My cloth-wearing MagWarden healer would tank often.
Plenty of magicka to block with a frost staff. No need for a high stam.
Magicka drop ? Just generate more.
And I could heal myself for whatever damage got through.

Frost staves and tanking for magicka toons are a great fit.

Like I can get the job done while still playing how I want. In relation to relatively easy content of course.

I use sword/shield front bar and ice/shock staff back bar. With 1h enchants being bad, the destro staff blockade helps me keep a full value debuff on target. Shock staff if off-balance is desired, ice if not.

The Frost Staff's heavy attack should be juuuuuuust slightly faster to allow a tank to taunt. Maybe 33%?

It wouldn't ruin PVP, either, because most classes either use Lightning Staff for passive AOE damage increase or Fire Staff for passive single target damage increase. Nobody in PVP uses the Frost Staff's heavy attack for the weak shield or "taunt" on players.

It's whatever for me.

I play SnB/Frost staff without Tri-focus passive. My tankiness is pretty much the same as it was. It's just one more uptime to keep (elemental blockade). After some adjustments to my build I got used to it.

At least, Decisive on tank now got some meaning. The same is true for resource regaining poisons.

In WoW some tanks use twohanded weapons.

Ice staff is still more popular on BG than PVE Tanking!

I love staff tanking, but I just wish it weren't the ice staff. I really prefer fire staves in general, though I've heard of illusion as a good alternative.

Another option is to give Weakness to Elements a tanking morph. Perhaps it could serve as the destro equivalent of Pierce Armor, while also providing the passive of Tri-Focus?

Well number one, no one needs to they do it cause they want higher numbers. Players who want a higher score do, and players struggling to complete content seek any perceived advantage to help them.

Number two, I don't know that it matters as those seeking numbers will do anything regardless of the relationship to traditional views of performance roles. Also those desperate for a performance boost will follow the first group regardless of whether it will actually benefit them at their skill level.

Personally I like the more traditional role with just S&B, but I don't think it really matters what I like.

I am perfectly fine with the concept of a Tank Spell Caster, I however have a big problem with the way ZOS went about this. The animations and abilities are disappointing on so many levels.

• Holding your staff out in front of you to block, looks weak
• Heavy attacking to taunt
• Using magicka to block with no visual effect to show anything other than physical blocking
• No extra tanking abilities other than slight change in passives

We have seen Mobs put up a literal wall of ice in front of them that can absorb incoming projectiles in front of the caster, shards of ice being spawned from the ground or thrown at an enemy, waves of frost immobilizing anything it touches. There is so much potential, but instead they chose to retweak a fricking sub-category of a destruction magic weapon.... I hated it when it happened and I hate it now.

They gave some cool frost abilities to the Warden class but even they don't really use Frost Staff tanking the way ZOS wanted it to be. We use it(or lightning staff) cause its META, but its a visually and gameplay failure, most people that use it even actively don't put points into the passive that gives Frost staff the heavy attack taunt and magicka blocking.

I'm happy that bow is now a solid alternative to Destruction staffs on certain tank builds cause at least applying some debuffs with that makes a bit more sense and the visuals are not that immersive breaking as its not suppose to be a tanking weapon to begin with, but to me it beats the failure that is staff tanking. I mean hell if it wasn't for that fact that tanks are buff bots I don't see anyone having used staffs for tanking at all.

Add a new visual to Frost Staff blocking and either change more skills to have different effects when using frost staff or make it its own skill line and then we can talk. OR OR lets revert Frost staff to what it was, a DAMAGE option and lets use something like Illusion, Mysticism or Conjuration to trick the minds of enemies to attack you, to conjure wards,shields or summon stronger but temporary weapons and armor to protect you and your allies, and to reflect and absorb effects from and to enemies. There is so much you could do with the other magic types, but no lets use FROST for tanking......

I might have missed a few points but this turned into a bit of a rant cause of my hatred for what staff tanking has become.....

I just use a bow with endless hail.

Zacuel wrote: »

Sneaking in a heavy attack and weaving in balance is great way to restore a lot of Magicka quickly while applying a taunt and giving yourself major resolve/ward.

With ice staff anyway. Then you're good to go on your SnB bar again.

The Ice Staff should not have to be a back bar item only for Tanks. It should be able to be your maim weapon. A tank should be able to run another weapon other than One Handed and Shield and still be as effective. Right now that is not the case.