The simple tank
Class: WARDEN
Race: Argonian
Main Role: Tank
Health, Magicka, Stamina
| HEALTH | MAGICKA | STAMINA |
| 64 - 60k | 0 - 12k | 0 - 15k |
Skills
Bar 1
Weapon 1: One Handed And Shield
One Hand And Shield Skill
Pierce Armor
One Hand And Shield Skill
Absorb Magic
Warden Skill
Budding Seeds
Warden Skill
Gripping Shards
Undaunted Skill
Bone Surge
Warden Skill
Permafrost
Bar 2
Weapon 2: Destruction Staff
Warden Skill
Ice Fortress
Warden Skill
Frozen Gate
Warden Skill
Polar Wind
Warden Skill
Lotus Blossom
Warden Skill
Blue Betty
Warden Skill
Enchanted Forest
Armor Types
| Light Armor | Medium Armor | Heavy Armor |
| 1 | 1 | 5 |
Gear and Item Set Info
Gear
backbar ice staff plague doctor
main bar sword and board plague doctor
helm blood Spawn light
shoulder blood Spawn medium
chest ebon
hands ebon
waist ebon
legs ebon
feet ebon
neck plague doctor mag recovery
ring plague doctor mag recovery
ring plague doctor mag recovery
why a ice staff?
ice staffs are very good for tanking. If you go to the tree you’ll see when you heavy attack, you’ll taunt the enemy. That means by having an ice staff on our backbar, we have a free inner rage and restore Magicka.
Ebon set
ebon is a great set that not only buffs you with health but also for your group. Great for squishy dds.
plague doctor
a lot of people say that this set is selfish. It isn’t. Especially when you’re getting into tanking you’ll want a bit more health than the experienced tanks. This set is very good at that and gives you lots of health. I ran vso with this build to try it out and it works great!
bloodspawn
This set is not only great with ultimate Regen but gives you huge resists. Without this you’ll sit at 26k resists. Most tanks are fine with this but I wanted to give you a little more resists so with this set active you’re getting around 32k resists and gold your gear out then it cap.
General Info
We are using atronach stone for mag recovery
sustain
we sustain Magicka from recovery, pop a potion and you’ll have around 2k mag recovery with stamina food. We Regen stamina through heavy attacks. I know expect 20k stam or higher but you really don’t need it. 15k is enough for a new player and you’ll realise that only on rare occasions you’ll need 15k. Try it out and see how you go.
vampire
vampire is really op, especially on a tank. You gett huge recovery and damage migration. If you struggle with the fire dmg it’s either you’re standing in fire too much or it’s a bosses mechanics. If there’s a fire dot on the ground, stand out of it. If an enemy hits you with direct dmg like a fireball then block or dodge. Fire from enemies can mostly be avoided. If it’s a boss eg ash titan vcoa2. Throw on mist form, from the vampire skill tree. When the boss does his huge aoe use the ability and you won’t die.
Buffs
in fights most your abilities will have a 20sec duration so you can reset your buffs at the same time.
abilites
gripping shards
this your cc ability, use this to immobile enemy’s in fights
frozen gate
this is how you pull Long range adds in. You place it on the ground and then the next enemy to stand on it will be pulled to you. It takes practice but it is really strong in trash fights. Especially in trials where there are lots of adds.
ulti
use permafrost and enchanted Forest in dungeons
use enchanted forest and warhorn in trials
Champion Point Tips
Cp allocation
this time I’ll be explaining the cps because some people didn’t understand them last time.
blue tree
100 elfborn
100 blessed
40 elemental expert
for this tree I’ll be getting a lot of things in heals. The reason being is that there aren’t a lot of things we need to get in the blue tree because we aren’t doing a lot of dmg. Elfborn is strong as that can make our heals Crit for huge amounts of heals.
Red tree
20 spell shield
20 heavy Armor
56 hardy
56 elemental defender
56 thick skinned
20 ironclad
12 quick recovery
this tree buffs our overall migration and increases our resists.
green tree
75 tenacity
75 Mooncalf
45 warlord
45 shadow Ward
This tree will increase your sustain and the cost of other abilities.
lower cps
if you’re at a cp like 160 then you’re going to want to get some cps in
red tree
start with getting your cps in resists so you can get them up. Then evenly distribute them across hardy expert defender and thick skinned is the best way to go
blue tree
spend your cps in blessed, then elfborn then final one. Really simple.
green tree
go straight away tenacity. Once you got good amount of points then start putting in Mooncalf
Feel free to leave a comment with a question or anything else!
I just got Morrowind and the build looks really interesting since I always wanted a tank. Is it possible to level solo with it? Or do I need to bring some more dmg?
Thanks for your effort to write all of this down 🙂 Always good to learn from people that know what they’re talking about^^
I personally leveled this build solo for a while. Make sure to put the bear on and have the cliff diver and the beetle thing as your main attacks, you also will have an ice staff on your backbar so run wall of elements as well.
At lvl 30 I suggest going to the random dungeon finder, and just start running dungeons like hell. You can do it earlier if you want. What I personally did to learn tanking is to find an npc boss, the easy ones, and just block his heavies interrupt and get used to it. The normal dungeons are going to give you a skill point for the quest, better gear and how to work with your team! As you progress start picking up the skills you need and switch out the old ones for the current abilities. This is kinda brief but hopefully this will help! ?
Thank you for the fast reply and help! 🙂
I’ll try what you suggested and practice with bosses.
I’ve never been to dungeons even though I have around 270 CP, but I guess I have to give it a try (Since that’s what a tank is for, right?). Hope the randoms aren’t too unforgiving with noobs 😀
Thanks again!!!
Can you clean this up. Like go into more detail with what traits and enchantments/glyphs you have on all the gear please, also maybe some rotations. Really love this build! Gave 5 stars!!!
Thanks for the vote!
For the traits and enchants it’s simple:
Ice staff backbar –
Defending trait – for resists since we lose some on backbar
Crusher enchant – the main reason is that your not applying the debuff from pierce armour on your backbar from taunting so this is to reduce it a bit.
Front bar
One hand
Defending – for the extra resists
Crusher – this reduces the targets resistance which increases your fellow dps dmg
Shield
Stamina – so we can block, break free, roll dodge more, we have enough health as it is.
Reinforced – Armor value is nice for protection
I’m gonna break this section up because it will be too long, so the comment underneath is armour 🙂
Part 2!!!!
Head
Health enchant – these enchants are one of the strongest increases to your don’t ignore them
Reinforced – the head, chest and legs are “strong pieces” giving you more health on these pieces, run reinforced, because the extra armour passive is really important with strong pieces and you’ll get the most benefit out of them
Shoulder
Health – health is on every piece of armour so go to head for the description
Sturdy – the shoulder, hands, waist and feet are “weak pieces” which has less health. You want sturdy as we want block to cost less as we have less stamina and reinforced is just not worth it here. Sturdy outperforms reinforced on weak pieces and other way round for strong
I’m gonna keep breaking it up so you can read it easily
Part 3!!! Sorry for long message this is last one
Chest
Health
Reinforced – it is a big piece
Waist
Health
Sturdy – small piece
Hands
Health
Sturdy – small piece
Legs
Health
Reinforced – big piece
Feet
Health
Sturdy – small piece
That is all I already covered jewellery in the build post but the mag recovery is for our sustain, very important you get that!
This may be too in detail, in which I apologise, but this is the min maxed setup and I explained everything 🙂
Thanks for the quick response your amazing! But what about infused and sturdy ONLY as traits? Could that be viable?
I chose reinforced over infused as we do not need to squeeze a little extra health over reinforced, which protects you with extra armour. We have 62k health, when I did a test on infused we were at about 64k health and I found it didn’t perform as well as reinforced. Sturdy is good on the weak pieces as we want block to cost less but not on the strong ones as the extra benefit isn’t worth it.
I hope this answered your question!!
Really looking forward to trying this out. Is it still current and viable?
Thanks in advance!
This build is absolutely fine and is really strong!
Yesterday I tanked vdsa and it was insanely strong!
Just remember to change to stam food if you need to block or roll more!
Hi everyone!
I’d just like to say thank you for for generous support and votes you’ve put in. The simple tank build is now placed no. 3 among the top rated builds out there!!!!!
Thanks so much and see you in Tamriel! 🙂
Never tanked in a mmorpg before but the thoroughness of this post and the clear knowledge it’s writer portrays convinced me to give it a shot as I start ESO. Thanks dude.
Any passive abilities that have a high priority
The most important passives when you’re leveling is your racial, weapon and class. These passive will help build up your build. Once you’re lvl 50 starting going for undaunted passives and finish off any class passives you have left.
In terms of class passives get everything from all skill lines except for animal companions, in animal companions just get the middle two.
One hand and shield are really important for blocking, moving around and tanking in general so get all and the same for race.
Finally undaunted is going to give you resources back and more stats, so get all, a good tip to level undaunted is just going through all veteran dungeons and completing them all, except for dlc and do hard modes on version 1 and neutrals, as 2s can be a bit tricky.
That’s all and I’m responding to KEK but reply was working for me so I had to do this as a comment!
I was wondering if you could please be more specific about all of the class skills you use. Thanks!
Alright here comes the detail!!!
Budding seeds: aoe heal for your whole group set it on the ground and after 5 seconds it will heal you. But if you are in trouble then you can activate it beforehand but it cost mag, so don’t spam it!
Polar Wind: our big heal, gives a lot of health back but uses a lot of mag, so use it wisely especially when you’re in trouble. It also heals an ally on top so you can act as a miny healer!
Permafrost: Our ultimate that we use the most, you and your group take 30% less dmg, very nice in general swap this with warhorn in trials.
Ice fortress: standard resist buff (resistance means we take less damage from attacks), and minor protection reducing ALL of the damage we take by 8% always have this up especially with permafrost.
Lotus blossom: whenever we light and heavy attack we heal, so when you heavy attack for sustain you ALSO gain a big heal as well.
Blue Betty: increases our mag sustain by a lot and removes a negative effect from us (really useful in vhof) and due to passives we get ultimate for using it. So much benefit!
Enchanted forest: really cheap ultimate but only use this if you’re low on health, if you’re not use permafrost. Huge heal that can get us from around 10% to 60% in a couple of seconds (I have tested) and every low health person in this radius gives you 20 ultimate. If you do this on 4 low health allies you get 80 ultimate!
I have already covered impaling shards and frozen gate in the general info.
I hope this helps!
Where did you put your points for health magika or stamina?
Hi John
I put all my points into health. We really want to get as much health as we can and there is no need to put points into stam or mag. Why? Well we restore mag through recovery and stam through heavy attacks.
I hope this answers your question!
Do you think i would be able to make a resonable off tank using a two handed instead of sword and board?
Would be replacing pierce armor and absorb magic with inner fire and mist form.
Changing to two handed could work but here are a couple of problems. (Keep in mind I know this is an off tank)
Inner fire: it costs a lot of mag, you’re putting a serious strain on your resource management, and if you add mist form then the only way you’re going to make it work is to rework your entire sustain so that you can pop inner fires off without worry.
When you taunt, we also apply major fracture and breach, reducing the resistance by a lot. I know you’re an off tank but you cant rely on your main tank to apply it all the time.
Also note that you’re losing resists without a shield, (look in red cp tree) by about 1.5k and you lose a lot of blocking bonuses.
Overall, this is your game, and you can play it however you want. Will it work? Yes. Will it be better than shield? Probably not. You are going to change things around from the build that may change it a lot. In the end, I’ll say give it a try and enjoy it but just keep in mind what I said. ?
Hi everyone!
I’ve done testing and I can confirm that the simple tank is absolutely fine for Summerset. There is no need to change anything and it performs even stronger ?
what about stats ?
The stats are just before the skills.
soo, all points in health .. this still working ?
I have tested this in Summerset and it works even better! And yes all points into health. 🙂
Is this strictly for PVE or is it good for PVP too?
Any tips on leveling up vampire line?
Okay we’re you as to beat Maelstorm Arena with this build? Because I’m champ 382 and I’m struggling.
so i should become a vampire for this build? i dont really get vampirism, can you please explain how it helps this build?