New Warden Tank advice?

StregoneCorvo · November 2020

Morning folks,

I have a relatively new Warden Tank that I'm beginning to level up and would love some advice. Mostly, as a Warden Tank, what are your recommended powers to take in your weapon skill lines?
For 1H/Shield I have Pierce Armor and Heroic Slash. For Destruction Staff I have Unstable Wall of Elements. Are any of the others skills in either weapon tree worth having because the ones in 1H/Shield look pretty awesome but I don't see them in most of the "builds".

For some background - I do not PVP; I prefer story arcs when solo, I tend to focus Delves and public dungeons with small groups of friends. In other words, I'm a casual player looking to not hamstring myself while I have fun. So far, the advice I've been give was to put the first 10 points into Magicka, the next 15 into Stamina, and the rest into Health.

Thanks for any advice you'd like to offer!

Fennwitty · November 2020

If you stick to delves and public dungeons it doesn't matter really what skills you choose. Do whatever you want, just keep a taunt.

Longer answer: All skills and passives in 1-h shield line are useful for a tank, sometimes situationally. Except for Power Slam and Shield Wall which are are fairly niche.

For a staff tank destruction staff is mostly Wall of Elements and the passives. Training the first skill is good too, it has a morph that allows ranged interrupt which can be useful. You might train the other skills just to help your DPS while soloing. Some tanks like Tri-Focus passive, some don't.

Also start working on your Undaunted skill line for level 3 skill Inner Fire. That's the best ranged taunt in the game. Note online guides might still refer to using Ice Staff for a ranged heavy attack taunt, that's no longer how it works as of last patch. Technically you could get Elemental Grasp to give a medium ranged taunt with Ice Staffs, but Inner Fire's better.

This is still super general but you'll want to get the frost skill Gripping Shards, the morph of Impaling Shards for a good aoe immobilize. Really useful when tanking groups of enemies.

I recommend checking out Alcast's beginner tanking guides for more detail.

StregoneCorvo · November 2020

Fennwitty wrote: »

If you stick to delves and public dungeons it doesn't matter really what skills you choose. Do whatever you want, just keep a taunt.

Longer answer: All skills and passives in 1-h shield line are useful for a tank, sometimes situationally. Except for Power Slam and Shield Wall which are are fairly niche. Some tanks like Tri-Focus, some don't.

Fantastic response, thanks. That's exactly what I'm looking for.

etchedpixels · November 2020

I would also look hard at slightly hybrid leaning builds if you play to also play solo. Quest/delves with a tank can get tedious, and public dungeon solo is painful (you won't die but you'll be there all day)

For example I run my warden tank solo with 2H/bow and medium armour sets (venomous smite, defiler, valkyn skoria) and a few 2H skills and the medium and 2H passives. With the right debuff/buff/heals on the skill bar I can then sail through quest/delve/public dungeon content without boredom setting in, or dps the trash and tank the bosses as needed.

Thanks to the dressing room add-on I can switch roles with a button press when not in combat.

It is a chunk more skill points but there are no shortage of fairly easy ones if you are not also trying to fill out crafting and stuff like that.

Another thing to note on builds: this update trashed the stamina scorch morph but the changes also seem to have made the magicka one absolutely brutal as a combo with well timed group ultimates. As a result I ended up switching the morph on my tank.

Having a flexible range of warden skills is also good. There are a lot of buffs, debuffs and heals in the warden armoury (it's basically a buff/debuff machine), and being able to supply a bunch of those to groups can be useful depending what they can provide back and how low level they are.