The Arcanist is the newest Class arriving in The Elder Scrolls Online for the Necrom Chapter in June 2023. I was invited in March to participate in a playtest and give feedback to the devs about the Arcanist.
The question you’re all probably wondering was if it’s any good?
As you may have guessed, I focussed mainly on the Arcanist Tank, as that’s both my niche and there were many others play testing as both damage dealers and healers. I spent a number of hours testing all of the abilities in different combat scenarios and I’ve compiled all my thoughts into this article!
This was an early build of the Arcanist so when I was playing they had already made some significant changes and adjustments to the Arcanist with more changes intended before the Necrom PTS is launched. For this article I will remain vague on percentages and numbers since those won’t be accurate to the PTS or Live versions of the Arcanist.
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How Does It Look?
The first thing you notice with the Arcanist is that they are a very visual class. There are big effects, animations and sounds with pretty much every skill and it makes them feel really exciting to play, the team working on the effects have done a great job to make the Arcanist stand out.
Dev Vision
The main vision for the Arcanist Tank is for them to be more active and reactionary, the intention is that as the situation develops you have to react to what is happening, with maybe a damage shield or a specific skill.
That is a combat style I can see and buy into because generally Elder Scrolls Online Tanking can sometimes be perceived as “boring” on some classes due to their lack of reactionary skills and their ability to just stand still holding block.
Crux System
The Arcanist introduces a brand new combat system to The Elder Scrolls Online with Crux.
This is something that you generate with some abilities and spend it with others. You can stack up to 3 Crux at a time and you can visually see your Crux flying around your character.
This system is well designed in the way that if you ignore it, the Arcanist can still do everything it’s supposed to do. By managing your Crux it adds additional benefits to those who master the system so new players won’t be punished for not maximising its use but experienced players will be able to gain some slight additional benefits.
My Expectations
My expectations of a new class going into this playtest were looking for something that’s overall fun and different to what we already have.
I was looking for abilities that help towards engaging combat as a Tank and specifically what was on offer regarding Crowd Control & Pulling, Group Buffs, Sustain and Survivability.
Solider of Apocrypha
The Tank focussed skill line is the Solider of Apocrypha. Outside of this skill line there isn’t a massive amount of use for a Tank compared to how other classes have lots of functional use amongst all 3 skill lines.
Skill 1 – Gibbering Shield Ultimate
The Tank Ultimate. On the playtest this didn’t seem like it would be very good for PvE Tanks. It’s hard already to replace how good Aggressive Horn is and this Ultimate basically provided a large damage shield that absorbed a % of all damage and returned it back to the enemy with the morphs increasing the shield size or providing a shield to 6 allies, its like a combination of Barrier, Magma Shell and Igneous Shield but not as useful as any of those skills.
Skill 2 – Runic Jolt
This was cast on an enemy and did Magic Damage along with applying Minor Maim. It also TAUNTED the enemy and generated Crux. One morph converted to a Stamina ability which stole armor from the enemy (increasing group pen) and the other morph healed me and applied Minor Lifesteal to the enemy.
This felt like a really bizarre skill because it added a class taunt but not a whole lot of additional functionality. The Stamina morph was the more useful one because it offered the group benefit of increasing pen and combining it with Tremorscale negated the need for either Alkosh or Crimson Oath in group content.
The overlapping of Taunt and Minor Maim was strange to me because I don’t know if this is really that good when you consider how useful both Pierce Armor and Frost Clench are but it’s one of the few Tank Crux generators also.
Skill 3 – Runespite Ward
This skill summoned a damage shield, when you first get hit it returned damage back at the enemy and it would consume Crux to increase the damage shield, a weaker version of the ultimate almost. The morphs either refunded the full magicka cost or massively increases the shield for the just the first second its active.
This was one of the most useful survival tools on the Arcanist Tank. The refund cost morph wasn’t very useful but the big shield really helped to create more reactionary Tanking upon taking a big hit of damage or in anticipation of a big hit. It’s pretty similar to a Templar’s Radiant Ward skill and this is quite a vital skill because the healing capability of a Arcanist Tank wasn’t anywhere close to being as good as most other Tank Classes.
Skill 4 – Fatewoven Armor
The Arcanists version of a Major Resolve skill. The difference was that this skill also applies Minor Breach to enemies when they damage you while the skill is active. For the morphs one increased the duration of Major Resolve and generated Crux, the other added Block Mitigation which could be increased by consuming Crux.
Really interesting skill, the effortless potential of applying Minor Breach was quite good, the downside of this was that we’ve only just had Minor Breach added to Frost Blockade with the Scribes of Fate updated so it didn’t seem as good as it would of done if that wasn’t an overlapping factor. It does mean you are not relying on the Chilled effect to access Minor Breach with Blockade and it does create some diversity potential with builds.
Skill 5 – Runic Defense
A group buff! This grants yourself and group members Minor Resolve and gives you Minor Protection. When you get damaged for the first time while below 50% Health it consumed the Minor Protection to give you a burst heal. The morphs offered a stun or granting you armor and CC immunity after the heal.
This was a decent ability for a self heal but offered up some serious risk. You are basically fully reliant on your damage shield skill to protect you and you’re unable to heal up unless you are below 50% health and then get hit while this is active.
The heal was a decent heal but it was a smaller heal than Coagulating Blood and the Sorc Clannfear and much less accessible. Minor Protection for the group is additional safety but this again overlaps with something already on offer from Combat Prayer.
Skill 6 – Rune of Eldritch Horror
The final Tank skill is probably the best, for bosses and group content at least. You apply Minor Vulnerability to an enemy and when morphed you also apply Minor Brittle. The reason why it’s so good is because 1 – you don’t need to be wielding an Ice Staff to apply the Minor Brittle and 2 – it has a really long duration making it a much more reliable skill to maintain brittle.
Other Skills & Passives
Amongst all of the Arcanist passives they included Increased Armor, Ultimate, Resource Return and improved Damage Shields. There was also huge amounts of increased recovery to the point where my standard tank build was sitting on 5k Magicka Recovery. There was a group buff passive that provided Minor Evasion also, but it’s a really niche thing that isn’t useful in most places.
Outside of that, only three skills really stood out from the other skill lines was the tentacles (Abyssal Impact), it wasn’t a Pull skill unfortunately but it did immobilise enemies, however it was only in a small width similar to a Restraining Prison or Empowering Grasp and the duration of the immobilise was dependant on Crux also.
One Healer skill – Arcanist’s Domain was also good and it resembled a Templar Extended Ritual but this one provided Minor Courage thus making Claw of Yolnahkriin and other Minor Courage Tank sets redundant.
Finally there was a kind of vacuum pull skill – you put it onto one enemy and the other enemies around it are supposed to get pulled to that enemy. The idea was interesting but it didn’t work properly during the testing so enemies actually got pushed away rather than pulled in. If they can get this fixed before launch it could be really good.
Final Thoughts
We have to remember that these thoughts are based on The Arcanist using an early build for a playtest and this is unlikely going to be the same as the PTS or released version.
The Arcanist is fun to play, and this stems mostly from the fact that it’s new and flashy, the playstyle is different and reactive and its interesting trying to put together a build where you have to consider a range of different things such as how to generate and spend crux.
The really good aspects of Arcanist Tanks were the Magicka sustain was incredible. The Minor Brittle skill was also excellent because it felt really beneficial to have access to that debuff without needing to use an Ice Staff and the fact that it had a really long duration. The taunt skill while really strange was also very useful with reducing the enemies armor so there is some potential there with that.
The Crux system has the potential to create a really fun and unique playstyle, on the tank side of things there was a severe lack of benefit to the system with few ways of generating Crux and very few useful ways of spending it as well. If they can make some adjustments to this to really push more towards making this a reactive Tank class then it could be very good.
When you look at the current Crux spending, getting a small amount of Block Mitigation is fine but it’s not exactly easy to get it, when compared to something like Bound Aegis on a Sorcerer Tank they have multiple passives benefits by slotting that skill as well as huge active benefits when the skill is used and on an Arcanist you need to do more work for a much smaller benefit, so why would you do it? With one button a Sorc Tank is instantly stronger than The Arcanist Tank.
Arcanist Tanks really suffer with a lack of crowd control – there no pull, even if the vacuum skill is fixed it’s still not going to be any competition for Unrelenting Grip because you’ll still need to use Silver Leash for add pulling, the vacuum is applied to an enemy and the others are pulled to it but those archers and mages at the back of the room will still need pulling in. For crowd control there’s the tentacles immobilisation but again just isn’t as effective as Choking Talons or Gripping Shards because its a small width and only in front. Crowd Control is one of the most important factors for a Tank Class because the vast majority of Tanks in ESO are players completing dungeons where CC’ing is essential.
When comparing what the Arcanist Tank can potentially offer vs all the other classes it had a lot of overlapping buffs and benefits we can already obtain in some other way, there wasn’t anything unique or super useful on offer aside from the increased armor penetration. If they can iron out a few things, it could easily gain a solid improvement
When you look at the current issues for Class variation in Tanking, the Dragonknight is vastly superior because not only are they good at Tanking, they also offer the most additional benefit that isn’t obtained by someone else playing a DK, and a lot of the DK skills have some functional use for Tanking – 21 out of the 30 DK base skills and passive are useful for a Tank
With Wardens, Sorcerers, Nightblades they are all great Tanks and fun to play also but rarely used because having 1 other person in a group using one makes them obsolete and this is my biggest concern for Arcanist Tanks.
I’m really looking forward to seeing what adjustments they make going into the PTS to give the Arcanist Tank that little more edge and usefulness ready for the Necrom launch in June!
