pve medium armour tank

Steel_Brightblade

Hi, I'm just after some opinions on how viable a medium armour pve tank is. I'm considering on my dragon knight to spice tanking up a bit of going, 5p armour master, 2p engine guardian 5p glory. Using immovable to proc armour master, getting dodge from light attacks thanks to glory, which I use a lot to get ultimate up.

Has any one tried something like this and had good or bad results?

So I'll be in 5 medium and 2 heavy with this set up.

Acsvf

You can do it, but honestly it'll be pretty bad.

Arobain

I have tried it, however i did not go into as much extent as you are going, it did revolve around an equal amount of blocking and dodging as well as damage to pull off, saying that, it was ***, you can do it, in a dungeon, but you will need the healers abosulte attention, because you don't have as much survivability, i'd say give it a shot, if you have tons of money to experiment with

Steel_Brightblade

Was thinking I'll give it a go, the glory gear is free, just a few normal arena runs, already have those pieces and in 20 days ish I'll be able to make 9 trait on all medium, have thousands of telvar stones to cover any resources I might be short in. So won't cost me much of anything.

Septimus_Magna

I tried it with my stam NB, capped spell/armor resist in 5 medium/2 heavy and could keep Major Evasion/Immovable/Armor Master buffs up at all time. And it worked pretty well, until Siphoning Attacks got nerfed.

The problem is stamina sustain because Immovable costs a lot of stamina to cast and the Armor Master buff only lasts 10 seconds. Previously I could get a lot of resources back with Siphoning Attacks and Caltrops which made the build viable.

For a DK you have Igneous Shield to get stamina back, with a large enough stam pool this could cover the cost of Immovable.
Lets say Immovable is 3.5k stamina to cast and you have a 30k stamina pool, this means you would need to cast Igneous 3x to get 3.5k stamina back. Im not really experienced with medium armor DK builds but this seems like it would be hard to block a lot and keep Armor Master buff up all the time.

Recently I started to theory craft an Ultimate based stamina DK tank and came up with the following setup:

5x Tava's Favor
2x Blood Spawn
5x Glorious Defender

I think this would work best in 5 HA/2 MA with Shuffle to get the major evasion buff. After light attacks you basically get a 28% dodge chance with Shuffle, thats a 28% chance to proc Tava's Favor and gain extra ultimate on top of the normal (and Blood Spawn) ultimate regeneration.

If you use Magma Shell as ultimate (which will be up very fast) you get 11 second immortality, resources back and give nearby group members a huge dmg shield. Standard would be nice for the aoe dmg and reduced dmg taken.

Unfortunately there no way to get major evasion on a magicka DK, otherwise it would be really strong with Burning Embers and Draw Essence.

Cuyler

Very viable, there's actually no reason to use Heavy when you can reach both mitigation caps in medium armor, run faster, have better stam regen and more utility (think group buffs here). Now with that said, vMOL may be the exception where you may want to go HA.

Steel_Brightblade

Thanks, nice to get some more thoughts on this, I was thinking engine guardian for the stamina boost or magic since I can then spam igneous shield. For ultimate I normally tend to use aggressive warhorn. My tank is currently all about making my group dps/survival better at the cost of my damage. Hoping in medium armour I can have the best of both worlds. The cost of immovable is concerning, I have 460 champion points with 100 in stamina cost reduction and rest in Regen.

Cuyler

don't get me wrong most players aren't privy to MA tanking so in pug groups or ppl who are not in the know will look at you like you're crazy lol. As it's important to mention you will put more stress on the healer, BUT that's a L2P issue with healers.

Steel_Brightblade

I rarely do pug groups, lucky enough to have a good guild, a few of us have talked about it and plan to do a few simple before and after tests on pledge dungeons to see how it goes.

Cuyler

Steel_Brightblade wrote: »

I rarely do pug groups, lucky enough to have a good guild, a few of us have talked about it and plan to do a few simple before and after tests on pledge dungeons to see how it goes.

Kewl yeah you should be all set to try it out then GL!

DHale

Use evasion/shuffle not immovable. Your hardened/volatile armor is just as good as immovable and although magic it's far cheaper than immovable. You need unchained in cp tree. I drink a Stam trash pot vr15 level throw caltrops hit shuffle and get to work. I went high Stam all attributes and glyphs high Stam cost reduction no regen whatsover as its zero when blocking high magic regen and some magic cost reduction. For choking talons, hardened armor, igneous. If you use medium I would recommend reinforced trait. Hitting 33.5 physical and spell resist regardless of the armor you use. Then use defensive or absorb magic. that said medium armor with reinforced and take the Stam regen cp points and put in medium armor focus. I would try five medium one heavy chest and one light belt if undaunted is nine. 6 percent more health more Stam more magic is a good thing. The goal from medium is getting the Stam cost reduction I use 2 bloodspawn not engine guardian I want to keep getting war horn or magma armor or standard up. This gives me all three resources rather than one from engine guardian. I use pierce armor for the armor and spell debuff and heoic slash thing that gens ult. Heavy attacks to get Stam and gen. I have defending sword one my defense bar but have weighed mace on my other bar to rip heavy attacks faster between blows. I try to gen ult constantly that's how a dk gets resources.

Steel_Brightblade

Thanks for the level if detail, skips are fairly assimilator to that which I already use andI've been given a few other ideas. Together you've given me a slid starting point to go for before I start tailoring it to suit me.

Steel_Brightblade

Omg, phones predictive text screwed that post! Gist of it was, thanks for the advice:)

Forestd16b14_ESO

..... see what you did ZOS...... SEE WHAT YO DID ! Player are now starting to question if medium armor is better than heavy armor for tanking. This is your fault ZOS along with those PvP cry babies about how they can't gank HA users and you guys better stay true to your words about HA buffs in U10 in June.

dday3six

Forestd16b14_ESO wrote: »

..... see what you did ZOS...... SEE WHAT YO DID ! Player are now starting to question if medium armor is better than heavy armor for tanking. This is your fault ZOS along with those PvP cry babies about how they can't gank HA users and you guys better stay true to your words about HA buffs in U10 in June.

No matter what ZOS does you're never going to be happy with it. You want heavy armor to make you invincible so you can let it carry your bad build.

acw37162

You will want shuffle, imoveable, and harness for armor master.

The effect last ten seconds regardless of how long the ability or spell lasts so you have to cast one of the three abilities every ten seconds and it's nice to rotate them.

Can it be done it most dungeons, yes. Will it work well in most random group finder or pug groups probably not.

If you have a strong group of people you usually run with it will work fine. The only dungeon I wouldn't run that set up in is ICP. There are lots of fights in there with large trash kills that hit hard and two boss fights that would be problematic/not impossible in medium.

Edit: and shuffle and glory will stack and will come out to something like 28 - 32 % dodge Chance sorry I don't want to do the actual math.

Steel_Brightblade

Got home after some of this advice and got blood spawn shoulder from a silver chest (already have the helm) so looking forward to trying this lot out