A Challenge for you Theorycrafters: Frost Staff Warden Trials Tank

AjiBuster499

I frequently hear people hate on frost tankers because they're inferior to SnB for numerous reasons (2h so lose a set bonus, destro skills aren't built for tanks, etc). So, I want you theorycrafters to try and create a Main Tank Trials-ready build for Warden that uses double Frost Staves.
If this doesn't motivate you, think of the faces that those people who think frost staff users can't tank will make when your build can tank a trial.

Go!

P.S. In terms of trial difficulty, the harder the better, but it should at least be able to tank a vet Craglorn trial.

Acrolas

The first mistake is thinking you need or should have double frost staves on a frost tank.

AjiBuster499

Acrolas wrote: »

The first mistake is thinking you need or should have double frost staves on a frost tank.

I was initially thinking about just having 1 frost staff is okay, but then people could just make the frost staff a backbar and never use it. I want to see a tanking build that focuses around the tanking style of the Frost Staff and using that to their advantage to hold aggro and survive against a trials-level boss.

josiahva

While the frost staff ads great back-bar utility to my tank, I would never use it to try to replace S&B. It comes down to the fact that pierce armor is still the best taunt in the game...I would have to use multiple magicka skills to get the same effect...which would have a terrible cost for sustain. I am a fan of the frost staff...but it will NEVER replace my front bar S&B without major changes, I am NOT losing major breach and major fracture for a slower ranged taunt...its ridiculous to suggest that to any tank. Sure, I can get them from other skills possibly...but why pay 3 times as much for the same effects?

PlagueSD

AjiBuster499 wrote: »

destro skills aren't built for tanks.

Really?

Crushing Shock:
Interrupts spells, putting the caster off balance.

Elemental Blockade:
Blockade of Frost reduces enemy Movement Speed and immobilizes chilled enemies*.
*with elemental force II - Increases your chance of afflicting enemies with Burning, Concussion, and Chilled status effects by 100%.

Destructive Reach:
Frost Reach immobilizes the enemy.

Elemental Drain:

• Send the elements to sap an enemy's defenses, afflicting them with Major Breach, which reduces Spell Resistance by [x] for 21 seconds.
• Also applies Minor Magickasteal to the enemy for 21 seconds, causing you and your allies to restore 400 Magicka every 1 second when damaging them.
• Also applies Minor Magickasteal to the enemy.

Seems like some pretty solid tanking abilities right there. (CC being one of the main duties of the tank)

Lynx7386

As a huge supporter of frost tanking I have to agree, its best as a back bar to a 1h/shield. The real benefit of a frost staff is being able to use both resource pools to block instead of just one. Aside from that it's not too much different than any other destroy staff (for the record I've been running a fire staff back bar on my dk tank lately and enjoy that equally well). Blockade is just there to help with aoe threat and crusher uptime, and frost provides better defense than other staff types, but aside from rare occasions the taunt heavy is hardly used.

SirDopey

I find it incredibly useful on my Warden tank on the back bar, blockade, eledrain and pulsar (the morph that reduces enermy health by 10%) are all great support skills.

It's also really nice to have an alternative block source if you screw up and find you're completely out of stamina but with a full magicka pool.

But you'd have to heavy attack, cast ele drain and sub assault to achieve what pierce does in one ability, so I feel like you just can't avoid having S+B on at least one bar.....

Royaji

PlagueSD wrote: »

AjiBuster499 wrote: »

destro skills aren't built for tanks.

Really?

Crushing Shock:
Interrupts spells, putting the caster off balance.

Elemental Blockade:
Blockade of Frost reduces enemy Movement Speed and immobilizes chilled enemies*.
*with elemental force II - Increases your chance of afflicting enemies with Burning, Concussion, and Chilled status effects by 100%.

Destructive Reach:
Frost Reach immobilizes the enemy.

Elemental Drain:

• Send the elements to sap an enemy's defenses, afflicting them with Major Breach, which reduces Spell Resistance by [x] for 21 seconds.
• Also applies Minor Magickasteal to the enemy for 21 seconds, causing you and your allies to restore 400 Magicka every 1 second when damaging them.
• Also applies Minor Magickasteal to the enemy.

Seems like some pretty solid tanking abilities right there. (CC being one of the main duties of the tank)

It's all good and dandy but the main duty for tank is to hold taunt. With ice staff you have two taunts:
1. Heavy attack - an atrocious mechanic. It has a cast-time and forces you to drop block to taunt. That's like, really bad.
2. Inner Fire/Inner Rage - it is twice as expensive as Pierce Armor and does not apply fracture.

So Ice-staff can be alright as a secondary weapon but double ice-staff tanking in trials? Maybe some of the best players can pull it off. Purely thanks to their skill and despite all the ice-staff mechanics.

Tannus15

I've been working on a frost staff warden tank and there are a few issues.

Firstly, (and this is a big one) you don't get battle-field mobility. this means it's incredibly difficult to relocate while blocking as a frost tank.

Secondly you don't want to use magicka AT ALL if you can avoid it, because you need your magicka pool for blocking. this means you need to rely on stamina skills for utility.

Thirdly heavy attacking for resources takes significantly longer compared to sword and shield.

Fourth, sets. Since you can't run 5/5/2 like you can on sword and shield, you are pretty much restricted to 5/5/1 or 5/4/2. In general I've done with 5/5/1.

there are some thing I am finding are working however:

Subterranean assault and inner beast. With enough stamina regen I can taunt with inner beast and provide fracture and breach with sub assault. this works quite well and the debuff is an AOE instead of single target, which is also cool. Plus some of the frost immobility issues are solved due to the range of inner beast.

Crushing shock, breakfree and bash. Your bash and break free still use stamina and you've got plenty of that, crushing shock you can use in emergencies for when you can't move to bash (see mobility issues)

Betty netch. Free purge, magicka regen while blocking, what's not to like? I cast this a lot for the purge.

Balance. Trade health for magicka. With a big enough health pool you can block for days.

Sets are a big issue for Frost tanks. Because you can't use 5/5/2 set selection is very important. Right now I'm using Ebon and either desert rose or hircine with 1pc lord warden for the extra resists.

Desert rose gives me a decent amount of magicka back while blocking which is nice.
Hircine gives me insane levels of stamina regen and buffs the group.

There are probably better options out there, these were just the 2 that I'm trying out at the moment.

AjiBuster499

PlagueSD wrote: »

AjiBuster499 wrote: »

destro skills aren't built for tanks.

Really?

Crushing Shock:
Interrupts spells, putting the caster off balance.

Elemental Blockade:
Blockade of Frost reduces enemy Movement Speed and immobilizes chilled enemies*.
*with elemental force II - Increases your chance of afflicting enemies with Burning, Concussion, and Chilled status effects by 100%.

Destructive Reach:
Frost Reach immobilizes the enemy.

Elemental Drain:

• Send the elements to sap an enemy's defenses, afflicting them with Major Breach, which reduces Spell Resistance by [x] for 21 seconds.
• Also applies Minor Magickasteal to the enemy for 21 seconds, causing you and your allies to restore 400 Magicka every 1 second when damaging them.
• Also applies Minor Magickasteal to the enemy.

Seems like some pretty solid tanking abilities right there. (CC being one of the main duties of the tank)

Compared to some of the SnB Skills (Taunt with both resist debuffs, reflect skill that can stun enemy or heal you, ultimate generation, maim, slow, and damage in one skill), Frost Staff is not supported very well by it's Destruction Staff abilities. It has the slow, maim, damage, and taunt, but nothing else besides a small bubble iirc.

WrathOfInnos

I bet double frost tanking could work in vet trials, especially on Warden or Templar. It would really just be harder on the healers to keep the tank alive, since frost staves do not offer as much defense as sword and shield. Ice staff and shield would be a nice option, since would also have to sacrifice group utility with 11 gear slots instead of 12.

Voxicity

Pretty sure I saw at least one of the tanks in Hodor's latest vMoL run with a frost staff. Maybe I was just dreaming it though

Never mind, just checked and i think it was a lightning staff, ignore me

dodgehopper_ESO

Royaji wrote: »

PlagueSD wrote: »

AjiBuster499 wrote: »

destro skills aren't built for tanks.

Really?

Crushing Shock:
Interrupts spells, putting the caster off balance.

Elemental Blockade:
Blockade of Frost reduces enemy Movement Speed and immobilizes chilled enemies*.
*with elemental force II - Increases your chance of afflicting enemies with Burning, Concussion, and Chilled status effects by 100%.

Destructive Reach:
Frost Reach immobilizes the enemy.

Elemental Drain:

• Send the elements to sap an enemy's defenses, afflicting them with Major Breach, which reduces Spell Resistance by [x] for 21 seconds.
• Also applies Minor Magickasteal to the enemy for 21 seconds, causing you and your allies to restore 400 Magicka every 1 second when damaging them.
• Also applies Minor Magickasteal to the enemy.

Seems like some pretty solid tanking abilities right there. (CC being one of the main duties of the tank)

It's all good and dandy but the main duty for tank is to hold taunt. With ice staff you have two taunts:
1. Heavy attack - an atrocious mechanic. It has a cast-time and forces you to drop block to taunt. That's like, really bad.
2. Inner Fire/Inner Rage - it is twice as expensive as Pierce Armor and does not apply fracture.

So Ice-staff can be alright as a secondary weapon but double ice-staff tanking in trials? Maybe some of the best players can pull it off. Purely thanks to their skill and despite all the ice-staff mechanics.

Dk does have the advantage of being able to spit out stink breath. Nightblade has mark target and surprise attack. That being said I think the DK would be more feasible in this theory, and has the advantage of being able to drop strong personal shields that also feed your stamina.

Jade1986

Tannus15 wrote: »

I've been working on a frost staff warden tank and there are a few issues.

Firstly, (and this is a big one) you don't get battle-field mobility. this means it's incredibly difficult to relocate while blocking as a frost tank.

Secondly you don't want to use magicka AT ALL if you can avoid it, because you need your magicka pool for blocking. this means you need to rely on stamina skills for utility.

Thirdly heavy attacking for resources takes significantly longer compared to sword and shield.

Fourth, sets. Since you can't run 5/5/2 like you can on sword and shield, you are pretty much restricted to 5/5/1 or 5/4/2. In general I've done with 5/5/1.

there are some thing I am finding are working however:

Subterranean assault and inner beast. With enough stamina regen I can taunt with inner beast and provide fracture and breach with sub assault. this works quite well and the debuff is an AOE instead of single target, which is also cool. Plus some of the frost immobility issues are solved due to the range of inner beast.

Crushing shock, breakfree and bash. Your bash and break free still use stamina and you've got plenty of that, crushing shock you can use in emergencies for when you can't move to bash (see mobility issues)

Betty netch. Free purge, magicka regen while blocking, what's not to like? I cast this a lot for the purge.

Balance. Trade health for magicka. With a big enough health pool you can block for days.

Sets are a big issue for Frost tanks. Because you can't use 5/5/2 set selection is very important. Right now I'm using Ebon and either desert rose or hircine with 1pc lord warden for the extra resists.

Desert rose gives me a decent amount of magicka back while blocking which is nice.
Hircine gives me insane levels of stamina regen and buffs the group.

There are probably better options out there, these were just the 2 that I'm trying out at the moment.

yeah, thats pretty much how i run mine too. =P

Royaji

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

PlagueSD wrote: »

AjiBuster499 wrote: »

destro skills aren't built for tanks.

Really?

Crushing Shock:
Interrupts spells, putting the caster off balance.

Elemental Blockade:
Blockade of Frost reduces enemy Movement Speed and immobilizes chilled enemies*.
*with elemental force II - Increases your chance of afflicting enemies with Burning, Concussion, and Chilled status effects by 100%.

Destructive Reach:
Frost Reach immobilizes the enemy.

Elemental Drain:

• Send the elements to sap an enemy's defenses, afflicting them with Major Breach, which reduces Spell Resistance by [x] for 21 seconds.
• Also applies Minor Magickasteal to the enemy for 21 seconds, causing you and your allies to restore 400 Magicka every 1 second when damaging them.
• Also applies Minor Magickasteal to the enemy.

Seems like some pretty solid tanking abilities right there. (CC being one of the main duties of the tank)

It's all good and dandy but the main duty for tank is to hold taunt. With ice staff you have two taunts:
1. Heavy attack - an atrocious mechanic. It has a cast-time and forces you to drop block to taunt. That's like, really bad.
2. Inner Fire/Inner Rage - it is twice as expensive as Pierce Armor and does not apply fracture.

So Ice-staff can be alright as a secondary weapon but double ice-staff tanking in trials? Maybe some of the best players can pull it off. Purely thanks to their skill and despite all the ice-staff mechanics.

Dk does have the advantage of being able to spit out stink breath. Nightblade has mark target and surprise attack. That being said I think the DK would be more feasible in this theory, and has the advantage of being able to drop strong personal shields that also feed your stamina.

I'm not saying that there are no other sources of those debuffs. Just that Pierce Armor taunts, applies Major Fracture and Major Breach in one button press. And it costs half of what just Inner Fire costs even without the follow-up debuffing skill.

static_recharge

I love all of these suggestions and out of the box thinking. It might not be as easy to play as the "traditional" tank but it sure sounds like a lot of fun and a good change of pace.

PlagueSD

Royaji wrote: »

PlagueSD wrote: »

AjiBuster499 wrote: »

destro skills aren't built for tanks.

Really?

Crushing Shock:
Interrupts spells, putting the caster off balance.

Elemental Blockade:
Blockade of Frost reduces enemy Movement Speed and immobilizes chilled enemies*.
*with elemental force II - Increases your chance of afflicting enemies with Burning, Concussion, and Chilled status effects by 100%.

Destructive Reach:
Frost Reach immobilizes the enemy.

Elemental Drain:

• Send the elements to sap an enemy's defenses, afflicting them with Major Breach, which reduces Spell Resistance by [x] for 21 seconds.
• Also applies Minor Magickasteal to the enemy for 21 seconds, causing you and your allies to restore 400 Magicka every 1 second when damaging them.
• Also applies Minor Magickasteal to the enemy.

Seems like some pretty solid tanking abilities right there. (CC being one of the main duties of the tank)

It's all good and dandy but the main duty for tank is to hold taunt. With ice staff you have two taunts:
1. Heavy attack - an atrocious mechanic. It has a cast-time and forces you to drop block to taunt. That's like, really bad.
2. Inner Fire/Inner Rage - it is twice as expensive as Pierce Armor and does not apply fracture.

So Ice-staff can be alright as a secondary weapon but double ice-staff tanking in trials? Maybe some of the best players can pull it off. Purely thanks to their skill and despite all the ice-staff mechanics.

No one said anything about double bar ice staff or using it on your main tanking bar. I'm just pointing out that there are some nice CC abilities for tanks in the destro tree. OP pointed out that destro abilities weren't built for tanks. I'm proving him wrong. I personally back back frost staff with S&B on front bar. Makes tanking on my DK easy as I get to choose which resource I want to block with.

Recremen

My friend main tanked Vet Sanctum Ophidia HM with dual frost staves on his Warden. Didn't have any issues. So it's totally viable in at least that.

rustic_potato

Balance gives free magika in a trials environment as the HP loss is healed almost immediately. Only downside is losing the second full set or monster set. Alkosh can be procced on the back bar. I have tanked with frost staff on a sorc and was able to even permablock fights. Haven't tried it on a warden but the theory is the same and easier due to class passives and skills. So yeah totally viable.

Tasear

There's a really cool video if a warden frost tank. Tanking vhof like a boss. It's useful for flipping between resources. Frost staff have a better minor maim. Mind you biggest issue is heavy attack with frost staff isn't worth time and can be dangerous. So would be best at range or off tanking. Also probably works better on warden who have debuff to restiances on 1 skill.

Blackleopardex

I tried double frost staff tanking on a nightblade. The idea there is to go into only magica and health on the gear and attributes and use 5 light(heavy when needed). Tri-stat food for stamina(dodge). This means, higher shields, higher damage, higher heal. Now the base idea seems nice and you can make it work. However...

The first problem is to benefit from the frost-staff you need 1 skill on each bar from the destruction staff abilities.
Now there are certainly ways to do this. For example use elemental drain on one bar and blockade on back-bar. However my problem with this is the use-fullness of elemental drain is canceled when you get the healer in the picture. So the next skill in line would be crushing shock. And this is a viable idea and for sure a useful skill in some circumstances but not always. So in conclusion to this to benefit from a double frost-staff setup you would need to constantly take up 2 skill-slots that actually could be used for much more beneficial skills in many situations.

Second problem has been mentioned but i wanna add something to it. When blocking with a frost-staff you are loosing to much speed. This is a huge drawback in many situations, simply for moving out of deadly aoes while taking projectiles that hit hard.

I would say, and I think many agrees with this, the furthest you can push this and still benefit without making ridicules sacrifices would be to run frost-staff and 1h&shield on the back-bar. However I have a feeling I would spend more time on the back-bar running a build like that.

On a side note I do like frost-staff as a back-bar weapon, I run it gladly in a dungeon specially if I need to run elemental drain

Dubhliam

I have an idea: make a Bosmer Sorcerer healer.

Go!

ccfeeling

A Challenge for you Theory crafters: Frost Staff Templar Trials Tank