Requesting help on Templar Tank build

Detective_Hacc

I've mostly always played a Healer, but my character's a nord so I really want to try out tanking. I have a few questions.

For one, Stamina or Magicka? Is there any real difference between the two other than the skills? Is one a better option than the other?

For stamina, I'm guessing my skills would look something like this: Link

Gear would most likely end up being 5x Whitestrake's Retribution plus 5x Undaunted Bastion for a "Damage Shields 4 Days" build.

For Magicka, I'd likely switch out the bow for a restoration staff. (I'm a templar. That makes sense to me.) Skills would look something like this, I'm guessing: Link

Since the hardest content I'm probably ever going to run through is Vet Dungeons, I can see being an off-healer working out really well. Gear would likely be 5x Whitestrake's Retribution and 5x Vampire Cloak.

Are either of these two setups good? Do I have the right idea?

VaranisArano

I really enjoyed Whitestrake's Retribution as my "learning to tank" set. It's really forgiving for learning mechanics and rezzing squishier group members.The best part is that when you are good enough that you don't see the damage shield proccing very often, you know you can move on to another tank set because you've got the mechanics down pat.
Other gear: Undaunted Bastion is fine, if you like it, great. If it's overkill, you can swap it for just about anything. Vampire Cloak's Minor Protection won't stack with Restoring Focus so if you have good uptime on Restoring Focus you may not benefit from that very much. If you want a more magicka damage oriented heavy armor set, you might try Rattlecage.

My experience tanking is on a MagDK and a Stam Sorc, so I'll try to go with what worked for me as magicka tank and stamina tank.

Stamina thoughts: Unstoppable and Restoring Focus are giving you the same Major Resolve/Ward and that won't stack, though they have different side effects. You'll probably find that having both is overkill. If you wind up using both, great. Uber protection. If you do swap one, Low Slash from 1-hand & shield will give Minor Maim to the boss and you can morph it for aoe or ulti gen. Bow bar looks good and combos really well with taunting for a tank. If you can, definitely pick up Caltrops from the Alliance War skill line since that will give you an AOE that is also a CC. Caltrops is pretty useful for grouping and slowing enemies so they stick around in your endless hail longer. I can offer advice about getting AP if you need it.

Magicka thoughts: I would definitely fit shards somewhere onto your bar as an AOE skill. AOEs are super useful for grabbing enemy attention (not a taunt, but if you hit first they usually go for you) and as a tank you'll often want the attention of most of the trash mobs. Having some aoe dot ticking while you use puncturing sweep should melt mobs pretty quick. Since you have the one-hand and shield bar anyway, I'd personally use Pierce Armor instead of Inner Rage. I know Pierce Armor is a stam skill and won't hit for much on a mag character, but the added debuffs (major Fracture/Breach) are really nice. There are only a few fights where my MagDK tank uses Inner Fire as her main taunt and most of the time she does fine with Pierce Armor. The resto staff bar is nice as an off-healer, but I suspect you won't need all of those active. If you find that you don't, you can swap out some damaging skills on there.

My only question is how good the channel time of Remembrance is going to be as a tank. I would think using that will be pretty situational as to when you need it versus when you have time to stand still and cast it in between taunting and boss mechanics. But then I'm not that familiar with the skill and this may be a moot point. Alternatives that might be worth looking at are the Alliance War ultimates: Barrier and Warhorn. Both of those cost a lot more ultimate but are very good support ultimates. Warhorn benefits from a more consistent uptime such as in a trials or coordinated dungeon group, but Barrier might give you the freedom to throw a large damage shield on your group exactly when you need it.

Basically, I think your builds look fine and these are just some thoughts for consideration.

Detective_Hacc

Would switching out Undaunted Bastion in the stamina set for Juggernaut work? I have access to two rings, an amulet, a helmet, and a belt. All purple quality. They're sitting in my bank.

As far as Remembrance goes, I'm guessing it would only see use in bad PUGs, but would save said PUGs from wiping. A quick taunt before casting it would allow for the full channel time to complete and then give me enough time to re-taunt. This is the main reason I didn't go with the other morph. Through testing, it's channel time is far too long.

VaranisArano

Theoretically, Juggernaut and Whitestrake's Retribution should work well together. its worth trying out since you've already got the pieces sitting. If you find you need more health, you could try Green Pact or Plague Doctor.

You can also run a more damaging medium set on your jewelry and weapons if you want to, since Whitestrakes is a good tank set. it really depends on how you want to run or whether you feel like you need to go pure tank for you can do some DPS as well.

My MagDK used to run Whitestrakes + Silks of the Sun, then switched to Ebon Armory + Knightmare. I swap from Grothdarr monster set when I need more damage and Lord Warden when I need to hit the resistance cap. So some of its situational. Normal dungeons don't take a pure tank, but a pure tank is nice when you are learning to feel comfortable in veteran dungeons.

Checkmath

templar surely works as a tank, its not the best, but can work very good.
for easy gear setup, people would love you to wear either ebony male set. other sets easy to obtain and very efficient would be torugs pact and akavir dragonguard.
most tanks should have more stamina than magicka, so they recover stamina to block when using a skyshard or an orb.
for the weapons i would go for sword and board mainbar and froststaff backbar.
also i would change the morph of restoring focus to the one with reduced costs and magicka return, since your best defence is blazing shield, which costs magicka and even can damage enemies for a good amount. for slowing down enemies, extended ritual already is a good skill. if you want, you also can run a charged icestaff with elemental blockade to even root enemies.

Magdalina

I used to tank a lot on my blazing shield templar. Admittedly she's originally been a PvP setup so her gear setup was never 100% optimal for dungeons. I used 5 Plague and 5 Lich. Had about 46k health, 26k magicka and 2-4k(when Lich proc'd) mag regeneration. Had lowest stam possible basically, something like 12k, managing that was the tricky part But high health+shield lets you survive a lot of things(in dungeons at least) without blocking. Could "offheal" with just BoL given the magicka recovery. Admittedly that setup doesn't offer much for group support beyond off healing.

If you go the magicka route I'd def recommend getting at least 30k health and using Blazing Shield, it's an amazing skill. #2 must have skill would be Channeled Focus, the magicka restore is invalueable(I'd even think a stam build could also profit off that more than from the other morph).

If you ever tanked on DK, templar is a lot trickier to manage stamina on, pretty much the only thing that restores stam is Repentance but that's only off dead enemies and only for the first templar who uses it. I imagine it'd be easier on stamplar, on my health/magplar I heavy attacked almost nonstop between blocking to keep stam up.

I also recommend Swarm Mother monster set - great for non DK tanks, free chains pretty much Taunt ranged mobs and block and they will pretty much get auto pulled.

VaranisArano

If you use Swarm Mother, pair it with Inner Rage for your ranged taunt. I found it draining on my stamina as a Magicka DK and ultimately stopped using it because I disliked just standing, taunting, and blocking during trash mob fights. However for a build that lacks easy crowd control, Swarm Mother is an excellent option if you are looking to control ranged adds and pull targets in for your DPS.

DoonerSeraph

IMO I would drop whitestrakes later for brands of imperium. 2 reasons: with enough mitigation and healing you wont fall below 30% that much. And brands of imperium shields you and allies periodically, being a slightly less "selfish" build

VaranisArano

Brands of the Imperium is a good choice once you feel comfortable enough with tanking to farm White Gold Tower for it. I'd moved on to Ebon Armory before I got the chance to farm it so I have no idea how well it compares to Whitestrakes.

Personally, I suspect Whitestrakes is the better set for learning to be a tank because:
A. The damage shield procs exactly when you need it.
B. You'll usually only fall below 30% when something's gone wrong, like a mechanic didn't get blocked or your fellow PUGs wiped and you have to rez them. The damage shield is very helpful for carrying you through mechanics as you are learning how to handle them or saving your group when you have to stand and take damage as you rez dead group members.
C. You'll know when you don't need Whitestrakes anymore. If you start never having issues with falling to low health and aren't seeing the damage shield proc much, that's a good sign that you know the mechanics, have good mitigation and healing.

When you are learning to tank, there's nothing wrong with using sets that only benefit yourself like Whitestrakes because a living tank benefits the group a lot more that a tank who was giving them support but is dead. As you get comfortable with tanking and especially as you move towards harder Vet dungeons and Trials, you'll see more suggestions for sets that support the whole group, like Ebon Armory, Torug's pact (with crucher enchantment), Alkosh, and even Brands of the Imperium.

DoonerSeraph

VaranisArano wrote: »

Brands of the Imperium is a good choice once you feel comfortable enough with tanking to farm White Gold Tower for it. I'd moved on to Ebon Armory before I got the chance to farm it so I have no idea how well it compares to Whitestrakes.

Personally, I suspect Whitestrakes is the better set for learning to be a tank because:
A. The damage shield procs exactly when you need it.
B. You'll usually only fall below 30% when something's gone wrong, like a mechanic didn't get blocked or your fellow PUGs wiped and you have to rez them. The damage shield is very helpful for carrying you through mechanics as you are learning how to handle them or saving your group when you have to stand and take damage as you rez dead group members.
C. You'll know when you don't need Whitestrakes anymore. If you start never having issues with falling to low health and aren't seeing the damage shield proc much, that's a good sign that you know the mechanics, have good mitigation and healing.

When you are learning to tank, there's nothing wrong with using sets that only benefit yourself like Whitestrakes because a living tank benefits the group a lot more that a tank who was giving them support but is dead. As you get comfortable with tanking and especially as you move towards harder Vet dungeons and Trials, you'll see more suggestions for sets that support the whole group, like Ebon Armory, Torug's pact (with crucher enchantment), Alkosh, and even Brands of the Imperium.

Agreed. Also Whitestrake's is craftable. I pointed brands of imperium for a later replacement that made sense with his build (shield stacking).

Drdeath20

Theres soo many ways you can do it and every dungeon and group is different. Best tanks have the ability to be versatile, so have multiple sets handy to swap as needed for different scenarios

Drdeath20

I like armor master, shaulk exoskeleton and swarm mother.

Narvuntien

I have a magplar rather than stamplar tank.

I use raidiant ward not blazing shield.

No shards and no swarm mothers. Volcanic rune is my cc. The dps running ahead and argo-ing everything is so damn annoying though, when i don't have the option to chains.

Dragongaud, spectres eye, shadowrend. Mag regen. I can lay down self shields and heals.

VaranisArano

Narvuntien wrote: »

I have a magplar rather than stamplar tank.

I use raidiant ward not blazing shield.

No shards and no swarm mothers. Volcanic rune is my cc. The dps running ahead and argo-ing everything is so damn annoying though, when i don't have the option to chains.

Dragongaud, spectres eye, shadowrend. Mag regen. I can lay down self shields and heals.

DPS running ahead and aggroing everything is damn annoying even when you do have chains

I think DPS and Healers starting the fights is the perpetual aggravation of all tanks, no matter the class.

Magdalina

VaranisArano wrote: »

Narvuntien wrote: »

I have a magplar rather than stamplar tank.

I use raidiant ward not blazing shield.

No shards and no swarm mothers. Volcanic rune is my cc. The dps running ahead and argo-ing everything is so damn annoying though, when i don't have the option to chains.

Dragongaud, spectres eye, shadowrend. Mag regen. I can lay down self shields and heals.

DPS running ahead and aggroing everything is damn annoying even when you do have chains

I think DPS and Healers starting the fights is the perpetual aggravation of all tanks, no matter the class.

Doesn't bug me that much when I tank tbh - assuming they know what they're doing. If the trash is gonna be pretty much dead by the time I get there they might as well go for it. If they are going to be pretty much dead by the time I get there, well...that's another story altogether, and a rather funny one at that