It help once you get into the champion point realm because there are some abilities you can opt into that reduce block cost, help with damage mitigation and increase stamina refill on heavy attack. Once you get here these will help a lot, also have some self healing like dragon blood(draconian abilities I think) and vigor (assault skill line). Being able to self heal is clutch.

Sturdy is good for the beginning if you don't have CP. But endgame a few CP in block cost reduction and enchants on jewelry do a better job since block cost reduction has diminishing returns - the latter also reduce bash costs for interrupts. For endgame content infused on big pieces with tri-glyphs - don't bother with those until you hit CP160 because they are expensive - and divines on smaller ones with a regeneration mundus, preferably atronach will serve you better. For tanking pool size and regeneration are key, and stamina regeneration is not very important since you can get more of that trough heavy attacks (heavy armor passives) and in the fights where you need to perma-block you will need shards anyway. Orc race is OK for tanking because has bonuses for maximum stamina and health, as well as received healing. Nord or Imperial would have probably made better choices, but if you want to go DD as well for soloing or PvP orc is a better choice.