Best Skill Lines for Subclass Solo Builds in ESO

The Elder Scrolls Online’s revolutionary subclassing system transforms character building by enabling players to combine skill lines from different classes. This groundbreaking feature unlocks unprecedented customization opportunities for solo adventurers seeking to optimize their performance across Tamriel’s most challenging content. For those uncertain about optimal skill line selection, this comprehensive guide evaluates the most effective options for solo gameplay, categorized from foundational B-tier to game-changing S-tier selections.

Strategic Insight: Respecing your abilities for subclassing requires ESO gold investment. Players needing immediate currency can consider purchasing gold through legitimate channels to accelerate their build development.

12. Ardent Flame (Dragonknight)

Ardent Flame specializes in sustained damage-over-time effects with fire and poison elemental themes. Beyond its offensive capabilities, it delivers respectable self-healing through morph choices including Burning Embers and Cauterize, making it viable for specific playstyles.

However, the skill line suffers from underwhelming passive benefits and inefficient spammable abilities. Searing Heat’s limitation to only three specific skills severely restricts its subclassing versatility. Lava Whip feels mechanically awkward, and its Molten Whip morph demands both stamina and magicka resources, creating significant challenges for magicka-focused builds. The alternative Flame Lash morph necessitates immobilization or off-balance conditions that the skill line itself cannot provide.

Common Mistake: Players often attempt to build around Flame Lash without realizing they need external sources for the required status effects.

Ultimately, Ardent Flame serves as a specialized option for fire-themed builds but sees limited application in broader solo subclassing strategies.

11. Winter’s Embrace (Warden)

While traditionally viewed as a tanking specialization, Winter’s Embrace holds surprising potential for solo adventurers, particularly those focusing on frost damage themes.

Key abilities include Ice Fortress for crucial defensive armor and Arctic Blast, which provides burst healing while damaging and stunning enemies—though it carries the notable drawback of requiring damage cessation to trigger healing effects. Winter’s Revenge provides reliable damage-over-time, while Northern Storm stands as a formidable ultimate for solo scenarios.

The primary limitation stems from inadequate direct damage sources and inconsistent DPS capabilities. Although effective for frost-themed character concepts, it remains more specialized compared to higher-ranked alternatives.

10. Daedric Summoning (Sorcerer)

Daedric Summoning centers on conjuring pet companions that blend damage dealing, tanking, and healing functions, creating versatile solo play potential.

For offensive capabilities, players can combine Familiar with Twilight alongside Daedric Prey for enhanced pet damage—though disappointingly, this buff exclusively benefits Daedric summoning pets rather than all companion types.

Critical Warning: The mandatory double-barring requirement for sorcerer pets represents a major disadvantage in subclassing. Since every skill slot carries significant value, dedicating two slots to pets effectively creates dead skill positions that cannot accommodate other powerful subclass abilities.

Defensively, Harden Ward provides powerful shielding despite losing its healing component in recent PTS updates. Bound Armor remains a solid defensive choice, particularly the Bound Aegis morph that grants minor protection and minor resolve buffs.

The passive abilities within Daedric Summoning received substantial improvements in Update 46, particularly Expert Summoner delivering more consistent maximum stat bonuses.

While offering flexibility, these limitations prevent Daedric Summoning from reaching elite tier status.

9. Animal Companions (Warden)

Animal Companions presents a well-rounded option for solo builds, especially appealing to players favoring animal companion or druid-themed gameplay. The skill line maintains excellent balance between active abilities and passive benefits, though it appears somewhat dated when measured against newer classes like Necromancer and Arcanist.

The standout ability Deep Fissure delivers not one but two integrated armor debuffs, collectively reducing enemy resistance by roughly 10,000 points. This substantial armor reduction proves invaluable for solo builds, enabling your damage abilities to achieve significantly higher effectiveness. Additionally, the Netch skill provides reliable damage enhancement and resource sustainability.

Many other abilities feel comparatively lackluster. The Wild Guardian ultimate provides excellent utility but demands double barring—a significant drawback in subclassing configurations.

Skills including Screaming Cliff Racer, Swarm, and Bird of Prey demonstrate somewhat outdated mechanical design. Screaming Cliff Racer particularly underperforms in solo situations due to its 7-meter range requirement for activating the off-balance effect, frequently preventing optimal utilization of this powerful debuff.

The passive abilities generally perform well, with Flourish excelling by boosting magicka and stamina recovery by 20%. Savage Beast generates ultimate, previously considered powerful, but with current subclassing mechanics, passives scaling per slotted class ability may prove suboptimal when you can only accommodate one Animal Companion skill, such as Deep Fissure.

In summary, Animal Companions maintains viability, particularly for players preferring animal or druid-focused thematic builds.

8. Restoring Light (Templar)

Restoring Light excels as a support specialization focused on healing and resource sustainability. The premier ability Rune Focus delivers major resolve for enhanced armor alongside healing-over-time effects and stamina or magicka regeneration. While major resolve proves difficult to obtain in solo configurations, Restoring Light masterfully combines defensive and restorative options.

Extended Ritual supplements with additional passive healing, gradually restoring health over duration. This skill’s unique advantage maintains healing effects even during knockdown or stun conditions—exceptionally beneficial for solo content. It dramatically improves survivability beyond typical expectations.

For enhanced damage output, players can select the Retribution morph, assuming adequate healing capacity exists.

Another exceptional ability, Repentance, provides cost-free stamina and health restoration complemented by passive recovery enhancements, ranking among the premier skills for stamina-oriented builds.

To construct exceptionally durable solo builds approaching near-unkillable status, incorporating these abilities proves highly effective.

The passive abilities offer additional healing and defensive advantages, including Sacred Ground granting minor mending and Mending providing up to 13% bonus to all healing effects.

Additionally, Light Weaver gained new functionality in update 46, automatically blocking for 2 seconds during channeled attacks like Sweep or Arcanist’s Beam. This enhancement provides another compelling reason to select Restoring Light for enhanced solo protection.

7. Storm Calling (Sorcerer)

Within the Storm Calling specialization, the definitive skill for solo adventurers remains Critical Surge, delivering passive healing whenever damage is dealt. This proves particularly effective for classes utilizing multiple damage-over-time effects, as healing continues passively even during crowd control effects.

Hurricane performs excellently, providing armor bonuses, movement speed increases, and consistent area damage. It synergizes perfectly with Critical Surge for sustained passive healing.

The Storm Calling skill line features outstanding passive abilities, making it highly attractive for subclassing solo configurations. Energized boosts shock and physical damage, with shock damage being especially valuable for heavy attack lightning staff builds. Players will experience substantial recovery improvements by slotting Capacitor, recently upgraded to enhance all three resource recovery types instead of exclusively magicka.

Through the Amplitude passive, players gain increased raw damage scaling with enemy health. Expert Mage provides additional weapon and spell damage for each slotted Sorcerer ability.

This specialization delivers comprehensive support, making it valuable consideration as secondary or tertiary skill line to enhance solo build performance both offensively and defensively. An outstanding selection overall!

6. Siphoning (Nightblade)

While commonly perceived as a healing-focused line, Siphoning’s ultimate generation capabilities, resource sustainability, and solid damage output establish it as powerful solo build component.

Siphoning Attacks regenerates magicka and stamina while providing healing based on damage dealt. Skills including Swallow Soul and Sap Essence heal proportionate to damage inflicted, with Sap Essence scaling healing based on the number of targets affected.

The passive abilities within Siphoning demonstrate unexpectedly high effectiveness. Magicka Flood now increases both stamina and magicka by 6% rather than exclusively magicka. Additionally, Catalyst delivers impressive 30 ultimate when consuming potions. Players benefit from enhanced healing through Soul Siphoner and substantial passive ultimate generation via Transfer.

Overall, the Nightblade’s Siphoning skill line represents a valuable asset, offering significant ultimate generation and healing, making it excellent choice for diverse solo builds.

5. Grave Lord (Necromancer)

Grave Lord is renowned for comprehensive buffs, debuffs, and passive enhancements. Skills such as Shocking Siphon provide substantial sorcery and prophecy bonuses, while Skeletal Mage enhances weapon and spell damage. Unnerving Boneyard provides area-of-effect major breach, while the Frozen Colossus ultimate delivers area-of-effect major vulnerability.

Damage output with Grave Lord’s abilities proves remarkably impressive, featuring skills like Blighted Blastbones for area damage and Shocking Siphon for sustained damage-over-time effects.

The Grave Lord passive abilities perform exceptionally well, particularly Death Knell granting 20% bonus critical chance when enemies enter execute range. This becomes particularly significant when combined with S-tier solo skill lines, causing enemies to rapidly disintegrate.

Players also gain access to Dismember, providing valuable passive penetration—an exceptional advantage for solo gameplay. Additionally, the Rapid Rot passive offers 10% bonus to damage-over-time effects.

For players seeking damage enhancement while securing buffs and debuffs for solo content, the Necromancer’s Grave Lord skill line warrants serious consideration.

These elite-tier skill lines deliver exceptional damage and utility through both active abilities and passive benefits. For most optimized builds, incorporating at least one S-tier line as primary specialization becomes essential, given their extraordinary power potential.

4. Dawn’s Wrath (Templar)

The Dawn’s Wrath specialization features Radiant Destruction, an outstanding execute ability that can provide healing through the Radiant Glory morph.

Players access numerous other powerful damage skills, including Vampire’s Bane delivering strong damage-over-time while providing major prophecy and savagery access. Solar Barrage provides additional damage while applying the empower buff. Purifying Light benefits solo play through additional healing capabilities.

The passive abilities within this line prove equally impressive. Illuminate grants bonus spell damage via minor sorcery—a substantial enhancement. The Restoring Spirit passive offers significant cost reduction benefits. Furthermore, the Prism passive enhances ultimate generation capacity.

As demonstrated, Dawn’s Wrath presents abundant excellent options and powerful passives, ranking among the premier soloing skill lines in ESO.

3. Aedric Spear (Templar)

Aedric Spear contains the legendary DPS ability Puncturing Sweep, which provides healing while dealing area damage. This skill can form the cornerstone of complete solo build configurations.

Another highly recommended solo ability frequently overlooked by players is the damage shield skill Radiant Ward. This ability’s shield strength increases with each enemy struck.

Blazing Spear represents another excellent damage-over-time option within this specialization. With adequate bar space, players can incorporate Focused Charge for gap closing and major protection benefits.

However, what truly distinguishes Aedric Spear from other ESO skill lines are its passive benefits, many activatable without slotting Aedric Spear abilities—making them invaluable for single-bar builds.

Recently, multiple Aedric Spear passives received enhancements, including Spear Wall now granting minor protection and minor berserk. The classic Burning Light passive provides significant magic damage enhancement. Additionally, Balanced Warrior received upgrades increasing both weapon and spell damage by 6%—substantial improvement for endgame builds. Finally, the Piercing Spear passive provides 10% critical damage increase when slotting Aedric Spear ability.

Overall, this skill line deserves serious consideration for any subclassing solo configuration.

2. Assassination (Nightblade)

The Assassination specialization concentrates on damage output, particularly critical damage mechanics. Core abilities include Impale or Killer’s Blade for powerful single-target execution and Surprise Attack or Concealed Weapon for focused DPS performance. The ultimate ability Soul Harvest delivers massive single-target damage while generating ultimate per kill. Additionally, Relentless Focus, recently buffed to stack ten times, passively grants up to 400 weapon and spell damage—extraordinary enhancement.

The passive benefits from Assassination rank among the game’s strongest currently. Master Assassin increases critical chance approximately 7% while flanking, though this provides limited benefit for solo players unless utilizing companions or pets.

Next, the Executioner passive provides substantial sustainability, restoring 1,000 magicka and stamina per kill—massive advantage for solo gameplay. Pressure Points grants additional 2.5% critical chance per slotted Assassination ability. Hemorrhage adds another 10% critical damage bonus, with its minor savagery effect providing around 6% additional critical chance.

As evident, these passive abilities excel for solo content and dramatically boost damage potential. Players need only equip one Assassination skill to activate all benefits. Combined with other powerful abilities and strong ultimate available, Assassination becomes highly effective subclassing option.

1. Herald of the Tome (Arcanist)

The premier soloing specialization is Herald of the Tome from the Arcanist class. This line features Pragmatic Fatecarver, the game’s superior area-of-effect damage ability. With its powerful damage shield and recent updates enabling direct damage functionality, it pairs perfectly with the Reaving Blows champion point star for healing.

Virtually every ability within this line performs impressively, with strong synergistic relationships. Cephaliarch’s Flail represents another standout skill; it provides healing while immobilizing enemies and generating Crux. Recuperative Treaties enhances damage, restores resources, and passively builds Crux accumulation. Additionally, The Languid Eye stands as incredible ultimate regarding damage output relative to cost.

Regarding passive benefits, all demonstrate exceptional power. Notably, Fated Fortune provides substantial 12% critical damage buff when spending or generating Crux. Splintered Secret also excels for solo gameplay, increasing penetration per slotted Herald of the Tome ability.

Overall, this specialization equips players to dominate any game content, making it nearly impossible to overlook for subclassing configurations. Consequently, it earns the top position in this comprehensive guide.

ESO’s subclassing system delivers unprecedented flexibility for crafting powerful solo builds customized to individual play preferences. Whether prioritizing maximum DPS output, robust resource sustainability, or exceptional survivability, optimal skill lines exist to match every gameplay approach.

From Restoring Light’s versatile support capabilities to Herald of the Tome’s raw destructive power, these elite-tier specializations can elevate your gameplay experience to extraordinary levels. Which skill line will you select? Share your perspectives in the comments section! Remember to explore Hack The Minotaur’s YouTube channel for additional ESO strategies and guidance.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE:

ESO Subclass Build: Magicka Sorcerer Solo

How to Prepare for the Subclassing System of ESO

ESO Update 46: Which Class to Choose for Subclassing

No reproduction without permission：GameCDjnh » Best Skill Lines for Subclass Solo Builds in ESO Expert analysis of the top subclass skill lines for dominating solo content in ESO