Looking for advice on a Redguard Stamina Templar Tank build

Locriana

Im working on turning my Redguard stamina Templar (CP 370) into a tank. I'd love to hear any advice on (obtainable) gear, skill use, and attribute distribution. Also, I've never tanked. I run a very good Dunmer sorc healer, and yes, an Altmer stam DK dps (who is awesomely fun to play, finally, after many rebuilds, as is my mag sorc- she does huge dps also with her Julianos Fire staff...). Yes, I've got myself into wierd builds, due to initial ignorance about the game. But here we are, I can re-spec, but I'm not starting over.

But I'm very interested in learning to tank, love dungeons, and looking forward to prep for more trials experience (so far I've mostly used my healer). And no, I'm not gonna turn my med armor DK elf girl into a tank. She's too much fun (though you have to play her just right) as is.

Redguard is good for it I think because he has full heavy armor lvls, the right weapon skills, at least 6 item blacksmithing researched (and 8-9 on some), so maybe he could make an armor set good for tanking? Also, the stamina advantages are nice.
He's at 50 on sword and shield, and two-handed, has used them since day one. I understand these are good for tanking. I don't want to start from scratch on weapon skills, so I'd like to use these.
Right now he's running dreugh King, way of fire, and sellistrix for dps. I know that's not gonna work for tanking. He also can use tremorscale ms, which sounds good for a tank?
I've been collecting Blessed Meridia armor, which sounds interesting with its #5, also I have some dune ripper....wondering if anyone can recommend either dungeon or overland armor good for tanking, if these aren't good.. If I'm going to build armor, the second set needs to be either overland or a dungeon I can easily grind on vet for jewelry.
Best taunt skills I have access to? Combos to use?
He also has a stam heal from PVP, and of course the horn.
Note: I don't like to do cookie-cutter builds, it's more fun to find my own way, but I do benefit from advice from my betters too!

Any good advice?
Thanks!
PS, I have looked at info online about this, and some of what's out there seems pretty absurd to me, like a 4-health attribute build with everything in stam (for a tank??) armor sets I've never heard of so not likely to find...And acronyms so numerous I can't decipher it...lol...So I'm looking for advice for a mid-level player here. Please help me get started as a cp370 tank who likes to do vet dungeons... :-) and is interested in the focus/mechanics of tanking.
Strangely enough, I've never been able to get my Redguard as good at dps as either my mag healer or elf dual wield, bow using DK... This game is very mysterious sometimes...

The_Duke

Meridias doesnt work on bosses so its useless in PVE. Its great in duals and small scale PVP.

Locriana

The_Duke wrote: »

Meridias doesnt work on bosses so its useless in PVE. Its great in duals and small scale PVP.

Thanks for the info. What's good tank armor for pve?

onemoredragon

As a beginner tank, I'd suggest first getting some easy obtainable gear. Ebon Armory set is good and you can get it in vet Crypt of Hearts (farm vet for jewelry). The other set can be craftable, for example Tava's favor (for ultimate generation) or Hist Bark (for more defensive setup). Good monster helm options are Bloodspawn (ulti gen), Lord Warden (resistances for your group), Mighty Chudan (with this one you can easily save one skill slot required for your major buffs).

You can also use 2 pieces of different monster sets according to the bonuses their provide and your need in these bonuses (mag recovery, more health, more stam, you get the idea).

Check out Woeler's tanking sets discussion, this might help you to decide what you want to use on your tank
Tanking Sets Discussed:

And well, there's a lot to discuss about tanking really so I don't even know where to start. If you are on EU PC, could give you some advice in-game or run a few dungeons

eso_nya

Torugs Pact with an infused weapon enchanted with a crusher glyph to boost your teams penetration and akaviri dragonguard to pump out warhorns faster.
Monstersets: Bloodspawn, Lord Warden, Sentinel
Good skills:
power of the light -> another penetration buff and 5% spelldmg to the grp
ritual of retribution -> aoe slow, cheap healing caltrops
ransack -> dont use the other morph as it screws over ele drain (or did some time ago, no idea if it got fixed)

Locriana

Thanks @onemoredragon for the link to the videos. I think I have enough purple Ebon laying around, so I guess I'll dust it off again for awhile..used it when he was trying to be a healer, and I.got tired of those red balls flying around..lol
Leeching plate doesn't look worth farming the jewelry on vet Imp City. I'm not thrilled with healing taken bonuses either, depends too much on the healer and it isn't much anyway..
I'm going to look into crafted sets too. Any suggestions what would go well with Ebon? (Besides I don't like how Ebon looks...)

Thanks very much for the offer to show me some things in game, but it looks like you're on PC and I'm on Xbox :-/

@eso_nya thanks for the skills advice, I'm taking notes..

I have some dune ripper around from spamming vet Vollenfell for treasure hunter for my sorc....opinions on dune ripper?

Anything else anyone has to say about skill combos, techniques for tanking, I'm interested to hear.

Thanks!

onemoredragon

@Locriana I'm sorry this link was supposed to be the link to the whole playlist not just the Leeching plate thing. This set is for really specific build and yeah, I wouldn't recommend it on stamina templar tank you are going for

Duneripper set is indeed quite tanky but it aims for you own survivability more than group support, yet it can still be ok for a beginner I think - 8% healing taken, bit more health and you gain resistances on blocking. Just imo, but for PVE in this game you should not build a tank focusing purely on your own tankiness (unless it is a specific build, again, for example, stacking maximum health in order to utilize abilities which scale off your health). You need to be able to provide as much to the group as you can while being able to survive the hardest hits. Starting with something that makes you feel safe and helps your survival is okay. However, if we take into comparison these two dungeon sets, Ebon and Duneripper, Ebon would really win against the Duneripper - this 1k additional health for your party members can save their squishy lives! And while having additional 3-4k resistances is good, you can go without it.

I see that you want to use a 2H. I never tanked with a 2H but keep in mind, if you use this setup, you will lose 5 set bonus from one of your armor sets. Certain sets can get away with that, but I think most PVE tanks would use double sword and board setup. Also you lose a bit of resistances on your 2H backbar (given to you by a shield piece with your sword and board). Can't say exact value atm though.

As for skills, these are the bread&butter of us tanks - Pierce Armor, Heroic Slash, Absorb Magic and Inner Rage.

Absorb Magic is good to have on a frontbar with S&B, increasing the amount of damage you block and reducing the cost of blocking. You can go without it of course, but I highly recommend it. In certain fights you can actually use this skill and it's amazing (Lord Warden boss in ICP - spamming Absorb Magic while having his shadows attacking you is quite fun, you don't even have to hold block). Also note that templars have passive ability Spear wall that increases the amount of damage you block from melee attacks. Keeping that in mind, you could use Aedric Spear ability on your front (or both) bars - charge, or javelin, or even shards for some more mitigation.

One important thing I'd like to mention too - make sure to keep your major buffs up (Major Resolve and Ward), for templars it's Rune focus skill, unless you are running Mighty Chudan which gives you these buffs permanently.

As a healing option, Vigor is certainly good for your stam tank. Also I would recommend using Repentance for situational use - if you are running out of stam on a trash packs, keep it. If you fight a boss that spawns adds and you can ''repent'' their corpses - keep it. Other times it's not as useful anymore, thanks to ZoS nerfs.

A little about your skillbars setup. Everyone plays and builds differently but in general, it's a nice idea to keep your buffs/debuffs on a backbar and position your most important tanking skills on a front bar. Also I find it more comfortable to have ranged taunt on a front bar together with melee taunt.

Regarding buffs and debuffs, you need to keep an eye on your:
1. Major buffs;
2. Major Fracture and Breach debuffs on a target from Pierce armor taunt (12 seconds);
3. From Heroic slash - Minor main debuff on a target (12 seconds) and Minor heroism for you (gives you ulti for 9 seconds). Basically, you can apply taunt and heroic slash every 9 seconds to make it easier.

Also let me mention one last thing. As a tank you need to be in charge of positioning enemies. But sadly, templar does not have anything like DK's chains or Warden's portal. Check out Swarm Mother monster set, it pulls enemies that you taunted to you, very useful if you want to pull that goddamned archer in the corner that doesn't wanna come to your group's AOEs. Another valid tactic here - position around archers/casters/other stationary *** and make melees follow you.

I used to have a stamina templar tank before Morrowind and it was quite fun. Not having it anymore so I am not sure how to build it properly now. Hope you can find a satisfying setup for your tank.

Asardes

Ebon Armory + Tava's Favor + Bloodspawn is an easy to obtain and effective combo. Ebon gives you enough HP to stay full stamina and easily chang back to DD swapping just gear.

Locriana

Wow @onemoredragon I wish I'd seen this before I just respecced my Templar, ha ha ha.. This is really great advice!
And of course, you are right, and I feel stupid, I should use 2 sword and shield bars, duh...Don't know how long it would've taken before this dawned on me, so thanks!

I'm redoing all my skills and chose mainly what offers protection and healing to self and group. 2 s&h bars will help a LOT getting the skill bars useful.

As for morphs...why would you use Pierce Armor instead of Ransack, since ransack gives you damage protection?

A BIG question here about attribute points. I'm thinking put half into health, and the other half distributed between magic and stamina, according to the usage need, since I'm not thinking about weapon or spell damage here. I added up the numbers of what I'm using on the skill bars (fortunately they mostly agree with what you mentioned), and my magicka use would be about double my stamina use (unless I sub out something for the stam heal). So, does it make sense to put twice as many att pts into magic as stamina? I can of course also retrieve stamina with heavy weapon hits, and have no way to retrieve magicka. Also my Redguard skills give me extra stam regen. Does any of this sound reasonable or am I missing something?

I dug through my armor holders bag and found enough Ebon and ember shield to give him those to begin with. Ember shield doesn't look half bad... Maybe a start. There's an 8 trait craved tank armor I'm aiming for when I get the research done... Meanwhile I'm thinking to farm wrothgar for pariah.

Thanks @Asardes ...Tava is crafted, right? I'll check that out. I think I have Bloodspawn... I do have pirate skeleton, someone recommended that. Or maybe non-matching pieces just for the bonuses. Tremorscale is fun and could maybe help with damage? Since taunts proc it....

Is there any other specific taunt besides that one skill Ransack/Pirece armor? I can't find anything else with the symbol.
What were you thinking of for a ranged taunt?

Just had my first go at tanking at a dolmen, lol (don't want to annoy dungeon randoms) ....red orbs again....At least I got some of them to chase me.

Thanks guys, much appreciated advice.

Asardes

Don't use pirate skeleton, it's a horrible set for tank, brings 0 utility for group, and it's getting nerfed next patch. Other good monster sets are Lord Warden - it's receiving a buff extending the radius from 5 to 8 m - and Swarm Mother, which is needed on non-DK tanks because having something to pull enemies with is beneficial.
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Lord+Warden+Set
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Blood+Spawn+Set
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Swarm+Mother+Set

Tava's Blessing is a 5p crafting set that requires 5 traits researched. The crafting station is in Hew's Bane, accessible as part of the Thieves Guild DLC. If you don't have traits researched or access to DLC you can have one crafted by someone else. The set is really good because it gives you high ultimate recovery, and therefore group utility. You need to run shuffle with it to make it proc, and evasion also gives you passive mitigation which is really good in some hard boss fights. http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Tava's+Favor+Set

As for Ebon Armory, it adds 1K health for all group memebers, so it has group utility as well.
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Ebon+Armory+Set

Tanking is all about group utility, keeping aggro is just the basic function, but it's barely enough.

Your bar should probably look like this:
Pierce armor | Heroic Slash | Absorb Magic or Power of the Light | Honor the Dead or Resounding Vigor | Blazing Shield | Spell Wall or Resolving Barrier or Empowering Sweep or Solar Prison (depending on fight)
Inner Rage | Anti-Cavalry Caltrops or Power of the Light | Repentance | Shuffle | Restoring Focus | Aggressive Warhorn (use this unless really pressured)

Always take pierce armor, because the buff given by ransack is small - only 1.3K resistance, which translates to less than 2% mitigation before blocking, and far less when you are blocking. Pierce armor also gives major breach which helps magicka DDs. You actually get the minor resolve and ward from combat prayer, a skill the healer should be using, along with minor berserk (not important for tank). Healer should also keep elemental drain up on mobs for the magicka steal, but if it's a fellow templar he could be using radiant aura instead, which is AoE but does not have the breach debuff. You can debuff further by using pierce armor together with power of the light. The two debuffs stack, since the former is major, the latter is minor.

It's advantageous to run with a big stamina pool because Templar has no way to passively restore it if there are no corpses around to repent, so it's better to just refill as much as you can when you have the occasion. Any veteran dungeons can be run with 25-30K health without any issues if you know what you are doing. If you are running tri-glyphs get your big pieces in infused (legs, chest, head, shield) to take full advantage on those and small ones in sturdy, or all sturdy if you use the existing maximum health enchants. Ebon Armory gives 2 maximum health bonuses, and Tava's has one, and all will receive a buff next patch. You will sit at about 28K health with all attribute points in stamina, which is about right. Put shield play enchants on jewelry to reduce both block and bash costs. Weapons either infused or defending, which crusher enchantment for maximum debuff. Infused will be buffed and defending nerfed next patch so the former is actually better now. Best combo of armor weights is light waist, medium hands - this should be from Tava's since you can have them crafted in any weight - and the rest heavy. This gives you the full undaunted mettle passive with the smallest resistance loss. Weapons and shield should also be Tava's since farming Ebon weapons is a chore to farm and you need to have them on both bars to make it work (not sure if it doesn't bug even with that). So that leaves the Ebon jewelry and 2/3 remaining body pieces for farming: one of the following: feet, legs or chest. Depending on what 2p combo you get in the right traits craft the 3rd from Tava's.

Pariah is actually a very bad set for tanking, first and foremost because the added resistance will mostly be wasted. With 5p of heavy armor and your resistance buffs up you are at about 26K physical resistance and about 28.5K magic resistance, due to Balanced Warrior class passive . The resistance cap is 33K, and you get no benefit getting above that number, since mitigation from resistance is capped at 50%. If you are wearing Bloodspawn or Lord Warden, the procs will put you close or above that cap anyway. The amount of mitigation you will gain by capping your resistance is 8-10% when not blocking; that's won't save you from one shots anyway. Even if the sets don't proc, the resistance is not that important, since as tank most of the mitigation comes from blocking. Absorb Magic skill increases that mitigation, and so do 1H+S passives and Spear Wall class passive. That's why it's ideal to run that on both bars. Note that 1s after you change bar is not considered blocking, so never change bars during a boss heavy attack. That's why you should keep your longer lasting buffs on back bar, and more frequently used skills on the front one.

Tanking at dolmens doesn't teach you anything since the mobs there die to fast to really see the effect of holding aggro and CC on them, and managing resources; their hits are also anemic, so you won't really know what you should block and what you shouldn't. World bosses are a bit better, since they do hit hard, they have adds, they have CCs and ground effects. But you can only learn to tank if you run veteran dungeons. You can begin with ones like Spindleclutch 1/2 (easy) and progress to City of Ash 2 (moderate), then to the DLC ones. I say veteran because on normal you can't really learn much since there are no one shot mechanics and the bosses die too fast. At 300+ CP you are strong enough for those.

Locriana

Thanks @Asardes! I'll be studying this for awhile....much appreciate your logic and knowledge. I thnk I'm starting to get it.

One question. You are saying put all attribute pts in stamina? When I see a lot of magicka-using skills on your bar suggestions.
I can get stamina back, but I can't get magicka, so how am I going to be able to use all these magicka skills, with so little magicka?

Oh and I put a good amount of cp into blocking (which got me treasure hunter perk), and also cp into the return on stamina for heavy attacks. I'm finally noticing the effect from this.

One thing I noticed....you can't really go around solo with a tank, can you...doesn't do enough damage! Guess I'll farm the armor with my sorc..
And I don't mind farming Ebon, cause I enjoy Crypt of hearts, and I need another purple ring, so...here we go. I'll take my healer lol.

Edited to add: saw I missed you were talking about Pariah, got it. And the dolmen thng was just a lark...there was one other guy there, low level, and I was practicing taking the worst beasties off him. Everybody's got to start somewhere. ;-)

Asardes

Locriana wrote: »

Thanks @Asardes! I'll be studying this for awhile....much appreciate your logic and knowledge. I thnk I'm starting to get it.

One question. You are saying put all attribute pts in stamina? When I see a lot of magicka-using skills on your bar suggestions.
I can get stamina back, but I can't get magicka, so how am I going to be able to use all these magicka skills, with so little magicka?

Oh and I put a good amount of cp into blocking (which got me treasure hunter perk), and also cp into the return on stamina for heavy attacks. I'm finally noticing the effect from this.

One thing I noticed....you can't really go around solo with a tank, can you...doesn't do enough damage! Guess I'll farm the armor with my sorc..
And I don't mind farming Ebon, cause I enjoy Crypt of hearts, and I need another purple ring, so...here we go. I'll take my healer lol.

What do you think of Pariah? It looks pretty good to me, better than Plague doctor, which I know people farm overland for...but then what do I know...

Most of the skills I mentioned are stamina, either from 1H+S skill line or Alliance War. That's because Templars have no class tanking skills, just a handful of passives which are helpful. DKs do have a lot of class skills specialized for tanking, and all of those consume magicka (talons, chains, cinder storm etc.). That's why the magicka pool, and magicka recovery are more important on a DK tank than a stamina Templar one. Plague Doctor and Green Pact do make sense on a DK tank because ingenous shield, which is a group shield, scales on the health of the caster - the higher the health, the higher the value of the group shield. The new trial also has some mechanics which do a lot of damage, and the tank has to have at least 45K health to reliably survive them. But for the rest of them ~30K is enough. DKs can also get away with a lower stamina pool because they can recover stamina passively, by casting Earthen Heart skills (ex. ingenous shield) and ultimates. Templar has no such luxury and has to get any stamina he can trough heavy attacks and repentance. So the buffer has to be big. Blazing Shield scales on your own health, but it doesn't cover allies. Bone shield does covers allies, but scales on their health so it will be very weak for healer and DDs who have ~17K. I recommended the former because it consumes magicka, and that's the non-critical resource for your build. You don't want to put more pressure on your already hard pressed stamina.

I edited the previous comment with my thoughts on Pariah.

As I said in my first comment staying full stamina gives you flexibility: when you are not tanking you just put on medium armor, 2H or 2W and Bow and DPS. You won't kill anything in tank gear. Maybe land trash mobs, but it will be painfully slow.

Locriana

You mean Reviving Barrier, from alliance support? Wow, that looks awesome, I'll have to get to support 6...almost there, but that looks fantastic.

Asardes

Reviving is the only group shield you can give regardless of class. It also boosts your magicka recovery trough class passive. Another important skill you can go for is efficient purge. It's situational but makes some fights much easier. Or use extended ritual but that requires allies to activate a synergy. I don't know what the cost of ritual is on a stamina char but efficient purge is about 5K. You will only have 13.5-16K magicka depending on consumables with tri-glyphs so that's quite costly.

Locriana

Im not gonna have Tri-glyphs, considering I have one Hajeiko after playing eso for a couple years...they are quite expensive too! So I may have to put a little bit in magicka and health. But I do have a great provisioner. We love our withered tree inn venison pit roast.... :-D

What is Shuffle, by the way, I can't find it anywhere...,

Oh, I see, Shuffle is a medium armor thing, I'll sub Vigor for that. Similar stamina cost, and what the hell. (I may put in puncturing sweeps, because it heals and I kind of like to feel like I'm doing damage, even if I'm not...lol....except it's a magicka cost.)

So I got out my calculator and total magicka use here in 14259, total stamna use is 11731. So, I'm assuming it is intended to use the stamina skills more often than the magicka skills. It'll be interesting trying to keep track of that...

Learning a lot here, looking forward to testing this with some understanding guildies....

Locriana

Asardes wrote: »

Don't use pirate skeleton, it's a horrible set for tank, brings 0 utility for group, and it's getting nerfed next patch. Other good monster sets are Lord Warden - it's receiving a buff extending the radius from 5 to 8 m - and Swarm Mother, which is needed on non-DK tanks because having something to pull enemies with is beneficial.
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Lord+Warden+Set
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Blood+Spawn+Set
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Swarm+Mother+Set

Tava's Blessing is a 5p crafting set that requires 5 traits researched. The crafting station is in Hew's Bane, accessible as part of the Thieves Guild DLC. If you don't have traits researched or access to DLC you can have one crafted by someone else. The set is really good because it gives you high ultimalte recovery, and therefore group utility. You need to run shuffle with it to make it proc, and evasion also gives you passive mitigation which is really good in some hard boss fights. http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Tava's+Favor+Set

As

since I can't run Shuffle for Tava's blessing... Anyone have thoughts on the following crafted sets? (I have 6 traits minimum on everything)

Song of Lamae
Whitestrake
Willows Path
Hist Bark

Or should just save all that rubedite for when I can do Orgnums scales, and run some overland set?

Like...
Warrior Poet?
Green Pact?
Plague Doctor?

Much thanks for all the input.

Asardes

You can run shuffle on back bar and either vigor or honor the dead on front bar as I explained in my coment. As for hakeijo is not that expensive. You can buy it for 5K telvar from the IC sewer vendors. On guild stores is 10-12K. If you are playing for a couple of years (I will have exactly 2 years in October) 100K shouldn't really be a problem. As for sets, if you don't run Tava's because for some obscure reason you don't want to run shuffle, you can run Hist Bark. That one gives evasion while blocking but won't give you any ult. Matching two dropped sets is pretty hard due to the way RNG works. Weapons/shields with good traits from good overland sets sell for 100K+. You can farm Alkosh in nMOL but you will probably have to do plenty of runs until you get the matching weapons & shield. Running puncturing sweep on a stamina tank is a really bad idea. First both the damage and heals scale of your magicka and spell damage which are quite low on a stamina based characters. Second, while you are channeling it you can't block. So you will get hit in the face.

Locriana

Asardes wrote: »

You can run shuffle on back bar and either vigor or honor the dead on front bar as I explained in my coment. As for hakeijo is not that expensive. You can buy it for 5K telvar from the IC sewer vendors. On guild stores is 10-12K. If you are playing for a couple of years (I will have exactly 2 years in October) 100K shouldn't really be a problem. As for sets, if you don't run Tava's because for some obscure reason you don't want to run shuffle, you can run Hist Bark. That one gives evasion while blocking but won't give you any ult. Matching two dropped sets is pretty hard due to the way RNG works. Weapons/shields with good traits from good overland sets sell for 100K+. You can farm Alkosh in nMOL but you will probably have to do plenty of runs until you get the matching weapons & shield. Running puncturing sweep on a stamina tank is a really bad idea. First both the damage and heals scale of your magicka and spell damage which are quite low on a stamina based characters. Second, while you are channeling it you can't block. So you will get hit in the face.

The reason is not terribly obscure, I just don't understand enough about it. And I don't want to wear out benevolent knowledgeable people like you with a million questions ;-)
Will shuffle work with only one piece of medium armor? Can't you just dodge normally to proc the Tava? It's interesting but I'm just wondering about alternatives until I decide how much materials to invest in this. Because frankly Orgnums scales looks pretty darn good.
As for the one Hajeiko I've collected.... I've never seen prices that low on it. The ones I see are quite high. And I have two other characters who would be in line for it if I had enough to do anything with them. I need to be very sold on a set of armor before I'd think of investing that in it. Maybe my Julianos light armor sorc set.

100 K is a problem if you have quite a few things you are trying to accomplish with characters. Like I just bought some much sought after recipes...after a lot of price hunting visiting guilds around the Tamriel world....which will do all of them some good. Just another way of approaching things.
Funny i don't even know how I got that Hajeiko, it just turned up with the last question mark after my enchanter was master level and knew them all. I thought, hmmm....I don't want to use this one just to see what it is....glad I didn't!
I played eso when it first came out, it didn't grab me, so I don't play it again for like 1-2 years. When I came back to it, lots had changed and I love it now. Really fantastic world they've created, with lots of possibilities. I like to experiment, so I like that things can be done in many different ways.

Asardes

Locriana wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

You can run shuffle on back bar and either vigor or honor the dead on front bar as I explained in my coment. As for hakeijo is not that expensive. You can buy it for 5K telvar from the IC sewer vendors. On guild stores is 10-12K. If you are playing for a couple of years (I will have exactly 2 years in October) 100K shouldn't really be a problem. As for sets, if you don't run Tava's because for some obscure reason you don't want to run shuffle, you can run Hist Bark. That one gives evasion while blocking but won't give you any ult. Matching two dropped sets is pretty hard due to the way RNG works. Weapons/shields with good traits from good overland sets sell for 100K+. You can farm Alkosh in nMOL but you will probably have to do plenty of runs until you get the matching weapons & shield. Running puncturing sweep on a stamina tank is a really bad idea. First both the damage and heals scale of your magicka and spell damage which are quite low on a stamina based characters. Second, while you are channeling it you can't block. So you will get hit in the face.

The reason is not terribly obscure, I just don't understand enough about it. And I don't want to wear out benevolent knowledgeable people like you with a million questions ;-)
Will shuffle work with only one piece of medium armor? Can't you just dodge normally to proc the Tava? It's interesting but I'm just wondering about alternatives until I decide how much materials to invest in this. Because frankly Orgnums scales looks pretty darn good.
As for the one Hajeiko I've collected.... I've never seen prices that low on it. The ones I see are quite high. And I have two other characters who would be in line for it if I had enough to do anything with them. I need to be very sold on a set of armor before I'd think of investing that in it. Maybe my Julianos light armor sorc set.

100 K is a problem if you have quite a few things you are trying to accomplish with characters. Like I just bought some much sought after recipes...after a lot of price hunting visiting guilds around the Tamriel world....which will do all of them some good. Just another way of approaching things.
Funny i don't even know how I got that Hajeiko, it just turned up with the last question mark after my enchanter was master level and knew them all. I thought, hmmm....I don't want to use this one just to see what it is....glad I didn't!
I played eso when it first came out, it didn't grab me, so I don't play it again for like 1-2 years. When I came back to it, lots had changed and I love it now. Really fantastic world they've created, with lots of possibilities. I like to experiment, so I like that things can be done in many different ways.

You can use shuffle without even equipping a piece of medium armor, but you should equip one for the undaunted mettle passive and also for a bit of cost reduction to stamina abilities. Same goes for light, if you spec in those passives.
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Medium+Armor+Skills

The major evasion buff given by shuffle lasts for 20s and gives a 15% chance of dodging incoming attacks. It might not look like much, but this is equivalent to a 15% damage reduction over longer fights which you can't get trough other means. In some fights where incoming damage is very high it may actually save you.

That's why I was recommending in one of my previous comments to use shuffle on your back bar, together with restoring focus, since they can be refreshed together. As you can see there's enough space on your bars to run all those buffs, debuffs and utility skills so you don't really need to choose between that and vigor.

Your bars should probably look like this:

Pierce armor | Heroic Slash | Absorb Magic (if high incoming damage) or Power of the Light | Honor the Dead or Resounding Vigor | Blazing Shield | Spell Wall or Resolving Barrier or Empowering Sweep or Solar Prison (depending on fight)

Inner Rage | Anti-Cavalry Caltrops or Power of the Light (if not on your front bar and target can't be snared) | Repentance | Shuffle | Restoring Focus | Aggressive Warhorn (use this unless really pressured)

Orgnum Scales is not a good set, since your health recovery will not be very high. It was used in PvP together with Troll King monster sets, and various other buffs to achieve 3-4K health recovery. But that will change next patch since defile debuff will also affect health recovery, not just healing. In PvP normal healing is halved by battle spirit so having health recovery and high mitigation is actually better on some tank builds. But in PvE you don't have battle spirit to mitigate incoming damage by 50%. In fact for a tank burst healing is critical to survive high incoming damage. Let's say your health recovery is somewhere around 1K. This means that when you will fall under 60% health, you will have 500 extra health recovery. As any other resource, health recovery ticks every 2 seconds. To put that in perspective, if your health is let's say 30K, which is typical for a tank, then you will receive 500 health every 2 seconds, that is 250 health per second, or 0.8% of your total health. Barely noticeable. http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Orgnum's+Scales+Set

By comparison Honor the Dead spell will heal you for about 6K health assuming your magicka pool is 13.5K and spell damage 1.5K and you receive minor mending and minor vitality from your restoring focus. That is 20% of your health, instantly. If you use it under 75% health you will get 60% of the ~4.5K magicka it costs back over 6s. So the cost is really 1.8K magicka, very low even relative to your low magicka pool. Resolving vigor heals for a lot more, because you have a higher stamina pool, but draws from the same resource pool as your block. It's very clear why Ogrnum's Scales is useless in PvE.
http://www.esohead.com/skills/22253-honor-the-dead

Asardes

I was also suggesting Hist Bark as an alternative to Tava's Favor, but it's not as good, since it gives major evasion only when blocking, doesn't grant any ultimate gain from doing so, and also has an useless 3p health recovery bonus (I explained why health recovery is useless in PvE), instead of stamina and magicka recovery bonuses on Tava's. It only saves a skill on your back bar, but you don't really need that spot anyway. http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Hist+Bark+Set.

But as Templar you can't really afford to perma-block to fully benefit from Hist Bark evasion, unlike a DK, and I explained before why: you simply don't have the passives to do so. Your only ways to sustain stamina are repenting dead enemies - and in some of the harder fights there aren't any - and weaving heavy attacks - that is actually ideal, since you have a buff from heavy armor passive Rapid Mending, and also the racial passive Adrenaline Rush that gives you back stamina on each melee attack with a cooldown of 5s. Also weaving heavy or light attacks from time to time helps build up ultimate.
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Heavy+Armor+Skills
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Redguard+Racial+Skills

Locriana

@Asardes Ok, this makes a lot of sense! I've wondered a lot about the actual benefits and math going on in recovery buffs in general. When you need healing you are in battle and not regenerating much -- if at all. I've read that you don't really regenerate until everything calms down. I've experienced much better results eating pool buffed food or drink than recovery buffed.

Does this go for the other stats too? Are we going for Tava's armor mostly for #5? Because I wasn't impressed by the recovery buffs on it. Stacking health like Orgums scales seemed better to me, but I get your explanation about the health regen. So, it's in the Fifth Element that we are making the choice here?

I was going around Vvardenfell yesterday with a friend practicing tanking the overland bosses there -- very interesting. I like the focus of being a tank, drawing aggression away from other players and managing protection to stay alive. I was using Ebon and Embersheild (incomplete). Looking for Warrior Poet because I think it will make a good second set. At least I'd like to try it out.

One thing is I remember why I stopped using Ebon. For some reason those red orbs flying around in m field of vision annoy the hell out of me. (And there is a subtle sound effect too that gets to me...) I end up turning them off (by switching a necklace) except right before a battle and that gets old. I think I'll have to keep Ebon in reserve for trials or the extra difficult dungeon scenarios. And run a different second set (along with Tava's) most of the time.

When I re-specced att pts, I left it half into stamina and half unattributed to test things (I like to run tests in the field). I found I was able to manage my health and resources most of the time, even when I wasn't used to the skills and where they all were yet. Fingers need to get conditioned and all that... So I started cranking up stamina a bit at a time, because I was running a bit low...and...my Templar went from couldn't hurt a fly to a moderate level of damage dealing. Nice. I was able to block a lot too, and that's an instinct with me, especially when I have a shield. With CP that makes for some healing and return damage as well. So that's nice. As it also stuns adds that are foolish enough to swing wildly at me, and gives people time to attack.

So maybe it'll be WP or Plague doc or some other set with Tava's (I'm curious to try that out with shuffle). Experiment with secondary sets. Something tells me that whatever you run, in most of the game it'll be down to gameplay and on the fly management and learning your character. I've seen good tanking from lower level players (even low cp in vet dungeons) with pretty ordinary armor. Of course in trials it's a whole other level. I'd take my light armor sorc healer in there any day but it'll be awhile before I'm a qualified tank no matter what I'm wearing!

Thanks"

Asardes

Warrior Poet is weak since the health buff is identical to that given by warhorn (minor toughness) and they don't stack. You are much better off with ebon since you are buffing your mates too. 1K extra health can make the difference between one shot and recovery from the brink. Actually the magicka and stamina recovery on Tava's are pretty useful. Because they stack with other buffs. For example you can run Atronach mundus and a drink that buffs magicka and magicka recovery then buff that with CP to give you really good sustain and allow you to spam blazing shield for mitigation, heal with honor the dead if healer is down, even retaunt distant enemies with inner fire. You can't recover magicka otherwise since 1h weapon heavy attacks only recover stamina.

The stamina recovery is not as useful since stamina stops recovering when you are blocking. But you don't need to perma-block, except in some really hard trial fights. You need to time your block with the boss heavy attacks. And when you aren't blocking stamina recovers. So Tava's bonus will stack with 1p Bloodspawn and racial bonuses, maybe CP too. The bulk of your stamina comes from heavy attack and repentance, if there are dead enemies to repent.

Locriana

Did a whole lot of dungeons tonight with my new tank and some friends, two with weak gear....and a limited healer.....not ideal, but a couple of smart players....and did pretty well. Only on normal so far, but one was White Gold Tower, and the first time I did it all the way through. Finding I have to use Remembrance in a pinch, so not so much war horn.... Warrior poet and Embershield at the moment, and got Spawn mother on vet. Finding it of somewhat limited use, but it works. Might go back to blood spawn since discovering that inner fire taunt has range of 28 meters!

Plan on making some Tava's though, soon as I can get enough grain solvent to purple it all.

Using lots of your advice @Asardes , so thank you and @onemoredragon -- and my guildmate who explained white gold tower and a few things he knew about tanking as well. Enjoyable.

Good to know what stacks and doesn't. Some I've discovered, like the named buffs such as major sorcery, etc. still have a few att. Pts reserved...may put them all in stamina.

Actually I thnk warrior poet is good used with another set that adds a lot of health since it adds 10% health, and that part about "at all times" is very useful, since I don't like my health bar getting smaller when the ultimate wears out...And that's what pumped up the health to over 35k...with food buff.

But I like what you say about stacking regen...so I'll try various combos and see what works for me.

Oh and slotting javelin with the stamina morph worked fantastic on the portals in WGT, btw....my friends thought they'd need to give me a bow or staff...

Looking forward to variations on a theme here...

Thanks!

Asardes

Stacking health above 30K on a non-DK tank brings no utility to the group, and things that one shot you at 30K will probably do so at 50K too if you don't follow the mechanic. Rememberance on a tank is a bad option since the heals scale of your highest stats, which on a tank are spread out so it will be very weak. Warhorn is the far better option since it doesn't scale on anything. Having high uptime on warhorn is important. You can generate ultimate by:
- using heroic slash: 9 ultimate every 6 seconds (minor heroism)
- doing light and heavy attacks, roll dodging and blocking (same effect but they stack)
- using a dawn's wrath ability every 6 seconds gives you 3 ultimate; in your case power of the light - that also debuffs the target for 1.3K physical and spell resistance
- Bloodspawn proc gives 15 ultimate
- Tava's Blessing when dodging an attack gives 9 ultimate
You should average a warhorn every ~45s with this setup. That means 66% uptime. If the healer also uses warhorn as he should you will have 100% uptime on stats buffs. That's why the minor toughness buff from Warrior Poet is useless. Same buffs and debuffs don't stack, only minor with major ex. major fracture & breach from pierce armor with minor breach & fracture from power of the light. That's why you should keep both up. Next patch sharpened trait is getting halved in value so penetration from debuffs becomes even more important.

Normal dungeons can be tanked even in light armor with 17K health so your gear selection is irrelevant. As you move into veteran dungeons and especially trials your gear should be more carefully selected. The setup I laid out in my comments would even work in a veteran trial.

Locriana

Asardes wrote: »

Stacking health above 30K on a non-DK tank brings no utility to the group, and things that one shot you at 30K will probably do so at 50K too if you don't follow the mechanic. Rememberance on a tank is a bad option since the heals scale of your maximum magicka and spell damage so it will be very weak. Warhorn is the far better option since it doesn't scale on anything. Having high uptime on warhorn is important. You can generate ultimate by:
- using heroic slash: 9 ultimate every 6 seconds (minor heroism)
- doing light and heavy attacks, roll dodging and blocking (same effect but they stack)
- using a dawn's wrath ability every 6 seconds gives you 3 ultimate; in your case power of the light - that also debuffs the target for 1.3K physical and spell resistance
- Bloodspawn proc gives 15 ultimate
- Tava's Blessing when dodging an attack gives 9 ultimate
You should average a warhorn every ~45s with this setup. That means 66% uptime. If the healer also uses warhorn as he should you will have 100% uptime on stats buffs. That's why the minor toughness buff from Warrior Poet is useless. Same buffs and debuffs don't stack, only minor with major ex. major fracture & breach from pierce armor with minor breach & fracture from power of the light. That's why you should keep both up. Next patch sharpened trait is getting halved in value so penetration from debuffs becomes even more important.

Normal dungeons can be tanked even in light armor with 17K health so your gear selection is irrelevant. As you move into veteran dungeons and especially trials your gear should be more carefully selected. The setup I laid out in my comments would even work in a veteran trial.

Great points all. And thanks for putting that together, remembering (getting used to the rotation) the extra perks of all the skills at the time I use them...well, that's key isn't it.

I talked to a very knowledgeable guy today who also likes Tava's with Ebon. But he said he was getting wrecked in it after the Morrowind update. Have you used it since then? He wasn't sure why...or else it didn't come across verbally (as in, I didn't get why because the conversation was multi-faceted). I'm def gonna try it, just wondering if you knew anything about this, or what might have changed, or what might be the compensating factor for you if true.

Oh and, thanks for the info about Remembrance, but I changed to it when the Shield ultimate wasn't working for crap. And it helped more. Maybe I need to get to the morph of shield Wall or something....? Though it doesn't help the crew. I do need an 'oh crap' go to... ;-)

Asardes

No reason to get wrecked after the addon in those sets. I've tanked trials both before and after and felt no different. In fact the mitigation is higher now due to the way CPs are front loaded. You can put less CP in a star, get slightly less mitigation from that one but add more in other stars to get more overall.

Another point is the block cost which has been indirectly increased by substracting it every 0.25s instead of every 0.5s. That's why I was recommending:
- big stamina pool (racial bonus, attribute points)
- weave heavy and light attack (racial bonuses, stamina recovery, ultimate gain)
- don't forget to release block when not needed; in trash fights you can instead hit blazing shield for mitigation instead of block and refresh every few seconds as the damage return will also keep mobs focused on you
- use sturdy on small pieces if going tri-glyph or all armor if going with a mix of health and magicka glyphs
- use shield play enchants on jewelry
- invest CP in shadow ward

If that guy was used to just stay there and perma-block like I've seen so many tanks do I guess he'll have a really bad time unless he adjusts his play style and other things I mentioned.

Asardes

I explained why the ultimates are situational. That's why I used or and let you think for yourself what to use.

The shield wall ultimate (spell wall morph is recommended unless you are DK) is only good in a few fights. Namely:
- Mighty Chudan in vRoM, because you can reflect the spit back (DKs can use wings instead)
- vAA when tanking axes because you will need to block constant heavy attacks from up to 6 axes and it releases the pressure a bit by allowing you to block for free and heavy attack to regain stamina until it expires.

The rest of the time you can use other ultimates on front bar. I usually keep replenishing barrier there for the magicka recovery from skill line passive, but almost always use the warhorn from back bar when it fills.

Locriana

@Asardes and others who have commented on this thread, many thanks for your advice! It's taken me awhile, but I've managed to incorporate many of your ideas in my Redguard Templar Stam Tank, and it's going really well. Just recently managed to make the Tava's Blessing armor, which I'm using with Ebon (with an option to substitute Imperium if desired -- sometimes in Trials they say too many tanks with Ebon is a waste, I guess they don't stack)
I used sturdy for all the pieces, and put a lot of cp into shadow ward, shield play on jewelry, and I can block all I want and stam barely moves from it. Evasion works great, plus everything else that ramps up ultimate, like synergizer...

Anyway, this is a great tank to play, it's far more interesting than just poking monsters and trying to stay alive. He also has a stam and magicka heal so can help support less than optimal (ha ha) teams in dungeons.
I get war horn available almost end to end, still have to get into PVP again to get support to 6 so I can get Barrier (I've got like five and a quarter)

He's needing an alt suit (and some skills) for dps for doing story lines and thngs other than tanking. Having so much in stamina though he will get good weapon damage when switching to dps.

But this turned out well, thank you for advising me and answering so many questions and educating me on things I didn't know!

Best to you!