Tanking in 1.6.1

emre.as.aslanb16_ESO · February 2015

As a result of the recent changes to blocking and stamina drain while doing so, I am asking myself: How are future tanks going to look like?
I am playing a Templar Tank on EU live at the moment and tried to tank on the PTS now. There is one thing I have to get used to: Losing 25% and more stamina per hit from bosses... which is ridiculous. Sometimes I don't lose stamina at all, sometimes it depletes within seconds.

Considering the amount of bosses which need a lot of movement (dodge rolls, sprints etc), an empty stamina pool is fatal.

How are other Tanks looking at this issue? I'd like to hear your opinion towards this topic.

aco5712 · February 2015

Stack as much block cost reduction as possible haha. Otherwise damage shield and stop blocking to regain your stam? Have your templar healer give you shards

xherics · February 2015

I do not like the taunt costs... 4-5 taunts and out of stamina... ridiculous...

DeLindsay · February 2015

xherics wrote: »

I do not like the taunt costs... 4-5 taunts and out of stamina... ridiculous...

Nothing about 1.6 or 1.6.1 changed what you just said. On Live right now if you Taunt 4-5 trash enemies back to back you burn your resources. As for Boss fights, you should NOT be Taunting that often due to the immunity Bosses gain to Taunt if it's reapplied to often too many times. I've also been hearing 2 sides of this, as I didn't personally get a chance to Tank with my NA main while we had access to PTS. My Guild members are saying Vet Dungeons didn't really change much in difficulty, including Tanking. They cleared several Vet Dungeons including a CoH run with only 1 death and a few others with only minor issues.

The other side of it is some Players are stating Vet Dungeons are impossible in 1.6. The problem with much of those crying foul with the changes is that they are using Template Characters without a proper Gear setup and (at that time, last week) without many abilities even morphed.

As a Bosmer - Vampire - NB - Tank I almost never ran out of Stamina. The only exceptions I can even think of is Praxin in Vet SC and the Transmuted Hive Lord in Vet DC, but that happens to whomever gets hit with the "I'm just gonna lay here and take a nap" ability that completely drain all Stamina. There's so many trash mobs on the Praxin fight and the Magicka/Stamina bomb makes that fight challenging for resources, but even that can be fixed with Evil Hunter.

asteldian · February 2015

Anyone have the new block cost figures?

Harleyquincey · February 2015

I am, to say the least, concerned about how tanking will be affected by the somewhat silly costs of skills.

An example:

Live Server: Inner Beast costs around 252 of my 1.700ish magicka (w/o buff food)
PTS: Inner Beast costs around 4.000 of my 8.000 magicka (w/o buff food)

Add to this that Green Dragon Blood's cost has also increased a pretty big deal and you'll see how DK tanks are going to have an equally hard time now. I fail to see the reasoning behind all of this to be fair.

The other option would obviously be to morph Inner Beast so that it instead costs Stamina, this however further drains the stamina pool and is no longer an emergency-taunt. So I'd kindly ask to reduce the cost of Inner Beast a whole lot and some abilities such as Green Dragon Blood at least by some degree since the current state on PTS will mean insane ressource management issues imho.

DeLindsay · February 2015

Harleyquincey wrote: »

I am, to say the least, concerned about how tanking will be affected by the somewhat silly costs of skills.

Then don't look at what ZoS did to Ring of Preservation

paulsimonps · February 2015

I have yet test1.6.1 but in 1.6.0 i used a dk dunmer template character and i went through elden hollow veteran and crypts of heartveteran without issue, my stamina was fine most of the time, only a few times did my templar have tothow out shards, i fail to see what makes everythingso difficult, that is in the eyes of those that failed. Will test tanking the same dungeons on 1.6.1 later today.

BEZDNA · February 2015

Just finished vet daily for golden key on PTS on my tank and i can say for sure it's completly different.
On live server i had very strong tank build for dungeons focused on magica where i was able sucsesefuly tank and pull 1,5k dps on trash and 500 dps on boss fights with ZERO resourse problems, i had only 1 enchant on reduse cost of block and almost never run out of stamina.
Now on pts with the build from live server i have serius resourse problems with almost 20k magica and 1200 magica recovery i can use my skills just few times but that's not the main problem. The stamina drain from blocking is just insane - i was on ZERO stamina just in 10 sec on trash fights and i hade 5 heave, defencive stance and 1 enchant on block reduse cost.
At the final boss i had the same problems with stamina whenever 2 ghosts apear. Finaly i was forced to enchant 2 more rings with block cost reductions and to be honest that helped me a lot. Since then - no problems with stamina drain on block.
Hard to say right now what is the best way - but looks like i will not be able to sucsesefuly use magic skills and manage my stamina and magica while tanking as i used to on live (at list no befor i get a bunch of CP to invest in all sweet cost reduction passives)

timidobserver · February 2015

I think this was a PVP focused change. The point was to make it harder to create a tanky build that can also do heavy damage. It basically makes block cost reduction a requirement for blocking large amounts of attacks.

eserras7b16_ESO · February 2015

PvE Blocking was a joke kinda, now you'll need proper skills and enchants to tank

just enchant your jewelry with blocking reduced at it should be!

spoqster · February 2015

emre.as.aslanb16_ESO wrote: »

As a result of the recent changes to blocking and stamina drain while doing so, I am asking myself: How are future tanks going to look like?
I am playing a Templar Tank on EU live at the moment and tried to tank on the PTS now. There is one thing I have to get used to: Losing 25% and more stamina per hit from bosses... which is ridiculous. Sometimes I don't lose stamina at all, sometimes it depletes within seconds.

Considering the amount of bosses which need a lot of movement (dodge rolls, sprints etc), an empty stamina pool is fatal.

How are other Tanks looking at this issue? I'd like to hear your opinion towards this topic.

I didn't have time to test it in dungeons, but I did run around with my versatility build in Craglorn a bit. My first impressions (same char as on live) are that blocking has become ridiculously expensive. Blocking in a group of 6 mobs drained my stamina in a heartbeat. It felt useless and unpredictable. One moment your stamina is almost full, and the next it is empty and you die shortly after without much chance to do anything. I was so bad that I googled to see if the mobs were using a stamina drain spell.

I ended up not blocking and just stacked shields. It worked fine in trrms of success. But I don't want to play that way. I like the mix of attacking, shielding, evading, blocking. It would be a shame if it stayed like this. With block out of the loop, fighting is less interesting.