Tanks make veteran dungeons a lot easier, as the content is made to be run with a tank. Open world, not so much, you could tank the world bosses but they are just not as difficult. Consider having a DPS setup and a Tanking setup. Use your DPS based setup for over-world content and use your tanking setup for Dungeons.

For example, I have all my attributes in Stamina already as a tank, and if you collect enough skyshards/quests etc, you'll have enough skill points for both sets of skills, then you could either just use a DPS based CP setup for tanking dungeons with your tank gear, or just switch your CP with your gear when you go from Overworld to Dungeons.

Fortunately, most CP that benefit tanking are not wasted points for a DPS. As far as the Warrior points go, there's a great deal of overlap when it comes to where you want to stack your resistances. The Thief and Mage points are the ones that more directly benefit your damage and sustain. There is also overlap in the sustain department, and damage as a tank is basically irrelevant unless you want to do both. The takeaway here is that you can put CP into survivability and damage, so as to be able to simply swap weapons and armor.

You do have a couple of options. You can have your CP setup to benefit both tank and dps as efficiently and effectively as possible, and never change them, simply switching out sets to accommodate whatever content you are doing (in this case you have a tank set, and a dps set). Or, you can use one CP allocation and a single gear setup for both. Your group will probably appreciate you more if your tank gear is more utility focused, like with Tava's, Blood Spawn, Dragon, Ebon, Worm Cult, Alkosh, etc. But it is entirely feasible and realistic to simply craft a 5set of heavy Hundings, or something else that is damage-oriented. As long as you are able to hold aggro and stay alive, it doesn't really matter what else you do.

Note the disclaimer though (there's always a catch): This applies to dungeons, not trials. A seasoned tank would be able to do normal trials in a heavy dps getup used in dungeons, but it's not very effective or efficient. In a trial setting, you are much better off going the "buff totem" route for your group's benefit. For vet trials, don't do this. For that you want to be a fully dedicated tank.

parkham wrote: »

I appreciate all the responses - will re read too. I guess I'm thinking too much into it (I do that sometimes).

Speaking of sets, another big problem I have is with gear. Some of this stuff is just out of the realm for a newish player like me. 9 trait sets, veteran dungeon set drops - stuff like that I will probably never get anytime soon.

At first read: It sounds like I could be adequate in a hybrid getup only switching skills and gear with everything except veteran trials (and I don't even know what that is, but will search for it later).

You can find either someone for free or a small fee can build you high trait gear, also veteran dungeons and normal dungeons drop the same gear (except monster helm) they just come in blue quality. So if you wanna farm for gear, it's way easier to go through normal dungeons.

Then once you get the gear you can upgrade to purple fairly cheaply (if you don't wanna rely on anyone)

You might want to go with a bit less balanced build than the one Deltia proposes, with more emphasis on either stamina or magicka. Then when soloing you can emphasize damage skills that key off those. It is a good idea for a tank to have stamina and magicka morphs of skills skilled up anyway, as things get shifted around between updates. I started with a Stamina build, but after a friend had a lot of success with a Magicka one I switched over and it does fine too.

Another option is take a look at some builds at Tamriel Foundry for ideas. The "Boom Build", in the Dragonknight forum, in particular I've found to be a lot of fun for soloing and even normal dungeons with a decent team. It uses Bahraha, Thunderbug, and Grothdar to do a lot of damage just from the sets. I've run into a regular delve spawn and just blocked and watched them all melt.

The nice feature is that with patience you can buy the Bahraha and Thunderbug gear on guild stores. Bahraha takes some time to get all the pieces in the traits you may want, but don't feel they all have to be perfect to go out and solo delves and such. Grothdar you will have to collect yourself, since it is Bind on Pickup, but a tank should have a pretty easy time joining queue for that. Vet pick-up groups are kind of risky, mind you, it would be better if you can get into a good PvE guild. Also for vet dungeons you may want more defensive gear.

I would say don't worry about trials until you are involved in a guild that runs them. You really want specialized builds and gear for that, but then you will have people who will help you get them too.

it depends. some vet dungeon bosses are survivable by dps alone. some can be tanked by light armor sorc with pets and hardened ward. some don't follow taunt and generally ignore the tank. but there are also dungeons that are troublesome to do without a real tank.

and 12 man trial, tank is required veteran or not.

No vet dungeon requires a 'real' tank except *maybe* ruins and cradle.

But it sure makes it a little less intense haha

Yeah you don't really NEED a tank in any vet dungeons aside from cradle and ruins.