Templar Pure Stamina Tank Viability?

The_Antiquarian

When I played as a tank for WoW and SWTOR for hardcore dungeons and raids, I stayed strictly with Shield + Board combination with heavy armor.

I see that ESO is vastly different in play-style, but 10 years of MMOing experience just can not allow me to play a tank with medium combo sets and magika based tanking.

My ultimate question is, is SOLE STAMINA BUILD with full heavy armor a viable build with underlying assumption that I place most attribute points on Health and Stamina?

My ultimate goal is to run Veteran and DSA dungeons/raids!

Takllin

The_Antiquarian wrote: »

When I played as a tank for WoW and SWTOR for hardcore dungeons and raids, I stayed strictly with Shield + Board combination with heavy armor.

I see that ESO is vastly different in play-style, but 10 years of MMOing experience just can not allow me to play a tank with medium combo sets and magika based tanking.

My ultimate question is, is SOLE STAMINA BUILD with full heavy armor a viable build with underlying assumption that I place most attribute points on Health and Stamina?

My ultimate goal is to run Veteran and DSA dungeons/raids!

You can play a magicka based tank in heavy armor.

That being said I don't know how viable a stamina based tank would be, I've never tried it, only magicka. Typically your stamina pool is reserved for blocking/dodging so I don't think having that as your primary stat pool would be viable, unless you could get it high enough to allow for it to be your primary stat.

The_Antiquarian

Takllin wrote: »

You can play a magicka based tank in heavy armor.

That being said I don't know how viable a stamina based tank would be, I've never tried it, only magicka. Typically your stamina pool is reserved for blocking/dodging so I don't think having that as your primary stat pool would be viable, unless you could get it high enough to allow for it to be your primary stat.

Hello, Thank you very much for the input. Back in WoW and adhering close to Elitistjerks, it was always better to focus on one primary stat if it isn't heavily affected by diminishing return. Since stamina is so important for Templar tanks already, I figured, I might as well, pour everything on stamina with stamina based builds to be able to tank "professionally."

Has anyone ran purely stamina-based build with stamina-based skills for "professional" tanking?

Seth_Black

Answer is simple:

You CAN do whatever you want in ESO.

Trick to do that:
1. You need to know your class in 100%
2. You need to know game mechanics (abilities used by bosses, mobs & how to react)
3. You need to plan it YOURSELF to avoid copying someone's builds that may not work for you (or match your playstyle).
4. Learn well how to combine abilities, passives, traits, enchants and armor types for own advantage

I'm playing mainly my Khajiit Nightblade and I've been resetting, changing builds and ways to play many times
I was already tank, healer & dd based on stamina fully or magicka fully in each role, used all weapons
and almost all weapon-armor combinations I could find interesting.
Same as you I got a lot of experience from tanking (also healing and dd) in WoW hardcore raids and idea is the same
...you need to work out all of your abilities, their pros and cons all possible combinations and situations you find them useful.
I can tell you right now, you won't end up with 2 skill bars filled and that's it. You will need to change that A LOT depending what boss you're currently tanking or how big is group you need to pull and control.

Tip from my own experience:
Stamina tank is very good for tanking anything that's based on magic. Stamina based abilities don't get affected by negate and similar abilities. All great till you get hit by FROST
Magicka tank is really great for people that move a lot and use more damage AVOIDANCE abilities rather than damage reduction ones (at least for nightblade, for templar it's a little bit different).
So... you can go stamina OR magicka without problems really as long as you have planned use of opposite resource pool for situations where your build is vulnerable .

Good luck ...and have fun

The_Antiquarian

@Seth_Black Wow, Thank you very much for the comprehensive guide.

I am glad to know that your pure stamina builds have suited well for the high-end dungeons and etc as well (I am sure a good guild group is a must to run with pure stamina build effectively =P).

Your advice has given me a certain amount of hope! Thank you very much!

But once again, I am open to more suggestions.

Seth_Black

I'm leveling up my templar now but this will be pure magicka build (at least for some time knowing me)
I will post my build or at least my ideas for using some abilities when I find some spare time

Zanen

Stamina tanking works fine, my stamina based Redguard DK tank is a monster.

Plan on going 5/1/1 for armor and use one of the melee-proc races (Imperial or Redguard)

Get caltrops. The only thing I'd be aware of is as a stamina tank you're going to have to pvp quite a bit to reach your pve potential, where magicka builds benefit more from other options.

The_Antiquarian

Zanen wrote: »

Stamina tanking works fine, my stamina based Redguard DK tank is a monster.

Plan on going 5/1/1 for armor and use one of the melee-proc races (Imperial or Redguard)

Get caltrops. The only thing I'd be aware of is as a stamina tank you're going to have to pvp quite a bit to reach your pve potential, where magicka builds benefit more from other options.

My God. You must explain more about your amazing build! What skills do you use? What armor sets do you use? How many points did you allocate to health and stamina!?!?!?

Zanen

The_Antiquarian wrote: »

Zanen wrote: »

Stamina tanking works fine, my stamina based Redguard DK tank is a monster.

Plan on going 5/1/1 for armor and use one of the melee-proc races (Imperial or Redguard)

Get caltrops. The only thing I'd be aware of is as a stamina tank you're going to have to pvp quite a bit to reach your pve potential, where magicka builds benefit more from other options.

My God. You must explain more about your amazing build! What skills do you use? What armor sets do you use? How many points did you allocate to health and stamina!?!?!?

Most everything would be different on a Templar, but hist bark, footman, and (whitestrakes synergizes with the DK self heal)

Puncture, defensive stance, a root or stun, a heal, a shield.
2h is good on your back bar, brawler and rally, caltrops, couple magicka utilities, ranged taunt from undaunted, or a mellee attack you can use while blocking that triggers your melee proc depending on need.

As a redguard I stack as much stam as I can get away with to maximize the return from adrenaline rush, but still lots of health. As an Imperial I'd stack a little more health.

You might consider an alternate 2h spec with 5 medium while soloing once you get comfortable with the tank spec, it's a long way to level cap.

likewow777

Just to give my 2 cents, my Templar has all attributes in health, and a split of armor enchants between health and stamina. If you wanted more stam, though, obviously go with more stam glyphs. In endgame, you should be shooting for 25k+ health, 30k would be great. Whatever you can do to get there, just do that, and dump the rest into stamina.

Gear is pretty much the same for most tanks. 5 piece Footman's, 5 piece Hist Bark, 2 piece something else. Generally, the Engine Guardian monster set is best for sustain while tanking, but you can experiment if you want. A crafted 2 piece that gives more stamina might be good as well.

The stuns/roots you will use are going to be magicka, so that might be good or bad. The stun I use is Volcanic Rune, from Mage's Guild. It throws enemies in the air, then stuns for 4 seconds, and it is range castable. As has been mentioned, Caltrops is good for AoE aggro. I personally use Empowering Sweep, the ultimate, because I don't really PvP. You'll also probably want to consider slotting Repentance, if your healer isn't doing so, for the free health/stamina and because it passively gives you a 10% boost to all regeneration.

Speaking of regen, your sustain as a stamina tank is going to work better with high regen. Certain races are going to have an easier time of doing this. There's no particular value to shoot for that I can think of, but 1k+ is a good start. My stamina DPS NB has 1700 regen, at VR3, and I can almost literally fight, nonstop, until my armor drops from 100% to 0, or my fingers give.