Tanking...... WTF!!!

Brimsurfer

**Please read the full post and try to understand what I am actually trying to find out, before posting, thanks **

Ok so how does tanking works in this game?

I am a Redguard DK , going deep into Draconic Power, Sword and Shield, Heavy Armor and Redguard Racials. But tanking in this game does not make sense to me. Where are my agro generating abilities? I don't see even one.

I got only one skill, i.e. Ransack, in the whole repertoire of my skill lines that can taunt the enemy to me (oh yes and the 3rd skill in Undaunted skill line, don't remember the name of the skill) but that's fine, since its a taunt skill so having access to one taunt is enough but what about agro generation?

Since I am a tank I am primarily building defensive abilities I have decent damage but I can never beat a pure a dps class, on the other hand healers generate a F***load of agro with their heals. So what happens is this;

I go in with my shield charge, knock one of the enemies of its feet and use dark talons for AoE CC. But in less than 2 secs I loose agro completely because of the damage coming from dps classes and as enemies turn to them and deal some damage to the party that's when the heals kick in and then pretty much all mobs rush the healer, that's when I use shield charge again to charge into the mob of enemies to save healer and use my AoE CC Dark Talons again but by this time I am so far behind in agro that there is no hope for me to gain agro again. I try to use Ransack (my only taunt ability) on the enemy who seems to be dealing the most damage but that's all I can do.

Is this how tanking supposed to work in this game? Can someone please clarify? Or am I doing something wrong? Because this kind of tanking is actually putting me off. Because in my opinion a tank must be able to establish control of the fight but absence of agro generation on tank's part, takes it away from the tank.

EDIT: Apparently the only two things in this game that generate agro are damage and healing and as a tank I can never be ahead of my party in these departments. Shouldn't their be a mechanics for tanks as well to generate agro or the abilities that grant big agro boosts or bursts?

Kiash

You aren't supposed to hold aggro on every mob in large packs if that is what you are asking. You take the biggest and most dangerous and hold aggro on those. DPS and Healers need to be able to dodge and block as well. It's by design. Ransack is your taunt, you'll use it to hold aggro on the harder hitting/ boss mobs. Otherwise, you will not be able to completely control a fight with one player, thankfully.

Coggage

The mobs in this game aren't stupid enough to ALL attack the guy with "HIT ME!" tattooed on his forehead. The AI doesn't work like that. If the roles were reversed I'd be sending some of my fellow mobs to attack the rest of the party too.

nerevarine1138

Coggage wrote: »

The mobs in this game aren't stupid enough to ALL attack the guy with "HIT ME!" tattooed on his forehead. The AI doesn't work like that. If the roles were reversed I'd be sending some of my fellow mobs to attack the rest of the party too.

Yeah, I've actually been relatively impressed with the AI here. Like when I lay down an AoE effect and hear someone yell, "Spread out!" to the group.

Thete

I believe you're supposed to use your taunt as and when needed, and you seem to have forgotten puncture. I believe it's cc abilities (which come not only from the tank) which are to be used to ... well, crowd control. Pulling back to sensible places is also advisable to charging in.

Armitas

^Ransack is puncture once it's upgraded.

It's pretty much like Kiash said. The only thing I could add OP is to chose which mob you charge in on so that when the fight starts the outer mobs will pass by you so that you can pop burning talons and freeze them their for a few seconds. It's up to your nukers to to wipe those adds out quick while they are in place. So position yourself so that the mobs will cross your path as they move to the other players.

If you happen to see a player running around with a mob chasing him pop fiery grip and ransack him. It's okay for some of them to have mobs on them just keep an eye on them and help them if they need it, but your main priority is the boss.

It's also up to you to interrupt archers in the back. You don't have to taunt them, just run up to them and interrupt them when the red cone shows up.

Thete

Armitas wrote: »

^Ransack is puncture once it's upgraded.

I see, sorry. Haven't gone down the tanking route yet.

LIQUID741

I love that the AI in this game is actually AI...and not the dumbed down pulls MMO's have been used to for years.

BlackSparrow

This is not the type of MMO where one tank can gather up a big group of enemies and keep them. It's designed that way. Just keep the boss's attention, and your DDers can handle everyone else. You'll also need to be somewhat self-sufficient with healing, since there are not a lot of good single-target heals in this game for healers to stack on you.

liquid_wolf

I have been searching for an AoE taunt and after finally giving up found other ways to tank.

Snares, heals, ransack-taunt, and stuns with my shield seem to be the best.

I've noticed the NPCs are smart enough to know who the healer is and to focus target on that person, so I spend a lot of my time slowing creatures down and beating on them until they target me.

As a side-set of abilities, I also have knockbacks and heals to support my "healer" just in case things start to get rough.

I'm still not entirely sure what to do with the DPS and them pulling monsters off me. It makes sense the NPCs would want to hit someone that really just hurt them, but I do feel somewhat sorry as I can't really do much to keep the DPS from getting their face smashed in.

Big bosses are easy to manage... Those still seem pretty standard fights.

But when it comes to a large group, It seems I have to charge in, snare/stun them all up, and people can focus on my target to know who needs to be taken down next.

It is one of the reasons I have 0 ZERO attribute points in health. All in stamina/magicka. My armor has the health. The enemies simply are not piling onto me, so I'm not really concerned about needing it. My role is to control, support, and lead the charge. The extra magicka/stamina helps with that.

I'll see if that needs to change in veteran content... but it has worked very well for me so far.

Brimsurfer

well then the whole fight turns into a circus, its not a fight anymore . Healer is running away from mobs, mobs are running after Healer and I am running after mobs.....if this is how its meant to be then I am not sure how the raids will work in this game, would turn out to be some sort of clusterf***.

Healers got their heals which generate agro, dps excel at damage and generate agro, tanks must have something too to generate significant agro. Otherwise I don't know if any end game raids will be able to offer a legitimate and orderly challenge to the players......

Their needs to be a form to a battle, otherwise it'll turn out to be like GW2, there is challenge but yet there is no challenge because there is not order to it and players won't be able to make sense of it well at least I won't be I guess. But i'll keep playing for now and see if it gets better.

murklor007neb18_ESO

Yep you basicly got the idea of ESO tanking - its all up to the group, not the tank.

An ESO tank has very limited ability to maintain aggro - hell I find so many mobs are immune to puncture, even bosses. *Everyone* need to be able to survive. Each class has so many abilities to do CC in combat.

When the group understand that, you'll breeze through content. When they dont, you wipe. Combat in ESO is very much reliant on reacting appropriatly to the mobs, not just frantic button mashing and dpsing. Today I was facetanking a solo instance boss, died no less than 3 times before I realized that trying to kill the summoned adds only meant I couldnt focus on what the boss was doing. A single missed interrupt meant a lost fight and guess what happened when I didnt miss an interrupt? Not going under 90% HP and beat him down like a little baby.

jesterstear

Did a couple runs tonight on my 16 Templar tank/healer. Well she's mostly tank but her class skills heal, though her mana don't last long with the tanking optimised build. I've got no AOE so can only lock down one mob, when we pull 8 trash with 4 players it's all a bit chaotic, I run for the ugliest looking one, if nobody qualifies then run around interrupting mobs that look like they're gonna cast something, and try to keep an eye on my colleague's health so i can throw my instant cast heal if they're getting low.

I suppose I could use my restoration staff at the beginning of a pull, do one group heal, then swap sharpish because i'll be tanking after that!

Fortunately those trash mobs die very quickly, so my limited healing endurance doesn't matter. It would if I was solo/main healing a boss fight, I suspect.

Danarchist

I have been healing in this game through the beta's and since release. One thing I learned quickly is I have to choose whether I let the "unleash hell" dps die or take the hits myself. I have to spam my healing "rotation" (which consists of mainly hots) to keep people alive. It really is a balance between letting dps learn "the hard way" that this is not WoW and protecting the group from having to beat a boss with only the tank and healer alive. The mentality of "maximum dps output" seems to wear off around the 30's.
That being said the best strategy so far has been to have DPS focus on trash, adds, and NPC healers while the tank holds the big baddies at bay. This will not work if you have someone going balls deep aoe and hitting the boss, but in most cases people catch on fairly quickly. As a tank all i expect of you is to hold the boss. If a minion is punching me in the face I can handle that as my resto staff spells cant be interupted and im used to taking some damage at any given time. If a mob is knocking me down or stunning me however a quick *** on it is appreciated.
You will find that dungeon runs get much easier as you level and people learn the ins and outs. I died in fungal grotto a few times my first run, zero times my second.

thedemiseraphb14_ESO

Fights are slower, but three tankish dps people that all can take a few hits and balance damage output, plus someone with good heals that can dodge survive etc and knows how to interrupt can work wonders. Nice to see options in this game.

awkwarrd

Ransack might be broken, or needs a threat buff?

Would be good to see something happen about this with the new content coming out next month.

Brimsurfer

what options? I am a pure tank and I don't see any options here for me? Now I am thinking of ditching sword and shield and use 2 handed weapons and go semi tank / dps. No room for a full tank in this game

Ziz

Dk tank... Run in... Burning talons... Taunt main target... Block... Rinse repeat... The end.

All other classes... Run around like a chicken with your head cut of lol.

leperchans

Your job isn't suppose to be able to keep all the mobs aggro'd to yourself. Your job is to make sure you keep the biggest/baddest mob away from the rest of your party and to toss out way of CCing the other mobs so they just don't run rampant on your party.

Everyone can handle having 1-2 mobs attacking them and they should be equipped to deal with such situations. This game isn't suppose to be like WoW where you can just sit there and spam your AoE taunt and laugh while the rest of your party just AoE the mobs till they die. Everyone has to worry that mobs can/will end up attacking them during combat. The tanks job is just to make sure the strongest of the mobs is only attacking them.

This is how they wanted aggro to work in this game, and I'm glad they did it this way. It is boring in games where the tank is the only one who is taking damage and mobs are too stupid to realize that they are not the only person standing around them. So, if you really don't like the way it is now, I really don't know what more to say then you should get use to it or stop tanking because it's not going to be changing anytime soon.

Brimsurfer

I saw all of this happening once before, when GW2 came out. I saw people defending the game design and then the same people quit the game in less than a month of release and I was still playing

SDZald

People really need to stop thinking in terms of DPS/Healer/Tank in ESO it is a skill based system not a class base system. Yes you can be a healer but you better be able to use skill points wisely so you can get pounded on and survive. As a tank you have to be able to do more then taunt, you have to do decent dps so you can hold the ag. Start to think out of the box, make your groups more flexible by having each member be more flexible.

Elder Scrolls really is a single player based game that is trying be a multi-player game. Its one of the things I truly like about it, every game since the darn pen and paper D&D games have followed the same mold that a character has to be good at one thing and one thing only. Try and break out of that thinking. FEEL the FREEDOM

jesterstear

Brimsurfer wrote: »

what options? I am a pure tank and I don't see any options here for me? Now I am thinking of ditching sword and shield and use 2 handed weapons and go semi tank / dps. No room for a full tank in this game

But if you're a Dragon Knight, even holding only one mob, you're helping your friends stay alive with Obsidian shield / Igneous Shield and Ash Cloud while they kill the trash.

As a Templar, I can only hold one, but i can pop a few heals on people who are struggling (from my very limited, tank's mana pool) , and this can help bring untapped mob agro back on to me as well.

In either case you are a pure defence class, though not all of the defence is coming from your tanking.

ElliottXO

If you don't understand how to tank in this game then you will better be off as DPS.

This game is not a GW2. It has the trinity. I quit GW2 after 2 days because it didn't have it.

Cogo

As a tank, your job is not just to stand and take aggro from everything.
You have a lot of different abilities that will help the group control the fight.
You said a few exemples yourself. You are able to AE root. Even for a few seconds. Think about it. How powerful isn't that? What if your group would been rooted the first 4 seconds when the mobs attacked you?

Also, as a tank you have charge, stuns, SINGLE taunt for a target of your choice, reduce damage on another target and so on.

The tank in ESO is a "thinking" tank. Not just a big meatshield...

Look through your abilities. Maybe even morph or check new ones that would suit you?

I found tanking extremely rewarding in ESO. No other game ever made tanking this interesting.

And please remember, ESO is NOT other MMOs. It's a new type of MMO, where cooperation, teamwork, fancy footwork or just plain dumb luck plays a big part. Love it! Enjoy it! Play it!

jesterstear

In situations where there are more mobs than the tank can control, what is the strength of these mobs?

I've only tanked low level stuff so far, and fortunately I've only encountered one Chuck Norris at a time. The adds were just landsscape mooks the other guys were able to solo, especially given that they had a healer backing them up and my Templar tank throwing spot heals in. My tanking skills all run off stamina and my heals off Magika.... my magika don't last long as it's not a priority item, but it seems to last longer than these adds, fortunately.

Tanking in Lord of the Rings online wasn't easy BTW, far from it. It was a crazy dance with frantic icon chasing and some serious number crunching and chin scratching preparation.

But encounters were designed with the expectation that every mob be tanked, because healers and dps were an order of magnitude squishier. The need to stack the prime requisite up to the wazoo at the expense of anything defensive, outright bans on equipping medium/heavy/shields, and finally good old mitigation caps, saw to that.

It was militarily unrealistic and TBH the fact that my character could not help another person AT ALL if they had already fallen or I was unable to take a beating on their behalf, was kind of at odds with how I imagined them. I mean really, not knowing even the most rudimentary first aid? Too inarticulate to coach an ally in the arts of defence?

Valturion

Many people have already said it; there is no such thing as "pure tank."

Utilize your weapon swap and always hold the biggest, baddest monster in the battle. Every class has the ability to be self-sufficient to a point against normal enemies.

rager82b14_ESO

Ya, I don't really like how group content works in the game myself, I'm sure some do, but it just feels like a mad house circus. Not really fun for me.

Supersomething

Take most of the concepts about tanking you use in other MMO's and forget them. Tanking in ESO is quite a bit different because you are not designed to tank every last trash mob in any given dungeon.

Trash mobs in most dungeons are the equivalent of over world mobs you are in constant contact with and do not pose a huge threat. Essentially your primary objective here is to throw out some cc's and safeguard your healer if they need help or your dps, but honestly the dps should be able to take care of themselves. You have only single target taunts for a reason, because you are only going for mobs that are posing a serious threat to the party, namely casters or heavy hitting melee. Ideally with the amount of CC and synergies being thrown around your party should not be having that much of an issue with trash. AoE threat is not your job anymore, or anyone's really.

For bosses this is where your role essentially shines because you are required to throw up your taunt and mitigate damage. Outside of this your role is just to safeguard any players who risk dying. Sometimes for trashpulls on my DK I'll just switch to my dps weapon and help knock the stuff out faster and switch to my 1h and shield if things become dicey.

So to reiterate do not treat tanking in this MMO like you think it should work in comparison to all other MMO's because you're going to be frustrated if you do.

Devilfish85

Short, paraphrased version of what many others have said: This isn't WoW.

For years everyone has been looking for a group formula that breaks the (very successful but old and worn out) 'holy trinity' of Tank, DPS, and Heals. Many modern, recent MMOs do the same thing as TESO and try to blur the lines between the roles so they aren't so absolute. The tank can't hold aggro on absolutely everything... but neither do the mobs instantly splatter anyone who isn't a tank. Of the many things one could criticize with TESO, I think the combat and group dynamics feel great.

jesterstear

Did some more BC tonight.

I can hold multiple mobs, by using my single target sword and board skill to force attack a mob 12 sec, swap to another target immediately and use the same skill etc. In between you can autoattack whack a few mobs, if they're untapped it does override healing agro and get them on you. But obviously this burns stamina really fast.

Atm I am 3:8:4 skill points in magika, health, stamina. Thing is I got a lot of health atm, which allows me to make a mistake in a boss fight (miss an induction) and not wipe the group.

I'm also wondering if i'm actually helping the situation by doing this.

I'm not interrupting or blocking the mobs who are agroed on me because i'm too busy chasing new targets round. It might be better letting them go after someone with a little less damage mit, who can kite and has sufficient free time to kite / block / interrupt if necessary. The healer was really having to spam me when I got rooted by a sorc then focus fired by some archers who inducted their red cone of death on me and I couldn't move.

The undaunted guild has a skill that lets me buff my allies' magic and physical defence quite a bit.... wondering whether to use it or just save the mana for healing.

Sometimes I was emptying my mana pool with 3 heals in 10 seconds on the bigger trash pulls.

The successful runs all had 2 players entirely focused on defence or 1 player focused on defence (me) and 2 players split between dps and healing abilities.

Shaun98ca2

From the healer's perspective. As a tank you are going to want to use your weapon swap. If theres a boss then S&B ransack makes sense focus the boss. If theres no boss use a DPS build and try to CC AOE mobs to get a majority of them after you. Try to pay attention to your healer(this goes for ALL dps) if something is attacking the healer chain it away or CC it down.

So yea pack of trash mobs go full burn and try to harm as many as possible. FYI blocking and dodging make healers LOVE you.