Sturdy, reinforced, and infused for Pearlescent Ward

Rageypoo · March 2023

I finished farming the perfected pearlescent ward and I'm ready to make a tank set, but I hear a lot of conflicting information about what traits are best. Before golding everything out, I want to make sure I get it right. What traits would you recommend this set be and why? Any other tanking sets you'd recommend to go with it?

Thanks!

Necrotech_Master · March 2023

i think most go with sturdy for the reduced block cost, as sustain is important

reinforced is less important due to the armor cap which should be easy to hit in all heavy armor without reinforced

infused is only OK on the "large" gear (head, chest, pants), it isnt quite as effective on the smaller pieces due to the half value of the enchant

El_Borracho · March 2023

All 3 are the traits you want as a tank. It really boils down to resources vs. resistance. If you want high resistances, reinforced on the big pieces (chest, legs, feet) is the way to go. If you want more resources, infused on the big pieces, with a tri-stat glyph (or the health, stamina, or magicka) depending on need. I would reserve sturdy for smaller pieces (hands, belt, shield) as the size of the piece does not increase the percentage on block reduction.

In my experience, Pearlescent is typically used by the off tank, so the infused/tri-stat setup may have a slight edge, but getting the "wrong trait" between infused and reinforced is not really a thing with tanks.

virtus753 · March 2023

To reiterate what's been said:

If you're in all 7 heavy with gold armor, you've got 14897 resistance from the armor alone and a further 2401 from the Resolve passive. That's 17298 from armor rating and armor bonuses alone. Throw in Major Resolve (5948) and Minor Resolve (2974) and you're at 26220. The effective cap is 33000. While that might seem pretty far off from 26220, there are certain races and classes that come with additional armor bonuses (e.g. DK, Templar, Warden, Nord). And if you're using the Puncturing Remedy set, it's easy to get 9k+ resists out of that alone with decent uptimes. Now there's also Ozezan for a unique 4272 armor rating.

If you're in 5 heavy, 1 light, 1 medium (which is sometimes slightly better and sometimes slightly worse than 7 heavy, depending on your tanking style and the fight), then you are less likely to hit the cap, so reinforced would be of more use. Compared to 7 heavy, 5-1-1 has 2492 less physical resistance but only 1766 less spell resistance (due to the Spell Warding passive). Reinforced would help close that gap, but you are still able to hit armor cap in 5-1-1, so you might still lose the benefit of reinforced at times. Hence also why Fortified (the red CP star) is not crucial on tanks, since even if you're not at cap, the more armor you already have, the less relatively valuable it is. Another trait or another CP star could be of more benefit depending on the situation.

That's why reinforced is something you might not always get the full value from (to put numbers on what was pointed out above). You will always get the full value out of infused and sturdy, but how much you value them by comparison is going to depend on your tanking style and the fight. Some fights require more blocking; others benefit from greater resource pools. Higher resource pools means greater resource return from Undaunted Command and greater benefit from Undaunted Mettle. But some fights penalize you for higher health pools, like Cloudrest's Baneful Mark, Lokke portals - yes, OTs sometimes go in there - and any mechanic that does damage scaling with your health, like several of the DoTs in the newer dungeons.

All that is to say there isn't a definitive right/wrong with these traits. And you can always change them with transmutation, so don't feel like this is a one-time choice you're stuck with forever. Try them out and see what works best for you given your setup, your groups, and the content you're doing.

Rageypoo · March 2023

Thank you this feedback is really helpful. How do you guys feel about the divines trait for tank gear?

Necrotech_Master · March 2023

divines could work if you wanted to be more flexible depending on mundus stone without needing to change the trait

there is +armor mundus, which may add more than putting the pieces at reinforced, or you could do something else like +max hp, max stam, or a recovery if you needed it

virtus753 · March 2023

Rageypoo wrote: »

Thank you this feedback is really helpful. How do you guys feel about the divines trait for tank gear?

Some tanks do use that trait, especially in combination with the Atronach mundus for extra magicka recovery. It can be useful, but understanding why is important to maximizing its utility.

Divines is a less tankier setup and benefits a style/fight where you will not be blocking as much, since you would be missing the extra block cost reduction of sturdy, the extra armor of reinforced, or the extra stats of infused. You also lose any magicka recovery tick if you are bracing on an ice staff bar and have the Trifocus passive, so the benefits of the divines trait would be completely negated for that tick. In short, the more you block on your ice staff bar, the less useful the divines trait is with the Atronach. But it can be useful for sustain if you get used to blocking only when necessary and can prioritize blocking on a sword and board bar, which comes with extra projectile mitigation anyhow. (If you have a sword and board bar, that is - if you run double destro, e.g. ECing as MT on vAS, you will not want to be blocking on your lightning staff bar because it doesn't provide the blocking mitigation and block cost reduction that ice staff does.)

ssewallb14_ESO · March 2023

There's conflicting information because it's highly player dependent.

The best tanks in the game generally don't run any block cost reduction on gear because they don't need it, instead opting for reinforced/divines. This requires that you block with near perfect efficiency.

OTOH less experienced players might run more sturdy, even going as far as including multiple block cost reduction glyphs on jewelry to "permablock." (which is actually fine if you aren't aiming for harder content).

I'd experiment with block cost reduction before golding anything out. See what you can handle without running out of stamina, then tweak your own build based on that.

Tannus15 · March 2023

you can't go wrong with sturdy.

the most important thing for a tank is taunt and don't die.
next is positioning and fight mechanics, lastly is the support you can give.

really good tanks will focus on their stagger uptimes or minor brittle uptimes because they have everything else locked in. They don't run all sturdy because they know what they need to block and what they don't. they know when to heavy attack for resources and when not.
in the same way a dps skirts the line for sustain vs damage, tanks will find the balance between the core job and every other bit of help they can provide the group.

The biggest struggle I have with tanks who are learning and starting out is they copy a top tier tank build and just keep dying because they don't have the experience to cut that many corners yet.

Always have your "selfish" setup ready if you're struggling to learn a fight and just want to perma block your way through until you've got the rhythm and the confidence to switch to a more supportive setup.

code65536 · March 2023

Tannus15 wrote: »

you can't go wrong with sturdy.

the most important thing for a tank is taunt and don't die.
next is positioning and fight mechanics, lastly is the support you can give.

really good tanks will focus on their stagger uptimes or minor brittle uptimes because they have everything else locked in. They don't run all sturdy because they know what they need to block and what they don't. they know when to heavy attack for resources and when not.
in the same way a dps skirts the line for sustain vs damage, tanks will find the balance between the core job and every other bit of help they can provide the group.

The biggest struggle I have with tanks who are learning and starting out is they copy a top tier tank build and just keep dying because they don't have the experience to cut that many corners yet.

Always have your "selfish" setup ready if you're struggling to learn a fight and just want to perma block your way through until you've got the rhythm and the confidence to switch to a more supportive setup.

That's correct.

Personally, I would recommend going reinforced on the chest (it's the piece where that trait will have the most impact) and then sturdy on everything else.

(Infused is, IMHO, never worth it, even on the large pieces.)

Rageypoo · March 2023

A tank I run with says he went 3 reinforced, 2 sturdy, 2 divines. Does this sound like a halfway decent combination, or should I go 1 reinforced, the rest sturdy?

Kali_Despoine · March 2023

El_Borracho wrote: »

reinforced on the big pieces (chest, legs, feet)

I'm sure he means Head not feet

depending on my build Block Dodge Suffer
Chest: infused tri stat glyph or reinforced
Legs: infused tri stat glyph or reinforced
head: infused tri stat glyph or reinforced
shoulders: divines sturdy
hands: sturdy
waist: divines well fitted
feet: well fitted divines sturdy

code65536 · March 2023

Kali_Despoine wrote: »

I'm sure he means Head not feet

Feet is correct.

For the purposes of enchantment strength, there are just two tiers:

The 3 "big" pieces (head, chest, legs)
The 4 "small" pieces

But the post was referring to the reinforced trait, and for the purposes of armor strength, there are four tiers:

Chest
Head, shoulders, legs, feet
Hands
Waist

Feet have the exact same armor strength as head or legs even though it's a "small" piece in terms of enchantment strength.

In any case, I still stand by my recommendation of reinforced chest and the rest sturdy. Why? Because the single most important thing for a tank is block. It's where you get the lion's share of your damage mitigation (a naked player that's blocking will take less damage than an armored player who is not). And unless you're very experienced and are among the most skilled tanks in the game, you will want to err on the side of blocking more. Yes, that means holding down the right mouse button and not letting go, which is why sturdy is the best choice. And over time, as you become more comfortable with both the content and the role, you will learn how to get away with blocking less and you will be more worried about the kinds of things that divines might help with.

(It's basically what Tannus said in the post above mine.)

But for the OP (and really, the vast majority of tanks), going full sturdy (or almost full sturdy with a reinforced chest) would be a better fit and is more useful in a wider range of scenarios.

My rule of thumb is, "if you need to ask, then divines isn't the trait for you".

(And in general, I don't recommend infused on armor for anyone at any skill level. Don't use it.)

BloodyStigmata · March 2023

I just run the 1-1-5 weight and 3 infused/4 sturdy, 3 triune setup on all my tanking setups for simplicities sake. I 'aint about that "carry 12 different sets with different traits for specific fights on you at all times" life.

Rageypoo · March 2023

This input has been extremely helpful, thanks!

I did have a question about jewelry traits, since triune was mentioned...is it worth using? Would protective be worth if you don't have a piece of reinforced on the body? how do u guys feel about harmony trait after the recent change? I was also thinking of using the tri-reduce cost enchantment and possibly a block enchantment, would that be good?

also enchantments...this one bugs me too, i've heard that tri-stat for armor is a waste, but I see a lot of top runners using this often on most or even all their gear pieces. I imagine having as much health as possible is the simple way to go, but I run out of resources a lot on a DK tank (not nearly as much as necro) and so tri-stat makes sense for that character, is it a kind of selective enchantment?

ZOS_Kraken · March 2023

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic.

Thank you for your understanding.

code65536 · March 2023

Rageypoo wrote: »

This input has been extremely helpful, thanks!

I did have a question about jewelry traits, since triune was mentioned...is it worth using? Would protective be worth if you don't have a piece of reinforced on the body? how do u guys feel about harmony trait after the recent change? I was also thinking of using the tri-reduce cost enchantment and possibly a block enchantment, would that be good?

also enchantments...this one bugs me too, i've heard that tri-stat for armor is a waste, but I see a lot of top runners using this often on most or even all their gear pieces. I imagine having as much health as possible is the simple way to go, but I run out of resources a lot on a DK tank (not nearly as much as necro) and so tri-stat makes sense for that character, is it a kind of selective enchantment?

I do not recommend Triune for the same reason I don't recommend Infused on armor. The reason is that max stats are not that useful for a tank. Your ability to sustain stamina or magicka is much more important than the maximum amount of stamina or magicka that you can have. Having 1.5K extra stam or mag at the start of the fight doesn't really make any meaningful difference, and I would advise anyone of any skill level or play style to steer clear of that trait for PvE tanking.

Personally, I use 3x infused jewelry. I like to have one of those jewelry pieces enchanted with block cost reduction. And then the other two with skill cost reduction. The specific kind of skill cost reduction will vary based on your class and what you're doing. For example, I main a NB tank, which uses a fairly even mix of mag and stam skills, so I have 1x block cost reduction and 2x tri-stat cost reduction. But on a DK tank, which is a much more magicka-intensive class and that generally has better stam sustain, I'd go with either 1x tri-cost and 1x mag cost or even 2x mag cost. The exact mix of jewelry enchants is something that you'll want to play around with and see what suits you best.

Harmony is another option in Update 37, and it's pretty strong on paper. But it has caveats, such as the need for there to be a reliable stream of synergies and you'll have to also pay more attention to synergy usage (e.g., not taking one when you're full on resources). So, it has potential, but requires more care and attention than something purely passive like infused cost reduction. I've not yet given Harmony a try, in part because infused cost reduction has worked so well for me for years that I haven't felt a pressing need to try something else.

For armor enchants, I used to personally prefer to just stack health. A lot of tank skills are health-scaled, like self-heals and shields, so the more health, the better. Again, max stam/mag are not as important as stam/mag sustain. The reason I say "used to" is because, there has been a trend in recent DLC vet HM content to have damage that's health-scaled; i.e., things that hit a player for more if they have more health. (I personally dislike this trend in content design, but that's a conversation for another topic.) And as a result, when doing some of the latest vet DLC HM content, you are probably better off with having lower health by having more tri-stat armor enchants. Content older than a couple of years don't have this problem, and max health is pretty great there (and there are some fights from before the dungeon team got their recent health-scaled damage fetish, such as Kjalnar HM, where you really have to stack max health in order to reliably survive... so, yea, in Q1 2020 they make a boss fight that punishes low-health tanks and then in Q3 2020 they made the first boss fight that punishes high-health tanks... thanks ZOS).

WrathOfInnos · April 2023

I'll add that Sturdy is calculated in a pretty generous way, with each piece being additive as a percent.

For example if your block costs 2k Stamina with no Sturdy, that 4% reduction takes off 80 to make it 1920 Stamina per block. It's easy to see this is a true 4% since 1920/2000 = 0.96. Now if you are already using 7 Sturdy and have 28% block cost reduction, the 8th piece brings that to 32%. That means the final Sturdy piece changed your block cost from 1440 to 1360, and some would call that a 5.6% reduction. It's still the same 80 Stamina per piece added, but the felt effect is slightly better with each additional Sturdy.

I point this out because many systems in ESO are multiplicative, and would calculate a 4% reduction off the latest value instead of the starting value. That leads to diminishing returns when stacking most stats, but not Sturdy. The only thing to watch is its interaction with flat block cost reduction glyphs, as this calculation is performed less favorably (flat cost subtracted off first, then percentage reduction).

Rageypoo · April 2023

All this info has been unbelievably helpful, thank you. I'm ready to make my set now!

El_Borracho · April 2023

@Kali_Despoine I left head (and shoulders) off as OP was asking about Pearlescent gear, assuming he was running a monster helm with it. But yes, head is a big piece, too.