DK Stam Tank sets

HebrewHatchet · January 2016

I'm new to tanking and looking to make gear every couple of vet levels, but I can't decide what to make!

I can make 9 trait sets and I have both the Engine Guardian and Blood Spawn sets (crappy traits, but it's fine for now). I'd also like to do at least mediocre DPS on fights like the Engine Guardian where a tank is not needed. Because of this, I don't want to toggle any max stat increase when switching weapons** (e.g. Armor Master 5% health). Lastly, I'd like to do all of this without crafting 2 sets of expensive ass, hard to manage gear (console gamer here).

** This happens when one of the 5 pieces for a set is your primary weapon and you swap to your secondary weapon which belongs to a different set. By doing it this way, you can toggle which 5 trait bonus you want on different bars, but it's bad if you take a 5% health hit every time you switch (when full).

Any suggestions on what to craft for myself?

For example:

When tanking: mace and shield on both bars
When DPSing: Maul and Bow

Head: Engine Guardian
Shoulders: Engine Guardian
Chest: Armor Master
Hands: Armor Master
Waist: Armor Master
Legs: Night Mother
Feet: Night Mother

Mace (x 2): Armor Master
Shield (x 2): Armor Master

Maul: Night Mother
Bow: Night Mother

This is good for tanking except that the Night Mother's set gives weapon critical at 2 pieces, which is not useful for a tank, so this could be optimized. For DPS, I'd get no benefit from my Armor Mater pieces (which is why 2 are on the mace and shield), but Night Mother's would give me weapon crit and damage at 3 pieces, so it's not terrible (i.e. good enough as I am mainly a tank). The other benefit is that it doesn't require 2 full sets.

paulsimonps · January 2016

I would advice you to get a full dps set up you can switch to when doing the engine guardian and Planar inhibitor. For example this is what I do: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/223879/enduring-dragon-pve-tank-by-luna-hlaalu/p1

I have the same attributes but I change over to medium armor and bow to be able to at least some dps. This at least makes it so that I can one shot the portals in vWGT with one focus aim. Some say focus aim is too slow, but seeing as I managed to one shot them all and with the added assistance of my group performing just as good get the no add achievement with it, I would say its not too slow. Haven't checked recently but have gotten around 12k dps with that setup I change to so its not good compared to full on dps but its better than what you can do in heavy armor.

I know you said you didn't want multiple sets but for the Planar Inhibitor there is no way around it. You need to be in a dps set up. For the engine guardian it doesn't matter cause you can just kinda hang back and chain in the few adds that come, your low dps will not wipe the group, but in vWGT it will.

NBrookus · January 2016

If you have armor abilities on both bars with Armor Master, you don't lose the 5% health bonus when you swap. And if 5% makes or breaks you as a tank, chances are your health or shields or buffs have other, bigger issues. You DO lose the extra phys and spell resist if you let your armor buff drop, but that's true even if you don't swap bars.

I agree with Paul. You need two sets of gear if you are going for vWGT. The two older dungeons where tanking is just not feasible (Volenfell and Darkshade last bosses) are easy enough you can let the other team members carry you through. But it can wait until you hit V16; in the meantime, I would just be a tanky tank.