Morrowind Sap Tank

wahoozie

Trying to be positive and come up with ideas on how to mitigate some of the recovery problems with the incoming patch, as magicka nightblade has always been my favorite way to tank. A rough build idea for vet 4-person content:

http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=14655

Using light armor master, I plan to take the stamina recovery morph of siphoning attacks and hope the passive recovery gained through light armor makes up for some of the loss. Note this calculator still uses pre-morrowind values, so I left the 'arcanist' cp node ~10% bonus to roughly show recovery after 10% cp reduction and 5% more due to lost armor passives. Also there are 0 points into the 'magician' to simulate the loss of that entire node. I have a charged lightning staff backbar as I intended to proc the 'off balance' cp passive, but as I went through some math I saw this would not be realistic to leave in my rotation.

Doing some rough calculations on the cost of maintaining our buffs:
10 second armor buff from annulment+armor master: ~390 mag/sec
mirage: ( 26 second evasion buff) ~115 mag/sec
summon shade: (18 second damage debuff and mitigation buff) ~127 mag/sec
refreshing path: (9 second heal and mitigation buff) ~331 mag/sec
funnel health: (10 second HoT) ~160 mag/sec

By alternating summon shade and refreshing path with slight delay, we could still maintain good uptime on the major ward and major resolve buffs we seek, however its clear to see that this is already reaching our recovery limits. At roughly 1123 magic/second to maintain, our ~1.2k magic/second (2360 recovery buffed with potions) leaves us very little room for using sap, the center point of self healing as a magicka nightblade tank. While you could slot elemental drain if no one in your group is currently using it (hope someone is), that only gives us a total of 357 magic/second to use sap and our range taunt. Note that we could gain some recovery from harness magicka, we can't rely on that as not all fights will have magic attacks hitting us.

In the case of reduce cost enchantments instead of recovery:
Annulement: ~339 mag/sec
Mirage: ~95 mag/sec
Summon Shade: ~99 mag/sec
Refreshing Path: ~274 mag/sec
Funnel Health: ~109 mag/sec

For a total of roughly 916 mag/sec. We also drop a large portion of our recovery, leaving us with 1469, or 735 mag/second, 180 less than we need to sustain just our buffs and healing.

This build is nearly at the mitigation cap without bloodspawn proc, so you could run two 1 peice monster helm sets with recovery bonuses, for an extra 129/second. We could drop the mirage skill and its evasion bonus to gain a small amount more. There are a few ways to gain magic recovery outside the class, through synergies or elemental drain as noted, but this will not be enough to cast healing and range taunt skills while sustaining in a reactive environment as content requires. I'm at a loss as to how to gain the magicka sustain lost without loosing an essential part of mitigation that is required to 'tank.' Using the other morph of siphoning attacks could fix this, but leaves us entirely unable to recover stamina other than heavy attacks, synergies and passive recovery (not blocking for 2 seconds.) We could switch to a more recovery-minded set, but will loose out on the ~8% mitigation provided by armor master. Any ideas or builds anyone else is working on, I would love to hear. Like I said, this is my favorite class to tank as and I would hate to see it taken from nearly entirely self-sufficient to begging the healer for recovery and constant healing.

Update - swapping armor master for a heavy seducer set leaves this build with a bit more room in magic drain vs recovery but would need testing if it's actually viable:
http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=14688

Update #2 - A final build I think I'll try once Morrowind drops:
http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=14752
It maintains quite a bit of damage for a tank, while still giving a small amount of group utility through the Sentinel monster set. I lack space on my hard drive to actually download the pts so I'll be doing testing with it soon when it comes out. It should be very do-able as long as block is sustainable through stamina return from siphoning attacks.

Kerioko

I found a build that will still work as the traditional sap tank, but you lose a ton of damage and healing power to be able to sustain the playstyle.

- 5 Heavy Seducer - 8% cost reduction and a ton of magicka regen to allow us to run 3 block costs glyphs
- 2 Heavy Sentinel - Provide us with stamina on heals, given the vast amount of hots you are running, this proc is almost always up when its available
- 5 Lich (SnB, Jewelry) - Probably the best way for magicka sustain next patch
- vMA/Master Resto - mutegen with vMA resto if you need more magicka sustain, master with springs if you need more stam sustain
- optional vMA ice staff - allows to alternate pools for blocking

Skills:

SnB - pierce, sap, funnel, shades, defensive stance, soul harvest
Resto - inner beast, mutegen (or springs), refreshing path, leeching, mirage, veil (or warhorn)
optional Ice - blockade, ele drain, path, leeching, mirage, veil

I have used this on PTS and havent had any problem tanking. The only downfall is you are forced to trade good tanking sets like ebon, alkosh, and teva's for sustain sets if you want to do anything other than hold block, taunt, and do the occasional light or heavy attack.

I tried another set-up of 5 blackrose/5 ebon/2 sentinel on duel SnB for a little group support. I had to run 3 cost reduce glyphs and atro mundus to even have a chance at not burning through resources. It worked OK, and would probably work better with a healer running shards and ele drain. The top set-up was what I had to run to be able to sustain without a healer running shards, orbs or ele drain.

wahoozie

I like the idea of sentinel for stam recovery, and while it does take away the group damage utility from more warhorns, it adds some back in group stamina sustain. Did you find it necessary to run lich and seducers? I am trying to avoid a solo build and maintain as much group buff/utility as possible. I've not managed to get alkosh but sunderflame has worked alright. Neither one seems practical on a magNB post-morrowind though. I'm really hoping to work in one of the new trials sets somehow, the low cost of soul-harvest tied with buffing two players damage by 15% seems strong, though I'm not sure it will overtake warhorn for the whole group.

Brrrofski

It'll work, but you'll lose all your damage. At which point, may as well be any other class.

I liked sap tank because it could deal damage. Most four man content doesn't need a tank, but it's nice to have. So I'd jump on my saptank to hold aggro and do damage.

Alteration mastery may be useful considering it'll reduce block cost next patch. I don't know, I'll have a play around when it launches.

wahoozie

Yeah, I guess I was trying to work around why everyone called them dead, but they're dead. I loved not needing to change gear as a tank for the pinion boss in vWGT. RIP shalk's/spc/bloodspawn. Was fun for a while.

Stannum

Im thinking of inverted tank build for NB (block on frost staff, stam regen build, manasteal and surprise attack spam, lots of rolldodge use, vigor heals), it will keep some DPS but it would be very different from former sup-tank build. And you cannot have 2 full sets with full monster in that case ((.

Brrrofski

wahoozie wrote: »

Yeah, I guess I was trying to work around why everyone called them dead, but they're dead. I loved not needing to change gear as a tank for the pinion boss in vWGT. RIP shalk's/spc/bloodspawn. Was fun for a while.

This is what I mean. Look at the gear you run. I use kagernacs/bloodthorn​/grothdrarr.

The different sets you can use currently on a saptank is what made it fun. It wasn't the same boring build every Stam dk tank used. There was variety. Not so much next patch

Turelus

Something Alcast said in his recent videos and streams which I forgot all about until then. You can slot attribute drain poisons to help keep yourself sustained.

Every little helps right?

wahoozie

Turelus wrote: »

Something Alcast said in his recent videos and streams which I forgot all about until then. You can slot attribute drain poisons to help keep yourself sustained.

Every little helps right?

I'm not very familiar with poisons, would the effect stack with minor magickasteal?

Stannum

Turelus wrote: »

Something Alcast said in his recent videos and streams which I forgot all about until then. You can slot attribute drain poisons to help keep yourself sustained.

Every little helps right?

They still require weapon atacks

IxSTALKERxI

Without siphoning attacks you're better off playing a DK and just use your imagination and pretend inhale is actually sap.

HugeMuffin

have you considered arch-mage? I'm looking into that to replace siphoning attacks, Jewels and 2x-sword+shield would probably not cost me too much physical for a light armor set, and I could still run a tanky body.

Silver_Strider

My poor Sap Tank is completely worthless now.

I tried to make it work, I really tried but there is just no way I can maintain my stamina and magic simultaneously with SA gutted as it is. I can build for sustain but then all group utility via sets (aka ONLY way NB have good utility) is gone out the window, not to mention I lose all my damage doing so as well. It's not like NB tanks were even that good outside 4 man groups but even that is gone now. It really hurts because my NB tank was the 1st character I had that cleared vDSA back in the old VR14 days, so seeing it become a shell of its old glory days is just heartbreaking.

I don't want another pack mule character.

Kerioko

With

wahoozie wrote: »

I like the idea of sentinel for stam recovery, and while it does take away the group damage utility from more warhorns, it adds some back in group stamina sustain. Did you find it necessary to run lich and seducers? I am trying to avoid a solo build and maintain as much group buff/utility as possible. I've not managed to get alkosh but sunderflame has worked alright. Neither one seems practical on a magNB post-morrowind though. I'm really hoping to work in one of the new trials sets somehow, the low cost of soul-harvest tied with buffing two players damage by 15% seems strong, though I'm not sure it will overtake warhorn for the whole group.

If I run master resto offbar with sentinel, running 5 heavy/2 Light I am able to get by running ebon/lich. this allows me to still have some group support and lich gives me enough magicka sustain to run leeching. Between light attack weaving, the occasional springs spam, and sentinel, I am able to run 1 block cost and 2 spell damage glyphs for 4 man dungeons and be fine on resources. The build loses out on warhorn uptime, but makes for a potent tank/healer than can run all non-dlc HMs without a healer!

@Brrrofski , I look forward to seeing what builds you run next patch as you have always provided a pretty good insight on sap tanking!

Stannum

does sentinel proc on self heal? (but anyway sentinel means that you cannot use swarm mother)

wahoozie

Sentinel does proc on self heals. Never been a fan of swarm mother, my theory is trash pulls are easy enough already, by the time I pull one or two in with that set, the whole mob is already dead.

Stannum

wahoozie wrote: »

Never been a fan of swarm mother, my theory is trash pulls are easy enough already, by the time I pull one or two in with that set, the whole mob is already dead.

SM helps a lot in situation like selene or blackheart heaven last boss fights. And it's also significantly reduces time running through trash. In other situation i usually replaced it with engine guardian. (Oh and i like SM in PvP)

Koensol

Stannum wrote: »

wahoozie wrote: »

Never been a fan of swarm mother, my theory is trash pulls are easy enough already, by the time I pull one or two in with that set, the whole mob is already dead.

SM helps a lot in situation like selene or blackheart heaven last boss fights. And it's also significantly reduces time running through trash. In other situation i usually replaced it with engine guardian. (Oh and i like SM in PvP)

Meh. Like @wahoozie said, if you have good dps, the set becomes redundant. In 4 mans at least. It is too clunky to use, has an internal cooldown, you need to wait for a range attack to actually pull them AND it will be hard to sustain come Morrowind. Not a great set for 4 man dungeons imo.

Stannum

Koensol wrote: »

Stannum wrote: »

wahoozie wrote: »

Never been a fan of swarm mother, my theory is trash pulls are easy enough already, by the time I pull one or two in with that set, the whole mob is already dead.

SM helps a lot in situation like selene or blackheart heaven last boss fights. And it's also significantly reduces time running through trash. In other situation i usually replaced it with engine guardian. (Oh and i like SM in PvP)

Meh. Like @wahoozie said, if you have good dps, the set becomes redundant. In 4 mans at least. It is too clunky to use, has an internal cooldown, you need to wait for a range attack to actually pull them AND it will be hard to sustain come Morrowind. Not a great set for 4 man dungeons imo.

How good DPS will help you to geather archers and healers that spawn far from boss on selene fight? At least one DD should run around the cave to clear them before there would be too much of them. With SM all of them are near the boss and burn in the group AoE.

Mysteri0n

with this update I would go engine guardian monster set to maintain resources

Koensol

Stannum wrote: »

Koensol wrote: »

Stannum wrote: »

wahoozie wrote: »

Never been a fan of swarm mother, my theory is trash pulls are easy enough already, by the time I pull one or two in with that set, the whole mob is already dead.

SM helps a lot in situation like selene or blackheart heaven last boss fights. And it's also significantly reduces time running through trash. In other situation i usually replaced it with engine guardian. (Oh and i like SM in PvP)

Meh. Like @wahoozie said, if you have good dps, the set becomes redundant. In 4 mans at least. It is too clunky to use, has an internal cooldown, you need to wait for a range attack to actually pull them AND it will be hard to sustain come Morrowind. Not a great set for 4 man dungeons imo.

How good DPS will help you to geather archers and healers that spawn far from boss on selene fight? At least one DD should run around the cave to clear them before there would be too much of them. With SM all of them are near the boss and burn in the group AoE.

Yes, but you lose out on a useful sustain monster set for tanking like engine guardian. Like I said, good dps will manage just fine. And those adds should die easily enough. It's a viable option for that fight, but with a good group I'd go for another monster helmet. Especially in Morrowind. Trials is a whole different story though because the adds there are significantly more nasty.

beatonthis

I love my sap tank so set out to make it viable with the useless change to siphoning strikes, so i decided to rebuild her and am really happy with how its turned out. Ive geared her this way now on live and shes a beast

the sets im using are:
2xSentinel of Rkugamz (both heavy) (heal and stam proc from heals, procs alot)
5x Desert Rose (2xRings, 2x Light 1x Weapon) (mag back every 4s when being hit)
5x Leeching Plate (1x Shield, 3x Heavy, 1x Neck)

Using S+B on both bars:
Front: Lotus Fan, Piecrce Armour, Swallow Soul, Absorb Magic, Refreshing Path, Veil
Back: Lotus Fan, Inner Fire, Sap Essence, Cripple, Summon Shade, Veil

Both absorb magic and cripple are my flex spot, can swap in pretty much anything but i like the extra mag from cripple on the aoe bar. I tend not to use mirage as both leeching and desert need me to take damage to proc, but do slot it sometimes if i need the extra resists

Autolycus

Stannum wrote: »

does sentinel proc on self heal? (but anyway sentinel means that you cannot use swarm mother)

Yes it does

wahoozie

Updated original post with a final build, will get to testing soon!

beatonthis

Another set im testing with is Shadow Walker, using it with cloak it basically converts 3k mag into 6k Health and Stam (3 ticks of 2050each per sec). You can still hold block and regen your stamina with it too, what i really need to test is if I taunt then cloak for the full 3s, will the mob i just taunted drop aggro and need to be retaunted after cloak ends, or will they stand there waiting for me to come back, or will they chase some1 else for 3s then come back to me when its over....

Think another good set to try would be the vengeance leech 3 piece set, any time u kill anything u get health, stam and mag back.

LtCrunch

beatonthis wrote: »

Another set im testing with is Shadow Walker, using it with cloak it basically converts 3k mag into 6k Health and Stam (3 ticks of 2050each per sec). You can still hold block and regen your stamina with it too, what i really need to test is if I taunt then cloak for the full 3s, will the mob i just taunted drop aggro and need to be retaunted after cloak ends, or will they stand there waiting for me to come back, or will they chase some1 else for 3s then come back to me when its over....

Think another good set to try would be the vengeance leech 3 piece set, any time u kill anything u get health, stam and mag back.

You used to be able to maintain aggro through cloak, but that was addressed a long, long time ago. Like within the first few after the game's launch. Unless they reverted the change since Imperial City was on the PTS then cloak will still drop aggro. Which is good. While it was quite amusing to tank a boss by taunting and staying in cloak the whole fight it was what I'd call completely broken.

aeowulf

LtCrunch wrote: »

You used to be able to maintain aggro through cloak, but that was addressed a long, long time ago. Like within the first few after the game's launch. Unless they reverted the change since Imperial City was on the PTS then cloak will still drop aggro. Which is good. While it was quite amusing to tank a boss by taunting and staying in cloak the whole fight it was what I'd call completely broken.

maybe that's the vision for NB tanks now... although maybe mobs should spend 1 or 2 seconds looking for the NB before agroing the party. the really broken bit was only the fact we could cast it quite a lot in a row, not casting it once.

it was completely broken yes, but probably less so than the changes to siphoning attacks will leave NB tanks post morrowind...

the issues i see with any nb tank build post siphoning changes mostly come down to mob management. A DK can charge in, drop talons, nice AE root & as around 1/3 of mobs are melee damage he is immediately only taking around 2/3 damage he would if all mobs could hit him on that initial pull. he can then chain in mobs and root again in place, all the while maintaining block and a massive great big igneous shield. This will change a little post morrowind, as i doubt they will be able to spam vigor too. Currently a NB can charge in and the only 'big' AE grab they have is sap essence but it does not root so the extra mobs come rushing over meaning the NB take around an extra 1/3 damage. it doesn't matter too much as sap essence covers this extra damage and it also covers the damage the other members of the party take from the lack of chains we have/sap not being huge. The reality is we end up using swarm mothers set combined with inner rage. loosing sap essence (which we will do indirectly through loosing the resource sustain it grants via siphoning) also means we will loose our only AE mob control we have and the healing we give to the party which helps counter our lack of control over mobs.

which is how delicate the balance is for a NB tank. the reason you don't see many is they are really tough to play. My health DK is ridiculous, he rocks a huge igneous shield with his 70k health pool and makes most content an absolute breeze for the party, but he is as boring as drilling for oil.

wahoozie

aeowulf wrote: »

LtCrunch wrote: »

You used to be able to maintain aggro through cloak, but that was addressed a long, long time ago. Like within the first few after the game's launch. Unless they reverted the change since Imperial City was on the PTS then cloak will still drop aggro. Which is good. While it was quite amusing to tank a boss by taunting and staying in cloak the whole fight it was what I'd call completely broken.

maybe that's the vision for NB tanks now... although maybe mobs should spend 1 or 2 seconds looking for the NB before agroing the party. the really broken bit was only the fact we could cast it quite a lot in a row, not casting it once.

it was completely broken yes, but probably less so than the changes to siphoning attacks will leave NB tanks post morrowind...

the issues i see with any nb tank build post siphoning changes mostly come down to mob management. A DK can charge in, drop talons, nice AE root & as around 1/3 of mobs are melee damage he is immediately only taking around 2/3 damage he would if all mobs could hit him on that initial pull. he can then chain in mobs and root again in place, all the while maintaining block and a massive great big igneous shield. This will change a little post morrowind, as i doubt they will be able to spam vigor too. Currently a NB can charge in and the only 'big' AE grab they have is sap essence but it does not root so the extra mobs come rushing over meaning the NB take around an extra 1/3 damage. it doesn't matter too much as sap essence covers this extra damage and it also covers the damage the other members of the party take from the lack of chains we have/sap not being huge. The reality is we end up using swarm mothers set combined with inner rage. loosing sap essence (which we will do indirectly through loosing the resource sustain it grants via siphoning) also means we will loose our only AE mob control we have and the healing we give to the party which helps counter our lack of control over mobs.

which is how delicate the balance is for a NB tank. the reason you don't see many is they are really tough to play. My health DK is ridiculous, he rocks a huge igneous shield with his 70k health pool and makes most content an absolute breeze for the party, but he is as boring as drilling for oil.

I've never seen mob management as an issue on any style of tank I've played. As a non dk (or sorc for that matter) you simply have to have different strategies as to how to pull mobs. I usually decide pre-pull between two tactics: either its a small pull, and no extra effort will be needed, simply taunt major adds and go; or it's a large pull and I will LOS around a corner to pull them all together. In either case, dropping the soul-tether ult from NB usually gives my dps more than enough time to nuke the group before they can start running around. With the great ulti gen from NB you can nearly drop it on every major add-pull while still having decent uptime on warhorn during boss fights.

aeowulf

i get it in the ear from my partner (healer) whenever someone dies due to me not scooping up most of the mobs, usually get a sore arm too

I think coming from over 15 years of playing MMO's it's kind of expected of the tank to get at least most of the mobs and i've been playing with my current group for years. Ultimate is reserved for horn for me, and i'm not convinced ultimate is generated that much faster for NB - yes we can get 2 every 4 seconds from casting a siphoning skill, but what will we cast every 4 seconds now? it's getting far too complicated and these changes are making it way more so - tanks are already the class dungeon finder waits for too

they should be trying to attract more people to taking the tank role, that will make the game more fun for all, the tanks that have had the role made more fun and the others not waiting so long in the queue

LtCrunch

aeowulf wrote: »

LtCrunch wrote: »

You used to be able to maintain aggro through cloak, but that was addressed a long, long time ago. Like within the first few after the game's launch. Unless they reverted the change since Imperial City was on the PTS then cloak will still drop aggro. Which is good. While it was quite amusing to tank a boss by taunting and staying in cloak the whole fight it was what I'd call completely broken.

maybe that's the vision for NB tanks now... although maybe mobs should spend 1 or 2 seconds looking for the NB before agroing the party. the really broken bit was only the fact we could cast it quite a lot in a row, not casting it once.

it was completely broken yes, but probably less so than the changes to siphoning attacks will leave NB tanks post morrowind...

the issues i see with any nb tank build post siphoning changes mostly come down to mob management. A DK can charge in, drop talons, nice AE root & as around 1/3 of mobs are melee damage he is immediately only taking around 2/3 damage he would if all mobs could hit him on that initial pull. he can then chain in mobs and root again in place, all the while maintaining block and a massive great big igneous shield. This will change a little post morrowind, as i doubt they will be able to spam vigor too. Currently a NB can charge in and the only 'big' AE grab they have is sap essence but it does not root so the extra mobs come rushing over meaning the NB take around an extra 1/3 damage. it doesn't matter too much as sap essence covers this extra damage and it also covers the damage the other members of the party take from the lack of chains we have/sap not being huge. The reality is we end up using swarm mothers set combined with inner rage. loosing sap essence (which we will do indirectly through loosing the resource sustain it grants via siphoning) also means we will loose our only AE mob control we have and the healing we give to the party which helps counter our lack of control over mobs.

which is how delicate the balance is for a NB tank. the reason you don't see many is they are really tough to play. My health DK is ridiculous, he rocks a huge igneous shield with his 70k health pool and makes most content an absolute breeze for the party, but he is as boring as drilling for oil.

I've played around with it on the PTS and it seems I was smart to make my NB tank an Argonian. From my testing the nerf to siphoning does hurt, but I can still sustain pretty much infinitely, completely solo. That's in the mostly garbage PTS gear I had to work with. If we're being completely honest Siphoning attacks was always broken, it just took the devs 3 years to do something about it. In it's current iteration it's pretty much trash, but for the live patch they're going to buff the numbers and adjust some of the mechanics regarding the burst resource restoration.

My NB hasn't been specced for much of anything but crafting since update 1.6 hit the live servers. For some reason this is the patch I decide I wanna whip him back into shape for tanking purposes. I've been called a masochist.

Mysteri0n

have you thought about running engine guardian instead of sentinel for more resources