My experience with Black rose set + Tanky SnB build

Vangy · June 2016

Hey all,

Currently im running x5 fasallas ( SnB + jewellery) with x5 black rose (body) and 2 engin guardian. Running x3 shield play enchants with defensive posture.
The idea was to make a block centric build that applies healing debuff to enemies while locking them down with talons/caltrops while being realllllly hard to kill. This performs reasonably well post change to heavy armour and block costs with the removal of bracing.

What ive noticed;

1. In small scale post heavy armour changes + SnB changes make blocking MUCH more viable. You can literally stand your ground and out block mostly anything.
2. Pre-patch it was much easier to tank larger groups because of bracing. Now even though constitution got buffed, the return from constitution is per 4 seconds and only becomes better when you dont get hit every second or more. In the latter case, bracing wins out by a large margin.
3. The 50% more resource return on heavy attacks is amazing when you can drop block long enough to launch a heavy.... this is okay in small scale but in group vs group, drop block = death cos of wrobels instagib meta..... Im running 30 frigging k resistances with 2.5k impen with 30k health and am still taking ridonculous hits.....
4. I would have preferred they kept bracing and tweaked the value to a lower one to balance it out with constitution.

As to why I think point 4 is valid is that without the x3 block cost reduction enchants, this build becomes near unplayable in PvP group vs group unless you run a lot of sturdy pieces. The passive bracing really helped and the new 120 wd/sd isnt really cutting it... Need to sacrifice all 3 jewellery slots + lots of CP to make up for the loss in bracing. The net result is that you lose a lot of cost reduction/regen/damage to keep block viable while at the same time losing quite a bit of damage. Again the passive change from bracing to wrath dosent make up for the loss in damage from all these factors. The passive from wrath needs to be considerably larger or needs to be replaced with a modified version of bracing imo. The gains from constitution is only worth it in the event that you arent taking a lot of hits cos it only happens every 4 seconds. All these factors are easier to manage on stamDK cos of the new improved venomous claw which works very well with reverb bash + ransack bash cancel to put pressure in small scale scenarios due to constant pressure even with low weapon damage but again dosent do much good in group vs group....

Was wondering how other people felt about this change. PvE dosent seem much different. Was ez mode before, still is ez mode now. These changes just made it harder to wear heavy armour and focus on a block centric build in open world large scale PvP for me.

TLDR: Changes made it easier to use SnB in small scale while it made it considerably harder to tank more people due to the way constitution works. Need to give up too much in return to make blocking viable due to loss of heavy armour bracing passive. Please tweak...

Armitas · June 2016

They have made blocking and heavy armor extremely perpendicular to offense. Meanwhile stamina and magicka lines continue to stack survival and offense in a parallel fashion. It really doesn't make any sense. Very little does in this game.

I don't think they should have nerfed black rose either. They saw a video of how much sustain black rose had so they nerfed it. HAVE THEY SEEN STAM BUILDS? You will not run a stam build out of stamina, and they have tons of damage and great survival. We have little damage, 0 armor thanks to penetration, and they are concerned that we might pair that with great sustain? Where is the concern over the rest of the game? Why is it always over blocking and heavy armor?

Rohaus · June 2016

I agree with what the OP is stating. Honestly, it is because of the changes that I personally think Reactive is the best tanking set for PvP... But, there is a level of understanding one needs in order to use that set... When too eat cc and when not to...

I don't feel as Tanky as I did prior to DB release in PvP... People are hitting me a lot harder... Of course, I am trying new abilities and as such I am fumbling up a lot more than usual which is probably why it feels like people are hitting me harder.. Time will tell.

Sandman929 · June 2016

PvP tanking needs so much work its crazy. I still do it, regardless, but if they would just tie mitigations to max health they'd instantly create so many ways for tanks to be a force in PvP.
Having a larger health pool could make CC durations shorter, DoTs less painful, buff poison and disease resist, any number of benefits that would have 2 positive effects on the game IMO:

1. It would provide an incentive for most players to invest a portion of attribute points in health and in doing so would bring down insane damage output with the pure DPS builds that are literally everywhere.
2. It would add a lot of value to a higher health tank build in PvP. Right now tanks are just as susceptible to everything as any other build, they can just take it a few seconds longer.

Sandman929 · June 2016

And thanks to the OP for the Black Rose report, I was curious about it.

MrTarkanian48 · June 2016

I wish they would change the return from Constitution to every 2 seconds.

That being said I have played around with tank builds in PVP but have pretty much abandoned the idea, even with the new changes for several reasons:

1) Penetration. 5.2K from Sharpened Weapons, 5.2K from Major Breach, 4.8K from light armor users, 20% from maces, 10% from Staves. If you are at 33,150, and get attacked by a LA wearing sharpened destro staff who casts elemental drain they basically reduce your mitigation by half. Also to hit the resistance cap, you need to sacrifice almost all damage. If you are not at the cap you have less mitigation. So you may have 25% more mitigation then them, but they have way more than 25% damage than you.

Meanwhile Medium and Light armor users have other methods of mitigating damage by Shields, Cloak, Dodge Roll, Shuffle etc, but still have a lot of damage.

2) People are usually smarter than mobs. If I am on my NB with two other DPS builds in cyro, and I run into a group with a tank, healer, and DPS we kill the healer first, then the DPS, then the tank. You can't taunt me and force me to bang against your block while your friends kill me. You can basically just try to annoy me CC's and debuffs to slow me down.

Also, if you are blocking with CC immunity, I'm not going to unload a bunch of resource heavy attacks on you, but instead just spam some light attacks. They don't cost me anything, but each one you block costs the same amount of stamina as if I were using Surprise Attack, ambush etc. And when you run out of CC immunity I just fear through your block.

There are a lot of mechanics in this game that make trying to tank in PVP a frustrating experience. Perhaps the change to Guard will help, but overall I don't think it will be very effective.

Lokey0024 · June 2016

MrTarkanian48 wrote: »

I wish they would change the return from Constitution to every 2 seconds.

That being said I have played around with tank builds in PVP but have pretty much abandoned the idea, even with the new changes for several reasons:

1) Penetration. 5.2K from Sharpened Weapons, 5.2K from Major Breach, 4.8K from light armor users, 20% from maces, 10% from Staves. If you are at 33,150, and get attacked by a LA wearing sharpened destro staff who casts elemental drain they basically reduce your mitigation by half. Also to hit the resistance cap, you need to sacrifice almost all damage. If you are not at the cap you have less mitigation. So you may have 25% more mitigation then them, but they have way more than 25% damage than you.

Meanwhile Medium and Light armor users have other methods of mitigating damage by Shields, Cloak, Dodge Roll, Shuffle etc, but still have a lot of damage.

2) People are usually smarter than mobs. If I am on my NB with two other DPS builds in cyro, and I run into a group with a tank, healer, and DPS we kill the healer first, then the DPS, then the tank. You can't taunt me and force me to bang against your block while your friends kill me. You can basically just try to annoy me CC's and debuffs to slow me down.

Also, if you are blocking with CC immunity, I'm not going to unload a bunch of resource heavy attacks on you, but instead just spam some light attacks. They don't cost me anything, but each one you block costs the same amount of stamina as if I were using Surprise Attack, ambush etc. And when you run out of CC immunity I just fear through your block.

There are a lot of mechanics in this game that make trying to tank in PVP a frustrating experience. Perhaps the change to Guard will help, but overall I don't think it will be very effective.

This sums it up nicely. If they added crit resist You could allocate the CP into hardy and elemental defender better. You could wear divines/ infused for Offensive capability, sturdy for block reduce cost in stead of enchants. As per the usual, the changes where limited because of fear of being overpowered.

Vangy · June 2016

If only some mods could see this and pass this along to wrobel... Not sure who to tag tho... PvP tanking really needs work... Sadly PvP forums hardly ever see any DEV inputs.... =(

Vangy · June 2016

Rohaus wrote: »

I agree with what the OP is stating. Honestly, it is because of the changes that I personally think Reactive is the best tanking set for PvP... But, there is a level of understanding one needs in order to use that set... When too eat cc and when not to...

I don't feel as Tanky as I did prior to DB release in PvP... People are hitting me a lot harder... Of course, I am trying new abilities and as such I am fumbling up a lot more than usual which is probably why it feels like people are hitting me harder.. Time will tell.

@Rohaus
Based on my testing, ive noticed the new improved constitution makes black rose the MOST viable set for block builds for large scale PvP. You give up lots of damage but you can decently perform the CC support tanky debuff role. Weaker than pre changes to HA but still possible. Reactive just dosent cut it any more. Blocking just eats up too much stam...Without black rose, you will take a HUGE hit to sustain based on the changes to HA. If you are interested take a look at this spread sheet. If you have questions feel free to ask. Sheet can be found in this link;

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/268522/heavy-armour-and-block-cost#latest

Valencer · June 2016

They simply don't want people to be able to stand their ground. It's either roll dodging for days, LoS-ing and kiting newbies or spamming damage shields.

Been this way ever since they halted stam regen while blocking and the past 9 months there's really not been any visible desire from ZOS to make builds focused on standing their ground truly competitive again.

Rohaus · June 2016

@Vangy

I honestly don't block all that much because of Reactive. I have zero points in block cost reduction because I rarely need to block... heck, I can eat a couple meteors no problem without blocking... reason being, the CC, from Meteor, comes in before the damage... least that is what I am seeing... not sure if that is what is supposed to happen. So, because of the CC coming in, I can literally just face plant the damage and laugh at the pew pew of its effect.

With the changes to Bone Shield... I have been seeing great success with running Bone Shield + Igneous Shield.

Reactive truly is all about eating CC. Roots being the best form of CC to eat!

With reactive armor, one should not be concerned with blocking as much as knowing when to eat CC and when to get the heck out of dodge.

Vangy · June 2016

Rohaus wrote: »

@Vangy

I honestly don't block all that much because of Reactive. I have zero points in block cost reduction because I rarely need to block... heck, I can eat a couple meteors no problem without blocking... reason being, the CC, from Meteor, comes in before the damage... least that is what I am seeing... not sure if that is what is supposed to happen. So, because of the CC coming in, I can literally just face plant the damage and laugh at the pew pew of its effect.

With the changes to Bone Shield... I have been seeing great success with running Bone Shield + Igneous Shield.

Reactive truly is all about eating CC. Roots being the best form of CC to eat!

With reactive armor, one should not be concerned with blocking as much as knowing when to eat CC and when to get the heck out of dodge.

Hmm that truly does sound interesting haha. Maybe I'll give it a try in a future patch when they fix resistances vs penetration scaling. Right now heavy Armour is not entirely in a good place and I've spent quite a bit on getting my black rose to gold lol.

Sandman929 · June 2016

Stamina DPS and Magicka DPS players scream bloody murder with every change, and tanks are just sitting here thinking "Are we ever going to get anything?"

Armitas · June 2016

Opps, wrong thread.

Rohaus · June 2016

Fury + Reactive + Monster helm of your choosing = still awesome sauce combination in DB.

Bone shield + Caltrops... oh so sexy! and both have their damage go up up as my Fury set procs... I get to 3500+ weapon damage very quickly. Sorry... meant to say Caltrops damage goes up as I take critical damage and the Fury set procs... Boneshield does NOT go up...

I have been swapping between Engine Guardian and Blood Spawn... Engine Guardian for small scale and Blood Spawn for large scale PvP would be my recommendation based on lots of experience running those two sets.

Vangy · June 2016

Haha that sounds beast man!

DKsUnite · June 2016

its been like this since 1.7, you either spec into a tanking set or you dont tank in pvp. Black rose isnt really a tanking set. I run reactive with bloodspawn and im fine to tank zergs. I only have 1 block cost reduction enchant. Like mentioned above, the root meta really makes reactive shine and hence why its the best pvp tanking set.

Teridaxus · June 2016

Sandman929 wrote: »

Stamina DPS and Magicka DPS players scream bloody murder with every change, and tanks are just sitting here thinking "Are we ever going to get anything?"

Waiting since beta. Gave up now.

Also black rose is just another band aid fix. Healers and dps got tons of sets to choose from. Why are we forced into reactive, blackrose, fassala ( another bandaid fix against the ever growing healing numbers) and the one or other niche set.

Vangy · June 2016

DKsUnite wrote: »

its been like this since 1.7, you either spec into a tanking set or you dont tank in pvp. Black rose isnt really a tanking set. I run reactive with bloodspawn and im fine to tank zergs. I only have 1 block cost reduction enchant. Like mentioned above, the root meta really makes reactive shine and hence why its the best pvp tanking set.

Wow reactive really getting a lot f backing from ya guys. Makes me want to try it out. Sadly the cost of golding it will cost me...

DKsUnite · June 2016

Vangy wrote: »

DKsUnite wrote: »

its been like this since 1.7, you either spec into a tanking set or you dont tank in pvp. Black rose isnt really a tanking set. I run reactive with bloodspawn and im fine to tank zergs. I only have 1 block cost reduction enchant. Like mentioned above, the root meta really makes reactive shine and hence why its the best pvp tanking set.

Wow reactive really getting a lot f backing from ya guys. Makes me want to try it out. Sadly the cost of golding it will cost me...

i use all purple lol. No real incentive to gold it lol

Brutusmax1mus · June 2016

You can be a tank in PvP now with the alliance way skill that share damage your ally takes. Really only good for small scale in theory imo. I've also never used it. So grain of salt...

But if 3 dps go straight at a tank, healer and a DPS, with this spell the tank is not useless.

Anyone tried the skill?