Traits are a very important aspect to consider when making a PVE build. There's a wide variety of them and they impact a number of aspects in your build, such as: Damage, Resistances, Sustain, and Speed.

There's a lot of small decisions to make when choosing the right traits for a build in PVE. The goal of this article is to go over every trait in the game and describe its potential usefulness in a group PVE context. With this information you'll have a better understanding of why certain traits are used a lot while others are almost never seen in group PVE. If this is overwhelming, don't fret, as most builds will include what traits to run. This is for people who are curious about the theory behind the choices.

Armor Traits

• Divines - Most common trait. Used universally by DPS and somewhat commonly by Tanks and Healers as it provides a large buff to either your damage (with Thief or Shadow Mundus) or sustain (with Atronach Mundus).
• Infused - Occasionally used by healers to increase max stats. Only worth using on the 'large' armor pieces (Helmet, Chest, and Legs)
• Sturdy - Tank-exclusive trait that helps with sustain while blocking. If you're having issues with Stamina sustain it may be worth using but otherwise other traits will provide more benefit.
• Well-fitted - Tank-exclusive trait that helps with Stamina sustain. This can be extremely useful in niche circumstances but for most cases you don't roll enough for the sustain gain from this trait to be worth it.
• Reinforced - Tank-exclusive trait that gives more raw armor. This trait is extremely good if you're not hitting resistance cap (33k) on your setup, otherwise it's worthless as there's no benefit to being over resistance cap in PVE. Only use this trait on 'large' armor pieces (Helmet, Chest, and Legs)
• Nirnhoned - Extremely niche trait, basically never worth using in PVE as the armor it provides is less than reinforced on 'large' armor pieces and you'll never need the armor bonus it provides on 'small' armor pieces.
• Impenetrable - PVP exclusive trait, never use this in a complete PVE setup.
• Training - No benefit in PVE.

• Invigorating - The recovery from this trait is miniscule (A little over 100 for each stat), Divines + Atronach Mundus will give you more Magicka sustain and Divines is more flexible in usage.

   

Weapon Traits

• Nirnhoned - Most common trait for DPS builds that use Dual Wield for front bar. The weapon damage bonus synergizes really well with the passive that increases your weapon damage by 15% of your offhand weapon's stats.
• Charged - Other common trait for Dual Wield DPS setups and niche use in support setups. The extra status procs you get from this passive add up quite a bit of extra damage and has the ability to proc a lot of passives in the game (such as Stamina sustain for Dragonknight Tanks with the Combustion passive)
• Precise - Another common trait for DPS setups. If using a one-weapon front bar, this is the best trait to use in most scenarios as you're not getting the critical chance passive that daggers inherently give.
• Infused - Most common back bar weapon trait as it gives full uptime for your backbar enchant (5s duration with 5s cooldown). For DPS this means a LOT of extra Weapon Damage, and for supports it means more armor reduction on a boss from Crusher or damage reduction on a boss from Weakening.
• Sharpened - Niche trait for DPS setups. Not worth it in PVE unless doing solo content.
• Powered - Strong front bar trait for healers. Stronger heals are never a bad thing. Good trait to default to.
• Defending - Niche trait for tank setup. Can be useful to hit resistance cap but otherwise pretty useless. Would recommend hitting resistance cap in other ways if possible.
• Decisive - Niche trait that can be very useful for support builds with a lot of ultimate generation. Would stay away from this trait unless you have a LOT of sources of ultimate generation, as each one can independently proc this trait.

• Training - No benefit in PVE.

   

Jewelry Traits

• Bloodthirsty - Most common DPS jewelry trait. Almost no reason to run other traits as this provides so much extra weapon damage in execute.
• Infused - Niche DPS jewelry trait and common support jewelry trait. Helps supports get a ton of extra sustain or weapon damage and can be used on niche enchantments like potion cooldown reduction to get more out of them.
• Swift - Somewhat niche support jewelry trait. There's a lot of fights in trials where the extra movement speed is invaluable to doing special mechanics so it's worth having a set of jewelry with this trait if you plan on playing support a lot.
• Protective - Extremely niche tank jewelry trait. Never use this to hit resistance cap, losing infused hurts the rest of your build too much to justify it.
• Harmony - Niche tank jewelry trait. If group gives you plenty of synergies then the sustain from this trait can easily outdo infused, but it can feel bad in groups where that coordination is missing.
• Triune - Niche jewelry trait. The raw stats on tanks is okay but a lot of the time not needed at all. You'd much rather have a boost to your sustain.
• Healthy/Robust/Arcane - Niche jewelry trait. There's not really a reason to run these traits as the damage boost is worse than bloodthirsty/infused and the resource gain is not very useful.