Magicka Sorc Tanking

KingYogi415

I'm looking for advice on tanking as a magicka sorc.

I have been able to tank regular dungeons pretty easy with my shields and pet.

Is being a shield heavy magicka sorc tank viable for vet dungeons?

I wear 5 piece heavy seducer and 4 piece mag.

Cheers!

Pepsi2853_ESO

earlier today i ran a dungeon with what i believe was a magicka sorc on vcoa. he was the tank, with only 10k hp, yet his shield kept him alive longer than any of us. i haven't played a sorc yet but from what i've seen from them they can tank pretty well.

KingYogi415

I imagine 99 points in baston should do the trick.

NovaShadow

I have a friend who tanks on his sorc and he seems to do it easily.

I'm tempted to try it when I get my baby sorc leveled.

bigted209

Sorcs can make great tanks, just have to keep those shields rolling, the Lightning form skill(name eludes me...) is also really handy. Resistance buff and damage output with it, bit of liquid lightning.... Really viable.

CreepyPahuska

KingYogi415 wrote: »

Is being a shield heavy magicka sorc tank viable for vet dungeons?

Totally. For a v16 character, aim for :
- 28k Hp
- 13k Stamina (using purple food is enough for that)
- 30k+ Magicka
- 1300+ Magicka recovery
- 32.5k Resistances

Use Sword & Board in the first bar & resto staff in the second. This way you can recover your ressources with heavy attacks.
For the damage shields, it's probably obvious, but use Hardened Ward & Harness Magicka.
And don't forget to put some crowd control skills in your bars, like Restraining Prison & Negate. They are the sorcerer's strength

KingYogi415

CreepyPahuska wrote: »

KingYogi415 wrote: »

Is being a shield heavy magicka sorc tank viable for vet dungeons?

Totally. For a v16 character, aim for :
- 28k Hp
- 13k Stamina (using purple food is enough for that)
- 30k+ Magicka
- 1300+ Magicka recovery
- 32.5k Resistances

Use Sword & Board in the first bar & resto staff in the second. This way you can recover your ressources with heavy attacks.
For the damage shields, it's probably obvious, but use Hardened Ward & Harness Magicka.
And don't forget to put some crowd control skills in your bars, like Restraining Prison & Negate. They are the sorcerer's strength

What about gear advice?

Should i run 5 heavy 2 light? or 5 light 2 heavy?

DerAlleinTiger

I'd give my own build, but I'm not a magicka sorc-tank, nor a stamina sorc-tank. I'm a raw health and armor kind of sorc-tank. Neither am I a min-maxer so it's probably not even greatly optimized. All I know is that it works and I'm happy with it, especially as a roleplayer.

KingYogi415

DerAlleinTiger wrote: »

I'd give my own build, but I'm not a magicka sorc-tank, nor a stamina sorc-tank. I'm a raw health and armor kind of sorc-tank. Neither am I a min-maxer so it's probably not even greatly optimized. All I know is that it works and I'm happy with it, especially as a roleplayer.

If you have successfully tanked multiple vet dungeons i'm open to all input!

CreepyPahuska

KingYogi415 wrote: »

CreepyPahuska wrote: »

KingYogi415 wrote: »

Is being a shield heavy magicka sorc tank viable for vet dungeons?

Totally. For a v16 character, aim for :
- 28k Hp
- 13k Stamina (using purple food is enough for that)
- 30k+ Magicka
- 1300+ Magicka recovery
- 32.5k Resistances

Use Sword & Board in the first bar & resto staff in the second. This way you can recover your ressources with heavy attacks.
For the damage shields, it's probably obvious, but use Hardened Ward & Harness Magicka.
And don't forget to put some crowd control skills in your bars, like Restraining Prison & Negate. They are the sorcerer's strength

What about gear advice?

Should i run 5 heavy 2 light? or 5 light 2 heavy?

I'm Running 7 Heavy, but I'm way over the Resistances cap so I guess that 5 Heavy, 1 Med & 1 Light could work as well, to get the Undaunted Passive.

I use 5 Armor Master (including 1 shield), 3 Alessia, 2 Willpower and 2 Endurance
The Armor Master set is a bit hard to get however, since its a 9 traits crafted set, so before, I used :
4 Spectre's Eye, 4 Alessia (including 1 shield), 2 Willpower and 2 Endurance

DerAlleinTiger

KingYogi415 wrote: »

DerAlleinTiger wrote: »

I'd give my own build, but I'm not a magicka sorc-tank, nor a stamina sorc-tank. I'm a raw health and armor kind of sorc-tank. Neither am I a min-maxer so it's probably not even greatly optimized. All I know is that it works and I'm happy with it, especially as a roleplayer.

If you have successfully tanked multiple vet dungeons i'm open to all input!

I have a very long-winded, but mostly-detailed, guide on my build. It's a bit out-of-date since I was only VR13 when I made it and I've since brought Vassa up to VR16. That being said, his build really hasn't changed at all since then. It's a PvE build designed to be very simple and very easy to build with no real grinding or super pricey purchases. It's also, again, not min-maxed at all. I'm sure the top 1, 5, even 10% of players could easily tell me a thousand different ways my build is 'wrong.' However, I have run every single vet dungeon with this build and completed them, along with every single death challenge and speed run (save for CoA, but honestly that's just a matter of me not bothering yet since it doesn't give a dye - I did get the no-death run for CoA on my first go with some friends who knew the dungeon well enough to give me good instructions). I've now also tanked HRC and AA both speed runs, as well as regular DSA and I -almost- had vDSA last night but our team was just a hair short on DPS and we were tired after 4 hours of it plus just running the regular beforehand. Completed regular MoL as well. Just trying to find a group to get SO and that sweet jade dye. So take from that what you will, it's not min-maxed but it sure works!

http://thesunbirds.enjin.com/forum/m/36111917/viewthread/25728363-vassa-tank-build-guide

Let me know if you can't get to that page. It -should- be publicly available, but if not just let me know. I do have to revise it an include my CP spread, but I don't have much time to do that today. Hope it helps!

CreepyPahuska

I just realised I wrote this guide in a private message recently, I hope it helps :

Attribute Points :
54 into Magicka and 10 into Health. I get most of my Health with set bonuses and glyphs. putting points into magicka makes your character more versatile, cause one thing that is nice about sorc tanks is that champions points aren't incompatible between DPS & Tank build, so you can easily become a DPS just by changing your skills and your equipement.


Magicka : 30.5k
Health : 29k
Stamina : 13.5k

Mag Recovery : 1419
Health Recovery : 457
Stamina Recovery : 616

Spell Resistance : 33.7k (38.9k with the Armor Master buff up)
Physical Resistance : 31.6k (36.8k with the Armor Master buff up)

The most important stats are :
Magicka : your damage shields scales entirely on your max magicka, 30k Magicka is nice, it's not really necessary to have more, but try not to have less
Health : Well, this is obvious, you're a tank so you need HP, nothing new here, but since you spam your damage shields, you don't need a lot of HP like a stamina build. I go down to 26.7k when I'm on my second bar and it's enough. Don't go over 29k, you won't need that much.
Stamina : Even if this is a magicka build, you still need stamina to block, rupt, taunt, etc... in most cases 13k of stamina is good but I keep a set of jewels with the robust trait to get a bit more in some occasions. Raids for example require a more "classical" type of tanking so I try to get up to 15k or 16k by sacrificing some magicka & magicka regen.

Magicka recovery : You'll be spamming your damage shields a lot so obviously, recovery is important, 1300 is good, you can go higher but don't sacrifice too much of the other stats

Spell and Physical Resistance : It doesn't reduces the damages absorbed by your shields, but you still need a decent resistance cause you won't be able to have your shields up 100% of time. 30k is fine, going over 33 or 34k is useless.

Skills :

Bar 1 : One Hand & Shield
Hardened Ward (your main shield, absorbs both physical & magical damages)
Pierce Armor (your taunt, the other morph is useless for a tank)
Absorb Magic (I almost never use this, but the passive bonus for having it slotted is really nice)
Harness Magicka (your secondary shield, it absorbs magical damages and restores a lot of magicka)
Bound Aegis (Minor resolve, Minor Ward, and most importantly 8% more magicka)

Ulti : Suppression Field (stuns everyone for 12 seconds, this is by far the best CC skill in the game)

Bar 2 : Restoration Staff
Restraining Prison (your main CC ability to keep mobs from running in all directions)
Inner Fire (your magicka ranged taunt)
Liquid Lightning (The other morph is nice too, maybe even better. This is your damaging AOE skill. It adds a bit of DPS and helps you aggro packs of mobs)
Boundless Storm (Major Resolve and Major Ward, try to keep this up all the time)
Bound Aegis (needs to be in both bars since it's a toggle)

Ulti : Energy Overload (tanking with Overload is really fun and does a nice DPS, and it gives you access to a third bar)

Bar 3 : Energy Overload
Mage's Wrath (Finisher)
Inner Fire
Hardened Ward
Boundless Storm
Bound Aegis

Champion Points :
Red :
Bastion : it increases the size of your shields, put 100 points in it.
Hardy & Elemental defender : since Thieve's Guild, I've heard that those two reduces the damages before they hit your shields. I haven't been able see it for myself yet, but if it's true, it's really nice.
Block Expertise : it's always nice to have a few points here if you can.

Green :
Go for arcanist & magician to increase your magicka recovery and reduce the magicka cost of spells.

Blue :
There isn't really anything related to tanking here, so you can put some DPS based points like Elemental Expert

I manage my ressources mostly by using heavy attacks, with the sword or with the staff, depending on wich ressource I need. Energy overload also restores magicka on every hit, and Harness Magicka also restores magicka when it gets damaged, so basically, you'll rarely run out of magicka.
I only block when it's really necessary (heavy attacks for example, to avoid stuns and other CC... or when you have too many mobs on you and your shields can't hold them)

Septimus_Magna

Most vet dungeons can be tanked with 5x light, 1x medium and 1x heavy armor and a couple dmg shields. Hardened Ward for physical dmg, Harness Magicka for spells and Healing Ward for difficult moments (or to help a group member out).

With S&B (extra magicka enchant) you should aim for 43k+ max magicka with tri-stat food, inner light and bound aegis. This will make your dmg shields huge with 100 CP into the Bastion. With a max spell dmg setup my sorc gets a 25k dmg shield just from hardened ward. If you stack more into max magicka (with 4pc spell power cure and elemental succession for example) this will be even more.

Defensive Posture (S&B) helps to reduce block cost but you only need to block heavy attacks to avoid getting knocked down etc. Dont block to much because it only wastes stamina because your shields take the dmg. If you make a build with a very big magicka pool, decent magicka regen and some block cost reduction you'll have no issues tanking most vet dungeons.

dsalter

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Most vet dungeons can be tanked with 5x light, 1x medium and 1x heavy armor and a couple dmg shields. Hardened Ward for physical dmg, Harness Magicka for spells and Healing Ward for difficult moments (or to help a group member out).

With S&B (extra magicka enchant) you should aim for 43k+ max magicka with tri-stat food, inner light and bound aegis. This will make your dmg shields huge with 100 CP into the Bastion. With a max spell dmg setup my sorc gets a 25k dmg shield just from hardened ward. If you stack more into max magicka (with 4pc spell power cure and elemental succession for example) this will be even more.

Defensive Posture (S&B) helps to reduce block cost but you only need to block heavy attacks to avoid getting knocked down etc. Dont block to much because it only wastes stamina because your shields take the dmg. If you make a build with a very big magicka pool, decent magicka regen and some block cost reduction you'll have no issues tanking most vet dungeons.

one block cost and one stamina regen and a stamina/magicka cost reduction usually does the trick actually since then you have enough regen for a taunt or 3 in succession, i'd say use the magicka one from undaunted but in truth it depends on what setup your group is depending on if you need to lower enemy armor or not

edit: forgot a jewel

Torbschka

CreepyPahuska wrote: »

KingYogi415 wrote: »

CreepyPahuska wrote: »

KingYogi415 wrote: »

Is being a shield heavy magicka sorc tank viable for vet dungeons?

Totally. For a v16 character, aim for :
- 28k Hp
- 13k Stamina (using purple food is enough for that)
- 30k+ Magicka
- 1300+ Magicka recovery
- 32.5k Resistances

Use Sword & Board in the first bar & resto staff in the second. This way you can recover your ressources with heavy attacks.
For the damage shields, it's probably obvious, but use Hardened Ward & Harness Magicka.
And don't forget to put some crowd control skills in your bars, like Restraining Prison & Negate. They are the sorcerer's strength

What about gear advice?

Should i run 5 heavy 2 light? or 5 light 2 heavy?

I'm Running 7 Heavy, but I'm way over the Resistances cap so I guess that 5 Heavy, 1 Med & 1 Light could work as well, to get the Undaunted Passive.

I use 5 Armor Master (including 1 shield), 3 Alessia, 2 Willpower and 2 Endurance
The Armor Master set is a bit hard to get however, since its a 9 traits crafted set, so before, I used :
4 Spectre's Eye, 4 Alessia (including 1 shield), 2 Willpower and 2 Endurance

sorry for necrotic, but one question @CreepyPahuska

I have wrote now many different posts of u (very well explained!), but theres one thing I dont get.

U mostly said u dont need much stam because of your shields etc., but why would u run armor master, because your resistances do not count on shields, they wouldnt run longer?

is it just if u have no mag and block, that u dont take to much dmg or do we just need it because once u will get hit when the shields are not on and u are dead?
My question is: wouldnt it be better to stay around something like ~25k resistances and focus more on mag recovery / max magicka?

CreepyPahuska

Indeed, resistances do not count on shields. I like having a good resistance cause I like having a backup solution and not rely on only one thing to survive. Also, I hate to focus on only one thing and be like "heyyyy look at me guys ! I got 150k shields, I'm indestrrrrrructible !". I prefer to invest on what's really necessary. When I'm happy with one stat, I focus on the next one on the list of priorities.
I've always played with about 30k shields, and always felt like having more was a waste of effort. So at that point, instead of getting more magicka, I prefer to focus on ressource management. I play with about 1400 magicka recovery and some reduced Mag cost. Here again, I don't need more, because I manage my ressources with heavy attacks. When you know the bosses mechanics well enough, you know when you can place a fully charged heavy attacks, and ressources management becomes easy.
Now that I got enough ressource management, I focus on stamina. Actually, for most content, the only stam I need comes from the purple food. In raids I try to get like 2k more by switching some jewelry pieces.
Finally, now that I'm happy with all those stats, I can focus on the last one: resistances. As I said, I want good resistances, because if you rely on only one thing and that thing fails you, for any reason, you're dead. Those things happen... (Mantikora's DoT, your cat is sitting on your shield key, a T-Rex ate your fingers, etc... and the list goes on. ) and when they happen, your group will most likely follow you in death. Being more versatile is safer in my opinion.
Besides, I like tanking with Energy Overload, it's fun and adds a bit of DPS, having good resistances allows me to be a bit more careless when I do that (I wouldn't try that on a raid boss though...)
Now for the choice of playing armor master... well I just like it cause it allows me to reach the resistances I want easily, plus I already have Harness Magicka in my bar wich triggers the set bonus. However, It may or may not be the best choice (especially since DB patch), but the only thing that matters in the end, is that you get the proper stats.

Now I'm not saying the sorc tanks builds with big shields, light armor, crappy resistances and 11k HP sucks. I don't like them but that's my opinion, it's only a different playstyle.

Torbschka

CreepyPahuska wrote: »

Indeed, resistances do not count on shields. I like having a good resistance cause I like having a backup solution and not rely on only one thing to survive. Also, I hate to focus on only one thing and be like "heyyyy look at me guys ! I got 150k shields, I'm indestrrrrrructible !". I prefer to invest on what's really necessary. When I'm happy with one stat, I focus on the next one on the list of priorities.
I've always played with about 30k shields, and always felt like having more was a waste of effort. So at that point, instead of getting more magicka, I prefer to focus on ressource management. I play with about 1400 magicka recovery and some reduced Mag cost. Here again, I don't need more, because I manage my ressources with heavy attacks. When you know the bosses mechanics well enough, you know when you can place a fully charged heavy attacks, and ressources management becomes easy.
Now that I got enough ressource management, I focus on stamina. Actually, for most content, the only stam I need comes from the purple food. In raids I try to get like 2k more by switching some jewelry pieces.
Finally, now that I'm happy with all those stats, I can focus on the last one: resistances. As I said, I want good resistances, because if you rely on only one thing and that thing fails you, for any reason, you're dead. Those things happen... (Mantikora's DoT, your cat is sitting on your shield key, a T-Rex ate your fingers, etc... and the list goes on. ) and when they happen, your group will most likely follow you in death. Being more versatile is safer in my opinion.
Besides, I like tanking with Energy Overload, it's fun and adds a bit of DPS, having good resistances allows me to be a bit more careless when I do that (I wouldn't try that on a raid boss though...)
Now for the choice of playing armor master... well I just like it cause it allows me to reach the resistances I want easily, plus I already have Harness Magicka in my bar wich triggers the set bonus. However, It may or may not be the best choice (especially since DB patch), but the only thing that matters in the end, is that you get the proper stats.

Now I'm not saying the sorc tanks builds with big shields, light armor, crappy resistances and 11k HP sucks. I don't like them but that's my opinion, it's only a different playstyle.

Thank you for the well-explained informations! I dont wanna go for 11k HP and low resistances, because as u mentioned, 1 mistake and ur gone. I just aimed for more mag reg and max magicka.

I just tanked ICP without any problems, but I'm very concerned about tanking 12man Trials (Lorkhau and Sanctum vet).

I used the following sets:

5x Twice-Born-Star all divines
3x Transmutation Jewelry with 1x Mag Regen, 1x Stam regen and 1x Block cost reduction
2x Bloodspawn / Engine Guardian (wasnt sure, so I tested both, I think I prefer bloodspwan but im not sure if its getting activated while I have a shield up?)

all in heavy

the weaponsa re not final, I just had
2x Magnus but I am to go for
2x Endurance for the health or something. I played Dual Sword Shield and for 2nd Boss even Dual Wield on Overload bar.

My stats were like:

38k magicka
2,2k Magicka reg
22k Life (I think I should sacrifice magicka Glpyhs for at least 25k HP)
14k Stam
27k Resis (with BA and Storm on)

I had no issues at all, I barely blocked and sometimes if I was at 30% mag I blocked for 3-4 Seconds and with constitution + that reg and a potion was instead full magicka again.

Do u think (if I get a higher Life) could work in Law and Sanctum vet?

Edit: I did run Mage and Atronach Mundus, I could swap the mage maybe for the + health or resistanced, dunno ^^ Some flexibility here for what u are doing, I really like that.

mcurley

@KingYogi415

My 7H "magSorc" tank does fine in vet dungeons even without damage shields. I'm only using easily obtained/crafted gear so I'm still very far from having the setup I want and I only have 230ish CP.

Using:

3 Willpower
5 Twilight's Embrace (only CP150)
3 Fasalla's Guile (4 on S/B bar)

I have around 32k Health, 20k Magicka, and 15k Stamina

S/B + Restoration Staff allows for good sustain of both resource pools using heavy attacks.I keep tri-pots available but almost never have to use them thanks to the recent constitution buff.

I thought I might have to use some different gear to do the more difficult dungeons but I haven't had any problems yet... perhaps tanking is a bit too easy in 4-man dungeons right now.

CreepyPahuska

@Torbschka

The problem with ICP is that I don't think that it's still a good way to check the viability of a build. It became too easy when nerfed Ibomez, and now it's even worse with the global nerf from DB. However, I can't really speak for MoL since I've never had the chance to try it, and I haven't been in the new version of SO, but if it's trully harder than the old version, your HPs and resistances are probably going to be an issue. I was able absorb the Mantikora's attacks with my shields, and it hits quite slowly so you have some time to place heavy attacks, but the DoT might kill you. It hits really hard, especially if you DDs don't share it properly (if they're not experienced, it will happen).

I think your stats are not perfectly balanced. it stands somewhere between a build like mine, and a build like big-shield-and-nothing-else.
I think you should sacrifice some Magicka recovery and max Magicka, to get more HP and resistances. In my opinion, you could use at least 3k more HP, 5k if you can, and at least 5k more resistances.
I also highly recommend you to try playing with a restoration staff. The 2nd passive skill grants you 30% Magicka on heavy attacks, it's really perfect for magicka management. Playing without that forces you to play with a huge amount of magicka recovery to be able to spam your shields. be careful however when you switch to your Staff bar, cause you'll be a little bit more squishy, so make sure to put a shield or two before you switch.
I'm not a big fan of the Twice Born Star myself, but you should start by trying to change the mundus stones and see what stats you can get. If that doesn't work, you can maybe try switching some pieces to reinforced, or even make a whole new set if you have the ressources. Another solution would be to change your accessories. I'm not sure but I think Transmutation jewelry only comes in Arcane (am I right ?). I play with willpower & endurance cause they come with different traits so I have more option to tweak my stats.

About the monster helms, I prefer not to use them. I tried differents sets, including bloodspawn (I'm almost sure that it procs through the shields by the way), but I haven't found one that was really worth it, so I prefer to use a normal crafted set instead (it also allows me to play with a Dwemer Head and shoulders, wich looks pretty badass xD).

Torbschka

Thank you, I will definitely use your input and tweak my stuff around!

As I said, I am scared to tank new veteran Law and Sanctum. Mainly all my "buddies" (well its not the main guild, just a raidgroup, u have to do that stuff on ps4) are very sceptical and I hear all the time "why the *** we want a mag sorc tank instead of a DK" etc.

Well, ICP was easy, but I am scared to totally get demolished. Right now If I use hardened ward and harnesss magicka with my 39k mag I can run around without block against bosses for like 4-5 seconds. Manticore will demolish it with 1 hit, wont he?

CreepyPahuska

Torbschka wrote: »

Thank you, I will definitely use your input and tweak my stuff around!

As I said, I am scared to tank new veteran Law and Sanctum. Mainly all my "buddies" (well its not the main guild, just a raidgroup, u have to do that stuff on ps4) are very sceptical and I hear all the time "why the *** we want a mag sorc tank instead of a DK" etc.

Well, ICP was easy, but I am scared to totally get demolished. Right now If I use hardened ward and harnesss magicka with my 39k mag I can run around without block against bosses for like 4-5 seconds. Manticore will demolish it with 1 hit, wont he?

Well forgive me for your buddies, but if that's truly what they think, f*** them. The problem isn't that you're a mag sorc tank, it's their lack of open-mindedness, like a lot of people on TESO unfortunately. What they need for the raids is a good tank, and being a DK doesn't necessarily means being good (just like being a templar doesn't imply being a good healer).

Now, you will probably get totally demolished. Once, maybe twice, who knows. Raids aren't like a walk into vet spindleclutch. They're hard, the mechanics are tricky. If you've never been there you'll have to learn the mechanics and the bosses moves (wich attack needs to be blocked, etc...). Also, if you die it won't necessarily be your fault. There's are 11 people behind you, if one of them fails at doing his job, it may just bring the whole group down. For example, if you get killed by the Manticore's DoT, it will most likely not be your fault, but the fault of the DDs who probably didn't came close enough to you to share it (and when I say "close", I literally mean "merge" into you)

About your shields, the manticore won't demolish it in one hit, but there is a high chance that there won't be enough left of it to absorb another. That's the reason why I don't like playing with more than 30k shields (actually in raids, I don't hesitate to go down to 29k to get a bit more stamina), if you want more, you need a lot more to be actually worth it.
Oh, and your shields are up, weave heavy attacks, to keep both ressources full, that's the most important.