The Tank You Deserve

Armor Types

Gear and Item Set Info

***GEAR:

*All gear values shown are accurate with build passives, CP, and scaled to gold gear.

- The Master's Perfected Sword & Board set on CC back bar. (vDSA weapon set):

• (2 items) Adds 3% Healing Taken
• (2 items) When you deal damage with Puncture, you heal for 6,988 Health and gain Spell and Physical Resistance equal to the amount of healing done for 5 seconds. 
• *Notes: This is a great self-heal if you have stamina but not magicka. Although, this build has great sustain and many different heals.

- Winter's Respite set on front healing bar sword & board + jewelry (Western Skyrim overland light armor set):

• (2 items) Adds 129 Magicka Recovery
• (3 items) Adds 1,096 Maximum Magicka
• (4 items) Adds 1,096 Maximum Magicka
• (5 items) Casting abilities that leave an effect on the ground will create a circle of healing frost (8m radius) for 10 seconds. You and your allies restore 2,688 Health every 1 second while inside the circle. This effect can occur once every 10 seconds. 
• *Notes: This is a phenomenal group healing set. This is the primary heal for this build which can be proced by 3 different abilities on the heal bar (one mag, one stam, and one health ability).

- Brands of Imperium set on chest, belt, legs, hands, & feet (Imperial City Prison dungeon set):

• (2 items) Adds 1,206 Maximum Health
• (3 items) Adds 1,206 Maximum Health
• (4 items) Adds 4% Healing Taken
• (5 items) When you take damage, you grant you and your group members within 8 meters a damage shield that absorbs 13,314 damage for 6 seconds. This effect can occur every 12 seconds. 
• *Notes: The group damage mitigation of this set is unparalleled due to its 50% uptime and the fact that it works in the same radius as Winter's Respite/all of your heals. It basically amounts to ~33% damage mitigation for the group if your group stays within 8m of you, assuming they have ~20k health. It's insane.

- Earthgore Monster Set (option 1):

• (1 item) Adds 4% Healing Taken
• (2 items) When you heal yourself or an ally that is under 50% Health, you conjure a pool of quenching blood underneath them, immediately removing all previous enemy placed effects, and healing the lowest Health friendly target in the area for 35,211 Health over 10 seconds. This effect can occur once every 20 seconds. 
• *Notes: This is a phenomenal healing set. The way it procs is extraordinary, and it is always up when it is needed as long as you have at least Overflowing Altar/one of your heals up. It is basically a fire and forget clutch heal. Great for no-death runs when you’re not running a healer. It also procs in an 8m radius like most of the other ground based heals of this build. Hence, it can save multiple group members.

- Tremorscale Monster Set (option 2):

• (1 item) Adds 1,096 Maximum Stamina
• (2 items) When you activate a taunt ability on an enemy, you cause a duneripper to burst from the ground beneath them after 1 second, dealing 7,799 Physical Damage to all enemies within 4 meters and reducing their Physical Resistance by 2,395 for 8 seconds. This effect can occur once every 8 seconds.
• *Notes: This set is only useful in groups with stamina dps. However, it grants a unique enemy resistance debuff that increases group penetration, and thus dps, by a noticeable margin. DK tanks synergize best with stamina dps due to the Mountain’s Blessing passive.

***TRAITS:

- All armor/shields should be sturdy to maximize block cost reduction to yield great stamina sustain.

- Both weapons should be defending in order to maximize your base resistances.

- One jewelry piece should be protective while the other two are heathy. (This plays into min-maxing your resources and base resistances.

***ENCHANTMENTS:

- Weapons: crusher enchants on both to maximize armor debuffs on enemies (at least on CC back bar weapon w/ your taunt). It really doesn’t matter what enchant you place on your front heal bar weapon.

- Armor: 

• helmet, chest, & legs: triune
• shoulders, hands, belt, & feet: max health
• shields: max stamina

- Jewelry:

• rings & neck: magicka recovery

***MUNDUS STONE:

- The Tower: Increases your Maximum Stamina by ~2,000.

***MAX CHARACTER STATS:

- max magicka: ~20k on front heal bar; ~18.6k on CC back bar

- max health: ~35.5k

- max stamina: ~25.6k w/Tremorscale; ~24.2k w/ Earthgore

(w/ Tri-Stat Food on)

- magicka recovery: ~1,360

- health recovery: ~540 (definitely way higher with sets procing/heals; +500 w/ Bewitched Sugar Skulls)

- stamina recovery: ~660 (Sturdy traits and play style circumvent any stamina sustain issues. Also higher with abilities active.)

- spell resistance: ~27,900

- physical resistance: ~27,800

(Resistances are maxed out easily with 100% uptime on Turn Evil and procing vDSA set via taunting.)

***ATTRIBUTES:

- Magicka: 0

- Health: 39

- Stamina: 25

General Info

***PURPOSE OF BUILD:

This build is the culmination of ~3,000hrs of tanking experience, an extensive review of all of the current in-game gear sets, and a 3-month build process. It serves as a universal PvE tank/healer hybrid that allows you to maximize dps in most dungeons without a healer. It has been vetted in all veteran DLC dungeon challenger content (no-deaths, hard modes, speed-runs), group arenas including vBRP (still need a healer), and veteran trials. It has allowed me to complete all dungeon challenger content without a healer except for 4 HM’s (FV, MGF, IR, & SG) and 2 no-death runs (DoM & MGF). It serves as a phenomenal off-tank and even main tank in veteran trials. The set synergy and ability bar layout facilitate the hardest group content ESO has to offer. From damage mitigation to heals, group damage buffs, enemy resistance & damage debuffs, damage shields, crowd control, and group resource sustain, there is nothing this tank build can’t do. This is the pinnacle of tanking. This is… “The Tank You Deserve”.

***USE OF ABILITIES:

*Abilities are laid out on their bars for ease of use with a controller.

- Healing Front Bar:

(This bar in tandem with the aforementioned set pieces virtually makes you a tank healer. Stay on this bar during a boss fight if your group is getting hit hard in order to throw down heals quickly.)

• Use Green Dragon Blood as your primary self-heal when at low health. Opt for using Pierce Armor to proc your ~7k instant heal from The Master's Perfected set when you are only missing a bit of health. Green Dragon Blood is a % based heal, so it will not replace much of your health if it already isn't very low. Don't waste magicka.
• Keep 100% uptime on Turn Evil to maximize your resistances. Your resistances should be high enough regardless though. This ability grants 8% damage mitigation and 10% stamina recovery in an 8m AoE in addition to fearing all enemies within for 5sec. Recast it to fear/CC enemies after grouping them. DO NOT spam it.
• Use Overflowing Altar as your primary heal. This is this build's #1 ability. The synergy is unbeatable given that it instantly heals 65% of your teammates' missing health. This is also a ground based heal that does about ~700 hp/sec, so it will proc Winter's Respite (another ~2,700 hp/sec). Lay this down when you need extra heals yourself or to protect melee dps during boss fights. Always throw this down to proc Winter's Respite when doing large add pulls. This is the beauty of this build. Stack every add you can and you'll have all the heals and DoTs on the same convenient spot. Group survivability while pulling large trash groups is unparalleled. Feel free to spam this ability if your group is getting hammered. The health it costs to cast is immediately replaced by the Winter's Respite procing.
• Use Cinder Storm as your ranged AoE heal (~1,100hp/sec). You can also use this ability to proc Winter's Respite at range on teammates, and it is fantastic to cover reviving allies. You can also just stack this heal on your other heals for intense healing. Always cast this on teammates behind the boss when you have it turned away from them. (also snares enemies by reducing their movement speed by 70%)
• Use Inner Rage as your ranged taunt or main taunt if you happen to be out of stamina or chilling on your heal bar. DO NOT spam it.
• Use your Magma Shell Ultimate to gain resources and invincibility for 12sec. Allows you to keep bosses still in any amount of damage to give the dps time to do their jobs. Also grants a ~120% damage shield for allies.
• *Notes: This build puts out a minimum of ~4,500hp/sec and maximum of ~9,100hp/sec when Earthgore procs & an Energy Orb is up (in addition to the other ground based heals). This maximum doesn’t even include the Energy Orb synergy, critical healing, or self-heals.

- Buff/Debuff/CC Back Bar:

• Use Energy Orb as a directional AoE heal (~1,100hp/sec in 8m radius + ~4,600hp from synergy) and group resource sustain ability (~4k mag or stam on synergy).
• Use Igneous Weapons to notably buff group dps (20% weapon & spell damage increase). (You should be able to keep 100% uptime on this.)
• Use Heroic Slash to generate some ultimate and debuff boss damage by 15% for 12sec.
• Use Unrelenting Grip to chain in enemies for your group to stack DoTs on/prior to using Turn Evil to CC them.
• Use Pierce Armor as your melee taunt/an enemy debuff to get up group penetration by ~5,300. It can also be used as a ~7k self-heal when procing The Master's Perfected set.
• Use your Aggressive Horn Ultimate during execute phase on bosses or whenever available to buff group resources and critical damage by 15%.

Champion Point Tips

*Feel free to adjust these at your own discretion, but this is what seems to work best w/ this build.

- The Tower

• Bashing Focus: 59 (helps with stamina sustain while getting interrupts; spamming bash during execute does the most dps)

- The Lover

• Mooncalf: 43
• Arcanist: 43
• Tenacity: 43

- The Shadow

• Shadow Ward: 82 (ESSENTIAL for all tanks)

- The Apprentice

• Blessed: 82
• Elfborn: 82 (both to maximize heals w/ build sets)

- The Atronach

• Master-at-Arms: 58

- The Ritual

• Mighty: 48

- The Steed

• Ironclad: 67 (paramount for tanks)
• Spell Shield: 11

- The Lady

• Hardy: 43
• Elemental Defender: 43

- The Lord

• Heavy Armor Focus: 58
• Bastion: 48 (increases strength of Brands of Imperium damage shield)

***PASSIVES:

- All class passives: Ardent Flame, Draconic Power, and Earthen Heart

- All One Hand And Shield passives

- All Heavy Armor passives

- Intimidating Presence and Banish the Wicked passives in Fighters Guild

- All Undaunted passives

- All racial passives

- Medicinal Use passive in Alchemy

- Gourmand passive in Provisioning

***POTIONS:

- Tri-Stat Pots (Immovability Pots if you need to get revives in the presence of knockback effects)

***FOOD:

- Bewitched Sugar Skulls or Purple Tri-Stat Food

***Use whatever race you want with this build, but keep in mind max stats may vary accordingly with racial passives. I consciously chose Khajiit for this build because they do 10% more critical healing and have a nice uniform 825 max stat increase passive, but there are other great tank/healer races.

***Other Sets to Alternate:

• If you’re comfortable with the build/running all melee dps/the dps are comfortable dodging damage and you’re not attempting a no-death, run Tremorscale in place of Earthgore.
• Use Arkasis’s Genius (Stone Garden dungeon heavy set) in place of Brands of Imperium if you happen to have a redundant healer. This set gives phenomenal group Ultimate regen. It is very useful when running vMHK HM. It allows the tank to keep up with dps Ultimate regen so the dps don’t need to slow down the burn.
• Using Wyrd Tree’s Blessing in place of Brands of Imperium helped me tank vLoM HM.
• Hist Bark in place of Brands of Imperium helped me tank vSG HM. (You definitely still need a healer. I had mine even running Guard from the Support skill tree. All of the dps ran Shuffle too.)
• I find myself keeping Winter's Respite on 99% of the time because it makes the build, but you can run Roar of Alkosh instead if you’re main tanking a trial.
• This build is great for off-tanking veteran trials. (You’re basically a 3rd healer.) You may just want to use Tremorscale in place of Earthgore if a healer is already running it.
• Lord Warden is also a good option for off-tanking trials granted it procs in an 8m radius (+~5% damage mitigation).

Build Rating