While runnig ebon with torugs pact and indused ice staff on a back bar with absorb magicka glyph I'm getting a lot of mag sustain allowing me to run crushing shock for ranged iterrupts and saving the hassle of using spell symmetry

Tasear wrote: »

Actually meta uses a frost staff on back bar. It's funny how meta (aka group think works)

It gives you increase duration of enchant debuffs and buffs.

You can apply minor maim in aoe forum.

You can interrupt things.

You can balance resources between two.

There is other things but this is why.

You absolutely should not get the block with magicka passive though.

idk wrote: »

Tri-focus has the taunt. Ancient knowledge is where blocking costs magicka.

So it is Ancient Knowledge that you want to avoid. I do not have points into the taunt for two reasons.

1. Pierce Armor from S&B provides both major Fracture and Breach which increases the groups damage.
2. When need/want to refresh my taunt might be a better time to hold up block.

Pretty much Pierce armor us the best taunt due to the debuffs. I think most of us have Inner Rage (Undaunted skill) for our range taunt since it give us a range choice but also a magicka choice since we could be out of stam (a tank that cannot taunt it not a tank).

I do not know what your interests are with tanking. Clearly you seek knowledge which is what everyone does when they seek to improve. I would recommend saving https://woeler.eu/ to your favorites as it is the most comprehensive bit of tanking information there is for ESO.

That does not mean do not ask questions here and even with all that info his site does not have every bit of information for every situation. That would be way to much. Even the most experienced tanks often learn a new way to handle a fight.

Edit: take that site in small doses. Lots of info. I just suggested it as a good reference.

@idk
I think tri-focus passive is where blocking cost magicka, by the look of this site: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Destruction_Staff
Not sure if it is out-dated since I am not at the game right now.

I've tanked with my first dk character since I joined the game months ago. Have managed through all base game dungeons HM but not vet dlc dungeons yet. I find it annoying if I want to keep both enchant debuff up on double S&B because I have to switch bar very often. I also find it useful sometimes to have range interrupt(like in CoS or MHK white werewolf boss). And I wanna try something new so I decide to roll a new dk tank(just love dk!)

I will check the website. Appreciate it

Syy101 wrote: »

I know the meta tank uses double S&B. I use them as well. But it seems there're ppl who use S&B + staff or even double staves, so I wonder what's the advantage of using staves on a tank, or of using a magicka-oriented tank build.

Elemental drain? S&B taunt already apply major fracture and major breach. Besides many healers already slot elem drain so don't see a point for a tank to use it.

Ranged taunt? We already have inner rage. And heavy attacks with ice staff have cast time and may not be fast enough under some situation.

Blockade for better uptime of crusher enchantment?

Tanks need stamina to block/break free/dodge/interrupt and also need magicka to cast many utility skills, so tanks usually run a hybrid build with stamina slightly larger than magicka(or the other way around) and don't seem to benefit much from a pure magicka build.

I am not mocking a staff tank build or something. I am trying to build a new mag dk staff tank build but I soon find that my skill sets don't seem to differ much from my double S&B tank. I still need skills like chains, talons, dragon blood, shield, volatile armor/Equilibrium, war horn, etc. Maybe swap absorb magic with reflective scale, but that doesn't make much difference. Not to mention I will lose tons of defensive passives if I use a staff.

Any hints?

1- Meta Tank doesn't use double S&B. It's the exact opposite. It's been more than a year since I saw any tank without a staff on back bar. There are many reasons for this, I'll explain as I answer other things on this post. Just to show what it looks like, here is a simple trials Main Tank build. Most people use this kind of build, almost same with small differences but that's generally what a meta tank build looks like in current patch. Don't get stuck on the CP it's just a template. It's an overall mitigation setup that will get you through everything but definitely not optimised. https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=95872
2- Advantage of using a staff on back bar is being able to interrupt from range, applying crusher from range and apply Elemental Drain when needed. It's not for range taunt obviously.
3- There is no such thing as "magicka oriented" or "stamina oriented" tank when it comes to end game builds. We are hybrids. Mostly in health and similar values of Stamina and Magicka.
4- Your skills won't be different as you said because everything will be same except you have a staff with one or two destro staff utility skills on back bar.
5- Absorb Magic is absolutely garbage, don't slot it at all unless you actually want to absorb a projectile, which is something completely optional at this point in the game where we can mitigate so much damage thanks to CP. For example, Rakkhat doesn't hit as hard as he used to so we stopped using Absorb Magic there. Only place to use it currently is against Z'Maja and even then it's completely optional. I've made a video a while ago explaining why it's not as good as it looks when it comes to the block cost reduction and block mitigation. It's not even noticable, most tanks stopped using it years ago.
6- You won't lose much defensive as opposed to what majority of tanks think. When you look at the passives, you'll see that there is actually not much difference. 1h/s has 20% block mitigation and 36% block cost reduction. Frost Staff has the same values. Only advantage of 1h/s is that it provides 15% extra mitigation against projectiles and moving faster while blocking. Other than that, only difference in damage taken from a melee attack (majority of the damage you'll be taking as a tank) is the resistance values from your shield. Resistances are not as important as most people think and don't do as much difference in damage taken. It's barely noticable so you can go for Frost Staff on your back bar safely.

Here are some corrections to previous posts in this thread:

It gives you increase duration of enchant debuffs and buffs.

It doesn't. Enchant duration cannot be increased in any way currently.

You can apply minor maim in aoe forum.

Blockade is one of the worst ways to apply Minor Maim. Every ability in this game has a specific chance to apply status effects. AOE Damage Over Time abilities (such as Blockade) have only 1% chance to apply status effect, 2% while on destro bar. Since tanks don't use any AOE abilities from destro staff except Blockade, this statement is not true.

Magicka blocking part is already adressed and I can confirm that you should never take that passive.

An extra information you might want to have. Ice is usually the preferred choice but there will be times you want to use Lightning Staff. In a run with mostly stamina DDs, in order to support them and have them benefit from the Exploiter passive (10% damage increase against Off Balanced enemies) your group will want Blockade of Storms. This usually comes from a healer but not always. Those are the times you want to run it. You will lose some defense obviously but keep in mind that Stamina DDs are used mostly in older trials which are less difficult in terms of damage taken and tanking in general so don't worry too much about it. Again, there is no point in running Blockade of Storms in a run where you have only Magicka DDs because they don't heavy attack at all and do not benefit from the Exploiter passive so you can keep Ice Staff and continue to enjoy utilities while keeping your tankiness high.

There isn't a higher revelation behind it. The benefit of a frost staff, is that you can use it to restore your magicka.
And a frost staff is the best choice for damage shield tanks, which got even more viable with this patch. Last patch, my biggest issue was sustain because shields are super expensive. Since I discovered how viable frost staves are, my tanking has improved by so much. I can now can tank all the things that gave me hard times.

In many situations it also frees up a slot. I found taunt heavy attacks to be absolutely sufficent in most situations. (Not so much in vHRC for example, where there are many dangerous adds to be taunted and heavy attacks often don't hit what you want them to hit)

On NB Tanks, Ice Staff backbar is pretty much needed to sustain as block sustain using just one resource is too poor for NBs.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

I totally understand why not to use absorb magic but your video is bad. You have 4+ ads in a 20 minute video. It takes you till after the second ad, at the 11+ minute mark, to get to the point where you explain the reason. No reason to see you build the build. You ought to have had the build ready and the video could have been less than half the length.

Yeah I agree, video is unnecessarily long. Wanted to make sure everything about the build is shown clearly so there are no questions in comments afterwards about it. But yeah, it could be shorter indeed. About the ads, just use AdBlock if you don't want to see them.

I use a frost staff backbar on my NB tank. It allows for good crusher uptimes, snares and immobilizes mobs, and saves me stam by using magicka to block with when use Silver Leash to pull mobs in.