Is useful to be a tank in pvp? or is only for pve in this game?

Uri · May 2015

I am leveling a DK, I am thinking to build it as a tank. I am planing to focus in pvp at endgame, Idk how pvp works in this game at the moment ( I am pretty new).

Can a Tank be really good in pvp/ava/roaming or I should focus to build/leveling it differently?

Tintinabula · May 2015

Its quite useful..Ive run a tank spec before and you would be amazed at the amount of people who yard dog attack you without any notice of the group behind you dpsn them down.(just gotta know when they realize your tank specd

....and make sure you dont tank solo

ForTheRealm · May 2015

Tanky builds do very well in PvP, just watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgNFBKNCd7Q

Teargrants · May 2015

Stock Footage: NBs dodge roll-tanking PvP

mtwiggz · May 2015

Whether you tank or not is completely up to you, but level everything on your character - not just tanking abilities. You never know what skills, armor, weapons, etc. you may want to use in the future. It's a lot easier to level everything at once than grind out certain skills in the end.

Bashev · May 2015

Tanking in PvP is fun but it is not rewarding if you are not in a group. Let's give you an example. If you play solo and you tank 10 players and during that time your alliance kill them you won't earn a big amount of AP. It doesn't matter that you absorbed almost all the damage. Now if you play solo and you heal your alliance members who killed these 10 players then you will get a nice amount of AP.

Kas · May 2015

It's very valid, but it's different from PvE.

In PvE the tank uses taunts and wants to soak up damage for the group so that DDs (and healers) can get away with lower def. This does not work in PvP. Obviously there is no taunt (apart form wearing the wedding dress costume

- that actually works to some extend) and aften after several tries as a whole group (HA saptank wearing footman, constantly throwing spearshards on hin, etc) we never managed to get anything useful from that aweful "guard" skill in the alliance skill-line.

What works in pvp, is different:
Imho, playing tanky means your whoel group shold do so. What you lack in damage is compensated by being able to stay close to each other and use close-range synergies. 3 long range glass-cannon magicka detonations and meterors (easily reflected / avoided) won't do anything comparable to standard + nova + talons + lightning flood with all synergies activated.
Healing is no problem at all. Healers should be able to manage their magicka perfectly well in 5 heavy and all they lose is the crit bonus form LA. The otherwise valuable penetration is not important. Since HA users receive more healing, the healign output of a tanky group actually increases over a light group!

I can assure you this works pretty well - as in "8 vs 24 is nothing special" well. What really sucks about tanky builds is that they a) want to stay close to each other for the reasons above and b) don't get any mitigation vs siege damage. Your average light/meadium armor blob with many high-HP barriers will actually have a MUCH easier time dealing with siege weapons (and also have god defense otherwise).

Imho the possibility to run that barrier "cheese" is the main reason tanky builds aren't a LOT more popular. Especially once your typical group reaches a certain size, the barrier cheese is probably just better overall.

Solo PvP, is a whole different story. Imho today's solo meta evolves around picking your fights (doesn't have to mean ganking single targets, can also mean going 1v3 but escaping as soon as the fourth and fifth enemy show up) and finishing them quickly enough, then escape and reangage later. You don't need to be tanky for that. You want burst and mobility - something that magicka sorcs and stamina nightblades offer above anything else. This is why they're so popular imho.

eliisra · May 2015

Bashev wrote: »

Tanking in PvP is fun but it is not rewarding if you are not in a group. Let's give you an example. If you play solo and you tank 10 players and during that time your alliance kill them you won't earn a big amount of AP. It doesn't matter that you absorbed almost all the damage. Now if you play solo and you heal your alliance members who killed these 10 players then you will get a nice amount of AP.

If you only heal you get 0 exp from those players. So I wouldn't recommend it. Tanks, supports and healers are currently all penalizes when rewarding a player kill.

For tanks, like you pointed out, it's very little AP to be made solo. There's nothing in the reward calculation that considers who absorbed the dmg or tanked the enemy player before he died.

Than there's healing, which does reward some AP in itself, when allies are in-combat and low on health. But anyone can grab some off-heals and do dps simultaneously. Heals wont have time to register in larger battles when people die in 1-3 sec. Same with using support skills or being a tank with low dps output. You need to do actual high dmg to targets if you want both exp + AP.

If you join a group, you do get the AP regardless of role. But exp still goes to the guys with the highest dps, unless you're doing small scale PvP.

Topic: Tank role in PvP is mainly pushing in the front and dropping debuffs/cc/bash/ulti peels, so that your allies can follow. You're also sort of creating safe positions your group or allies can advance to. DK's are best suited for it. Only running in and like blocking PvE style trying to stay alive, doesn't really help much.

Imdrefan · May 2015

I need to get a better computer so i can record some tanking in pvp...

Vis · May 2015

Tanking in pvp is useful, but be aware that most Cyrodiil tanking is active tanking: spamming stacked shields or spamming dodge roll/heals. Good luck.

TagaParti · May 2015

The greatest build in pvp happens to be a tank, but not a typical tank as you might think of. Everyone in PVP knew who she is. She is Sheliza of EP (NA), they call her, "Unkillable". All the best players or dps builds you can see in youtube, can never take her down, it will always be a draw or win for Sheliza. She is the only one who can run the entirety of Cyrodiil afraid of noone.

Cinnamon_Spider · May 2015

TagaParti wrote: »

The greatest build in pvp happens to be a tank, but not a typical tank as you might think of. Everyone in PVP knew who she is. She is Sheliza of EP (NA), they call her, "Unkillable". All the best players or dps builds you can see in youtube, can never take her down, it will always be a draw or win for Sheliza. She is the only one who can run the entirety of Cyrodiil afraid of noone.

I can think of two videos I've seen where Shaliza was killed.

ToRelax · May 2015

Just search for "sheliza" on YT and the first three videos are other players killing sheliza. lol.
But Sheliza is certainly unkillable on the forums

.

Uri · May 2015

Ty all for the responses! I am going to focus in building as a tank.