Best race choice for stam DK tank

Riga_Mortis

I have a DK charcter thats basically going to waste at the moment, and was wondering if there was a "best" race choice for turning him into a pure pve endgame tank.

AmberLaTerra

Nord, or Imperial.

With nord you get a damage reduction bonus that can be great for a stam DK tank along with max health and stam and health recovery.

With Imperial you get Max health, max stam, and red diamond that can time to time help heal you a bit when using light/heavy attacks between taunts and blocking on bosses.

xSylvanasWindrunner

If you want MAX DPS, The only choice is Kahjiit, as its the only race that can out DPS them all.
If you want best sustain, you take the Redguard race.

fred4

I'm going to take a stab at this. In my experience your #1 concern, as a tank, is how to keep block up while managing your stamina. Therefore I vote for:

REDGUARD, on account of the Adrenaline Rush passive. This should allow you to block-cast skills while restoring some stamina.

Honorable mentions go to NORD, for the Rugged damage reduction passive and the 9% extra health, and IMPERIAL, for the 12% extra health and healing from melee attacks.

altemriel

Id say nord, orc??

fred4

With current racial passives Orc doesn't bring anything to the table that Nord doesn't also have for tanking. Plus Nord has the damage reduction, which Orc does NOT have.

I want to clarify that, although I have a Nord stam DK, I have only extensively tanked on my Magicka NB. The latter has the Siphoning Attacks ability, which allows restoring stamina while blocking, particularly when you're dealing with mobs or adds. This is known as a Sap Tank. Running out of stamina is possibly the most dangerous thing that can happen and this is where my bias comes from. I would however defer to anyone who has stam DK tank experience. Certainly Nord and Imperial look really good too.

AmberLaTerra

I speak from one who runs a tank and does trials when I suggested Nord or Imperial.

I personally run a high HP/High Resist Imperial stam tank and never run into stamina issues by weaving heavy attacks between my taunts and blocks. As a DK tank your role is not to spam abilities, nor to do DPS, your role is to tank. You will mostly your two taunts, self buff abilities such as Hardened armor, Obsidian Shield (moprh of choice there) and Ingenious weapons to buff your groups DPS, and Vigor, Clatrops, green dragons blood for slowing enemy groups taking pressure off the healer, emergency self heal. War Horn will be your idea Ultimate.

tom5330

i just changed my dk to redguard. its awesome

fred4

tom5330 wrote: »

i just changed my dk to redguard. its awesome

But are you tanking or DPS?

Liofa

It doesn't matter at all . Just choose what race you want . Of course there are better choices like Nord , Imperial and such but just look at the leaderboard groups . Beyond Infinity's main tank is a Khajit which gives no passives that benefits a tank . I play a Dunmer as a main tank and I am in the 105 in EU server which is maybe 10th(?) group . My setup is like this : 5 Torug's Pact , 5 Alkosh , 2 Blood Spawn . Except Blood Spawn (which barely procs) , I have absolutely no set that gives me sustain or tankiness . Just reducing armor of enemy by a lot . My weapons are Infused . I don't have any kind of tankiness boost other than CP and I am still in a nice place in EU leaderboard for vMoL . I think I am in a nice place even with a race that is considered bad because it is all about the player when it comes down to tanking . Hope I made a point .

ZoM_Head

Imperials....very VERY hard to say no to in my opinion.

12% max health BEFORE undaunted sets.

You can go stam DD for vMSA or PvP or trails, sure you do not have sustain like Redguards nor the crit of Khajiits, but running FULL medium you will have almost 18.5-19K max health without spending any attributes into health.

If you'r role is to tank 1st and dps second, go imperial.

Damage mitigation is useless once you reach hard cap, maybe nice in PvP though if you do NOT reach caps.

I have 4 Imperial chars. 2 Stamina DKs, 1 Stamina NB and 1 Stamina Sorc.

You can turn ANY char into a great tank obviously, but some small differences make it easier.

AmberLaTerra

Liofa wrote: »

It doesn't matter at all . Just choose what race you want . Of course there are better choices like Nord , Imperial and such but just look at the leaderboard groups . Beyond Infinity's main tank is a Khajit which gives no passives that benefits a tank . I play a Dunmer as a main tank and I am in the 105 in EU server which is maybe 10th(?) group . My setup is like this : 5 Torug's Pact , 5 Alkosh , 2 Blood Spawn . Except Blood Spawn (which barely procs) , I have absolutely no set that gives me sustain or tankiness . Just reducing armor of enemy by a lot . My weapons are Infused . I don't have any kind of tankiness boost other than CP and I am still in a nice place in EU leaderboard for vMoL . I think I am in a nice place even with a race that is considered bad because it is all about the player when it comes down to tanking . Hope I made a point .

I would agree with the idea of play the race you want, but the OP did specifically ask for info on the best races so I tried to answer him. I mean the reality of it is my tank is only Imperial because I wanted to play an Imperial for it and I was still so new to the game when I made her I just stumbled upon dumb luck of the race I wanted to play as a tank being one of the better tanking races.

At the end of the day it is your build and how you play your build that matters a lot more then race in any role. I know people who have amazing wood elf magicka healers, and a great magicka sorc nord. Are they ever going to match the ideal race build for them by pure min max? No. Are they still better then a lot of players playing that ideal race because they know how to play their builds? Yes.

fred4

AmberLaTerra wrote: »

I speak from one who runs a tank and does trials when I suggested Nord or Imperial.

OK, it's settled, listen to this man or woman.

I have done more 4-man dungeons and less trials and am very likely not as experienced as AmberLaTerra. My problem with heavy attacks is that you're exposed for longer, so you depend on reading or knowing the boss mechanics. When I first tanked vet Velidreth on my stam DK, I kept dying on that account. As a mag NB, with Sap Essence, you are less exposed, since you only need to light attack. As a Redguard you are also, arguably, less exposed on account of getting stamina from your racial passive. I am writing this more from a perspective of getting advice myself. To the original poster I recommend you listen to AmberLaTerra over me.

Riga_Mortis

Thankyou for all the replies.

The main reason I asked was because Ive always played a healer and dd, so was wondering if a race choice might make a difference for a tanking beginner like myself.

AmberLaTerra

fred4 wrote: »

AmberLaTerra wrote: »

I speak from one who runs a tank and does trials when I suggested Nord or Imperial.

OK, it's settled, listen to this man or woman.

I have done more 4-man dungeons and less trials and am very likely not as experienced as AmberLaTerra. My problem with heavy attacks is that you're exposed for longer, so you depend on reading or knowing the boss mechanics. When I first tanked vet Velidreth on my stam DK, I kept dying on that account. As a mag NB, with Sap Essence, you are less exposed, since you only need to light attack. As a Redguard you are also, arguably, less exposed on account of getting stamina from your racial passive. I am writing this more from a perspective of getting advice myself. To the original poster I recommend you listen to AmberLaTerra over me.

well the real key on a stam tank, more specificly a DK stam tank is resistance. With the DK skill lines it is incredible easy to make up an armor combo that with your buffs gives you both Physical and Spell resistance well above the cap so even on bosses that can apply debuffs to your resistance you will still be capped and able to survive a hit if you miss blocking at the proper time or do not have the mechanics down to a science. Stam DK's are the most forgiving tanks in that way if built with that resistance in mind.

A lot of people over look that and think having more offensive abilities in their tank help the party more instead of self buffs for survival. When you get into the high end game work on vet trials for high scores your tank doing 3k DPS instead of 10k DPS and causing a boss to live 7 seconds longer hurts the score less then losing Argo or dying due to not having the skills and self heals to last through a momentarily distracted healer bu a nearly dead DPS or not reacting to a mechanic on time.

Now grant it high resist will never mean you can just ignore the Mechanics (well okay in normal dungeons you pretty much can with a high resist tank but we are talking end game here) but you should if built right have the room to survive a mistake. This also comes down to play style as well of course, I know several in my social guild have tried to exactly copy my build and it just does not fit their play style being purely defensive and doing barely any DPS so lose focus trying to up their DPS and end up dying.

The best thing you can do is pull from all the advice you will get from many players in this thread and build what works best for you.

fred4

ZoM_Head wrote: »

Damage mitigation is useless once you reach hard cap.

I am quite certain that the Nord damage mitigation passive applies in addition to a hard-capped armor rating. I'm not arguing Nord > Imperial, but I do think the Nord has a unique advantage, just as the Imperial has a unique advantage in more health and Red Diamond.

fred4

AmberLaTerra wrote: »

well the real key on a stam tank, more specificly a DK stam tank is resistance.

So I guess, in terms of gear, Armor Master and Defending weapons spring to mind. Do you still rate Footman to round that out? What newer sets should one consider?

Do you rate Malubeth or Lord Warden for tanking? Personally I think Bloodspawn is hard to ignore, since ultimates play such an integral part in a DKs resource management. Also for the resistances, of course.

Asardes

Racial passives are not that important after all. It's nice to have one that gives you extra health and/or extra stamina but if you don't you can always compensate with other abilities. For example if you are a khajit, redguard or a dunmer you can slot structured entropy and get +8% health - orcs have 6%, nords and argonians have 9%, imperials 12%. Stamina pool is in fact most important, because when you absorb shards they always give back 25%, and 25% of 32K is certainly better than 25% of 20K. In fact as a tank I die 90% of the time because I run out of stamina for blocking, breaking CC and roll dodging from danger. I'm not sure if having health over 30K brings any advantages, because most things that are able to one shot you hit way harder than that, and dodging them - which involves stamina - is way more useful. Veteran non-DLC dungeons can be tanked with less than 20K without any problems, even VWGT and VICP with experienced group - did the latter at least one without any health buff to test and I do most daily pledges with no buff at all. The only ones I still have difficulties - buffed I have 27K health & 32.5K stamina - are the new SotH dungeons, but in none of the cases having more health would actually help, because the mechanics are oneshot. For Velidreth I tested once putting all my points in health, and reached 38.5K if I'm not mistaken. But I was getting killed even more easily than before, because I ran out of stamina even faster. The boss before has similar one shot mechanics if he's not dodged/interrupted when he does his "steel tornado" attacks.

From my own experience the most important things in a tank are:

1) Damage mitigation from heavy armor passives, 1H+S passives, defending trait on weapons, shields, and other skills/passives - in the coming patch I will be able to reach 31K both physical and magical with major resolve/ward, without any reinforced or nirnhoned pieces, with 1 light and 1 medium for the undaunted passive; if the healer is running combat prayer (as he should anyway for the DDs) I get an extra 1.5K resistance on top of that from minor resolve/ward - the resistance cap is ~33K and the mitigation is capped at 50% at that point so adding more would be wasted anyway. When I'm about to get hit I cast ingenous shield. In hard, static fights I also cast ring of preservation - mitigates incoming damage by 8%, allows me to regenerate stamina faster (when I break block) and also roll dodge for reduced cost. I have most red CP in thick skinned, elemental defender and hardy, a few in bastion, heavy armor focus and quick recovery and also a few in spell shield and iron clad.

2) Maximum stamina pool - I run a full stamina build, because I can get high enough pools in the other stats by using prismatic enchantments on all my gear with big pieces infused, the rest divines. With blue CP150 healt + stamina food I have 13.5K magicka, 27K health and 32.5K stamina. On my jewelry I have block/bash cost reduction enchantments. I have most green CPs spread between bashing focus, warlord, mooncalf, tenacity and thumbing. As I said, even if you don't recover it on your own, synergizing shards will fill more stamina on a bigger pool. You will also be able to fill it yourself during the times the boss is not doing dangerous attacks by doing heavy attacks. The more to be filled, the better.

3) Magicka recovery - this is sometimes neglected, but even if the magicka pool is shallow, only 1/3 of the size of a magicka DD or healer, and I have no points in magicka, this is less important, as a tank won't be using the magicka for damage anyway, but just for utility. With divines on the small pieces and the Atronach mundus I'm able to reach 1.25K recovery. I have the remaining green points in magician and arcanist for reduced cost and extra recovery. I run a less common armor set, Willows Path. I could have run Tava's Favor, but I eventually chose this instead, for the extra recovery. You need magicka for shields, wards, CC, various group utility spells. In the case of DK of course chains as some fights really need you to use those a lot because adds need to be pulled and AoEd (ex. some rounds in VDSA, tree-minder Na-Kesh)

4) Ultimate recovery - the more often you blow the horn, the higher the damage of the group - this is a no brainer ultimate for any tank or healer. I can manage a horn every 45-50s on average in really intense, sustained fights. That means ~60-70% uptime. Tava's Favor users report similar numbers so I reckon that the set "steals" some of the Bloodspawn procs trough dodging and the effect of using both instead of or just one of them is negligible. In any case both are minor ultimate gain mechanics in my experience - the bulk of your ultimate gain comes from heroic slash, heavy/light attacks (you need to do those for stamina recovery anyway) as well as class abilities, in the case of DK those in the earthen heart line - you will need to keep ingenous weapons up (they last almost 40s), use ingenous shields and use cinder storm as soft CC/taunt for some mobs - in practice eruption seems to be working better than caltrops, and it's better a DD runs those for the extra damage.

5) Stamina recovery - often neglected because they say the tanks need to be blocking and won't be able to recover anyway - but in practice there are highly mobile fights where you won't be blocking more than 10% of the time, and you'll have to roll dodge, break CC and sprint a lot. An example that comes to mind is the Lord Warden at the end of VICP which I find to very stamina intensive but the boss only comes for the tank now and then, attacks once or twice, then flies away. As a DK I'm even running green dragon blood as burst heal but more importantly for stamina recovery during that fight and others.

6) Self heals - if your class lacks an effective burst heal, vigor is the best alternative. I couple that with high stamina recovery and I'm able to self heal trough the hardest fights. I even heal the DDs if they are packed together. You can't rely solely on healer, because he may be occupied or even down.

7) Ability to deal damage - this seems odd, but in some fights you need to be able to do it. Most glaring example is the Planar Inhibitor - there you need to go full DD, close those portals fast and deal damage to the atronach itself. Being a full stamina spec, having the blue CP mostly in mighty, and a few in taumaturge, precise strikes and piercing helps me deal enough damage in some fights to really matter, especially when I change to medium armor 2H/Bow DD.

8) Maximum health pool - if you reach 27K and you do the right thing you don't die.

AmberLaTerra

I myself use Ebon (with defending ebon weapons both bars) and Pariah (shield here both bars since ebon sheild still bugged and removes the 5 piece bonus when you swap bars even if both bars have sheild), as Ebon boosts the HP of even glassy DPS, and Pariah keeps me at cap resist if I am hit with a debuff and take some damage with it's bonus of giving extra resist based on lost health.

Armor master, or even twice born star with the lover and lady stones for both resist stones can work well too though.

As for the helm sets I personally use Engine Guardian for it random resource restore, but that is due to war horn being not overly costly for an ultimate. Malubeth for self healing, or Bloodspawn for ultimate regen are also both great options though.

There are so many build options and variations that can work with a stam DK for tanking that you can really go nuts experimenting though. The DK skill line opens up so many resist buffs I have even seen people testing medium sets to build high resist DOTS tanks that can tank and do half decent DPS.

I am just more a purist myself and like my tank being built for her role of tanking and leaving the DPS to the ones build for that.

Dubhliam

Nord or Imperial

Actually_Goku

If you're endgame - go Imperial. The max stat edge that Imperials have over Nord foregoes the resistance caps that you hit with the damage mitigation Nords receive.

I'm not 100% on that, but either way, more health, more stamina = more time alive, more time blocking, more heals etc.

Prof_Bawbag

I think if you're gonna sink 100's of hours into this game you're better just going with which race you like the best rather than with the passive and that goes for any TES game. Nothing worse than being stuck with a race you don't particularly enjoy. I think I initially ran a High Elf sorc, but whilst the passives kinda did help in the beginning, I just didn't particularly enjoy using a high elf. Any build I opt for is always gonna be a Dunmer because it's simply the race I opt for in all TES games. I'd say over 97% of the build requirement is down to the player themselves and the rest is down to the passives. You can have all the required passives of the day, but they're not gonna do you much good if you don't have the ability to fully utilise the build in question.

Lord_Eomer

AmberLaTerra wrote: »

Nord, or Imperial.

With nord you get a damage reduction bonus that can be great for a stam DK tank along with max health and stam and health recovery.

With Imperial you get Max health, max stam, and red diamond that can time to time help heal you a bit when using light/heavy attacks between taunts and blocking on bosses.

Nord is now real tanky race..

Max health, stamina and health recovery buff with damage reduction works lot better..

fred4

Actually_Goku wrote: »

The max stat edge that Imperials have over Nord foregoes the resistance caps that you hit with the damage mitigation Nords receive.

Again with this nonsense. You are implying that the Nord racial damage resistance is worthless, because damage resistance is hard capped. That is nonsense! Damage resistance is not hard capped, only the resistances from armor and the various buffs that specifically mention physical and spell resistance are hard capped. I have dug up the post that breaks this down. Please study:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/279426/damage-mitigation-explanation-and-list-of-options-updated-for-a-third-time/p1

Actually_Goku

fred4 wrote: »

Actually_Goku wrote: »

The max stat edge that Imperials have over Nord foregoes the resistance caps that you hit with the damage mitigation Nords receive.

Again with this nonsense. You are implying that the Nord racial damage resistance is worthless, because damage resistance is hard capped. That is nonsense! Damage resistance is not hard capped, only the resistances from armor and the various buffs that specifically mention physical and spell resistance are hard capped. I have dug up the post that breaks this down. Please study:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/279426/damage-mitigation-explanation-and-list-of-options-updated-for-a-third-time/p1

I did say "not 100% on this" but you conveniently left that out from your quote.

Cheers for making it personal a$$hole

fred4

It's just, you probably didn't read the whole thread. Someone else brought up the same point and I'd already refuted it.

QUEZ420

Imperial master race.

Asardes

Nord passive resistance works the same as CP mitigations (Expert Defender, Thick Skinned, Elemental Defender, Hardy) and minor (ex. circle of protection), major protection (ex. veil of blades) bonuses, and other special ones (standard of might) - they subtract from the damage before your resistance is taken into consideration. So if a boss hits you with a 50K heavy attack the Nord passive would substract 6% (3K) before everything else is taken into account. With full mitigation from armor and minor/major ward that cap the resistance, the fraction that actually applies is 50%. So in practice you will take 1.5K damage. Imperial has 12% health bonus, Nord has 9%. So a difference of 3%. At 27K health an Imperial will have 0.8K health, but get hit with 1.5K more. So especially at high CP and capped physical/magical resistance the Nord mitigation passive is more beneficial than the extra health the Imperial has. It's debatable if the red diamond passive compensates for that, since the heal is quite small; it's way better to not be damaged in the first place. Imperial is a flexible race, but not one that's easy to min-max with. With the passive change from the SotH patch, the stamina bonus relative to orcs and specially nords is not that large - assuming a 30-32K stamina pool, the extra 4% is 1.2-1.3K stamina, less than the base cost of a pierce armor taunt.

Voxicity

Khajiit, DK has ez stam recovery

Woops, ignore me, was thinking dps

Hylda69

I personnaly run an Argonian Stam DK and i really love it.

For PvE => 5 Dragon + 5 Seducer + 2 Blood Spawn.
20k magicka, 25k stamina, 27k5 hp, 1k3 reg magicka.

For PvP => 5 Black Rose + 2 Blood Spawn + 3 Agility + 2H Mael Battle Axe + S&S with stam bonus, doesn't matter which set.
11k magicka, 33k stamina, 27k hp, 1k8 reg stam, ~3k2 dgt S&S / 2H.

stevepdodson_ESO888

xSylvanasWindrunner wrote: »

If you want MAX DPS, The only choice is Kahjiit, as its the only race that can out DPS them all.
If you want best sustain, you take the Redguard race.

or you could actually just read what he said... "Tank"... and focus on answering the question