I've done a few vet dungeons with the frost staff tanking. It's pretty good as long as there is only one target. I ran all light armor. Armor master and desert rose. I use the light armor shield instead of blocking. I've also off tanked the second boss of mol on normal. I'm a dk

I've experienced it having Agro taken from me as a DK tank as our 4 Man dungeon Templar used a Frost Stave back bar almost wiping our group. I stopped and had him read the Tri-focus passive. His response. "I didn't read it, sorry"

I don't have a problem with it in general but the Taunt should have been in a Frost Skill directly not a passive so it's not hidden from noobs.

I've tried it recently, very recently. Have only done about four dungeons thus far or so.

I like the idea of it. In practice it's hard, especially with multiple enemies. Heavy Attacks take such a long time. Single target it's fine against boss battles, but if you have to pick your time to fire up your taunt ('Spindleclutch I' fight, The Whisperer is a good example of this), as as others have said; you can't block whilst you're doing it. And you can be interrupted half way through sometimes, OR the enemy dodges your heavy attack and hence your taunt misses (The mini boss in Cyprt of Hearts I, just before the twins does this a lot).

5 Heavy and 2 Light thus far: Desert Rose, and Magnus' Gift. I'd like to go 5,1,1, but haven't found 2 Desert Rose defending staves yet. Well I did find one at a trader, but I'm not paying 250,000 gold for it.

I was worried about running out of magicka, but so far it hasn't happened at all. In fact it's a little crazy I finish some battles and still have 90% magicka after +2 minutes. With more practice I can see myself removing Magnus' Gift in the future perhaps, for a touch more health (Mag:23k. Health 29k, Sta 12k currently). Or replacing some regen jewellery glyphs with spell damage, that might be the next (cheaper) step. I've got my magicka spell reduction and magicka recovery at lower rates to with my CP too, and apart from one time when I was just block casting to see if I could drain my stores, It's not really been a problem. My character is a templar however, and they're always standing in the their Channeled Focus and having Elemental Drain active on the enemy, so there's likely a lot of overkill going on here in regard to magicka regeneration.

What does worry me is the lack of any real passives or utility it brings. I can use Elemental Drain sure, but that leaves my stamina damage dealers having to come up with Major Fracture on their own. And we have no Minor Main skill, etc. I was thinking about using the Knightmare Set to compensate for this, but it doesn't work with a staff to knowledge. At the moment I use a weapon/spell reduction enchantment to lower enemy damage. Though I can't say anything beyond that as haven't really paid any attention to it in battle.

Puncturing Sweeps is awful with it though, for some reason blocking to cancel that skill seems as unreliable as ever. Though from memory this was the case with Sword and Shield too so that's not staff specific.

It's still enjoyable and at the end of the day functional; We can take a hit or three form bosses and keep others 'safe'. I think it ideally would need a touch more utility however. Personally I think they should have made it an entirely new staff line, but it is what it is. I'm still certainly getting use to it. It's interesting hearing what others have to say.

Rev Rielle wrote: »

It's interesting hearing what others have to say.

I was playing around with my sap tank in vet 4-man dungeons. Granted, these are really easy regardless of your build, but my frost sap tank performed well enough. I was using 5 heavy, 2 light; Iceheart, Winterborn, and Baraha's Curse on my front S/B bar. With Sap Essence up all the time I needed almost no regen (just rings), but this isn't anything new for sap tanks. the combined CC from Winterborn, Baraha's Curse, and wall of elements worked well and looked pretty cool when they procced (important ). Previously I would swap between Swarm Mother's and Malubeth but I really didn't didn't miss either.

It was a lot of fun, but I can't see myself succeeding in trials with a set up like this. The frost staff mostly added flavour to my back bar and a way to proc more CC, which is something I need when I play my sap tank. Fun overall, but underwhelming. I'm sure others could build a more effective frost NB tank.

I run a Magicka NB Sap Tank set-up that uses Frost Staff!

Trial Set-up
- 5 Dragon - Jewelry, SnB, Frost Staff (4 on staff bar)
- 5 Ebon - All Armor
- 2 Bloodspawn

SnB: Pierce Armor, Funnel Health, Refreshing Path, Mirage, Heroic Slash, Warhorn
Frost Staff: Inner Fire, Sap Essence, Blockade of Frost, Siphoning Strikes, Dark Shades, Soul Harvest

SnB is for boss fights
Staff is for trash pulls and range taunting (only use frost heavy to start an engagement)

Dungeon Set-up
- 5 Dragon - Jewelry, Belt, Sword, and Frost Staff
- 5 Shalk's - Armor and Shield
- 2 Monster Set(Bloodspawn, Grothdarr, Swarm Mother, Lord Warden, or Sentinel)

SnB (Main Bar) - Pierce Armor, Funnel Health, Sap Essence, Dark Shades, Lotus Fan, Warhorn
Frost Staff (Buff/DoT Bar) - Inner Fire, Refreshing Path, Blockade of Frost, Siphoning Strikes, Mirage, EotS

I try to have 30K health and magicka, 15K stam, and 2K spell damage.
Nice thing about frost staff on back bar is I can run ele drain if the healer lacks a destro staff.

PVP Set-up
5 Shalk's - 4 Armor, Sharpened Resto
2 Blood Spawn
5 Dragon - 1 Armor, Jewelry, Defending Frost Staff

Resto - Entropy (or Sap), Funnel, Fear, Combat Prayer, Mist Form, Soul Harvest
Frost - Cripple (or Lotus Fan), Blockade, Path, Siphoning Strikes, Mark, EotS

Resto is used for offense, heals, and ult gen
Destro for defense, dots, and EotS

The set-up I am currently working on (using the same bars above) is:
- 5 Heavy Seducer
- 3 Willpower Jewelry
- 2 Engine Guardian
- vMA resto/frost

My main problem with ice staff is it makes it so a tank can't run a 5/2/5 set-up on staff bar.
Also, frost staff offers no way of providing both major fracture and major breach, so you are forced to run a class skill or SnB to get those debuffs.

I have considered using Ice staff for a sorc tank (then use dark conversion to keep my magicka up), but as others have said, using your magicka for both blocking and spamming shields is to much of a resource drain.

@Kerioko This sounds really interesting. I like the focus on Ultimate regen.

RavenSworn wrote: »

Works best with my magicka pet based sorcerer tank.

I've thought about trying this out. I've got a Necropotence sorc that I'm having a blast with ATM. What does your set up look like? How would you work a frost staff into it?

Argawarga wrote: »

RavenSworn wrote: »

Works best with my magicka pet based sorcerer tank.

I've thought about trying this out. I've got a Necropotence sorc that I'm having a blast with ATM. What does your set up look like? How would you work a frost staff into it?

It's basically sword and board on the front bar with Pierce Armor | daedric prey | Absorb magic | boundless storm | twilight matriarch, frost staff back bar with Shattering Prison | Liquid Lightning | Unstable Wall of elements | structured Entropy | twilight matriarch.

On other runs i go for unstable familiar in conjuction with the matriarch (though at times I go for Clannfear for kicks with three dps in the team) and change up the liquid lightning with empowered ward. Still farming for the necropotence set though, hard to get the frost staff with the right traits I want.

I've done a few vet runs and its fun to play with the Clannfear tanking the boss while ressing the guys. It's definitely something fun to do.

Lynx7386 wrote: »

...
Not needed, minor maim is applied by chilled now, so any cold ability reduces target damage.
...

I've heard this said a number of times but I've yet to find it in any Destruction Staff skill/passive tooltip. I'm sure I read it once, but has it been changed in a recent Patch?

Rev Rielle wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

...
Not needed, minor maim is applied by chilled now, so any cold ability reduces target damage.
...

I've heard this said a number of times but I've yet to find it in any Destruction Staff skill/passive tooltip. I'm sure I read it once, but has it been changed in a recent Patch?

It's not in the passives, it was a change to the chilled status effect itself, which all ice damage can apply.

TheStealthDude wrote: »

They should've added taunt to destructive clench for frost staves. This seems a lot more intuitive than heavy attacks.

I don't think anyone intentionally uses the heavy attack for taunting unless they're low level. Once you unlock inner fire it isn't needed.

Argawarga wrote: »

Rev Rielle wrote: »

I've heard this said a number of times but I've yet to find it in any Destruction Staff skill/passive tooltip. I'm sure I read it once, but has it been changed in a recent Patch?

It was a Homestead change.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/311708/pts-patch-notes-v2-7-0-homestead

"The elemental status effect Chilled now applies Minor Maim to enemies instead of snaring them.

The elemental status effect Concussed now applies Minor Vulnerability to enemies instead of Minor Maim."

Thanks! That's where I must have seen it.
Now if I can just get it to show up in the S'rendarr , along with the Taunt, in it's own window. But for the life me I can't figure that out yet, it just doesn't want to move (Taunt), or show up at all (Chilled)

Edit: Also Minor Maim is basically never active. Perhaps 5% of the time it seems ((according to S'rendarr)) Which is bitterly disappointing. That could really be improved.

Lynx7386 wrote: »

TheStealthDude wrote: »

They should've added taunt to destructive clench for frost staves. This seems a lot more intuitive than heavy attacks.

I don't think anyone intentionally uses the heavy attack for taunting unless they're low level. Once you unlock inner fire it isn't needed.

Well at the moment I'm playing around and trying to use the Heavy Attack as the -only- taunt I have. It worked fine in Wayrest Sewers I just before. However Garron was completely immune to it, which is clearly a bug (? I don't think he's immune to other taunts) and hopefully will be addressed at some point in the future. Group battles I tended not to use any taunt at all; as long as you (the hit-taker/tank) go in first and lay down your elemental blockade, and for my character being a templar Ritual of Retribution, the enemies seem to be drawn in pretty well, so far. Lots more experience is needed to see if this holds up in the long run.