Royal Poet's Guide to Traditional Tanking in Veteran Dungeons

Joxer61

@BejaProphet Umm, wow...again. Now that's what I call a reply!!! Cheers for that!


"And that best strategy is to make your survival 95% passive so that you aren't thinking about it; and to make your DPS contribution 95% passive so that you are not thinking about it, and as much as possible you put 100% of your constant attention to doing those things for your group."

I am in line with that thinking 100%!!! I strive to make my tanking just flow...where I don't have to worry about things and focus on mechanics and getting the job done and helping the group. Was never the sort of tank that stood there going "Look at me, im uber" Let the dps have the bragging rights I say, Ill just hold the big guys so they can beat them down. And yes, dungeons is where my focus is at the moment...trials will come all in due time.
So yea, thanks again for some of the best tanking/playing info ever posted and I hope in reading this I am able to apply it not only in theory but on a practical sense as well!! Cheers!!

BejaProphet

Oh btw. Whatever your opening move is I’m afraid you all will have to learn to cast it well on the move. If you stop to lign it up carefully some turd is going to dive in ahead of you. Such is life.

BejaProphet

SHIELD CHANGES!!!!

Normally I wouldn't want to add such DK specific advice in this, but in a previous post I gave advice to a young DK and I told him to never ever ever use Igneous Shields for personal survival. Well, things have changed....

Why I previously said never to use Igneous shields for personal survival

The reason was that when you are running ultra low magicka regen, you simply cant waste it. And shielding yourself was less efficient than healing yourself. This was because your resistances (your biggest factor) did not benefit your shields. Therefore for a mob to bust through a 10k life took the creature TWICE as much effort as it took that creature to rip through a 10k shield. And with 565 magicka regen I don't have the juice to spam something that is half as effective for keeping me alive. Even with the major mending it wasn't as effective. Now don't get me wrong, casting shield then GDB was more effective than casting GDB twice. But neither was as efficient as letting your health get low, casting GDB then letting your health get low and casting GDB again. That was how to be unkillable, and still is.

But now shields have changed...

Shields now benefit from your resistances. So now a creature busting through 1 point of shield is absolutely equal to busting through 1 point of health that you healed. Well, its equal except for the fact that unused shield is going to vanish quickly. To counter balance these improvements, they now are based on 8% of our max health rather than 10%, and the one morph gives us 150% extra rather than 200% extra.

So what does this all mean for my DK shields?

For my personal shield it is a nice boost

If you have BOTH chosen Igneous morph AND you have built with high resistance,s like I advise, your personal shielding is going to be significantly stronger. And to that its continued other benefits it is now worthwhile to cast for personal defense. The fact that this is true means that the igneous shield + GDB combo is going to be more powerful than ever. That being said, I recommend that combo be used sparingly because it is still going to be a massive drain if you are running low magicka regen.

For me shielding my team mates

My main use of my shield has always been to shield my team from one shots that I couldn't stop by taunting or obstructing the blow. For this the news is mixed and less awesome. Our shields just shrank by 20%, but that smaller shield now benefits from their resistances. I'm not going to tell you the math but it comes out to this: 13,240 resistance is the watershed. Any team mate that has higher than that will now be MORE protected from our shields. Any team mate that is lower than 13,240 resistance will be LESS protected by our shields. This means that the team members that could most easily be one shotted will be less protected by us. However, ultimately its going to be fairly close to the same for shielding other players. It won't be big enough that I use it any differently.

Hope this is helpful.

thedude33

Nice motivational article !

A few things.

- I think I have read there is a cap on physical and magic resistance for PvE ?
- It appears I need a couple of different set ups. One for dungeon pugging and one for organized Trials

Time to do some searching for good combos

AcadianPaladin

I believe the cap for resists is 33K. I currently run about 28K on each and boost it to the cap with major resolve/ward (DK hardened armor). I dream of getting Mighty Chudanx2 and maybe dropping hardened armor. . . .

BejaProphet

I keep hearing different things on precisely the cap, but I am under the impression that the cap is 33.1k. Regardless it’s 33kish.

AcadianPaladin

@BejaProphet thank you for prompting me to consider Silver Leash as a stam-fueled option for replacing Chains on my DK. Like you, I'm testing it now and so far love it. I already use the stam morph of the undaunted ranged taunt so things are a little more balanced now. No problems sustaining when just holding a single boss by the nose. My sustain challenge was during boss fights with lots of adds - running low on blue when trying to chain in lots of adds and talon them down. Stam for pulling in mobs and mag for locking them down seems to be helping.

I follow this thread and it continues to be be both helpful and inspirational. I started my 'classic DK main tank' journey as a learning exercise to give my main (a magplar healer) a better, more 'first hand' knowledge of how to more fully support tanks. This aspect of the journey has been a success but while doing so I discovered that tanking is pretty interesting in its own right.

BejaProphet

I just found out that Alcast’s black rose prison guide recommends tanks go Mighty Chudan with spellsymmetry. I feel so vindicated.


TLDR crowd: that’s what I argued for on my post on monster sets, even though Chudan has been relentlessly mocked by much of tanking community.

Disclaimer: not currently slotting spell symmetry as of this post. Still rolling with deep thoughts so far.

Stx

I enjoyed reading all this information. I am a returning player who is thinking about being a tank for pugs or my guild. Looks like I'll try and collect ebon armory for sure. I am a templar, so I'm not sure mighty chudan would be best for me but I like the passive boosts to resists and hp. Keeping down my rune is part of my job for group resource gen and that gives major resists.

I have a question about magicka regen for a templar. One of the jobs you describe as a tank is helping your dps do more dps by using group wide one shot prevention. I feel that as a templar how I would do this is to keep luminous shards down for the synergy, keep rune down for group armor and resource regen, and also sometimes use the extended ritual for the cleanse and heal synergy.

Would you say maybe as a templar I might need more than baseline magicka regen to accomplish this? To be honest I haven't tried using block cost reduction glyphs so I dont have much experience there.

BejaProphet

I don’t think I would use Chudan as a Templar either. You get too much good stuff with your armor buff.

As for the other questions: it’s really a matter of what you want to accomplish. If you want to create a character that does the job of a tank, and simultaneously tries to accomplish other things like healing and boosting resources, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. And at that point perhaps you would want more magicka regen. 🤷‍♀️

This however is a guide to what I refer to as a “traditional” tank. Meaning I want my sole focus to be on tanking. Not on tanking + extras. And if I was going to play a Templar while aiming for that, I would not stack magicka regen. I would not use luminous shards unless I felt it was a good opening attention grab. I would definitely use the stam morph of my rune. And I would probably test ritual of retribution, but not because of the heal cleanse. Rather I’d try it because it’s a freaking huge radius AOE dot that might rock for early aggro grab.

But all that being said, this doesn’t mean what you are suggesting is wrong. It means you are suggesting something a little off from the style this guide is teaching. I don’t want any tools that diverts anything beyond a minuscule sliver of my attention from The Job.

And the job of tanking is preventing one-shots and overwhelming damage while I control the fight to maximize every other role.

Stx

Thank you for the advice. I just want to be the beat templar tank I can be, and I thought maybe I could take advantage of my tools with more magicka regen.

But I am new to tanking, so I'll take your advice and try some shield glyphs.

My current goal is to build an ebon armory set and find a set of powerful assault gear from vendors if I can. Alkosh is a bit out of reach for me as I'm not even sure if I'm ever going to do trials.

I'll try to focus on getting good at the job first then maybe work in the group heals and stuff later.

Opalblade

I'm still kinda new to ESO, but I love tanking in other MMOs and wanted to get into tanking here too. Because of the things I've seen other people say, I was starting to worry that in order to be a useful tank in this game, I'd have to give up, well, being a TANK. I had almost given up hope, but your guide got me interested again! Thank you!

Stanucz

As a returning player, I stumbled on this fantastic guide this week. So, as a necro, I'm gonna necro.

Now three years past the original posting, so @BejaProphet, how has this guide aged? Do you think you've had an effect on the consensus in the tank community? Do you still hold to all of the principals you laid out 3 years ago or have things changed significantly?

What build guide content producers have you noticed running with your guidelines?

BejaProphet

@Stanucz Hey! Very glad you like the guide.

How has the guide aged?

The guide was written prior to Summerset, so many of the details are badly out of date. Some of the abilities are dramatically different.

That being said, the principles that I teach in the guide remain 100% applicable today and they still guide my tanking decisions.

The task of a tank remains the same. We protect the group from one shots and overwhelming damage. We control the fight by stacking and keeping it stationary and thus maximize our group’s potential.

The same things in our build make that possible. Extreme tankiness for passive survival and buffing our groups damage so our attention is 100% on the job of tanking.

Have I had an effect on the consensus?

The accepted best practice today has moved dramatically towards the vision of tanking as I describe in this guide as compared to when I wrote it. Though with some gaps remaining.

However, I do not think my guide made this change. I think increasing amounts of more difficult content pressed people to discover what was really best tanking practices all along.

Years past there was a much greater emphasis on “seeing what a tank could get away with.” They would try things that was not making them a better tank. In contrast I was always explaining what made a person better purely at tanking. As content demanded better tanksthose things became accepted.

Sadly, the magicka regen addiction is still alive and well. 😉

Stanucz

BejaProphet wrote: »

That being said, the principles that I teach in the guide remain 100% applicable today and they still guide my tanking decisions.

Just what I hoped to hear. I'm actually already seeing improvement in my play and I'm enjoying the role a helluva lot more now.

BejaProphet wrote: »

Sadly, the magicka regen addiction is still alive and well. 😉

I've seen this! It's funny, because last week I would have taken at face value that I needed more regen. But now I just shake my head and move on.