Well my friend the best in Tanking in my opinion is DK. However Templar also a good choice, but as magicka i do not think so, as for the race the best would be Imperial, actually Imperial is the best race due to its flexibility, but that doesn't mean you can't choose another race specially with Champion Point system me myself have High Elf DK Tank that doing a very good job but since you are only lvl 15 i recommend you to re-roll, try this site

Racial Comparison
tamrielfoundry.com/races/

Templar class section
tamrielfoundry.com/forum/classes/templar-class/

kyrok01_ESO wrote: »

Also probably important, I am interested in both PVE and PVP. I don't mind if I don't do tons of damage, I mean for this character to be more of a tank/support role, and I plan on playing a Nightblade on a different toon later on for full DPS craziness.

My Altmer DK magicka tank is still a work-in-progress, but she's my main pvp character so I can tell you what my experience in pvp has been so far.

I have my sword and board on my first bar and a resto staff on the back bar to help my fellow players. I only really 'tank' when taking resources in a small group, to keep the guards and things away from my group members (who 90% of the time are DPS, but even then I've seen small groups of just DPS take resources so tanking isn't necessary for this). I spend a lot of time healing or using siege engines. You will find that compared to everyone else, you hit like a wet noodle and won't be killing much - but I will say you can get a nice feeling of satisfaction when it takes a solid group players to take you down .

But I guess to summarise, you'll probably be healing/sieging more than anything else if you want to tank in pvp. Tanking is pretty useless in pvp at the moment so support is where you'll want to be at. I have a NB I switch to now and then for 'full DPS craziness', it's good fun .

Laranoye wrote: »

WillhelmBlack wrote: »

From healing a lot of dungeons.

Nightblade. Self sustaining plus very good DPS at the same time. I love it when I get NB tank, I can just forget about them and help kill the trash and apply buffs.
DK. Decent self sustain and CC. Still require help.
Templar. Only class that can Tank and Heal at the same time but for higher end content, requires Engine Guardian to maintain stamina, lacks good CC. Again, without Engine Guardian they need help with stamina.
Sorcerer. Decent buffs, CC and mitigation but no stamina sustain.

In that order.

was it a magicka or stam nightblade? im presuming it was a magicka if they were self sustaining.

That part about Templar being the only class that can Tank and heal at the same time... Let's not forget that the MagBlade Tank not only has sustain and DPSes- but it also Heals the group with Funnel Health, Sap Essence, Refreshing Path, and Soul Siphon/Veil Of Blades. Then again... I am kinda partial to the MagBlade Tank.

kyrok01_ESO wrote: »

Thanks for all the awesome input! So from what everyone is saying it sounds to me like Nightblade is the best tank as they can self sustain and heal their party while still doing pretty good damage. Templars arent as good because they cant manage resources as well, but still have good hp sustain for themselves and the party, but do less damage. And while Dragonknights have ok sustain and really good CC, they dont put out a whole lot of damage. Sorcerer's seem to be mostly CC focused and dont manage resources well.

This sound about right?

While the NB tank is appealing to me, i want my only nightblade to be dps focused, so ill choose not to do that, templar tanking does sound fun to me, and if i build well it seems i can mostly make up for their weaknesses. What would you guys reccomend for Templar tanking? 5 Heavy 1 Med 1 Light. Should I go full Magicka or Stamina? Obviously Sword and Shield in one bar, but in the second bar what would be best? Resto Staff? another Sword and Shield?

Actually there isn't really a best class to tank, it's just very different ways to do things, each has strengths and weaknesses. Some people will tell you that DK is the absolute best class to tank, but the truth is, (in my opinion at least...) it's only the easiest to master. The others can be a bit more challenging, and quite unsual compared to other MMORPGs.

As for the sorcerers tanks, I don't feel like I have resource management issues on my Breton tank. It's true that we don't really have anything good to recover stamina, but as a Magicka tank I moslty stack shields and don't block much. Some bosses are more challenging than others but there is always a way to deal with it, and i'm sure it is true for every class

Templars and Nightblades can tank everything as much as Dragonknights.

The key is "using Magicka taunt and magicka pool". RIP pure stamina tanks.

Templar magicka tanks can definitely work well. Here's my own setup from another thread:

UrQuan wrote: »

When in his tanking setup, my magicka templar uses the following gear (everything but the jewelry is upgraded to gold, jewelry is purple):

• Maw of the Infernal's Helmet (medium with infused trait and prismatic enchant)
• Bogdan the Nightflame's Pauldron (heavy with infused trait and prismatic enchant)
• Cuirass of the Armor Master (heavy with infused trait and prismatic enchant)
• Gauntlets of the Armor Master (heavy with divines trait and prismatic enchant)
• Sash of the Armor Master (light with divines trait and prismatic enchant)
• Greaves of the Armor Master (heavy with infused trait and prismatic enchant)
• Sabatons of the Armor Master (heavy with divines trait and prismatic enchant)
• Sword of Endurance (sharpened trait with absorb magicka enchant) on each bar
• Shield of Agility (reinforced trait with prismatic enchant) on each bar
• Necklace of Agility (arcane trait with shield-play enchant)
• Ring of Agility (arcane trait with shield-play enchant)
• Ring of Endurance (healthy trait with shield-play enchant)

The mismatched monster helm/shoulder set is so that I get the 1-piece health bonus from each. Once I finally get an Engine Guardian shoulder that I like I'll be swapping them out for a 2-piece Engine Guardian set, sacrificing some health in order to get much better resource management.

The Armor Master set is amazing for tanking as long as you've got an armor ability slotted on each bar. I used to use Hist Bark as my crafted tank set, but if you keep Shuffle up most of the time (which is not generally a problem) you get slightly better dodge chance (because you don't have to be blocking for it to happen), and you get insane resistance.

The Agility pieces that I use aren't the most sought-after (and expensive) ones because they have the arcane trait, but since I use more magicka than stamina when tanking anyway, they're great for me. The 2 pieces of Endurance that I use are just to get a bit more health.

Note that I use essentially identical weapon/shields on each bar (one of my swords is actually an axe, and the shields are different styles, but otherwise they're identical - the different look actually helps me to know which skill bar I'm currently using).

In this setup I generally use the following skills on my bars:
Bar 1:

• Pierce Armor (bread and butter taunt that also reduces resistance)
• Puncturing Sweep (the DPS that I do mostly comes from this, and it's a nice self heal)
• Shielded Assault (my gap closer that stuns and gives me a damage shield)
• Structured Entropy (a nice cheap little DoT/HoT, but most importantly it increases my health by being slotted)
• Shuffle (the dodge chance is great, and thanks to the Armor Master set it increases my health by being slotted, and buffs my resistance when I use it)
• Empowering Sweep (a cheap ultimate that I can use over and over in boss fights - doesn't do that much damage, but I use it more for the damage mitigation)

Bar 2:

• Heroic Slash (I use this on the boss every 10 seconds or so to reduce their damage and help generate ultimate)
• Radiant Ward (a damage shield that scales off my high health and does a small AOE on activation - I like to use this while I'm low on stamina and surrounded by mobs so I can take a breather from blocking)
• Breath of Life (this is rarely to heal myself - it's mostly for situations where the healer is out of action and I'm trying to help the group stay alive)
• Structured Entropy (it's on both bars because of the health buff for being slotted)
• Harness Magicka (the magic damage shield is sometimes useful, but this is mostly there because of the bonuses Armor Master gives me for having an armor ability slotted, and to have a little variety of utility instead of having Shuffle on both bars)
• Solar Prison (this is the expensive ultimate that I'll usually only be able to use once or twice in a boss fight - awesome damage and damage mitigation, with the only downside being that I can't spam it like I can Empowering Sweep)

I sometimes swap out certain skills for certain fights (in particular I sometimes slot Inner Fire for a ranged taunt), but that's generally my setup.

So with all of that, here's what my stats look like while tanking (using VR15 tri-stat food):

And here's the same but with an armor ability active:


I find that this works pretty damn well for me, but your mileage may vary.

hrothbern wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Templar magicka tanks can definitely work well. Here's my own setup from another thread:

UrQuan wrote: »

When in his tanking setup, my magicka templar uses the following gear (everything but the jewelry is upgraded to gold, jewelry is purple):

• Maw of the Infernal's Helmet (medium with infused trait and prismatic enchant)
• Bogdan the Nightflame's Pauldron (heavy with infused trait and prismatic enchant)
• Cuirass of the Armor Master (heavy with infused trait and prismatic enchant)
• Gauntlets of the Armor Master (heavy with divines trait and prismatic enchant)
• Sash of the Armor Master (light with divines trait and prismatic enchant)
• Greaves of the Armor Master (heavy with infused trait and prismatic enchant)
• Sabatons of the Armor Master (heavy with divines trait and prismatic enchant)
• Sword of Endurance (sharpened trait with absorb magicka enchant) on each bar
• Shield of Agility (reinforced trait with prismatic enchant) on each bar
• Necklace of Agility (arcane trait with shield-play enchant)
• Ring of Agility (arcane trait with shield-play enchant)
• Ring of Endurance (healthy trait with shield-play enchant)

The mismatched monster helm/shoulder set is so that I get the 1-piece health bonus from each. Once I finally get an Engine Guardian shoulder that I like I'll be swapping them out for a 2-piece Engine Guardian set, sacrificing some health in order to get much better resource management.

The Armor Master set is amazing for tanking as long as you've got an armor ability slotted on each bar. I used to use Hist Bark as my crafted tank set, but if you keep Shuffle up most of the time (which is not generally a problem) you get slightly better dodge chance (because you don't have to be blocking for it to happen), and you get insane resistance.

The Agility pieces that I use aren't the most sought-after (and expensive) ones because they have the arcane trait, but since I use more magicka than stamina when tanking anyway, they're great for me. The 2 pieces of Endurance that I use are just to get a bit more health.

Note that I use essentially identical weapon/shields on each bar (one of my swords is actually an axe, and the shields are different styles, but otherwise they're identical - the different look actually helps me to know which skill bar I'm currently using).

In this setup I generally use the following skills on my bars:
Bar 1:

• Pierce Armor (bread and butter taunt that also reduces resistance)
• Puncturing Sweep (the DPS that I do mostly comes from this, and it's a nice self heal)
• Shielded Assault (my gap closer that stuns and gives me a damage shield)
• Structured Entropy (a nice cheap little DoT/HoT, but most importantly it increases my health by being slotted)
• Shuffle (the dodge chance is great, and thanks to the Armor Master set it increases my health by being slotted, and buffs my resistance when I use it)
• Empowering Sweep (a cheap ultimate that I can use over and over in boss fights - doesn't do that much damage, but I use it more for the damage mitigation)

Bar 2:

• Heroic Slash (I use this on the boss every 10 seconds or so to reduce their damage and help generate ultimate)
• Radiant Ward (a damage shield that scales off my high health and does a small AOE on activation - I like to use this while I'm low on stamina and surrounded by mobs so I can take a breather from blocking)
• Breath of Life (this is rarely to heal myself - it's mostly for situations where the healer is out of action and I'm trying to help the group stay alive)
• Structured Entropy (it's on both bars because of the health buff for being slotted)
• Harness Magicka (the magic damage shield is sometimes useful, but this is mostly there because of the bonuses Armor Master gives me for having an armor ability slotted, and to have a little variety of utility instead of having Shuffle on both bars)
• Solar Prison (this is the expensive ultimate that I'll usually only be able to use once or twice in a boss fight - awesome damage and damage mitigation, with the only downside being that I can't spam it like I can Empowering Sweep)

I sometimes swap out certain skills for certain fights (in particular I sometimes slot Inner Fire for a ranged taunt), but that's generally my setup.

So with all of that, here's what my stats look like while tanking (using VR15 tri-stat food):

And here's the same but with an armor ability active:


I find that this works pretty damn well for me, but your mileage may vary.

@UrQuan ,

Looks to me as a solid Magicka Templar HA Shuffle Armor Master build.

On the Block Stamina costs:
You have Defensive Posture not slotted, but 3x Shield enchant to compensate.
Question:
How much Stamina do you rougly recover in practice from your Redguard racial Adrenaline Rush?

I used to run with both defensive posture slotted and shield-play enchants back in the days when stamina regenerated while blocking, and you could effectively perma-block. Even back then I was never actually a perma-blocking tank player, though, so I found that it was totally overkill on the stamina cost reduction. When I finally abandoned my VR14 tank gear for my VR16 gear (well, not really abandoned - my VR15 DK now uses it as his tanking set) I decided that I'd keep the enchants, but stop slotting defensive posture in order to give me room to have an armour skill slotted on each bar (previously I was only using an armour skill on one bar).

I'm not entirely sure how much stamina I recover from the racial passive, but even without picking up shards from a healer it's incredibly rare for me to run out of stamina with this build. At one point I had the WW ultimate slotted on my bar 1 with Solar Prison still on bar 2. The idea was that having the ultimate on the bar I spend the most time on would mean I'd be getting that 15% bonus to stamina regen most of the time, while still keeping a more useful ultimate on my other bar. I found that I really didn't need that extra regen, though, so I stopped putting the WW ultimate on my bar. The racial passives definitely help my stamina management from becoming something I need to worry about.

Even though I've got so much more into magicka than stamina, that's the resource that I do need to worry about keeping up. My high health gives me a little bit of leeway to survive for a while if my magicka runs out (especially since it makes my damage shield higher, and if I'm about to run out of magicka I always use that first).

It's also worth noting that I designed this build partly around being able to swap my gear and skill bars out in order to swap between the tank, healer, and DPS roles as needed. That's the whole reason why I went with a magicka-heavy tank build in the first place - because it allowed me to swap gear & skill bars and suddenly have a magicka DPS or a magicka healer. If I had gone stamina I could have swapped between tank and DPS roles easily, but not healer.

UrQuan wrote: »

Templar magicka tanks can definitely work well. Here's my own setup from another thread:

You can tank dungeons like vWGT & vICP with that build ?

CreepyPahuska wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Templar magicka tanks can definitely work well. Here's my own setup from another thread:

You can tank dungeons like vWGT & vICP with that build ?

Yes and no. Some of the fights in those dungeons don't work well with more traditional tanking setups. For example, the Planar Inhibitor fight isn't one where you really need a tank at all, so for that fight I switch to my DPS setup. Lord Warden Dusk is another one where I wouldn't use this setup, and would instead swap some stuff out (mostly to put some ranged stuff on my skill bars).

kyrok01_ESO wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Templar magicka tanks can definitely work well. Here's my own setup from another thread:

@UrQuan

Do you have any advice for how I should build around level 20, solo leveling with occasional group dungeon play? Should I even build for tanking pre 50? Today I swapped to a magicka tank build with Sword and Board on Bar 1 and Resto Staff on Bar 2, 16 points into magicka, Focused Charge, Puncture, Puncturing Sweeps, Breath of Life, Restoring Aura, and Solar Disturbance on my Bar 1. Went 5 Heavy, 2 Light. Long story short I had a very hard time soloing content, did little to no damage i felt, and puncturing sweeps was the only thing that really kept me alive or did any dps, and soon as i ran out of magicka i was basically dead. Not really sure what to do, should I just go back to my Fire Destro Staff Mage build and stick to that until VR content? Because after spending an hour to barely finish 3 quests, and dying to just about everything, was pretty close to just quitting and jumping on my nightblade lol.

At level 20 I wouldn't worry too much about tanking, aside from leveling some of the skills/skill lines you're going to use for tanking in the future. Also, I never actually do solo questing in my tank setup - it's purely for group content. I typically do solo questing in my magicka DPS setup.

So if I were you I'd switch things to use 2 heavy (chest should be one of these, and the other should be legs or head or shoulders) and 5 light. You don't need more heavy armour than that while solo leveling (or even for tanking non-vet dungeons), and this way you'll be able to take advantage of better magicka sustain while still leveling both the heavy and light skill lines. It may also be a good idea to put 1 medium piece in there, just so that you're leveling that skill line too. You just want to level the medium skill line to 22 so that you have access to Evasion down the road - as a magicka tank you're not really going to care about the passives in the skill line.

I'd also use Reflective Light (morph of Sun Fire). For a magicka Templar you can pretty easily get through almost all leveling content using just Reflective Light and Puncturing Sweep. I'd also probably use resto staff on my main bar, and only swap to sword & board if you need to do some heavy blocking (which should be rare outside of group content), or when turning in quests in order to level the skill line.

CreepyPahuska wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

Yes and no. Some of the fights in those dungeons don't work well with more traditional tanking setups. For example, the Planar Inhibitor fight isn't one where you really need a tank at all, so for that fight I switch to my DPS setup. Lord Warden Dusk is another one where I wouldn't use this setup, and would instead swap some stuff out (mostly to put some ranged stuff on my skill bars).

Yea, well the inhibitor thing is obvious, playing as a tank on this guy doesn't make a lot of sense. I go full DD too with my sorc on this boss. Actually I asked that question because I was a bit concerned about your resistances and recovery rates. I thought a templar tank would require a bit more

If the fight goes on long enough I sometimes have issues with magicka recovery (which is why I plan on switching to Engine Guardian once I get a set of shoulders I like), but I've never had a problem with not having enough resistance. Between keeping Shuffle up most of the time, occasionally popping a damage shield (the damage shield from Radiant Ward gives me 10K+ shield depending on how many enemies are close to me), using damage mitigation (at a minimum I've always got Minor Maim active on the boss/bosses to reduce damage by 15%, and I'll spend a large percentage of each fight with 15%+ damage mitigation on myself thanks to spamming Empowering Sweep), blocking/dodging when needed, having high health, and periodic self heals from Structured Entropy and Puncturing Sweeps, my resistance has always been more than enough. 90% of the time if I die it's because everyone else has already died to stuff that the tank can't keep them safe from. And sometimes I die because I screw up lol.