Tanks: what are your thoughts on balancing selfish vs support gear in PUG dungeons?

DigiAngel · May 2022

I have 3 alt tanks for daily normal randoms:

Tremorscale
Ebonheart
Dark convergence

I don't think I've died once since hitting lvl 50 and fully gearing them. Most of the gear is purple, jewelry is blue.

wheresbes · May 2022

I'd say go for support with a few tweaks here and there. More and more I get amazing pugs and the times instead in which the group doesn't work, it's just better to leave.

If you build selfish you're basically immortal, but if you haven't got a healer or dds are not that great, it's going to be a pain.

Though you could start selfish and the more comfortable you are in content, the more support stuff you put on.

I'm not a tank but I spec fully to my role with 1 or 2 skills for my utility or group utility.

I can tell you from a dd pov that I feel the difference when buffs/debuffs are there and when there are none. The former makes the run much more enjoyable.

Snow_White · May 2022

My selfish set is Engine Guardian. If sustain is poor/fake healer I switch to it if I need to.

I mostly run Magma/TT/PA. Vateshran S&B in trash and Masters S&B on bosses. Been thinking about going to Drakes/War Machine or Sax/War Machine for the fun of it.

If you’re going to go selfish for the heals, I think Winters Respite (weapon/jewels) is a better option than Leeching since it heals the group and compensates for a fake healer. Probably heals better than Leeching too. It also makes it really obvious where to stand for noobs and people stacked better when I used to use it.

While I’m not going to fault people for choosing survival sets, once you pass a certain point in your development as a tank I don’t think going that selfish is necessary, and I’m not going to optimize my sets around groups that suck. I want to clear things as fast/easily as possible, and in ESO DPS is king. The higher your group DPS, the faster you burn and less mechanics you need to perform, the easier it is as a tank.

If the group DPS is low enough that support sets aren’t worth running, selfish tank sets just make the problem worse by lowering damage even further. I’m better off either doing more damage myself, or dropping group and re-queuing.

Tannus15 · May 2022

For non DLC I run knight errant, vicious ophidian and velidreth.

BXR_Lonestar · May 2022

I just roll full support gear regardless. If the group is bad, they're going to need all the help they can get anyways, and because my tanks are used to playing like this, its not a big deal for me.

buttaface · May 2022

Since several good tanks here, a question if anyone knows. Other day I was tanking normal Coral Aerie on a Necro tank/DPS hybrid (Ice front, 2H back) wearing PA and SPC (healer wasn't wearing SPC so I did and often do) and a couple of the bosses were tearing me a new one with just regular attacks and heavies. Blocked heavies were hitting me for 25k+ on a spirit mender necro with flare on front bar. Have tanked HM vets, lots of vets, no trials with it though, and never had this problem other than a few bosses that hit real hard in vet hm in other dungeons, but again NORMAL. Is there some mechanic going on there I didn't know? It was NORMAL. I died in that place a couple times, can't remember ever dying on that toon tanking, and it was embarrassing in normal. Anyone here know what's up with Coral Aerie?

Sets I use for dungeons that haven't been mentioned in the thread or lightly mentioned:

Ice/Ice Magplar in Almalexia's Mercy. Winter's Respite and Bogdan (Slimecraw if easy WB Nerieneth if there's a healer ) - for soloing WB, Pugging, no healer teams, off tank/dpsing funzie dungeons, drinking/chatting and not paying attention. Always let them know to get in the ice circle or stay as close as possible without being in boss attack. This is a utility knife heal/tank/dps where uncertain of healing or no healer and it does nice dmg solo, 15-20k+ real dps due to being in all light, highly recommend if not in an organized, skilled team. I never run bahra or leeching when there's sets like this out there. Added to Rune, Sweeps and Ritual, these sets produce an insane amount of health regen and aoe healing.

Necro DC and Drakes, Ice Front, 2H back, great on trash, saves lots of time people love Drakes.

Necro Dead Water's Guile and Drakes, Potentates 2h infused crusher back, decisive ice front, ult tank for pumping out lots of Ults, you will get lots of death ticks from stampede and blastbones, plenty to justify using Dead Water, always use up unused corpses with Necrotic Potency before heading to next targets. "How are you ulting so much LOL?"

Thanks generally for one of the rare extremely informative threads here!

Foxtrot39 · May 2022

For moment I really just want to stay alive I have a heavy damage mitigation build using batallion defender and Iron blood

Couple that by sloting revealing flare and turn evil and you get a 45% damage reduction rather consitently

Dracane · May 2022

Currently I use Tormentor+Dark Convergence and it's a lot of fun.
My priority was to make trash clearing as convenient as possible by pulling mobs in one spot and aoe taunting them with 1 skill. People seem to appreciate this and it makes dungeons pretty fast. Bosses are the same regardless of gear and giving people a bit more penetration or damage will probably not do that much. Having an aoe taunt against certain bosses is also quite convenient.