i'm looking for DK tank tips

Mettaricana

I'm trying to do a DK tank for the best of the best endgame stuff trials etc.

what im looking for is a stamina based heavy armor build. but overall i'm looking for skill bars what i should and should not use at all if stamina based is a lousy choice by all means suggest a great magicka based. i wish to maintain huge tanking but also have at least tolerable damage.

i'd also like some suggestions on armor like craft-able or easy to get sets to use until i can get the vr14 stuff.

thanks in advance to those who can help me.

Draxys

Tanks, by definition should not "stamina based", they should be health based. Yea, make sure you have lots of block cost reduction and a decent amount of stam, but you'll find that focusing on health and ways to preserve stamina are much better than having tons of stam itself.

You will want to forgo attempting to do any damage against bosses, but make sure your second skill bar has some form of damage on it to help with trash pulls. I use destro staff on my off bar.

Typical set up is 5 heavy 2 light or medium. Hist Bark is a great crafted set to have at any level. I use Hist Bark and Footman with 2 pieces of whatever. Works great.

asteldian

Green Dragon Blood and Talons/caltrops are fantastic tank tools (the latter for trash)

WhiskyBob

I personally recommend using coagulating blood instead of green dragon blood.

Green Dragon Blood stamina regen does not stack with potions.

Also:
- Use hardened armor (spike armor morph) always.
- Grind pvp for caltrops for amazing aggro management on packs.
- For ultimates I recommend Magma Armor (if your party know how to use synergies) or Shifting Standard
- From 1h and Shield remember to have Defensive Posture always on your bar. Create a separate bar for boss fights with Crippling Slash for boss fights
- Save range taunt for emergency grabs, it costs shitloads of stamina compared to melee taunt

pan_k

Well, there are various builds you can try. Since you want a "stamina based" with some decent dps too, you could try sth along my build, currently at vet2. I'm having a great time with it and works great even for outleved challenges. I play pledges scaled to max vet, dsa normal, etc.

For set, get 5 heavy hist bark, 2 medium (I use night's silence right now).

First bar for tanking:

- Pierce armor 90% of the times, inner fire for special occasions.
- Heroic slash for extra ultimate gen, probably optional.
- Green dragon blood
- Fragmented shield
- Elude, from medium armor (that's the key skill for this build and makes it very fun ).
- Ultimate Standard of might

Second bar, 2H:

- Carve
- Wrecking blow
- Executioner
- Rally
- Talons
- Ultimate Corrosive armor

For trash, i taunt everything i can, then switch to 2nd bar and help clearing. For bosses, stick to the tanking bar, switch to the 2nd bar for the execute phase, drop corrosive armor and spam wrecking blows and then executioners. Corrosive is also useful for emegercy situations as a life saver and it also allows you to rez under any circumstances.

Attributes right now are 3 health/1 stamina, probably may need some tweaking later, all glyphs stamina, jewerly reduce stamina cost.

You don't need extra armor buffs, and certainly you can try a few different skills. Caltrops is indeed very useful. As I said, this works great so far but for special end game content (trials, vet dsa, etc) it needs some changes. From my limited experience in dsa, you need inner fire for taunt, your 2nd bar can't be used very ofter, you need extended chains, and defensive posture.

Have fun.

Mettaricana

Draxys wrote: »

Tanks, by definition should not "stamina based", they should be health based. Yea, make sure you have lots of block cost reduction and a decent amount of stam, but you'll find that focusing on health and ways to preserve stamina are much better than having tons of stam itself.

You will want to forgo attempting to do any damage against bosses, but make sure your second skill bar has some form of damage on it to help with trash pulls. I use destro staff on my off bar.

Typical set up is 5 heavy 2 light or medium. Hist Bark is a great crafted set to have at any level. I use Hist Bark and Footman with 2 pieces of whatever. Works great.

i iknow health based but i can't do anything without resources so which should i do stamina or magika since i can't block with magicka what should i do for attribute layout and enchants for the gear

SafiyerAmitora

Health by itself isn't going to do wonders; mitigation and resists make it "count" for more, so Nirnhoned and/or Reinforced are really helpful. I currently run at 24k health (w/trifood) and I have 5pc footman/5pc Hist/2pc Malubeths (using footman girdle which is exploration, footman gauntlets which is divines, footman jewelry, both Malubeths pieces are infused but if I get reinforced I'll switch immediately, I have 2pcs Nirnhoned, and 3pcs reinforced), using hardened armor with absorb magic (defensive posture morph), 23k-ish armor and 30k-ish spell resist (both without hardened armor up), and I can take a hit really well. Thing is, I'm magicka-based, because I prefer to be self-reliant for my heals rather than my healer (if I relied on my healer and they go down, I'd be screwed, and I PvP, so I prefer to keep myself up).

I have 5 enchants magicka, 3 stam (stam enchant on shield), 1 reduce block cost, 2 reduce spell cost, disease enchant on mace, and absorb magicka enchant on resto staff (resto staff for heals/magicka regen from heavy attacks; again, the self-reliance). Attribute distribution: 0/50/12.

S&B bar - Gdb, absorb magic, choking talons, hardened armor, pierce armor, corrosive armor ult.
Resto bar - Gdb, extended chains, caltrops (if you don't have this, I'd probably recommend eruption here), inner fire (I refuse to morph this because this ability now has the same range throughout, rendering inner beast less helpful as a magicka-based tank, and I want a magicka taunt in case I run out of stam, and the extra chance for the synergy for inner rage will just block the way when more useful synergies need to be activated), and igneous shield.

I focused heavily into block cost reduction, reduce spell cost/magicka regen, armor, and spell resist for CP.

Now, I realize you asked for craftables, but figured to at least give an end-game build to (potentially) use once you get there. In the meantime, 5pc Hist and 3/4pc Seducer worked nicely for me as a magicka-based tank.

I'd prefer magicka/stam drinks for this build, BUT... that would have me running 20k health more or less (25k-30k health is recommended for tanks...), so I'm not sure how good of an idea that is... Haven't tried it yet (in PvE; in PvP, it works wonders), but with all the mitigation and buffs I have, it *may* work. I can always test it and find out! ;D As of right now though, I use trifood.

I've tanked dungeons with a similar, but bit squisher build than this and have had great success, and a few with this build (did really well), so it'll do great.

Hope this helps!

Muizer

OP,I don't know what level you are at currently, but I just wanted to add a general note that apart from your settings when you generate a new character, you should pretty much forget about what role you want in end-game.

Instead, you should level your characters in ways that when it gets to v14 it's suited for multiple roles. There's certainly enough xp to be gained on the road, for instance, to max out all your active class, weapon and armour abilities. As for attribures and passives, they can be reset at what is alltogether not a lot of money so you don't have to worry about that while leveling up.

What will constrain you most of all is going to be your end game gear. Outfitting your end-game character for multiple roles..........that's something you won't be able to do easily.