Vamp cloak seem the best choice between him and plague, 30k health is enough and more magicka is appreciated.

Beside, ebon jewelries are found on crypt of heart (as the rest of the armor) and are easy to farm. Dragon drop at eastmarch (jewelries from anchors, slash from delves boss, hands from public dungeon boss) and are even easier to farm, and can be bought in guild store.
Dragon is my far my favorite, especially for a ultimate-based DK tank. I run ebon whenever needed, but I'm using dragon far more.

Edit : both plague doctor and vampire cloak have the exact same drop requirement than dragon, only the region change.

Ebon jewelries was dropping from MoL before One Tamriel, but now it dropping on crypt of heart, I can assure you. I farmed them for a friend one month ago, and even if the drop rate is horrendous (on the final boss -who is the only jewelries source-, 15 possible pieces from 3 sets, that mean 45 possibilities and only two good) we managed to get them.
Before 1T Dragon 160cp was only found on Hel Ra Citadel, now it has been moved, as ebon (and as all the other sets : worm, viper, elegance, nikulaï, hircine… all except raid-dedicaced sets such ophidian, moondancer and so).

Farm the three anchors at Eastmarch, you should get one dragon jewelry each three anchor, and get the full jewelries sets in less than one hour (perhaps green-blue jewelries, but still better than nothing).

@RoyJade, cool, I will try, thanks for the info, much appreciated!

@Peekachu99, magicka DK. I really like the Vamp set, but was just worried about the health so low. Thanks for the input.

Also, would any of you think being a vampire would help? Seeing as they have the extra magicka recovery and the damage decrease at 33%?

@RoyJade, thanks bud. Ita cool, for sets I use this:
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Sets

Duragon_Darko wrote: »

Ok, just started tanking trials. I made a 5 piece Tavas (weapon, shield, chest, legs, boots) with Bloodspawn (shoulders, head) and would like everyone's opinion as to which of the 2 sets in the subject line should I use as the secondary 5 piece. I know that Footman is a good set, but will need the drops first before equipping it. That goes for Ebon as well, as I know this set is needed but the jewelry only drops in Mal. Dragon is another set that is luck of the drop and is never on sale at market carts.

Plague Doctor gets me to 39k in health with 25k in magicka with a 4% increase to healing recieved.
Vampire Cloak only gets me to 32k health, 33k in magicka, but gives me a permanent 8% damage reduction.

Which would you use until you can get the other more preferred sets, and why would you use them?

All feedback is appreciated, thanks.

Sorry, edit for some info. 480 DK magicka tank.

A lot of not great info in this thread unfortunately.

Regarding Ebon, There are 2 named amulet drops (from the Lich, Uulkar Bonehand and Dogas the Berserker) in CoH 1, and a named Ring from Iblegast (early boss) in CoH 2 in addition to the last boss drops. Swords and Shields are hard to get, but jewelry isn't too much of a farm as far as farms go.

Dragon you can farm from Chests / Dolmens / Public Dungeons and world bosses in Eastmarch, but yes can be a pain. Especially weapons as usual. A purple jewelry set is about 50k, but blue jewelry is cheap and not actually hugely different to start with.

Vampire cloak actually is much worse than it seems because sources of mitigation are multiplicative, not additive. This means that the bonus is effectively only 4% (since it applies multiplicatively with your presumably capped resistances).
See https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/279426/damage-mitigation-explanation-and-list-of-options-updated-for-a-third-time/p1 for some more details.

Footman is not very good any more for similar reasons. The damage mitigation is 4% at best, and the block cost reduction is super negligible because you will be running sturdy on at least some, if not all your small armor pieces, and can further augment with some CP.

In general though, for normal trials, anything is fine as long as you can live. For vet trials, you will be hard pressed to find a group that doesn't want every set you wear to provide utility. This means both Vamp Cloak and Doctor will not be ideal.

The usual meta sets to pair together are limited to:
Tava, Ebon, Alkosh (farm normal Maw of Lorkaj, it's not scary on normal), Akaviri. Some use for the off tank having Powerful Assualt PvP set, but no means required.
Monster set either Bloodspawn or Lord Warden usually.

That isn't to say other sets don't have value, I'm not personally a meta peddler, but if you want to do vet trials this will be pretty expected unless you have a very understanding group, that isn't going for scores. Those types of people just want to do what is known to work well and not shake it up unless something changes. Not criticizing that mentality necessarily, but just saying if you want to do vet trials, expect most people to want you to be wearing 2 full sets plus monster set that add group utility.

Hope this is helpful.

@amasuriel
In regards to the resistance cap, is it wise to get your resistance with gear and cp to the cap of 33k, or do we get to 25k and let our shields take us to the cap?

@amasuriel
Yes, I meant Spiked Armor. Thanks!

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

@Duragon_Darko

If your tanking normal trials you can pretty much wear anything.

For vet trails there are various sets that are beneficial to the group.

Ebon is a fan favorite if top to moderate raiding groups as it increases survivability for everyone. Great set for the MT to wear.

Alkosh is another great set for the tank to wear though it can take some time farming shields and mainhands. Jewelry not so bad. Increases the groups samage.

Both are great sets for vet trials

Until getting Alkosh Tavas will work fine.

Though I have to point out that despite everyone insistence (including my suggestion above) that Tava's is good, even the mighty Woeler, which everyone points to as the tanking pinnacle in these threads, says Tava's isn't that great because the ultimate will be wasted in a decent 4 horn rotation. See his video on Jan 27th. https://woeler.eu/index.php

If you are just starting out of don't have Alkosh, Hist Bark is probably better than Tava's, since the evasion is free (dead tank is useless tank, and vet trials are hard), and no group with an actual 4 man horn rotation will be able to make use of the extra ultimate.

Another good point make in that video is that you will need different gear for different fights. Alkosh will be 100% useless in the final boss of AA, because you will be in a corner with axes beating your senseless and DPS don't touch the axes. So ideally, eventually you will have full sets of things you can swap in and out of depending on what the off tank has and what the trial is.

Ok... looking at the craftable tank sets... why does Alessia's Bulwark look better then Hist Bark? Anyone else think that? Even Song of Lamae looks better. Thoughts?

Duragon_Darko wrote: »

Ok... looking at the craftable tank sets... why does Alessia's Bulwark look better then Hist Bark? Anyone else think that? Even Song of Lamae looks better. Thoughts?

You won't notice 10% less weapon damage on enemies in most situations. Even the ones that do physical damage, its weapon damage the stat, not 10% overall damage. Lamae, you probably don't want your 5 piece bonus to only work when you are at 30%, since ideally you will never be at 30%.

If you don't like Hist Bark and are running shuffle anyway, nothing wrong with continuing to use Tavas, it's just that it can be hard to keep uptime on shuffle without good healer support, since it hard content you will be perma blocking and not regening stam the normal way.