Tanking normal and vet dungeon in pugs

OldGamerESO · January 2017

I have 5 different characters that I run dungeons on frequently. I have tank set and dps set for each. I generally queue as a tank since I prefer that role in a dungeon. I belong to some great guilds, but putting a group together is painful. Getting a group together via /zone has its own issues (like being interrogated via whispers on what my spec is, gear, health, etc is). So I usually jump in the dungeon finder, which is an instant queue. I run randoms, pledges and specifics to get gear and achievements and work on my undaunted level.

All my tanks run short and long range taunts, boss debuffs and warhorn.

Magicka / Knightblade sap tank
Magica Templar
Stamina Dragonknight
Magica Sorcerer
Stamina Sorcerer

Here is my issues... many pugs often suffer from dps issues and/or dying issues. I get levels 29 - cp150 very frequently on dungeon finder. Yesterday I ran fungal grotto II and it took 10 minutes to kill each boss. I was on my Magicka sorcerer tank and I think I did 6k dps myself.

So I am re-thinking the whole war horn focused builds are not good for me. When I run trials on Fri-Sat I am locked into a healer or dps role and never tank them. So I only run tanks for 4 man content. I put a lot of effort to get my ultimate generation high so I can do war horns. A lot of my gear choices are to maximize that. But here is my thinking. On a super strong dps group, I am close to useless as a tank anyway. They sometimes run ahead of me and kills trash before I can even taunt anything. The bosses die in 15 seconds, even on vet. My warhorn makes it better, but who cares if it is 15 seconds or 30.

On the bad pugs though (which is most of my dungeon runs) I am wondering if I would be better off dropping the whole tavya, bloodspawn, alkosh think and changing it up for more utility. I have soloed many of these dungeons in hybrid tank/dps fits. Maybe I should use one of those and slap a taunt on them? Even if I drop all ultimate generation gear and just use heroic I am sure I can pop a warhorn before a boss fight. That frees me up to switch to more experimental gear for dps/healing to prop up v ery weak groups.

What do you think?

Qbiken · January 2017

Just remove warhonr and you´re fine. Warhorn imo is only good with a good group. Slot some ulties that does some dps instead.

kylewwefan · January 2017

I pug a lot too, for similar reasons to yours. Like you, I get a lot more low DPS groups than high. In low damage groups, warhorn and support skills don't often help much. Alkosh might be nice if you ever get a synergy to proc it. Most the time, this does not happen.

Better to go hybrid and switch your foods out. Sword/Board one bar, DW or Staff the other. Run some AOE and maybe a class execute.

Buffing the heck out of a ~10k DPS might bring them up to 11

you're probably better off adding your own.

I've no problems leaving a group for a harder Vet dungeon based solely on the CP I see. Vet COA2 or any vet DLC, roll out. It's quite rare to finish those ones with a group finder pug.

WalksonGraves · January 2017

Just throw on a monster set like velidreth you should make up for bad dps.

amasuriel · January 2017

Yes I gave up on being a utility tank in 4 man for much the same reason. A good group is only going to be a little faster even with excellent ult generation, but everything goes so fast you won't really notice. A bad group even 100% warhorn isn't going to help them.

My usual PuG tank setup now is tremorscale, knight errant and Hunding (still 5 heavy 2 medium), bow on back bar.

With 5 heavy and the health return from knight errant I still have no trouble tanking anything 4 man with little to no healing (vigor and igneous). Though I will switch to more sustain gear when doing something like vCoHII final boss with guildies.

Single target I do 8-12k depending on how long the fight is and my uptime on standard. AOE (hail, caltrops, tremorscale) I can easily pull 15-20k. This not only speeds up poor DPS, but means the difference between being able to solo the last 40% of a boss (after rezzing everyone in the group 4 times) and just having to give up because nobody can stay alive. It's not very glamorous soloing a boss with 8k DPS, but its better than having to give up half way through a dungeon.

I agree with @kylewwefan though, in that if I'm queued for a random vet (for the sweet sweet jewelry), and I get CoS, Mazzatun etc and the group isn't 300+ I won't even try. I politely curse the random finder for not allowing me to turn off DLC dungeons and apologies that I'm not up to Mazzatun etc right now and leave. And before everyone jumps down my throat, yes there are bad players with high CP and great players with low, but its the only metric we have right now, and it is legit harder to have enough stats at low CP to do a hard vet. Other option is asking for achievement links, but that is equally unfair in different ways.