Tank role to shield or no shield?

skillywilly_187 · June 2015

just curious as a templar im not in my final stage of build yet just leveling, i hear the word tank.now i play WoW as a top end raider fury dps/ off tank capable. for wow i know as a warrior at least you must tank with a shield. are there exceptions with ESO as a tank? does races matter or classes? is 2H or dual wield possible for tanking?

Shunravi · June 2015

Use a shield.

However, it can be good to have 2h on your off bar. That will let you use rally and brawler... There are many instances I would say are shield required, especially with an inexperienced group. But it this game it's always fun to explore possibilities.

Reverb · June 2015

Shunravi wrote: »

Use a shield.

I second this. I always use sword and board for tanking, and 2H or resto staff offhand.

Rosveen · June 2015

It's worth noting that for a new character shield is the only source of taunt: Puncture. The other one is Inner Fire from the Undaunted line, but you need to do a few dungeons to unlock it. Shield also has skills increasing your block mitigation and a nice damage debuff. Basically, it's perfectly suited for tanking single targets. You can keep whatever you want on the offbar, though. I haven't had much success with a bow, but it was useful enough for the few situations that require staying ranged.

Dragonknights are probably the most straightforward tanks, but all classes can tank.

Rune_Relic · June 2015

That's a toughy....
Do you mean tank as in self preservation or group preservation ?
Big difference.

Pick one
Tank / DPS - Solo
Tank / Tank - Solo
Tank / Heal - Solo
Tank / DPS - Group
Tank / Tank - Group
Tank / Heal - Group

Damage shields are a thing enhanced with magicka builds and light armour
Blocking is very powerful and heavy armour and sword/shield reduces stamina cost of blocking and damage
Champion points can enhance all areas.
sword and shield has a taunt....but for the most part you want to stun/cripple/snare/cc if you mean group tank to keep enemies off your team mates or reduce their damage.
Bows lines bombard can snare all enemies at range
Their are Undaunted skills
Then you have to pick between AoE or Single target bias with 1 limited skill bar per weapon choice.
Some enemies you simply cant go toe to toe with and must use ranged and keep away at all times.
Some are a single target DPS race.
Some swarm and need to be subdued or be hit from all direction with light damage that simply overpowers you.
Some are stun and cripple immune.

In a nutshell how you tank depends on class/armour/weapon/undaunted/racial skills you pick and champions you use to enhance.
It depends on the kind of enemies you want to be strong against and those you choose to suffer.
Some magicka builds just focus on magicka enhancement (which is far better managed than stamina) so they can DPS and Tank without penalty as long as their damage shields hold.

I go 5 heavy / 2 medium with armour bonus, Sword/shield Dual-Wield Stamina Nightblade and rely on cloak/syphoning attacks/power extraction/whirling blades. Block cost reduction on jewellery so I can soak up the mass damage without losing all my stamina to the hoards hitting on me and become a sitting duck. If I started running low on resources and overcome, I can just pop soul tether, which normally wipes anything on low health around me that's still standing and restores me to full health. This works great when you are swarmed. Not so good when enemys spread out like archers. Hence sword and board to reflect sorcs magicka damage and a shield charge and bash to stun and subdue spread out archers while I slowly pick them off one by one. slowly being the operative word as being so defensive compromises damage.

You see.....there is no optimum tank build IMHO as it depends on the kind of enemies you face and you cant be master of all. Resource management is absolutely key.

So experiment and see what works for you. The game allows you to resolve the problem in many ways. The compromises will always be there and are an individual thing. Your team is also expected to keep themselves alive to some degree too with two weapon skillbars so the archetypal roles are blurred in ESO.

Sindarious · July 2015

I've been playing with a Sorc Tank build Sword and Board/2H, 5-6 heavy 1-2 med armor. It's been going pretty well. I focus on life stealing abilities and damage reduction with some instant dps/snare abilities. Me and my 2 group mates have been able to 3 man all the dungeons in the first few zones with little problem. Just find something that works for you and go with it, also it really helps to find a good group of friends to play with to juggle ideas and try out me things without having to feel stressed by randoms on your group judging you. I've been having a blast that way and hey if something isn't working you can always respec and try something new.

Anlaemar · July 2015

Main a shield, no matter the group. The passives in that skill tree is meant for tanking.