I'd love to play as tank, but the endgame community is DK or bust and I only play my main (sorc), which zos decided that is not good at tanking.

Maybe if all the classes had the necro treatment, with nice crowd control, pulling ads skills and useful debuffs?

As a newer player to ESO. (2 weeks now) I was trying to find information on low level tanking in ESO, and I was not very successful in finding information for how I would do low level tanking. After reading threads like this one, it does not encourage new players to even try at tanking. Most of what I have found seems to indicate to wait till after level 50, then gather gear and spec for it.

The catch 22 for a newer player is that you do not know the dungeons, and you don't want to go in to learn the dungeon as a brand new tank if your going in a PUG. so your more likely to queue as a DPS so that you can learn the dungeon.

I tanked in WoW (Pally) for a couple of years before Rift came out.

When I switched to Rift, Tanking was much easier, and you had the ability to switch between roles, specs, and armor sets with macro's. The game was designed to allow this. I remember one 10 man raid that I would tank boss #1. Heal for boss #2. DPS for boss #3, then back to 2nd tank for boss #4.

Right now I am thinking that it is probably best to level a ranged DPS for my first 50, then worry about a tank class later on.

Jeremy wrote: »

That's mostly just an issue for tanks involved in endgame guilds doing veteran raids. They have very specific demands of their members so they can be more "efficient". But for the average dungeon there is a vast assortment of different builds you can use to tank with.

Can you define average dungeon?

I know the normal dungeons can be done with 4 DPS.
I know the normal early DLC dungeons can be done with 4 DPS (that can self heal), or with a tank and 3 DPS or 3 DPS and a healer.
I know the normal later DLC dungeons can be done with the regular tank, healer, 2 DPS setup, and the tank doesn't need to be optimized.

But things change when you do Veteran.

So like the former, you need a decently setup tank to do what we call the "1" dungeons. These are dungeons with a I at the end of their name, vanilla/non-DLC dungeons. You can get by without a monster set, or any set at all, but you probably want people at least somewhat doing their roles.

This progressively changes. When you do '2' dungeons or those that end in II. You need a tad bit more focus. Sure.. your idea of a half-DPSing Tank can still run these.

They MIGHT even be able to handle some of the early DLC vets.

Definitely not the later ones. But here's the issue. Both the early (White Gold Tower, ect) will appear with the later (Frostvault, ect) in the queues. They will also appear with the pledges.

I don't see how you can justify a 8-12k DPS tank in those situations. And personally I don't really see those dungeons as 'endgame' as much as Trials ought to be. We might differ on opinion there. But you'll have to make that clear since I'm not going to assume.


Now on another note (this references the entire thread, and not the one quoted, so consider the following a 2nd post without double posting).

These games tend to have a Tanking Paradox. When you have a thread pop up like this. Its usually in reference to the early to mid game level of play. Judging by the queue times. Its safe to say there is near 1:1 Parity of tanks to healers. Healers outnumber the tanks by about 10-20%. But the percentage is negligible due to how quickly dungeons are completed.

The issue is when you queue as DPS. By the queue times there's about 4-6x more DPS than Tanks. I don't have the exact numbers, but you can derive a ratio based on average time it takes to complete the dungeon and apply it to queue times. We know tanks are instant, healers are near instant, and DPS is about 20-40 minutes. We also know that 2 DPS for every tank that enters the queue enter the dungeon.

For a perfect world, there should be an equal number of healers to tanks and 2 DPS for every tank. At this ratio, there would be queue times for DPS in the 2-4 minute range. I'd say that's a great goal to shoot for.

So what's this paradox I mentioned before? Well we think we need more tanks. When in reality, we kinda don't. You see... here's what happens if you make a tank.

You create a tank, get to 50/160. And you have instant queues across the board. Sounds wonderful if you like tanking. And lets say you do in fact enjoy it. Lets assume perfect conditions here. So you level quickly because queuetimes are low. You gear quickly again, because queuetimes are low.

What happens when you're geared out? Lets say you do trials. So here's where things get interesting. When you enter the phase of doing trials, here's the new set of problems:

First one is you leave the queues. If you've got gear, and you've worked it all out. Why do you need to queue?

Second one, you have to find a trial group. One issue I've seen in many games is tanks aren't in high demand in multigroup content. Especially considering the ratios needed change. In groups, you need the 1:1:2 ratio. In trials from my understanding is 1:1:4 (two tanks, two healers, 8 dps). And being as DPS take longer to get to where they need to be. They become rarer than tanks at that end of play.

And finally, lets assume there was a spot for you as a tank. Once you're done with progression, end game gearing. Its time to roll another character. You gonna do another tank? DPS tend to have a much higher variety of options available to them.

So you can see how interesting it can be trying to make tanks more 'fun' to play. I'm not opposed to making tanking more fun. But at the end of the day, even if you did that. They'd still have instant queues that take them out of the queuing system entirely. Only to realize it might be for a tougher situation at the end of the day.

Being as not everyone who plays is even interested in doing trials. I have a solution that would aid everyone. So requiring 3 tanks in trials doesn't fix that issue I brought up. As i said, not everyone even wants to do multigroup content. So lets throw that out as a non-fix.

The solution is to address the ratio of leveling/gearing DPS in the queues. There's an easy way to deal with this. A dynamic grouping mechanism.

So when the queue times for DPS get above 10 minutes, start allowing more and more DPS into the group. So a 4 man group becomes 5 man. And do this until there is up to 8 people in the group (if the ratio is still skewed after that, then there is another underlying problem). For each person added to the group, increase the base HP of the mobs by 50% to account for the extra DPS. And this doesn't apply to premade groups.

This would help two issues. It would bring queue times down for DPS and by proxy that would increase the number of DPS at endgame level. Of course I would combine this with a tank incentive (or any role that is short be incentivized). I got this idea from FFXIV who will give bonus awards to those playing roles that appear to be in shortage. That seems to help alleviate their tank shortage issues a bit.

But again, I stress that making the role more fun is probably a good idea too. I know a few of my friends get bored tanking simply because its taunt and block. More QoL improvements to help their role would be appreciated by many I believe.

Riejael wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

That's mostly just an issue for tanks involved in endgame guilds doing veteran raids. They have very specific demands of their members so they can be more "efficient". But for the average dungeon there is a vast assortment of different builds you can use to tank with.

Can you define average dungeon?

I know the normal dungeons can be done with 4 DPS.
I know the normal early DLC dungeons can be done with 4 DPS (that can self heal), or with a tank and 3 DPS or 3 DPS and a healer.
I know the normal later DLC dungeons can be done with the regular tank, healer, 2 DPS setup, and the tank doesn't need to be optimized.

But things change when you do Veteran.

So like the former, you need a decently setup tank to do what we call the "1" dungeons. These are dungeons with a I at the end of their name, vanilla/non-DLC dungeons. You can get by without a monster set, or any set at all, but you probably want people at least somewhat doing their roles.

This progressively changes. When you do '2' dungeons or those that end in II. You need a tad bit more focus. Sure.. your idea of a half-DPSing Tank can still run these.

They MIGHT even be able to handle some of the early DLC vets.

Definitely not the later ones. But here's the issue. Both the early (White Gold Tower, ect) will appear with the later (Frostvault, ect) in the queues. They will also appear with the pledges.

I don't see how you can justify a 8-12k DPS tank in those situations. And personally I don't really see those dungeons as 'endgame' as much as Trials ought to be. We might differ on opinion there. But you'll have to make that clear since I'm not going to assume.


Now on another note (this references the entire thread, and not the one quoted, so consider the following a 2nd post without double posting).

These games tend to have a Tanking Paradox. When you have a thread pop up like this. Its usually in reference to the early to mid game level of play. Judging by the queue times. Its safe to say there is near 1:1 Parity of tanks to healers. Healers outnumber the tanks by about 10-20%. But the percentage is negligible due to how quickly dungeons are completed.

The issue is when you queue as DPS. By the queue times there's about 4-6x more DPS than Tanks. I don't have the exact numbers, but you can derive a ratio based on average time it takes to complete the dungeon and apply it to queue times. We know tanks are instant, healers are near instant, and DPS is about 20-40 minutes. We also know that 2 DPS for every tank that enters the queue enter the dungeon.

For a perfect world, there should be an equal number of healers to tanks and 2 DPS for every tank. At this ratio, there would be queue times for DPS in the 2-4 minute range. I'd say that's a great goal to shoot for.

So what's this paradox I mentioned before? Well we think we need more tanks. When in reality, we kinda don't. You see... here's what happens if you make a tank.

You create a tank, get to 50/160. And you have instant queues across the board. Sounds wonderful if you like tanking. And lets say you do in fact enjoy it. Lets assume perfect conditions here. So you level quickly because queuetimes are low. You gear quickly again, because queuetimes are low.

What happens when you're geared out? Lets say you do trials. So here's where things get interesting. When you enter the phase of doing trials, here's the new set of problems:

First one is you leave the queues. If you've got gear, and you've worked it all out. Why do you need to queue?

Second one, you have to find a trial group. One issue I've seen in many games is tanks aren't in high demand in multigroup content. Especially considering the ratios needed change. In groups, you need the 1:1:2 ratio. In trials from my understanding is 1:1:4 (two tanks, two healers, 8 dps). And being as DPS take longer to get to where they need to be. They become rarer than tanks at that end of play.

And finally, lets assume there was a spot for you as a tank. Once you're done with progression, end game gearing. Its time to roll another character. You gonna do another tank? DPS tend to have a much higher variety of options available to them.

So you can see how interesting it can be trying to make tanks more 'fun' to play. I'm not opposed to making tanking more fun. But at the end of the day, even if you did that. They'd still have instant queues that take them out of the queuing system entirely. Only to realize it might be for a tougher situation at the end of the day.

Being as not everyone who plays is even interested in doing trials. I have a solution that would aid everyone. So requiring 3 tanks in trials doesn't fix that issue I brought up. As i said, not everyone even wants to do multigroup content. So lets throw that out as a non-fix.

The solution is to address the ratio of leveling/gearing DPS in the queues. There's an easy way to deal with this. A dynamic grouping mechanism.

So when the queue times for DPS get above 10 minutes, start allowing more and more DPS into the group. So a 4 man group becomes 5 man. And do this until there is up to 8 people in the group (if the ratio is still skewed after that, then there is another underlying problem). For each person added to the group, increase the base HP of the mobs by 50% to account for the extra DPS. And this doesn't apply to premade groups.

This would help two issues. It would bring queue times down for DPS and by proxy that would increase the number of DPS at endgame level. Of course I would combine this with a tank incentive (or any role that is short be incentivized). I got this idea from FFXIV who will give bonus awards to those playing roles that appear to be in shortage. That seems to help alleviate their tank shortage issues a bit.

But again, I stress that making the role more fun is probably a good idea too. I know a few of my friends get bored tanking simply because its taunt and block. More QoL improvements to help their role would be appreciated by many I believe.

I"m sorry i don't have time to read all this. But I would include veteran dungeons into my analysis. So long as the tank has a healthy amount of life and resistance there is a lot of room for build diversity.

Marcus684 wrote: »

1) so much flashy graphical sh*t in the screen that I can’t see what the boss is doing, so I can’t tell when to block/interrupt/etc.

This is a real issue also. I've tried over and over again on this board to highlight this problem as a serious impediment that discourages new tanks. Sadly it rarely gets any traction so I'm glad to finally see someone else actually post this.

pelle412 wrote: »

The problems with playing a tank character
- In group content, you're a complete slave to how well the rest of the group is doing. A dungeon can complete in 10 minutes, or 3 hours and you often have little control over that.

Everyone has this challenge. The good thing about tanking is that you didn't wait for 30 mins to find this out. So tanks really have an advantage there as well.

- It is fun to play a tank if your group is good. That's it. This is a key reason you see so few (real) tanks PUG dungeons.

I see tons of good tanks doing PUGS regularly and I do a lot of them. "Only fun if good" mentality is lame tbh. I've had many fun runs with people learning.

I think that Tanks (and Healers) should be paid for their services.

It needn't be much, just enough that DD players will consider playing a Tank (or Healer) for once.

Entire guilds are making millions from skin/title carries, so the idea of paying for a carry isn't new or outrageous.

If 2 (or 3) DDs need a Tank (or Healer) for certain dungeons then they are being carried and should consider paying for it.

Tanks (and Healers) don't get the respect they deserve as a crucial party member in a game where DPS is king.

I have 5 Tanks (one of each class) and I rarely play them anymore.

But I may be convinced to carry DDs for gold.

BretonMage wrote: »

"Tanks don't do damage" should be an obsolete concept tbh. It's tedious to do any overland content (as per my husband who's a tank), and also actually ultimately boring to just taunt and stand there swatting away at enemies in group content.

Yeah it baffles me that people think DPS should ONLY be the dps job. its literally the most basic gameplay mechanic and by logic should be EVERYONES job. DPS more so than others. this is why I far more enjoy tanking and healing in FFXIV, becuase people there and the developers realize this truth.

- Solid magic tanking options, there is such a poor variety in tanks. In general. They are almost all bottlenecked into the same general setups

- removal of dumb one shot mechanics,

- abilities that require your health as a cost along with more perks that favor health. If we had damage abilities that scaled with health. Solo content wouldn’t feel like crap as we could actually do damage then


- also health recovery needs to be buffed to where it’s not a complete joke.


- dungeon mechanics need to take some of the burden off tanks. Too much of the time in the harder vet dungeons does it feel like the tank is having to do everything while also handling the boss. There’s too much pressure on tanks and why a lot of people don’t want to do it. You take on a lot of the responsibility as the tank.


- Classes need a group taunt

- sap tanks need to be brought back. How they left them is completely unacceptable. They killed a entire archetype of tanks


This would make a lot more tanks play

Riejael wrote: »

dazee wrote: »

Yeah it baffles me that people think DPS should ONLY be the dps job. its literally the most basic gameplay mechanic and by logic should be EVERYONES job. DPS more so than others. this is why I far more enjoy tanking and healing in FFXIV, becuase people there and the developers realize this truth.

A little offtopic, but I used to nearly cry when my Whitemage out DPS'd the DPS.

But on topic, I totally agree, killing should be everyone's job.

Ha yeah I would out dps the dps regularly in dungeons as Warrior. But it made me feel good not bad since we still killed the boss in reasonable time.

Having some clue as to what it takes to be a tank?

Playing tank for easier dungeon que ups pretty much. also a lot of hp feels totally radical
kinda sorta wish ww's were better tanks in dungeons

As someone who loves tanking in pretty much every MMO, I'd say that tank-minded individuals would be a lot more likely to want to tank if players would quit treating tanks as DPS enhancement tools. Same with healers.

The tank's actual role is to hold aggro, be the "front line" when it comes to many boss mechanics, and minimize their own and the group's DTPS, taking as much incoming damage out of the group as possible. Looking at a table of HPS, DPS, and DTPS, a pure tank can and should blend out the first two completely - there are people whose job it is to care about those, and it's not the tank. That's what differentiates the archetypal tank from other roles and makes his role unique.

Unfortunately, everything in ESO boils down to DPS. DPS this, DPS that, it's all you ever hear anything about and all many groups seem to care about. There are vastly more DD players than any other role, so that's not surprising, but expecting every other role to turn around and bend over, sacrificing their enjoyment of the role they chose merely to enlarge someone else's e-peen, is simply not an environment most tanks want to exist in.

They get called "selfish" if they don't follow the DDs' orders regarding sets, abilities, glyphs, etc., although somehow the DDs aren't "selfish" for only caring about their own numbers, and when in fact what the traditional tank actually wants to do is sacrifice his own DPS to lower the DTPS and increase the survivability of his groupmates - about as far from selfish as you can get. I know a lot of tank mains from WoW and SWTOR who won't touch the role here for that reason.

So, tl;dr: Encourage tanks by increasing incentives to be tanky (ZOS' job - increase mitigatable damage done to tanks significantly), and by reducing social pressure to be a DPS slave and nothing more (community problem).

Unit117 wrote: »

- Solid magic tanking options, there is such a poor variety in tanks. In general. They are almost all bottlenecked into the same general setups

- removal of dumb one shot mechanics,

- abilities that require your health as a cost along with more perks that favor health. If we had damage abilities that scaled with health. Solo content wouldn’t feel like crap as we could actually do damage then


- also health recovery needs to be buffed to where it’s not a complete joke.


- dungeon mechanics need to take some of the burden off tanks. Too much of the time in the harder vet dungeons does it feel like the tank is having to do everything while also handling the boss. There’s too much pressure on tanks and why a lot of people don’t want to do it. You take on a lot of the responsibility as the tank.


- Classes need a group taunt

- sap tanks need to be brought back. How they left them is completely unacceptable. They killed a entire archetype of tanks


This would make a lot more tanks play

Agree with most.
We had a damage skill that scaled from health. Original Arctic Blast before they ruined it and made it require a target and apply a stun.
Literally this one skill had me tanking again and even tanking trials on my warden. I don’t mind driving the minivan of characters (a trials tank) if I can hang my fuzzy dice (a fun skill). They took away my saptank first though. I said to myself it couldn’t get worse and it did.