Sword/Board or Frost staff Warden Tank?

One_ofMany

I cannot make up my mind!
What would be the Pros and Cons of each?

Dracane

Looking at it from this perspective, sword and shield has the benefit of giving you 2 set pieces instead of 1 and you can put a magicka, health or stamina enchant on your shield.
Also, sword and shield obviously has an entire skill tree with many vital passives, such as higher movement speed while blocking and reduced damage from projectiles.

Frost staff can be usefull on magicka warden, because your blue betty can restore magicka to you even while blocking and you have high magicka to begin with. As a stamina Warden, you obviously won't use a staff.

One little trick to take into account, is that when you put 2 points into ancient knowledge but NONE into Tri-Focus, blocking with a frost staff will still consume stamina, but you still get the reduced block cost and increased damage mitigation.
However, we are looking at 36% block cost reduction and 20% damage mitigation from sword and shield, opposed to 30% cost reduction and 20% mitigation from frost staves. FULLY charged heavy attacks from a frost staff, can taunt and give you a very tiny damage shield. But trust me, it's a waste of time and most of the time, you won't have the time to perform a 2 second channel on any mob. Using inner fire or puncture is just much more attractive and better to use.

The conclusion is, that there is barely a reason to use a frost staff over sword and shield. You can do it for fun and if you want to feel cool But if you want efficience, then sword and shield is the way to go.

Shinkhan

I think that Dracane made a good point here ! i will add also that Warden has a completly different style of tanking regardless of wich of S&B or staff is been used. Just remeber that overall the staff is more used when you want to be supportive (rang interrupt, drain) and S&B is way more tankier so i would say that using one of each depnds highly on the combat (is it pvp or pve, is case wich boss ?....etc) i myself would have in some occasions S&B and frost staff in each bar (1st boss vHoF) and sometime S&B and lightning staff (Rakkhat fight for exemple) and sometimes S&B on both bars (Axes in vAA) that's just an exemple and all of this also depends on the needs and personal tasts !
I hope we could help a little !

RavenSworn

Why not both?

GaunterODim

Yes, I would definetely use at least one bar with s&b as a tank. You will need this and if its just for the enemy resistance(phy+mag) debuff or the minor heroism from low slash. You want this.
Depending on how much magicka your buffs or utility skills cost, a frost staff on the back bar can really help out your sustain. Blocking with stamina and swapping to the frost staff when stam drops low so it can recover.