IMMORTAL DRAGONKNIGHT TANK BUILD FOR THE INFINITE ARCHIVE

Last updated: Update 44

This build utilizes massive Ultimate generation and Ultimate cost reduction to keep up permanent Magma Shell which makes you immortal no matter how high you plan to go in the Infinite Archive. You'll be able to deal up to 800k DPS in AoE and 400k in Single Target once you max out all the important Visions. This build assumes that you're playing in a Duo with a Damage Dealer who isn't a Magma Shell Dragonknight. If you're playing in a Duo with another Magma Shell Dragonknight you should look at the Solo guide instead.

SKILL SETUPS


Front Bar Back Bar
Slot 1: Trample Slot 1: Torchbearer
Slot 2: Soul Burst Slot 2: Wield Soul
Slot 3: Elemental Explosion Slot 3: Hardened Armor
Slot 4: Exhilarating Drain Slot 4: Stampede
Slot 5: Elemental Susceptibility Slot 5: Simmering Frenzy
Ultimate: Magma Shell Ultimate: Flawless Dawnbreaker

ADDITIONAL INFO:

  • Use the Disease, Assassin's Misery and Heroism combination on your Trample. Physical and Stun are also decent Focus script options. Stun makes the fights safer but also more tedious, because you won't be able to chain enemies that have recently been stunned. Trample will provide Major Heroism which is crucial for generating enough Ultimate for Magma Shell. At the beginning it will only last 10 seconds, but with the Extended Favor Vision it can reach a duration of up to 41 seconds. Thanks to the Assassin's Misery script it will deal massive AoE damage once you have at least a single Focused Efforts Vision. Choosing the Disease, Physical or Stun script in the first row makes the ability cost Stamina which makes it much easier to sustain and makes it so you can cast it inside Negate fields.
  • Use the Physical, Anchorite's Potency and Interrupt combination on your Soul Burst. Soul Burst is your AoE interrupt which is crucial in the Archive as lots of enemies there have attacks you need to interrupt, and with them being stacked tightly it might be hard to bash each of them manually. Thanks to the Anchorite's Potency script you can generate 3 Ultimate with it every 5 seconds, so whenever this is off cooldown you can cast Soul Burst to keep enemies interrupted and it won't slow your Ultimate generation that much compared to another Exhilarating Drain cast. Choosing the Physical script in the first row makes the ability cost Stamina which makes it much easier to sustain. This should also make it so you can cast it in inside Negate fields, but it doesn't because it's currently bugged.
  • Use the Dispel, Assassin's Misery and Cowardice combination on your Elemental Explosion. Elemental Explosion is your spammable for AoE damage. It also applies Minor Cowardice, which reduces enemies Weapon and Spell damage by 215, which is extremely potent because trash enemies have around 500 Weapon Damage, so Minor Cowardice reduces their damage significantly, and combined with Major Cowardice it makes them do 0 damage. Thanks to the Dispel script it can also remove annoying AoEs, such as the Negate fields.
  • Exhilarating Drain is a 3-second channel that generates 20 Ultimate over its duration and it's crucial for getting enough Ultimate to keep up constant Magma Shell.
  • Elemental Susceptibility deals massive damage once you have at least a single Focused Efforts Vision, is completely free to cast and continues to deal massive damage for 30 seconds. It's also your source of Major Breach which you'll need to fully penetrate your enemies' armor. This is your spammable for single target damage.
  • Magma Shell caps your damage taken at 3% of your max health and past a certain Arc it is the only way of surviving the incoming damage.
  • Use the Generate Ultimate, Class Mastery and Heroism combination on your Torchbearer. Getting Minor Heroism from this skill will allow you to replace Heroism Potions with CC Immunity Potions, which will be crucial because Trample, Elemental Explosion and Exhilarating Drain all have very long cast/channel times.
  • Use the Pull, Anchorite's Potency and Cowardice combination on your Wield Soul. Wield Soul is your chain. It also applies Major Cowardice which reduces enemies Weapon and Spell damage by 430, which is extremely potent because trash enemies have around 500 Weapon Damage, so Major Cowardice reduces their damage significantly, and combined with Minor Cowardice it makes them do 0 damage. You might not need it due to Magma Shell, but it's crucial for dealing with Mystic's Meteors without killing them in time. At the beginning it will last 10 seconds, but with the Extended Favor Vision it can reach a duration of up to 41 seconds. Thanks to Anchorite's Potency script you can generate 4 Ultimate with it every 5 seconds, so when timed correctly you can do useful actions like chaining and taunting without stopping your Ultimate generation.
  • Hardened Armor's damage shield will help you survive whenever you screw up and you're missing a tiny bit of Ultimate for casting Magma Shell. It can also deal decent damage as the reflect is a single target direct damage so it has a decently high chance to proc Burning.
  • Stampede will proc your Weapon Damage enchant which with maxed out Attuned Enchantments Vision can grant up to 2147 Weapon and Spell Damage. It will also proc the Merciless Charge set which slightly buffs some of your status effects.
  • Simmering Frenzy will grant you 400 Weapon and Spell damage and thanks to Ring of the Pale Order you won't even notice its health drain. The reason for choosing Simmering Frenzy is that it's almost entirely passive - you'll click it once and you never ever have to interact with it again, which is important because you want to minimize time spent on your backbar so you can benefit more from the Decisive trait on your frontbar.
  • You're not supposed to ever activate Flawless Dawnbreaker, it's on your backbar only to proc the Slayer passive.
  • You should prebuff Igneous Weapons and Channeled Acceleration before each combat. These buffs will last over 4 minutes with maxed out Extended Favor. If you don't want to prebuff, you should replace Hardened Armor (if you prioritize damage) or Simmering Frenzy (if you prioritize survivability) with Igneous Weapons as missing out on the Major Brutality would be a huge mistake.

GEAR

Gear Slot Set Weight/Type Trait Enchantment

Head

Baron Zaudrus Medium Divines Tri-Stat

Shoulders

Baron Zaudrus Medium Divines Tri-Stat

Chest

Elf Bane Heavy Divines Tri-Stat

Hands

Elf Bane Heavy Divines Tri-Stat

Belt

Armor of the Trainee Medium Divines Tri-Stat

Legs

Elf Bane Heavy Divines Tri-Stat

Boots

Elf Bane Heavy Divines Tri-Stat

Necklace

Elf Bane Jewelry Infused Potion Duration

Ring

Ring of the Pale Order Jewelry Infused Potion Duration

Ring

Blessing of the Potentates Jewelry Infused Potion Duration

Frontbar Main Hand

Blessing of the Potentates Inferno Staff Decisive Poison

Frontbar Main Hand

Merciless Charge Greatsword Infused Weapon Damage

ADDITIONAL INFO:

  • Elf Bane extends Magma Shell's duration from 12 to 18 seconds. It also extends your Burning from 4 seconds to 9 but that's just a nice side effect.
  • Baron Zaudrus provides Ultimate when you apply Status Effects, and you'll be doing that a lot.
  • Blessing of the Potentates reduces the cost of your Magma Shell by 15%.
  • Ring of the Pale Order allows you to outheal any damage you take (because Magma merely caps your damage taken to 3% of your Max Health per tick). It doesn't work with Status Effects, but you have other sources of damage and it can also be procced by the Prickly Retort Vision.
  • Merciless Charge slightly buffs some of your status effects.
  • Divines will boost your Critical Chance by buffing your Thief Mundus.
  • Infused jewelry with Potion Duration enchants will allow you to become permanently immune to stuns once you have at least 4 Quickened Tinctures Visions.
  • Decisive on your frontbar is crucial for generating enough Ultimate for Magma Shell.
  • Poison enchant on your frontbar will occasionally proc the Poisoned Status Effect.
  • Infused Greatsword with a Weapon Damage enchant will eventually provide 2147 Weapon Damage which is a massive boost to your damage, and it'll be constantly reapplied with the Stampede ability which you'd have to use anyway for the Merciless Charge set.
  • Body enchantments do not have to be Tri-Stat. You could use a mix of Health, Stamina and Magicka enchants. If that's the case you can also change all enchants to Stamina once you're very deep into the Archive if you want to push more damage.

CHAMPION POINTS

Warfare

Fitness

ADDITIONAL INFO:

  • Deadly Aim, Thaumaturge and Master-at-Arms boost Status Effects.
  • Peace of Mind will be up almost all the time thanks to your CC Immunity potions (and eventually with enough Quickened Tinctures Visions it'll be up 100% of the time).
  • Hardened will boost the duration of Crowd Control Immunity provided by your potion, even though it doesn't show it in the potion's tooltip.

RACE

Imperial is the best race for this specific build, due to their Red Diamond passive which reduces Magma Shell's cost from 149 down to 141, which saves 8 Ultimate per Magma Shell. Nords are 2nd best, their Stalwart passive will generate either 5 or 10 Ultimate per Magma Shell depending on the timing, which makes them slightly worse because reliability is much more important.


MUNDUS

You might want to start with The Atronach Mundus which increases your Magicka Recovery by 310 and causes your armor pieces with the Divines trait to increase it by another 28. After you get enough of various sustain Visions (or instantly if you feel like your sustain is good enough) you can switch to The Thief, which increases your Critical Strike rating by 1333 and causes your armor pieces with the Divines trait to increase it by another 121.


ATTRIBUTES

HEALTH

64

STAMINA

0

MAGICKA

0

You should start with 64 points into Health so you can survive those short periods without Magma Shell which will be inevitable at the beginning as you won't have any Boundless Potential Visions. Later on you can switch to 64 Stamina to deal more damage.


FOOD

The best food is Orzorga's Smoked Bear Haunch, however it's extremely expensive so you should use Jewels of Misrule instead, it provides only slightly lower stats than Orzorga's Smoked Bear Haunch while being significantly cheaper. Eventually with enough sustain Visions you can switch to Bravil's Best Beet Risotto to increase your damage with the Max Stamina.


POTIONS

Use potions with Crowd Control Immunity and Major Savagery. They're crafted by combining Namira's Rot, Wormwood and Dragonthorn. With the Infused Potion Duration enchants on your jewelry these will provide 32.7 second of Crowd Control Immunity which then gets boosted by the Hardened Champion Point to 37.6 seconds, which means that with 4 Quickened Tincture Visions you'll be able to be permanently Immune to Crowd Control, and before that you'll only have small windows during which you'll have to watch out for heavy attacks and other stuns.


VISIONS

ESSENTIAL

Boundless Potential

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Focused Efforts

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Extended Favor

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USEFUL

Attuned Enhancements

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Archival Intelligence

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Prickly Retort

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Scorching Support

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Quickened Tinctures

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DO NOT PICK UP

Adaptive Conqueror

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Lasting Harm

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MECHANICS

Realmshapers have an attack where they slam the ground, sending out blue waves in all directions. The reason these are dangerous is they deal oblivion damage which bypasses Magma Shell, so you have to side step or dodge roll them, otherwise these will one shot you.


GAMEPLAY

Big thanks to Jacob Nordhoff, this guide was improved thanks to him showing the build he used in his Arc 45 run.