Just to show a quick sample how the build works, I made a video on my vet 5 DK soloing veteran dungeon spindleclutch up to the first mini boss including trash. It was a fairly easy boss but i just want to show you the crazy amount of mana I had all through out the fight. It's pretty much impossible to die as a DK as long as you have mana since Dragon's blood heals 33% missing health.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRYfQPAloeE



Introduction

The idea is to have as much survivability, high self-sustain and deal as much possible damage for endgame tanking. I'm a firm believer that tank dps matters specially with trials coming out soon, I think we will see even more creative builds that really pushes one's class to its limit. The build will be using 7 light armor for mana efficiency and will be using the Magicka furnace set to provide ridiculous amount of mana making a spell heavy tank with spammable heal / nukes at its disposal. Now inb4 healers are overrated, lets begin.



Race choice: Pretty much all standard tanking races

Imperial - Huge boost for HP and Stamina. Red diamond is always a plus.

Red Guard - My 2nd best choice. I think 12% max HP from Imperial is kinda hard to give up for extra stamina regen but still good nonetheless.

Breton - Spell resist wont be as good since we'll be using 7 light armor on this build meaning we'll be capped without it anyway, still not bad considering it gives magicka and magicka reduction.



Attribute Points

49 points to HP. Adjusting other stats are much easier to adjust through gear/enchants.



Armor and Stat priority

7 Light armor. I wanna take advantage of our great variety of class skills that all uses mana including high sustaining ability like Dragon's blood. Having 7 light armor will give us more manna efficiency, recovery and will pretty much guarantee spell resist cap. In return we gave up a lot of armor ( which will be mostly negated by volatile armor ), 7% increased healing and 20% block cost reduction which is probably the biggest downside. I never really had an issue with stamina so i personally don't think these passive are really needed specially with the help of Helping hands and stamina pots. Maybe when we get to see harder contents in trials but who knows.



I feel like DK's are really spell heavy and having 21% on light armor passive alone will definitely open up to a lot more flexible playstyle. Magicka will also be your secondary stat. After capping HP to around 2500-2700 I would start investing to magicka. There's also sets I think that is almost mandatory for this build and that is Magicka furnace and Warlock set. For instances where there is no mobs/bosses using melee attacks, ill be using Warlock set. Magicka furnace is almost 4 times better than warlock so its really good for tanking where you could really take advantage of its 5 piece bonus. You'll be able to spam your sustaining abilities and aoe/nukes to provide great dps for the group. Not sure if its a bug or intended but you can hold block while casting spells which is great since there's really no potential risk when your using your abilities.



Skills

These are just examples, It is most likely you will have to adjust your bars depending on the encounter.

Main Bar - For single target boss fights ( Shield )

Off Bar – High sustain ( Resto staff ) / Aoe trash mobs ( Shield )

Inner Beast - I'm not a big fan of our melee taunt. I think having a range taunt is invaluable and we have a lot of magicka at our disposal. taunting multiple mobs would be an easy task.

Cinder storm - 30% avoidance for like 20 seconds, deals around 400 damage in total per cast and on top of that this is your stamina battery. every cast you gain 4% stamina through Helping hands.

Unstable flame - large portion of you're dps comes from here. Try not to clip your dots, let it completely fall off before refreshing to take advantage of its morph effects. You can replace this with Defensive stance if you are starving in stamina when blocking and need more survivability when tanking.

Green Dragon's Blood - Your main self heal. With the huge amount of mana we get from magicka furnace set and the mana efficiency provided by our light armor passives, who needs a healer? It's ridiculous when running vet dungeons i usually ask a healer to go dps on most bosses since i can pretty much keep myself up for the entire fight. Can be replaced with Igneous shield if you wanna try are more proactive approach and having a shield support for the group ( have not testest this ). This will also provide stamina through helping hands.

Volatile Armor - Pretty much mandatory since we are using light armor. This will cap our armor and the damage return is a also nice.

Deep Breath - I went with the interrupt morph since I really find it useful having an aoe interrupt when dealing with trash mobs. Saves a lot of lives and makes it much easier to deal with these annoying archers/chargers that kills your group who can't avoid reds on the ground.

Burning Talons - I had chosen the dps morph that adds damage overtime. The dps increase is quite huge and really helps a lot when taking down multiple mobs. Again with this build you'll have a lot of mana at your disposal so it really helps to keep the adds pinned down since we dont have an aoe taunt.

Standard of Might - Great damage buff that also provides mitigation. Provides damage overtime which is nice and immobilize on synergy. Consider this both your defensive and offensive cooldown.

Quick Siphon – I think this skill is kinda underrated specially if you are the caster where the effect is actually doubled. It heals for about 80 HP everytime you hit the target. I picked the instant cast morph since I dont wanna risk casting a spell for 1.5 seconds where I am not able to block. You can cast this skills instantly while blocking. I’ll leave the force siphon morph for healers.

Mutagen – Stacks with rapid regeneration. Most healers will be using rapid regeneration but let your healer use this if your healer happen to use Mutagen Morph.



Situational skills

Spiked bone shield - The synergy is quite strong, Definitely usefull for encounters with a lot of aoe damage on the group. Also provides much more armor than volatile armor.

Igneous weapon - If theres no other DK providing this buff feel free to use them on your extra bar to provide damage buff.

Absorb Magic - If you need extra suvivability. provides more mitigation and decrease cost of blocking.

Evasion - Might be good for encounters with a lot of heavy physical damage. Together with cinder storm, Thats 45% avoidance ( not really sure how these 2 skills stacks ). Will prolly do more testing specially with sets like Spectre's Eye that provides another 20% avoidance with 50% uptime.

Magma Armor - For encounters where you need a heavy tank cool down. With the content we have right now, i dont really see an instance where you actually need this.



Mundus Stone

Lord - If you are not HP cap.

Mage - If you are HP cap.



Equipment sets

Magicka furnace - A must

Warlock - For encounters with no melee bosses/mobs

Twilight Embrace - Standard tanking sets, 10% increased healing recieved is always nice.

Worm cult - If there's no other user that is providing this set. Its not a bad pickup but I'd rather rely on dps/healer to use this set if you are in a guild/group.



I'm at the very early stages of this build, I'm pretty sure there will be a lot of changes when more testing has been done and when skills/items actually gets fixed.