10 Best Solo Classes and Builds (Greymoor)

Human Made

Penned by Angus Green

Angus is our resident Elder Scrolls Online specialist. He lives in Eugene and is a teacher by day.

Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

The Flames of Ambition update shook up the meta solo classes, and we’ve taken to testing them out to see which classes feel like they are in the best position right now. The best solo class in ESO can be hard to pin down due to personal preference and playstyle, but certain classes will give you a definitive edge in soloing content. You can solo all content in Elder Scrolls Online with any class given enough practice with that specific character. Still, this list compiles the classes and builds that will let you breeze through solo content with minimal hair pulling on those difficult battles. If you are looking to create a new toon to solo content or struggle with solo content on your main at the most challenging stages of play like in Vateshran Hollows or the Maelstrom Arena, try one of these builds out to make your life easier. 

If you don’t see your build on the list, keep in mind that does not mean it is a lousy soloing build! The builds below are simply easier to use for solo content and tend to lead towards magicka classes due to their ability to deal damage from afar, boosting their survivability. Elder Scroll Online’s Champion Points are personalized, and each player’s CP level varies. Therefore, I will only be listing the must-have slottables and passives that each build needs ranked in order of importance, and the rest will be up to your playstyle. Now let’s get started with the top 10 ESO best PvE solo classes!

Note: These builds do not take into consideration the Ring of the Pale Order, as it is DLC locked (Greymoor) and requires a large amount of scrying and RNG to obtain and scry its leads. The lifesteal that this mythic item grants makes soloing content much easier and will make both magicka and stamina builds more viable. Having a Maelstrom weapon for your backbar will also significantly increase your overall damage. 

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10. Magden (Warden Class)

The Magicka Warden specializes in nature magic, having plants heal them while they dish out damage with frost magic while animals fight by their side. The Magicka Warden works great for soloing content due to its AoE and single target damaging abilities and built-in sustain to their kit. Having your Eternal Guardian bear companion will also help take a lot of the heat off you in battle while also giving you consistent extra damage.

Remember, you’ll need to keep the bear ultimate on both bars if you want him with you. He will always desummon if you switch to an ability bar that does not have it slotted as the ultimate. The class spammable doesn’t feel great right now, but replacing Screaming Cliff Racer with Force Pulse fixes this issue. The Magden is lower on this list right now because some of the suggested builds below outclass its overall damage. 

The Build

1. Race:

High Elf, Breton

2. Skills:

Front Bar –
Lightning Staff: Force Pulse (Spammable), Deep Fissure, Arctic Blast, Bird of Prey, Harness Magicka

Ult: Eternal Guardian

Back Bar –
Lightning Staff: Unstable Wall of Elements, Winter’s Revenge, Leeching Vines, Blue Betty, Ice Fortress

Ult: Eternal Guardian

3. Equipment:

• Head/Shoulder Monster Set – Iceheart 
• Body Pieces – Necropotence
• Jewelry and Weapons – Mother’s Sorrow

4. Champion Points:

9. Mag DK (Dragonknight Class)

The Magicka Dragonknight specializes in fire magic, embodying their dragon ancestry. The Magicka Dragonknight deals the best damage overtime in the game, which allows them to melt through content with ease. Magicka Dragonknights can also struggle with sustain, so be to get the most out of Heavy Attacking with Molten Armaments to get resources back while doing more damage. Due to nerfs to DOTs lately, Dragonknights’ overall damage does fall behind the classes that come later in our list. 

The Build

Race:

Breton, High Elf

Skills:

Equipment:

• Head/Shoulder Monster Set – Valkyn Skoria
• Body Pieces – Burning Spellweave
• Jewelry and Weapons – Mother’s Sorrow

Champion Points:

8. Stamsorc (Sorcerer Class)

The Stamina Sorcerer offers the deadly combination of being both a heavy-hitter and elusive. The Stamsorc daedric summonings further aid them in battle. Stamina Sorcerers excel in mobility and survivability while putting down some ridiculous damage as well. You’ll flash through mobs of enemies and be able to sustain your health through difficult boss fights with robust built-in healing abilities. Stamina resource management can be strenuous, so be sure to use Dark Deal to get your stamina pool topped off as often as you can. 

The Build

Race:

Orc, Khajiit, Dark Elf

Skills:

Equipment:

• Head/Shoulder Monster Set – Stormfist
• Body Pieces – Briarheart
• Jewelry and Weapons – Vicious Serpent (Hunding’s Rage or Spriggan’s Thorns for Pre-trial)

Champion Points:

7. Stamcro (Necromancer Class)

The Stamina Necromancer lords over the dead and dominates, using their undead companions to rampage through content. The Stamina Necromancer is finding itself in a good place after the latest patch. Stamina Necromancers do significant AoE damage and have many abilities available in their toolkit to make fighting large groups of enemies and challenging bosses manageable in solo content.

For those of you who want to try out the necromancer for the first time, be wary that if NPCs see you cast one of your “Criminal Act” abilities, you’ll get a hefty bounty on your head. Be sure to wait until your Skeletal Archer has de-summoned before entering into the public eye because when the NPCs start attacking you, they will attack back and get you into more trouble. Outside of that, your undead companions prove quite useful during solo content, so be sure to have them up when you are adventuring out into the wilds of Tamriel! 

The Build

Race:

Dark Elf, Orc, Khajiit

Skills:

Equipment:

• Head/Shoulder Monster Set – Velidreth (Without DLC, go for Selene)
• Body Pieces – Briarheart
• Jewelry and Weapons – Dagon’s Dominion (Without DLC, go for Hunding’s Rage)

Champion Points:

6. Magplar (Templar Class)

The Magicka Templar wields light to smite their enemies and handedly keep their health bars topped off with their naturally strong healing magic. Magicka Templars have exceptional sustain while still doing a lot of AoE as well as single-target damage. Magicka Templars is a class that doesn’t have some of the painful learning curves as some of the other classes in ESO while also never lacking in damage, making it a very approachable class to start playing. The Magplar is also unique in that it is both a magicka class while also requiring play in melee range. This class is extremely fun and will let you breeze through solo content safely, even in the light armor you’re restricted to wearing. 

The Build

Race:

Breton, High Elf

Skills:

Equipment:

• Head/Shoulder Monster Set – Domihaus (Without DLC, go for Malubeth the Scourger)
• Body Pieces – Mother’s Sorrow
• Jewelry and Weapons – Overwhelming Surge (Or for more sustain and damage, False Gods)

Champion Points:

5. Stamblade (Nightblade Class)

The Stamina Nightblade strikes from the shadows dealing massive spikes of damage, and they even have command of the shadows themselves. The Stamina Nightblade feels very efficient right now in taking down individual targets. You can use a two-handed main bar, but I prefer using dual wield for this build. This class doesn’t have a great range of AoE abilities but makes good use out of the Endless Hail skill, especially if you have access to the Maelstrom Arena bow “Thunderous Volley.” 

The Build

Race:

Dark Elf, Khajiit, Wood Elf

Skills:

Equipment:

• Head/Shoulder Monster Set – Selene
• Body Pieces – Arms of Relequen (Briarheart for Pre-trial)
• Jewelry and Weapons – Berserking Warrior (Hunding’s Rage or Spriggan’s Thorns for Pre-trial)

Champion Points:

4. Stamden (Warden Class)

The Stamina Warden is in a powerful position right now, with it being a solid mix of high single target damage, serious AoE damage, and excellent survivability. Your Wild Guardian bear summon serves as a constant companion that will help tank difficult content as well as shred through enemies alike.

You’ll want to engage with Subterranean Assault, timing it to hit as you get closer to deal massive AoE damage, bursting down groups of enemies before you get into melee range. Sustain is never an issue with your Bull Netch, which not only gives back stamina but also grants you 20% extra weapon damage with Major Brutality. 

The Build

Race:

Wood Elf, Nord, Dark Elf

Skills:

Equipment:

• Head/Shoulder Monster Set – Stormfist
• Body Pieces – Briarheart
• Jewelry and Weapons – Dagon’s Dominion (Without DLC, Hunding’s / Spriggan / Unfathomable)

Champion Points:

3. Magcro (Necromancer Class)

The Magicka Necromancer is a fantastic choice for dealing some of the very best AoE damage in the game. If you haven’t played necromancer before, now is a great time to try it. Magicka Necromancers have a lot of build-in sustain, allowing you to hit harder for longer with their abilities.

Starting fights with Stalking Blastbones and timing out your Ricochet Skull to hit along with it will inflict massive damage and can clear out trash packs with ease. Because so many necromancer abilities are AoE, utilizing a lightning staff on both bars will increase your overall damage.

The Magicka Necromancer can also take on large numbers of enemies with ease due to its Hungry Scythe ability, which heals more for every additional enemy hit, stacking up to five times. This healing effect means even with squishy light armor; you don’t have to worry about getting overwhelmed. Your Spirit Guardian also continually mitigates your damage taken while also healing you, so solo content will be a breeze once you get a feel for the class.

If you decide to tweak the build below, make sure you keep a Bone Tyrant ability slotted on both of your bars so that you get the Death Gleaning passive bonus that gives you back magicka and stamina when an enemy dies in combat with you. Keeping a Living Death ability slotted on both bars will also give you a higher critical chance for healing from the passive Near-Death Experience. 

The Build

Race:

High Elf, Breton, Khajiit

Skills:

Equipment:

• Head/Shoulder Monster Set – Iceheart (Zaan if you’re Soloing Bosses)
• Body Pieces – Mother’s Sorrow
• Jewelry and Weapons – Medusa (Or False Gods for More Sustain and Damage)

Champion Points:

2. Magblade (Nightblade Class)

The Magicka Nightblade is in a massively advantageous spot in the current iteration of ESO and excels at high burst damage and survivability. Swallow Soul (Strife) will be your bread and butter as it deals impressive damage as your spammable and constantly heals you for around a third of the damage you deal with it every two seconds for ten seconds.

Merciless Resolve (Grim Focus) will increase your critical damage and healing up 2% with each light attack, capping at 10%. Once capped after five light attacks, you can fire its spectral bow for a massive burst of damage which also heals for 50% of the damage dealt when at melee range. This ability will act as your burst heal, but keep in mind that in the execute phase on a boss at 25%, you may want to hold onto the extra 10% crit damage instead of firing off the bow so your execute abilities do more damage. 

The Build

Race:

High Elf, Dark Elf, Breton

Skills:

Equipment:

• Head/Shoulder Monster Set – Zaan’s (Or Iceheart if you don’t have DLC)
• Body Pieces – Mother’s Sorrow
• Jewelry and Weapons – Medusa (Or False Gods for Sustain and Damage)

Champion Points:

1. Magsorc (Sorcerer Class)

The Magicka Sorcerer is one of the highest used classes in the game, and with good reason. This class takes the title of ESO’s best solo class. Its daedric summoning abilities call companions to fight for you that not only deal damage but also tank. You’ll find that it will be relatively easy to begin soloing content even when you are still below level 50.

As you get more comfortable with the playstyle and rotations, you can drop being a Pet Sorc and trade out your familiar and winged twilight for more active damaging abilities. Without pets, I suggest putting on Mystic Orb for more AoE damage and an execute ability, the Sorcerer’s being Mage’s Wrath. It’s hard to argue with this class’s solo viability with being able to build for raw damage and not having to worry about taking the brunt of the damage from the content you run through. 

For your Pet Sorc build, you’ll need both your unstable familiar and your winged twilight on both your front bar and your back bar so that they don’t desummon when you switch bars. This may seem annoying at first, but this effectively reduces the complexity of your rotations by half, letting you focus on combat rather than threading the needle on those cooldowns. 

The Build

Race:

High Elf, Dark Elf, Khajiit

Skills:

Equipment:

• Head/Shoulder Monster Set – Maw of the Infernal
• Body Pieces – Necropotence
• Jewelry and Weapons – Mother’s Sorrow

Champion Points:

Honorable Mention: ESO Best Solo PVP Class 

When soloing PVP content, you’ll need a class with access to serious damage, excellent resource management, and survivability. If you want to 1 v x, you’ll need to be able to kite and burst down your opponents one-by-one or get lucky with an AoE blast of damage so you can move on to the next set of enemies.

Given these needs, you guessed it: the Magsorc takes the cake. Having a kit that has access to high burst damage and also the ability to kite and escape more efficiently than any other class when things go south, this class has you covered.

Being ranged also allows you extra room to deal damage from afar while avoiding crowd control. You can either morph the Sorcerer’s mobility spell to Streak, which stuns all you pass through, or, Ball of Lightning which absorbs projectiles and grants some CC immunity. This build is optimized to be a no proc set given that proc sets are disabled in Cyrodiil right now, meaning any triggered effects or percentages on item sets will not work. 

The Build

Race:

High Elf, Dark Elf

Skills:

Equipment:

• Head/Shoulder Monster Set – 1 piece Domihaus, 1 piece Swarm Mother
• Body Pieces – Crafty Alfiq
• Jewelry and Weapons – Spinner’s Garments

Champion Points:

That wraps up our top 10 best solo classes in ESO! I hope you enjoy trying out one of these builds on a new toon or can modify an existing one to make your gameplay even smoother. Check out some of our other articles here at High Ground Gaming to up your gaming experience further. If you enjoyed this list of best solo builds in Elder Scrolls Online and want to stay up to date with the best insider gaming knowledge, subscribe to the HGG newsletter.

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