PVE DK Tank. Rate/Comment/Suggestions on my build?

HalvarIronfist · May 2019

I mostly main my PVE tank, but I always like to keep open to alternate builds and discussion.

Race: Nord. Stats 64 Health, Steed Stone

Unbuffed stats

H: 41k

M: 11.5k

S: 11.9k

Health Recov: 1749

Mag Recov: 552

Stam Recov: 542

26k Resistances. 6 heavy, 1 medium. S/B FrontBar, 2h Backbar.

BUFFED:

H: 51.6k

M: 17k

Stam: 11.9k

Health Recov: 2109 (2433 after using green dragon blood)

Mag Recov: 552

Stam Recov: 542.

31k Resists.

Using Ebon Armory, Green Pact, and Infernal Guardian. (TO BE REPLACED)

Armors are a bit random, between invigorating traits, and divines. With CP block cost reduction, i decided against running sturdy armor to reduce block cost. Since CP covers this, I could trait my armor otherwise.

Why do I not use an ultigen set ? Nord race, fighters guild and earthen heart passives provide decent ultigen. Not to the 100% spammable level, but close enough for me to have on hand as I need it.

My main questions are: If I choose to use a different set besides green pact, what should I chose? As for monster sets, i planned on using Bloodspawn to hit the spammable ultimate level. Although I had eyes on Lord Warden, for another example. And what traits should I optimally run? Invigorating is nice, but just too weak to care about unless they're completely stacked. i could run all divines, or sturdy, and infused with weapons or so forth.

UntilValhalla13 · May 2019

Depends on what you're trying to do exactly. Stam and mag are kinda low for me personally. Mines at 38k health, 17k mag, 19k stam on an argonian with ebon/alkosh, Lord mundus. Ice or lightning staff backbar. Green pact is more of a selfish set that doesn't really offer any group support or utility. Lord warden is a nice choice, as well. I run infused on the big pieces with tri glyphs, and sturdy on smaller pieces with health glyphs. I mostly run him in vet trials though, so it really just boils down to what content you're aiming to tank.

HalvarIronfist · May 2019

UntilValhalla13 wrote: »

Depends on what you're trying to do exactly. Stam and mag are kinda low for me personally. Mines at 38k health, 17k mag, 19k stam on an argonian with ebon/alkosh, Lord mundus. Ice or lightning staff backbar. Green pact is more of a selfish set that doesn't really offer any group support or utility. Lord warden is a nice choice, as well. I run infused on the big pieces with tri glyphs, and sturdy on smaller pieces with health glyphs. I mostly run him in vet trials though, so it really just boils down to what content you're aiming to tank.

I have yet to do trials, which I was thinking about going to Alkosh. But until then, tri glyphs with infused on big pieces and sturdy on smaller sounds interesting. I knew GP was a selfish set, but the other set I was using, Grevious Leeching Plate, I decided to abandon for the better recovery/HP benefits.

Royaji · May 2019

Seems kinda confused and all over the place.

Health regen is a bad stat. Like, trash-tier bad. You are better off with stacking anything else.

Not using tri-food on a tank also does not make much sense. Magicka higher than stamina means shards/orbs will give you magicka which is really not great. Also if you are going the way of low regen and using balance for sustain (like your build does stat-wise) you can go below 12k without too much trouble.

2h backbar... I mean, I know, it looks cool and stuff but it provides 0 benefits for tanking. Like, none.

You kinda have the right idea about monster sets but it's not a one or another choice. Get both Bloodspawn and Lord Warden. Different fights require different monster sets. I would also add Earthgore and Stonekeeper as must haves if you are serious about tanking.

Second set can be indeed upgraded to Alkosh or Powerful Assault if you want to provide more support. Something in the middle of the road will be Dragon (yes, it's an ulti set but it is still a very good mixed support/sustain set due to the way it interacts with battle roar. And you can't really have too many horns in dungeons). And something like Battalion Defender can be your tanky set for tougher fights. Again, don't just choose one, a good tank always has a variety of sets on hand to adjust to the situation.

Sturdy is an obvious trait choice. Either full sturdy if you tend to be a bit too trigger happy with blocking or aforementioned sturdy small/infused big option if you want to do it like "the cool kids" but have a bit less margin for error.

BejaProphet · May 2019

11.9k stamina is extremely loe

MartiniDaniels · May 2019

How do you sustain on such low stamina? Probably a lot of heavy attacks, but unfortunately in harder content you won't have luxury to heavy attack a lot, actually you will hold block a lot and use your skills while holding block, not 100% of the time, but a lot. Usual trick is to have considerable amount of max magicka / max stamina and sustain through pots, ulti and healer support with very few heavy attacks. But this requires trial level healers so you'll need some magicka recovery in dungeons.

What I'll do? Change of green pact is not that critical at the moment, if you are learning harder content extra health is good. Change it to alkosh/torug/powerassault/dragon when you feel that you have enough HP.
I suggest changing mundus to atronach (magicka recovery), and 1 or 2 to glyphs on jewelry to magicka recovery. Other 1-2 glyphs to shield play enchants. Change food to tri-stat food (Longfin pasty with melon sauce). Re-distribute some attributes to stamina. Maybe 40 HP and 24 stamina.

HalvarIronfist · May 2019

Royaji wrote: »

Seems kinda confused and all over the place.

Health regen is a bad stat. Like, trash-tier bad. You are better off with stacking anything else.

Not using tri-food on a tank also does not make much sense. Magicka higher than stamina means shards/orbs will give you magicka which is really not great. Also if you are going the way of low regen and using balance for sustain (like your build does stat-wise) you can go below 12k without too much trouble.

2h backbar... I mean, I know, it looks cool and stuff but it provides 0 benefits for tanking. Like, none.

You kinda have the right idea about monster sets but it's not a one or another choice. Get both Bloodspawn and Lord Warden. Different fights require different monster sets. I would also add Earthgore and Stonekeeper as must haves if you are serious about tanking.

Second set can be indeed upgraded to Alkosh or Powerful Assault if you want to provide more support. Something in the middle of the road will be Dragon (yes, it's an ulti set but it is still a very good mixed support/sustain set due to the way it interacts with battle roar. And you can't really have too many horns in dungeons). And something like Battalion Defender can be your tanky set for tougher fights. Again, don't just choose one, a good tank always has a variety of sets on hand to adjust to the situation.

Sturdy is an obvious trait choice. Either full sturdy if you tend to be a bit too trigger happy with blocking or aforementioned sturdy small/infused big option if you want to do it like "the cool kids" but have a bit less margin for error.

1. Health regen just seemed like an interesting bit. I had green pact laying around and it's pretty fun to screw around with running a high HP tank.

I do sometimes use tri food, but depending on the dungeon I change foods. I.E, no using Tri on Vet FG1,

2h backbar has absolutely no 2h ability. Plan to switch it to ice staff for the destro passives for that, but alas. I need skill points and a ice staff of the 2nd set.

I was thinking alkosh. But for all terms of overall play, i figured dk/nord passives + dragon + bloodspawn would be overkill for ult gen. Useful; yes, but it just seemed overkill. BD seemed interesting to try since I actively PVP and farming it wouldnt be too difficult.

Sturdy just didn't seem optimal to fully max out since I'm not trigger happy with blocking, and CP can help the cost reduction.

HalvarIronfist · May 2019

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

How do you sustain on such low stamina? Probably a lot of heavy attacks, but unfortunately in harder content you won't have luxury to heavy attack a lot, actually you will hold block a lot and use your skills while holding block, not 100% of the time, but a lot. Usual trick is to have considerable amount of max magicka / max stamina and sustain through pots, ulti and healer support with very few heavy attacks. But this requires trial level healers so you'll need some magicka recovery in dungeons.

What I'll do? Change of green pact is not that critical at the moment, if you are learning harder content extra health is good. Change it to alkosh/torug/powerassault/dragon when you feel that you have enough HP.
I suggest changing mundus to atronach (magicka recovery), and 1 or 2 to glyphs on jewelry to magicka recovery. Other 1-2 glyphs to shield play enchants. Change food to tri-stat food (Longfin pasty with melon sauce). Re-distribute some attributes to stamina. Maybe 40 HP and 24 stamina.

Typically with green dragon blood, activating synergies and heavy attacking. I have completed a very good chunk of 'hard content' with this build as is. (Vet DLC, Vet 2's). I just felt like I should try new things yet. Essentially, I built a health-stack tank. While lacking in other departments, it does hold its own fairly.

m2rc · May 2019

Obviously do what you want and ultimately what you find fun, but Green Pact is overkill for a group situation. Big time. 50k health is not a good idea anymore, unless you've already got a Torugs + Alkosh setup in the group somehow.

Your resources are way too low. Change your attribute points from health into stam and mag. I run with around 19k stam, 40k health and around 14k mag. It gets me by well enough. Make sure you have more stam than mag because when you use the Blessed Shards synergy you want to restore stam, not mag. Deep thoughts is also good for a quick recovery of magicka and heavy attacking with frost staff is there if needed.

Your racial passives will help to reach around 40k health and will help with ulti gen, so you don't necessarily need to run Dragon or other ulti gen based sets.

I personally suggest Torugs over Alkosh for a main tank. Compared to Alkosh, Torugs is way easier to get a 100% uptime on the buff you're running. Every 8 seconds cast Wall of Elements and you've got 100% uptime on Crusher. Torugs is also easier to obtain then Alkosh.

For monster set Lord Warden or Blood Spawn are both very strong choices. With Lord Warden you can get around 33k physical resistance nearly all the time. With Blood Spawn you get 33k resistances occasionally with a decent burst of ultimate.

I like 7 heavy as it makes me incredibly sturdy, with all sturdy when I can.

Good luck.

MartiniDaniels · May 2019

HalvarIronfist wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

How do you sustain on such low stamina? Probably a lot of heavy attacks, but unfortunately in harder content you won't have luxury to heavy attack a lot, actually you will hold block a lot and use your skills while holding block, not 100% of the time, but a lot. Usual trick is to have considerable amount of max magicka / max stamina and sustain through pots, ulti and healer support with very few heavy attacks. But this requires trial level healers so you'll need some magicka recovery in dungeons.

What I'll do? Change of green pact is not that critical at the moment, if you are learning harder content extra health is good. Change it to alkosh/torug/powerassault/dragon when you feel that you have enough HP.
I suggest changing mundus to atronach (magicka recovery), and 1 or 2 to glyphs on jewelry to magicka recovery. Other 1-2 glyphs to shield play enchants. Change food to tri-stat food (Longfin pasty with melon sauce). Re-distribute some attributes to stamina. Maybe 40 HP and 24 stamina.

Typically with green dragon blood, activating synergies and heavy attacking. I have completed a very good chunk of 'hard content' with this build as is. (Vet DLC, Vet 2's). I just felt like I should try new things yet. Essentially, I built a health-stack tank. While lacking in other departments, it does hold its own fairly.

Oh, it's ok, I remember playing with 12k magicka and 13k stamina and even completed majority of dlc vets in that setup, on bosmer DK. But now I understand that I was simply carried by dps. Yeah, I was keeping taunt and surviving, and it was nice fights. But now playing a lot on dps, it's worlds difference between 35-40k HP tanks who properly buffs/debuffs group and boss and 50k tank who "holds his ground". Though it's better 50k who always alive then 35k which dies from single error. But still that 2k health recovery is of low importance if you have even mediocre healer available.