A. wait a while till they get around to fixing Templar tanking.
B. Reroll another tank with another class.
C.Reset ya points into another way to play. Dps or Healer, Maybe a bit of both
D. Quit

These are the only options open.

Templar tanking is indeed kinda meh atm

But its far from broken. Never forget that your party also has to pull its own weight here. If the DD wont use CC properly there is no healer or tank in the world that can keep the group alive. You most likely did the right things already by getting in, taunting the most dangerous mob in the pack and getting the first line of CC up. But if nothing happens afterwards because the rest of the party is bad, the group dies. simple as that.


Some things to consider:

- try go get the Inner Fire Undaunted spell. It works with magicka instead of stamina and can be cast on range. WAY better than the One Handed Skill.

- Only block heavy attacks. Don't waste all your stamina blocking everything. if you block all the trash at once you WILL lose your stamina within seconds

- Avoid trash damage by CC, not constant blocking

- you most likely got too much incoming damage because there was no proper CC used by the other DD (even the healer can use some if necessary)



Yeah, DKs are better tanks atm, but a templar gets the job done too.

Dont let that one bad group demotivate you. There are a lot of things that can go wrong in veteran dungeons. Keep trying. get to know some people and form handpicked groups. try to get slowly away from pug groups by expanding your friends list. this way the chance of failing vet dungeons dramatically reduces.

The best way to hold aggro in this game, at the moment, is to heal.
Heal anyone, anywhere, and you are #1 on the hate list, it seems. (if such a list actually exists, who knows, everything seems so random)

It's broken, but given how many things are broken in this game, not really all that surprising.

My advice? Get to VR10 before doing any VR dungeons. Similar to the non-VR dungeons, doing them at level is an exercise in frustration / futility / death-zerging.

Actually, scratch that. Get to VR10 before 1.1.x comes and completely changes the entire game.

grizzbi wrote: »

SO..
I'm here to try to find solutions..

I just tried Spindleclutch as a VR1 Tank. And was not able to tank properly..at all.

I'm a templar Tank - heavy armor / health and stamina soft capped
I got VR1 gear, . And Enough Magicka to use a few skills (with enough magicka regen to use them again a few seconds later)
Abilities: single melee taunt / magicka aoe for trash mobs / huge armor buff / blinding flashes as CC /
+ Many potions ( from alchemy)
+ Food to get to the soft caps.

I tried to taunt the most dangerous targets + interrupt the casting ones + aoe a few targets but not all + use my CC for survivability + keep my armor buff most of the time

Anyway, whatever I do:
- If I block I get out of stamina in a snap and can't use my taunt anymore. The healer dies. Or I die because I can't block anymore.
- If I block half the time, I die in 3 hits/ 2 sec and the healer can't heal me because it's way too fast.

I play a templar tank, and tanked this dungeon just fine at VR1 multiple times.

Templars are extremely effective tanks. Anyone who tells you otherwise does not at all understand the game. They have stronger blocking mitgation then DKs, stronger heals and a power defensive buff (rune focus). Their only weakness tanking wise is the fact there heal is stupid auto target (DKs is self only) and there ultimates are worse then dks. Otherwise tanking wise, they are fairly evenly matched. What makes DK so overpowered is that they are also insanely better DPS, CC and everything else.

How to tank as a templar:

Step 1:
Respec, remove ALL stamina. Stamina is utterly worthless in this game as the skills that depend on it do horrible dps, and as you noticed - you need it to block.
Do a 35/14 health/magicka split. This lets you super OC health, and oc magicka.

Magicka is your prime stat as a tank almost more so then health, because Splindletclutch especially youll quickly find out - tanking in this game isn't so much about being defensive, its about being offensive while surviving. You dont dps? You will fail spindleclutch, exactly at 2nd boss.

Skills:
Sword and Board:
Pierce armor:
-40% armor and spell resist is MASSIVE. People that tell you to use the inner fire taunt instead are out of their minds. The dps difference is insane. You can not and will not win spindleclutch at VR1 using the wrong taunt.

Templar Abilities:
Biting Jabs - primary dps.
Rune focus - primary defensive skill. (Use only during 2nd boss, otherwise have your heal loaded - honor the dead or breath of life)
Inner Light (Mages guild) - add to your dps
Last skills whatever, can have your health and rune focus, or the shield charge is nice too.

This line worries me:
" got VR1 gear, . And Enough Magicka to use a few skills (with enough magicka regen to use them again a few seconds later)"

Magicka regen is one of the worst stats in this game. Because your whole "few seconds" is actually about 16 seconds, if you overcharged that stat. (around 60ish at vr1 iirc? ) 60x2 seconds, about 480 magicka for our good heal = 16 seconds)
16 seconds is an ETERNITY to get another skill off - especially in a game where you can die in 3 seconds easily. Never EVER rely on that stat. Jewelry should be dedicated towards spell damage. If you really want to go defensive cuz your other 3 party members are pure dps DKs, you can do -blocking costs. No other choices are really valid.

How you manage your magicka at low lvls:
-Start with a lot. (use food)
-Use potions
-Save some for the hard parts
-Morph rune focus so its free (magicka regen morph)

(Mid vr levels you need to start using equilibrium)

"- If I block I get out of stamina in a snap and can't use my taunt anymore. The healer dies. Or I die because I can't block anymore."
Stop blocking. Only block POWER ATTACKs - eg the ones that big you a big message on your screen telling you to block. (Bosses wont give you this message - learn the tells).
They don't hit hard at all with non power attacks, especially with rune focus up.

- If I block half the time, I die in 3 hits/ 2 sec and the healer can't heal me because it's way too fast.
- Don't block half the time.
If the health cant keep you up thru 1 boss doing non-power attacks. It's the healers fault, not yours.

99% of what makes this dungeon hard is the DPS and CCs job. Tanking it is one of the easier parts, at least stats wise. (Mechanically , its on par with the difficulty of healing)

Good luck.

Templars do need buffs. However ZO are nerfing templars and buffing DKs next patch because they have no idea how to balance the game. And the devs never respond to the forums.

vyal wrote: »

The best way to hold aggro in this game, at the moment, is to heal.
Heal anyone, anywhere, and you are #1 on the hate list, it seems. (if such a list actually exists, who knows, everything seems so random)

It's broken, but given how many things are broken in this game, not really all that surprising.

My advice? Get to VR10 before doing any VR dungeons. Similar to the non-VR dungeons, doing them at level is an exercise in frustration / futility / death-zerging.

Actually, scratch that. Get to VR10 before 1.1.x comes and completely changes the entire game.

I've been a healer for the whole game before I respec to be a tank. It was working quite well. I didn't get aggro too much. I was using heal over time + direct heals + support skills.I don't think the aggro system works differently in Veteran Ranks. Does it?

Getting to VR10 before doing any dungeon is in fact skipping the content which could help to make the VR journey more diversified and interesting.

yake82 wrote: »

Im pretty sure you did everything right. Its just almost impossible to find good pug group for the first 3 vet dungeons. This is a new game, people are still in learning process.

Consider spending some gold for item sets. I bought Warlock, Twilight Embrace and Hunding Rage sets. So thats +11stam regen, +10% healing and extra magicka every minute.
Im V2 so they will be outdated soon.

By way, you should try Banished Cells first, its the easiest of the three. Second bosses in Spindleclutch and Fungal Grotto are murderous to pug groups.

Playing a tank without friends or a guild is certainly much more random. But I like this idea. As a healer I was able to really help any pug. I would have loved to do the same as a tank. It should be more difficult with this role but not impossible.

I use 5 heavy armor pieces + 2 light armor ones. I chose the death's wind set .AOE knockback when under 30% life. CC seems to be a good choice for a tank. That's even more true for a Templar who has less CC.

Too bad: this set is not working currently. The next patch is supposed to fix it. I thought I would have to wait a few days for that, but things seem to take longer than expected on ZOS side...

chaosme wrote: »

The trash is usually harder than the boss itself because of how things tend to end up being very messy. The best way to get through trash now seems to be with lots of AoE spamming.

AOE (spamming) is more the DPS role. Slotting a AOE ability is certainly necessary for a tank. Especially for trash. But my main concern is survivability as a tank and group support.

Axer wrote: »

I play a templar tank, and tanked this dungeon just fine at VR1 multiple times.

Templars are extremely effective tanks. Anyone who tells you otherwise does not at all understand the game. They have stronger blocking mitgation then DKs, stronger heals and a power defensive buff (rune focus). Their only weakness tanking wise is the fact there heal is stupid auto target (DKs is self only) and there ultimates are worse then dks. Otherwise tanking wise, they are fairly evenly matched. What makes DK so overpowered is that they are also insanely better DPS, CC and everything else.

How to tank as a templar: ...

Thanks, but I don't want to use this kind of build. I want to use the many tanking abilities available in the templar skill lines. I don't want to replace them with the healing abilities and the dps one.

I really prefer this guide. It focus on tanking. It uses the templar "tanking" abilities: mitigation and CC.

I've tested all the skills by myself. Then, when I've found this guide, it just helped me to finish my build. And it shows how to adapt to different situation. That's what a pure tank should try to do to be really effective.

This guide is very well done: as you can see the guy uses different abilities. For different situations. It's not a very specific build. It's a pure tank approach using all the tools available for a templar. And It works for him. In my case it didn't. Because I had to block way too much. Because otherwise my templar skills didn't helped enough to mitigate the damage.

I could explain in details why I don't want to use your specific build. But it's not the subject.

Most of the people don't even care about many templar abilities. Because they just skip them. Or just use them to fill a gap in a dps / healer or hybrid build.

I could understand that there's no place for a pure tank build. But in that case, why can I queue as a tank? And why is a tank required to finalize a group before you enter a dungeon?

I could just skip the dungeon for the next 3 or 4 VR ranks. Or just adapt my build , by including CC skills from other skill lines like volcanic rune.

But when I see that other classes can achieve better results as tanks by using exploits, I suspect that it will be the norm. All the time. The game is about FOTM builds and exploits. And when they try to make a group, people search the ones able to exploit these broken mechanics. Because that's how the game is currently "balanced".

I do agree. But the game is not explicit about that:

- A tank is required in the group search tool.
- People expect the tank to be able to tank.
- When people die they reject the fault on the tank or the healer.
- When they see "tanks" who exploit the game to become immortal or to bug a boss, they think " Now that's a Tank!"
- If they chose to be a tank, they will use the same broken mechanics to achieve the same result.
- All the attention is focused on those broken mechanics.
- No attention is given to "normal tank abilities" to balance them and make all of them effective.

Epsilon_Echo wrote: »

Don't forget that VR Spindle clutch is rated up to VR5. So your bosses will outclass you by a long shot. Not to mention that there is a boss after that point that is considered the hardest fight in the game for a group without massive DPS.

I'm not saying its not-doable at VR1. But I made it in a group with a VR2, VR3, VR5, and VR10.

It's probably doable with a good and organized group. Or with exploits. It's very difficult and frustrating for an average VR1 group.

I was very surprised when people told me that it was not a VR1 dungeon but a VR3-5. And I'm even more surprised when I look at Zenimax adding V10-V12 content when there's still no Dungeon for V1-V2...

And the boss who is a DPS race...Why would you bring a tank here? It's more a burden than anything else.

Epsilon_Echo wrote: »

I was the tank (at VR10) and was needed for the other bosses. For that boss I ended up switching to my alt bar ( Two handed with momentum and igneous weapons) for DPS. It was still a ridiculously hard fight and hard than the other two VR3-5 dungeons. Banished Cells is structured more towards parties with good tanks.

Thanks for the info. I'll keep that in mind if I accept to play again despite the current state of the game.

rpssunrealb16_ESO wrote: »

its not really you as a tank that is failing but the dps in your group that have to crappy dps builds to do there jobb.

jab is an awesome tanking ability becouse it does a knockback on last hit so it kinda works like a mini cc and rune focus is the best option as a defense booster then i would use the regen aura to keep stam up along with the melee taunt. for the last skill i would pick either the undaunted spider or armor skill or solarbarrage for aoe and a spell resist boost. But as i said above while other mmos look for the tank to do the heavy work in dungeons this game instead passes that jobb on the dps . So if dps dont know wth there doing the group will wipe a tank can however do mistakes and still survive and do there jobb.

thanks for these advice.

Spamming jab is not fun to me. And the magicka used will not be used for the other skills. It can help with some build (with more max magicka), but not mine. And it won't save me long enough. I prefer to use blinding flash which works for me and as a support skill for the whole group (morphed for the 4 sec duration).

I already use rune focus (main bar) and restoring aura (second bar).

I can use Immovable in some rare case to provide even more armor (I have it on my second bar and use it 2 sec before I engage the fight to be able to gain some stamina back with regen, restoring aura or a potion). But I usually don't because it cost a lot of stamina. And stacking a lot of armor didn't help that much in the dungeon.

I'll use sun shield as a second shield + the aoe small aggro. I don't have it yet. Maybe I'll change it for bone armor later. But I prefer to have more hp (with sun shield) than more armor (soft cap + doesn't work against spells). And as I have a lot of HP , sun shield will scale better ( because it's a percentage).

I use solar barrage in some case. But it was not really helpful because it gave me too much aggro and - in that particular case (spindle clutch) - the magicka could be better used (volcanic rune comes to my mind for AOE CC..).

Right now, I highly doubt that these change can help that much. I'll see later if I return to the game.

grizzbi wrote: »

Thanks, but I don't want to use this kind of build. I want to use the many tanking abilities available in the templar skill lines. I don't want to replace them with the healing abilities and the dps one.

I really prefer this guide. It focus on tanking. It uses the templar "tanking" abilities: mitigation and CC.

I've tested all the skills by myself. Then, when I've found this guide, it just helped me to finish my build. And it shows how to adapt to different situation. That's what a pure tank should try to do to be really effective.

Lol. Then you want to continue to horribly fail VR dungeons then I guess.

Also I didn't post much of a build, just basic skill set and attribs. You can build however you like and still do well if you take my advice and use MOST of the skills I recommended.

grizzbi wrote: »

This guide is very well done: as you can see the guy uses different abilities. For different situations. It's not a very specific build. It's a pure tank approach using all the tools available for a templar.

Um lol no I looked at it dude. The ONLY templar tank skill he recommended was exactly the same one I recommended, so guess you either never at all read what I wrote, or don't understand his guide either.

The only templar tank skill that matters and he/I recommneded was rune focus. You probably never used it in spindle, it could be simply as that, but refuse to take both of our advices and continue to fail if thats how you want to play the game, have at it.

I mean there plain and simply aren't many templar tank skills. The only other one even notable is blind he mentioned for "group control"
But thats simply complete nonesense for a lot reasons:
A) Group tanking is not a thing in this game. There are no aoe taunts, there is simply NO way you can tank a large group of enemies in a VR dungeon, period. I'm VR10 and lead a guild of the best of the best, it simply is not a thing that can be done, and should never be attempted.
The monsters should die far before they ever become an issue to try to tank. None have much hp. You aoe/cc them down, thats how the gmae is designed. Don't enjoy it? Sorry, thats how the game is.

Reason the blind sucks:
EXTREMELY SHORT RANGE. Only works on yourself.

Only other non heal defensive skill:
Radiant Ward:
Why it's poor:
In of itself, it could be useful for tanking a very hard boss that has a ton of adds that spawn near him, to get yourself a big shield. Such a situation does not exist in the game is it's issue.
And for single target , its terrible. Only grants a big shield if you hit a lot of mobs.

So yea, ignore the advice from a seasoned veteran leading one of the top pve guilds, and follow it from some random dude guide thats over a month old that probably never beat a VR dungeon. Have fun dying.

Axer wrote: »

So yea, ignore the advice from a seasoned veteran leading one of the top pve guilds, and follow it from some random dude guide thats over a month old that probably never beat a VR dungeon. Have fun dying.

You're so full of yourself.

I definitely prefer "some random dude" who try to use the specific Templar abilities in different ways. That's how I enjoy any mmorpg: I refuse to follow the crowd who dismiss 50% of the abilities and swear that they are just "useless". Much more fun to kill a guy in pvp with my own "underdog" build.

Back to the topic. I try to understand the specific VR dungeon mechanics, so that I can test things and adjust my own builds. I've only tried one dungeon and was surprised with the damage from trash. Relax.

grizzbi wrote: »

@‌ Xanxarib16_ESO

Yes, my problem was mainly trash. I thought I would aggro them for a few seconds, meanwhile the DPS would do their job. I do understand that I'm probably not supposed to do that with my current setup. I'll try later with a better build (I miss 2 or 3 skills because I recently changed from a healer role to a tank).

Thanks for your advice. Volcanic rune is also my idea to be more efficient right now.

yea even DK's cant hold agro on all the trash mobs and we should't hold agro on it all. a dps can with no problem handle 1 mob, 2 mobs if he gets heals and block, and the healer can also handle 1 mob or 2 mobs if he hold block down, they wont die from it not 1 shoot or 3 shoots, unless its the elite mobs they have 15k hp, and those you need to tank, but im quessing you allready know that.

my group well we LoS pull alot if the trash group have 3 or more ranged in there packs and are to spread out to much to AoE.
And since im in 5/2 HA/LA setup with impulse spam i wont come close to a Sorc full 7/7 LA impulse spam or a Templar full 7/7 MA 2h sword setup.
So on trash pull the dps tank as much as i do, but as long as the 2 dps and the tank get the damage we take is spread out evenly among us the healer wont have a problem, and well our dps have learned to hold down block when we fight trash.

im telling you Impluse spam ftw, AoE is king on trash. just have an taunt ready for those few adds in the packs that cant get CC'ed or that you know hit hard.

but your templar AoE healing should pull a good amount of agro, and help the healer to keep the group alive, and if you did't investment in D-staff - your Templar AoE healing and Volcanic rune should help you out on trash packs!