Welcome to The Tank Club Ultimate ESO Beginner Tank Guide!
This ESO Beginner Tank Guide has been created for PvE Tanks, to help coach you on your way to becoming a successful Tank in The Elder Scrolls Online.
Before you get started with Tanking, please take a little time to have a read through this guide to hopefully give you an idea about what Tanking is all about in The Elder Scrolls Online.
This guide is basically a summary of everything you need to know, whether you are new to ESO or just new to Tanking, you should find all the basic information you need to start Tanking.
For a good starting build for a Tank, make sure you also check out our Beginner Tank Build.
Updated: September 2022 (Lost Depths)
ESO Beginner Tank Guide Table of Contents
What is a Tank?
In the Elder Scrolls Online – A Tank is someone who is the heavily armoured shell of a group, the first one into battle and the front-line of combat to protect and defend everyone else against any threat.
A Tanks main job is to aggro and control enemy targets forcing them to attack you and ensure as little damage as possible is passed onto Damage Dealers and Healers. Once aggro is achieved the next task of the Tank is to position enemies safely where allies are as protected as possible to perform their respective roles. As a Tank it is vital to learn fights quickly and efficiently, know mechanics and tactics for each fight as you are the frontline and you will deal with mechanics more than most other roles in a group. Tanks in ESO, similar to the military vehicle, need a very strong defence and good battlefield manoeuvrability: You take a lot of damage as a Tank so the priority is to boost your Max Health and Resistances so you are able to deal with all incoming damage.
The biggest obstacles for a Tank are self-sustaining and survivability. Tanks usually aim for a high Magicka Recovery stat to help with in combat abilities. Stamina sustain can be difficult, when you block – you lose Stamina and Stamina cannot be regained through regeneration while holding Block. With good sustain, you’ll be able to heal yourself if needed and surviving becomes a lot easier, but experience is key to surviving and learning all areas of your class, race, role and each particular fight is a must.
Once you have mastered the basics of Tanking, you will be expected to support your group by setting up in a particular way. This is where you begin to help your group with certain buffs and gear sets, which increase the group damage output (or survivability and sustain) and also begin using further debuff skills and sets which increase the damage your enemy targets take. The reason why buffing and debuffing is important for the Tank is because you are always on the front-line and close to the enemy so it is far easier for a Tank to maintain certain buffs and debuff. Also, the more damage your group can do, the quicker fights will end which benefits everyone in a group especially a Tank who is having to balance sustain, fight management and more.
Choosing a Tank Class
You can Tank using any class in The Elder Scrolls Online. Each class has its own skills and passives that will benefit you as a Tank.
Dragonknights are the best performing Tanks for beginners but every class is able to Tank. Each class has a certain set of group buffs and utilities, and generally you would use these other classes as and when they are needed because you are missing these particular unique buffs and debuffs in your group.
This tier list has the beginner perspective in mind. This is not a tier list based on what is the most optimal class for group content.
Choosing a Tank Race
The race of a Tank does not play a huge part in how well you can Tank later in the game.
Early on in the process, with very little Champion Points or correct gear it will be more important which race you play, and ideally you should choose a race that will help you in some way with Tanking.
The main thing new Tanks struggle with is sustain and there are a few options you can choose to improve your sustain. I would suggest for new Tanks to go with a sustain class as it will make your job considerably easier while you get used to Tanking.
The Tank Races here are listed with beginners in mind, but this list would be slightly different if we were looking at it from an endgame perspective.
For more information check out the Tank Race Page.
1 Redguard
Redguard is a fantastic choice for beginner Tanks. Basically, as long as you cause damage to the enemy you will gain back Stamina which amounts to over 12k Stamina per minute. This makes Redguards the best race for Tanks who are blocking a lot and not great yet at managing Stamina resources.
- Wayfarer – Increases your experience gain with the One Hand and Shield skill line by 15%. Increases the duration of any eaten food by 15 minutes.
- Martial Training – Reduces the cost of your weapon abilities by 8%. Reduces the effectiveness of snares applied to you by 15%.
- Conditioning – Increases your Max Stamina by 2000.
- Adrenaline Rush – When you deal damage, you restore 1005 Stamina. This effect can occur once every 5 seconds.
2 Argonian
Argonians are a very strong option for beginner Tanking. The additional stats are very helpful but they have great sustain thanks to the potion passive which will give 3125 Health, Magicka and Stamina when you use any potion, this is in addition to the resources gained from the potion itself.
- Amphibian – Increases your experience gain with the Restoration Staff skill line by 15%. Increases your swimming speed by 50%.
- Life Mender – Increases your healing done by 6%.
- Argonian Resistances – Increases your Max Health by 1000 and your Disease and Poison Resistance by 2310.
- Resourceful – Increases your Max Magicka and Max Stamina by 1000. When you drink a potion, you restore 3125 Health, Magicka, and Stamina.
3 Nord
Nords are a solid choice for a Tank in the long term. You’ll benefit from the increased resistances and Ultimate gain in the end game and those Resistances will also be helpful when playing at low Champion Points since you’ll have much less mitigation. Most new Tanks struggle more from sustain issues so while this is a good choice it might be slightly more difficult early on in your progression.
- Reveler – Increases your experience gain with the Two Handed skill line by 15%. Increases the duration of any consumed drink by 15 minutes.
- Resist Frost – Increases your Max Health by 1000 and Frost Resistance by 4620.
- Stalwart – Increases your Max Stamina by 1500. When you take damage, you gain 5 Ultimate. This effect can occur once every 10 seconds.
- Rugged – Increases your Physical and Spell Resistance by 2600.
4 Imperial
The Imperial is a good Tank race because it reduces the cost of everything even your Ultimate and Block Cost. The biggest benefit from the Imperial comes from casting skills more often, the less you use skills, the less useful the racial passives are, and this race is also locked behind a pay window which is why it’s 4th choice for a beginner Tank.
- Diplomat – Increases your experience gain with the One Hand and Shield skill line by 15%. Increases your gold gained by 1%.
- Tough – Increases your Max Health by 2000.
- Imperial Mettle – Increases your Max Stamina by 2000.
- Red Diamond – Reduces the cost of all your abilities by 6%.
Attributes
From level 1 to 50, each time you level up you gain Attribute Points.
At level 50 you will have 64 Attributes.
General stats to aim for as a beginner:
- Max Health: 38k+
- Max Stamina: 23k+
- Max Magicka: 20-22k
There is no right or wrong way to set your attributes but as a beginner, you’ll want to try and achieve some base level stats to start off with.
To reach these stats you should make sure you have your gear on and enchanted and your skills and passives input. Next you should distribute any Champion Points you might have and then finally you top everything off by inputting your Attributes.
Typically, it can be a good idea to use 64 points into Health and then utilise Stamina and Magicka glyphs on your gear to begin with. Once you have obtained a must have tank set you would invest in some Prismatic Defense (Tri-Stat) glyphs for your gear but to begin with this isn’t advised as they are expensive, but they are far superior for a Tank compared to using single stat Glyphs.
High Max Health is important because Tank based healing skills scale with Max Health meaning you’ll heal for more the more Max Health you have and also any damage shields you use will also be larger. As a beginner Tank you also have more room for error the higher your health so consider this when applying your attributes.
You need to be careful not to put all your eggs into one basket, however. Even if you have 60k Health, if you don’t have enough Magicka you won’t be able to heal and if you don’t have enough Stamina, you won’t be able to block, and you’ll still get 1-shot by bosses.
Max Stamina is also very important because you need Stamina to be able to block, so having more of it means you’ll be able to block and sustain for longer. You don’t regain Stamina back from Stamina regen while blocking. Rather than making your Max Stamina extremely high, you need to figure out how to sustain your Stamina, as sustaining is far more important that having a huge Stamina pool because it won’t matter how much Stamina you have if you can’t sustain it, you’ll always run out.
You also want your Stamina to be higher than your Magicka normally, because when you use a synergy such as an Orb or a Shard that gives you back resources, it will always give you the resource of whichever one has the highest max value.
Max Magicka holds some importance because the majority of your skills cost Magicka, your healing costs Magicka and so you n