The Champion Points 2.0 system in the Elder Scrolls Online is complicated, but it offers a lot of great customization. While there is a learning curve involved, the benefit is that you’ll get to play the game exactly as you want to. If you’re new to ESO, Champion Points can be boiled down to upgrades to your character’s damage, defense, and other utility stats (e.g. pickpocketing or fishing).
Champion Points (simplified to CP from here on) unlock at Level 50. Each time you level up past that point, you’ll gain one of three CP types in rotation — Craft, Warfare, and Fitness. You’ll have to level up three times to get one of each, but CP levels thankfully go much more quickly than the initial 1–50 leveling process. Each CP you gain is account-wide, meaning you can spend them on all your toons.
In this guide, we’ll go through the best ways to spend your Champion Points in ESO. We’ll start with priorities for all players, then move onto specific CP needs based on the role you’re playing. Keep in mind that this may change as the meta shifts, so keep an eye on upcoming patch notes to stay on top.
Let’s get started!
Getting Started
To begin, every Champion Point fits into one of two categories — passives and slottables. Passive CPs give you bonuses at all times, and slottable CPs need to be placed in one of the four available slots in the CP screen to take effect.
Slottables allow for further customization as you unlock more to the point of excess, but it does take a while to get to that point. At around CP 1200, you’ll have most of your needs covered by passives and your main four slottables.
As you earn and start allocating Champion Points, you’ll have to unlock specific “starting” bonuses before you can get to the more useful ones. There are several good slottables outside the main picture for each CP tree that don’t require any buildup, but for the most part, you’ll need to unlock stepping stones to get the most out of the CPs you choose.
If you ever want to change up your Champion Points, you can reset all your CPs for 3000 gold. If you have a blank armory loadout saved, you can effectively reset your CP and skills for free! This is especially helpful if you’re just starting out and want to swap from a magicka to a stamina focus, or flip between DPS, tank, and healer. The armory system is free, so you can pick it up at any time from the crown store and place it in your house.
Most Useful CP for all Players
No matter which role you’re playing in ESO, these Champion Points will help you out.
Craft — Steed’s Blessing (Slottable 50)
The Steed’s Blessing slottable gives you 0.4% increased movement speed out of combat for each point you spend, maxing out at 50 points spent for a 20% increase. You can unlock this one right away, as it’s located outside the main constellation.
This is a big quality of life pick, as it helps reduce the time spent trudging through locations you’ve already visited. ESO has some breathtaking landscapes, but you only need to see the crafting writ boards so many times before they grow dull.
Craft — Treasure Hunter (Slottable 50)
The Treasure Hunter slottable is one of the most useful choices as it “increases the quality of items you find in treasure chests.” It costs 50 CP to unlock and requires an investment of at least 35 other Craft CP before you can even access it, but it really makes a difference. Better-quality loot means fewer resources spent on upgrading items. You’ll also be able to sell them for more profit on guild stores.
Warfare — Tireless Discipline and Eldritch Insight (Passives 20 + 20)
Tireless Discipline gives you 520 max stamina, while Eldritch Insight gives 520 max magicka. They don’t take up slottable spaces, meaning you can still customize your build with other useful Warfare slottables. Picking both of these up as soon as possible helps with resource management early on, when you may not have higher-level gear and maxed-out passives. 520 might not sound like a lot, but any increase to your resource pools can be handy in the middle of combat.
Warfare — Piercing (Passive 20)
The Piercing CP gives you 700 offensive penetration, helping you deal more damage when playing solo. In group content, you’ll usually have companions who will debuff enemies to give you better penetration, but your overall damage really takes a hit when your penetration doesn’t match or exceed the enemy’s armor.
Warfare — Preparation (Passive 20)
The Preparation passive reduces damage taken from non-player attacks by 10%, making it great for getting through overland content and especially useful for tanking the blows of harder enemies like dungeon or world bosses. It’s only for PVE players, as PVP players won’t gain a bonus from it.
Fitness — Hero’s Vigor (Passive 20)
This CP is especially helpful for DPS and healers who are naturally squishier. Gaining an extra 560 health, you get the equivalent of half of the bonus of the Ebon Armory set. This allows tanks to build different sets to increase group damage or provide other utility for their groups. That extra 560 health may save your team from a wipe on those nasty group mechanics, so it’s a great passive to take.
Fitness — Boundless Vitality (Slottable 50)
You gain 28 health per point in Boundless Vitality, coming to a total 1400 additional max health. This gives you some wiggle room to avoid dying from a wipe mechanic.
Fitness — Fortified (Slottable 50)
You get 34.6 physical and spell resistance per point in Fortified, totaling up to an additional 1731 Armor. This is great for giving squishier characters some much needed bulk.
Fitness — Rejuvenation (Slottable 50)
You get 1.8 health, magicka, and stamina recovery per point in Rejuvenation, totaling up to an additional 90 for each. This extra sustain is a huge benefit to ensuring that you have enough resources to cast your spells consistently. If you aren’t having trouble keeping yourself alive, I recommend prioritizing this over the Boundless Vitality and Fortified slottables. It’s weaker than it once was (it used to provide 150 of each), but I wouldn’t pass up the usefulness of the increased sustain.
Most Useful Tank Champion Points
If you’re playing as a tank, these are the Champion Points to keep your eye on.
Fitness — Tireless Guardian (Passive 20)
This is a no-brainer for tanks, as it reduces the cost of blocking by 40. This keeps you blocking for longer, keeping you alive and pulling aggro away from your team.
Fitness — Fortification (Passive 30)
Another great passive that helps mitigate the damage you’ll take as a tank. Fortification increases the amount of damage you can block by 4%, which adds up in fights where you take a lot of damage.
Warfare — Ironclad (Slottable 50)
Tanking slottables can be customized a good deal, prioritizing shields and other types of mitigation. Ironclad is one of the best, as you’ll be taking a lot of direct damage as the tank. Ironclad reduces your damage taken by direct damage attacks by 10%.
Warfare — Duelist’s Rebuff (Slottable 50)
Essentially as useful as Ironclad, Duelist’s Rebuff instead reduces your damage taken by single-target attacks by 10%. Single-target attacks make up a good chunk of enemy attacks, so you’ll take a lot less damage overall.
Warfare — Unassailable (Slottable 50) / Enduring Resolve (Slottable 50)
Depending on what type of enemies you’re tanking, taking one or both of these is never a bad choice. Unassailable reduces your damage taken by area of effect attacks by 10%, which can be useful against unavoidable sweeping damage. Enduring Resolve reduces your damage taken by DOT attacks by 10%, good for situations where you get nasty bleeds and don’t have access to a cleanse.
Warfare — Bracing Anchor (Slottable 50)
This one is useful only when you really need the extra blocking power, as it’s somewhat miserable to use in practice. While in combat, your block amount will increase by 20%, but your movement speed will be reduced by 16%. This can really bog you down, so only throw this on when you’re taking on a real monster of a fight.
Most Useful Healer Champion Points
If you’re a healer, here are some Champion Points you want to pick up.
Warfare — Blessed (Passive 20)
This is pretty straightforward for a healer — Blessed increases your healing done by 2%. It’s not much of a bonus, but it adds up in the heat of battle.
Warfare — Enlivening Overflow (Slottable 50)
An exceptionally useful CP for healers, Enlivening Overflow offers a significant amount of sustain for you and your team. It activates when you overheal yourself or an ally and grants health, magicka, and stamina recovery equal to 0.5% of your max magicka, up to a cap of 150. The bonus only lasts for six seconds, and will have a six second cooldown before it can trigger again. Now that the Rejuvenation CP gives 90 recoveries instead of 150, Enlivening Overflow is a must-have.
Warfare — Swift Renewal (Slottable 50)
Most healing skills heal targets over a period of time, aside from your burst heal skills. Swift Renewal increases your healing done with HOT effects by 10%, therefore increasing most of a healer’s arsenal of heals.
Warfare — Soothing Tide (Slottable 50)
Another amazing CP for healers, Soothing Tide increases your healing done by area of effect heals by 10%. This affects a wide range of healer skills, and should be taken in most cases.
Warfare — Focused Mending (Slottable 50)
This is an important skill to take if you plan to use healing skills that are burst heals. Focused Mending increases your healing done with single-target heals by 10%, which can mark the difference between life and death. I personally don’t use many burst healing unless specific veteran mechnicas call for it, so this slottable isn’t always essential.
Most Useful DPS Champion Points
Below are the top Champion Points to prioritize as a DPS.
Fitness — Bloody Renewal and Siphoning Spells (50 Slottable)
These CPs are huge sources of sustain for their respective resources. Whenever you kill an enemy, you recover 1500 stamina (Bloody Renewal) or magicka (Siphoning Spells), helping manage your skill rotations much more easily. You’ll need to actually land the kill to get the bonus, so execute skills can be helpful here.
Warfare — Backstabber (50 Slottable)
This is the best CP if you find yourself standing behind enemies for a long time. It increases your critical damage by 15% to enemies you are flanking, giving you a huge increase to damage. It does require consistent good positioning, but it’s usually manageable with a good tank.
Warfare — Master-at-Arms (50 Slottable)
This is another amazing DPS slottable that increases your damage done with direct attacks by 10%. This includes any damaging skill that deals damage to a target immediately (cast times do not affect this), including light/heavy attacks. Unless you are a Dragonknight focusing purely on DOT skills, you’ll get a significant DPS increase from this CP.
Join the High Ground
Champion Points are complex and require a lot of game knowledge to get the most out of them, but all of them are useful in their own way. We hope you found this ESO Champion Points guide useful, and can put some of these CP suggestions to use to make your character even stronger than it was before.
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