NB Tanks: How did you get here?

idk · September 2018

I liked the old sustain mechanism. It worked great for me and gave NBs a different flare. I do miss NB tanking.

_Salty_ · September 2018

My first character at console launch was a Breton Sap tank. I read about the game for months before I made my decision since it seemed like an active play style. Ive always been a tank in other games and I hated just being a meat shield block machine. So I chose Sap tanking.

Zos systematically has destroyed this spec patch after patch.

I re rolled a new account (leaving behind a maxed account because ps4 wont allow you to change your name and I didn't like my old one) and I made a Nord Nightblade tank right off the bat.

Now Zos has made it so I have to back bar dual in order to keep my tavas tank or make a set of histbark. I don't plan on doing either of these things.

All the sorcs are flooding the forums with tears, Im positive they have never played a Sap Tank. If they did they would be used to being bludgeoned by the nerf bat.

TheInfernalRage · September 2018

My first NB was a Damage Dealer originally. Then queue issues forced me to turn him into a healer. After reaching level 10 Undaunted, I got curious about turning him into a tank.

The first try was a healing tank with two restoration staves. It stayed like that for a long time. Good for normal dungeon runs and White Gold Tower. I was surprised at how effective it was at that stage. Then I decided to level sword and shield and he became a traditional tank. After that I experimented on ice staves. When I turned my thief Khajiit into a tank, my first NB returned to being a damage dealer.

I love NB's because it's a very versatile class. Hopefully ZOS will not kill that versatility by shoving NB DD's up our throats. They already crippled the Sorcs by taking away the third bar without changing the pets to be on single bar only (and yes, cast time).

D0PAMINE · September 2018

I made one cause I was bored. I can have infinite sustain, but I dont use him much cause im too lazy to grind out the passives.

Sparr0w · September 2018

Made 5 stamblades when the game first dropped on console. When I came back I made 2 of each mag & stam dd's (PvE/PvP) and a NB tank. Done most stuff on my NB, still a really fun playstyle and unique (until next patch).

Really nice that the tanking toolkit was just a basic DD toolkit so could easily swap roles depending on what was needed.

stimpy986b14_ESO · September 2018

I played a Dark Templar tank in Age Of Conan so I was looking for something similar.

To be fair, NB tank used to play alot like the DT tank from AOC... unfortunately not anymore.

aeowulf · September 2018

The first networked multiplayer I played were MUDS (Specifically VikingMUD before anyone asks) and I wanted to play a knightly character. Then Everquest arrived in the late 90's and I still wanted to be a 'Knight' so I chose a Paladin. I enjoyed i but was always a little jealous of Shadow Knights and their fear kiting so when a new server came up, I chose that class and never looked back. I could of chosen a pure warrior as a tank, but have always chosen to support the underdogs, i've found them more challenging and thus rewarding.

This choice followed me through countless games where possible until the arrival of ESO. My first character was a DK, because they were marketed as the best tanks, and I had always tanked for my core group of friends. I found them boring and uninspiring compared to other games so I quit ESO. A bit later, one of my friends convinced me over a pint to come back, so I did but rather risk the same fate happening again, I created an NB with a view to trying a different role for a change, that of DPS. It didn't work out for me and my friends still wanted me to tank, so I switched to heavy armour and struggled, a lot. Then I found a youtube video showing path procing siphoning and how an NB needed to tank differently to a DK.

Over night I was transformed - and them Gilliams videos came along and my sap tank took off. It was the most fun I had ever had in ESO. I could not get enough of playing...

Them Morrowind hit, and sap tanks were removed overnight, I begrudgingly converted to Stamblade whilst i saw my friends stop playing and two guilds die over the first month of that expansion hitting.

My NB is still my main, and back in heavy armour but... my heart is no longer in it - A bit like when a relationship goes bad.

4.2.0 is not looking favourable either... I have to much time invested in this character and too many memories to play an alternative in ESO. I was really hoping they would get something like sap tanking back rather than loose their play style. Path should of been changed to a siphon skill...

max_only · September 2018

I wish more nb tanks could comment. Our playstyle is valid too

jypcy · September 2018

max_only wrote: »

I wish more nb tanks could comment. Our playstyle is valid too

Is there something specifically you want nb tanks to comment on?

aeowulf · September 2018

I fear all remaining NB tanks have commented

Wifeaggro13 · September 2018

efster wrote: »

There are a few of us kicking around the forums and I'm kind of wondering what made you look at the class and go "yeah, I want to tank with that". This thread isn't to talk about viability of NB tanking in endgame/PVP/whatever, just a trip to the department of backstory. I don't care if you tank in PVP, vet trials, normal dungeons, spend all your time in zone casting Sap Essence on mudcrabs or if your NB tank just runs around picking NPC pockets these days, I'm just curious about what got you to try tanking on a NB, and why did you stick with it (if you did).

I'll start~
I've played RPGs of various stripes since the mid-90s but ESO was my first MMO (not counting Kingdom of Loathing for obvious reasons) so I didn't know much about tanks, healers, or DPS, other than what I kind of gathered from hanging out with other gamers, many of whom did play MMOs. My first clear of Aetherian Archive (then v12 or v14 or whatever it was) as a stamblade involved Wrecking Blow spam.

I was actually going to roll a DK when I first got the game, because dragons are cool, but then I remembered how much fun I had playing Nightblades in Daggerfall and Oblivion, and NB was the closest to the "sneaky archer" archetype that I usually enjoy, so I decided to go with that. I leveled as a stamblade, but I kind of wasn't enjoying it. In older TES lore, NBs were swift, and agile, and good at magic, but archers in ESO are really not suited for magicka playstyles, unless you count the spectral bow NBs get from Focus. Magicka nightblade seemed like a strange idea at the time since my character is a Bosmer, who aren't really good at magicka type stuff (Jagar Tharn doesn't count).

As I was levelling, the bane of my existence was that Undaunted quest for Banished Cells (i am a completionist and I really don't like having quests sitting in my log unresolved, and I hate abandoning quests even more). I thought that it required me to clear the whole dungeon (I have yet to l2read quest descriptions, it's a lifestyle, don't judge), not just enter it and return to Turuk with the good news, so I spent hours hanging out outside the entrance to BC hoping someone would take me with them. This was long before Group Finder and I didn't know anybody in the game. Then I tried going in there on my own (wearing dropped green/blue gear, no sets). I died to the first trashpack, but hey, my quest had advanced. One thing I noticed during the waiting for BC was a lot of people looking for a tank.

I wasn't really used to the whole MMO community thing and I've always tried to figure things out on my own rather than look up guides, so the learning process for me was very slow. After I discovered sets and started training my character in crafting, I realised that i would be able to maybe use a set to make my character do what I wanted. I started looking at the skills and morphs and passives to see what I could do, and I saw that ESO nightblades had passives that got buffed by heavy armour use, so I thought, what about a tank? It went so counter existing TES lore, but I looked at the in-game description for the class:

Nightblades are adventurers and opportunists with a gift for getting in and out of trouble. Relying variously on stealth, blades, and speed, Nightblades thrive on conflict and misfortune, trusting to their luck and cunning to survive.

...and I kind of zeroed in on "trusting to their luck and cunning to survive" and thought, well, why not try and survive the biggest hits in each encounter? I could do that if I made a tank. Besides, judging from the never-ending stream of "lf tank for XYZ" in zone chats everywhere I went, there was plenty of opportunity in tanking.

By this time I was a lot more aware of just how complex an MMO is compared to a single-player game, so I was much less shy about googling stuff, so of course I googled Nightblade Tank and instantly found the sap tank, which was quite strong at the time. Joined some guilds, made some friends, chose some gear sets, started running group content. Never looked back, tbh, even though the sap tank is only a misty watercolour memory nowadays, and the NB tank identity is being stripped away little by little with every update. I learned to tank on a NB, started out strugglebusing for hours on Grothdarr, and at this point I've cleared nearly all vet content, including many HM trials, on my NB. Due to lack of time IRL I can't quite drum up the interest to tank on anything else. I moonlight as PVP and PVE heals and fair-to-middling mag DPS on the same character via gear and CP swaps, so I'm really kind of a Swiss Army Nightblade, but I don't love anything in ESO as much as I love tanking on my NB.

Okay, maybe fishing. I really love fishing.

Anyway, enough about me; tell me about you!

I guess my first thought is why are you playing a tank in this game of any class if your not doing end game pve/pvp. The game mechanics rely so heavily on dps that playing anything but a dps is counterproductive for 95% of the game. But the initial launch theory was you could make a tank that had a different playstyle then dk was offering. But for the most part tanks were needed for more of the content.

MacCait · September 2018

Good post OP!

A few of us came over from another game, DC Universe Online, but some stayed behind, including our awesome tank. So we started a guild and were constantly trying to find a tank...

I've always been a pretty good damage dealer in games, so never fancied it. I tried lots of classes and just really loved the Assassin class and ended up making quite a few Nightblades in different races and all with different builds. Over time as I came to really know the class well, I had been thinking about the Nightblades passives and how theoretically, they seem to be naturally carved out to make a decent tank. This was a year or so later and we still didn't have a tank in the guild, so one day I took my Imperial PvP Nightblade and attempted to make him into a PvE tank.

I theory crafted a magic NB tank build over a few days using Twilights Embrace (back in the day) and it worked really well. I loved using the Nightblades passives along with its own class skills to debuff, and used the taunt from Undaunted. I ran it that way for a couple years without ever using sword and board. I ran it dual wield on the front bar and resto on the back bar, buffing the group with Combat prayer. The dual wield gave me the extra spell power and with 64 points into magicka, it added a lot to the groups damage. I rarely blocked, I just dodged, and healed my way through the damage using Swallow Soul (before the nerfs to sustain, and two price increases and nerf to the skill). It was so fun controling the flow of battle that way.

To this day it was the most fun and furious version of my NB tank. It was complex, you had to move fast and furious to stay alive, it was multi-tasking and risky. It was nothing like the standard safe 'stand and hold block tank', it felt like a warrior, like a battle tank. I called the build the twilight gladiator. It was so much fun, and for a damage dealer, it just fit so well with my playstyle. Miss that build.

In time, as I was tanking sooo much, I no longer dps'd, and tanking became my main role. I became curious about other classes ability to tank. I made a dk and found it absolutely boring as hell, tried to make it fun in so many ways, but it really is tanking for dummies and a 3 button safe zone tank. I ended up with tanks in every class (before morrowind), and although I really loved Sorc tanking too, my Nightblade tanks remained my favorite to this day.

It's such a shame they have taken such a poounding since Morrowind... I have tried to adapt and it's much more like a regular tank these days with sword and board, but the true fun was lost a long time ago. Nightblade tanking has lost it's identy and uniqueness. It's a sad tale really... but a nice few minutes remembering the good times and a trip down memory lane

max_only · September 2018

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

efster wrote: »

There are a few of us kicking around the forums and I'm kind of wondering what made you look at the class and go "yeah, I want to tank with that". This thread isn't to talk about viability of NB tanking in endgame/PVP/whatever, just a trip to the department of backstory. I don't care if you tank in PVP, vet trials, normal dungeons, spend all your time in zone casting Sap Essence on mudcrabs or if your NB tank just runs around picking NPC pockets these days, I'm just curious about what got you to try tanking on a NB, and why did you stick with it (if you did).

I'll start~
I've played RPGs of various stripes since the mid-90s but ESO was my first MMO (not counting Kingdom of Loathing for obvious reasons) so I didn't know much about tanks, healers, or DPS, other than what I kind of gathered from hanging out with other gamers, many of whom did play MMOs. My first clear of Aetherian Archive (then v12 or v14 or whatever it was) as a stamblade involved Wrecking Blow spam.

I was actually going to roll a DK when I first got the game, because dragons are cool, but then I remembered how much fun I had playing Nightblades in Daggerfall and Oblivion, and NB was the closest to the "sneaky archer" archetype that I usually enjoy, so I decided to go with that. I leveled as a stamblade, but I kind of wasn't enjoying it. In older TES lore, NBs were swift, and agile, and good at magic, but archers in ESO are really not suited for magicka playstyles, unless you count the spectral bow NBs get from Focus. Magicka nightblade seemed like a strange idea at the time since my character is a Bosmer, who aren't really good at magicka type stuff (Jagar Tharn doesn't count).

As I was levelling, the bane of my existence was that Undaunted quest for Banished Cells (i am a completionist and I really don't like having quests sitting in my log unresolved, and I hate abandoning quests even more). I thought that it required me to clear the whole dungeon (I have yet to l2read quest descriptions, it's a lifestyle, don't judge), not just enter it and return to Turuk with the good news, so I spent hours hanging out outside the entrance to BC hoping someone would take me with them. This was long before Group Finder and I didn't know anybody in the game. Then I tried going in there on my own (wearing dropped green/blue gear, no sets). I died to the first trashpack, but hey, my quest had advanced. One thing I noticed during the waiting for BC was a lot of people looking for a tank.

I wasn't really used to the whole MMO community thing and I've always tried to figure things out on my own rather than look up guides, so the learning process for me was very slow. After I discovered sets and started training my character in crafting, I realised that i would be able to maybe use a set to make my character do what I wanted. I started looking at the skills and morphs and passives to see what I could do, and I saw that ESO nightblades had passives that got buffed by heavy armour use, so I thought, what about a tank? It went so counter existing TES lore, but I looked at the in-game description for the class:

Nightblades are adventurers and opportunists with a gift for getting in and out of trouble. Relying variously on stealth, blades, and speed, Nightblades thrive on conflict and misfortune, trusting to their luck and cunning to survive.

...and I kind of zeroed in on "trusting to their luck and cunning to survive" and thought, well, why not try and survive the biggest hits in each encounter? I could do that if I made a tank. Besides, judging from the never-ending stream of "lf tank for XYZ" in zone chats everywhere I went, there was plenty of opportunity in tanking.

By this time I was a lot more aware of just how complex an MMO is compared to a single-player game, so I was much less shy about googling stuff, so of course I googled Nightblade Tank and instantly found the sap tank, which was quite strong at the time. Joined some guilds, made some friends, chose some gear sets, started running group content. Never looked back, tbh, even though the sap tank is only a misty watercolour memory nowadays, and the NB tank identity is being stripped away little by little with every update. I learned to tank on a NB, started out strugglebusing for hours on Grothdarr, and at this point I've cleared nearly all vet content, including many HM trials, on my NB. Due to lack of time IRL I can't quite drum up the interest to tank on anything else. I moonlight as PVP and PVE heals and fair-to-middling mag DPS on the same character via gear and CP swaps, so I'm really kind of a Swiss Army Nightblade, but I don't love anything in ESO as much as I love tanking on my NB.

Okay, maybe fishing. I really love fishing.

Anyway, enough about me; tell me about you!

I guess my first thought is why are you playing a tank in this game of any class if your not doing end game pve/pvp. The game mechanics rely so heavily on dps that playing anything but a dps is counterproductive for 95% of the game. But the initial launch theory was you could make a tank that had a different playstyle then dk was offering. But for the most part tanks were needed for more of the content.

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Wifeaggro13 · September 2018

max_only wrote: »

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

efster wrote: »

There are a few of us kicking around the forums and I'm kind of wondering what made you look at the class and go "yeah, I want to tank with that". This thread isn't to talk about viability of NB tanking in endgame/PVP/whatever, just a trip to the department of backstory. I don't care if you tank in PVP, vet trials, normal dungeons, spend all your time in zone casting Sap Essence on mudcrabs or if your NB tank just runs around picking NPC pockets these days, I'm just curious about what got you to try tanking on a NB, and why did you stick with it (if you did).

I'll start~
I've played RPGs of various stripes since the mid-90s but ESO was my first MMO (not counting Kingdom of Loathing for obvious reasons) so I didn't know much about tanks, healers, or DPS, other than what I kind of gathered from hanging out with other gamers, many of whom did play MMOs. My first clear of Aetherian Archive (then v12 or v14 or whatever it was) as a stamblade involved Wrecking Blow spam.

I was actually going to roll a DK when I first got the game, because dragons are cool, but then I remembered how much fun I had playing Nightblades in Daggerfall and Oblivion, and NB was the closest to the "sneaky archer" archetype that I usually enjoy, so I decided to go with that. I leveled as a stamblade, but I kind of wasn't enjoying it. In older TES lore, NBs were swift, and agile, and good at magic, but archers in ESO are really not suited for magicka playstyles, unless you count the spectral bow NBs get from Focus. Magicka nightblade seemed like a strange idea at the time since my character is a Bosmer, who aren't really good at magicka type stuff (Jagar Tharn doesn't count).

As I was levelling, the bane of my existence was that Undaunted quest for Banished Cells (i am a completionist and I really don't like having quests sitting in my log unresolved, and I hate abandoning quests even more). I thought that it required me to clear the whole dungeon (I have yet to l2read quest descriptions, it's a lifestyle, don't judge), not just enter it and return to Turuk with the good news, so I spent hours hanging out outside the entrance to BC hoping someone would take me with them. This was long before Group Finder and I didn't know anybody in the game. Then I tried going in there on my own (wearing dropped green/blue gear, no sets). I died to the first trashpack, but hey, my quest had advanced. One thing I noticed during the waiting for BC was a lot of people looking for a tank.

I wasn't really used to the whole MMO community thing and I've always tried to figure things out on my own rather than look up guides, so the learning process for me was very slow. After I discovered sets and started training my character in crafting, I realised that i would be able to maybe use a set to make my character do what I wanted. I started looking at the skills and morphs and passives to see what I could do, and I saw that ESO nightblades had passives that got buffed by heavy armour use, so I thought, what about a tank? It went so counter existing TES lore, but I looked at the in-game description for the class:

Nightblades are adventurers and opportunists with a gift for getting in and out of trouble. Relying variously on stealth, blades, and speed, Nightblades thrive on conflict and misfortune, trusting to their luck and cunning to survive.

...and I kind of zeroed in on "trusting to their luck and cunning to survive" and thought, well, why not try and survive the biggest hits in each encounter? I could do that if I made a tank. Besides, judging from the never-ending stream of "lf tank for XYZ" in zone chats everywhere I went, there was plenty of opportunity in tanking.

By this time I was a lot more aware of just how complex an MMO is compared to a single-player game, so I was much less shy about googling stuff, so of course I googled Nightblade Tank and instantly found the sap tank, which was quite strong at the time. Joined some guilds, made some friends, chose some gear sets, started running group content. Never looked back, tbh, even though the sap tank is only a misty watercolour memory nowadays, and the NB tank identity is being stripped away little by little with every update. I learned to tank on a NB, started out strugglebusing for hours on Grothdarr, and at this point I've cleared nearly all vet content, including many HM trials, on my NB. Due to lack of time IRL I can't quite drum up the interest to tank on anything else. I moonlight as PVP and PVE heals and fair-to-middling mag DPS on the same character via gear and CP swaps, so I'm really kind of a Swiss Army Nightblade, but I don't love anything in ESO as much as I love tanking on my NB.

Okay, maybe fishing. I really love fishing.

Anyway, enough about me; tell me about you!

I guess my first thought is why are you playing a tank in this game of any class if your not doing end game pve/pvp. The game mechanics rely so heavily on dps that playing anything but a dps is counterproductive for 95% of the game. But the initial launch theory was you could make a tank that had a different playstyle then dk was offering. But for the most part tanks were needed for more of the content.

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ya? i would expect that from some one who did not experience earlier game play

LadyLethalla · September 2018

I was a big fan of Gilliam the Rogue, whose builds were pretty damn good. My main is a NB, now a magblade; I made a PVP magblade from one of his builds and also his NB tank - though I haven't actually dared to PUG him into even a normal dungeon. Would prefer to try him out with friends, but my timezone sucks.
He's doing writs and daily SS delves, and otherwise lives with his wife in Rivenspire.

max_only · September 2018

Do I want to tackle this?

Sigh.

“Why are you playing a tank in this game of any class if your not doing end game pve/pvp”

Just because you can complete dungeons with a fake-tank-dps-queue-skipping-selfish-spin-2-win-button-masher doesn’t mean the rest of the game enjoys that. Many many many people want real tanks. Just take a look at the forum. Nobody likes fake tanks in the queue, not for any part of the game.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/433185/fake-tanks/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/434071/what-defines-a-tank-in-the-group-finder-personal-story/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/398353/something-needs-to-be-done-about-this-fake-tank-crap/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/431244/dear-random-pugs-stop-blaming-tanks-and-being-abusive-to-us-in-random-cues/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/427546/how-do-you-handle-fake-tanks/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/427170/how-often-do-you-get-fake-tanks-in-pugs/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/422656/fake-tank-or-fake-healer-which-is-best/p1

95% of the game IS NOT endgame trials and cp pvp. On that you are objectively wrong. If 95% of YOUR time is spent on end game that is valid for you. Based on the content zenimax has created? “95%”of the game is middle stuff.

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

max_only wrote: »

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

efster wrote: »

There are a few of us kicking around the forums and I'm kind of wondering what made you look at the class and go "yeah, I want to tank with that". This thread isn't to talk about viability of NB tanking in endgame/PVP/whatever, just a trip to the department of backstory. I don't care if you tank in PVP, vet trials, normal dungeons, spend all your time in zone casting Sap Essence on mudcrabs or if your NB tank just runs around picking NPC pockets these days, I'm just curious about what got you to try tanking on a NB, and why did you stick with it (if you did).

I'll start~
I've played RPGs of various stripes since the mid-90s but ESO was my first MMO (not counting Kingdom of Loathing for obvious reasons) so I didn't know much about tanks, healers, or DPS, other than what I kind of gathered from hanging out with other gamers, many of whom did play MMOs. My first clear of Aetherian Archive (then v12 or v14 or whatever it was) as a stamblade involved Wrecking Blow spam.

I was actually going to roll a DK when I first got the game, because dragons are cool, but then I remembered how much fun I had playing Nightblades in Daggerfall and Oblivion, and NB was the closest to the "sneaky archer" archetype that I usually enjoy, so I decided to go with that. I leveled as a stamblade, but I kind of wasn't enjoying it. In older TES lore, NBs were swift, and agile, and good at magic, but archers in ESO are really not suited for magicka playstyles, unless you count the spectral bow NBs get from Focus. Magicka nightblade seemed like a strange idea at the time since my character is a Bosmer, who aren't really good at magicka type stuff (Jagar Tharn doesn't count).

As I was levelling, the bane of my existence was that Undaunted quest for Banished Cells (i am a completionist and I really don't like having quests sitting in my log unresolved, and I hate abandoning quests even more). I thought that it required me to clear the whole dungeon (I have yet to l2read quest descriptions, it's a lifestyle, don't judge), not just enter it and return to Turuk with the good news, so I spent hours hanging out outside the entrance to BC hoping someone would take me with them. This was long before Group Finder and I didn't know anybody in the game. Then I tried going in there on my own (wearing dropped green/blue gear, no sets). I died to the first trashpack, but hey, my quest had advanced. One thing I noticed during the waiting for BC was a lot of people looking for a tank.

I wasn't really used to the whole MMO community thing and I've always tried to figure things out on my own rather than look up guides, so the learning process for me was very slow. After I discovered sets and started training my character in crafting, I realised that i would be able to maybe use a set to make my character do what I wanted. I started looking at the skills and morphs and passives to see what I could do, and I saw that ESO nightblades had passives that got buffed by heavy armour use, so I thought, what about a tank? It went so counter existing TES lore, but I looked at the in-game description for the class:

Nightblades are adventurers and opportunists with a gift for getting in and out of trouble. Relying variously on stealth, blades, and speed, Nightblades thrive on conflict and misfortune, trusting to their luck and cunning to survive.

...and I kind of zeroed in on "trusting to their luck and cunning to survive" and thought, well, why not try and survive the biggest hits in each encounter? I could do that if I made a tank. Besides, judging from the never-ending stream of "lf tank for XYZ" in zone chats everywhere I went, there was plenty of opportunity in tanking.

By this time I was a lot more aware of just how complex an MMO is compared to a single-player game, so I was much less shy about googling stuff, so of course I googled Nightblade Tank and instantly found the sap tank, which was quite strong at the time. Joined some guilds, made some friends, chose some gear sets, started running group content. Never looked back, tbh, even though the sap tank is only a misty watercolour memory nowadays, and the NB tank identity is being stripped away little by little with every update. I learned to tank on a NB, started out strugglebusing for hours on Grothdarr, and at this point I've cleared nearly all vet content, including many HM trials, on my NB. Due to lack of time IRL I can't quite drum up the interest to tank on anything else. I moonlight as PVP and PVE heals and fair-to-middling mag DPS on the same character via gear and CP swaps, so I'm really kind of a Swiss Army Nightblade, but I don't love anything in ESO as much as I love tanking on my NB.

Okay, maybe fishing. I really love fishing.

Anyway, enough about me; tell me about you!

I guess my first thought is why are you playing a tank in this game of any class if your not doing end game pve/pvp. The game mechanics rely so heavily on dps that playing anything but a dps is counterproductive for 95% of the game. But the initial launch theory was you could make a tank that had a different playstyle then dk was offering. But for the most part tanks were needed for more of the content.

via Imgflip Meme Generator

ya? i would expect that from some one who did not experience earlier game play

Who didn’t experience earlier gameplay? Both the OP and I were here before 1Tam and OP was here for veteran levels so what kind of weak comeback is that?

And that picture is: Why are you in this thread bringing your negativity?

Samsgaard · September 2018

I'm an alt-oholic, so at launch, there was never a question that I would have a magblade in my line-up. Coming over from Lotro, my magblade of course had to be a Nazgul, and why not the Witch-king of Angmar? Most of my toons (including the magblade) became tanks; so one day poof! I had a magblade tank.

(Back then, as I recall, magblade was at the bottom of the DPS ladder anyway. Funny how things change.)

The Witch-king is a servant of the Shadow. And "Shadow" happens to be the title of a NB skill line. So naturally, the Witch-king is a Shadow Tank. I hope no one coined that phrase already. But I'm guessing Alcast probably did.

In any event, the Witch-king not only walks the paths of darkness but also conjures consuming darkness when fully roused. He casts (off) his dark cloak to reveal his shadowy and ever-regenerating form; his mere presence unsettles foes to the point of mass hysteria; and he summons a fellow shade (usually Khamul) to fight by his side. Reflecting the dark forces that siphoned his own mortal existence away, leaving him a wraith, he causes strife in his enemies' hearts, sapping their very essence and sometimes even shredding their souls.

In addition to his mighty spiked mace, which can puncture any armor, the Witch-king keeps a magic spear handy. With the spear, he channels the bitter cold of Angmar to create a virtual blockade of frost. Undaunted to the max, the Witch-king may also perform rituals of sorcery beside a bloody altar and deploy the remains of mere mortals as a veritable shield of bones for his forces.

For LOLs, he sometimes also equips a Morgul blade on which he impales vulnerable foes--a grim form of execution that condemns the victim to a fate worse than death.

Meanwhile, he himself is extremely hard to kill. That is not surprising, because he is not truly alive. Moreover, prophecy holds that not by the hand of man will he fall.

If he seems more on guard against female or inhuman bosses, that is purely your imagination.

efster · September 2018

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

I guess my first thought is why are you playing a tank in this game of any class if your not doing end game pve/pvp.

I literally do tank endgame PVE though.

Wifeaggro13 · September 2018

max_only wrote: »

Do I want to tackle this?

Sigh.

“Why are you playing a tank in this game of any class if your not doing end game pve/pvp”

Just because you can complete dungeons with a fake-tank-dps-queue-skipping-selfish-spin-2-win-button-masher doesn’t mean the rest of the game enjoys that. Many many many people want real tanks. Just take a look at the forum. Nobody likes fake tanks in the queue, not for any part of the game.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/433185/fake-tanks/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/434071/what-defines-a-tank-in-the-group-finder-personal-story/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/398353/something-needs-to-be-done-about-this-fake-tank-crap/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/431244/dear-random-pugs-stop-blaming-tanks-and-being-abusive-to-us-in-random-cues/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/427546/how-do-you-handle-fake-tanks/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/427170/how-often-do-you-get-fake-tanks-in-pugs/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/422656/fake-tank-or-fake-healer-which-is-best/p1

95% of the game IS NOT endgame trials and cp pvp. On that you are objectively wrong. If 95% of YOUR time is spent on end game that is valid for you. Based on the content zenimax has created? “95%”of the game is middle stuff.

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

max_only wrote: »

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

efster wrote: »

There are a few of us kicking around the forums and I'm kind of wondering what made you look at the class and go "yeah, I want to tank with that". This thread isn't to talk about viability of NB tanking in endgame/PVP/whatever, just a trip to the department of backstory. I don't care if you tank in PVP, vet trials, normal dungeons, spend all your time in zone casting Sap Essence on mudcrabs or if your NB tank just runs around picking NPC pockets these days, I'm just curious about what got you to try tanking on a NB, and why did you stick with it (if you did).

I'll start~
I've played RPGs of various stripes since the mid-90s but ESO was my first MMO (not counting Kingdom of Loathing for obvious reasons) so I didn't know much about tanks, healers, or DPS, other than what I kind of gathered from hanging out with other gamers, many of whom did play MMOs. My first clear of Aetherian Archive (then v12 or v14 or whatever it was) as a stamblade involved Wrecking Blow spam.

I was actually going to roll a DK when I first got the game, because dragons are cool, but then I remembered how much fun I had playing Nightblades in Daggerfall and Oblivion, and NB was the closest to the "sneaky archer" archetype that I usually enjoy, so I decided to go with that. I leveled as a stamblade, but I kind of wasn't enjoying it. In older TES lore, NBs were swift, and agile, and good at magic, but archers in ESO are really not suited for magicka playstyles, unless you count the spectral bow NBs get from Focus. Magicka nightblade seemed like a strange idea at the time since my character is a Bosmer, who aren't really good at magicka type stuff (Jagar Tharn doesn't count).

As I was levelling, the bane of my existence was that Undaunted quest for Banished Cells (i am a completionist and I really don't like having quests sitting in my log unresolved, and I hate abandoning quests even more). I thought that it required me to clear the whole dungeon (I have yet to l2read quest descriptions, it's a lifestyle, don't judge), not just enter it and return to Turuk with the good news, so I spent hours hanging out outside the entrance to BC hoping someone would take me with them. This was long before Group Finder and I didn't know anybody in the game. Then I tried going in there on my own (wearing dropped green/blue gear, no sets). I died to the first trashpack, but hey, my quest had advanced. One thing I noticed during the waiting for BC was a lot of people looking for a tank.

I wasn't really used to the whole MMO community thing and I've always tried to figure things out on my own rather than look up guides, so the learning process for me was very slow. After I discovered sets and started training my character in crafting, I realised that i would be able to maybe use a set to make my character do what I wanted. I started looking at the skills and morphs and passives to see what I could do, and I saw that ESO nightblades had passives that got buffed by heavy armour use, so I thought, what about a tank? It went so counter existing TES lore, but I looked at the in-game description for the class:

Nightblades are adventurers and opportunists with a gift for getting in and out of trouble. Relying variously on stealth, blades, and speed, Nightblades thrive on conflict and misfortune, trusting to their luck and cunning to survive.

...and I kind of zeroed in on "trusting to their luck and cunning to survive" and thought, well, why not try and survive the biggest hits in each encounter? I could do that if I made a tank. Besides, judging from the never-ending stream of "lf tank for XYZ" in zone chats everywhere I went, there was plenty of opportunity in tanking.

By this time I was a lot more aware of just how complex an MMO is compared to a single-player game, so I was much less shy about googling stuff, so of course I googled Nightblade Tank and instantly found the sap tank, which was quite strong at the time. Joined some guilds, made some friends, chose some gear sets, started running group content. Never looked back, tbh, even though the sap tank is only a misty watercolour memory nowadays, and the NB tank identity is being stripped away little by little with every update. I learned to tank on a NB, started out strugglebusing for hours on Grothdarr, and at this point I've cleared nearly all vet content, including many HM trials, on my NB. Due to lack of time IRL I can't quite drum up the interest to tank on anything else. I moonlight as PVP and PVE heals and fair-to-middling mag DPS on the same character via gear and CP swaps, so I'm really kind of a Swiss Army Nightblade, but I don't love anything in ESO as much as I love tanking on my NB.

Okay, maybe fishing. I really love fishing.

Anyway, enough about me; tell me about you!

I guess my first thought is why are you playing a tank in this game of any class if your not doing end game pve/pvp. The game mechanics rely so heavily on dps that playing anything but a dps is counterproductive for 95% of the game. But the initial launch theory was you could make a tank that had a different playstyle then dk was offering. But for the most part tanks were needed for more of the content.

via Imgflip Meme Generator

ya? i would expect that from some one who did not experience earlier game play

Who didn’t experience earlier gameplay? Both the OP and I were here before 1Tam and OP was here for veteran levels so what kind of weak comeback is that?

And that picture is: Why are you in this thread bringing your negativity?

lol easy fan boi im pointing out what half the threads in the last 18 months have been saying. but im allowed to be in any thread i want im not violating any policy and your coming pretty close to flamming would you like the thread locked?

Wifeaggro13 · September 2018

efster wrote: »

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

I guess my first thought is why are you playing a tank in this game of any class if your not doing end game pve/pvp.

I literally do tank endgame PVE though.

yes end game PVE tank is fun there just is not enough content that requires it.

max_only · September 2018

I didn’t flame you. I’m as cool as ice, permafrost cool.

If you took that “fake tank” thing personally sounds more like you doth protest too much.

Thanks for bumping this Nightblade tank thread though. Even if you don’t understand this is great for exposure

darkstar2084 · September 2018

I had a breton NB sap tank for a while, good times. It was the most fun I ever had tanking, Then that stopped being viable. Rip
so my NB came a battleground veteran instead

aeowulf · September 2018

I went through a period of BG too - stopped when CP was enabled, should prob go back but never really did much there. Too much spam loot in the mail.

I do miss Gilliam though, he was an inspiration to all NB, I feel we as a community have lost someone very important and I hope he can make some positive changes in his new place (for all roles & classes). I would love to know his personal thoughts on the new PTS changes...

Lord_Etrigan · September 2018

Okay. I was at a wine tasting with my cousin Ernesto. Which was mainly reds, and you know I don't like reds, man. But there was a rose that saved the day. It was delightful. And then he tells me about this girl, Emily, that we used to kick it with.

"So, uh, he tells me that she's working as a housekeeper now, right? And she's dating this dude, Carlos, who's a shot caller from across the bay. And she tells him about the dude that she's cleaning for. Right? That he's like this big-shot CEO, that is all retired now, but he's loaded. And so, Carlos and Ernesto are on the same softball team, and they get to talking, right? And here comes the good part. Carlos says, "Yo, man...........

max_only · September 2018

Tried turning my nightblade into a stamina dps.

It’s just not for me. I can’t do it lol, physically. SIGH.

aeowulf · October 2018

max_only wrote: »

Tried turning my nightblade into a stamina dps.

It’s just not for me. I can’t do it lol, physically. SIGH.

That's what I tried and it doesn't mesh with me too well - i just don't enjoy it

actosh · October 2018

aeowulf wrote: »

I fear all remaining NB tanks have commented

Will never happen

Just running short on time, so the reasons why are added later