead.

Winter’s Revenge deals an amazing amount of damage and snares enemies inside of it helping them stay in your damage aoes, because of this it's a good enough reason to slot this skill. However, the most important thing for us is that the ability also has a roughly 50% chance to apply the chilled status effect on any enemy within its borders while on the front bar, this is a huge bonus to our damage and our group's damage.

Unstable Wall of Frost is another frost damage ground area of effect skill, similar to winter’s revenge, however, it differs a lot. If we have a maelstrom staff, this skill will deal more damage, additionally, this skill is what is allowing us to proc our berserk glyph on our backbar keeping up a solid uptime on our 452 weapon and spell damage. it also applies a small projectile shield when cast and when the explosion occurs. it can be recast to spam the explosion if you have no aoe spammable in your build.

Barbed Trap gives you minor force which is an important increase of 10% critical damage while costing stamina instead of magicka which is crucial for our sustain, you'll gain this bonus automatically if you are using Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet, but the skill is still worth slotting for damage and cost reasons. It does a small DoT that helps to increase your damage, since it is bleed damage it can procs hemorrhaging which is a small DoT status effect.

Elemental Susceptibility is a fairly unique skill that is free, but applies all elemental status effects every 7.5 seconds to the target it is used on. As chilled does a lot of damage for us, and this is free burning uptime, it’s actually quite solid and has a pretty long duration at 30 seconds, this can also be swapped for mystic orb if you can sustain it in groups.

Scalding Rune deals damage.

Craft

PvE Combat (Craft)

Professional Upkeep (50)

Steed's Blessing (50)

Liquid Efficiency (75)

Rationer (30)

For a general Craft allocation for PvE.

Warfare

Frost Knight (Warfare)

Wrathful Strikes (50)

Deadly Aim (50)

Thaumaturge (50)

Master-at-Arms (50)

Warfare slottables for Nightingale's Frost Knight Warden DPS build.

Fitness

Frost Knight (Fitness)

Rejuvenation (50)

Celerity (250)

Boundless Vitality (50)

Siphoning Spells (50)

Fitness slottables for Nightingale's Frost Knight Warden DPS build.

Champion Points

If you're in a solo setting, use Fighting Finesse instead of Thaumaturge.

If you're in a boss fight, Sustained by Suffering is a good alternative to Siphoning Spells.

If you need extra armor, Fortified is a great option to help with survivability.

An alternative to Celerity is Spirit Mastery, which helps out a lot as you can resurrect other players 33% faster.

Alternative Setups

Below you will find a beginner setup, an AoE Boss setup, a trash setup and a frost thematic setup that can hit very good numbers!

Beginner 80k+ DPS

AoE Boss Fight

Trash Setup

Thematic 105k+ Setup

Alternative Skill Setups

Below are skill setups for different scenarios.

Overland & All Purpose

Frontbar: Frost Reach, Fetcher Infection, Frost Pulsar, Subterranean Assault, Barbed Trap, Wild Guardian (Ultimate)

Backbar: Winter's Revenge, Unstable Wall of Frost, Arctic Blast, Lotus Blossom, Blue Betty, Wild Guardian (Ultimate)

Trash Packs

Frontbar: Force Pulse, Mystic Orb, Inner Light, Subterranean Assault, Frost Pulsar, Wild Guardian (Ultimate, passive)

Backbar: Winter's Revenge, Unstable Wall of Frost, Proximity Detonation, Arctic Blast, Bird of Prey, Icy Rage (Active Ultimate)

Frost Pulsar is a solid AoE spammable that applies minor mangle to enemies hit by it, with charged it will also almost always apply chilled in AoE, it does give minor protection to you and other group members, but this secondary effect is not noticeable in real content. Don’t bother to use pulsar to apply this to your group. Only use this in trash encounters.

Force Pulse is a strong 3-target spammable that's condition relies on status effects. as you apply chilled so often, you'll basically always hit 3 targets with force pulse as long as they're in close proximity to eachother, as it does 3 elemental types of damage, you have an extremely high chance to apply burning, chilled and/or concussed all at the same time!

Mystic Orb is a strong aoe dot that travels forward slowly. increases your magicka/stamina/health recovery by a bit, gives allies a damage and resource return synergy

Lotus Blossom is incredibly nice. It provides passive healing for you and/or your group, it is a cheap 60 second duration buff that gives you access to major prophecy and savagery and it allows you to gain access to your green balance passives. Notably, natures gift when it heals an ally, as well as spreading minor toughness around the group and also granting us major mending to heal for a bit more on allies, or ourself when someone gets low.

Blue Betty is is our major sorcery and brutality buff which purges negative effects and gives us a separate (roughly) 200 magicka recovery every second while the ability is active. That is extremely useful to have. It probably shouldn’t be dropped unless you have an excess of sustain, this usually happens in trial environments

Degeneration is a good alternative to scalding rune provided that rune is too unwieldy. It does a bit less overall damage and isn’t aoe, however, it weaves like a dream and is directly applied to the target instantly.

Inner Light is a passive slot skill which does a couple of things, firstly, it gives us major prophecy which is an extremely necessary buff to have up as often as possible on this build. It also increases our max magicka by up to 7% and increases our magicka recovery by 2% while slotted as well. This combines both the bonuses of the mages guild passive, and the slotted effect from the max rank of the skill. This skill shouldn’t ever be cast in PvE combat. Provided you specifically have a high uptime on minor berserk, this passive slot beats slotting camo hunter or another fighter’s guild skill.

Proximity Detonation is a high burst damage explosion that needs to be well timed for trash packs to be worthwhile. it does a small amount of aoe damage that ramps up dramatically based on the amount of targets in close proximity, in unoptimised groups this skill won't get much value.

Icy Rage is a strong burst AoE ultimate that excels in trash packs and high aoe target fights. We use the frost staff version of this ultimate since we double-slot ice staves. the difference between icy rage and fiery rage is that icy rage immobilizes enemies inside it's radius at the cost of some of it's damage per tick.