Is stamina/magicka tank really a thing?

Gordon906

A tank requires both resources and now the meta revolves around mag regen even for "stam" tanks dk. So is magicka or stamina tank really a thing?

raj72616a

stamplar tank has no spammable magicka class skill that is useful like Igenious Shield.

WalksonGraves

You can tank with all points in hp and tri food, you don't need focus on one thing because you aren't maximizing damage. Use magika for your abilities and stam for blocks

Brrrofski

I have 18k Stam only saptank yet 35k magica. So very much a magica tank.

Lynx7386

Tanks will always use both and essentially be hybrids, but usually builds will focus more on one or the other. Stamina tanks use vigor more and magicka is mostly for utility effects, magicka tanks save stamina for blocking and taunting and focus more on spellcasting.

Examples: my nightblade is a magicka based sap tank. Stamina is used almost entirely for blocking/break free/dodging, and the occasional pierce for taunting. Outside of that I'm relying on sap essence/refreshing path for damage and healing, dark shades for maim, mirage for evasion, siphoning attacks for sustain, etc.

My future warden tank is more likely to be stamina focused, using vigor/caltrops and stamina abilities more (thunderbug/shalk skill as an aoe fracture&breach, dive as a ranged attack, etc). The bull netch will cover Stamina sustain even while blocking.
Magicka will be used primarily for buffs and heals, and on a frost staff back bar for Blockade to snare/immobilize/maim aoe packs.

FlyLionel

Yes? You need stamina to permanently block, you need magicka for utility/igneous spam for more resources. You can completely spec into stamina and just sit there and block until ult/pot/shards happen, doing nothing. You can spec into magicka with an ice staff? Maybe still use sword and shield holding block with 9k stam and just spam igneous throughout the fight? It is a thing but no one does it. You can make a stamina healer with echoing vigor and blood altar/igneous/extended ritual buffs somehow but you will not be good compared to a mag temp. Same goes for tanks, they are stamina with magicka utility. Top notch tanks balance things out generally, once you master your resources with stamina as a tank what else are you going to spec into?

Asardes

Tanks use both resource pools:
- magicka mostly for utility skills and buffs, shields, some heals; you don't really need a big magicka pool, but rather high magicka recovery
- stamina for blocking, taunt (pierce armor) and debuffs (heroic slash), sometimes for healing (vigor). Stamina does not recover while blocking so the most reliable way to self sustain is to do heavy attacks when you can from S&B bar.

For example I run a DK tank - full stamina build - 24K, doesn't need buffing - that gets all the health he needs - 28K, doesn't need buffing - from gear bonuses, and max magicka 18K and recovery 1.5K from consumables, gear and slotted skills (Barrier on front bar). I'm running a pretty meta build: 5 Ebon Armory + 5 Tava's Favor + 2 Bloodpawn / 2 Lord Warden. That build is good for any group content in the game: veteran dungeons, VDSA, veteran trials.

I also run a sorcerer tank - full magicka build - 41.5K, buffed by food - with 22.5K health, also buffed by food, who has just 13.6K stamina. He doesn't need much stamina because he doesn't block that much. I can spam hardened ward (15K) trough most damage and just block the heavy one shot and/or disabling attacks. He has both high magicka recovery (2.1K) and stamina recovery (1.35K). He works well enough for veteran dungeons - done all of them on HM, may also work for VDSA, but no way I would bring him to veteran trials.

So the harder the content, the tighter the "meta", just like for any other group role.

IronCrystal

WalksonGraves wrote: »

You can tank with all points in hp and tri food, you don't need focus on one thing because you aren't maximizing damage. Use magika for your abilities and stam for blocks

You need the stamina to block and you need the magicka to cast buffs and igneous shield.

If you have all points into hp you will fail vet trials. I have seen a 70k tank go into vmol and get destroyed due to lack of stamina.

paulsimonps

For end game DK Tanks its really just, you are a tank. DK's more so than any class is both magicka and stamina. You really on high max stamina and high magicka recovery, and with a decently sized magicka pool to start with you got a lot of good buffs for sustain and crowd control. Sorcs, Templars and Nightblades, can be used in Trials but it would essentially nerf the group you run with. DK's are far more self reliant self sustaining and can run great buff debuff sets without lose to functionality. So yea DK's are Tanks and that is that. And from my point of view the same will go with Wardens. Actually if you spec it right, all tanks are just tanks. But by this I mean specced for Trials. Dungeons are easy enough to be done by anything really.

WalksonGraves

IronCrystal wrote: »

WalksonGraves wrote: »

You can tank with all points in hp and tri food, you don't need focus on one thing because you aren't maximizing damage. Use magika for your abilities and stam for blocks

You need the stamina to block and you need the magicka to cast buffs and igneous shield.

If you have all points into hp you will fail vet trials. I have seen a 70k tank go into vmol and get destroyed due to lack of stamina.

All hp works out to 15/40/20 with stam jewelery. The guy with 70k was a shieldplar no one else builds up hp that high.

Asardes

In PvE the damage reflected by blazing shield, even with full CP investments, only amounts to 3-4K DPS in large trash packs - blazing gets boosted by number of enemies present - against single bosses or ones with few adds it's much lower than that. A trial group runs with 250-300K DPS. So that would be ~1% extra DPS from reflected damage, absolutely laughable. A blaze-plar tank in trials is absolutely useless. He will be far squishier than a "meta" build because he would run out of stamina for blocking faster and after you run out of stamina doesn't really matter how much HP you have, because you get killed really fast. Additionally some damage, like the Warrior cleave in VHRC will scale on target HP and remove a percentage of that. Having a huge HP pool may actually be a disadvantage in that situation because the healers must heal more to top it off. The magicka pool will be lower as well, and running out of that shileld at the wrong moment wouldn't be good. So I'm not really surprised people don't take blazing shield tanks in trials. They may bring templar tanks, but those will be stamina or hybrid magicka/stamina tanks with ~27-30K health.

idk

IronCrystal wrote: »

WalksonGraves wrote: »

You can tank with all points in hp and tri food, you don't need focus on one thing because you aren't maximizing damage. Use magika for your abilities and stam for blocks

You need the stamina to block and you need the magicka to cast buffs and igneous shield.

If you have all points into hp you will fail vet trials. I have seen a 70k tank go into vmol and get destroyed due to lack of stamina.

A high health Templar like that is more of a pvp build and works fine in dungeons but trials are to much for it.

All but one of my tanks are stamina bases with all attributes into stam. Health is managed with gear and mostly at 30k leaving me with a good stam pool as well. In cases I need a shard it works great since much if the benefit of shards is based on my max stam and the return from igneous is also based on max stam.

I just find it easier to control max health via gear and fine no reason to add any health via attributes.

Asardes

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

IronCrystal wrote: »

WalksonGraves wrote: »

You can tank with all points in hp and tri food, you don't need focus on one thing because you aren't maximizing damage. Use magika for your abilities and stam for blocks

You need the stamina to block and you need the magicka to cast buffs and igneous shield.

If you have all points into hp you will fail vet trials. I have seen a 70k tank go into vmol and get destroyed due to lack of stamina.

A high health Templar like that is more of a pvp build and works fine in dungeons but trials are to much for it.

All but one of my tanks are stamina bases with all attributes into stam. Health is managed with gear and mostly at 30k leaving me with a good stam pool as well. In cases I need a shard it works great since much if the benefit of shards is based on my max stam and the return from igneous is also based on max stam.

I just find it easier to control max health via gear and fine no reason to add any health via attributes.

Shards restore exactly 1/4 of your stamina pool when you pick them so having a large stamina pool does indeed help sustain. Taking into account that synergies have a cooldown, you can only activate a shard every 15-20s, so the restores stamina needs to last you that long or at least trough potion cooldown/ultimate reload cycle. That's why sustain is very hard with <15K stamina in situations where you need to block a lot, even with a lot of block cost reduction. IMO >20K is needed.

Koensol

WalksonGraves wrote: »

IronCrystal wrote: »

WalksonGraves wrote: »

You can tank with all points in hp and tri food, you don't need focus on one thing because you aren't maximizing damage. Use magika for your abilities and stam for blocks

You need the stamina to block and you need the magicka to cast buffs and igneous shield.

If you have all points into hp you will fail vet trials. I have seen a 70k tank go into vmol and get destroyed due to lack of stamina.

All hp works out to 15/40/20 with stam jewelery. The guy with 70k was a shieldplar no one else builds up hp that high.

But you don't even need more than 28-30k health as a tank. The rest should be divided between mag/stam.

Rickter

I had this conversation with a guildie about a week ago.

yes there is a distinct differentiation between a magicka tank and a stamina tank - even for DKs

its all down to what you spec into. Im going to list/describe two different setups:

Set Up 1:

Stat Pools: 31k HP | 18k Mag | 30k Stam
Attributes: 64 points in Stamina
100 CP points into Warlord
Jewelry enchants Reduce cost of stamina abilities x2
bar one:
Inner Beast (stam morph) | Pierce Armor | Vigor | Heroic Slash | Igneous Shields > Warhorn
bar two:
Inner Beast (stam morph) | Caltrops | Green Dragon Blood | Extended Chains | Noxious Breath > Magma Shell

Set Up 2:

Stat Pools: 31k HP | 32k Mag | 18k Stam
Attributes: 64 points in Magicka
100CP pints into Magician
Jewelry enchants Reduce cost of magicka abilities x2
bar one:
Inner Rage (mag morph) | Pierce Armor | Burning Breath | Extended Chains | Igneous Shields > Warhorn
bar two:
Inner Rage (mag morph) | Heroic Slash | Cinder Storm | Burning Embers | Choking Talons > Magma Shell


Now. . .

Obviously a tank needs to be hybrid. obviously a tank needs to use both resource pools. but judging from these two somewhat similar yet vastly different set ups, can you differentiate who would be considered the STAMINA tank and who would be the MAGICKA tank?

Spoiler alert: Set Up 1 is the stamina tank as all their attributes, cost reduction and a majority of their skills are stamina oriented and vice versa for Set Up 2 only with Magicka.

Disclaimer: this is how i personally differentiate a stam tank from a mag tank. I know there are true hybrid builds but i dont personally utilize any and its one or the other for me.

Gordon906

Rickter wrote: »

I had this conversation with a guildie about a week ago.

yes there is a distinct differentiation between a magicka tank and a stamina tank - even for DKs

its all down to what you spec into. Im going to list/describe two different setups:

Set Up 1:

Stat Pools: 31k HP | 18k Mag | 30k Stam
Attributes: 64 points in Stamina
100 CP points into Warlord
Jewelry enchants Reduce cost of stamina abilities x2
bar one:
Inner Beast (stam morph) | Pierce Armor | Vigor | Heroic Slash | Igneous Shields > Warhorn
bar two:
Inner Beast (stam morph) | Caltrops | Green Dragon Blood | Extended Chains | Noxious Breath > Magma Shell

Set Up 2:

Stat Pools: 31k HP | 32k Mag | 18k Stam
Attributes: 64 points in Magicka
100CP pints into Magician
Jewelry enchants Reduce cost of magicka abilities x2
bar one:
Inner Rage (mag morph) | Pierce Armor | Burning Breath | Extended Chains | Igneous Shields > Warhorn
bar two:
Inner Rage (mag morph) | Heroic Slash | Cinder Storm | Burning Embers | Choking Talons > Magma Shell


Now. . .

Obviously a tank needs to be hybrid. obviously a tank needs to use both resource pools. but judging from these two somewhat similar yet vastly different set ups, can you differentiate who would be considered the STAMINA tank and who would be the MAGICKA tank?

Spoiler alert: Set Up 1 is the stamina tank as all their attributes, cost reduction and a majority of their skills are stamina oriented and vice versa for Set Up 2 only with Magicka.

What set did you use because dem resource tho.

Rickter

Gordon906 wrote: »

What set did you use because dem resource tho.

Imperial

Purple tri-stat food (Longfin Pastry)

all armor pieces and shield enchanted with Gold Prismatic Defense glyphs

5 Ebon | 5 Powerful Assault | 2 Bloodspawn

for the stam build i rounded up the mag, its really 17.8k magicka not 18k