I have a feeling there's gonna be a better sap tank when the necro comes out..

darkblue5 wrote: »

So NB tanking is in a bit better place but more resembles DK tanking.

This one statement is just.........UUUUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHH.

Every other style of tank has been nerfed to the ground and made into nothing but discount DK Tanks.

Sap Tanks
Blazing Shield Tanks
Dodge Tanks
Max Magic Shield Tanks

CAN I GET SOME ORIGINALITY IN MY TANKING PLZ? If I wanted to play like a DK Tank, I'd BE a DK Tank. What's the point of having different classes when they all are suppose to play the same way? It's stupid design and even with this potential class redesigns, I doubt it'll be "good". I have absolutely 0 faith in ZOS doing even a semi-decent job at it and while this is one of the times I would absolutely LOVE to be proven wrong, 5 years of experience tell me otherwise.

Long gone bud.

I had a sap tank once, but then it got destroyed and he's now my crafter :'( . I think the Morrowind update 2 years ago was when the playstyle got killed.

Silver_Strider wrote: »

darkblue5 wrote: »

So NB tanking is in a bit better place but more resembles DK tanking.

This one statement is just.........UUUUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHH.

Every other style of tank has been nerfed to the ground and made into nothing but discount DK Tanks.

Sap Tanks
Blazing Shield Tanks
Dodge Tanks
Max Magic Shield Tanks

CAN I GET SOME ORIGINALITY IN MY TANKING PLZ? If I wanted to play like a DK Tank, I'd BE a DK Tank. What's the point of having different classes when they all are suppose to play the same way? It's stupid design and even with this potential class redesigns, I doubt it'll be "good". I have absolutely 0 faith in ZOS doing even a semi-decent job at it and while this is one of the times I would absolutely LOVE to be proven wrong, 5 years of experience tell me otherwise.

Saptanking was how I got started in tanking. My first tank was a saptank. And boy, it was fun.

Sap Essence did AoE damage and healed me (and my allies). And that heal scaled with the number of targets hit. So we had a heal that scaled with the number of enemies on me.

And then Siphoning Strikes back then had a chance on direct damage ticks to return a hefty amount of resources. Each enemy hit by each cast of Sap thus had a chance of granting me resources. So we had a means of resource sustain that scaled with the number of enemies on me.

If I had a large number of enemies beating up on me, I was literally invincible. My magicka, stamina, and health returns all scaled up, and I could just stand there, spam sap, and never die and never run out of resources! It was FUN!

But let's be real here: It was also terrible game design.

Why need a healer, when I outhealed most healers? Why bother with DDs when I, as a tank, would often out-DPS PUG DDs? Why did I need anyone? I could literally solo vet dungeons with a saptank.

One of the changes that ZOS has made over the years--and this is a 2-pronged effort in both combat mechanics and dungeon design--is to force tanks to actually be tanky. And this is, frankly, good for the game.

So let's go through your examples of "dead" tank types...

1. Healing (sap) tanks: If a tank can survive through just self-healing, then what this also means is that if a healer focuses healing on a tank, that tank can just AFK and not die. There needs to be something more. This is why there has been so much content "damage creep" over the years. In vMHK, you have trash mobs that do as much damage as DLC trials bosses with hits whose base damage values exceed 100K. These are must-block (or must-dodge) hits. If you block it, you'll lose about 20K health and will need to be healed up before you can take another. A tank's ability to self-heal just means less reliance on a healer to babysit them (and I can run vMHK without a healer), but that healing is not--and should not--be their primary means of survival, because for that 100K hit, the healing only covers recovering the 20K that I lost--the other 80K is block and resistances.
   • Even if we still had the old Siphoning Attacks, even if there were no changes in combat design at all, saptanking would only be viable in legacy content. The level of incoming damage in trials and in newer vet dungeons simply requires a lot more from the tank than just healing and resource sustain.
2. Shield tanks: Shield tanks don't work. Because shields don't benefit from block mitigation. They've never had block mitigation. So in that sense, shield tanks had never worked. The reason people used shield tanks once upon a time was because the base damage values from enemies were so inconsequentially low back in the day. Back when bosses would hit for 20K, a 10K shield actually meant something. Now, when bosses hit in excess of 100K, the same 10K shield is a pittance. Even a 25K shield would be irrelevant. When I use Absorb Magic on Z'Maja's heavy attack, which effectively gives me a shield in excess of 20K, the best I can say is that "it slightly dulls the sting".
3. Dodge tanks: Um. What exactly is a dodge tank, anyway?
   • If you're talking about passive dodging via Evasion, good riddance. RNG dodge is not a good combat mechanic. Not to mention, it's never been reliable. If I get lucky, I might RNG-dodge a hard-hitting heavy attack. But I can't plan/build around being lucky. I need to build for the possibility that I get back luck and don't get RNG dodges on anything important, in which case, what was the point of the RNG dodge in the first place?
   • If you're talking about active roll dodging, then this is most certainly not dead, and it is in fact growing in popularity. With the high amounts of damage in newer content, roll dodging is pretty much the norm these days. And in some places, it's required. If you block a Centurion heavy attack instead of dodging it while the defile is active in Frostvault HM, you've pretty much signed your death sentence. Although, here too, ZOS is wary of dodge roll trivializing mechanics, which is why Nocturnal's Favor from Z'Maja cannot be dodged.

So what exactly do people mean when they say "DK tank"? I mean, DK is not a playstyle. Do they mean block tank? If so, then let's take a moment to look at why ZOS chose blocking as the primary means of survival for a tank...

It's because in order for block to be most effective, you need to build for it. It means sacrificing jewelry enchants and/or armor traits for block cost. It means restricting your weapon choice to 1H/S or ice staff. And because blocking stops regeneration of the blocking resource, it means players have to be smart about it. In exchange for all that, blocking provides an amazing level of survival and mitigation.

If, for example, shield-tanking were to be made viable for real tanking, then shields need to be much more effective. But it needs to be done in such a way that shields become that effective only for someone who makes substantial concessions in building for a tank. How would you go about doing that?

(The elephant in the room here is dodge rolling, since that's a skill not exclusive to tank builds and the mitigation from it is 100%, making it even better than block. It's why every serious tank has to learn dodge roll timings. It wouldn't surprise me if undodgeable mechanics like Nocturnal's Favor or the use of strong DoTs like Ablative Fallout become more commonplace in the future as a result.)

Unfortunately the SAP Tank is long gone....

Technically, if you use Leeching Plate + Bahrahas Curse + Malubeth you can sap tank with any class in the game in PvE. Obviously not the same thing as before, but that playstyle with infinite stamina is dead.

If you want off healing as a tank, Warden is pretty neat since their main heal also heals everyone else, and it's a big burst heal.

If you want to solo open world PvE, you can make it work since it's not as intensive as dungeons.

code65536 wrote: »

Silver_Strider wrote: »

darkblue5 wrote: »

So NB tanking is in a bit better place but more resembles DK tanking.

This one statement is just.........UUUUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHH.

Every other style of tank has been nerfed to the ground and made into nothing but discount DK Tanks.

Sap Tanks
Blazing Shield Tanks
Dodge Tanks
Max Magic Shield Tanks

CAN I GET SOME ORIGINALITY IN MY TANKING PLZ? If I wanted to play like a DK Tank, I'd BE a DK Tank. What's the point of having different classes when they all are suppose to play the same way? It's stupid design and even with this potential class redesigns, I doubt it'll be "good". I have absolutely 0 faith in ZOS doing even a semi-decent job at it and while this is one of the times I would absolutely LOVE to be proven wrong, 5 years of experience tell me otherwise.

Saptanking was how I got started in tanking. My first tank was a saptank. And boy, it was fun.

Sap Essence did AoE damage and healed me (and my allies). And that heal scaled with the number of targets hit. So we had a heal that scaled with the number of enemies on me.

And then Siphoning Strikes back then had a chance on direct damage ticks to return a hefty amount of resources. Each enemy hit by each cast of Sap thus had a chance of granting me resources. So we had a means of resource sustain that scaled with the number of enemies on me.

If I had a large number of enemies beating up on me, I was literally invincible. My magicka, stamina, and health returns all scaled up, and I could just stand there, spam sap, and never die and never run out of resources! It was FUN!

But let's be real here: It was also terrible game design.

Why need a healer, when I outhealed most healers? Why bother with DDs when I, as a tank, would often out-DPS PUG DDs? Why did I need anyone? I could literally solo vet dungeons with a saptank.

One of the changes that ZOS has made over the years--and this is a 2-pronged effort in both combat mechanics and dungeon design--is to force tanks to actually be tanky. And this is, frankly, good for the game.

So let's go through your examples of "dead" tank types...

1. Healing (sap) tanks: If a tank can survive through just self-healing, then what this also means is that if a healer focuses healing on a tank, that tank can just AFK and not die. There needs to be something more. This is why there has been so much content "damage creep" over the years. In vMHK, you have trash mobs that do as much damage as DLC trials bosses with hits whose base damage values exceed 100K. These are must-block (or must-dodge) hits. If you block it, you'll lose about 20K health and will need to be healed up before you can take another. A tank's ability to self-heal just means less reliance on a healer to babysit them (and I can run vMHK without a healer), but that healing is not--and should not--be their primary means of survival, because for that 100K hit, the healing only covers recovering the 20K that I lost--the other 80K is block and resistances.
   • Even if we still had the old Siphoning Attacks, even if there were no changes in combat design at all, saptanking would only be viable in legacy content. The level of incoming damage in trials and in newer vet dungeons simply requires a lot more from the tank than just healing and resource sustain.
2. Shield tanks: Shield tanks don't work. Because shields don't benefit from block mitigation. They've never had block mitigation. So in that sense, shield tanks had never worked. The reason people used shield tanks once upon a time was because the base damage values from enemies were so inconsequentially low back in the day. Back when bosses would hit for 20K, a 10K shield actually meant something. Now, when bosses hit in excess of 100K, the same 10K shield is a pittance. Even a 25K shield would be irrelevant. When I use Absorb Magic on Z'Maja's heavy attack, which effectively gives me a shield in excess of 20K, the best I can say is that "it slightly dulls the sting".
3. Dodge tanks: Um. What exactly is a dodge tank, anyway?
   • If you're talking about passive dodging via Evasion, good riddance. RNG dodge is not a good combat mechanic. Not to mention, it's never been reliable. If I get lucky, I might RNG-dodge a hard-hitting heavy attack. But I can't plan/build around being lucky. I need to build for the possibility that I get back luck and don't get RNG dodges on anything important, in which case, what was the point of the RNG dodge in the first place?
   • If you're talking about active roll dodging, then this is most certainly not dead, and it is in fact growing in popularity. With the high amounts of damage in newer content, roll dodging is pretty much the norm these days. And in some places, it's required. If you block a Centurion heavy attack instead of dodging it while the defile is active in Frostvault HM, you've pretty much signed your death sentence. Although, here too, ZOS is wary of dodge roll trivializing mechanics, which is why Nocturnal's Favor from Z'Maja cannot be dodged.

So what exactly do people mean when they say "DK tank"? I mean, DK is not a playstyle. Do they mean block tank? If so, then let's take a moment to look at why ZOS chose blocking as the primary means of survival for a tank...

It's because in order for block to be most effective, you need to build for it. It means sacrificing jewelry enchants and/or armor traits for block cost. It means restricting your weapon choice to 1H/S or ice staff. And because blocking stops regeneration of the blocking resource, it means players have to be smart about it. In exchange for all that, blocking provides an amazing level of survival and mitigation.

If, for example, shield-tanking were to be made viable for real tanking, then shields need to be much more effective. But it needs to be done in such a way that shields become that effective only for someone who makes substantial concessions in building for a tank. How would you go about doing that?

(The elephant in the room here is dodge rolling, since that's a skill not exclusive to tank builds and the mitigation from it is 100%, making it even better than block. It's why every serious tank has to learn dodge roll timings. It wouldn't surprise me if undodgeable mechanics like Nocturnal's Favor or the use of strong DoTs like Ablative Fallout become more commonplace in the future as a result.)

Poor design or not, removing those playstyles didn't do anything positive for the game either, it just removed Tanking option that were available and gave you the ultimatum of "DK Tank or Bust". Even Warden Tanks have seen several nerfs and while some were understandable, like the Shimmering Shield Nerf, others were completely unnecessary, like Arctic Blast. Even if they only worked in Legacy content, it would at least help with the Duty Finder issue of never having enough tanks to run content as now there's some actual Tanks. Removing flavor and narrowing the scope of tanking has made it bland and with every nerf to Tanking, it drives more people away than it does towards.

Your argument against Healing Tanks is that a Tank that can self heal can just AFK when the healer focus them, which isn't true as mechanics were still in play that could 1 shot even the most sturdy of tanks. The old Sap Tank builds could perma block because Siphoning Strikes completely covered you in terms of blocking and you could Sap with near impunity. The only problem was that it didn't have enough Self Healing when it came to 1v1 confrontation or multiple enemies were spread around to far that Sap Tanking was ineffective. Even now, Tanks are fully expected to be able to self sustain enough on their own to heal themselves should **** hit the fan and they're required to rez. Then, we have those 1Tank/3DPS groups that are still everywhere and really what has changed by removing Sap Tanks?

As for Shield Tanks, it's not that the playstyle wasn't really a thing but rather that ZOS kept nerfing Shields that prevented it from being a thing. I remember when Blazing Shield Templars in PvP were among the more annoying playstyles to come across; 70k Health and a damage shield that just burnt thru you like a hot knife thru butter but instead of giving Templar Tanks the love they needed to make that playstyle viable, ZOS nerfed Blazing Shield into obscurity. Max Magic Shield Sorcs also died off as Tanks once Shield strength got tied in with max Health and made those shields hardly worth anything as bosses would rip thru them instantly now whereas before, they could take a beating. Then there's the other nerf shields have had over the years, like the 6 second duration nerf that made Shields a hell of a lot less potent when they used to last 20+ seconds. For Shield Tanking to be a thing, I think that shields should be made into passive thing. You apply a shield and they provide the same mitigation as blocking, draining resources when getting it and disabling when you're out of resources. Alter Invigorating to be the Damage Shield equivalent of Sturdy (or just tack it onto Sturdy trait) and introduce a new essence rune for Damage Shield Play Enchantments (they've introduced Runes and Alchemy mats before so this really shouldn't be a huge stretch either). As for how to balance this against natural blocking, make it so that shields also naturally drain resources for being active, making Damage Shield a bigger resource drain than natural blocking but with slightly more freedom since you don't have permablock and be unable to retaliate

While I wasn't a fan of the RNG Dodge Tanking method either, it's more so that it helped newbie tanks to learn. Histbark used to be one of the best sets for new tanks to use because it offered a ton of extra resistances as well as gave them some mild sustain help via the passive dodge feature built into it that made it a no brainer to help teach tanking but now people are just thrown to the wolves when it comes to tanking and I don't really feel that to be a good thing. The fact that it also took NB Tank's only remaining niche away just sort of soured it out for me as well since its literally the only thing that NB Tank offered at that point that removing it was just another kick in the nads that NB Tanks didn't need.

IDK, seeing so much wasted potential has just left me really jaded about the Tank role in ESO. I've never been much for Tanking in MMOs but ESO takes the cake as the worst game for Tanking as ZOS constantly make an already painful job and turn the screws to it every chance they get.

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Poor design or not, removing those playstyles didn't do anything positive for the game either, it just removed Tanking option that were available and gave you the ultimatum of "DK Tank or Bust". Even Warden Tanks have seen several nerfs and while some were understandable, like the Shimmering Shield Nerf, others were completely unnecessary, like Arctic Blast. Even if they only worked in Legacy content, it would at least help with the Duty Finder issue of never having enough tanks to run content as now there's some actual Tanks. Removing flavor and narrowing the scope of tanking has made it bland and with every nerf to Tanking, it drives more people away than it does towards.

Their "removal" came largely by way of content that those tanking styles could no longer support. As I noted, even if the game mechanics had not changed, none of those styles would be able to survive modern content. When I saptanked, I was basically a DPS, except in heavy armor and with some more health. Today, when I tank, the role feels unique. And, in many ways, more engaging, as the demands on the tank are increased. Good tanking is more important than ever and the tank is now the centerpiece of mechanics. Those are all positives.

Silver_Strider wrote: »

Your argument against Healing Tanks is that a Tank that can self heal can just AFK when the healer focus them, which isn't true as mechanics were still in play that could 1 shot even the most sturdy of tanks.

Exactly. Blocking was still the primary means of mitigation even back then. And self-healing is still used by tanks today. So, then, what's really different?

When I first DK-tanked, I just stood there, held block, spammed igneous, and... that was it. But the Morrowind changes affected everyone, not just nightblades and Siphoning Attacks. The return from igneous is no longer tied to stamina pool, and is lower as a result. My stamina pool is lower in general because new content demands more health (and because it no longer affects the igneous return). And I can't spam igneous because like I could pre-Morrowind it's expensive and magicka sustain was hit hard. ZOS wanted to kill permablocking, and they did. No matter what class you tank on, you need to drop block and get heavy attacks in. It's not a nightblade thing. Not a DK thing. It's something every tank has to do because they, for better or for worse, killed permablocking.

I guess my main quibble with what you say is that you liken everything to "DK tanking"... what does that even mean? It's just tanking. And it's not really that different than what tanking used to be. You still block important stuff. The damage creep in content has led to higher health (I used to tank with 24K, and now I tank with almost 40K), bigger penalties for missed blocks, and increased the importance of dodge rolls. The sustain changes (for everyone, not just tanks) means no more "easy mode" sustain and more care has to be given to things like working in heavy attacks for sustain.

I've seen a video of someone tanking vCR +3 on a nightblade. I have a friend who's tanked it on a sorc. I run with someone who tanks it on a warden. And having watched those other three classes tank vCR +3, and comparing it to how I tank it on my DK, I'd say that the DK is arguably the hardest. The Warden's Shimmering Shield makes makes Nocturnal's Favor much more forgiving. The sorc has a much stronger and reliable burst self-heal and can streak out of Favor+cone combos. Even the nightblade has advantages over the DK: superior self-healing and better mobility. The only thing that the DK has in its favor is better group support--chains for the small add spawns and Engulfing. But in terms of dealing with the mechanics, they are probably the worst out of those four classes.

Silver_Strider wrote: »

IDK, seeing so much wasted potential has just left me really jaded about the Tank role in ESO. I've never been much for Tanking in MMOs but ESO takes the cake as the worst game for Tanking as ZOS constantly make an already painful job and turn the screws to it every chance they get.

I disagree and think that tanking is in a better place now than it has been in a while, and I'm saying that as someone who's tanked everything. There are some pain points, though. It seems like the dungeon team thinks of sadistic new ways to torture tanks each patch and at times the stuff that's being thrown at me feels overwhelming (ahem, effluvium+ablative in Frostvault HM... that *** isn't fun for anyone). But on the whole, I'm pretty okay with how things are.

The act if using sap to tank with siphoning attacks to fuel both recoveries is dead.

However NB tanks are not dead. Just go ebon/torugs/bloodspawn infused jewely with reduced cd potion glyphs and decisive 1h, infused frost staff back bar with crusher on a nord.

Keep refreshing path and frost wall down and use the new tank heal shadow cloak for big incoming hits, keep heroic slash rolling, use sap essense or swallow soul every 6 seconds, pop pot when off CD and invigorating drain on snb bar when you are free to do so.

Enjoy 38 second warhorns.

You can still do it just fine. The main problem with the spec is that past nerfs cut into its sustain, but now you can nullify all sustain issues by using 3 Infused cost reduction glyphs on jewels. On an Argonian NB that not only gives you insane resource sustain, but tons of ulti too.