Darkstorne wrote: »

Just wondering if running without a shield or frost staff is viable as a vet dungeon tank. Do some mechanics make decent blocking absolutely essential?

I keep looking at Gaze of Sithis and dreaming of a badass tank with a 2 handed sword who doesn't care much for blocking. I'm wondering if damage shields could help make up for the loss of block mitigation, especially with Brawler and then an additional 10k shield available on command with the Psijic passive and the CP option (two 5k shields activated on blocking). And then perhaps making use of the Psijic ult with the passive 5% damage reduction, and Revealing Flare for the passive 10% damage reduction.

I just don't want to risk trying to build this out if it's completely impractical And I still wince in pain when I remember how ZOS noticed players were using Mist Form as an alternative to blocking and said "NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT!"

I have actually tried this now.

If you want to PUG normal dungeons, including DLC, back to back in order to fill your sticker book, playing double 2H is absolutely fine, but you don't need Sithis. Queue as a tank. Why did I use double 2H? Front bar Master's 2H, back bar Maelstrom 2H or the Tormentor set. The key thing, which makes this very fun, not to mention fast, is the Tormentor set. Use Stampede, which leaves an effect on the ground, and this grants you:

(A) A small AOE taunt.
(B) Permanent activation of the back bar enchant from the ground AOE.

Rushing from fight to fight with tha gap closer and instantly taunting everything, getting instant queue times as a tank, carrying the group no matter what in terms of tanking and sometimes DPS, it's a joy. You don't need to build particularly tanky. I use a medium armor setup with Vicious Ophidian as my other set. This kind of setup will basically solo everything up to vet HM non-DLC dungeons, if you know the mechanics and if those mechanics don't stop your progress. Slot Precognition and you can even break out of some (but not all) otherwise unbreakable stuns and you don't need assistance from your group at all. They just make the dungeon go by faster and you get the random normal rewards.

I did this on my DK, then adapted the build for my stamsorc as an armor-capped health regen build with Gaze of Sithis. The TL;DR of the latter is: Nope. You won't PUG vet DLC dungeons with that. Bosses hit too hard. If you knew all of the dungeons really well, dodge rolling every time you should, then you might scrape by. It's hard to say. You are less tanky than if you were blocking.

My stamsorc is a Nord. I had that class available to test, but I think it does offer some unique synergies. Should be a good choice. Double slotting Bound Armaments is insane passive utility as it ups both your stamina and health permanently, as well as buffing your stam regen and health regen. I reached capped (33K) resistances from Sithis / Armor buff / Tormentor with little effort. I had 5.6K health regen with a potion in the final build. I used Revealing Flare on both bars for the Major Protection. I used Tormentor 2H on the back bar and Master's 2H on the front bar. The final set was Vicious Ophidian again, along with 1 piece Slimecraw. I used a Hardening enchant on the Infused front bar weapon for another 5K shield every 2 seconds, on top of the Brawler shield.

Why Vicious Ophidian - 3 heavy / 4 medium? I tried Eternal Vigor first for even more health regen. 6 heavy / 1 medium. Did not like it. Didn't need the mag regen. Health regen better (up to 8K) but not ground-breaking. Most of all, sustain didn't feel great (solo) and damage felt like utter garbage outside of Master's 2H trash pulls. This build needed to justify it's existence by doing somewhat decent damage for me. It didn't. It took forever to get through Blessed Crucible on vet (solo). I wanted Vicious Ophidian for the crit, the Minor Slayer, the better solo sustain, the sprint speed. I felt very little tankiness was lost as a result. Still at armor cap, so it was mainly the health regen. I eventually decided on the Serpent mundus over the Steed as well. The added health regen from the Steed was kind of low, given I used Reinforced and Nirnhoned gear to reach the armor cap. Ultimately a Brawler build stands and falls with stamina sustain, not health regen.

The stamsorc skill setup was very simple. Bound Armaments and Revealing Flare passively on both bars. Precognition as the double-barred ultimate in order to break out of unbreakable stuns solo or if the group doesn't do it for you. Alternatively Power Overload worked quite well for extra single target damage, but the idea was to never use the ultimate and permanently gain +1.5K health regen from Strategic Reserve CP.

Brawler spam on front bar, Stampede on the back bar. Crit Surge and Hurricane on back bar for the healing and armor. Don't forget that Stampede always crits, so another guaranteed heal there. Camou Hunter on the front bar for the damage, leaving one flex spot that should likely be used as a magicka dump for:

(A) The Undaunted ranged taunt. You may sometimes need it, for example to activate Skoria from range (for hard mode) or to pull individual adds in vDSA.

(B) Dark Deal. Since you're not blocking, this works despite the channel time to restore stamina, heal and use as a magicka dump. Not bad.

(C) Deep Thoughts! I think this is where it gets interesting. You can do this. It works. You can do this in a boss's face and it should give you 30% extra damage reduction. This used to be Major Protection in the past, but now it appears to be a unique buff. The problem with it is that it's not as responsive as momentarily blocking and that it's 30%, not 55% (or more with 1H+S). My testing was a bit inconclusive as to whether this works reliably, but this is the thing that might just make or break the build, if you practiced it.

So I tried a couple of things. I did vWGT with a random PUG. The group failed on the last boss, but the tank felt completely fine.

I tried Depths of Malatar (random vet). The group fell apart at the first boss. This fight turned out very borderline for this build. The health regen + Brawler spam worked a treat during the poison spew phase. No healer needed (later tested solo). The subsequent one shot was very borderline. The problem was that the boss one shots you from stealth, so you have no Brawler target before the one shot happens. You have to be completely on top of your rotation to make sure Hurricane + Tormentor are up and then swing Brawler for a small shield, block for the Psijic shield, or Meditate. This could probably be done with practice, even solo. Simply more health might help. The boss's later eviscerate phase was more of a problem with a bad group. Precognition did not work here.

I tried The Cauldron, getting drafted into the secxond or third boss fight. The mage character who slams it's staff on the ground. That guy just hit through all shields and my 34K health in one go. Apparently that attack can be dodge rolled and even for "proper" tanks it's a tossup between blocking and rolling. That left it a bit inconclusive. I didn't know the mechanics at all (on vet). I think that, without much knwledge of the mechanics, you will be better off with a (perma-)blocking tank or maybe that's the only way.

Malatar and The Cauldron seem to indicate this build is pretty borderline. Unless these fights are as difficult with a conventional tank, I would say the Brawler spec is not quite there. For non-DLC vet dungeons, of which I also tried a few, everything was a cakewalk. No problem. Indeed you'll carry the group solo, if need be, but you can also do so on a build more aggressively specced into damage, without Gaze of Sithis. In that sense this build struggles to find a niche. The niche where it might excel is fairly narrow. Basically older (nerfed) DLC dungeons, such as vWGT. Maybe vDSA. When it comes to arenas, I expect vMA and vVateshran to be a breeze. The relatively low damage could be a problem, but Master's 2H Brawler builds have a habit of powering through when the adds ramp up.

Finally I tried nBRP and got to the middle of the 3rd arena with very little trouble, solo. I eschewed sigils. It felt like nBRP can possibly be soloed with this build, if you put your mind to it and/or used sigils. I also tried vBRP and got through a few rounds of the first arena, but it was slow and felt about the same difficulty as the 3rd one on normal.

The success of the build depends on how hard the one shots are. It doesn't fare well in content designed to borderline one shot a blocking tank. In content that revolves more around pressure, it does well.

For what it's worth, here is the exact build in it's current iteration:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=421256

Note UESP does not account for the game permanently giving you 2K extra health from merely having Bound Armaments slotted. In regards to CP, I'm a big fan of Slippery as well as flat sustain, even if it's just +90. The defensive blue CP I considered were Ironclad, which I kept against one shots, and From The Brink, which I ditched in favor of crit damage for now. Should try the heal from damage next.

P/S: I suppose if you specced all out into health, e.g. attributes, Health enchants instead of Hakeijo, Healthy jewelry instead of Bloodthirsty, this might mitigate the problems as a tank. I wanted a carry build and wanted to offset the relative absence of group utility, such as no pull skill, by doing damage.

EF321 wrote: »

IDK, using meditation (30% damage reduction from passive, on top of everything you listed) and being stage 3 vampire might just or might not work. Just an idea. If you are altmer at the same time, that's extra 5% on top of it all.

Yeah, vampire is something to try, but may work both ways. I have also noticed that sets like Pariah do not work well when you are hit extremely hard in PvP. As with that set, it's a question of when the Undeath passive gets calculated. Undeath may do nothing for you at all, if a boss zeroes you from full health in one hit.

There are a lot of set options I'm going to skip, because of similar concerns. Sets that proc at low health are unreliable, because a boss may hit right through the threshold and they never proc. For example I have observed this in PvP with the Juggernaut set. Sets that have long cooldowns are equally out of the question for me. Maybe Hexos Ward or Ironblood are worth considering, but both have downtime and aren't 100% on demand. I chose the Infused Hardening enchant on top of Brawler and I built into Brawler sustain for high uptime.

I have upped my health to 41.7K in the meantime and just did vMA. It was very comfortable (Flawless), except as expected the damage was really borderline with pure Stampede / Brawler spam against bosses that have a DPS check, such as the ice Matriarch. I killed her just in time, before she was about to destroy the last platform. My overall time was 1:12, which is not bad for me. I'm not super fast in vMA anyway, with 0:50 probably being my fastest (on magplar). The upside to the Brawler tank is that you can ignore some of the adds and mechanics and just focus the boss, because nothing really threatens you. You gain a little time by not becoming side-tracked.

The tooltip of Bone Shield is 14K on my 41K health build. I may give that a try for pure tanking in place of Camou Hunter. Brawl, shield, meditate. I've also been thinking about CP and am now using both Ironclad and Duelist's Rebuff, as I feel single target one-shots are this build's biggest weakness.

Camou Hunter looks like it will be permanently replaced with Bone Shield. Since I don't need magicka, I'm switching to a Crit / Health / Stam potion. This is coming together nicely. Better tanking of one shots, while giving up only a little damage.

Forgetting Brawler and going for a pure shielding Sithis build may be an avenue worth investigating. Specifically on templar or sorc. Templar has Blazing Shield (or the other morph). Stack that with Bone Shield and meditation. Very high health (60K+) shielding templars have been viable in the past. Viable for really high end content? I don't know.

In case of sorc, you would build for magicka instead of stamina and stack Hardened Ward with Bone Shield. Not sure Hardened Ward would be big enough to be worth it, but could be worth checking. Next patch that should scale with stamina too. If you're truly just going to meditate all the time, you will need zero sustain, so could use Sugar Skullls to get all your stats up or that other super high mag / health food maybe.

Incidentally it wasn't the Cauldron I ran b4 and had the most glaring issue with, it was the Dread Cellar.

OK, I'm about to update the two stamsorc builds I posted with refinements. I won't use Camou Hunter in any iteration anymore, because I'm now on Weapon Crit / Stam / Health potions. The build has almost no mag consumption and that potion is relatively cheap, so what's not to like. Whether you do damage with Brawler, or not, the crit will help proc Crit Surge from Hurricane.

Furthermore I'm not finding a great use for Bone Shield, because you don't really have two seconds to prepare for the big hits. You're either going to shield or you'll go into meditation and I choose meditation. Bone Shield is, therefore, being replaced with Inner Rage and this is the magicka dump. There are definitely situations where that's useful. In vDSA. In the Cauldron.

As it turns out, the two builds, one with Vicious Ophidian and Master's 2H, one with Cyrodiil's Light and Minor Aegis, are complimentary. One does not replace the other. They play differently. The VO build is a joy. You have the sustain to rush around and brawl. You use the Brawler shield a lot. The other gear setup is markedly tankier, but you will only notice that and need it in some fights. The sustain of the Cyrodiil's Light setup feels miserable and, from my point of view, it plays like crap. You don't have much Brawler sustain. You end up meditating a lot and being a tank.

It is not the case that the VO setup only performs better in "lesser" content. I completed vDSA as a tank today, where the VO setup was better and much more fun on account of nothing hitting that hard. However, I then pugged The Cauldron on vet (for the first time) and, yes, it was the actual Cauldron this time. I had to switch to the Cyrodiil's Light setup for one of the early boss fights where that felt much more comfortable. However for the final boss fight, the VO setup was far superior, as you could move and brawl the entire time. It almost felt like I could solo that fight with more practice - half of the group had died, but I kept swinging and apparently it was hard mode. Due to the many adds and rocks, Master's 2H Brawler spam with VO sustain came into it's own. In the end, however, we completed the fight with the full group.

These builds feel exceptionally strong in content where they work. Maybe I just like that they're off meta and I made them, but the VO build in particular is a true carry build. If your group dies, you may sometimes finish off a boss or you have the health regen to stand in red and rez. You also have DPS to augment a weak group. I dare say in some PUGs it feels like you're doing everything apart from healing others, although I don't measure that stuff.

There's guaranteed success in all normal and non-DLC vet dungeons. If I can get the experience to make this work in all DLC vet dungeons, I shall be very happy. It's the ideal farming build. Much better than a conventional tank. The latter would probably do things to enable the DDs to do more damage, which these builds do not, but you can only lead a horse to water. These "tank" builds simply carry the group with actual DPS. I'm tempted to switch to a Precise trait on the VO build, which would bring crit close to 40%.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=421256
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildData?id=421109

PS: Expert Summoner passive activated, thus now showing the correct health.