Would One Hand & Shield be viable for a PvE Off-tank/DD build?

Mitrenga

I am thinking about trying an off-tank/DD set up for One Hand and Shield + Ice staff, using Vampire's Cloak, Mother's Sorrow and Iceheart.
Would this be viable for PvE, aiming for vet trials? I presume it would be a burden on the group. How can I improve this build? Thank you!

BlueRaven

Well, it’s going to be difficult, I think.

In my opinion (and all of this is in my opinion, I am not a theory crafter for builds) tanks got a bit of a stealth nerf particularly for low or mid level cp players.
In the blue tree (and red tree to a lesser extent) there appears to be a clear differentiation between damage dealer and tanking abilities. Put points into tanking and you have less points for damage, put more in damage be less tanky.
Even if you have the enough cp, off tanks will need to re-slot passives between fights depending on their role for that encounter.

As a side note, replace the above statement about tanking and put in healing, and the observation is about the same.

Again, all of this is my opinion.

Good luck!

ForzaRammer

Not viable

JanTanhide

It's a bit difficult to do now for real Tanking. As mentioned above the CP tree is really hard core setup for Healing or DPS or Tanking. Can't really do both unless you swap CP every time you want to switch from Tanking to DPS and that will get expensive at 3,000 gold a pop.

Now you can have a decent Tank setup with skills and gear and probably do all normal content just fine and even the base Vet dungeons well.

Heck, try it and see how it works. Good luck!

Gundug

Trying to be too many things at once usually results in being a terrible version of all those things. You would end up being a low output DPS that can’t survive a hit from a boss. If you are looking to be a solid tank that does damage in certain situations, you could run something like Azureblight Reaper jewelry and weapons with Leeching Plate or Crimson Twilight, plus your choice of monster helm. Go full tank setup with skills and attributes.

Azureblight combined with a few good area of effect damage over time skills hitting many mobs at once erases trash. My Azureblight tank usually does around 50k DPS in trash pulls, and as high as 130k. Leeching does steady modest damage and gives you a reliable hands free self heal. Crimson provides a burst heal plus decent periodic burst damage. Leeching is better for staying alive while Crimson can do higher damage to tight stacks of enemies.

None of this is endgame leaderboard chasing trial stuff, but you could tank vet trials successfully and learn your craft while being extremely helpful during trash pulls. Be sure to have your taunt(s), Wall of Elements, source of Major Breach (Caltrops is AOE breach), Heroic Slash for enemy debuff and Heroism, chain skill of some sort, root skill, emergency self heal and any buff skills you need to stay alive.

lolo_01b16_ESO

With 1h/shield and ice staff you will do noticably less dps than a proper dd. So if you can handle the offtank duties in a dd-ish setup, it's usually better if you wear support gear and let one of the support dds switch to full dd.
In my groups those support offtanks usually wear powerful assault and choose their second set depending on the fight and the group's needs. Possibilities would be worm, hollowfang, warmachine, master architect, olorime, ...

But the importent thing here: Only take the suggestions on the forum as ideas and talk with the other people in your raid group to coordinate your setups.

waterfairy

I made a dps tank or 'dank' as I call it who was much more versatile before the update yet if I needed to tank vet trials I would switch his gear to full tank mode because you don't want half a tank in a vet trial. I'm not going to share my build setup because it's still solid ha but I'll say I have sword and shield on my front bar for tanking and dual wield on my back bar for dps/buffs

Mythreindeer

IMO you’d be better off using one bar as a DD with appropriate weapon like 2H or fire staff and the other bar with 1H & shield or ice staff and split your points between health and either mag or Stam depending on weapon choice.

Either way is a compromise

AyaDark

https://youtu.be/jje9cIT6Dh8

DD can tank bosses.

If you use shield you lose some part of DPS. You can not do DPS and heal and mitigate damage the same time, with out lose in DPS.

So It is possible, but when you will heal and mitigate damage you can not strike. But other time - you can.

Will it be helpfull ? I do not know. Can you be help full with such gameplay depends on situation and people you play with.

If you lose agro or die - party will be unhappy.

BXR_Lonestar

I think you just give up too much when trying to do both DPS and Tanking to be very effective at either. To be really effective at DPS, you have to really lean into that role and invest in things that will allow you to do damage, which in the new system, forces you to take damage perks at the cost of survivability, which is what you will ultimately need if you want to be an effective tank. Not to mention that you will need to chase high WD/SD and either a high stamina/magika pool to have sustained damage output - and some damage abilities scale with max stats and damage modifier too.

I have had some success with making a tank/healer hybrid that is pretty darn functional too - main tanked a trial one night, then main healed the same trial the next night without changing gear. But that is really only possible because it is still pretty easy to build a character that can overheal without an insane amount of investment in healing perks, max stats, weapon dmg, etc., which allows you more flexibility to take tanking perks. Not to mention that healing done perks synergize with tanking, because they increase the amount of healing you do to yourself too. Finally, healers also need to be durable, so it is not necessarily working against your build when you take tanking/survivability perks.

Tyrobag

Sorry to be negative, but you can improve the build by picking one or the other. The way the game is built you are either one thing or another, trying to be both results in being neither. Its the same way with Hybrid DPS. If you want to be a good off tank that functions as a dps when not needed you need to have two gear (and now CP) setups.

josiahva

Tyrobag wrote: »

Sorry to be negative, but you can improve the build by picking one or the other. The way the game is built you are either one thing or another, trying to be both results in being neither. Its the same way with Hybrid DPS. If you want to be a good off tank that functions as a dps when not needed you need to have two gear (and now CP) setups.

Just another way ZOS nerfed tanks this patch. Only tanks need to be versatile, and this patch was all about nerfing versatility. Of course the reasoning behind it was PvP tanks...but the real effect is that it makes things a lot more difficult for PvE tanks. I am down to logging in just a few times a week now, not so much because my tank/DPS hybrid damage is down about 10-15%(which is more about not having the CP needed to get the DPS passives while having all the tank stuff) but more because its been pretty obvious that ZOS wants characters to specialize now and every patch over the last few years has reduced versatility...why bother to continue to play when all I can be is a pure tank? Or a glass cannon DPS? Believe it or not, some people don't like to be a cog in a machine that can only do one thing effectively without changing their CP spec. Sure, you can still work around the changes...but next patch it will be worse...and the one after that worse yet, etc.

waterfairy

josiahva wrote: »

Tyrobag wrote: »

Sorry to be negative, but you can improve the build by picking one or the other. The way the game is built you are either one thing or another, trying to be both results in being neither. Its the same way with Hybrid DPS. If you want to be a good off tank that functions as a dps when not needed you need to have two gear (and now CP) setups.

Just another way ZOS nerfed tanks this patch. Only tanks need to be versatile, and this patch was all about nerfing versatility. Of course the reasoning behind it was PvP tanks...but the real effect is that it makes things a lot more difficult for PvE tanks. I am down to logging in just a few times a week now, not so much because my tank/DPS hybrid damage is down about 10-15%(which is more about not having the CP needed to get the DPS passives while having all the tank stuff) but more because its been pretty obvious that ZOS wants characters to specialize now and every patch over the last few years has reduced versatility...why bother to continue to play when all I can be is a pure tank? Or a glass cannon DPS? Believe it or not, some people don't like to be a cog in a machine that can only do one thing effectively without changing their CP spec. Sure, you can still work around the changes...but next patch it will be worse...and the one after that worse yet, etc.

True. In the beginning they tried to go the 'play as you want' way but over the years they pigeon holed us into the typical mmo trinity with little room to balance 2 types of the trinity effectively

Mitrenga

Thank you very much for all the comments and suggestions. After discussing with my raid group, we also realized that it's not a viable option. I very much wanted to try it for fun, but in the end do not want to pull my group back.

zvavi

Mitrenga wrote: »

Thank you very much for all the comments and suggestions. After discussing with my raid group, we also realized that it's not a viable option. I very much wanted to try it for fun, but in the end do not want to pull my group back.

Dungeons are much more free in that regard (wearing sets to buff 2 dds vs wearing leeching azurablight, while in trials it is buffing 8 dds vs the same damage of those 2 sets) so if you ever decide on a fun build, join the dungeon side.