The Tank Build

k9mouse

Never built a tank before and just want some advice on how to make a good one:
My char is DK, Khajiit with Bow and Sword and Shield.

I can NOT change the race or the class -- I made her even before Early Access was officially stated. Yeah, she is one of the oldest chars ingame.

Any tips how to make a good DK tank with those weapons? Skills and Stats
Thanks

LordEcks

Building a tank really isn't very hard in ESO, because unlike DPS or healing "tanking" isnt really measured by any sort of number. At least not one that most other players would noticably recognize.

Since you only have five abilities in ESO try to keep the following in mind while choosing your tank abilities.

1) You will need a taunt.
2) Your job is to protect your group. You need some way to help mitigate damage to them. For DK's this is usually Dark Talons. You can root many mobs in place and keep them from attacking whoever they like. There are other options, all just depends on what build you intend to go with.
3) Your secondary job is keeping yourself alive. This has more to do with your stats / gear than anything, but your abilities augment this as well. You should keep at least one ability on your bar that will keep you alive. Whether its Dragon Blood for the self healing, Obsidian Shield for group (and self) dmg shielding...Defensive Posture.. etc. Keep something on your bar that makes you harder to kill.

The other two abilities are a mix and match of one of the above 3 roles. If you feel you need more survivability, add another survival button. If you feel your not doing enough damage, add DPS.

Lastly is stats/gear. The name of the game is once again, be hard to kill. This means raising your hit points, armor, and spell resistance as high as you can.
How you increase your survivability is entirely up to you. Its not just maxing out your hit points. I've seen tanks put more focus on stamina and stamina recovery than RAW HP. This particular person gained most of his mitigation through excessive use of Shielded Assault (a charge move in the shield skills that gives you a damage shield).

How you choose to do that is entirely up to you, but I will tell you that being Khajit ..while not an extreme handicap or anything, isnt doing you any favors in the realm of tanking.

Tanking styles at this point in the game are extremely arbitrary in my opinion. So there is no one way to do it.

ers101284b14_ESO

I use a Nord but can tell you my stats.

I have 3100 health
1600 stamina.
I use health and stamina glyphs on my armor and the Tower mundus. I also use traits that boost the mundus and the glyphs. I use sword and board full heavy armor. My armor usually overcharges when the armor boon kicks in.

As for a rotation I use
1 ransack
2 crippling slash
3 cinder storm
4 ignesious shield
5 coagulating blood
Ult dragon knight standard

Ransack I use when I need to grab aggro off someone. Also it lowers the enemies armor and boosts yours do I make sure it's always on the main target. When it's affecting the target their health bar looks cracked.

I always follow up ransack with crippling slash to lower how hard the target hits.

I use cinder storm in large groups because it does damage while giving the enemies a chance to miss. It's good for crowds or to lay as a trap

Ignesious I also keep up as often as possible. It does damage to any enemy near your party and boosts everyone's armor. Just a decent buff with a little damage going on.

Coagulating blood I use to help the healer. Just because I can take damage doesn't mean the healer can't use a little help every once in a while. Remember the healer is your friend.

Dragon knight standard is just an awesome AOE ultimate but you gotta make sure you can keep the target mobs in the circle. DPS players love grabbing aggro while your dropping it and luring enemies outside of the standard. Don't let them.

This is my PVE setup. Since I'm not a huge PVPer I don't have a PVP set up yet.

k9mouse

@ers101284b14_ESO
I do not play PVP either, but I love PVE. Thanks for the info. I have also, a DPS build (Khajiit NB) and a healer (Argonian Templar), leveling an DPS as well (Argonian Sorc) so I understand those spots in a dungeon group. I usually try to get the monsters in a small group and kite them to death (via an AOE's) if I can. Not sure, how that will work for tanking.

ers101284b14_ESO

I don't do too many AOEs. Tanking is weird in this game. They didn't design it to be able to tank the whole room. They designed it to be able to tank 2-3 main enemies that's about it. But ransack is a good aggro puller so if the healer starts getting hit I usually hit that enemie with ransack then pull it away from the healer.

Rosveen

I keep protection/debuff on my main bar and different utility skills on the second bar. Something like: Pierce Armor, Crippling Slash, Defensive Stance, Fragmented Shield, Green Dragon Blood.
Then throw Inner Beast and Burning Talons on the other bar. Maybe Igneous Weapons if you don't have another DK buffing your group. Cinder Storm is nice.
A weapon skill or two if you use something other than 1h, but I never had much luck with bow as a secondary, so I'd keep 1h on both bars. There's quite a bit of flexibility here, depending on the fight. You'll have to find out what works for you, some encounters are best tackled with skills you rarely use elsewhere, so it's difficult to give you a universal rotation.

dharbert

Tons of HP, tons of spell resist, tons of armor. Taunt, take the hits, heal yourself if you can, do a little DPS if you can (but that's not a tank's function). Your job is to keep the mobs occupied while the DPS in your group beat them to death with a lead pipe.

k9mouse

So health is the main stat to focus on and Stem as the 2nd stat? Leave magic alone? (I will be using Sword and Shield for close up melee and Bow for range kills) I might be thinking in terms of DPS still....

Thechemicals

k9mouse wrote: »

Never built a tank before and just want some advice on how to make a good one:
My char is DK, Khajiit with Bow and Sword and Shield.

I can NOT change the race or the class -- I made her even before Early Access was officially stated. Yeah, she is one of the oldest chars ingame.

Any tips how to make a good DK tank with those weapons? Skills and Stats
Thanks

For pvp? If your tanking dungeons youll be 90% sword and shield. The bow offers nothing for tanks. I suppose you could swap to bow and shoot volley then go back to tanking but .....no. For pvp bow venom+snipe is good or volley+talons+dragon standard is pretty painful too.

Armitas

Here is a detailed link to the tank build I use. You can incorporate the bow into bar 1 but honestly it would be better to just use s/b twice in that build for the spell damage, but it will fit if you want to keep the bow. The build uses two different sets of S/B so you won't have to learn any new weapons.

The build is pretty solid and has something for every encounter along with some great group defense, excellent self defense and amazing resource management in heavy armor.

Mountain_Dewed

It is fairly easy to learn a new weapon also. Whenever you are about to gain xp(turning in quests for example), equip choice of weapon so that you gain experience in it.

Just a small FYI

cracker81

I have had a tank back when early access came out. I went from stamina base build to magika. I love my magika mixed with stamina build.

I wanted to try more than one build for a tank and still do PvP. So, I spent well amount of gold looking for a great build. In the beginning with the stamina build I could only hold 3 to 4 adds on me at once and for the boss fight it was easy to take a lot of dmg from the boss.

My build now is mixed with magika/stamina but mostly magika.
I can AOE all adds and keep them on me with no problem or even solo the adds.
Depending on the boss fight I will change out a few skills for the boss. Hard hitting boss will be more stamina skills(Pierce Armor /Deep Slash/Volatile Armor/green dragon blood/dark talons) , adds with boss more magika skills(Pierce Armor /Inhale/Volatile Armor/green dragon blood/dark talons), and boss with low damage/no adds I will have dps with taunt skills(just take out inhale replace with whip). My swap weapon holds buffs/player support abilities.(Igneous Weapons/Igneous Shield/Rapid Regeneration/Ward Ally/Illustrious Healing). This allows me to off heal as well. Pretty much what I do when I get a moment of breath I throw out buffs/heals. I pug a lot and it seems I have to dps/tank/off heal on most fights.

I would say the tank/healers are the most over worked builds out there. Good luck.