Magicka tanking?

mashugana

Can you tank as magicka in eso?

I got my first character to CP 160 and I have been running normal dungeons as both healer and dps. I am getting the hang of the fights and such. But I am an MMO tank at heart and would like to try it.

Can magicka based characters tank? Or do you have to be stamina sword and shield to get all the taunts and such?

Thanks for any advice,

Nestor

Well, the Ranged Taunt is Magic, the Melee Taunt is Stamina. Then there are Ice Staff Heavies which Taunt, but are not a good way to Taunt in most fights, IMO.

The utilities like Shields and Igneous Weapons are Magic for the most part.

My Main Tank is 46K Health, 20K in both Stamina and Magic and I can pretty much run the fight keeping both resource pools up.

The biggest challenge to tank is Slowing Your Rotation and only apply skills as buff or debuff timers run out, and block when needed not all the time. Get that figured out and you can tank a boss for hours.

Mancombe_Nosehair

Four of my five tanks are magicka tanks. You really don't need that much stamina to tank, heavy attacks, or tri potions if you are short of stamina.

Magicka allows tanks to do some damage, as well as heal if the healer isn't very good.

mashugana

Thanks! I'm new to this - don't ESO tanks need to hold aggro too? I cannot find how a magicka tank holds aggro? or do you just need to wear heavy armor and survive?

I'm used to the tank controlling the fight - keeping them off the healer, keeping them grouped for the AOEs, etc. Maybe its different here - still learning.

VaranisArano

mashugana wrote: »

Thanks! I'm new to this - don't ESO tanks need to hold aggro too? I cannot find how a magicka tank holds aggro? or do you just need to wear heavy armor and survive?

I'm used to the tank controlling the fight - keeping them off the healer, keeping them grouped for the AOEs, etc. Maybe its different here - still learning.

Magicka tanks hold aggro through taunts like every other tank. If you are solely magicka, use Inner Fire or Ice Staff.

Taunts
One Hand and Shield - Puncture
Mages Guild - Inner Fire (Magicka morph)
Ice Staff - heavy attack with Trifocus passive
Tormentors Set - with a charge attack

mashugana

thank you! i did not know that ice staff had those tanking skills

VaranisArano

mashugana wrote: »

thank you! i did not know that ice staff had those tanking skills

With the Trifocus passive, Ice Staff makes an okay tanking weapon. One Hand and Shield has more tanking utility and Pierce Armor definitely gives better debuffs if you want both Major Fracture anf Major Breach.

Personally, when I used Ice Staff, I also used Inner Fire because sometimes the heavy attack was too slow to keep good uptime on the taunt.

mashugana

Thanks! I could not find inner fire in the mages guild - do you mean the one in Undaunted?

Also will Sword and Shield work even if I have low stamina? I don;t care about the damage but if the taunt does not scale off stamina then maybe I use sword and shield anyways.

But it seems I can take my CP 180 sorc, swap from light armor to heavy, grab an ice staff or sword and shield, slot inner fire and boom - I'm a tank. Not for veteran or anything but just basic tanking. That right?

Thanks again.

VaranisArano

mashugana wrote: »

Thanks! I could not find inner fire in the mages guild - do you mean the one in Undaunted?

Also will Sword and Shield work even if I have low stamina? I don;t care about the damage but if the taunt does not scale off stamina then maybe I use sword and shield anyways.

But it seems I can take my CP 180 sorc, swap from light armor to heavy, grab an ice staff or sword and shield, slot inner fire and boom - I'm a tank. Not for veteran or anything but just basic tanking. That right?

Thanks again.

*facepalms*
Yep, its the Undaunted! My mistake.

My MagDK uses One Hand and Shield for tanking. I don't do a lot of damage with it, but I primarily use it for the taunt and debuffs.

And yeah, as long as you hold boss aggro and don't die, I'll be happy to have you as a tank in any dungeon group I'm in.

pluckpluck

Well, in this game, there are stamina characters, magicka characters, and tanks, that are hybrid.

I'll take my DK tank as reference :
The first thing you have to look at is your health. With sets, you sould be between 30 and 40k hp (ebon+alkosh should be a little over 30k, so you are around 40k with a PlagueDoctor+ebon).

Then, you need some magicka and stamina. You can't be only stamina, because your shielding and heal skills are magicka, but you can't be only magicka, because you need to block and roll dodge, bash and break free.

As @Nestor said, you should look for around 20k in magicka and stam, so you can manage more or less your ressources. A healer giving shards or bubbles is always better, still. 20k magicka = 4 to 5 skills.

Via your earthen heart passives, if you cast Igneous Shield, you get back almost 1k stam. With 20k magicka, and a little magicka regen, you can so get back up to 5k stam by spamming your Igneous Shield. Because when you block, you don't regenerate your stamina. And how do you regen magicka then? with Balance skill from Mage line Giving you major resolve and ward, and giving you back 3k magicka. It costs health, but your healer should be behind your back to help on that.

Now, any tank should play 1h/Shield on one bar, because of the melee taunt that brings penetration to allies, and for the second skill that will reduce the damage output of mobs, while giving you more ultimate generation. For rare fights, when the damage is still use, having the AbsorbMagic from that same line will allow you to block more for less stamina. The skill is anti-projectiles, still, so don't spam it on a melee a boss, it would lead to nothing. Just having it in your bar is enough.

For second bar, most of the content is perfectly tankable with 1h/shield too but staves offer some different opportunities. MoS hardmode is easier with an ice staff to cast wall of elements and slow down the wolves. The taunt the icestaff offers is also nice because ranged, and will bring back ressources instead of spending them, because it's an heavy. It appears also that in some trials, offtank could want to swap icestaff for lightningstaff, to give to the group the possibility of off-balancing enemies via the elemental wall.

mashugana

Wow - thank you so much. It seems like I cannot take my 100% Magika DPS Sorc and just make it tank from time to time. I can do that for healing but this opens my eyes.

For taking it seems like I should take a character and make that their primary focus. That's huge! Thank you again.

VaranisArano

mashugana wrote: »

Wow - thank you so much. It seems like I cannot take my 100% Magika DPS Sorc and just make it tank from time to time. I can do that for healing but this opens my eyes.

For taking it seems like I should take a character and make that their primary focus. That's huge! Thank you again.

It depends on what level of content you want to do. For normal dungeons, you should be okay if you can survive. I've tanked with Encase for a CC, Twilight for a self heal, wards for survivability, and Inner Fire for a taunt. Its not as tanky as my MagDK, but definitely doable for most normal dungeons.

ThanatosXR

Magika tank sounds fun, especially if you can heal and buff everyone abit

Mancombe_Nosehair

I have 17 points in health and the rest in magicka. I use tri stat food. It enables me to tank dungeons with my magplar, but also do dps when soloing other stuff.

Rev Rielle

mashugana wrote: »

Wow - thank you so much. It seems like I cannot take my 100% Magika DPS Sorc and just make it tank from time to time. I can do that for healing but this opens my eyes.

For taking it seems like I should take a character and make that their primary focus. That's huge! Thank you again.

I haven't for a while, but I use to magicka tank as a templar when needed (usually would heal). I used 5x Magnus, 5x Desert Rose and x1 whatever monster set I felt like at the time (Often Lord Warden, from the Imperial City Sewer dungeon). These days with staff being 2 set pieces it's even better for staff tankers. Apart from Tri stat food I had zero thought about stamina. I managed fine whenever I did. and I tanked some relatively hard content at the time, such as veteran Cradle of Shadows.

So my advice would definitely be to try it and see how you go. I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked.

akl77

I came from a background of playing healers, so my tanks build are all mag regen based, just eat tri stats food, put on tank gears that gives you 35-40k health, and spam your taunts and heals away with unlimited mag regen.

BejaProphet

Yeah the trick is to hold block so your stam doesn’t regen, then spam igneous shield so that you turn 4,000 magicka into 900 and change stamina, then spam balance to turn 5k health into 3k magicka. If you do this fast enough you can destroy all three resource pools in record time.

I didn’t say it was a good trick.

Flameheart

I play my magicka characters all as a tank from time to time. I do that with my magicka NB, my magicka DK, my mag Sorc, my mag Templar and my mag Warden. I even prefer magicka tanking over stamina tanking, because the possibilities to use that magicka pool for additional support are much more versatile in compare to a stamina tank in my eyes.

Actually the terms magicka tanking or stamina tanking do not tell it correctly, tanking is always a hybrid playstyle, sometimes leant more towards magicka skills and therefore a larger magicka pool, or more towards stamina for more blocking ressources in longer fights (boss fights in raids).

All you need for that are a lot of CPs (so you can max your DD CP setting and put CPs into resistances etc.), a lot of skillpoints (so no skill reset is needed, just a new sorting on your bar) and a lot of skills explored and trained, the gear and the right skills on your bar and pots. Besides that, it's just a mouse click for an equipment and skill bar change by outfitter or any other gear/skill addon. For 90% of all dungeons you don't even need to change your CP settings, just use your CP DD settings. Just a few special DLC veteran hardmode dungeons and veteran raid instances provide bosses which may require some change in the CP settings or just provide long stamina depleting boss fights which favor tanks with a high stamina pool because of almost perma blocking.

Actually I am truly sad, that so less people get a grasp how godly and versatile the combat, skill and equipment system of this game is when it comes to roles. I have gear to play all my magicka chars in all three roles, DD, healer and tank. Will my Magblade healer as good as my templar healer when it comes to raids ? Of course not. Will it be more than enough for 95% of all other content in this game especially for your 08/15 daily quest ? Yes, absolutely. Same for the comparison between a DK tank and other class tanks.

malicia

@mashugana

It all depends on what you want to do. If you simply want to do dungeons, then your build choices are numerous, and you can build your tank however you want. If you want to do vet trials, you'll probably end up running a more standard tank build.

The usual goals of tanking are to survive, to taunt the big stuff, group the small stuff, debuff the big stuff, buff your group. How you do that is mostly up to you. The only exception is basically vet trials, where they'll expect the tank to bring certain utilities to the group - DD builds are designed with the expectation of the tank bringing Alkosh, as an example.

msalvia

Honestly, you might lean a little more stam or mag, but tanks typically use both--generally you want a higher max stam pool, but higher mag recovery (speaking mostly as a DK tank, might be different for other classes). Unlike DPS, it's rare to have a competitive "pure mag" or "pure stam" tank since the role relies heavily on both resources. It's balancing them in a way that works for you that is the trick

mashugana

Thanks again all