PVP Health Tank Builds - Templar's and DK's

armeegrun · March 2019

All,

I have been gaming ESO for several years now, recently and I would say finally branching out into PVP. What I am having trouble with, and would seek some advice on is a counter to these Tanky builds that are unkilliable, but can seem to be capable of killing numerous opponents at the same time. I had the most frustrating PVP weekend, I have a few PVP DPS toons, a MAGSORC, and MAG DK, a STAM DK, a Bow NB and a STAMPLAR.

The STAM DK only puts out about 3600 Weapon damage, over 1K Stam regen and 23K and change phys and spell resistance, unbuffed. Penetration from the Champion points itself is 4308, plus the weapons are sharpened to add more, as I thought I would need it to fight these tanky health builds. Thus far, these DK's and Templars take ZERO damage from me, and can still kill me in an instant. When I say an instant, I literally mean in a second or two. I was standing outside a keep, when suddenly these attacks were on me, and this DK critical rushed me and I was dead before I even knew what was happening. This occurred all weekend, the only two toons I had moderate success with was a NB bow, gank style, played by staying out of the affray and on the edge of battle, and a MAG SORC, which did so so because she runs RESTO back bar.

I ran into a guy later that wanted to dual me, I noticed he had 61K Health, was a DK with sword and board front bar, and a two handed back bar. How are these players able to manage such high health, and still pull enough damage to destroy a half dozen or so straight damage dealers? When in Cyrodil, all you have is roving packs of these unkillable tank builds camping on keeps waiting for you to leave. It's not very fun when every five steps outside the keep these health tank builds kill you. Any ideas at all from anyone? I try to talk to these players later when I run into some of them, they usually have something smart to say but this one guy told me he is running Plague Doctor and Green Pact, with two different monster set items that each give additional resistances. This gives me another question, how do those builds have any DPS to kill numerous opponents?

This is not a complaining thread, I am legitimately attempting to find out a few things. First, am I doing something wrong, are my builds garbage, or, is there just no way to defeat these players. This then raises another question, do we all try to make these builds?

Aznox · March 2019

Those "Unkillable tanks that can also kill players" are just experienced players combining two things to their benefit :
- The skill gap : no miracle here, just practice a lot and hope you own personal ceiling isn't too low.
- The knowledge gap : understanding and using the strongest mechanics in the game (sets, buffs, etc..). For this you can spends tens of hours testing, reading, understanding, and join "knowledge circles" to exchange with other players having the same mindset.

Here's a recent video from one of these players, there's about a dozen things to learn just by watching it a few times and paying attention to details :

https://youtube.com/watch?v=LixQi9v57Yk&feature=youtu.be

(edit : back to the post title : first thing you'll learn in the video is that having 60k health is useless)

WillhelmBlack · March 2019

Aznox wrote: »

Those "Unkillable tanks that can also kill players" are just experienced players combining two things to their benefit :
- The skill gap : no miracle here, just practice a lot and hope you own personal ceiling isn't too low.
- The knowledge gap : understanding and using the strongest mechanics in the game (sets, buffs, etc..). For this you can spends tens of hours testing, reading, understanding, and join "knowledge circles" to exchange with other players having the same mindset.

Here's a recent video from one of these players, there's about a dozen things to learn just by watching it a few times and paying attention to details :

https://youtube.com/watch?v=LixQi9v57Yk&feature=youtu.be

(edit : back to the post title : first thing you'll learn in the video is that having 60k health is useless)

That's quite a sizeable skill gap in that vid.

armeegrun · March 2019

Details like using terrain, and obstacles and such. All good points that I have noticed these players do all the time. Other issues are I see is that with as much health and resources they have, they don't need a whole lot of raw damage to kill you, just a few good wacks and then when the opponent has spent his or her own resources, healing or attacking, drop a heavy on them? SO I am thinking one of two things here, a glass cannon or just a similar build to take them out. I have built an ORC Templar build similar to what they are using, she has only 27 K health but the resistance and resources are over OP. She can stand head to head with these players and get kills. I now want to figure out how to build a medium armor damage toon, or light armor mag toon that can also take these players out. So far I haven't come up with something workable. My best MAG toon is as SORC running NECRO and Spinners, Destro/Resto. But I am thinking that maybe that's not the best gear combo. I put Spinners and Pariah on my MAG DK, thinking I may get a little extra Phys and Spell resistance help, but that combo isn't doing much better against these types. More research is needed I think.

armeegrun · March 2019

I think a detailed analysis product of the video, player and actions is whats needed here.

The first thing I notice is this player has what, maybe 30K Health and STAM? Maybe 10K Magicka. But the thing I notice is the regen on these resources, they regenerate awful fast. He or she is able to attack, heal, buff etc, and regen resources easily. All while moving and using terrain/obstacles to keep from being hit.

However, if it is skill and experience, then all of those other players are just bad and inexperienced?

armeegrun · March 2019

I still think I am missing a key fact somewhere, as well as all those other payers I see this one killing...lol

This just frustrates the heck outa me, I am even more confused about the topic now.

Aznox · March 2019

what i mean by "paying attention to detail" :

- the video is slightly accelerated, you can compare buff duration to video timeline.
- look up each skill used on https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Skills
- understand the rotation/patterns in the use of those skills
- distinguish offensive/defensive phases
- pause the video, think about what you would have done next, compare with what he does, especially positioning

keep in mind all of this is possible because, yes, most of the enemies players are bad (in a relative manner) and use of the environment allows to never tank all of them at the same time for more than a few seconds.

Aznox · March 2019

When you have finished with the first video, here's another one :

https://youtube.com/watch?v=NNIUgQnu_uQ

And then there will be another one, and another one, ... don't expect to make any significant progress if you are not willing to invest several hours into this.

armeegrun · March 2019

No issues with looking into this at all. But I like to be in the mix myself to see exactly whats going on when I am close to going down. So far it looks like it's always a sustain issue form me, and then possibly not enough damage, and/or not dropping an Ult at the right time. Another fact I can see, or at least think I see in the video, debuffs are not helpful against these builds.

Waffennacht · March 2019

Someone rocking even 40k health and x2 proc sets will always beat your typical damage dealer 1v1.

The high health (which for many classes also doubles as their heal scale) is impossible to burst through, the focus on Regen stats and sustain means you'll never over come the heals.

I have a sorc health tank PvP build. I've won so much it's gone stale. In CP (I main BGs tho) it's 55k health with an instant 16k heal non crit (12k non crit in BG) (32k in PvE) - you can't beat that, not while having 33k resistance and minor protection/major depending how I set up.

Then you gotta deal with Zaan and sload + roots, snare, stun, poisons, and defile

Not happening

ChefZero · March 2019

armeegrun wrote: »

No issues with looking into this at all. But I like to be in the mix myself to see exactly whats going on when I am close to going down. So far it looks like it's always a sustain issue form me, and then possibly not enough damage, and/or not dropping an Ult at the right time. Another fact I can see, or at least think I see in the video, debuffs are not helpful against these builds.

Depends on if they have access to purge.

CatchMeTrolling · March 2019

There’s a few high health tank builds going around but they rely on proc* sets and debuffs. Really only useful against inexperienced players and xv1ing. Probably can’t kill them but I’m not dying to them either.

Veg · March 2019

Here's your guide to killing tanks

armeegrun · March 2019

Waffennacht wrote: »

Someone rocking even 40k health and x2 proc sets will always beat your typical damage dealer 1v1.

The high health (which for many classes also doubles as their heal scale) is impossible to burst through, the focus on Regen stats and sustain means you'll never over come the heals.

I have a sorc health tank PvP build. I've won so much it's gone stale. In CP (I main BGs tho) it's 55k health with an instant 16k heal non crit (12k non crit in BG) (32k in PvE) - you can't beat that, not while having 33k resistance and minor protection/major depending how I set up.

Then you gotta deal with Zaan and sload + roots, snare, stun, poisons, and defile

Not happening

Yep, I think I may have run in to you out there, or more specifically, been run over by you out there...lol

I agree with you, you just can't over power those heals, resources etc. I think the only way is to Zerg builds like that. I just built my Templar into one of these builds. I need to transmute numerous pieces, but even as she stands now, is hard as eff to take down, gotta be at least 4 or 5 opponents. Can't wait to get some more legendary tempers and transmute crystals...lol

Asardes · March 2019

Someone who stacks 50-60K has sacrificed all other stats, meaning he has very low magicka/stamina and spell/weapon damage. Since both damage abilities and most heals scale of the latter that means that such players won't do much damage. All classes except Templar also have heals that scale off maximum health: DK - Green Dragon Blood, Sorcerer - Clannfear (also adds 8% more HP from class passive), Warden - Arctic Blast/Polar Wind, Nightblade - Dark Cloak. This means that even if you manage to get such a player relatively low, he can still bounce back with those. For example you think you have just bursted that DK? He just pops Green Dragon Blood, then Spell Wall or Magma Shell and you can't do anything about it. There's also a passive for Stage 3 vampirism - Undeath that reduces the damage in execute range. So such players only "tank" less experienced players, making them use up their resources against them, while their buddies pick them off when they're out and/or distracted.

You can reach that much health by running blue food with a combination of Plague Doctor, Green Pact and a monster set that gives a HP bonus like Thurvokun (also useful for debuffing attacking players), Lord mundus, on a race with a high HP stat like Nord or Imperial, going 7 heavy or 1 light/1 medium/5 heavy (Undaunted Mettle passive), slotting various abilities that increase HP be them class or Structured Entropy. If you get killed by such players on their own it says a lot about your bad build and lack of expertise. If you keep attacking them instead of their 20-25K HP buddies that actually heal and/or do damage it's entirely your fault. The main counter for those builds is CC/Stun (since they probably have low stamina pool they're susceptible to them), bleed/oblivion damage (aren't mitigated by resistance), and defile to prevent healing.

Personally I don't like pure tank builds, but for melee I prefer those who can deal relatively high damage but also have good mitigation (~25K resistance, running 1H+S on one bar), sustain (1.5-1.8K primary stat recovery) and 23-25K HP in no-CP (27-29K in CP).