About PvE Tanking

Krist

I am not interested in builds on this discussion, more on role. I am quite happy with my own build, which is probably a bit unique, but works for me.

Since I said what I do not want to talk about, now what I do want to talk about. The role. I have a DPS NB and a DPS Sorc, both of which have good survivability and excellent dps, so I know how to play that roll. I have not tanked for a team in years, and maybe it showed yesterday, but in the past the roll of the tank was to keep the bosses occupied while dps melted the mobs, I have played that roll of dps and accepted it..sometimes I died. I felt it all went well, but had one dps complaining because he had mobs on him and he died. I explained to him that if I chased mobs and left the bosses to attack him, he would have died far more, and that his roll was to destroy the mobs. This got me cussed out and told I had no idea what I was doing.

Fact is, maybe I dont know what the expectations are now. I have pierce armor and inner fire for taunting, which I use frequently in my rotation. Are tanks now expected to keep all mobs on them, as in other games? If so, what is the best method. Thanks for genuine replies. Just really interested on roll not so much build or which class is better. I have just come back to PvE...which I did tell them before hand....and tanking was never my greatest interest before due to lack of taunt. My character has been PvP for quite some time, and only solo everything else. Thanks again.

VaxtinTheWolf

It's just the occasional panzy that think you are a failure if one single enemy touches their Holy body.

Sometimes you will also come across the ones that ask if you are even taunting if you happen to lose aggro on the boss for less than 2 seconds. Really, sometimes it wears off, excuse me for not catching it even sooner, despite reestablishing said aggro.

Simply ignore it. Yes, Crowd control via Tank is nice, if you are busy with boss position, just taunt them with the ranged one best you can. DPS often build for pure damage, so they may not carry any real CC to defend themselves, or just focus and kill it themselves if it's just a weak opponent. What they can to to help is bring the enemy bullying them towards you, to get it off them even faster, but some run to a corner and die.

Enough personal ranting. Just do what you can, ignore the nit-pickers. I like feedback when i'm learning to tank on an unfamiliar class, but I don't appreciate when the fellow comrade are throwing their taunts at you instead.

Krist

VaxtinTheWolf wrote: »

It's just the occasional panzy that think you are a failure if one single enemy touches their Holy body.......Enough personal ranting. Just do what you can, ignore the nit-pickers. I like feedback when i'm learning to tank on an unfamiliar class, but I don't appreciate when the fellow comrade are throwing their taunts at you instead.

I have noticed even as DPS that others seem to blame everything on the tank. I never did like that. I have died several times and had them blaming the tank, but I did not feel it was his fault. It was my own missteps and mishandling. In this one dungeon, I saw the healer told the dps to stay close to him, not sure if he listened as I was busy with what I was doing.

Thanks for the reply. It does make me feel better.

Still open to other takes on it.

raj72616a

i think they usually yell at the healers. but yea i did come across quite a few who complained i did not grab aggro of all the mobs (or that i did not hold aggro of some bosses that were immune to taunt)

i hold aggro of bosses, debuff mobs, heal allies (since i play a templar and can only heal instead of crowd control), i rez, and after that i taunt as many other mobs as i can. taunting trash mob is very very very low on my priority as a tank.

if the dps are good players, they would have slaughtered the trash mobs before i get a chance to taunt them.

Soriana

Tank here, been tanking since closed beta; have learned a ton by pugging my way to Undaunted level 9 1/2 or whatever it is.

Plain and simple, your job is to control the boss, aiming him away from the rest of the group, and any other immediate threats that you can taunt. There are only going to be so many bad guys you can hold aggro on at one time so forget trying to control them all. Go for the biggest and the baddest and, if a dps cannot survive against the other loose bad guys, they are the problem...not you.

If you have some kind of crowd control you can use for the rest of the bad guys, that is great, but totally not necessary in my opinion.

Trials tanking is another matter entirely but regular group dungeons are a cake walk if you do the above. Sorry you had a bad experience with a glass cannon.

Kozai

raj72616a wrote: »

i hold aggro of bosses, debuff mobs, heal allies (since i play a templar and can only heal instead of crowd control), i rez, and after that i taunt as many other mobs as i can. taunting trash mob is very very very low on my priority as a tank.

Templar tank has a harder time with crowd control, one advantage of a DK (Talons and Chains). One possibility is Ritual of Retribution, fire that off as you get near a spawn, and it attracts their attention and slows them, it has a really large radius so is good for that. Even slowing down the mobs a bit will help the dps kill them before too many accumulate. Another possibility is Caltrops, but you need to PvP for that (though I found it pretty easy to get PvP credit on my Templar, they seem to be 95% dps and love it when healers show up).

paulsimonps

I mostly on taunt the bigger guys, the rest I CC, and by CC I mean, CHAIN ALL THE THINGS! Getting stuff in nice and tight for the DPS to just AoE it down makes everything go super fast. If you don't have pugs that spam single target it trash pulls of course. After everything is chained in its talons talons talons talons. For classes that aren't DK's though its obviously a lot harder to do that and I would recommend taunting more things.

Note thou, there is nothing more annoying than a DPS or Healer that starts running around like a mad man as soon as they get one little add on them..... Its harder for us to taunt it if you run away with it!

But all in all a tanks job is to Control the battle field. Aim boss away from group, chain in adds and root them down and to buff and debuff the team. Some tanks say they want to deal damage but that's a waste of time. Buffing and Debuffing will give higher group DPS in most situations, really bad DPS's will of course change that but yea that's why I rarely pug. So don't worry to much about the Taunt and worry more about CC.

Krist

Kozai wrote: »

Another possibility is Caltrops, but you need to PvP for that (though I found it pretty easy to get PvP credit on my Templar, they seem to be 95% dps and love it when healers show up).

PvP I do know, and yeah, you have to be high dps to sustain PvPing if you wish 1v1, however, I encourage anyone interested in the skill lines to not shy from it. Even if you do not wish group, look for where the big fights are happening and join in. Hit several targets in big fights immediately because you get credit for each one, use siege when you get enough ap. Stuns, holds and fear are very effective against most targets. Show up to take a Keep or Resources. My point is even if you are not a PvP player, give it a go. The skill lines are useful outside of PvP and it is playable even if you are not really a "PvP'er". If you die, there is no penalty, you res and get back to the battle and keep earning the ap.
Yes, we do love it when healers show up too!
Join the most populated or go when population is high, pop locked is best time for non-PvP builds because you can get into the big fights, just have to wait to get in.

I know, got off of my own subject, but wanted to encourage PvE'ers to PvP if they like the skill lines and find them useful in situations as you said above. I actually considered caltrops in my rotation the night the dps went off on me. I used them before on my own dps in group dungeons to keep mobs off of me.

pizzaow

paulsimonps wrote: »

Note thou, there is nothing more annoying than a DPS or Healer that starts running around like a mad man as soon as they get one little add on them..... Its harder for us to taunt it if you run away with it!

Yes, this ^^^.

Protip: if you do get an add on you, bring it TO the tank/aoe. Bonus points for using voice chat and saying something like "hey tank, I'm bringing you a new friend".

Triddle

I try to keep aggro on as many adds as possible, for the most part in a boss fight you should be able to hold the boss and any significant adds, while swarm type adds should be pretty much instantly killed by the dps. If you have the luxury of a decent root you can root the swarms too. With a solid tanking build that isn't constantly battling for survival/resources you should have plenty of time to pick up any significant adds in a timely fashion.

There're essentially three kinds of adds in ESO dungeons, the kind the tank must pick up ASAP and hold aggro on throughout the fight, the kind the tank might pick up and hold aggro on as much as is convenient, and the kind the tank might CC, or otherwise ignore. It's important as a tank to recognize which types of adds are involved in a fight, many fights don't have any adds of the first kind, and you can get away with ignoring adds entirely. Others have so many adds of the second kind that it becomes your responsibility to do your part and have at least some of them on you. Some have both of these things (Xal-Nur comes to mind). If you let the Xal-Nur trolls run around beating on your dps, they're going to be sad about it, and hopefully will patiently explain the need to hold them to you. But if they're sad that one of the archers is shooting at them, they can just get over it.

At the end of the day the dps are going to spend at least some of the fight with at least some mobs hitting them. If they can't handle that then... Well they should probably learn to.

Krist

Triddle wrote: »

There're essentially three kinds of adds in ESO dungeons, the kind the tank must pick up ASAP and hold aggro on throughout the fight, the kind the tank might pick up and hold aggro on as much as is convenient, and the kind the tank might CC, or otherwise ignore. It's important as a tank to recognize which types of adds are involved in a fight, many fights don't have any adds of the first kind, and you can get away with ignoring adds entirely. Others have so many adds of the second kind that it becomes your responsibility to do your part and have at least some of them on you.

Good advice. It was really trash mobs that the dps was complaining about. I watched for the hard hitters. With my build it is kind of like tanking made easy, so easy enough to pull mobs when necessary. I just never thought it was necessary and there were two bosses to hold aggro on. It was not until we were done and about to leave dungeon/group that the dps made his complaints known. He then quickly dropped group so I could not even ask where the problem was. When I PM'ed him with an honest question to it all, and reminding him it was a good run as he only died at the last boss....he cussed me out. While I dont let folks like that bother me, I did want to see where we stand as tanks now. I am by far no expert, so I looked for any threads on it. Could not find anything worth using, everything was class/build specific, thus this thread.
Thank you for the good advice.

I have learned some things here, from you and others. I need to incorporate more CC into my rotation, which will be easy enough.

Ozstryker

Krist wrote: »

Triddle wrote: »

There're essentially three kinds of adds in ESO dungeons, the kind the tank must pick up ASAP and hold aggro on throughout the fight, the kind the tank might pick up and hold aggro on as much as is convenient, and the kind the tank might CC, or otherwise ignore. It's important as a tank to recognize which types of adds are involved in a fight, many fights don't have any adds of the first kind, and you can get away with ignoring adds entirely. Others have so many adds of the second kind that it becomes your responsibility to do your part and have at least some of them on you.

I have learned some things here, from you and others. I need to incorporate more CC into my rotation, which will be easy enough.

Burning embers (or encase) are great tanking tools on trash mobs, gather and root leaves ranged dd's to do their thing... Sometimes the odd mob or ranged mob is left uncontrolled, but chains or inner fire sort that! Usually though trash melts pretty quick!

You said u have dd characters op, so apply this logic... If a dd is swarmed by a mob ask yourself why. usually it's because they have aoe attacked an uncontrolled mob, or positioned themselves too close to a mob that hasn't been brought into the fight yet. etc.
So what as a dd should they do? personally if i did something dumb like that I'd kite them toward the tank, and hope he'd help me out! but to often a dd will try to beat them down and then complain that u suk... Laugh it off, 9 times outa 10 it's their own fault.

Krist

Ozstryker wrote: »

You said u have dd characters op, so apply this logic... If a dd is swarmed by a mob ask yourself why. usually it's because they have aoe attacked an uncontrolled mob, or positioned themselves too close to a mob that hasn't been brought into the fight yet. etc.
So what as a dd should they do? personally if i did something dumb like that I'd kite them toward the tank, and hope he'd help me out! but to often a dd will try to beat them down and then complain that u suk... Laugh it off, 9 times outa 10 it's their own fault.

HAH...that is exactly what I told him to do, he told me to F*** Off.....lol. I was not wanting confirmation on what I knew already, but I am glad to see I was not that far off on my thinking. Do I need work on tanking skills? In the 3 years I have been PvP focused, I tanked now about 4 times in that time, so I do. However, I tanked often before that, and good to see the concept is still the same, though as I said, cc was never in my rotation and now I think I will give it a try.

Ozstryker

Krist wrote: »

Ozstryker wrote: »

You said u have dd characters op, so apply this logic... If a dd is swarmed by a mob ask yourself why. usually it's because they have aoe attacked an uncontrolled mob, or positioned themselves too close to a mob that hasn't been brought into the fight yet. etc.
So what as a dd should they do? personally if i did something dumb like that I'd kite them toward the tank, and hope he'd help me out! but to often a dd will try to beat them down and then complain that u suk... Laugh it off, 9 times outa 10 it's their own fault.

HAH...that is exactly what I told him to do, he told me to F*** Off.....lol. I was not wanting confirmation on what I knew already, but I am glad to see I was not that far off on my thinking. Do I need work on tanking skills? In the 3 years I have been PvP focused, I tanked now about 4 times in that time, so I do. However, I tanked often before that, and good to see the concept is still the same, though as I said, cc was never in my rotation and now I think I will give it a try.

This has been an interesting thread! It's interesting because alot of the responses here have all basically said the same thing regarding the general principal of tanking trash mobs.... Basically iv built my tank based on what I've seen while using my healer (main).. I use skills and tactics that I've witnessed other tanks using efficiently!! I too am glad my thinking has been not far off

I'd say the only work a tank needs on skills is just to have them all available and morphed so you can swap in and out a particular skill depending on a groups composition! I keep a flex spot open on both bars for this.. I believe it's the little things a group don't see that make a run go smoothly, and what keeps tanking fun..
I love to see dd's saying things like "tanks are not needed in this dungeon/game". To me, that means we (tanks) understand our roll and are generally doing it well

bertenburnyb16_ESO

if there are hard hitting mobs I try to taunt em to or lock em down,
but well its always the tanks fault (or the healer)
thats the job of the tank, to take the hits of the enemys and the whining of his teammates