Is a 2 hander or bow as second weapon for a tank really worse than a destro staff?

Grimreaper2000 · June 2019

Almost every tank build has as second bar weapon a destro staff for the enemy debuffs
But 2 handers have an execute, ( maelstrom) bow has endless hail … whats gives extra dps. So why arent they viable options? Less important, but a tank with a staff just looks weird ...

r3turn2s3nd3r · June 2019

Because full strength Crusher debuff is worth more dps coming from your DDs than a tank spec trying to add dps via damage skills. However, a Bow is 'viable' for full strength crusher, but you will lose providing Off Balance.

Vildebill · June 2019

Bow is perfectly viable, you can debuff enemies with endless hail, easier to target the debuff since it procs on the enemy most centered in the hail, and you give some extra DPS to the group. You're obviously not as tanky though with a bow as you are with a frost staff.

I wouldn't go with a 2h though.

redlink1979 · June 2019

r3turn2s3nd3r wrote: »

Because full strength Crusher debuff is worth more dps coming from your DDs than a tank spec trying to add dps via damage skills.

Agree.

Royaji · June 2019

Yes. As a tank you have low weapon/spell damage, low magicka/stam, miserable crit chance and no penetration. Your damage is a joke and maelstrom bow or executioner will not change that. Two-handed has no useful skills for a tank. Bow is better since it does offer a ground DoT for crusher uptime (some people will argue that Endless Hail is even better than WoE) and an immobilise. With a very "light" (read medium armor) tanking build you can utilise bow fairly well to offer acceptable off-DPS but this only works for easy content/very experienced players.

On the other hand, staves offer either comparable defenses as s&b (ice) which means you will not be caught with your pants down on your backbar by a heavy attack or off-balance uptime (lightning). Not even talking about access to ele drain, ranged interrupt (although can be done with a bow too) and ability to restore magicka with heavy attacks. As a personal opinion, staff also streamlines resource management since you can have a very well defined "tanking pool" (taunts, block, bash, movement) in stamina and "support pool" (WoE, Engulfing, chains, roots and so on) in magicka. And if the look is that jarring to you several staff motifs look like spears or elaborate polearms.

Starlock · June 2019

Royaji wrote: »

Two-handed has no useful skills for a tank.

On the contrary, Brawler would like to have a word with you. Rally would also like to have a word with you. Not everybody uses a tank class that has a good self heal. Both the damage shield from brawler and the heal over time + burst of Rally are very useful if you think outside of the cookie cutter mold.

Royaji · June 2019

Starlock wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Two-handed has no useful skills for a tank.

On the contrary, Brawler would like to have a word with you. Rally would also like to have a word with you. Not everybody uses a tank class that has a good self heal. Both the damage shield from brawler and the heal over time + burst of Rally are very useful if you think outside of the cookie cutter mold.

There are much better options than brawler for pretty much every class. And Rally is a stamina scaling heal, your average tank will get very small ticks out of it it.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · June 2019

Ground AOE weapon DOTs (Hail and Blockade) will both ensure 100% crusher enchant uptime. That is way more important than a weak execute coming from a tank. A staff can also provide off balance, which is an added bonus, so they are more prevalent than bow. A classic theory on tank building is basically building for higher stam than magic, so resource returning skills give stamina, but to also build for reasonably high magic regen, to allow skill spamming. This model also favors a magic skill over a stam skill that you will cast every 8 seconds.

xeNNNNN · June 2019

Grimreaper2000 wrote: »

Almost every tank build has as second bar weapon a destro staff for the enemy debuffs
But 2 handers have an execute, ( maelstrom) bow has endless hail … whats gives extra dps. So why arent they viable options? Less important, but a tank with a staff just looks weird ...

The ice destro is also a ranged taunt which is exceedingly useful for a tank. Its also complete free in terms of resource cost.

Healers usually run lighting back bar for off-balance either way so they can just slot ice so they have a ranged taunt beyond inner fire.

Starlock · June 2019

Royaji wrote: »

Starlock wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Two-handed has no useful skills for a tank.

On the contrary, Brawler would like to have a word with you. Rally would also like to have a word with you. Not everybody uses a tank class that has a good self heal. Both the damage shield from brawler and the heal over time + burst of Rally are very useful if you think outside of the cookie cutter mold.

There are much better options than brawler for pretty much every class. And Rally is a stamina scaling heal, your average tank will get very small ticks out of it it.

This doesn't really counter the fact that both of these skills can be useful for tank setups. It is very, very doable to tank with a 2-hander and 1h+shield. One of the beauties of this game is that there's a lot of room for play and creativity. The main exception to that is if one get oneself stuck playing with elitists who refuse to try anything outside of a really narrow definition of what "viable" means. More power to them, I guess, but I'm going to continue using my stamina templar tank - who uses a 2-hander and 1h+shield - as my go-to for trials and vet dungeons. He's beaten everything I've thrown at him by using this weapon that supposedly has no useful skills for tanking.

Nemesis7884 · June 2019

its worthwile leveling 2h on your tank next to 1h/s and destro in case you ever want to pvp you will find the most overlapp on your tank if you want to go stamina

Benzux · June 2019

I use a two-hander on my DK tank backbar. Crusher enchant, Rally, and Brawler are nice (though Brawler is a bit niche, but I don't have anything else to put in that slot anyway) to have access to. Then again, I'm probably the most "anti-meta" person on this planet, and having a 2-hander instead of a staff just feels better for me. Works completely fine for me.

MartiniDaniels · June 2019

Bow is completely viable, actually some top players think it is most viable, because there are many sources of off-balance and off-balance cool down, so overall gain from endless hail damage may be comparable to group dps increase from tank's lightning staff. (don't forget that tank receives all group buffs too)
And on top of that bow provides better targeting of crusher (endless hail is smaller so less chance to waste crusher not on boss), LA+hail provides 3 crusher applies, while blockade provides only 2, so it's more resource effective and also it is a source of major expedition on roll-dodge.
And of course if you tank in alkosh+yolnakrin, you can backbar VMA bow

Off-balance uptime from tank is very over hyped, from my tests it looks like 10% uptime when tank alone provides lightning blockade. So it is 1% increase of group dps in case everybody has 75 points into exploiter and of course if there are 2 healers with lightning blockades, impact of tank's blockades decreases since status will be on cooldown often.

So I personally now use either bow or ice staff (when ice snare and/or a lot of permablock is required).

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · June 2019

2h is junk on a tank. Brawlers shield is a joke on a well built tank, with the average Stam and weapon damage a tank has, you get a 2.5k ward, that will scale up to at best, with 6 targets, 8-9k. If you want a Stam based ward, use bone shield. 30% of your health, which is 10+11k on a proper tank, is much better and you give your group a synergy for a ward too, 50% of their health. So much better then brawler.

MojaveHeld · June 2019

Alongside everything else that has been mentioned here, let me mention that it generally makes your stam management really difficult as a tank if you go 2h or bow on your back bar. In many endgame fights, managing your stam is already one of the most vital parts of being successful. So adding another set of skills requiring stamina instead of magicka makes things needlessly difficult in that case. Destro staff backbar really is an all-around better choice for tanks.

Royaji · June 2019

Starlock wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Starlock wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Two-handed has no useful skills for a tank.

On the contrary, Brawler would like to have a word with you. Rally would also like to have a word with you. Not everybody uses a tank class that has a good self heal. Both the damage shield from brawler and the heal over time + burst of Rally are very useful if you think outside of the cookie cutter mold.

There are much better options than brawler for pretty much every class. And Rally is a stamina scaling heal, your average tank will get very small ticks out of it it.

This doesn't really counter the fact that both of these skills can be useful for tank setups. It is very, very doable to tank with a 2-hander and 1h+shield. One of the beauties of this game is that there's a lot of room for play and creativity. The main exception to that is if one get oneself stuck playing with elitists who refuse to try anything outside of a really narrow definition of what "viable" means. More power to them, I guess, but I'm going to continue using my stamina templar tank - who uses a 2-hander and 1h+shield - as my go-to for trials and vet dungeons. He's beaten everything I've thrown at him by using this weapon that supposedly has no useful skills for tanking.

I will agree to disagree since I know there is no point in arguing with you. Those "elitists" you are talking about just like being, what's that word... ah, efficent. It matters not to me what am I running, I just want it to be the best I can have.

And I never said that tanking on the basic level is hard. Can you do it despite running a two-hander? Sure. But it is not useful since the alternatives are just that much more efficent.

GimpyPorcupine · June 2019

Starlock wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Two-handed has no useful skills for a tank.

On the contrary, Brawler would like to have a word with you. Rally would also like to have a word with you. Not everybody uses a tank class that has a good self heal. Both the damage shield from brawler and the heal over time + burst of Rally are very useful if you think outside of the cookie cutter mold.

Brawler lost a lot of utility when they removed the DOT, so you won't get the extra Crusher procs.

Royaji · June 2019

GimpyPorcupine wrote: »

Starlock wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Two-handed has no useful skills for a tank.

On the contrary, Brawler would like to have a word with you. Rally would also like to have a word with you. Not everybody uses a tank class that has a good self heal. Both the damage shield from brawler and the heal over time + burst of Rally are very useful if you think outside of the cookie cutter mold.

Brawler lost a lot of utility when they removed the DOT, so you won't get the extra Crusher procs.

"Sticky" DoTs are not able to proc enchants so this was not possible even with a DoT on Brawler.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · June 2019

GimpyPorcupine wrote: »

Starlock wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Two-handed has no useful skills for a tank.

On the contrary, Brawler would like to have a word with you. Rally would also like to have a word with you. Not everybody uses a tank class that has a good self heal. Both the damage shield from brawler and the heal over time + burst of Rally are very useful if you think outside of the cookie cutter mold.

Brawler lost a lot of utility when they removed the DOT, so you won't get the extra Crusher procs.

brawlers bleed only procced enchants for like a week last year, so even if the skill still had the bleed, that would still be junk on a tank.

GimpyPorcupine · June 2019

Thanks @Royaji and @Lightspeedflashb14_ESO for the correction.

Olupajmibanan · June 2019

Grimreaper2000 wrote: »

Almost every tank build has as second bar weapon a destro staff for the enemy debuffs
But 2 handers have an execute, ( maelstrom) bow has endless hail … whats gives extra dps. So why arent they viable options? Less important, but a tank with a staff just looks weird ...

That entirely depends on the content you are running.

In trials, you will most likely be asked to equip a destro staff. However, after some arguing, trial leader will surely allow Bow as back bar weapon as well. Bow has all the active skills a staff have - AoE CC, ground targeted dot to keep full Crusher and ranged interrupt. You don't have to worry with off-balance as it is provided by healers anyways. The only thing that might cause troubles is lack of Ancient Knowledge passive which reduces your block cost and increases your block mitigation, Bow has no real equivalent to this.

For dungeons, you may go with whatever weapon you want. Destro Staff, Bow, 2h and even Resto Staff is frequently used if you are in a 3 DD + tank group. However, if I were you, I wouldn't go with two-hander to harder vet DLC dungeons.

If your problem is tank with staff looking weird, trust me, bow looks even more weird, especially it's block animation.
My personal advice, go with Frost Staff as back bar weapon but DON'T PUT any points in Tri-focus passive. That way, by equiping frost staff you'll technicaly equip weaker shield (no extra resistances, no extra movespeed while blocking) but with ability to keep full infused Crusher.