Mag NB Tanking with Ice staff in both bar - newbie question

thebluemage

Hello guys!
I'm totally new to this game and I intend to be a Breton Magicka NB tank wearing 7 pieces of Heavy Armor, and with ice staff in both bars.
My question is... its viable? How far I can tank with it?


Readind guides and premade builds, I came with this skill setup

BAR 1
Temporal Guard (passive help while tanking)

Concealed Weapon (my spam dps. Will reapply Major Resolve and Ward to myself)
Dark Cloack (self heal)
Lotus fan (gap closer)
Mage light (passive increase on crit)
Sap Essence (major brutallity and Ward)


Bar 2
Aggresive horn

Piercing Mark (long duration Major Fracture and breach)
Mirage (Minor resolve and ward. I think it can stack with major version, right?)
Siphoning attacks (help me to maintain Magicka)
Inner Rage
(Dont know what to put in my fifth slot, lol)


So far, I understand ice heavy attack (to draw enemy attention) can be a burden in battles where you need to keep blocking, thats why I put Inner Rage there, hoping its a instant ability to take enemy attetion.


I think its not perfect, or meta, but can I do 'ok' with it? How far can I go in this game with this skills setup?


Sorry for any grammatical errors. English is not my native language

TheMikrobe

Yes, it's possible, I have a nord nightblade tank with double ice staffs and it does well.

You don't need temporal guard because dark cloak gives minor protection. I have warhorn on the front and bolstering darkness or barrier on the back.

You don't need to do damage so don't use concealed weapon or magelight. I don't use sap essence, but it would be for the heal not the damage buff.

I use the fear skill to shut down trash mobs. I would really recommend silver leash to pull stray monsters into the stack. The shade gives minor maim, which is also useful.

zvavi

I would recommend removing concealed weapons too, because dark cloak gives u the same major ward and resolve, and usually if u even want the buff on you, you would want the heal to be active as well. My frost/resto nb tanks vSS rather comfortably.
I would also recommend trying out Undaunted "bone shield", since it is a nice shield and uses the stamina pool you don't use much

VaxtinTheWolf

If that's what you want to do, it should still work well enough for 4-man dungeons. Some things to note however:

- You don't need concealed Weapon. Dark Cloak will provide Minor Protection while active, as well as the Major Armor buffs due to the Shadow Passives.
- I suggest using Inner Fire(Whichever Morph) on the front/main bar you will be using as your taunt.
- Nightblades don't have a strong self-burst heal, so stacking several HoTs can be effective for sustaining your health.
- I would try to get around 20-25k Magicka and 30-40k Health to get some decent effectiveness out of the skills. Consider having one ability that costs Stamina too, so you aren't completely ignoring that pool for some utility at least.
- If you are going for high magicka regeneration, consider not using the Staff Passive that causes block to use magicka and cancel your regeneration while it's active. You could then use Leeching Strikes to assist with sustaining your Stamina while blocking.

Now I can't account for every option there could be, as you might be gaining certain effects from particular gear combinations or something (Shadowrend's Minor Maim), but with that said here is an example of how I'd set up my skill bars.

Main Bar: Infused Ice Staff (Absorb Magicka/Stamina, Weakening)
- Inner Fire (Choose Morph depending on your resource management)
- Strife / Silver Leash / Any Ability
- Lotus Fan (Minor Vulnerability) / Any Ability
- Mass Hysteria / Refreshing Path / Healthy Offering / Siphoning Strikes / Any Ability
- Dark Cloak (Minor Protection, activates Shadow Barrier Passive)
- [Ultimate] Soul Tether / Bolstering Darkness / Other

Secondary Bar: Infused Ice Staff (Crusher)
- Piercing Mark ('Free' 30s Major Fracture & Breach)
- Silver Leash / Strife / Spell Symmetry / Any Ability
- Elemental Blockade (Used for Snaring Adds, and activating Enchantment)
- Refreshing Path / Dark Shade (Minor Maim)
- Siphoning Strikes / Mirage / Merciless Resolve / Any Ability
- [Ultimate] Aggressive War Horn / Other

MartiniDaniels

No point in dual ice staves. You may go with ice/lightning to give better off-balance uptimes of the group... details about non-shield tanking under the spoiler..

I'll forget about damaging in heavy armor.. and since you are new and don't have champion points, you won't be able to tank in light armor even medium-difficulty dungeons. Actually you can do some damage as nightblade tank... but this requires top-notch trial gear and 600+ CP.

As for newbie I'll go with ebon+torug's pact (once you reach CP160). Before that just stack health and block cost/magicka recovery..

Bar setups:
Ice (tanking bar)
1. inner fire (taunt)
2. shade (for minor maim, minor maim is must have, it's world's difference in amount of damage done by boss to you and to the group). You may drop shade for merciless resolve later and use thurvokun's helm to apply aoe minor maim in the future (CP500+ recommended for dungeon with thurvokun's helm)...
3. reaper's mark (main debuff, should always be up on target focused by your group)
4. deep thoughts (it will take some effort to get this ability and to get used to properly use it, but it's worth it)
5. dark cloak (main heal, keep it up)

Lightning staff (buff bar), infused with crusher enchant (absolute must have as soon as you reach CP160)
1. siphoning strikes (select morph to support sustain you need more)
2. elemental blockade
3. phantasmal escape (in the harder content and higher CP snare removal is more valuable then minor ward/resolve, though in the beginning you may select other morph)
4. silver leash (you won't have enough stamina to chain everybody, just chain couple of ranged guys for now)
5. turn evil or mass hysteria

Overall, I played magicka nightblade tank for a while.. it was fun, but that kind of tank is gimmicky and not so good in group support and overall effectiveness as sword and board main bar / ice or lightning back bar tank...

And this is definitely bad idea to learn how to tank without s&b... a lot of content is very easy for tanking once you are high CP and experienced... but without CP and experience you will fail a lot and group will be irritated and when they'll see you don't have sword and board they will consider you a fake tank and may simply kick you.

Unfortunately, this game is not about "play the way you want".. yeah, you may use custom builds in PVP or in dungeons, when you can compensate their sub-optimal stats with your experience, skill and some tricks.. but for learning stage (as well as for high-end stage) just go with meta, sword and board builds.. you may adjust couple of abilities or 1 item set to your preferences... but no more then that, otherwise you will be severely lacking in stats.

I'll go with simple and sturdy setup like this to learn tanking as NB:

Main bar, S&B
1. Pierce armor (do not select ransack, you will have minor protection from dark cloak)
2. Heroic slash (minor maim and ulti gain)
3. Dark cloak (main heal, keep it up as much as possible)
4. Silver leash (you won't have enough stamina to chain everybody, just chain couple of ranged guys for now)
5. Reflect morph of defensive position (mostly slotted for block cost/effectiveness, helps a lot when you are new)

Ice staff back bar, infused crusher enchant
1. Inner fire
2. Elemental blockade
3. Mirage (change to phantasmal escape later)
4. Siphoning strikes, stamina morph
5. Mass hysteria

Tri-stat food, health enchants on armor (switch to tri-stat when you will be CP160+ and rich), mag/stam recovery or block cost enchants on jewelry.

For ultimate you may use veil of blades or soul siphon until you get warhorn. I'll go with double veil for now for extra HP and overall great boost to group survivability provided by that ultimate)

Iskiab

Biggest thing for tanking is:
- have a good health pool
- taunt bosses
- Hold block against bosses
- Lots of block cost reduction

I’d add sap essence, it’s great for holding aggro and doing damage on trash mobs.

I’d try 5 heavy, medium gloves and a light belt too.

jypcy

If you have an extra slot, grim focus is still a decent skill for providing some extra mitigation. Cast it once, charge it up, and then you can forget about it for the rest of combat while being a little tanker for it.

I’d definitely recommend removing temporal guard and concealed weapon because they’re largely superfluous, as others have noted. Sap essence and magelight are still okay choices I think. Probably not what I’d go with personally, but I could see them working.

As others have also noted, fear, dark shades, and silver leash are all good to consider just to round out your tanking toolkit of grouping, immobilizing, and weakening enemies.

I prefer the healing ult (soul siphon I think) over bolstering darkness. Dark cloak and siphoning strikes provide decent healing on their own, so amping them up with major vitality and extra healing on top synergizes really well for healing yourself out of a trouble spot. Can also be used to help heal allies in a pinch. Incap strike is another ult to consider if you don’t plan on running warhorn because it helps your sustain just by having it slotted.

Another consideration for a spare skill slot is malevolent offering. It’s actually a decently powerful targeted heal even on a really tanky build, and the damage cost is laughable to a tank.

Outside of class skills, others that might be worth consideration are degeneration or equilibrium from mages guild for magicka sustain, either damage or healing orbs from undaunted for allies’ sustain (and damage or healing), or blood altar from undaunted for more healing output if there’s not another source of lifesteal in the group.

If you change up skills, make sure to keep a siphoning skill on both bars for the magicka bonus.

TheFamousMockingbird

A Nightblade tank should also have Reapers Mark slotted. Free cost and applies both major breach and fracture to mobs. Also a huge heal for you when mob dies. Barely need help from healer apart from 1:1 boss fights.

thebluemage

Thanks guys for the tips!
Im taking note on everything


Only thing I did not understand:
Why to get ride of Concealed Weapon? I thought I would need a spammable button. I should light-attack instead of using a single dps skill ?

VaxtinTheWolf

@thebluemage

Feel free to use it when solo, but in a group setting, you don't need to really worry about that. The limited bar space would be much better used by other skills.

In a group, there should be two other adventurers that will hopefully take care of the Damage requirements, and maybe the healer might add to that as well. However, in the tank role, you should focus more on staying alive, taunting bosses and dangerous enemies to keep them off your group members, and controlling the adds with various Crowd Control (Snare/Stun/Immobilize) and de-buffs (Minor Maim).

jypcy

VaxtinTheWolf wrote: »

@thebluemage

Feel free to use it when solo, but in a group setting, you don't need to really worry about that. The limited bar space would be much better used by other skills.

In a group, there should be two other adventurers that will hopefully take care of the Damage requirements, and maybe the healer might add to that as well. However, in the tank role, you should focus more on staying alive, taunting bosses and dangerous enemies to keep them off your group members, and controlling the adds with various Crowd Control (Snare/Stun/Immobilize) and de-buffs (Minor Maim).

On top of that, I think swallow soul would be the better option if you feel the need to use a spammable. Slightly lower damage but adds another heal on top of everything else you have and helps with ultimate generation which you might not otherwise be making full use of.

MrBrownstone

thebluemage wrote: »

Thanks guys for the tips!
Im taking note on everything


Only thing I did not understand:
Why to get ride of Concealed Weapon? I thought I would need a spammable button. I should light-attack instead of using a single dps skill ?

You don't dps as a tank. To be able to tank even the strongest hits, your build must specialize in defensive abilities, which leaves you with very ineffective offensive stats so you won't be dealing considerable damage. It's better to buff your group damage instead of trying to deal damage as a tank.

You can go for a dps/tank hybrid for the easy content but in the long run it will be useless if you want to join serious content.