Need advice for sorc tanking

Jaimeh · August 2018

raj72616a wrote: »

do you have a regular team, do you only group with good players, or do you use group finder to play with random people, who might queue up as dps but deal 10k dps or less?

some ppl on this board despise PUG so their advice might not take non optimal situations into account.

sorc has terribly strong self heal from Critical Surge. the heal is strong and it's easy to keep 100% up time on Surge + Hurricane, so you can afford to play with less health and more stam/mag, and deal higher damage. you can tank most of the vet dungeons with around 20k health or a little less (not the DLC ones tho, except WGT).
going full stamina, main bar sword and shield, back bar dualwield or bow is viable. bow has plenty of damage over time skills, you can switch to bow to stack endless hail poison injection and acid spray when you are not blocking. and going full stamina makes blocking roll dodging breaking free easier.
going magicka is great too. you get a strong damage shield that scales to your max magicka, and a burst heal from pet. i myself find it hard to play with a small stamina pool tho. you would be stunned, knocked down, feared etc when you run out of stamina, and no amount of damage shield can save you if that happens. so if you are interested to try a damage dealing tank, stam sorc would be easier.

@raj72616a Thank you for your suggestions! I PUG a lot, so it would be nice to be able to do a little damage. From what I've read in this thread, I think I will distribute points into all pools, with a little more into stamina, and then I have to make a decision for example whether to use the stam or mag morph of lightning form, etc. I'll have to give it a try and see which pool will be harder for me to manage, but like you mentioned, having adequate stamina is important. For now I want to give s/b and staff a try, rather than be a stamsorc tank, though the damage would be better in that case, but I think the staff opens up a few more utilities. Thank you again for replying!

Jaimeh · August 2018

GimpyPorcupine wrote: »

Another suggestion, which I haven't tried yet because I haven't sorc-tanked post-Summerset, but slot but don't use Temporal Guard ultimate on one bar just for the Minor Protection, and slot Deep Thoughts on the other. You'll have the free damage shield on both from Concentrated Barrier passive, and the Deliberation passive will give Major Protection while meditating to restore resources. With that, you may be able to get rid of Dark Deal entirely.

That's a nice idea, I will keep it in mind when I get around to completing the Psijic quest on that toon. On the topic of Psijic skills, do you think Time Stop would be worth using for crowd control?

SirDopey · August 2018

erlewine wrote: »

GimpyPorcupine wrote: »

Lightning staff on back bar is viable for an extra avenue for Concussed/Minor Vulnerability/Off Balance. Go with Charged trait, and use Elemental Blockade. Put a Crushing glyph on it. Make sure you keep your Liquid Lightning down and Boundless Storm up for extra chances at Implode/Disintegrate.

I would suggest Charged Shock glyph on your Lightning staff backbar, so that it is guaranteed to apply Concussion/Off Balance to your first target every time you cast Blockade and/or swap to your backbar. Then put Infused Crusher on your S/B mainhand, so that every tick of BLockade procs your Infused Crusher while on your main bar.

This will no longer work after today's patch with the changes to backbar enchantments....just an fyi

MashmalloMan · August 2018

@Jaimeh if you're thinking between hurricane or boundless storm, boundless storm is better in almost every way for a tank. Longer duration, shock dmg to give you chance to proc concussed and with blockade up, offbalance therefore more group dps and cc. Hurricane maybe has more dmg/aoe range but your dmg is less important in comparison to buffing your group and making your rotation easier. Not to mention hurricane costs a hefty stamina cost which is more finite when you think about how blocking cuts off stam regen.

raj72616a wrote: »

Going full stamina, main bar sword and shield, back bar dualwield or bow is viable. bow has plenty of damage over time skills, you can switch to bow to stack endless hail poison injection and acid spray when you are not blocking. and going full stamina makes blocking roll dodging breaking free easier.

Please, do not roll dodge as a tank, if you are constantly back peddling or roll dodging and making the boss move across the dungeon, dps can't keep up their dmg rotations properly and healers can't heal properly.

SirDopey wrote: »

erlewine wrote: »

GimpyPorcupine wrote: »

Lightning staff on back bar is viable for an extra avenue for Concussed/Minor Vulnerability/Off Balance. Go with Charged trait, and use Elemental Blockade. Put a Crushing glyph on it. Make sure you keep your Liquid Lightning down and Boundless Storm up for extra chances at Implode/Disintegrate.

I would suggest Charged Shock glyph on your Lightning staff backbar, so that it is guaranteed to apply Concussion/Off Balance to your first target every time you cast Blockade and/or swap to your backbar. Then put Infused Crusher on your S/B mainhand, so that every tick of BLockade procs your Infused Crusher while on your main bar.

This will no longer work after today's patch with the changes to backbar enchantments....just an fyi

I touched on this in my earlier comment, the crusher enchant won't proc from blockade when you bar swap with update 19 however he is somewhat right about a guaranteed concussed proc with a charged staff. If you have shock on your charged lightning staff it has a 84% chance to proc concussed via the enchantment.

raj72616a · August 2018

try to not roll dodging in vRoM as a tank and see what happens lol

jypcy · August 2018

Marshall1289 wrote: »

raj72616a wrote: »

Going full stamina, main bar sword and shield, back bar dualwield or bow is viable. bow has plenty of damage over time skills, you can switch to bow to stack endless hail poison injection and acid spray when you are not blocking. and going full stamina makes blocking roll dodging breaking free easier.

Please, do not roll dodge as a tank, if you are constantly back peddling or roll dodging and making the boss move across the dungeon, dps can't keep up their dmg rotations properly and healers can't heal properly.

Just want to amend this that yes, as a tank holding aggro, please don’t do a quintuple somersault across the room because you don’t want to get hit by the big guy. But roll dodging is fine to do as a tank. Some mechanics might require it for survival/make surviving much easier, others are more situational where you judge you have a better chance of surviving if you dodge instead of block. The skeleton colossus boss in falkreath hold actually moves out of position if you don’t dodge his heavy attack. So it’s not a move you should focus on, but it’s not like “good tanks never roll dodge”; it’s fine to use, just use it sparingly and be smart about its use (instead of going straight backwards, dodge towards the boss and curve a little bit so it stays in place and won’t turn to face the group).

Jaimeh · August 2018

Marshall1289 wrote: »

@Jaimeh if you're thinking between hurricane or boundless storm, boundless storm is better in almost every way for a tank. Longer duration, shock dmg to give you chance to proc concussed and with blockade up, offbalance therefore more group dps and cc. Hurricane maybe has more dmg/aoe range but your dmg is less important in comparison to buffing your group and making your rotation easier. Not to mention hurricane costs a hefty stamina cost which is more finite when you think about how blocking cuts off stam regen.

@Marshall1289 Thanks for the heads up, and yes, makes sense to save stamina!