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Conduit - Sorc Tank non-Pet Build

Nox_Noir
Nox_Noir
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An alternative Tank Build that is fun to play and works!
This is a non-pet build centered around the self healing of crit surge and the sorcs nice cost reduction passives.

Highlights:
- Great sustain
- High mobility
- Great Survivability


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Stats with Self Buffs up on a Redguard, Ebon/Alkosh/Warden setup. Got nice stat pool and resistances (capped when lord warden procs). Attributes are highly subjective to your own preference, race, and content you're playing. Just make sure to have slightly more max stamina than magicka as usual (so that you can get stamina back from Orbs/shards while blocking). Also note the extra Spell and Weapon critical that we have easy access to thanks to both CP passives, these help proc the crit surge self healing more quickly.



SKILLS

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Bar1 - Bound Aegis (Flex) | Pierce Armor | Boundless Storm | Heroic Slash | Crit Surge | [Barrier]
Bar2 - Ball of Lightning (Flex) | Inner Fire | Restraining Prison | Silver leash | Dark Deal | [Aggressive Horn]

Useful Skills
Bound Aegis: Nice change to this skill in Summserset, passively grants us minor Resolve/Ward. Activating the skill grants us a nice block mitigation boost for a short time, unfortunetely costs a lot of magicka though but it does reduce damage noticably. Also slotting enables the "deadric protection" passive for a nice health recovery boost. Slot this skill for very hard hitting bosses.
Pierce Armor: The bread-and-butter Taunt + armor debuff
Boundless Storm: Really nice combo buff, our source for major resolve/ward, short speed bonus, and a nice dot to increase crit Surge healing procs. Keep this up 100%
Heroic Slash: Minor maim for the enemy, minor heroism for us. Keep this up 100%
Critical Surge: The main source of healing. Expect about 1k - 1.5k constant hps on a single boss, and up to 3k-4k when adds are around, because they will proc more crits when boundless storm hits them.
Ball of Lightning (Flex): Really helpful mobility tool and gap closer, and so much fun to use.
Inner Fire: The ranged taunt
Restraining Prison: Incredible AOE root to glue add packs together after chaining them in. Also grants us Major Vitality (+30% healing) for 2s plus 1 more second for each enemy hit. The area of effect is in front of us with a relatively long range, instead of around us like the DK root.
Silver leash: Thanks to the fantastic change in Summerset, this now lets us chain in ranged adds.
Dark Deal: Restore stamina plus a big heal, but use carefully! - Block will drop while casting this, choose the time wisely!
[Ult] Agressive Warhorn: The main Ultimate to buff our group.
[Ult] Barrier: I like to have this on my front bar for the 10% extra magicka recovery from the support skill line passive, and it can sometimes be used to save the group if something goes wrong. But there are other good options, like Shield disciplin, temporal guard, or double bar Warhorn for easier access.
[Ult] Shield Disciplin: Nice Life saver
[Ult] Temporal Guard: A little bit of extra damage mitigation for the front bar

Flex spot alternatives:
Vigor: When we run with 3dd's and don't get enough healing
Empowered Ward: Grants group Minor Intellect and enables the "deadric protection" passive for a health recovery boost.
Defensive Posture: Reflect projectiles + tiny block cost and mitigation buff
Sanguine Altar: Nice little heal over time with a long duration, plus healing synergy for group members
Energy Orb: Great heal over time plus resource synergy for group members
Elemental Drain: (requires Ice staff on back bar!) For when you have no healer and 3 extremely spoilt DD's who refuse to slot it themselves.

Important Passives:
Deadric Summoning:
Power Stone: 15% Ult cost reduction
Deadric Protection: 20% Health (and stam) recovery if we slot an ability from this tree
Dark Magic:
Unholy Knowledge: 5% cost reduction
Blood Magic: 10% heal when we hit something with Restraining Prison
Persistence: 15% cost reduction for the next skill after blocking an attack. If done carefully and not spamming skills to much, you can basically get this cost reduction on every skill you cast. It is an incredibly powerful tanking passive on the sorc.
Storm Calling:
Capacitor: 10% Magicka Recovery
Implosion: This actually scales with max Health, of which we have plenty, so we will deal a nice little bit of extra damage in execute phase



GEAR

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I personally prefer a 6 Heavy setup with the waist medium/light, It's a good combination of passives without sacrificing much resistances.
Food: Tri-stat (withered tree inn etc)
Mundus: Atronach
Of course there are other useful options such as the Lord if more HP is needed or Steed for HP recovery. The Thief is another interesting option as it will slightly improve the average rate of crit surge heal procs and heal crits.

Gear explanation:
Ebon: Still the Bread-and-Butter tanking group support, been this for the last 5million years or so.
Alkosh: The stam DD set that ended up being the unrivaled BIS tanking deduff set for what feels like half an eternity. Works particularly well on the SorcTank as the crit bonus adds a tiny contribution to our surge self healing.
Jorvulds Guidance: Really cool sustain/support set. Makes our life easy by extending many of our buffs and providing nice magicka sustain, helps the group by extending the Warhorn (note that it also extends the duration of the stamina and magicka boost even tho those are not official major/minor buffs yet). Use this instead of alkosh if you run dungeons with 3dd's and not enough synergies to make alkosh worth it.
Livewire: Honorary mention: it's a cool debuff set that fits thematically PERFECTLY with this build. Grants about 50% uptime on minor vulnerability and nice self healing.

Race
Argonian - potion addicted sustain miracle
Imperial - highest max resources
Redguard - great stam sustain
That said, almost all races have something useful for tanking though, Races have a less important impact on the tank role than on others i think.

The usual stuff applies here, Argonian BIS blablabla.
I want to give a honorary mention to Redguards though, because there are many Redguards stamsorcs out there already, and if any of them are reading this build and find it interresting, let me tell you the redguard does work surprisingly well for this build. I'm getting a good 100 stamina per second on average from adrenaline rush even on this build, its a pretty good sustain help, and the 10% extra stam help as well.
Similar applies even to Altmer, the extra magic pool and regen are far from useless. In fact I first tried out this build by repurpusing my Altmer magsorc and it worked really well.



CHAMPION POINTS


The Steed
Ironclad - 72
The Lady
Thick Skinned - 72
Hardy - 37
Elemental Defender - 37
The Lord
Quick Recovery - 32

The Tower
Warlord - 31
Bashing Focus - 25
The Lover
Arcanist - 64
Tenacity - 27
The Shadow
Shadow Ward - 72
Tumbling - 31

The Apprentice
Blessed - 100
Elfborn - 81
The Atronach
Physical Weapon Expert - 31 (Riposte Passive - this can proc crit surge and adrenaline rush. Use this if beeing a redguard, otherwise put points into Elfborn instead)
The Ritual
Precise Strikes - 38 (Perfect Strike Passive for crit surge, also buffs vigor heals)



Thanks for Reading - If you actually happen to try this out or have your own SorcTank build already let me know what you think about it!
Edited by Nox_Noir on July 29, 2018 7:25PM
  • Tremors
    Tremors
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    Looks good man, I used to tank as a sorc since launch up until about 2 years ago. Used to use the thief mundus and slot inner light on front bar for those surge heals.

    May look at getting back into it soon with the addition of silver leash.

    One thing that really stands out on sorc is that extra damage you do in execute from implosion, on both lightning and physical damage and scaling with max health.
    Edited by Tremors on July 29, 2018 8:02PM
    Passionfruit GM - PC NA
    Godslayer | Dawnbringer
  • MashmalloMan
    MashmalloMan
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    Build gave me a lot of good idea's so thank you for that. I play as a DD stam sorc redguard so I wanted something I could run for the easier vet dungeon's so I could queue faster. I was using thief mundus stone for the extra crit too and because I didn't want to swap between mundus stones, just gear. The biggest issue I had was that I lost out on boundless storm because I had Hurricane. I can slot lightning staff back bar with wall of elements to help. Second issue I had was trying to break 30k hp with tri-glyphs and 64 points in to stamina. I was using the clanfear but my god, I hate that thing. It is not worth waisting 2 slots for 8% hp and a 35% heal that costs that much magicka.

    I wanted to use ebon/dragonguard/bloodspawn to really have 100% uptime on warhorn for vet dungeons but warden is looking pretty nice and I should maybe swap out dragonguard for a hp set to help with my issue.
    PC Beta - 1900+ CP

    Stam Sorc Khajiit PvE/PVP Main || Stam Sorc Dark Elf PvP ||
    Stam Templar Dark Elf || Stam Warden Wood Elf || Stam DK Nord || Stam Necro Orc || Stam Blade Khajiit


    Mag Sorc High Elf || Mag Templar High Elf || Mag Warden Breton || Mag Necro Khajiit || Mag Blade Khajiit
  • Tremors
    Tremors
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    I feel like you should be able to break 30k hp with ebon, regardless of your race, even with 64 in stamina. Is this not correct? Healthy jewelry should do it otherwise.
    Edited by Tremors on July 29, 2018 8:26PM
    Passionfruit GM - PC NA
    Godslayer | Dawnbringer
  • MashmalloMan
    MashmalloMan
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    I will have to double check pts because I won't fully invest in to everything unless I can make it, but tbh 30k even seems a bit low, I'd want around 35k because I'm not a "pro" tank, would just be starting out. Guess I could take from other stat pools. No worries :)
    PC Beta - 1900+ CP

    Stam Sorc Khajiit PvE/PVP Main || Stam Sorc Dark Elf PvP ||
    Stam Templar Dark Elf || Stam Warden Wood Elf || Stam DK Nord || Stam Necro Orc || Stam Blade Khajiit


    Mag Sorc High Elf || Mag Templar High Elf || Mag Warden Breton || Mag Necro Khajiit || Mag Blade Khajiit
  • Masel
    Masel
    Class Representative
    Finally, so proud of you my son @Nox_Noir :smile:

    Where's our Fang lair?


    This build is great for DSA and HM Donjons as well!
    Edited by Masel on July 29, 2018 9:48PM
    PC EU

    All Trial Trifecta Titles Done!

    Youtube:
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChVEG6ckuAgGs5OyA6VeisA
  • Samsgaard
    Samsgaard
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    Given the Ebon/Alkosh gear and some of the skills, this looks like a build for trials, and a good one. In case I ever get back into trials, I hope this gains acceptance! Let us know how it works out.

    I've run a hybrid tank/dps version of the lightning sorc since launch, and it's been my favorite toon. Indeed, it keeps getting better as the game changes (Shacklebreaker gear, silver leash, and staff counting as two pieces). Speaking of staves, I outfit a lightning staff that looks like a spear and consider it to be one :smile:.

    - Mag/stam hybrid, Thief mundus for about 30% weapon and spell crit (IIRC).
    - 5 pieces of Thunderbug gear for resistance and a high-frequency lightning AOE damage proc.
    - 5 pieces Shacklebreaker gear - really makes the hybrid mag/stam concept shine.
    - Just switched monster set to Illambris to go all-in on the AOE lightning theme. Love it!

    With boundless storm, liquid lightning, and elemental blockade, that's three lightning AOEs with 100% uptime if you're on the ball. Add the Thunderbug proc, the Illambris proc and the lightning staff ultimate, and at times there are as many as six lightning AOEs hitting a group of mobs.

    I know it's heresy, but instead of heroic slash, this toon uses the AOE morph of low slash for AOE maim and AOE damage, which it turn affords even more chances to crit and thereby proc surge. On top of it all, caltrops - which (being metallic) strike me as consistent with the electricity theme.

    That's eight AOEs available in total. Meanwhile, the build is very sturdy due to 34k-ish health (IIRC) and 27k resistance self-buffed, constant surge heals, plenty of stam for bash/block/roll/break free, and AOE maim. Good sustain from heavy attack with sword, heavy attack with "spear," tri-potions, and dark deal for "Oh S***!" moments.

    Like I said, this is my favorite toon. Works well everywhere except vMA (maybe someday!) and vet trials, where your build would be more appropriate and viable. The only other downside is the headache I sometimes get from all the lightning effects.

    Goals in progress:

    - Complete a set (just need sword, shield, and "spear") of Netch gear to replace Thunderbug, at least for soloing and easy group activity. I'd miss the Thunderbug proc, but that shock damage bonus is awfully appealing.
    - See if I can get away with wearing Netch permanently, even in vet HM dungeons. Alternatively, acquire another heavy armor defensive set to replace Thunderbug for boss fights where Thunderbug won't proc - maybe the "storm" set from Tempest Island.
    - Complete a defensive monster set to wear in place of Illambris when necessary. I used to run with Iceheart, which is perfect for this build (procs on crit, adds defense and AOE offense). But it's not perfect for the them, and now that I've leveled a frost-themed warden tank, he gets the swirling snowballs :smile:.


  • Porter_H
    Porter_H
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    I've been running a very similar setup on one of my Sorc tanks with Ebon and Shacklebreaker. I use Swarm Mother for vet dungeons and swap it out for two health monster items on bosses.


    I don't use Silver Leash, run a backbar staff in easier dungeon with Elemental Blockade in that slot. If I'm dual S/B I'll run Lightning Splash there just cause it's fun and I can round up mobs with the monster set chain at times.
  • Tasear
    Tasear
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    This is very nice!
  • Valrien
    Valrien
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    Have you considered running Spell Symmetry?

    Convert health into magicka, convert magicka into health and stamina.
    Valrien Dravic -- Level 50 Dunmeri Sorcerer (EP)
    Garahel Dravic -- Level 50 Bosmeri Nightblade (EP)
    Tamriel Unlimited was a mistake. One Tamriel was a bigger mistake
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