What's your favourite class to tank with? I added a poll because I am genuinely curious.

zvavi

Sorcerer

Dammit sorcs are minority... I guess the pet is a big turn off...

Wandering_Immigrant

Templar

When it comes to my own comfort and confidence levels I don't think anything will ever top my DK. He was one of my original three characters I started the game with, and I basically learned the fundamentals of survival by taking him on a solo tour of every world boss I could find back when he was still in his teens and that's pretty much how he levelled to 50, random dungeons and world bosses. I seem to just have an instinctive answer to anything that happens on him now, he's like a cockroach he just keeps on living.

But poll said it's about fun, and while I do enjoy using my DK, I really love tanking on my Templar. When I created her I set out to make a paladin style tank capable of healing a group as much as I could while still being a sturdy tank. It took a lot of experimenting with set combinations and attribute allocation, and there were times I was ready to give up on it, but she's now in a place where her Rebirth consistently heals in the high teens and can break 20k with vitality buffs active, with the sustain to pump that out as often as needed, while still hitting resist cap and having all the typical tank tools.

She also has a setup for the standard brick wall Stam tank and even carries a light armor set and healing staff for going full on healer mode. She can switch between the three modes and even a couple in-between ones with nothing but a gear swap. That makes her very versatile and able to adapt on the fly to the needs of any pug she finds herself in.

She's like the ultimate all purpose support character, and it's a lot of fun playing around with that. Of course she hits like an overcooked noodle but I'm ok with that.

Vietfox

Nightblade

Back when Sap Tank was a thing.

Grianasteri

Warden

Warden, followed closely by Necromincer, then DK.

Thing is these tonks are used for different purposes, so its difficult to compare them, but I do tend to enjoy my Warden Ice tonk most.

MaxJrFTW

Warden

Warden > Necro > Templar > Dk

Dk makes me fall asleep. I haven't tried the other two yet, probably won't.

FrancisCrawford

Raudgrani wrote: »

Nightblades, seeing very few still - but at least I've seen a few the past couple of months or so. Previously people were like "What? A NIGHTBLADE tank? Dude you serious?". It's like many didn't even think it possible. Having only positive feedback on mine, especially that it's like completely self sufficient in most scenarios. Healers are used to healing and throwing shards etc., and I'm like "Stop, heal and give shards to DD's, I don't need them".

What do you use for self-healing when there aren't any adds?

FrancisCrawford

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Templars don't make good tanks for trials, because their heals are laughable with the buff sets that tanks are expected to wear, but if you spec for magicka, I think they make the best and most fun tanks for 4-man PUGs. You can have a tank build that is good enough to tank all DLC hms, and still do 15k DPS single target (30k+ on trash pulls) and have enough healing output to compensate for a bad/dead healer, assuming the DDs aren't taking a swim in lava or something.

What's your build like?

Runefang

ZOS_Adrikoth wrote: »

Interesting poll, thanks for sharing everyone. It seems like we have a lot of Dragonknights in this thread!

Uhhh have you just started this game? The only interesting this is the number is so low for DKs.

Aptonoth

Necromancer

Only tanked Necro so far but have a DK on the way but between the two I think I prefer my Necrotank.

ZeroXFF

Templar

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Templars don't make good tanks for trials, because their heals are laughable with the buff sets that tanks are expected to wear, but if you spec for magicka, I think they make the best and most fun tanks for 4-man PUGs. You can have a tank build that is good enough to tank all DLC hms, and still do 15k DPS single target (30k+ on trash pulls) and have enough healing output to compensate for a bad/dead healer, assuming the DDs aren't taking a swim in lava or something.

What's your build like?

The "proper" setup would be this:


HtD heals for 11.3k non-crit with this setup, which is ~31% max HP, which is about on par with other classes. But due to the size of the magicka pool I can actually keep healing myself for much longer, especially in fights with a lot of adds (due to recovery from Overwhelming Surge).

But I end up running like this most of the time when I'm tanking, because I usually run with this char as a mag DD, and this is what it looks like if I don't get to port out to swap mundus and cheap out on the CP swap:


The 2nd setup is good enough for most DLC dungeons and their hms already, but there are still a few where it gets too much. The first one hasn't failed me yet though.

With the next patch I'm considering replacing Overwhelming Surge with Kyne's Wind from the new trial for harder boss fights with 1-3 targets, because it would give better defense (due to minor aegis), better resource recovery from the 5p in situations with few targets, and with the 2p bonus allow me to have triune/healty trait on 2 of the jewelry pieces instead of infused, while still resulting in about the same passive mag recovery.

I'm running Altmer mostly because I want to optimize for DPS when I'm doing that, but it also works very well for this tank build. Spell Recharge passive gives stamina, which is perfect for a tank, and in addition it gives 5% damage reduction while channeling, which also works well, because when I go offensive and start doing the max DPS rotation and use Puncturing Sweep as spammable, I benefit from that part of the passive too. And the mag and spell damage passives boost healing (and damage), which is what a Templar tank needs. But Argonian would probably even be a bit better. Stay away from Nords and Bretons though, they have way too much resistance which is going to be wasted on a Templar, because you get so close to the cap already with just heavy armor and Channeled Focus.

Nova_J

Necromancer

CMDR_Un1k0rn wrote: »

Simple poll. Six options, for six classes. Please do let us know why you enjoy this class as a tank and a rough description of how you play it. For example, the weapons archetypes you use, what your main resources are, etc.

This poll is about what you find fun. If that happens to be the meta then of course, that's great and valid. But if you enjoy a different tanking setup more, than please vote that, even if it's not considered optimal.

To begin, I have voted Dragonknight as for one, I do love dragons. I am also very fond of Nords who do have a lot of history with the Ancient Dovah, and indeed, given the recent Akaviri invasion, well, Akaviri martial training becoming popular in Eastern Tamriel? Makes sense to me! Not to mention that Dragonknight also make fine warriors on the frontlines of Cyrodiil as well as fierce opponents in the Battlegrounds of Tamriel.

Necro tanks are good for debuffing enemies. Bone totem and colossus plus ruinous scythe gives major and minor vulnerability plus off-balance and major breach from boneyard. All of that on demand. Plus all of the resistances make them pretty fun to play. They dont have to use alot of the traditional tanking moves like puncture etc.

FrancisCrawford

That's super-helpful. Thanks. Thanks particular for all the effort you put into answering!! (I'm assuming those screenshots are from the PTS, just because the weapons are Overwhelming Surge rather than Plague Doctor. )

My top three templars are all Bretons, so I imagine I'd use one or more of them. (My fourth and newest is Imperial, and I don't have the capacity to make any more.)

It looks like the main traditional tanking skills you do without are Heroic Slash and a cc. Am I reading correctly? Do you think you'll miss having a cc now that the templar's rooting passive is being changed?

Interesting that you don't even bother running a half-strength Weakening enchantment. But then, I've started running infused Weakening on my healers.

ZeroXFF wrote: »

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Templars don't make good tanks for trials, because their heals are laughable with the buff sets that tanks are expected to wear, but if you spec for magicka, I think they make the best and most fun tanks for 4-man PUGs. You can have a tank build that is good enough to tank all DLC hms, and still do 15k DPS single target (30k+ on trash pulls) and have enough healing output to compensate for a bad/dead healer, assuming the DDs aren't taking a swim in lava or something.

What's your build like?

The "proper" setup would be this:


HtD heals for 11.3k non-crit with this setup, which is ~31% max HP, which is about on par with other classes. But due to the size of the magicka pool I can actually keep healing myself for much longer, especially in fights with a lot of adds (due to recovery from Overwhelming Surge).

But I end up running like this most of the time when I'm tanking, because I usually run with this char as a mag DD, and this is what it looks like if I don't get to port out to swap mundus and cheap out on the CP swap:


The 2nd setup is good enough for most DLC dungeons and their hms already, but there are still a few where it gets too much. The first one hasn't failed me yet though.

With the next patch I'm considering replacing Overwhelming Surge with Kyne's Wind from the new trial for harder boss fights with 1-3 targets, because it would give better defense (due to minor aegis), better resource recovery from the 5p in situations with few targets, and with the 2p bonus allow me to have triune/healty trait on 2 of the jewelry pieces instead of infused, while still resulting in about the same passive mag recovery.

I'm running Altmer mostly because I want to optimize for DPS when I'm doing that, but it also works very well for this tank build. Spell Recharge passive gives stamina, which is perfect for a tank, and in addition it gives 5% damage reduction while channeling, which also works well, because when I go offensive and start doing the max DPS rotation and use Puncturing Sweep as spammable, I benefit from that part of the passive too. And the mag and spell damage passives boost healing (and damage), which is what a Templar tank needs. But Argonian would probably even be a bit better. Stay away from Nords and Bretons though, they have way too much resistance which is going to be wasted on a Templar, because you get so close to the cap already with just heavy armor and Channeled Focus.

universal_wrath

Sorcerer

I had tanks of each class except for necromancer. Now, magsorc, I made it because I wanted to farm Auruan thunder set for it, for RP purposes. I started to like it. Dragonknight are bulky but has that since of that they are not immortals which I like. Nightblades was by far strongest tank I had but it was too dull. Templar was generic and plain as a tank so I didn't stick long with it. Warden was a healing creep but some how feels to healing you need it most. Sorc is potato if I'm not blocking put too much mitigation while blocking, plus if I werer to die from stuff I cannot survive, I streak away to safety like the caword I am. I'm lomearning to tank as sorcerer, it it sames very interesting, I try to incorporate strea/bol in my build to use it as mobility and sometime as crwd control along with front wall/incase, also I'm liking dark deal as heal because it heal sometimes for more than 25k+. Main resource is magicka with 30k+ magicka which is odd to me as I never run out of stam, and I'm a high elf. No pet heals for me, they suck and ugly.

ZeroXFF

Templar

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

That's super-helpful. Thanks. Thanks particular for all the effort you put into answering!! (I'm assuming those screenshots are from the PTS, just because the weapons are Overwhelming Surge rather than Plague Doctor. )

My top three templars are all Bretons, so I imagine I'd use one or more of them. (My fourth and newest is Imperial, and I don't have the capacity to make any more.)

It looks like the main traditional tanking skills you do without are Heroic Slash and a cc. Am I reading correctly? Do you think you'll miss having a cc now that the templar's rooting passive is being changed?

Interesting that you don't even bother running a half-strength Weakening enchantment. But then, I've started running infused Weakening on my healers.

ZeroXFF wrote: »

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

ZeroXFF wrote: »

Templars don't make good tanks for trials, because their heals are laughable with the buff sets that tanks are expected to wear, but if you spec for magicka, I think they make the best and most fun tanks for 4-man PUGs. You can have a tank build that is good enough to tank all DLC hms, and still do 15k DPS single target (30k+ on trash pulls) and have enough healing output to compensate for a bad/dead healer, assuming the DDs aren't taking a swim in lava or something.

What's your build like?

The "proper" setup would be this:


HtD heals for 11.3k non-crit with this setup, which is ~31% max HP, which is about on par with other classes. But due to the size of the magicka pool I can actually keep healing myself for much longer, especially in fights with a lot of adds (due to recovery from Overwhelming Surge).

But I end up running like this most of the time when I'm tanking, because I usually run with this char as a mag DD, and this is what it looks like if I don't get to port out to swap mundus and cheap out on the CP swap:


The 2nd setup is good enough for most DLC dungeons and their hms already, but there are still a few where it gets too much. The first one hasn't failed me yet though.

With the next patch I'm considering replacing Overwhelming Surge with Kyne's Wind from the new trial for harder boss fights with 1-3 targets, because it would give better defense (due to minor aegis), better resource recovery from the 5p in situations with few targets, and with the 2p bonus allow me to have triune/healty trait on 2 of the jewelry pieces instead of infused, while still resulting in about the same passive mag recovery.

I'm running Altmer mostly because I want to optimize for DPS when I'm doing that, but it also works very well for this tank build. Spell Recharge passive gives stamina, which is perfect for a tank, and in addition it gives 5% damage reduction while channeling, which also works well, because when I go offensive and start doing the max DPS rotation and use Puncturing Sweep as spammable, I benefit from that part of the passive too. And the mag and spell damage passives boost healing (and damage), which is what a Templar tank needs. But Argonian would probably even be a bit better. Stay away from Nords and Bretons though, they have way too much resistance which is going to be wasted on a Templar, because you get so close to the cap already with just heavy armor and Channeled Focus.

No, it's from live, otherwise I would have shown you a screenshot with Kyne's Wind too. Also that's the only way to have 7p heavy while using OS. For CC I still have frost blockade. It's not as good as the fear thingy from Fighter's Guild, but I don't have enough stamina to use it anyways. This is also the reason I dropped Heroic Slash and use Thurvokun instead for the minor maim debuff (shame on ZoS for nerfing the uptime on it next patch). As for weakening, it just feels like a waste to run infused trait for a half-strength enchant. On my Templar and NB tanks I use defensive trait to reach resist caps, and on DK I use decisive for more ulti, and at that point it doesn't really matter what enchant you use, its effect will be negligible.

Oh, and for easier content, where you can get away with less than 33k HP, instead of using some CC skill you can use Tormentor set on body pieces and replace Puncturing Sweep with Explosive Charge for an AoE taunt. I'm still collecting this set, so what follows is just theory so far. It will reduce your damage potential, but you still have plenty of DoTs, and it should make tanking trash packs much easier, as well as save you some resources on the additional taunts and chains. It will also help you reach resist cap even when running with DPS CPs, which by the way means even more mitigation, because the CPs that went to Heavy Armor Focus and Spell Shield are going to be in things like Ironclad etc.

I suppose Breton would still work, but now that all resists you get from gear give both spell and physical resist, there is no way to equalize the resists. And with a 5k difference (2.6k from Templar passive + 2.3k from Breton) it would be too expensive to use CPs for that. So you will end up either below resist cap for physical resist (and trust me, in vet Bloodroot Forge you're going to wish you had physical resists capped with HP this low), or you will be way over the cap with spell resist, resulting in wasted stats.

FrancisCrawford

ZeroXFF wrote: »

I suppose Breton would still work, but now that all resists you get from gear give both spell and physical resist, there is no way to equalize the resists. And with a 5k difference (2.6k from Templar passive + 2.3k from Breton) it would be too expensive to use CPs for that. So you will end up either below resist cap for physical resist (and trust me, in vet Bloodroot Forge you're going to wish you had physical resists capped with HP this low), or you will be way over the cap with spell resist, resulting in wasted stats.

Spell Power is a fairly low value stat in this context as well. And max magicka is of course a wash.

So the real question is comparing the sustain passives between the two races. I imagine the Breton passives would give you more magicka than the Altmer one does stamina, but I don't have a guess as to how great the disparity might be.

Kesstryl

Necromancer

I love my Necro Tank for the toolkit. I also have a Sorc and DK tank, but enjoy the Necro the most.

ArchMikem

Dragonknight

My only Tanking experience is with a DragonKnight. Though I've always wondered what a Templar was like.

CMDR_Un1k0rn

Dragonknight

ArchMikem wrote: »

My only Tanking experience is with a DragonKnight. Though I've always wondered what a Templar was like.

No class is bad at tanking by any means.

With that said, Templar is a lot more of a hassle to tank with compared to other classes, IMO.

Templar favours healing/DPS as strengths. But like I say, no class is really bad at tanking. But in the meta some are much better thanks to their toolkit.

xaraan

Dragonknight

DK b/c it's the most dependable.

I actually do have a lot of fun on Warden though.

And my fav. class is Templar, but Templar tanking is meh compared to other classes.

Used to like sap tanking back in the day.

Vinterskald

Nightblade

I'm not super experienced in tanking, and so far I've only tried out Dragonknight, Warden, Templar, and Nightblade, but somehow, Nightblade feels the most intuitive for me

I've planned on making a Necromancer tank, and I want to try out a Sorcerer tank some day as well, but there's something about the whole concept of NB tanks that I really love.

looshora

Dragonknight

I've tried every class at some point as a Tank minus Warden.
I use to have an NB Tank (Myrinkas I do not miss you) it was fun for a bit, taught me how to dodge. But the charm vanished after a while.
Templar Tank hated it. I talk everybody I can out of Templar Tanking when I can, great for dps, great for healing. Not a fan at all for Tanking. It's not for me and if the person I'm talking with is adamant about staying a Templar Tank I do try to help them. But I still try and talk them out of it.
Sorc Tank, eh... much like NB it lost its charm after a bit, I mean it was fun but Sorc's, in general, aren't really me. I still have him but he is now my pvp toon. (dps not tank)
Necro Tank still got him, he is fun every so often with the auto-pull but he just eh, fun to mess around with not something I'd take into anything actually hard.

DK, man oh man I've been a DK tank for... 3 years now. I love everything about it, great cc, fun buffs. Who doesn't like the spikey-ness? Decent burst heal, chain, and talons, good grief I love those two skills.
Plus having things like Noxious Breath and Deep Breath is fun. Plus Magma Shell, boy oh boy did that skill save my groups from a few wipes.

As for Warden.... no comment for some reason I've just always been anti-warden.

Gabrielzavadski

Vietfox wrote: »

Back when Sap Tank was a thing.

Yeah... i'm a returning player, and when i saw what happened to the nighblades...

Bro... it was super fun to play as a Saptank, even PvP was fun... SapTank was easy, fun, unique, and cool, now we have a graveyard for useless skills and morphs. Nothing they can't nerf even more!

OtarTheMad

Sorcerer

It was hard because I like Sorc, Necro and Warden for tanking but I think I like Sorc the most

idk

Dragonknight

While my favorite class for tanking these days is the DK because I am most comfortable with it, and the Warden a close second that was not always my preference.

The Templar was the first tank I used to clear a trial for a leaderboard score but that was close to six years ago. My favorite tank early on was a NB. Partially because of some skills that have since been neutered like Veil of Blades doing decent damage while giving caster twice damage reduction the group got and some other changes made.

I had an unorthodox build because that NB was actually a DPS. With the Redgaurd for the passive to restore stamina with melee attacks plus we regened stamina while blocking back then I had stamina for days. I used teleport shortly after the stam morph was available and people thought it was funny looking that I just ported around.

So the NB was fun, but as I said it was really a DPS. When I got serious about tanking I leveled my first DK.

Stx

Sorcerer

I dont know why but I love my imperial sorc tank.

I think they have really underrated skills and passives for tanking.

FrancisCrawford

The sense I'm getting from this thread is:

• For traditional tanking, go DK or Warden.
• For staff-only tanking, go NB or Necro.
• For tank/healer hybrids (barebones in each of those roles), go templar or sorcerer.

But then, I'm generally biased toward magicka, so my interpretation that four of the six classes are best for magicka-based tanking may not be consensus.

actosh

Nightblade

Recently enjoy my sorc and my necro tank.

zvavi

Sorcerer

Sorcs r dead last

Elwendryll

Sorcerer

The only class I tank with, because I only play one character. Khajiit.
Main resource is stamina but with a high mag regen.
1h/shield and lightning staff. Usually Yolna and Alkosh.
Rely a lot on dark deal.

I love it for many reasons, one being Charlie, my Clannfear. And bound aegis allows me to get out of tricky situations by face-tanking things that are a mandatory dodge for the other classes. This ability just feels so satisfying to use, you could just block lord falgravn heavies in HM execute for example (Don't do that).

I tanked almost everything, including a lot of dungeon trifectas. Yesterday I successfully solo tanked vSS. We tried Yolna HM and got it to 49%, that's a good start, but I need to practice the atro pulling xD

emilyhyoyeon

Nightblade

dragonknight feels awful to me. I love nightblade thematically and tanking with them feels so good and stong