Can a necro successfully tank just taunting with Inner Range if they also use Unnerving Boneyard?

daemondamian · July 2019

Instead of Pierce Armour could IR be used successfully as the only taunt (except for back bar ice staff HA) given that UB gives an aoe major breach and fracture?

Possible cons are that IR might use too much magicka whilst PA could be applied to more targets more often if your stamina pool is higher (or would it be a pro as you'd have more stamina for blocking)?

PA will affect enemies regardless of where they are (after having been applied) whilst UB is a fixed aoe which enemies may leave?

Pros would be that using IR only would free up a slot while UB still applies major breach and fracture offering a synergy that your allies can use which heals you?

You can target multiple enemies in a shorter amount of time taunting them to your location rather than running around and individually melee attacking/taunting enemies with PA?

FWIW - I've not done any tanking but am leveling up a necro character to tank PVE content inc vet but probably not trials.

Skelfish · July 2019

Short answer: yes. A necro tank that Dottz hosts on his website changed to Inner Rage as the only active taunt. Click here.

Boneyard is on the backbar, while Inner Rage moves to the front bar to take the place of Pierce Armor. There's a stamina morph of the ranged taunt available, don't forget.

I recently watched a youtube video of a guy tanking vBRP without Pierce Armor <edit> Found it. Click Here.

I don't have personal experience yet using that kind of set up, but I imagine as a tank there are some fights where it would be more advantageous to run Boneyard and ranged taunt only, vs the traditional poke poke of Pierce Armor. Tanks already shift gear around depending on the fight, and several other skills have situational use as well. Necros are in a unique position to have a single skill that provides long term Fracture AND Breach at the same time.

MartiniDaniels · July 2019

Yep, and in new patch inner fire is MUCH cheaper, and also provides guaranteed synergy for ranged dds.
Still cost to sustain all this is several times higher then cost of pierce armor.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · July 2019

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Yep, and in new patch inner fire is MUCH cheaper, and also provides guaranteed synergy for ranged dds.
Still cost to sustain all this is several times higher then cost of pierce armor.

2700/1350. only twice as much now, unless you use the stam version, then it is only 1.7x as much. hardly several times.

Puncture:

Reduced the damage dealt by this ability and its morphs by approximately 37%, but reduced the cost to 1350 from 1701.

Inner Fire: Reduced the cost of this ability and its morphs to 2700 from 4051, and increased the chance of applying the synergy to 50% from 25% for this and the Inner Beast morph.

Inner Beast (morph): This morph now also causes your target to take 5% more damage from you while the taunt persists, and added the Stamina cost reduction to this morph, taking the cost to 2295.

Inner Rage (morph): This morph now guarantees the synergy, instead of increasing the chance.

MartiniDaniels · July 2019

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Yep, and in new patch inner fire is MUCH cheaper, and also provides guaranteed synergy for ranged dds.
Still cost to sustain all this is several times higher then cost of pierce armor.

2700/1350. only twice as much now, unless you use the stam version, then it is only 1.7x as much. hardly several times.

Puncture:

Reduced the damage dealt by this ability and its morphs by approximately 37%, but reduced the cost to 1350 from 1701.

Inner Fire: Reduced the cost of this ability and its morphs to 2700 from 4051, and increased the chance of applying the synergy to 50% from 25% for this and the Inner Beast morph.

Inner Beast (morph): This morph now also causes your target to take 5% more damage from you while the taunt persists, and added the Stamina cost reduction to this morph, taking the cost to 2295.

Inner Rage (morph): This morph now guarantees the synergy, instead of increasing the chance.

Mmm, unnerving boneyard is not free, no?

Skelfish · July 2019

A lot of the issue is going to be with magicka sustain, I think. Spirit Guardian got its cost increased by almost 2x, and adding Boneyard will mean more magicka eaten up more often to keep up with the debuff. Changing Beckoning Armor to Summoner's Armor reduces the Spirit Guardian cost to 3700 (or something like that, it's about +1000 magicka more than live), which will help with sustain but it means you'd have to slot Silver Leash if you wanted a chain.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO · July 2019

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Yep, and in new patch inner fire is MUCH cheaper, and also provides guaranteed synergy for ranged dds.
Still cost to sustain all this is several times higher then cost of pierce armor.

2700/1350. only twice as much now, unless you use the stam version, then it is only 1.7x as much. hardly several times.

Puncture:

Reduced the damage dealt by this ability and its morphs by approximately 37%, but reduced the cost to 1350 from 1701.

Inner Fire: Reduced the cost of this ability and its morphs to 2700 from 4051, and increased the chance of applying the synergy to 50% from 25% for this and the Inner Beast morph.

Inner Beast (morph): This morph now also causes your target to take 5% more damage from you while the taunt persists, and added the Stamina cost reduction to this morph, taking the cost to 2295.

Inner Rage (morph): This morph now guarantees the synergy, instead of increasing the chance.

Mmm, unnerving boneyard is not free, no?

Considering that boneyard does AOE debuffs, you come out ahead of you have 4-5 targets inside and you can you tuant and debuff from 28 meters for both. But yes, if you want to take boneyards cost into it the equation, you do have to spend a lot more resources but a lot less time to debuffs them. That said, I don't run either of the skills on my tankcer and that won't change, as far as I can see.

And my magcer already runs unnerving boneyard, in my experience, the amount of tanks that run ransack instead of Pierce armor is way too high to run the other morph and in the new patch, with ransack getting a huge buff, trading ~2% named physical resistance for 8% mitigation from a named minor buff, the amount of tanks running the wrong morph for pve is only going to go up.

MartiniDaniels · July 2019

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Yep, and in new patch inner fire is MUCH cheaper, and also provides guaranteed synergy for ranged dds.
Still cost to sustain all this is several times higher then cost of pierce armor.

2700/1350. only twice as much now, unless you use the stam version, then it is only 1.7x as much. hardly several times.

Puncture:

Reduced the damage dealt by this ability and its morphs by approximately 37%, but reduced the cost to 1350 from 1701.

Inner Fire: Reduced the cost of this ability and its morphs to 2700 from 4051, and increased the chance of applying the synergy to 50% from 25% for this and the Inner Beast morph.

Inner Beast (morph): This morph now also causes your target to take 5% more damage from you while the taunt persists, and added the Stamina cost reduction to this morph, taking the cost to 2295.

Inner Rage (morph): This morph now guarantees the synergy, instead of increasing the chance.

Mmm, unnerving boneyard is not free, no?

Considering that boneyard does AOE debuffs, you come out ahead of you have 4-5 targets inside and you can you tuant and debuff from 28 meters for both. But yes, if you want to take boneyards cost into it the equation, you do have to spend a lot more resources but a lot less time to debuffs them. That said, I don't run either of the skills on my tankcer and that won't change, as far as I can see.

And my magcer already runs unnerving boneyard, in my experience, the amount of tanks that run ransack instead of Pierce armor is way too high to run the other morph and in the new patch, with ransack getting a huge buff, trading ~2% named physical resistance for 8% mitigation from a named minor buff, the amount of tanks running the wrong morph for pve is only going to go up.

Yes, of course, there are ton of benefits from boneyard and I'm not saying that it is bad to free one slot from pierce armor, especially when everything goes as planned. But when it doesn't go that way and sustain is stretched, pierce armor will be far superior. Still that build uses S&B anyway, so pierce armor/ransack can be placed back anytime.
In trials major breach will be provided by healers anyway and in dungeons... well, I guess in pug dungeons magicka dps will be in really bad position next patch.

Hexvaldr · July 2019

It will work and like many setups, the key is just fine tuning your resource allocation, usage, and sustain to a balance that works. The main thing you will lose without running a shield are the beneficial passives from that line that make it superior (but not mandatory) to blocking with frost staff.

Krayl · July 2019

Absolutely. I've off-tanked VMoL and main tanked VSS clears with this setup.

I build for health and magicka regen and don't usually have a stam skill on my bar.

you could run double staff but I still run S&B on front bar, and on front bar I'm running a stamina glyph on the shield so on that bar I am still getting stamina back from synergies - you need it to block. I find it useful to have the option to use the S&B skills situationally.

I highly recommend being an argonian for this setup - flexibility is key and the resource return from pots helps. Their bonus to healing is also nice since necro tank is very self-heal centric.

here's my default build setup, i call it "Veeskhleel" after the Argonian Ghost People who practice Necromancy

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=140907

I'm working on posting a full guide for the setup as I'm really enjoying it.

Krayl · July 2019

Skelfish wrote: »

A lot of the issue is going to be with magicka sustain, I think. Spirit Guardian got its cost increased by almost 2x, and adding Boneyard will mean more magicka eaten up more often to keep up with the debuff. Changing Beckoning Armor to Summoner's Armor reduces the Spirit Guardian cost to 3700 (or something like that, it's about +1000 magicka more than live), which will help with sustain but it means you'd have to slot Silver Leash if you wanted a chain.

I'm also already using summoner's armor in most situations. Beckoning has it's uses but in trials it's more trouble than it's worth on things like twins for example, and most things in trials can't be chained anyways. Meanwhile Summoner's Armor helps manage your magicka as you should be recasting your armor & spirit mender every 10 seconds or so to proc 4 seconds of major protection from Deaden Pain.

Joxer61 · July 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=123&v=xxelDSfAmlM

daemondamian · July 2019

Thanks for all the feedback, build and video links - many good points to consider.

I did intend on using S&B as I'm mostly following the alcast build https://alcasthq.com/eso-necromancer-tank-build-pve/ but I can always just try one option over the other and adjust skills accordingly to what works better.

Also if I can eventually get the full recommended set items of Roar of Alkosh then PA along with Avid Boneyard could be better as I can activate the synergy to proc RoA.

In regards to Heroic Slash and minor maim, if you were in a fight not requiring LW is HS still worth being slotted purely for the the Ulti regen if you were wearing Thurvokun which gives you an aoe minor maim (and defile) affecting multiple enemies with zero cost?

Skelfish · July 2019

TBH Minor Heroism would be up to you to decide if it's worth it. Necro has great ultigen with Deaden Pain/Necrotic Potency, so if you'd like to contribute to group DPS with faster Warhorns/Barrier/Whatever then that's a good reason to still slow Herois Slash.