Do tanks need to be meat shields?

Khenarthi · August 2017

Since my magNB tank got emasculated in the Morrowind patch, and I miss tanking (up to non-DLC pledges anyway), I've been looking for inspiration on other classes. Most advice I see, for wardens and DKs, involve putting a crapton of health on the character and some mag/stam for abilities, blocking, and taunts.

My magblade did fine with 30k health only,15k stam, and all else in magicka - up until the chapter was released.

Is it really necessary to have that much health? Won't it get extremely boring to take your character to do quests and other non-tanky stuff? I mean, even with a different set of gear - more dps oriented - if you have a small magicka or stamina pool it does not seem like combat will be fastpaced at all. But I may be wrong.

Any thoughts?

Reverb · August 2017

I too have noticed a lot of tanks lately with huge health pools. Lots of Plague Doctor builds, and DK tanks able to put 20k shields on the party.

Personally, I find the sweet spot for my tank is 33k health and 20k each stamina and magicka.

idk · August 2017

30k health is fine for dungeons and anything that existed before the last update.

One of the driving factors for high health builds is max stam or max magicka no longer influence resource return from class skills and passives as it did before making the stacking of a lot of stam less beneficial. Same with shards since the stam (or mag) gained from a shard is not standardized.

With a dk they get larger shields with more health and a warden's ice AoE does more damage based in mac health (though still not much).

paulsimonps · August 2017

You don't have to be a meat shield, but I would still recommend 30k HP. You can still do overworld stuff if you change to some DPS gear, and maybe change food but overworld is so easy you don't need more than that. I mean tanks are way more than just meat shields in general.

Khenarthi · August 2017

Thank you all for the advice (awesomes all around, for you awesome people).

I already planned on having a minimum 30k health (most likely 34 while I get used to it) and turning my stam warden into a stam tank warden, with mag regen when possible for abilities; I was just baffled by seeing 50k and 55k health on many builds, and wondered if there was anything essential that I simply could not grasp. The size of shields and heals does make sense, in a way.

Since I'm not going to tackle trials any time soon, I'll go with my original plan which gives me more stuff to cast abilities with. And I'll possibly (hopefully) still stampede over quest mobs with some stam sets equipped.

FakeFox · August 2017

With Morrowind health based tanking became very strong, compensating for the sustain issues. That said the only thing were you really need those 60k+ tanks is vHOF. It seems lot's of people are copying builds from progress guilds without even understanding why they play it. You still don't need over 30k health for 4-men content and normal raids. The only problem with low health builds is that you don't get much benefit in terms of sustain and damage out of them. I personally run support sets but still build into health ending up with around 40k.

Savos_Saren · August 2017

Honestly, I hate "meat shield" builds. That's why I don't like to run vet Trials. You can perform 99% of this game as a tank with less than 30k health. I've tanked normal trials, vet dungeons, and soloed world bosses with 25-30k health.

I find that 27.5k health is the sweet spot for my mDK tank builds. Just enough health to survive some of the vet dungeon boss's one-shot mechanics and add DPS to support soloing gameplay. As long as you keep up the trifecta of tanking, you'll be okay. 1.) Maintain aggro 2.) Use buffs/debuffs to support the damage dealers 3.) Be survivable

Merkabeh · August 2017

When people say tanks should have 30k health; is that pre-food buff?

I'm sitting right under 26k and with tristat food, will be right around 30k.

Or is the intent to have 30k raw, then food buff on top of that?

Savos_Saren · August 2017

Merkabeh wrote: »

When people say tanks should have 30k health; is that pre-food buff?

I'm sitting right under 26k and with tristat food, will be right around 30k.

Or is the intent to have 30k raw, then food buff on top of that?

30K with a food buff. Depending on your build, right now, try going to a world boss and soloing it with 26k. If you've got a good set of gear and rotation- you might be pleasantly surprised.

WuffyCerulei · August 2017

The Plague Doctor build was definitely Flavor of the month, but it seems to have died down a bit.

Merkabeh · August 2017

jaburns wrote: »

Merkabeh wrote: »

When people say tanks should have 30k health; is that pre-food buff?

I'm sitting right under 26k and with tristat food, will be right around 30k.

Or is the intent to have 30k raw, then food buff on top of that?

30K with a food buff. Depending on your build, right now, try going to a world boss and soloing it with 26k. If you've got a good set of gear and rotation- you might be pleasantly surprised.

Did the world boss outside wayrest (with no food) solo...I was immortal...lol...but my damage is weak sauce, so I quit before I killed it (at about 3/4 health).

I'm running Stam DK both SnB with Tava's, Footman and 2 piece hist bark, with shuffle for tava's. Using aggressive warhorn and magma shell for resource gen.

Need bloodspawn; and want to switch to Tava's and Ebon (free up some chants, and provide group buff).