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XxBradeyxX

I am looking to tank like dungeons and vet DSA. Maybe a trial or two. Am I supposed to use 5 tavas and 5 ebon?

Dubhliam

Plus two Bloodspawn.
It's the best setup for trials.

But all of that goes to waste if you don't support your groups with Aggressive Warhorn. That ultimate is the sole reason DK tanks wear Tava.

HatchetHaro

5 Tavas is pretty much always a must if you're going to buff your group regularly with Aggressive Warhorn. Ebon isn't exactly mandatory, and you can always go with Endurance and any 2pc for sword and board. All that is definitely enough to tank any dungeon and any normal trial.

For monster sets, Blood Spawn is the way to go. However, its low proc chance and the lack of more "defensive" stats may be off-putting, and in that case, you can always substitute it for Mighty Chudan, which gives you a ton of resistances and eliminates the need to have a resistance buff skill on your bar; I never have one on anyway.

For some vet trial bosses such as the last boss on vHRC, you're going to want to replace your armor with something much tankier, such as Armor Master. That boss hits really really hard regularly, and you're going to want to mitigate as much of that damage as you can.

exeeter702

Friend of mine struggles severely in harder content. He has tavas and bs and messes around with seventh legion or knights errant. Should he be glyphing full health and a decent amount of attribute points into health? He barely sits around 23k hp and is often one shot by things.

WalksonGraves

exeeter702 wrote: »

Friend of mine struggles severely in harder content. He has tavas and bs and messes around with seventh legion or knights errant. Should he be glyphing full health and a decent amount of attribute points into health? He barely sits around 23k hp and is often one shot by things.

23 is pretty damn low, tavas doesn't give you much in the way of defense it's really only for ult so the 2nd set has to be a great tank set. 7th legion is good paired with other things, its a decent set. Seems like he put all his attributes into stam or something, the more damage you do as a tank the less able you are to specialize in defense. 3x shield glyphs and enough stam to comfortably spam your rotation and have 50% left in the pool for blocking. Dump the rest into hp.

Woeler

HatchetHaro wrote: »

For some vet trial bosses such as the last boss on vHRC, you're going to want to replace your armor with something much tankier, such as Armor Master. That boss hits really really hard regularly, and you're going to want to mitigate as much of that damage as you can.

Absolutely not. In trials you run 5 ebon, 5 alkosh and a monster set you prefer (either lord warden or blood spawn). And still you are at the armor cap. Armor Master is a terrible and useless overbuff. If you need to go ultra tanky becuase your group is crap hist bark is a 1000x better choice than armor master.

Dubhliam wrote: »

Plus two Bloodspawn.
It's the best setup for trials.

But all of that goes to waste if you don't support your groups with Aggressive Warhorn. That ultimate is the sole reason DK tanks wear Tava.

No, it's not. Alkosh > Tava. Decent trail groups have a war horn rotation and you can keep this up just fine without tavas. If you are playing with a rotation your tank is either waiting all the time with ultimate full or screwing up the rotation using his war horn all the time in the middle of the rotation (which is quite random as tava and BS proc is random). Cool this really fast ulti regen, but it is definitely not needed and an absolute meh compared to the Alkosh support one can generate as a main tank. I alone can generate in 80%+ uptime on all bosses in the three craglorn trials (with exception of the mage of course).

For DSA it might still be worth it, but for trials, hell no.

Panth141

Absolutely not. In trials you run 5 ebon, 5 alkosh and a monster set you prefer (either lord warden or blood spawn). And still you are at the armor cap. Armor Master is a terrible and useless overbuff. If you need to go ultra tanky becuase your group is crap hist bark is a 1000x better choice than armor master.

Dubhliam wrote: »

Plus two Bloodspawn.
It's the best setup for trials.

But all of that goes to waste if you don't support your groups with Aggressive Warhorn. That ultimate is the sole reason DK tanks wear Tava.

No, it's not. Alkosh > Tava. Decent trail groups have a war horn rotation and you can keep this up just fine without tavas. If you are playing with a rotation your tank is either waiting all the time with ultimate full or screwing up the rotation using his war horn all the time in the middle of the rotation (which is quite random as tava and BS proc is random). Cool this really fast ulti regen, but it is definitely not needed and an absolute meh compared to the Alkosh support one can generate as a main tank.

@Woeler

I expect that, as the OP is just starting to get things together for trials, the responses were aimed towards someone who doesn't have gear from vMoL - which leads to Tava's, I guess.

In some fights - like the Mage in vAA (especially in HM) - you may get less use from Tava's if you can't fit Shuffle on your front bar and you're not a bar-swapping ninja.

5 Tava, 5 Ebon, 2 BS is a solid set-up for starting out tanking trials.

That said - if you do have Alkosh; slap it on!

Woeler

Panth141 wrote: »

Absolutely not. In trials you run 5 ebon, 5 alkosh and a monster set you prefer (either lord warden or blood spawn). And still you are at the armor cap. Armor Master is a terrible and useless overbuff. If you need to go ultra tanky becuase your group is crap hist bark is a 1000x better choice than armor master.

Dubhliam wrote: »

Plus two Bloodspawn.
It's the best setup for trials.

But all of that goes to waste if you don't support your groups with Aggressive Warhorn. That ultimate is the sole reason DK tanks wear Tava.

No, it's not. Alkosh > Tava. Decent trail groups have a war horn rotation and you can keep this up just fine without tavas. If you are playing with a rotation your tank is either waiting all the time with ultimate full or screwing up the rotation using his war horn all the time in the middle of the rotation (which is quite random as tava and BS proc is random). Cool this really fast ulti regen, but it is definitely not needed and an absolute meh compared to the Alkosh support one can generate as a main tank.

@Woeler

I expect that, as the OP is just starting to get things together for trials, the responses were aimed towards someone who doesn't have gear from vMoL - which leads to Tava's, I guess.

In some fights - like the Mage in vAA (especially in HM) - you may get less use from Tava's if you can't fit Shuffle on your front bar and you're not a bar-swapping ninja.

5 Tava, 5 Ebon, 2 BS is a solid set-up for starting out tanking trials.

That said - if you do have Alkosh; slap it on!

I know, but I am just replying to people saying "it is the best for trials", but it clearly isn't. Of course the setup works for beginners and is easy to get. But it is definitely not the best setup.

Lokey0024

Here's my question. Does it really matter if you are optimized fully in HM trials? Never done one so legit asking. Thx in advance

HatchetHaro

Woeler wrote: »

Armor Master is a terrible and useless overbuff. If you need to go ultra tanky becuase your group is crap hist bark is a 1000x better choice than armor master.

Disagreed in its entirety. Hist Bark 5pc gives Major Evasion when blocking. You know what else gives Major Evasion? Shuffle, an armor ability which, when slotted, gives you more health and, when activated, more resistances, all while wearing Armor Master. Health recovery is negligible in trials; you have 3 healers spamming healing springs and keeping everyone topped off every second, so that's one stat bonus that's useless on Hist Bark in trials, vs zero with Armor Master.

As for overbuffing, it depends; if you're a DK who focuses solely on tanking and assign attribute points and CP into tanking alone, then sure, you might be overbuffing with Armor Master. However, if you're already running a stam DK DPS build and geared for stamina and damage, then, no, you won't overbuff with Armor Master in your tank loadout.

Woeler

HatchetHaro wrote: »

Woeler wrote: »

Armor Master is a terrible and useless overbuff. If you need to go ultra tanky becuase your group is crap hist bark is a 1000x better choice than armor master.

Disagreed in its entirety. Hist Bark 5pc gives Major Evasion when blocking. You know what else gives Major Evasion? Shuffle, an armor ability which, when slotted, gives you more health and, when activated, more resistances, all while wearing Armor Master. Health recovery is negligible in trials; you have 3 healers spamming healing springs and keeping everyone topped off every second, so that's one stat bonus that's useless on Hist Bark in trials, vs zero with Armor Master.

As for overbuffing, it depends; if you're a DK who focuses solely on tanking and assign attribute points and CP into tanking alone, then sure, you might be overbuffing with Armor Master. However, if you're already running a stam DK DPS build and geared for stamina and damage, then, no, you won't overbuff with Armor Master in your tank loadout.

Armor master buff runs 10 seconds. Means you need to recast a 20+ second skill every 10 seconds to actually have the buff all the time. So it is not only an overbuff in armor it is also a complete waste of stamina. Here is the deal with not wearing armor master: You will reach the armor cap anyways. I'm running 5 ebon and 5 alkosh and I am perma capped (and I do not even use reinforced). And no I have no cp in heavy armor focuss. Wearing armor master is a complete waste. Not only are you overbuffing yourself, but you are wasting you stamina and a skill slot on an armor skill that you need to cast more than 2 times in its actual duration. This is a COMPLETE WASTE of resources.

So then you go after hist bark for its health recovery (no idea what trial group runs with 3 healers instead of 2?)? You defend a set that makes you waste stamina and a skillslot for an armor buff you do not need to be capped, but you judge hist bark because of it's health recovery?

I wear neither, but if I had to I'd choose hist bark buff over wasting stamina and skillslots for a not needed armor buff any day. Not to mention that hist bark gives you way more sustain and is especially handy for new people, while armor master just makes you spend resources on some armor.

And again, this whole "if you are also running a dps build you wont be capped" is completely wrong. Your passives + your set bonusses (NOT armor master) and the normal armor of the armor you are wearing + hardened armor is enough to be capped.

exeeter702

HatchetHaro wrote: »

5 Tavas is pretty much always a must if you're going to buff your group regularly with Aggressive Warhorn. Ebon isn't exactly mandatory, and you can always go with Endurance and any 2pc for sword and board. All that is definitely enough to tank any dungeon and any normal trial.

For monster sets, Blood Spawn is the way to go. However, its low proc chance and the lack of more "defensive" stats may be off-putting, and in that case, you can always substitute it for Mighty Chudan, which gives you a ton of resistances and eliminates the need to have a resistance buff skill on your bar; I never have one on anyway.

For some vet trial bosses such as the last boss on vHRC, you're going to want to replace your armor with something much tankier, such as Armor Master. That boss hits really really hard regularly, and you're going to want to mitigate as much of that damage as you can.

Mighty chudan is awful. For a dk tank to use that instead of spiked armor means he is giving up the draconic passives that come with it. Dk tanks can easily fit it on their bar without much of a compromise so I don't see the need.

Honestly most tank builds for all classes have a generous amount of wiggle room on the bars on top of having easy access to the major resistant buffs. Hell, NB tanks get it as a passive.

Baconfat79

Agreed 100%. Please stop suggesting Mighty Chudan. It is a total waste of monster set slots.

HatchetHaro

Woeler wrote: »

Armor master buff runs 10 seconds. Means you need to recast a 20+ second skill every 10 seconds to actually have the buff all the time. So it is not only an overbuff in armor it is also a complete waste of stamina. Here is the deal with not wearing armor master: You will reach the armor cap anyways. I'm running 5 ebon and 5 alkosh and I am perma capped (and I do not even use reinforced). And no I have no cp in heavy armor focuss. Wearing armor master is a complete waste. Not only are you overbuffing yourself, but you are wasting you stamina and a skill slot on an armor skill that you need to cast more than 2 times in its actual duration. This is a COMPLETE WASTE of resources.

So then you go after hist bark for its health recovery (no idea what trial group runs with 3 healers instead of 2?)? You defend a set that makes you waste stamina and a skillslot for an armor buff you do not need to be capped, but you judge hist bark because of it's health recovery?

I wear neither, but if I had to I'd choose hist bark buff over wasting stamina and skillslots for a not needed armor buff any day. Not to mention that hist bark gives you way more sustain and is especially handy for new people, while armor master just makes you spend resources on some armor.

And again, this whole "if you are also running a dps build you wont be capped" is completely wrong. Your passives + your set bonusses (NOT armor master) and the normal armor of the armor you are wearing + hardened armor is enough to be capped.

Funny, I never find myself capped running with Hardened Armor (or Unstoppable), not that I run it anyway. Secondly, I never said anything about having 100% uptime on the Armor Master 5pc bonus; it just comes with the set and one does not have to use it to its full potential. By the way, shuffle is pretty much a 20% damage mitigation, and it is actually extremely useful and has saved my life many times, and it does not cost much stamina to cast, so I don't see why not. I'd still choose Armor Master over Hist Bark any day due to shuffle being always on my skill bar and the extra health and spell resistance I get with it at the cost of a tiny bit of extra stamina (heavy weave a bit and you'll always have enough stamina for everything) and the lack of the need to hold block to get the Major Evasion buff.

exeeter702 wrote: »

Mighty chudan is awful. For a dk tank to use that instead of spiked armor means he is giving up the draconic passives that come with it. Dk tanks can easily fit it on their bar without much of a compromise so I don't see the need.

Another skill that's useful to have is Coagulating Blood (or Green Dragon Blood), and it's also a part of the Draconic Power skill line, so you still get the passives. Instead of spending magicka on a 20s resistance buff, spend it on a healing-received buff and get the exact same resistance buff permanently with the Mighty Chudan set.

Of course, it's all down to playstyle, but I find that I prefer to save my magicka for Igneous Shields (that + Resolving Vigor is an amazing stam heal) to help keep teammates alive (and for the stam return), as well as Igneous Weapons to buff my teammates. That's why I suggested Mighty Chudan in the first place, for its pure tank stats that don't require managing uptime and spending resources on.