The Dragonguard - Stamina Sorcerer Tank [Trials/PvE]

Overview
Welcome to my Dragonguard Stamina Sorcerer Tank designed for end-game Veteran Trials. This build works great for every Veteran Dungeon as well, although untested in Vet DSA. I've seen a lot of threads recently about tanks, so wanted to share my build with the hope of helping and inspiring those with an interest in Sorcerer tanking. Just keep in mind the following is more aimed at 12-person trial content.

Class: Sorcerer

Race: Imperial / Other Options: Nord, Redguard, Orc

Mundus Stone: The Atronach (Magicka Recovery)

Attributes: 33 Magicka & 31 Stamina

Stats
with purple tri-stat food + major/minor ward + major/minor resolve + bound armaments

Max Magicka : 20,134 / Max Health : 31,870 / Max Stamina : 28,365
Magicka Recovery : 1011 / Health Recovery : 457 / Stamina Recovery: 616
Spell Resistance: 30,490 / Physical Resistance: 32,547

Always aim to have around 30k health as a general rule of thumb for any tank, 28-32k is the sweet spot range. You really don’t need more health than that because if you get one shot by a boss, you’re going to get one shot no matter how much health you have. Resistances also do not need to be at cap, contrary to common belief.

A large sized magicka pool is incredibly beneficial for a Sorc. By allowing you to buff with boundless storm, taunt from range with inner fire, and use dark deal to provide you with self sustaining stamina is huge! I will explain more below, but I like having 20k magicka and 30k stamina to allow for more versatility with my skills. That's why my attribute points are split b/w magic and stam.

Gear
Disclaimer: the stats above and my gear are all purple. Enchants are purple as well except for the prismatic enchants, which are gold. Stats would obviously increase if everything was gold.

Weapon 1: Sword of Agility / Defending / Crusher Enchant
Off-Hand 1: Shield of Agility / Reinforced / Max Stam Enchant

Weapon 2: Axe of Agility / Defending / Hardening Enchant
Off-Hand 2: Shield of Agility / Reinforced / Max Stam Enchant

Head: Dragon / Infused / Prismatic Enchant
Shoulder: Dragon / Reinforced / Max Stam Enchant
Chest: Dragon / Infused / Prismatic Enchant
Hands: Dragon / Sturdy / Max Stam Enchant
Waist: Dragon / Sturdy / Max Stam Enchant
Legs: Ebon / Infused / Prismatic Enchant
Feet: Ebon / Reinforced / Max Stam Enchant

Necklace: Ebon / Healthy / Shield Play Enchant
Ring: Ebon / Healthy / Shield Play Enchant
Ring: Ebon / Healthy / Shield Play Enchant

Notes:

• You can freely mix and match set armor/weapon/jewelry pieces depending on what you have.
• Dragon can be exchanged with Tava’s Favor. Ebon can be exchanged with Alkosh. I run the Dragon set over Tava’s Favor because I prefer the flat ult reduction versus proc’ing Tava’s. Dragon’s 15% ult cost reduction combined with the Sorc’s powerstone passive results in constant Aggressive Warhorn’s every 185 ultimate.
• I’m currently running 2pc Agility. Agility can be replaced with Willpower, Endurance or the popular 2pc Bloodspawn depending on how you feel about your resource management. The new 1T monster sets offer many options as well using two different monster pieces that can help with resource management (eg. anything for max stam: tremorscale, sellistrix, selene / magic recovery: choketorn, shadowrend).
• Keep in mind there is currently a glitch with the Ebon one-hand and shield items. The Ebon health bonus to the group disappears when you swap bars. For this reason, I avoid using any Ebon weapons or shields.

Skills

Main Bar: Pierce Armor / Boundless Storm / Dark Deal / Absorb Magic / Bound Armaments / Ult: Aggressive Warhorn

Pierce Armor: Your main 15 second taunt and provides a nice debuff on enemies with major fracture and major breach
Boundless Storm: This is your resistance buff for major resolve and major ward. Refresh this every 23 seconds to keep 100% up-time. Why Boundless Storm instead of Hurricane? In a Veteran trial, one of your healers should keep 100% uptime with elemental drain on the boss. Therefore, using Boundless Storm will return magicka to you every second it ticks. It also has a longer duration. Hurricane is a waste of valuable stamina that’s better used for taunting and blocking. We have a magicka resource pool, so use it!
Dark Deal: A very strategic and powerful stamina resource management skill to regain stamina and a nice self-heal unique to Sorcs. You can convert magicka to return about the same amount of stamina and a huge amount of health. This is by far one of the best skills for sorc tanks and stam sorc dps. But be careful when using. There is a one-second channel time to cast and cannot be animation cancelled to receive the effect. The skill will take some getting used to and you must be familiar with boss mechanics so you're not dark dealing as the boss is about to heavy attack you. There's risk/reward with this skill.
Absorb Magic: Mainly slotted simply for the block cost reduction and reducing damage you take while blocking. You don't actually activate it. There may be times where you want to cast the ward if there's magic damage coming in and it lasts about 30 seconds.
Bound Armaments: Toggle ability. Source of minor resolve and minor ward. It's a toggle, so you only need to activate it at the start of a trial/dungeon or if you die. It also adds extra stamina to your resource pool.
Aggressive Warhorn: Every experienced trial player knows the benefit of aggressive warhorn. It goes without saying, but this is the most beneficial ultimate for a tank to use. Adds tri-resources for 30 secs and provides a 30% crit damage boost to the group for 8 secs. A nice warhorn rotation will make life much better for the dps in your group to take out enemies more quickly.

Back Bar: Echoing Vigor / Heroic Slash / Inner Rage / FLEX Slot (Liquid Lightning, Streak, Crit Surge, Elude) / Bound Armaments / Ult: Suppression Field

Echoing Vigor: A nice heal over time for yourself as well as for the melee dps in your group
Heroic Slash: An additional debuff on the enemies to reduce damage they deal and provides you with ultimate regeneration for even faster warhorns.
Inner Rage: Your ranged magicka taunt to grab enemies at a distance. You really don't want to be running all over the place trying to taunt with pierce armor. Also helps with your stamina management to be able to use your magicka pool. You don't need to morph it from Inner Fire, since the morphs are pretty useless.
FLEX: Slot any of the 4 skills I've listed. I typically use liquid lightning because it's use another magic damage over time source for the same exact reason why we use boundless storm. Crit Surge is kind of useless in my opinion because you rarely crit and vigor is a way better heal over time. Plus, you have a healer on you at most times in a trial. Streak is for situational use only. I don't run Elude because I don't wear Tava's. Keeping Elude up uses too much stamina from my experiences and it's really not needed. For most boss fights in a trial, the tank(s) has a personal healer. If the healer is good, Elude becomes a huge waste of stamina and more stuff to add to your bar rotation. For the axes in AA, I slot Absorb Magic here and double-bar it.
Bound Armaments: Same reason as above. Must be slotted on both bars or it will toggle off when you bar swap.
Supression Field: A nice 12 second area of effect heal for you and anyone standing within it. Very useful to use in various situations as well in trials. ie. you can negate the gargoyle's ground smash in Hel Ra and the chainspinner aoe circles in AA.

Champion Points
The Steed: Spell Shield 30 / The Lady: Hardy 100, Elemental Defender 10 / The Lord: Heavy Armor Focus 47
The Tower: Warlord 60, Magician 20 / The Lover: Arcanist 30 / The Shadow: Shadow Ward 77
The Apprentice: Blessed 100 / The Ritual: Thaumaturge 30, Precise Strikes 57

The blue tree is arbitrary and entirely up to you. 100 points into Blessed will help maximize your heals from Vigor and Dark Deal. Otherwise, allocate wherever you want.

The Red tree is also dependent on the content you’re doing and your own stats. This may mean re-distributing in the middle of a trial and spending 3000 gold every time. Generally though, you do not need both capped resistances as many people like to believe. For Vet HRC, AA, SO trials, most of the incoming heavy damage you’ll be taking is of the physical variety. For that reason, I max out physical resistance and place 100 cp into Hardy. Spell resistance isn’t as important in these three trials for a tank.

Food Buff: Tri-Stat (Max Health, Max Stamina, Max Magicka) Purple CP150 Food

Potions: Essence of Stamina (when gold isn’t a luxury, regular cp150 trash potions) / Essence of Lingering Health (Butterfly Wing, Scrib Jelly, Torchbug Thorax) / Tri-Stat Restoration (Columbine, Bugloss, Mountain Flower)

That’s it! A Stamina Sorcerer Tank. Please feel free to leave any comments or feedback. I’m continuously looking to improve and always welcome other opinions. A proper gear loadout or skill bar doesn’t make you a good tank. You must know all the mechanics of a fight, how to position enemies, when to time blocks, and when you can drop block to buff/debuff/etc. It takes time and practice, but any class can tank. Stamina based Sorcerer tanks are probably one of the rarest finds in the game. I absolutely love tanking as a Sorc, so I hope this build helps those out there who’ve always wanted to try it.