With the Summerset update, we have new jewelry traits appearing. In particular, in this post, I will talk about Infused and how it compared to Arcane (respectively Robust) using a spell (respectively weapon) damage enchantment. I consider each dd class, magicka and stamina, as well as healplars ! In the first part of this post, I explain what “modifiers” are and I list up the ones involved in this comparison. Then, you will find a table that sums up the results I got, considering two situations : solo or in a group.

An Infused trait brings +60% on the value of the enchantment. Therefore, we will compare, respectively :

One spell damage enchantment (174 spell damage) with an Arcane trait (870 max magicka) vs. one spell damage enchantment with an Infused trait (278 spell damage) : that is, 870 max magicka ( Arcane ) vs. 104 spell damage ( Infused ) .

trait (870 max magicka) vs. one spell damage enchantment with an trait (278 spell damage) : that is, . One weapon damage enchantment (174 weapon damage) with a Robust trait (870 max stamina) vs. one weapon damage enchantment with an Infused trait (278 weapon damage) : that is, 870 max stamina ( Robust ) vs. 104 weapon damage ( Infused ).

In order to understand better the math behind all this, I invite you to check out the holy bible on Tamriel Foundry here. It’s a bit hard to read the first time, but it really includes everything you need to know about damage calculation in ESO.

Make sure to hover over the underlined skills or passives to see the tooltips !

Modifiers : what ?

We call “modifiers” all those bonuses that will modify our stats pools (magicka, stamina, spell damage, weapon damage, and so on). For example, Inner Light brings a 5% magicka modifier. They are relevant to this post because a legendary Arcane trait on a jewel will not bring us 870 magicka, but actually more than that because this magicka will be amplified. In order to compute how much magicka we will exactly get, we need to understand how these modifiers will “interact” with each other.

Max Magicka or Max Stamina

Every max magicka (or max stamina) bonus we get will be amplified the following way :

where all our modifiers will be additive. That means that, for example, if we are a magicka dd using Inner Light (5% additional max magicka) and you leveled up your Magicka Controller passive (2% additional max magicka), we will get +7% max magicka. Note that the extra 0.2 in the formula above comes from our Champion Points.

Spell Damage or Weapon Damage

Every spell damage (or weapon damage) bonus we get will be amplified the following way :

where, again, all our modifiers will be additive. That means that, for example, if we are a magicka dd using potions and getting Major Sorcery (20% additional spell damage) and Minor Sorcery (10% additional spell damage), we will get +30% spell damage.

Having understood this, we also need to understand how to “convert” spell damage into max magicka (or weapon damage into max stamina). For this, we need to know that most skills (healing skills or damaging skills) tooltips are :

for a magicka ability, or

for a stamina ability, where is just a scaling factor that will depend on the skills. What this means is that for most skills, damage or healing-wise, 1 spell damage (respectively weapon damage) will be equivalent to 10.5 max magicka (respectively max stamina). I wrote “most” skills, because there are exceptions, notably the Volatile Familiar‘s shock aoe scales only with max magicka, and the explosion of Power of the Light scales only with max stamina.

UESP website

If you are not sure of how some ability is scaling, you can check the UESP website. It gives you the tooltips of every single skill in the game. In particular, the “Ratio” that you can see on the picture underneath will give you the equivalence between spell damage and max magicka (or weapon damage and max stamina).

Having explained all this, in order to compare Infused vs Arcane (or Robust), we will use the following method

Lists all max magicka (respectively max stamina) modifiers, and all spell damage (respectively weapon damage) modifiers. Compute the effective max magicka (respectively stamina) given by the Arcane (respectively Robust ) trait, that is 870 max magicka (respectively stamina). Compute the effective extra spell damage (respectively weapon damage) given by the Infused trait, that is 104 spell damage (respectively weapon damage), and multiply that value by 10.5 to know the max magicka (respectively max stamina) equivalence. Compare the two values !

Magicka Damage Dealers

Magicka Modifiers

We will list here everything that increases our max magicka pool. With the Wrathstone patch, the racial passives don’t matter in this calculation, so it doesn’t matter what race you are playing!

Modifiers that don’t depend on our class:

That’s a total of +13% solo and +23% in group, that is independent of our class. Now let’s see the additional class modifiers we can have :

Magicka Dragonknights , Magicka Templar , Magicka Warden : no additional modifiers.

TOTAL : + 13 % solo and + 23 % in group.

Note that Wardens could have +8% from Northern Storm, but it seems that Magicka Wardens have more damage using the Eternal Guardian that needs to be double slotted.

, Magicka , Magicka : no additional modifiers. : + % solo and + % in group. Note that Wardens could have +8% from Northern Storm, but it seems that Magicka Wardens have more damage using the Eternal Guardian that needs to be double slotted. Magicka Nightblade : + 8 % with a siphoning ability slotted with the Magicka Flood passive.

TOTAL : + 21 % solo and + 31 % in group.

: + % with a siphoning ability slotted with the Magicka Flood passive. : + % solo and + % in group. Magicka Sorcerer : +8% with Bound Aegis slotted.

TOTAL : +21% solo and +31% in group.

Note for Healplars : healers have the same modifiers as a magicka templar, except they use six light and one heavy armor pieces, so they get only 4% with the Undaunted Mettle passive. Therefore, they have a total of +21% solo and +31% in group. Note that if you are an argonian, you will get even less, but as you will see in the conclusion, that doesn’t matter.

Spell Damage Modifiers

We will list here everything that increases our spell damage.

Modifiers that don’t depend on our class :

Major Sorcery (obtained with Spell Power Potions, for example) : + 20 %.

(obtained with Spell Power Potions, for example) : + %. If group : Minor Sorcery (obtained with a templar in the group through the Illuminate passive) : +10%.

That’s a total of +20% solo and +30% in group. Now let’s see the additional class modifiers we can have :

Magicka Dragonknight , Magicka Nightblade , Magicka Warden : no additional modifiers.

TOTAL : + 20 % solo and + 30 % in group.

, Magicka , Magicka : no additional modifiers. : + % solo and + % in group. Magicka Sorcerer : + 8 % with four sorcerer abilities slotted with the Expert Mage passive.

TOTAL : + 28 % solo and + 38 % in group.

: + % with four sorcerer abilities slotted with the Expert Mage passive. : + % solo and + % in group. Magicka Templar or Healer : Minor Sorcery up even solo.

TOTAL : +30% solo and +30% in group.

Stamina Damage Dealers

Stamina Modifiers

We will list here everything that increases our max stamina pool. With the Wrathstone patch, the racial passives don’t matter in this calculation, so it doesn’t matter what race you are playing!

Modifiers that don’t depend on our class :

Undaunted Mettle 4 %. (as we will see, the results do not change if we are using 7 medium)

%. (as we will see, the results do not change if we are using 7 medium) If group : Aggressive Horn +10%.

That’s a total of +4% solo and +14% in group, that is independent of our class. Now let’s see the additional class modifiers we can have :

Stamina Dragonknights , Stamina Nightblade , Stamina Templar , Stamina Warden : no additional modifiers.

TOTAL : + 4 % solo and + 14 % in group.

, Stamina , Stamina , Stamina : no additional modifiers. : + % solo and + % in group. Stamina Sorcerer : +8% with Bound Armaments slotted.

TOTAL : +12% solo and +22% in group.

Note : As we can see, stamina damage dealers get significantly less max stat modifiers than magickas.

Weapon Damage Modifiers

We will list here everything that increases our weapon damage. I will assume that we are on our front bar, with trap slotted and dawnbreaker, which of course increases our weapon damage. I will discuss the fact that we are not always on our front bar in the comparison section.

Modifiers that don’t depend on our class :

Major Brutality (obtained with Spell Power Potions, for example) : + 20 %.

(obtained with Spell Power Potions, for example) : + %. Agility 15 %.

%. Slayer 6 % with two fighter’s guild abilities slotted.

% with two fighter’s guild abilities slotted. Flawless Dawnbreaker 5 %.

%. If group : Minor Brutality (obtained with a dragonknight in the group through the Mountain’s Blessing passive) : +10%.

That’s a total of +46% solo and +56% in group. Now let’s see the additional class modifiers we can have :

Stamina Dragonknight : Minor Brutality up even solo.

TOTAL : + 56 % solo and + 56 % in group.

: Minor Brutality up even solo. : + % solo and + % in group. Stamina Nightblade, Stamina Warden : no additional modifiers.

TOTAL : + 46 % solo and + 56 % in group.

Stamina : no additional modifiers. : + % solo and + % in group. Stamina Sorcerer : + 4 % with four sorcerer abilities slotted with the Expert Mage passive.

TOTAL : + 50 % solo and + 60 % in group.

: + % with four sorcerer abilities slotted with the Expert Mage passive. : + % solo and + % in group. Stamina Templar : +6% with the Balanced Warrior passive.

TOTAL : +52% solo and +62% in group.

Comparison

In the table below, the first four columns show the effective max magicka (respectively max stamina) using an Arcane (respectively Robust) jewel vs. the “effective” max magicka (respectively max stamina) using an Infused jewel with a spell damage (respectively weapon damage) enchant, in Solo and Group situations. The last four columns show the comparison between the two, as well as the relative difference as a percentage, in Solo and Group situations.

Magicka Damage Dealers

With the recent changes, Infused is better in solo and group situations situations, for all magicka damage dealers. Note that this analysis assumed that we had all modifiers up at all time (for example, Inner Light double slotted), so Arcane will be even less interesting if you don’t have those up at all time.



Stamina Damage Dealers

For stamina damage dealers, Infused just wins hands down over Robust Solo or in Group. Note that here again, we assumed that we were on front bar at all time, cause we counted two fighter’s guild abilities (trap+dawnbreaker) up, however, I did the calculation without these (so removing 11% of weapon damage modifiers), and Infused is still above Robust by a lot.

Healers

As healers, we don’t have as many magicka modifiers as a magicka damage dealer, which makes Infused better than Arcane in a group.

Outro

I hope you found this analysis helpful. This analysis was made from a pure damage/healing output point of view, so it doesn’t consider the fact that Arcane or Robust jewels improve your sustain a bit, you should of course consider that and test it for yourself. As a final word, I’d like to emphasize the fact that this analysis only compared Infused to Arcane or Robust, and not to bloodthirsty. Indeed, bloodthirsty cannot really be “mathed out” as simply, as it requires you to know, in a specific fight, what fraction of your time you spend in excecute. As always, if you have any questions, please leave a comment !