Questions about building a PvE tank

RT_Frank · November 2016

So I am a Nord dk running bloodspawn, tava, and dragonguard. My questions are about traits, glyphs and armor.

What traits are ideal for each piece? I heard infused for large and divines for small but my resistances get low so I did defending for swords and reinforced for shields but idk if this is ideal.

As for glyphs, is it prismatic for large infused pieces and health everything else? What about weapons and jewelry? Is it chrusher/hardening and then shield-play for jewelry?

Lastly, is going 7H or 5H/1/1 best? I feel like going 5/1/1 but my resistances are at 27k for physical and 30k for spell (buffed) with infused large pieces and 5/1/1.

Thanks!

Unsent.Soul · November 2016

@Woeler has a great video explaining and answering all your questions. It is an hour long but we'll worth the watch If your looking into being a serious tank.

You're off to a great start, I run defending on swords and reinforced on shields. Infused on big and either divines/sturdy on small pieces, I believe.

Good luck.

paulsimonps · November 2016

Go 5-1-1 for Armor for the extra resources. Also trust me on this, resistance is the most overrated stat for a tank. I have tanked most things in the game, and done it with no reinforced or Nirnhoned. I did used to use Nirnhoned for my shield but I stopped doing that too. My resistance is at around 23k physical and 27k spell buffed, and I can tank veteran Maw with that with zero issues.

I would btw go with tri glyphs for all of your armor pieces and then change your attributes to adjust the rest as you want it. No need to get above 30k in HP thou but I would still try to keep it there. Some go all out in magicka after that and some in Stamina, I would go for Stamina and then try to get magicka regen instead to go for that. For armor traits you either do Divines for the regen or Sturdy for block cost. I myself do 8 Sturdy and 3 glyphs for cost reduction and 100cp into it. Making my block cost 88 stamina. My regen I get from being a vampire and the atronach mundus and slotting barrier ultimate on my front bar from extra regen from the support magicka aid passive. It will be more than enough for you.

For weapons I would either go decisive for ultimate or Infused for extra effect from the Crusher enchant. Probably more I could say but I can't think of anything at the moment. Ask away more if you need more advice. And of course there are multiple ways to tank but this is my point of view.

Liofa · November 2016

Hello ! I have a lot of experience in ultigen tanking and completed vMoL lots of times with the build (with a few tweaks I did to make it better of course) you said . My spell and physical resists are 25k and 27k buffed . If you know mechanics , it is really easy to endure almost everything . Before I say more , I have to say that reducing resistances of the target is much more important than going high ultigen . While I was running ultigen build , all DDs were doing around 40-45k . After that , I changed to 5 Torug's Pact + 5 Alkosh with Infused weapons with Crusher enchants on them . This Crusher enchant reduces enemy resist by 2529 and can be up 100% on the enemy while a Defending sword without Torug's Pact effect only reduces armor by 1622 and has 6 second cooldown on it so it cannot be up 100% . So , this enchant + Alkosh on me , outperformed Sharpened weapon(s) . Some DDs changed to Precise and started doing 45-50k DPS .

Now that I explained why ultigen builds are worse compared to armor reduction builds , I can try to answer your questions .

I recently changed to all reinforced and heavy with Health enchants on them . It is definitely feels much better than 5/1/1 . Weapon enchant is Crusher . Jewelry enchant is Shield-Play . Having lots of Health and resistances allows me to take less damage which results in Healer having more time to support group instead of healing . The difference in damage taken is small but noticable in long fights . Having more Health is just whole another story . It is noticable in every fight .

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All I have said above is about veteran trials tanking where tanks actually matter . If you are going for 4-man dungeons , I think Ultigen builds are better due to insane amount of Tava's proc from trash fights .

RT_Frank · November 2016

Wow thanks for the input guys! Didn't really realize that tanking doesn't have must have sets/traits. Having much diversity in building a tank is a warm welcome from trying to build my dps.

bigted209 · November 2016

I run the exact same gear set up, though the dragon set gets swapped depending on what I'm doing(ebon/alkosh).... I do defending weapons(have powered also for running off tank-run wide radius vigor morph), nirnhoned on big pieces and shields, sturdy on the rest. Running 6 heavy, and a light belt for LA Passives. Sitting comfortably at spell/physical cap, 11k mag, 30/30k health/stam with 1800 recovery(running atro mundus). Also, vampire for the 10% mag recovery and undeath passive. Running stam glyphs on everything.