I ran baharas curse until I realized it doesn't proc off light attacks, I'd like to use leeching because right now my cp in spell crit is pretty wasted and Thaumaturge boosts the dmg from leech.

Yeah I don't use sap because my dmg isn't enough to be useful and it's an expensive spam with less than great heals.
So baharas purely with taunts doesn't proc often, Id rather use leeching plate.

Wormcult would be better worn by magicka dps it has zero abilities that help me. Like any set that doesn't have resistance bonuses I find it makes you too squishy.

As for Skeleton being a selfish choice, staying alive is my primary job and few other helms provide me with anything useful. The only "group" helm is bs and as I said 50 times already, the ult/min from bs is garbage and the bonuses are lost to my cap.

Pretty much any mask other than chudan means a max unbuffed defense of 25k, thats 13% more damage taken whenever major ward drops.

My only goals right now are aetherian archive for Defending Warrior and the bloodhist skin.

VMOL doesn't really have anything I want, skin looks terrible on Argonian vamps.

Autolycus wrote: »

BS is one of the most reliable monster helm procs out there. Any form of damage can proc it. You can go stand in the middle of an AoE and get a BS proc. You can take bleed damage and get a BS proc. It's up constantly.

Yeah that's great if you stand seek out damage and stand in it but imo that's not a good plan. What if the boss uses melee and single shot ranged hits? With dodge factored in I rarely see bs proc. What are these low damage/high rof boss fights? BS is best for trash mobs not bosses.

We are also talking about the difference between horn every 50 seconds and every 53 seconds with bs.

Or 50% mitigation at all times from chudan.

Oakmontowls_ESO wrote: »

@WalksonGraves why don't you run 1 pirate one chudan and work on your uptime of ward and resolve? You can use refreshing path for the ward and resolve buffs and the hot can help keep the melee dps's hp topped off as well as giving you a heal for when the healer dies.

..because they are both monster helms?
Basically as I said before, this means casting it every 11 seconds to maintain max resist. Magic can run out but stam is required to survive. My mana pool is used for mirage, shades and drain.

Why would a tank run merciless resolve?
It would do no damage nor help the group.

I keep shades on the front bar and refreshing path on the back bar for the speed boost since 500-1k heals aren't really useful unless triggering bogdan.

WalksonGraves wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

WalksonGraves wrote: »

Erock25 wrote: »

WalksonGraves wrote: »

You realize 1k is nothing right? It's 10% of base hp, 1/4 of what your food bonus is.
Enjoy your eggshell dps.

Going from 16.2k HP to 17.3k HP is the line between life and death for MANY dmging abilities in trials.

Take some points out of stam/mag. You don't need to be a glass cannon to dps and the dps gain is negligible from a few points.

This is the most "insightful" comment you have made. You aren't talking about the same thing as everyone else in this thread. When we are talking about Meta and BIS builds, it is because you are trying to push scores on competitive end game content. End of the day, there are only 2 metrics that matter. Time, which is directly dependent on group DPS, and number of deaths. This statement makes it clear you don't care about that.

It is 100% clear that you have never tanked a place like VMOL or other trial HMs, which is perfectly fine, most people haven't. But that is the current meta content for PVE Tanking; that is what the vast majority of people are trying to build for. If it works there, it will work everywhere. You are asking every DPS in your raid to sacrifice DPS because you don't want to wear a set (ebon). That is selfish and frankly makes you a bad (or ignorant) tank.

DPS in the current meta are trying to be glass cannons because the more DPS, the better the score. A glass cannon can't function on their own. We build depending on health buffs from things like warhorn and ebon. The difference between 16 and 18k health in trials is huge, as is the corresponding loss of of your primary stat if you aren't getting the support, especially because the negative effect is multiplied times 8.

Again, in 4-man stuff, wear whatever you want. Nobody gives a crap. If you are trying to build for VMOL or other HMs, then I suggest you open your eyes and ears and listen to what people are saying who have actually done it it. If good glass cannons can't function in pug runs, it's on them to adapt. If they can't function in a raid, it's mostly likely on the support roles to adjust what they are doing.

FYI: We tried having our off tank drop Ebon one night in VMOL HM. It was a disaster. The extra health is a difference between the raid wiping and survival. Also, a tank building around a 3 second channel skill might be the worst idea I have ever heard. If you need drain, your healer is garbage.

The drain is more for ult than anything, it just happens to be a great clutch heal. You can also animation cancel with block for a 3 sec stun, 5 ult and 8k-0 hp for 1 sec of channel.

With siphoning, hots and refreshing im getting 4.2-5k/sec heals + drain.
Self heal isn't as big of a factor if you have a proper healer but if they go down or aren't available due to mechanics I like to be able to survive solo. Rezzing dead party members is more of a regular dungeon thing imo.

Bs: Defense buff is lost to caps and boss rof is too low with me dodging to proc regularly. Im not a fan of "when hit" effects that aren't heals. Mostly I just get more out of sets like bogdan for the proc rate since im getting healed by 4-5 sources at any given time. I like chudan because It means I only have to use 3 central skills that cost resources and they are all cheap.

ebon:
I still think more freq horn has more impact, it's not like you can't put 1k into hp. If its so great why not have the healer run it as jewelry?

Pirate helm:
30% dr for 12 sec is huge, it's the best defensive buff in the game. 15% healing loss is absorbed by vitality pots/my base 39% healing taken.

The reasons a healer can't use Ebon is because they lose out on a ton of Magic/Magic regen/Spell Power to do that. Ebon only comes in Healthy jewelry , so that means replacing their Arcane Jewelry sothey lose out on close to 3k magic for that alone, dropping their effective spell damage by ~300, resulting in weaker heals overall. Not only that but Ebon offers 0 synergy for a Healer as a set, giving them only health and healing received, which are generally useless for healers to have, especially considering that they will already have an extra 3k health from the healthy ebon jewelry they'd be forced to wear. Finally, there are much better sets that a healer can wear that would not only allow them to better perform their job but help support the group further.

Worm Cult reduces the cost of magic abilities for everyone in the group including themselves so they can heal more often

Twilight's Remedy means their synergies are burst heals as well as buffs to the team.

Gossamer means that people can avoid damage, so less strain on healers to heal people.

Infallible means that things die faster, so less strain as you won't need to heal as long as without it.

ALL are better alternatives than trying to shackle the healer with close to 5k extra health that they can't use for any purpose, other than watching as their weak sauce heals fail to save anyone and slowly die off 1 by 1 til they're the last man standing and get immediately violated by an angry Trial boss.

WalksonGraves wrote: »

Autolycus wrote: »

BS is one of the most reliable monster helm procs out there. Any form of damage can proc it. You can go stand in the middle of an AoE and get a BS proc. You can take bleed damage and get a BS proc. It's up constantly.

Yeah that's great if you stand seek out damage and stand in it but imo that's not a good plan. What if the boss uses melee and single shot ranged hits? With dodge factored in I rarely see bs proc. What are these low damage/high rof boss fights? BS is best for trash mobs not bosses.

We are also talking about the difference between horn every 50 seconds and every 53 seconds with bs.

Or 50% mitigation at all times from chudan.

You're wrong. It's clear you haven't even tested BS. You don't even have to make an effort to generate ult with BS, it just happens constantly. It procs within a second or two of itself leaving almost no down-time. Smh... whatever. It's not like you're holding my group back, so do whatever suits you.

Your build is going to be limited to dungeons and normal trials until you learn to build for your group instead of for yourself. You might occasionally get a group that is willing to take you into vet trials, but I wouldn't count on that getting you very far in terms of progression. There are so many combinations of viable group-oriented tanking builds and you just hate the idea of doing anything that isn't totally self-centered. It's no wonder you've been tanking "since launch" (console launch maybe?) and haven't completed veteran trials yet.

Sad to see that so many nb tanks speak about support but no saptankbuild is running alkosh.

As for Nb stam Tank. i have completed vet hel ra hardmode with it and a sap tanks self healing wont save your ass when healers dont pay attention. Stam build i use isnt final yet since offtanks in our raid are wearing ebon and i still need to test/decide wich set i go for.

Btw i know how much fun and how supportive(with heals/dps) a saptank can be in pledges.

actosh wrote: »

Sad to see that so many nb tanks speak about support but no saptankbuild is running alkosh.

As for Nb stam Tank. i have completed vet hel ra hardmode with it and a sap tanks self healing wont save your ass when healers dont pay attention. Stam build i use isnt final yet since offtanks in our raid are wearing ebon and i still need to test/decide wich set i go for.

Btw i know how much fun and how supportive(with heals/dps) a saptank can be in pledges.

There are only so many ways a tank can support the team and not gimp themselves. Do you wear Alkosh, a set that offers a sap tank nothing particularly useful, but is helpful for the group or Ebon, a set that at least offers you health AND supports the group? I understand that Alkosh is an awesome addition for trials but to make the most of Alkosh, it's better for a Stamina Tank to wear it than a magic tank.

The whole reason I left my Trial Guild was for that reason actually. I have 2 Trial Tested tanks, my NB Saptank and my Stamina DK tank.

My NB Saptank wore 5 Ebon, 5 Moondancer, 2 Bloodspawn.
My StamDK wore 5 Tava's, 5 Alkosh and 2 Bloodspawn.

My Trial guild liked my Saptank more than my StamDK though those so I would always play him in Trials. However, they started dictating what they wanted people to wear for trials to get higher LB standings and asked me to wear Alkosh instead of Moondancer on my Saptank. I said that I could just bring my DK tank if they insisted I wear Alkosh but they outright wanted my Saptank and they wanted him to wear Alkosh. I tried to be more flexible and offered to trade in my Moondancer for Dragonguard, so I could have more Warhorn uptime but they continued to insist I wear Alkosh. Ultimately, we couldn't reach a compromise and I just ended up leaving.

Yes, Alkosh is helpful, more so than a lot of sets out there but you have to consider the cost on the tank for wearing that. My Moondancer set up gave me all the sustain I'd ever need or gave me a huge buff to my spell damage, meaning I could keep myself alive much better so healers could focus more on DPSing instead of worrying about healing me, not to mention my own damage was also much better so things would die faster regardless. Dragonguard would have also been a reasonably useful set for him to use as I get more health, magic regen and more Warhorn uptime so it would help the group that way too. Alkosh, while helping the group by lowering the target's resistances gives me useless stats for my build. I lose out on sustain and damage for extra group damage, that Moondancer and Dragonguard would still offer, albeit in different ways and maybe to lesser extents than Alkosh but still don't gimp the tank greatly.

I LMAO and quit reading this thread when I read this from WalksonGraves "I've run both, chudan is BiS for tanks"