Lynx7386 wrote: »

Also, it isn't always about your taunt also applying major fracture. A lot of anti-frost posters keep bringing this up as some kind of end all argument against frost tanking. Fact is, there are other sources of major breach and fracture that work well for the classes that are most likely to utilize frost staves for tanking: wardens have sub assault, nightblade has mark target.

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Illurian wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Also, it isn't always about your taunt also applying major fracture. A lot of anti-frost posters keep bringing this up as some kind of end all argument against frost tanking. Fact is, there are other sources of major breach and fracture that work well for the classes that are most likely to utilize frost staves for tanking: wardens have sub assault, nightblade has mark target.

Having to slot another skill purely for major fracture is not a pro-frost staff tanking argument.

The fact is, if you have to slot a separate skill just for major fracture, you might as well just use a S&B set up over frost staff. Specifically for wardens, subterranean assault costs stamina, so you might as well slot S&B and use the more reliable Pierce Armor for all 3 effects with no delay.

Except the slot you're using Sub Assault/Mark/whatever on would be free since Frost Staff Heavy Attacks aren't a skill and doesn't need to be slotted. If you're saying that we'd need to slot Inner Fire + Another skill, wouldn't it be better to add Fracture/Breech to Inner Fire instead of forcing both a taunt AND Fracture/Breech into one of the Destruction Staff Skills? Then you have to consider, Sub Assault is an AoE Fracture/Breech, making it much more effective than a single target skill like Pierce for debuffing.

The usual scenario for me is that I prep sub assault, load up a frost heavy, both going off at about the same time, using Inner Fire on a 2nd target and then Gripping Shards the runners on their way to my teammates. I now have 2 taunted enemies, several enemies with Fracture/Breech, most of which are now trapped by Gripping. Whereas on my SnB bar, I'd only get 1 taunted prior to Gripping Sharding them and having to use more time to get every debuffed with Piercing over Sub Assault. The delay on Sub Assault is not a negative since it allows for you to time everything up to execute you need to do in a much more effective manner as it lines up with Frost Heavy Attacks almost perfectly.

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Illurian wrote: »

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Illurian wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Also, it isn't always about your taunt also applying major fracture. A lot of anti-frost posters keep bringing this up as some kind of end all argument against frost tanking. Fact is, there are other sources of major breach and fracture that work well for the classes that are most likely to utilize frost staves for tanking: wardens have sub assault, nightblade has mark target.

Having to slot another skill purely for major fracture is not a pro-frost staff tanking argument.

The fact is, if you have to slot a separate skill just for major fracture, you might as well just use a S&B set up over frost staff. Specifically for wardens, subterranean assault costs stamina, so you might as well slot S&B and use the more reliable Pierce Armor for all 3 effects with no delay.

Except the slot you're using Sub Assault/Mark/whatever on would be free since Frost Staff Heavy Attacks aren't a skill and doesn't need to be slotted. If you're saying that we'd need to slot Inner Fire + Another skill, wouldn't it be better to add Fracture/Breech to Inner Fire instead of forcing both a taunt AND Fracture/Breech into one of the Destruction Staff Skills? Then you have to consider, Sub Assault is an AoE Fracture/Breech, making it much more effective than a single target skill like Pierce for debuffing.

The usual scenario for me is that I prep sub assault, load up a frost heavy, both going off at about the same time, using Inner Fire on a 2nd target and then Gripping Shards the runners on their way to my teammates. I now have 2 taunted enemies, several enemies with Fracture/Breech, most of which are now trapped by Gripping. Whereas on my SnB bar, I'd only get 1 taunted prior to Gripping Sharding them and having to use more time to get every debuffed with Piercing over Sub Assault. The delay on Sub Assault is not a negative since it allows for you to time everything up to execute you need to do in a much more effective manner as it lines up with Frost Heavy Attacks almost perfectly.

Don't get me wrong, I have a warden healing tank that runs resto/Destro (ice) so I'm familiar with the rotation and set up. I frequently use it for 3 dps vet pledge runs.

Adding major breech + major fracture to inner fire would certainly be a welcomed addition, and a potential solution. Perhaps adding major breech/fracture to frost staff heavy attacks instead of the shield?

Your example has a few caveats: loading up sub assault and a heavy attack takes 2-3 seconds, during which you could cast pierce armor at least twice, so you'd effectively have at least 1 extra mob taunted than your scenario, with all of them having both major debuffs applied. Also, it's worth noting that sub assault is a line aoe, and while it has a decent area, there are many situations when the mob group you are attacking aren't lined up in your sub assault area. This means having to recast sub assault for the remaining mobs.

It's also worth noting that sub assault is a stamina skill, while frost staff tanks are typically Magicka characters. This means your already limited stamina pool will have further drain on it, with no option for easy return through heavy attacks (unless you are already using S&B, which defeats the purpose of this discussion).

As much as I would love for frost staff tanking to be viable in all scenarios, it simply isn't quite there yet.

I use both Frost and SnB on my Warden Tank. I'm rarely on my SnB bar though, using it just to get Cloak, Netch, Leeching and Blast up before going back to my Frost Bar. I do keep Piercing on as a precaution as some situations have required permablocking that is impossible on Frost Staff alone (Warrior in vHRC being the most notable enemy as I was often bar swapping just to block with both resources and not die).

I'm not against improvements for Frost Tanking but I don't believe taunting nor lack of Major Fracture/Breech are why it's problematic. It's more so the longer heavy animation of Frost Staff and lack of mobility associated with it that's more an issue. There are fights that its literally impossible to get a heavy attack in with Frost Staff but are just barely possible with SnB that makes it much better. 1st boss of vMoL comes to mind as I can just squeeze in a Heavy with SnB when he targets a player for pillars before he's back on me that I could NEVER hope to pull off with a Frost Staff. If Tri-Focus allowed for at least 30% faster heavy attacks with a Frost Staff and Ancient Knowledged allowed faster movement while blocking, it would be better in those departments.

Then, there's also the loss of a 2nd 5 piece bonus that also hurts Frost Staff. Making an offhand for Magic Users would be invaluable for sure but it also means a new item to balance the game around, new thing to research, more diluted drop pools, etc. that I don't believe ZOS is welling (or able) to add into their spaghetti code.

Frost Tanking is an uphill battle that ZOS undertook halfheartedly without a proper mindset and they're struggling to make it viable enough with the current tools instead of adding the necessary tools needed.

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Illurian wrote: »

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Illurian wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Also, it isn't always about your taunt also applying major fracture. A lot of anti-frost posters keep bringing this up as some kind of end all argument against frost tanking. Fact is, there are other sources of major breach and fracture that work well for the classes that are most likely to utilize frost staves for tanking: wardens have sub assault, nightblade has mark target.

Having to slot another skill purely for major fracture is not a pro-frost staff tanking argument.

The fact is, if you have to slot a separate skill just for major fracture, you might as well just use a S&B set up over frost staff. Specifically for wardens, subterranean assault costs stamina, so you might as well slot S&B and use the more reliable Pierce Armor for all 3 effects with no delay.

Except the slot you're using Sub Assault/Mark/whatever on would be free since Frost Staff Heavy Attacks aren't a skill and doesn't need to be slotted. If you're saying that we'd need to slot Inner Fire + Another skill, wouldn't it be better to add Fracture/Breech to Inner Fire instead of forcing both a taunt AND Fracture/Breech into one of the Destruction Staff Skills? Then you have to consider, Sub Assault is an AoE Fracture/Breech, making it much more effective than a single target skill like Pierce for debuffing.

The usual scenario for me is that I prep sub assault, load up a frost heavy, both going off at about the same time, using Inner Fire on a 2nd target and then Gripping Shards the runners on their way to my teammates. I now have 2 taunted enemies, several enemies with Fracture/Breech, most of which are now trapped by Gripping. Whereas on my SnB bar, I'd only get 1 taunted prior to Gripping Sharding them and having to use more time to get every debuffed with Piercing over Sub Assault. The delay on Sub Assault is not a negative since it allows for you to time everything up to execute you need to do in a much more effective manner as it lines up with Frost Heavy Attacks almost perfectly.

Don't get me wrong, I have a warden healing tank that runs resto/Destro (ice) so I'm familiar with the rotation and set up. I frequently use it for 3 dps vet pledge runs.

Adding major breech + major fracture to inner fire would certainly be a welcomed addition, and a potential solution. Perhaps adding major breech/fracture to frost staff heavy attacks instead of the shield?

Your example has a few caveats: loading up sub assault and a heavy attack takes 2-3 seconds, during which you could cast pierce armor at least twice, so you'd effectively have at least 1 extra mob taunted than your scenario, with all of them having both major debuffs applied. Also, it's worth noting that sub assault is a line aoe, and while it has a decent area, there are many situations when the mob group you are attacking aren't lined up in your sub assault area. This means having to recast sub assault for the remaining mobs.

It's also worth noting that sub assault is a stamina skill, while frost staff tanks are typically Magicka characters. This means your already limited stamina pool will have further drain on it, with no option for easy return through heavy attacks (unless you are already using S&B, which defeats the purpose of this discussion).

As much as I would love for frost staff tanking to be viable in all scenarios, it simply isn't quite there yet.

I use both Frost and SnB on my Warden Tank. I'm rarely on my SnB bar though, using it just to get Cloak, Netch, Leeching and Blast up before going back to my Frost Bar. I do keep Piercing on as a precaution as some situations have required permablocking that is impossible on Frost Staff alone (Warrior in vHRC being the most notable enemy as I was often bar swapping just to block with both resources and not die).

I'm not against improvements for Frost Tanking but I don't believe taunting nor lack of Major Fracture/Breech are why it's problematic. It's more so the longer heavy animation of Frost Staff and lack of mobility associated with it that's more an issue. There are fights that its literally impossible to get a heavy attack in with Frost Staff but are just barely possible with SnB that makes it much better. 1st boss of vMoL comes to mind as I can just squeeze in a Heavy with SnB when he targets a player for pillars before he's back on me that I could NEVER hope to pull off with a Frost Staff. If Tri-Focus allowed for at least 30% faster heavy attacks with a Frost Staff and Ancient Knowledged allowed faster movement while blocking, it would be better in those departments.

Then, there's also the loss of a 2nd 5 piece bonus that also hurts Frost Staff. Making an offhand for Magic Users would be invaluable for sure but it also means a new item to balance the game around, new thing to research, more diluted drop pools, etc. that I don't believe ZOS is welling (or able) to add into their spaghetti code.

Frost Tanking is an uphill battle that ZOS undertook halfheartedly without a proper mindset and they're struggling to make it viable enough with the current tools instead of adding the necessary tools needed.

Illurian wrote: »

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Illurian wrote: »

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Illurian wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Also, it isn't always about your taunt also applying major fracture. A lot of anti-frost posters keep bringing this up as some kind of end all argument against frost tanking. Fact is, there are other sources of major breach and fracture that work well for the classes that are most likely to utilize frost staves for tanking: wardens have sub assault, nightblade has mark target.

Having to slot another skill purely for major fracture is not a pro-frost staff tanking argument.

The fact is, if you have to slot a separate skill just for major fracture, you might as well just use a S&B set up over frost staff. Specifically for wardens, subterranean assault costs stamina, so you might as well slot S&B and use the more reliable Pierce Armor for all 3 effects with no delay.

Except the slot you're using Sub Assault/Mark/whatever on would be free since Frost Staff Heavy Attacks aren't a skill and doesn't need to be slotted. If you're saying that we'd need to slot Inner Fire + Another skill, wouldn't it be better to add Fracture/Breech to Inner Fire instead of forcing both a taunt AND Fracture/Breech into one of the Destruction Staff Skills? Then you have to consider, Sub Assault is an AoE Fracture/Breech, making it much more effective than a single target skill like Pierce for debuffing.

The usual scenario for me is that I prep sub assault, load up a frost heavy, both going off at about the same time, using Inner Fire on a 2nd target and then Gripping Shards the runners on their way to my teammates. I now have 2 taunted enemies, several enemies with Fracture/Breech, most of which are now trapped by Gripping. Whereas on my SnB bar, I'd only get 1 taunted prior to Gripping Sharding them and having to use more time to get every debuffed with Piercing over Sub Assault. The delay on Sub Assault is not a negative since it allows for you to time everything up to execute you need to do in a much more effective manner as it lines up with Frost Heavy Attacks almost perfectly.

Don't get me wrong, I have a warden healing tank that runs resto/Destro (ice) so I'm familiar with the rotation and set up. I frequently use it for 3 dps vet pledge runs.

Adding major breech + major fracture to inner fire would certainly be a welcomed addition, and a potential solution. Perhaps adding major breech/fracture to frost staff heavy attacks instead of the shield?

Your example has a few caveats: loading up sub assault and a heavy attack takes 2-3 seconds, during which you could cast pierce armor at least twice, so you'd effectively have at least 1 extra mob taunted than your scenario, with all of them having both major debuffs applied. Also, it's worth noting that sub assault is a line aoe, and while it has a decent area, there are many situations when the mob group you are attacking aren't lined up in your sub assault area. This means having to recast sub assault for the remaining mobs.

It's also worth noting that sub assault is a stamina skill, while frost staff tanks are typically Magicka characters. This means your already limited stamina pool will have further drain on it, with no option for easy return through heavy attacks (unless you are already using S&B, which defeats the purpose of this discussion).

As much as I would love for frost staff tanking to be viable in all scenarios, it simply isn't quite there yet.

I use both Frost and SnB on my Warden Tank. I'm rarely on my SnB bar though, using it just to get Cloak, Netch, Leeching and Blast up before going back to my Frost Bar. I do keep Piercing on as a precaution as some situations have required permablocking that is impossible on Frost Staff alone (Warrior in vHRC being the most notable enemy as I was often bar swapping just to block with both resources and not die).

I'm not against improvements for Frost Tanking but I don't believe taunting nor lack of Major Fracture/Breech are why it's problematic. It's more so the longer heavy animation of Frost Staff and lack of mobility associated with it that's more an issue. There are fights that its literally impossible to get a heavy attack in with Frost Staff but are just barely possible with SnB that makes it much better. 1st boss of vMoL comes to mind as I can just squeeze in a Heavy with SnB when he targets a player for pillars before he's back on me that I could NEVER hope to pull off with a Frost Staff. If Tri-Focus allowed for at least 30% faster heavy attacks with a Frost Staff and Ancient Knowledged allowed faster movement while blocking, it would be better in those departments.

Then, there's also the loss of a 2nd 5 piece bonus that also hurts Frost Staff. Making an offhand for Magic Users would be invaluable for sure but it also means a new item to balance the game around, new thing to research, more diluted drop pools, etc. that I don't believe ZOS is welling (or able) to add into their spaghetti code.

Frost Tanking is an uphill battle that ZOS undertook halfheartedly without a proper mindset and they're struggling to make it viable enough with the current tools instead of adding the necessary tools needed.

I'm actually in agreement with what you've said, barring only keeping pierce armor up as a precaution. Pierce armor is important for both major debuffs to be applied, and not just the taunt. In trials it's not such a huge issue since you will more often than not have a stamblade or stamdk applying major fracture for you, and healers applying major breach via ele drain.

The problem is, if you're already utilizing S&B, frost staff brings nothing to the table you couldn't do better with the traditional S&B set up.

Frost staff tanking was an afterthought, and had a half hearted/assed implementation.

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Illurian wrote: »

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Illurian wrote: »

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Illurian wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Also, it isn't always about your taunt also applying major fracture. A lot of anti-frost posters keep bringing this up as some kind of end all argument against frost tanking. Fact is, there are other sources of major breach and fracture that work well for the classes that are most likely to utilize frost staves for tanking: wardens have sub assault, nightblade has mark target.

Having to slot another skill purely for major fracture is not a pro-frost staff tanking argument.

The fact is, if you have to slot a separate skill just for major fracture, you might as well just use a S&B set up over frost staff. Specifically for wardens, subterranean assault costs stamina, so you might as well slot S&B and use the more reliable Pierce Armor for all 3 effects with no delay.

Except the slot you're using Sub Assault/Mark/whatever on would be free since Frost Staff Heavy Attacks aren't a skill and doesn't need to be slotted. If you're saying that we'd need to slot Inner Fire + Another skill, wouldn't it be better to add Fracture/Breech to Inner Fire instead of forcing both a taunt AND Fracture/Breech into one of the Destruction Staff Skills? Then you have to consider, Sub Assault is an AoE Fracture/Breech, making it much more effective than a single target skill like Pierce for debuffing.

The usual scenario for me is that I prep sub assault, load up a frost heavy, both going off at about the same time, using Inner Fire on a 2nd target and then Gripping Shards the runners on their way to my teammates. I now have 2 taunted enemies, several enemies with Fracture/Breech, most of which are now trapped by Gripping. Whereas on my SnB bar, I'd only get 1 taunted prior to Gripping Sharding them and having to use more time to get every debuffed with Piercing over Sub Assault. The delay on Sub Assault is not a negative since it allows for you to time everything up to execute you need to do in a much more effective manner as it lines up with Frost Heavy Attacks almost perfectly.

Don't get me wrong, I have a warden healing tank that runs resto/Destro (ice) so I'm familiar with the rotation and set up. I frequently use it for 3 dps vet pledge runs.

Adding major breech + major fracture to inner fire would certainly be a welcomed addition, and a potential solution. Perhaps adding major breech/fracture to frost staff heavy attacks instead of the shield?

Your example has a few caveats: loading up sub assault and a heavy attack takes 2-3 seconds, during which you could cast pierce armor at least twice, so you'd effectively have at least 1 extra mob taunted than your scenario, with all of them having both major debuffs applied. Also, it's worth noting that sub assault is a line aoe, and while it has a decent area, there are many situations when the mob group you are attacking aren't lined up in your sub assault area. This means having to recast sub assault for the remaining mobs.

It's also worth noting that sub assault is a stamina skill, while frost staff tanks are typically Magicka characters. This means your already limited stamina pool will have further drain on it, with no option for easy return through heavy attacks (unless you are already using S&B, which defeats the purpose of this discussion).

As much as I would love for frost staff tanking to be viable in all scenarios, it simply isn't quite there yet.

I use both Frost and SnB on my Warden Tank. I'm rarely on my SnB bar though, using it just to get Cloak, Netch, Leeching and Blast up before going back to my Frost Bar. I do keep Piercing on as a precaution as some situations have required permablocking that is impossible on Frost Staff alone (Warrior in vHRC being the most notable enemy as I was often bar swapping just to block with both resources and not die).

I'm not against improvements for Frost Tanking but I don't believe taunting nor lack of Major Fracture/Breech are why it's problematic. It's more so the longer heavy animation of Frost Staff and lack of mobility associated with it that's more an issue. There are fights that its literally impossible to get a heavy attack in with Frost Staff but are just barely possible with SnB that makes it much better. 1st boss of vMoL comes to mind as I can just squeeze in a Heavy with SnB when he targets a player for pillars before he's back on me that I could NEVER hope to pull off with a Frost Staff. If Tri-Focus allowed for at least 30% faster heavy attacks with a Frost Staff and Ancient Knowledged allowed faster movement while blocking, it would be better in those departments.

Then, there's also the loss of a 2nd 5 piece bonus that also hurts Frost Staff. Making an offhand for Magic Users would be invaluable for sure but it also means a new item to balance the game around, new thing to research, more diluted drop pools, etc. that I don't believe ZOS is welling (or able) to add into their spaghetti code.

Frost Tanking is an uphill battle that ZOS undertook halfheartedly without a proper mindset and they're struggling to make it viable enough with the current tools instead of adding the necessary tools needed.

I'm actually in agreement with what you've said, barring only keeping pierce armor up as a precaution. Pierce armor is important for both major debuffs to be applied, and not just the taunt. In trials it's not such a huge issue since you will more often than not have a stamblade or stamdk applying major fracture for you, and healers applying major breach via ele drain.

The problem is, if you're already utilizing S&B, frost staff brings nothing to the table you couldn't do better with the traditional S&B set up.

Frost staff tanking was an afterthought, and had a half hearted/assed implementation.

There's plenty that a Frost Staff brings to tanking, such as more damage, CC and AoE options that SnB doesn't have. Sure, I can supplement SnB with Class Skills but not every class has the tools to tank as effectively as one another. NB doesn't have an AoE root like DK or Warden so their best bet is to try and proc chilled to immobilize enemies with WoE. Then, there's scenarios that I like having the interrupt of Crushing Shock available, such as the Ogre twins in vScalecaller where my teammates were busy rezzing someone to interrupt the magic Ogre during his skeever summoning channel. Even Pulsar has seen periodic use on my bar as just an extra AoE I can throw out periodically for Minor Mangle and extra Chilled procs (admittedly, this has mix results as Minor Mangle appears bugged to only apply to 1 target per cast as opposed to all enemies hit but I digress.)

Silver_Strider wrote: »

I rarely use Pierce as I never felt the need to use it when Inner Fire+HA+Sub Assault are fine for Dungeons and in trials, as you stated, Fracture/Breech are already being applied by Healers and DPS on such a consistent basis that it's almost moot if you're using Inner Fire or Piercing as they're bothing being used almost exclusively for taunting purposes only with Piercing just slightly edging out over Inner Fire because of its cheaper cost and the extra few seconds Fracture/Breech can potentially fall off periodically due to a mechanic that interfered with the group from applying their Fracture/Breech.

Silver_Strider wrote: »

You're placing way too much stock into Piercing providing Fracture/Breech when both are common as dirty and easily supplemented with external means without fully considering what Frost Staff brings as a Utility weapon.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

@Illurian I'm not entirely sure that a backbar WoE triggers the front bar enchant, but I'll test it when I can.

it 100% does. i guarantee it.

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Illurian wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

I don't think you understand the value of a back bar weapon ilurian. The enchant there doesn't even matter - you put the crusher enchant on your 1h/shield bar. Using elemental blockade with a staff from the back bar and swap back to 1h/shield. The blockade will proc your front bar enchantment. This is one of two reasons why all meta tanks have been running a lightning staff back bar for more than a year now. The other reason was to proc off balance with lightning blockade - but with the 20 second cool down on off balance now its easy enough for healers or a single dps to keep up that effect.

So in comparison to running a lightning staff back bar, the frost staff still gives you max enchant uptime but also provides far greater defense and utility. There was always the risk when running lightning back bar that every time you swap to use blockade you could get flattened because it provides no block mitigation or even extra armor like a frost staff does. With frost you can maintain permablock through the bar swap and while casting blockade.

The only other setup that works for tanks is double barring 1h/shield, which imo just gives you fewer options and versatility.

I'm not entirely sure that a backbar WoE triggers the front bar enchant, but I'll test it when I can.

Having said that, if it is indeed the case that a backbar WoE triggers the front bar enchant, that only further convinces me that it's not worth running. Your front bar enchant should be applied upon cool down anyway even with occasional weaving. Even in boss fights where you are in perma-block mode, Pierce Armor/Heroic Slash can be block casted, and applies the enchant. There is no benefit to having to bar swap to apply WoE only for it to apply your front bar enchant since it will be up anyway.

It does proc front bar enchants, hence why its been the meta for trials tanks.

Pierce and heroic should not be getting spammed in any permablocking situation as both will run your stamina dry. You can't light weave in those cases either because you'll drop block. Each pierce or low slash only has a 20% chance to proc your enchant, while a single wall of elements has a 20% chance every second for 8 seconds and costs no stamina.

I'm thoroughly convinced that you've never had to tank any serious content, every comment you make here goes directly against what top trials tanks have been doing since pre-morrowind.

Lynx7386 wrote: »

All top tanks drop 64 into health and manipulate their other stats with enchants and skills already. Max resource pools mean nothing for a tank - its always about recovery, which attributes don't effect in any way. High magicka recovery on a dk tank means endless stamina while blocking. On a warden, bull netch covers stamina recovery, so you can focus stats on magicka recovery. Natures gift covers both. A warden is more easily able to utilize both stamina and magicka for utility as well as blocking than a dk can - yet another reason they work well with both a shield and frost staff.

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Do tanks don't dump points into stamina (in most builds), they focus on magicka and magicka recovery so they can get the most use out of talons, eruption, chains, igneous shield, dragon blood, etc. And the stamina pool ends up being minimal, just enough to taunt and block and utilizing magicka to recover stamina as needed.

Personally, I have an almost perfect even split between the two on my warden and use both the shield and frost staff. I fully utilize both resource pools as needed - whether for continued blocking or for debuffing/taunting. Imo this is the absolute most efficient setup for any tank, and is one of the reasons I'm such a big proponent of keeping frost staff as a tanking option .

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Btw, reduced block cost from gear, champion passives, sturdy, and enchants effect both magicka and stamina blocking. A character who utilizes both a shield and a frost staff gets double benefit from all of those.

The best setup for permablocking right now - even better than a dk imo - is a warden using both the shield and frost staff. I can block with my shield, gaining stamina from the netch, natures gift, and constitution, while my magicka is restored by magicka recovery, nature's gift, and constitution. When stamina runs low, I can maintain permablock with the frost staff while netch, natures gift, constitution, and stamina recovery restore my stamina pool, and then swap back - never losing or dropping block.