The Skull Crusher Build, Pure Dragon Knight
Almost Unkillable, 50K DPS
Designed for the Skull Crusher Event and the Night Market
Introduction
The Skull Crusher Event, for those who don't know, is the Friday evening challenge to solo world bosses whilst your guildies look on. We start with easy base zone bosses then go on to the much tougher DLC bosses. I started designing this build before I had the idea for the Skull Crusher challenge, and this is it's second major iteration. I had to wait for the updated Dragon Knight before publishing this build.
Below is the Superstars build for this character. It contains most things you need to actually copy the build and have some fun. After the Superstars screen, I discuss some of the details of the build and there is a short video of it in action in the Night Market.
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Build Discussion
Sets
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The two main sets for this build to work are Para Bellum from Maelstrom Arena and Sioria from Cloudrest. Essential is a monster set and the best I have found is Zaan, farmed from Scalecaller Peak on veteran difficulty. I have Zaan in Heavy, Para Bellum is a medium weight and Sioria is light, so we use that on the jewellery and the weapons.
The Spectral Cloak set from the daggers found in Black Rose Prison is a must for a good 6% increase in all damage whilst Blade Cloak is running (ie all the time). You can also use the Maelstrom Greatsword on the back bar, but I find its operation clunky, and it doesn't fit so well with the timings of this rotation.
Para Bellum provides a surprisingly good shield (almost 10k on this build) and is 50% of my healing on this build as it's pretty much constantly up. Sioria provides an increase in weapons and spell damage and is well-suited to this fire-damage build.
Divines and multi-effect enchants on all. Jewellery should be Triune with a magicka recovery enchantment
The Sioria daggers and the Black Rose daggers all have the infused trait with the Glyph of Prismatic Onslaught ( Itade + Hakeijo) which deals damage and recovers magicka, stamina and health, These are expensive but well worth it.
Mundus is The Lady for increased Physical and Spell Resistance
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Zaan
Zaan is an armour set in the Elder Scrolls Online that can be obtained in Scalecaller Peak. It is part of the Dragon Bones DLC pack. When you deal Critical Damage with a Light or Heavy Attack, you have a 33% chance to tether to your enemy for 10 seconds as long as you remain within 8 meters of them. Enemies touching the tether take 145 Flame damage every 1 second, increasing by 100% per tick and are afflicted with the Burning status effect. This effect can occur once every 20 seconds and scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.
Black Rose Dagger (Spectral Cloak)
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Activating Blade Cloak while in combat allows you to gain Spectral Cloak whenever Blade Cloak deals damage for 2 seconds, reducing your damage taken and increasing your damage done by 6%. Use Deadly Cloak for better timings with the rotation.
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Buffed Stats, Food and Potions
I was aiming for around 30K magicka and 30K Health. My resistances needed to be 30K minimum. I sometimes see this rise to a max of 40K in combat metrics, but only the first 35K of resists are counted. As you can see, specific resistances are very high, and it helps that this is a Nord Character; Nords are very resistant to frost, especially.
All attributes go into Magicka, after all, this isn't a tank, we still want to do reasonable damage. If we take too long to kill a boss it may well reset!​​​​
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Ingredients:
To achieve the restore effect for all three resources, you must use one of the following combinations:
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Bugloss + Columbine + Dragonthorn
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Bugloss + Columbine + Mountain Flower
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Columbine + Mountain Flower + Wormwood
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Required Skills: Recipe Improvement 1 and Recipe Quality 2 (Legendary).
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Ingredients:
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1 Perfect Roe (Obtained rarely by skinning common fish).
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1 Frost Mirriam (Often found through Provisioning hirelings or reward containers).
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1 Red Meat.
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1 Lemon.
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A good alternative and significantly cheaper is Witchmother's Potent Brew.
Champion Points
This set of CP is balanced for huge resistance, great shield longevity and good damage output. Feel free to mix and match depending on which area of the build you wish to improve or change.
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Rotation and how to play
Playing the Skull Crusher is really quite easy. Basically, you will utilise the heals and shield when needed, otherwise concentrate on buffing the Engulfing Dragon Fire with:
Shatterspike Mantle
Incinerate
Igneous Weapons
Quick Cloak
Heart of Flame
Refresh when necessary. I suggest getting the Fancy Action Bar Addon.
What is it like to play?
In a word, bloody great fun. There is something fantastic about going into almost any situation and, as long as you don't stand in very stupid you're never going to die. I often throw a taunt on to help out if we have no tank or not enough tanks (replace Molten Whip with the Undaunted Taunt Inner Rage). And, still do more damage than the average pug by far. It often feels like God Mode in a dungeon or trial. Yes, you have seen me die on this build, but only usually when I make a stupid mistake, or the tank loses taunt, and I'm hit with a 100K cleave.
Now, you can make this build even more defensive, but at the cost of damage, we want to maintain that 50K DPS so that it doesn't get boring or take so long on a boss it gives up and goes home for tea.
I love using this build, and you will often see me on it. I love everything about the new Pure DK and when the class masteries are launched, this will only get better. I will update the build at that point.
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Build Notes:
Version: 2
Date: May 2026
Race: Nord
Anything you can't see - it's there, check the Superstars screenshot carefully
Will there be updates? - This will be updated when Update 50 is launched.
Finally, I hope you find this build guide useful and enjoyable. I had a lot of fun putting it together and even more fun hacking and slashing.