Vampire DK Tank

Solaaris · April 2016

Is it possible to make a DK Vampire Tank (Dunmer)

I play a DK tank, and quite honestly want to be a vampire. My guild healers have said go for it, as I can flesh out the fire weaknesses, is it worth a try?

thanks

Wollust · April 2016

I've tanked pretty much everything as a vampire DK.
Works fine.

FLuFFyxMuFFiN · April 2016

I say play how you want and not how others want you to play

swirve · April 2016

Yes.

Dunmer passives + elemental defence + enchants if needed.

Personofsecrets · April 2016

this actually seems like one of the more interesting options for tanking at the moment .I've been thinking about it a lot

swirve · April 2016

As a dk tank...the morphs on the following are your friend

Chains, armour, talons, blood, inhale, shield, ash cloud and the ultimate std...

Wollust · April 2016

FLuFFyxMuFFiN wrote: »

I say play how you want and not how others want you to play

That's not how it works in group play though. Soloplay, sure. Whatever you want. If you play in a group, you'll have to accept that adaption is needed.

RoamingRiverElk · April 2016

Just compensate for the extra fire damage with some CP if need be, enchants are awful now, as is the Dunmer passive. They weren't upgraded when the numbers system was changed ages ago.

FLuFFyxMuFFiN · April 2016

Wollust wrote: »

FLuFFyxMuFFiN wrote: »

I say play how you want and not how others want you to play

That's not how it works in group play though. Soloplay, sure. Whatever you want. If you play in a group, you'll have to accept that adaption is needed.

Yes I am aware. Most builds can be adapted to group play as long as it isn't some outrageous build that can't perform at all.

Masstershake · April 2016

I tank as a Nightblade dunmer vampire just fine.

Woeler · April 2016

The question is: Why? What does vampirism bring you as a tank and what vampire skill would you be willing to put on your bar in order to gain this (because vamp passives only apply when an ability is slotted)? If it gives you an interesting advantage, go for it. If it's just for the sake of being a vampire, then meh you just willingly took a lifelong fire debuff.

Momomani · April 2016

I play as imperial templar vamp and a tank I really dont know how much I benefit from it and if the health and magic regeneration is worth it.

leepalmer95 · April 2016

Woeler wrote: »

The question is: Why? What does vampirism bring you as a tank and what vampire skill would you be willing to put on your bar in order to gain this (because vamp passives only apply when an ability is slotted)? If it gives you an interesting advantage, go for it. If it's just for the sake of being a vampire, then meh you just willingly took a lifelong fire debuff.

Only the regen applies if a vamp skill is slotted.

The others all work

Saint314Louis1985 · April 2016

Woeler wrote: »

The question is: Why? What does vampirism bring you as a tank and what vampire skill would you be willing to put on your bar in order to gain this (because vamp passives only apply when an ability is slotted)? If it gives you an interesting advantage, go for it. If it's just for the sake of being a vampire, then meh you just willingly took a lifelong fire debuff.

you could use mist form maybe? also the passive that gives you more mitigation when low health.

hrothbern · April 2016

Saint314Louis1985 wrote: »

Woeler wrote: »

The question is: Why? What does vampirism bring you as a tank and what vampire skill would you be willing to put on your bar in order to gain this (because vamp passives only apply when an ability is slotted)? If it gives you an interesting advantage, go for it. If it's just for the sake of being a vampire, then meh you just willingly took a lifelong fire debuff.

you could use mist form maybe? also the passive that gives you more mitigation when low health.

With mist form you are invulnerable to control effects and Healing magic. So.... NO Healing. that is meh for a tank.

The passive for more mitigation when low health is of some, but little value against executes in PVP, but not helpfull for a mitigating tank who wants to be close to full health in PVE.

Perhaps a vampire High Elf Sorc tank could be the niche where this could work.... (perhaps using Equilibrium behind your damage shield to decrease your health all the time, vampirism securing minimal health recovery).... but I doubt it to work in hard content and the new endgame raids, if your only defense is shields.
But I leveled a Sorc to Vet 1 to try it out for PVE after the DB DLC. If Mist Form and Undeath apply BEFORE the damage shield. That should give a huge total reduction of incoming damage together with Hardy and Elemental Defender.

Momomani wrote: »

I play as imperial templar vamp and a tank I really dont know how much I benefit from it and if the health and magic regeneration is worth it.

That 10% more Mag & Sta recovery will imo not outweight the disadvantages of the higher incoming damage if you tank.
The Bat ultimate is not that usefull for a PVE tank. There are imo better ultimates contributing to your group.
In a pledge eg Warhorn. In a trial the tank should be one of the 2-3 players keeping agressive Warhorn always up.

Inarre · April 2016

Yes, if you know what youre doing and dont stand in fire aoes. It can go well if you understand your build, or terribly, terribly wrong as a pug argonian dk vamp tank showed me once in veteran city of ash.

*cries* ill never get that hour of my life back.

Nebthet78 · April 2016

Yes you can. I have a Bosmer Vampire NB Tank and I love her. She is a hybrid build so when my magicka runs out I can use Stamina and vice versa to keep the bosses and underlings away from the rest of my group especially when they need to rez another player.

Lokey0024 · April 2016

The extra damage resist at low health is real good, so is devouring swarm. During heavy fire attacks mist form after taunt. Was actually easier to tank as vamp then regular. More fun To

nihonseanb14_ESO · April 2016

You'll need 100 cp to pretty much fully negate the fire penalty, but other than that it works really well.

Have a v16 NB tank and a v13 Sorc tank I've been fooling with. There are some things to remember

1. In order to get stam/health regen bonus you need to have a Vampire ability slotted on your bar. I generally keep Bat Swarm on one bar, and Mist Form on my tanking bar.

2. You can't receive heals in Mist Form but do keep aggro from taunts. This makes it handy for weathering large boss AOEs that are difficulty to roll through/out of it.

3. Blocking instantly cancels Mist Form.

4. You'll want to try to feed before dungeons to get to Vampire level 1, since the closer you get to level 4 the worse your health regen gets. This can be a problem on some boss fights

4. You can use Drain Essence multiple times on same target, and even bosses (though it doesn't stun them).

Hope that helps.

runagate · April 2016

nihonseanb14_ESO wrote: »

You'll need 100 cp to pretty much fully negate the fire penalty, but other than that it works really well.

Have a v16 NB tank and a v13 Sorc tank I've been fooling with. There are some things to remember

1. In order to get stam/health regen bonus you need to have a Vampire ability slotted on your bar. I generally keep Bat Swarm on one bar, and Mist Form on my tanking bar.

2. You can't receive heals in Mist Form but do keep aggro from taunts. This makes it handy for weathering large boss AOEs that are difficulty to roll through/out of it.

3. Blocking instantly cancels Mist Form.

4. You'll want to try to feed before dungeons to get to Vampire level 1, since the closer you get to level 4 the worse your health regen gets. This can be a problem on some boss fights

4. You can use Drain Essence multiple times on same target, and even bosses (though it doesn't stun them).

Hope that helps.

Strangely enough I've just made myself a new dunmer DK I intend to become a vampire as the last of the 8 possible class combos I didn't have yet. This is cool information and much appreciated.

Septimus_Magna · April 2016

Im curious how Mist Form will work on a tank with capped armor/spell resist.

Capped resist will mitigate 50% of the incoming dmg and Mist Form will mitigate 75% of the incoming dmg for 4 seconds. This is 25% more dmg mitigation than blocking which completely stops stamina regen. Alternating between Mist Form and block to mitigate dmg could work pretty well because you can choose what resource to use to mitigate dmg.

Healing could be an issue if you have a hard-hitting boss but this could be countered to some extend if you have decent health regen (Im not even sure if this works during mist form).

It sure sounds crazy to make a heavy armor vampire tank build with health and magicka regen but it would be cool if it worked.

NBAballar18 · April 2016

I must say my main character is v.7 hes a imperial Vampire DK, tank and does good damage to. have not really had a situation where i couldnf beat an enemy in PvE, ive had difficutly but never got stuck. Idk how would be with your character.

HeroOfNone · April 2016

I tank on a khajiit vampire DK. I don't minmaxing and my weaving sucks. If I can do it I'm sure you can too =3

Grabmoore · April 2016

Woeler wrote: »

The question is: Why? What does vampirism bring you as a tank and what vampire skill would you be willing to put on your bar in order to gain this (because vamp passives only apply when an ability is slotted)? If it gives you an interesting advantage, go for it. If it's just for the sake of being a vampire, then meh you just willingly took a lifelong fire debuff.

This!

Why would you want to gimp yourself in PvE and PvP? You get no benefits except for the Undead passive you won't use in PvE anyways. In PvP you surely don't linke getting camo-hunter-slaughtered either.

Slotting Vamp ulti/skills most of the time is inferior, too. So, again, why?

dodgehopper_ESO · April 2016

The best passive of vampirism in my view is the Dark Stalker (sneaky) passive. This passives is
pretty addictive, and despite all the downsides of being a vampire, this makes it hard to give up
your unhealthy vampire-eczema.

Mist Form is not what it use to be.
Drain is an awful skill, and was never good.
Bat Swarm is cool though, especially on a DK.

When I use Vampire, I have mist form on one bar, and Bat Swarm on the other bar to get the passives. If you're tanking you'll want to get yourself to Stage 1 for better health regeneration and less of a fire weakness (although they've more or less made this weakness laughable). Other than that I have done fine for the most part even Tanking in Vet dungeons in medium armor as a Stage 4 vampire, so its doable. Trials on the other hand you might want to be more careful.

nihonseanb14_ESO · April 2016

Grabmoore wrote: »

Woeler wrote: »

The question is: Why? What does vampirism bring you as a tank and what vampire skill would you be willing to put on your bar in order to gain this (because vamp passives only apply when an ability is slotted)? If it gives you an interesting advantage, go for it. If it's just for the sake of being a vampire, then meh you just willingly took a lifelong fire debuff.

This!

Why would you want to gimp yourself in PvE and PvP? You get no benefits except for the Undead passive you won't use in PvE anyways. In PvP you surely don't linke getting camo-hunter-slaughtered either.

Slotting Vamp ulti/skills most of the time is inferior, too. So, again, why?

Fire debuff can be negated with Champion Points. I've got 501. For the warrior tree I'm already plugging them in for physical and magika resist, so fire dmg debuff is negligible. Your Vampire hunger stage has NOTHING to do with fire resist debuff. It is a flat 25% regardless of stage.

For PVP? If you're a vampire tank in pvp, the vampire part is going to be at the bottom of your list of pvp issues.I don't PVP as a tank. I don't know anyone who does and it does it well.

Vampire Passives are actually pretty nice

Undeath = +33% dmg reduction if your health gets low enough.
Supernatural Recovery = +10% Stam/Magika Recovery

Ultimates: Devouring Swarm isn't the greatest ultimate, it gets cheaper the closer to Vampire hunger stage 4 you get. In dungeons I can usually get it out every trash group. While it doesn't do as much dmg as most class ultimates, one important aspect is that it is mobile, it is based on you. This is more than handy on fights where the boss moves, since nothing is as annoying as throwing a big AOE ultimate down on the ground only for the boss to teleport/charge/move to another area or target. You move, bats goes with you.

Draine Essence: Yeah, a so-so power, I don't use it on my tanking bar. Big problem is that it locks you down for 3 seconds. As a tank you have better things to do than try to lock down trash for 3 seconds while you self heal. Solo? it's a nice little power, especially if you have another source of dmg on the target (DOTS/Pets/whatever) . In dungeons, I yell at people who use it.

Mist Form: I am still working out how to best use this. The fact that you can hold taunt in mist form is pretty awesome, almost as awesome as the 75% dmg reduction, which seems to stack with all your other dmg reduction. With Poison Mist I can sit in a group and take pretty much no damage while I slowly (very slowly) kill them. One note of caution, you can get whacked pretty hard when you come out and before you recast. I try to end by blocking, then recast, that way I don't get stunned/laid out. While you cant receive healing, you do recover health from passive health recovery, and yes, the 20% buff from Major Fortitude works with it too (from health potions, Blood Altar, Dragon Blood). Mist Form isn't an uber tanking power, it's just another card in the deck.

Honestly, neither the positives or negatives are that great. You certainly aren't gimping yourself as a tank, and you aren't giving yourself an 'I win' button either. It adds a little more depth to your play style, and lets your try somethings you might not otherwise do.

RDMyers65b14_ESO · April 2016

My vampire DK does quite well. She's an Orc, so she even has fangs.