The Ultimate ESO Beginner Tank Guide

ESO Beginner Tank Guide Table of Contents

Introduction

Welcome to The Ultimate Tank Guide for The Elder Scrolls Online!

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.

Tanking is a role that is in high demand but it’s a high pressure, difficult and stressful role to play. 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.

You’ll discover 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.

If you have any questions please join us on The Tank Club Discord.

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 vital.

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

The biggest factor in deciding your Tank Class always comes down to which Tank offers the most benefit to the group. So the reason why a Tank Class is more useful than another is not because of their inability to Tank content but more so the buffs and debuffs they have available that are useful to both the group and the Tank.

In terms of a Beginner Friendly Tank Class the Dragonknight is typically the easiest to play and one of the most useful.

They posses some of the best sustain and survivability in The Elder Scrolls Online while also providing useful buffs which not only makes the good for beginners but they are also one of the meta Tank Classes for the ESO Endgame.

The Dragonknight is the absolute best class for beginner tanks.

DK’s as they are also known are typically the easiest Tank class to play due to the self-sustain available to them via their class passives.

Sustain on a DK is great as you can get all resources back when using an Ultimate and you can get Stamina while blocking thanks to the passives Battle Roar and Helping Hands passives. Early on in the levelling process they have access to Magicka based crowd control with Choking Talons and Unrelenting Grip, both which are superior to every other Tank classes crowd control abilities.

They have two excellent healing skills; one burst heal that scales with Max Health called Coagulating Blood and one heal over time called Cinder Storm. They also have a group spam-able shield called Igneous Shield which scales with Max Health.

The DK has access to a unique group damage buff called Stagger which places a debuff on enemies via the Stone Giant skill which causes the target to take increased damage. Stagger is more common in the later stages of the end game due to its difficulty to maintain and sustain but is a requirement by most groups in harder content and trials.

DK’s also have a group buff called Minor Brutality which is often applied from the Mountain’s Blessing passive by casting a Earthen Heart skill.  Other groups buffs provided by a Dragonknight include Engulfing Flames and Igneous Weapons.

The Arcanist is the newest Class in The Elder Scrolls Online.

They are extremely strong because they can reach the resistance cap with almost no effort and you can easily stack huge amounts of regen as well.

Within the Arcanists kit you have so many useful group benefits, buffs and debuffs, more than any other class in ESO. They even have skills that allow you to remove whole 5 piece gear sets because you gain the same or equal buffs provided by a single skill cast.

The worst part about an Arcanist is that for a beginner they are quite complicated. They have the Crux system and all of the skills and passives you’ll typically slot will need to be cast regularly meaning they are a very active class.

Some players also find the Arcanist healing difficult since they don’t have the usual type of burst healing but instead they rely on shields and an automatic heal which could fail if you forget to recast the ability on cooldown.

In general however, the Arcansit is the best class in ESO for Dungeons just because of the sheer volume of benefits they provide from their skills and passives. In trials they are one of the top three and the decision of using one is usually down to the group leader.

The Necromancer is the most used Off Tank Class in ESO for Tanking in Trials. This is due to their superior damage over time mitigation and ultimate regeneration.

Necros are quite difficult to use as a beginner player because they are quite hard to sustain and self healing is sometimes difficult, especially if you are used to all of the tools that the DK offers.

If you are in a group with no Necromancers or anyone using gear sets such as Turning Tide or Archdruid Devyric then using a Necro Tank is very useful to increase group damage thanks to the Major Vulnerability offered by using either morph of the Frozen Colossus skill.

One of the strongest points of a Necro Tank is their ability to mitigate Damage over Time attacks (DoTs). This is not something you’ll struggle much with in older content, but trials and dungeons released after 2022 saw a huge increase in DoTs which is the area of expertise for a Necro. This is thanks to the Disdain Harm passive combined with the Spirit Guardian which reduces DoT damage and allows you to transfer damage to the guardian.

Ultimate regeneration is also a huge strong point for a Necro, there is no competition when it comes to regenerating Ultimate as they can regain theirs faster than any other class thanks to skills such as Necrotic Potency and combining that with their skills that generate corpses.

Necros can provide their group with other benefits such as Empower by using the Empowering Grasp, Off Balance via Ruinous Scythe, Minor Vulnerability via Agony Totem, AoE Major Breach with Unnerving Boneyard.

The downsides to a Necro Tank are the self healing is more difficult than other classes because you have to hit an enemy with a melee ability to heal yourself which in mobile fights makes you vulnerable. Many people have a hard time with Stamina sustain as there are very few resource gaining skills or passives.

The Warden is an easy to play Tank especially at lower CP due to their powerful Healing, Shields and Defensive Group Buffs.

The problem with Wardens is that you only need one Warden in a group and typically this would be a Healer. If you are in a group without a Warden, they are extremely useful as Tanks.

Group buffs from a Warden include Minor Toughness which increases everyone’s Health by 10% via the Maturation passive. They can provide Major Resolve to a whole group by using Expansive Frost Cloak. They can also provide Minor Vulnerability debuff on enemies with the Fetcher Infection ability. They also have easier access to the Chilled Effect which creates the Minor Brittle enemy debuff when wielding an Ice Staff.

Wardens are generally good at generating Ultimate, have high Magicka Recovery, have a strong self-heal with Polar Wind which also heals 1 other ally and then you have Shimmering Shield which absorbs 50k+ damage from projectiles as well as giving Major Heroism.

In some group compositions with no other Sorcerer then a Sorc Tank is a great option.

If there is one other Sorcerer then using one as a Tank can be instantly pretty useless as they have very little to offer the group. A Sorc brings a few group buff with Major Berserk from the Storm Atronach Ultimate and Minor Prophecy from the Exploitation passive which can add around 1-2k DPS to each Damage Dealer, and they can also provide Minor Intellect by casting Empowered Ward. Sorcerer Tanks are sometimes expected to use Crystal Weapon to reduce the enemy resistances to increase group damage.

They have a very strong self heal with the Unstable Clannfear as this scales with Max Health. Sustain is quite easy by using Dark Deal which swaps Magicka for a burst of Health, Stamina and Stamina over time making sustain almost as easy as a DK although this skill does make you drop block for a second.

Bound Aegis can be used for huge damage mitigation as a panic button during heavy mechanics and makes surviving as a Sorcerer very easy.

Sorcs have a very easy way to achieve Major Vitality with Restraining Prison even on bosses and elite targets meaning they can both take a lot of damage and also be healed easier through big damage situations.

Nightblade Tanks are simply one of the most unwanted Class in the game from a Tank perspective, even if they are quite good at Tanking and have really good capabilities at reducing the enemies damage. The only useful group buff is covered if you have one other Nightblade in a group.

Their group buff is Minor Savagery which comes from the Hemorrhage passive, Nightblades have other group benefits, but they can be obtained by other, sometimes easier methods. There is AoE Minor Vulnerability with Lotus Fan, Major Expedition, Minor Endurance, and Minor Intellect from Refreshing Path, Minor Cowardice from Power Extraction and Major Cowardice from Mass Hysteria.

To sustain and heal well on a NB you need to be able to light and heavy attack often to make use of Leeching Strikes which is more common with experienced Tanks who know fights well, as a beginner this would be much more difficult. The main self-healing from a Nightblade is a good heal over time Dark Cloak which is stronger when you stand still. You can keep this active for the majority of combat situations, and you’ll constantly be getting healed but it’s not quite as powerful as burst heal sometimes when you take a big damage hit. 

It’s basically not worth using a NB at all in the current time as they offer basically no useful group buffs, are more difficult to play compared to other classes and you would have a bigger benefit and easier time using a different class.

Templar Tanks are not very desirable in most groups but they are decent at Tanking for 4-person content and not bad for beginners.

They bring the group buff of Minor Sorcery via the Illuminate passive which is pretty much the only useful group buff a Templar provides.

Templars do have other utilities like Extended Ritual, Power of the Light and both morphs of Restoring Aura. 

Templars don’t posses a good burst heal but they can stack a range of healing over time with Living Dark, Extended Ritual and Restoring Focus which also gives them additional Stamina sustain and Major Resolve.

Sustain in 4-person content is extremely easy thanks to Repentance and there is additional survival thanks to Radiant Ward which is a Magicka costing, Health scaling damage shield that also provides Minor Protection.

Tank Race

Tank Race has always been a bit of a hot topic. You can actually Tank with any Race that you want because you don’t NEED to use the “best” Race to successfully Tank in The Elder Scrolls Online.

Race is much more important later when doing Hardmode Trial and Dungeon content but if you don’t have the intention of reaching that level of Tanking then there’s less need for using best Tank Race.

For more information check out the Tank Race Page.

1 Nord

Nords are the best choice for a Tank in the long term. You’ll benefit from the increased resistances and Ultimate gain. In the newer endgame content those Resistances are really helpful to combat the high damage over time you get in the newer dungeons and trials. It will also be helpful when playing at low Champion Points to boost mitigation.

  • 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.

2 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 a good 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.

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: 20k+
  • Max Magicka: 18k+

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 it is enchanted, make sure your skills are slotted 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 good 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. It’s as simple as the more health you have, the more you can receive damage before you die.

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 need to be able to maintain your skills and healing if needed and not run out after 2-3 casts. You still gain Magicka while blocking, even with a back bar staff so long as you don’t use the Tri-Focus passives, so Magicka sustain is typically a bit easier than Stamina. You don’t need super high Max Magicka but somewhere around 18k means you should be able to sustain for a decent amount of time especially with your Magicka regen ticking every 2 seconds.

Mundus Stones

Mundus Stones are located all over the world of The Elder Scrolls Online and you can use one to give yourself some additional benefits. You may also find Mundus Stones at other players houses sometimes. It’s important that you collect a Mundus Stone as soon as you can because they are free benefits that will help your character.

For Tanking there is only one main option for Mundus Stone and a few secondary situational options.

The Atronach

Increased Magicka Recovery by 310

This is the most common Tank Mundus Stone and the most useful. Tanks use a lot of Magicka for pretty much everything, mainly self-healing and buffing skills. Having high Magicka Recovery is one of the most important things for a Tank since you can still gain Magicka while blocking.

The Steed

Increased Health Recovery by 238 & Movement Speed by 10%

This is more of a situational Mundus. The speed buff is helpful for certain fights that require a lot of movement. You also get Health Regen which can be stacked with other sources to give you automatic self-healing every 2 second. In some Trial situations this can be helpful in the right circumstances where The Atronach is not needed.

The Lady

Increased Resistances by 2744

This can be a decent Mundus Stone if you are in an incredibly high damage situation, and you are under the 33k resistance cap. This isn’t something that is often necessary and the additional sustain from The Atronach surpasses the usefulness of these extra resistances especially since you can stack resistances from other sources.

Food

For tanking, there are a couple of different good food options.

Firstly you have Tri-Stat food; food that increases your Max Health, Magicka and Stamina. From your levelling and daily login rewards you will get Crown Fortifying Meal which is usable from level 1 and is pretty useful while levelling and is generally always useful if you can’t afford other food.

If you want a slightly better food then there is Bewitched Sugar Skulls as it gives Tri-Stats but also Health Recovery, plus it will scale at lower levels. The recipe is pretty expensive and can only be obtained during the Halloween Event – the Witches Festival. The food is relatively cheap to buy and is the better option until you can obtain the recipe yourself.

For more sustain one of the best foods is Orzorga’s Red Frothgar. This is a great sustain food but you will have considerably less Max Magicka and Stamina which some people might struggle with. In return you’ll gain more Max Health but the addition of a huge amount of Magicka Recovery can be really nice.

There are other good options such as Orzorga’s Smoked Bear Haunch and the cheaper version of that Jewels of Misrule but these foods are better for experienced Tanks since they rely on reduced blocking to make the most from the Stamina Regen they provide.

Champion Points

Simply refer to the Tank Champion Point page on the website – we have all the progressive CP you need from 160 to 2000+ to get you setup for Tanking.

Having at least 1200 CP will provide you with a lot of benefits with increased stats, recoveries, defense and more all of which is greatly benefitial for Tanking.

Gear, Traits and Enchants

Gear comes in 3 weights: Heavy, Medium and Light.

As a Tank you should use 5 Heavy as a minimum, so you benefit from the increased resistances, health and sustain from the Heavy Armor passives. You can use any other pieces you like generally, using a 5/1/1 setup with 5 Heavy, 1 Medium and 1 Light piece is the most common, but you can use 7 Heavy, use 2 Medium or 2 Light pieces, each offers a different set of additional Bonuses, Penalties and Passives.

Setting up a Tank as a Beginner, the most vital trait is usually Sturdy this is simply because the more you block the more useful Sturdy is as a Trait. As you become more experienced and block less Sturdy loses some of it’s value, but any kind of Block Cost reduction in ESO also suffers greatly from Diminishing Returns which means the more you stack it up, the less value it returns to you.

Often it’s good to use Divines or Reinforced traits depending on your situation since a full set of Sturdy gear almost has the same block cost reduction as using 1 Infused/Bracing piece of jewellery. If you are levelling still, then you will need to use Training but if you are actively Tanking content then you will want more supportive traits on your gear.

Reinforced helps you reach the resistance cap, for the newest content especially that is useful but if you are already at or close to the resistance cap then this trait is effectively useless.

Divines will boost the strength of your mundus stone, this works especially well when combined with The Atronach to provide you will additional sustain. If you don’t require Sturdy or Reinforced then gaining the extra Magicka Recovery will just add to improving your sustain.

These are classed as “Big” slots because when you put an enchant on them you will get the full value of an enchant/glyph.

Sturdy is by far the best trait to use especially as a beginner because you are likely to be blocking for extended periods during fights.

If you are low CP or taking a lot of damage then you can consider using a Reinforced Chest, this is the biggest armor slot out of all of your gear so switching to Reinforced gives you the highest value of resistances of all the gear slots. I would not recommend using a lot of Reinforced pieces because the benefit is extremely minimal, and it will harm your sustain as your block cost will drastically increase.

Later in the game when you are more experienced, the Divines trait can be a good substitute when you no longer block as much, and you have alternative ways to reduce Block Cost.

The best enchant to use is the Prismatic Defence/Tri-Stat however these are typically expensive so at Beginner Stage you should use whatever is needed to reach the Stats we mentioned in the Attributes section.

These are classed as “Small” slots because when you put an enchant on these gear slots it will be significantly smaller than the “Big” armor slots.

It’s pretty important to use Sturdy on these armor slots, it will help to reduce the cost of your blocking which at this stage is very important when you are a beginner and blocking a lot.

Sturdy outperforms all other traits by quite a lot when Tanking, when you become more experienced at Tanking then Divines can be the better option and in some certain situations having Well-Fitted can be of some benefit so you could consider saving any Divines and Well-Fitted gear pieces you pick up along the way so you can be more versatile when needed.

For the enchants, since these are small enchants it’s really up to you. Eventually you’ll want Tri-Stat on all slots but until you are using top level gear just build up your stats to reach the suggested stats from the Attributes section.

Shield are classed as a “Big” slot, the same as Chest, Legs and Helmets.

The thing to consider with a shield is that it’s only active on 1 bar so using an Infused/Health Shield would have a potentially detrimental effect as each time you switch bar you would lose over 1k Health.

For a Shield the most ideal traits would be Sturdy, but you could use Reinforced if you really wanted a slight increase in Resistances or something like Well-Fitted. These work well because when you are blocking on your main bar you will get extra block cost reduction with Sturdy, or you can opt for Well-Fitted which gives a little reduction in roll dodge and sprint cost while on that bar.

The most ideal glyph to use would be Tri-Stat because it gives a small increase of all stats so it won’t cause a huge loss of resources when bar swapping.

For Weapons, you need to be using a One Handed Weapon on your front bar with your Shield. It does not matter what type of one-handed weapon you use, when combined with a shield they have no additional effect like they do with Dual Wield.

One Handed Weapons have HALF the value of their Trait and Enchant compared with all Two-Handed Weapons.

Using Decisive is really good for generating faster Ultimate which is key to sustaining as a DK Tank. You could use Infused also but this just means you are getting a slight boost to your weapon enchantment but with Decisive you are gaining a whole new benefit with the extra Ultimate.

You could use a Defending One Hander if you are struggling with incoming damage, have low resistances or are low CP. The One Handed Weapon is the least important so you can choose whichever trait you want in reality.

Charged is another option, as a DK Tank you can gain large amounts of sustain using this trait or you can provide an additional group buff when combined with a certain weapon glyph.

As for the weapon enchantment, the best option is to just go with a Poison Glyph on a Dragonknight along with a Charged weapon or Absorb Stamina Glyph for other classes with an Infused Weapon as this will provide you with some extra sustain and there are no real other good options.

Weapon glyph on a one-handed weapon have half the value, we just use something to benefit ourselves as any strong group-based glyphs such as Crusher we would want to use on a 2 handed weapon so we can get the full value. You could use a Charged/Shock Glyph if you wanted to offer your group some Minor Vulnerability.

You could also use Weakening Glyph to reduce the enemies damage slightly.

For our back bar weapon we should use an Infused Ice Staff with a Crusher enchant.

Staves are Two Handed Weapons and therefor carry the full benefit of their Traits and Enchants unlike the One-Handed Weapon.

Using an Ice Staff it is basically a Tank weapon due to the Destruction Staff Passives, just make sure you are not using the Tri-Focus passive since blocking with Magicka is not advised at a beginner development stage.

You should use an Infused staff, and because we can get the maximum value from any enchantments we use and by using Infused we increase the power of the weapon enchant. For a staff you can provide a useful group buff by using a Crusher enchant and by using it on an Infused Staff we get a stronger value of this enchant.

For Jewellery it’s up to you what you want to go with, but typically you will just use jewellery with whatever trait it drops in.

Using 3 Infused would be great for sustaining if you combine it with 3 Magicka Recovery, this is a good overall general setup for Tanking. You can also use 1 Bracing Enchant if needed and when you progress further, using Prismatic Cost Reduction is also very good.

3 Triune is decent for beginners as it increases your base stats really high which can be helpful early on. Swift jewellery is great for add pulls and areas where you have to run, but not so useful for boss fights.

Enchants on your jewellery should be either 3 Magicka Recovery or 1 Bracing and 2 Magicka recovery. It’s not worth using more than 1 Bracing and there are no other really useful Enchantments to use at this stage.

Resistances

Resistances are an important part of being a Tank in The Elder Scrolls Online to help mitigate and reduce the incoming damage you will receive from enemies.

The Resistance Cap is 33,000 so you should never go above that number of resistances as they provide no additional benefit at that point. 33k Resistances is 50% mitigation so each 660 resistances are 1% damage mitigation.

Resistances are split into Spell Resistance which mitigates magic attacks including Flame, Shock, Ice and Magic damage and Physical Resistance which mitigates physical attacks including Disease, Poison and Bleed damage. Collectively these are also known simply as “Armor”.

There is a common misconception with Resistances – many players overvalue the usefulness of Resistances.

The situations where Resistances play a high level of importance include for new players with little or no champion points, anyone not using 5 Heavy Armor, situations where you are not blocking but still taking damage and during fights with high damage especially Bleeds and Damage over Time attacks.

Resistances play into a whole damage mitigation calculation where they essentially come out of the equation right at the end which means they are only marginally impactful when you have a range of buffs and damage reductions from blocking, Champion Points, gear, skills and passives along with debuffs applied to the enemy.

As a general rule you should aim for 25k+ Resistances when buffed with Major Resolve when doing any base game content and old DLC content. When you are doing DLC Hardmode Trials and Dungeons then 30k+ is good and for the newest DLC content the 33k resistance cap is helpful for the many damage over time attacks you’ll deal with.

If you take a 100,000-damage hit from a boss and you have 75% Block Mitigation – blocking this attack would reduce this damage to 25k with no buffs, resistances or anything else under consideration. If you had 33k resistances this hit would become 12500 damage (this is 50% of 25k) but at 25k resistances this hit is still only 15525 damage. If you add in Champion Points, skills, passives, buffs and enemy debuffs, this number would be far less and you can also get up to 90% block mitigation.

Trying to stack resistances can mean you lose other benefits to your build so while it’s useful to have some resistances, don’t make too much effort trying to reach the resistance cap especially early in the game as its not needed. You’ll need to consider it a lot more later in the game when going into the newest content.

Sets

It is important to have as many sets from this list available to you as possible – Tanks need a wide range of flexibility on gear for self buffs, group buffs and general trial viability.

Beginner Sets

Ebon Armory – Easy to obtain, useful Beginner Tank set. Provides an extra 1k Health to your group, a nice safety set.

The Worm’s Raiment – Another great easy to obtain Beginner Tank set. Gives you and your group additional Magicka Recovery which is perfect for a new Tank.

Pangrit Denmother – An easy to obtain alternative to Claw of Yolnahkriin.

Torug’s Pact – Craftable group buff gear set.

Armor of the Seducer – Great beginner Tank set for sustain but offers no group utility.

Druid’s Braid – Decent craftable starter set for new Tanks who have no gear.

Must Have Sets

Claw of Yolnahkriin

Crimson Oath’s Rive

Pearlescent Ward

Powerful Assault

Puncturing Remedy (Masters 1H & Shield)

Saxhleel Champion

Spaulder of Ruin

Turning Tide

Void Bash (Vateshran 1H & Shield)

Virtually all of your strength as a Tank in The Elder Scrolls Online comes from your Champion Points, skills and passives and the fact that a large majority of the Tanky gear sets are extremely ineffective or underwhelming means Tanks are expected to use sets that offer some kind of group benefit.

Group content relies heavily on everyone working together as a unit, part of this process as a Tank is to assist by debuffing enemies and buffing your group member with your gear.

When you are attempting to Tank content for the very first time, you should absolutely use Tank gear you are comfortable with possibly something that will assist with sustain or survival so you can figure out what enemies you will be facing, positioning, mechanics, sustain and survivability. Once you have these things covered and you begin to gain experience and confidence in these situations, the self-benefitting sets become less useful.

As soon as it’s physically possible you should try and switch to the most used Tank sets that will give some great benefits to your group and it will give you the chance to assist your group with completing content easier and quicker.

All gear has strengths and weaknesses which you should consider when deciding on a set you would like to use. For example, Leeching Plate is a fine selfish gear set to use in fights that have many enemies, and it will auto heal you, when you get into a boss fight where it’s just your team vs 1 boss this set is completely useless as it relies on having multiple enemies to give you large incoming healing.

Yolnahkriin is the absolute best Tanking set in the game and will increase your groups DPS, it’s extremely easy to maintain and it provides the Tank with actual Tank based support also. There are a good number of useful sets that have automatic or easy to proc buffs and debuffs.

On your first few clears of content use whatever gear you are comfortable with then look to optimise your build.

You have to be aware of gear weights when you decide on a set you are going to use. For example, Powerful Assault is a very strong group buff set, but it’s also a Medium Armor set. What this means is that you need to use either the Weapons and Jewellery or the cheaper option is to not use the weapons but use 2 “small” body pieces such as the Waist and Hands and combine that with 5 Heavy Armor pieces.

The other thing to consider with gear is the effect they have. Some gear will only benefit Ligh Armor/Magicka Damage Dealers so it would be useless for a group with all Medium Armor users and vice versa, something like Worm Cult is only useful in a Magicka group.

Monster Sets

Monster sets are obtained by completing Veteran Dungeons and looting Monster Helmets.

Monster Shoulders are obtained by completing daily Undaunted Pledges and using the keys to open Undaunted Boxes sold by the Undaunted NPCs.

There are many useful Tank monster sets, each with its own useful situation.

The most useful monster set for beginners is Engine Guardian as it will give you great sustain. As a Dragonknight it’s even better. When you gain Health from this set you convert this into Magicka via the skill Balance. If you gain Magicka you convert this to Stamina with a Dragonknight via Helping Hands passive by spamming Igneous Shield/Cinder Storm or on a Sorcerer with Dark Deal. If you gain Stamina, then this is the resource you are mostly looking for to maintain blocking.

Other must have monster sets include – Encratis’s Behemoth, Nazaray, Tremorscale, Archdruid Devyric.

Types of Tanking

There are a few different “types” of Tank

The regular type of Tank is a Main Tank. This is basically anyone who is Tanking 4-Man content such as dungeons and arenas. In 12-Man trials you always have one Main Tank who is the predominant Tank who takes aggro of the main threat or boss.

In trials only you also get Off Tanks for most trials. The Off Tank is usually in a trial to assist the Main Tank and they usually taunt any additional enemies that appear with bosses, they help stack add pulls with the Main Tank and generally provide additional group support. There are some instances where the Main and Off Tank have to trade taunts of certain bosses and there are also some trials with multiple bosses and each Tank has a boss they must aggro.

Hybrid tanking is when you are able to Tank enemies comfortably but also perform some levels of damage. This type of Tank is mostly seen in overland content, questing, delves and that kind of stuff. Very experienced Tanks may also use this type of Tank as an Off Tank in trials with very little damage or mechanics, or in some dungeons where enemies are weak and you can get away with just taunting, chaining and doing damage.

Priorities and Responsibilities

As a Tank you play a very important role in all content. There are some absolute base expectations for a Tank but the priorities and expectation of a Tank progress much more as you develop in the role.

As a beginner the things you are looking for are more about you as an individual so sustaining, taunting, surviving. Once you are more experienced in more content, you’ll be expected to maintain more skills, proc gear sets and provide a wide range of buffs and debuffs.

Priorities

1. High Max Health (38k+)

2. High Resistances (25k Min – Max 33k)

3. High Magicka recovery

4. 5-7 Heavy Armor

Responsibilities

  1. Taunting and maintaining aggro of enemies.
  2. Buffing yourself.
  3. Sustaining resources.
  4. Avoiding damage where possible, self-healing and staying alive.
  5. Positioning, stacking, interrupting and crowd controlling enemies.
  6. Learning/knowing all fight mechanics and tactics.
  7. Debuffing the enemy.
  8. Buffing your group with gear sets and skills.

Taunting

Taunting is when you force an enemy to target and attack you, this is also known as having “Aggro” of the enemy.

This can be achieved by using certain skills that trigger a taunt on an enemy.

There is a lot more to taunting than you might think.

Taunting is the most important Tank responsibility so make sure you know all the details you need to know before getting started.

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A hard taunt refers to an enemy being taunted with Puncture, Inner Fire or Frost Clench. These taunts have a 15 second duration and force the enemy to maintain their attack on you for the duration.

We now have Chain Taunts which are a hard taunt that is applied when you pull an enemy using Unrelenting Grip, Silver Leash, Beckoning Armor or the Swarm Mother Monster Set. The difference with chain taunts is they won’t taunt an enemy that is already taunted, and it will only apply a taunt if the enemy has no active taunt.

A Soft taunt is when you use no taunt ability on an enemy but either you are the only person nearby so they auto-aggro to you, or you use an ability or do a heavy attack to the enemy and as you are a “threat”, enemies’ aggro to you temporarily but they can easily retarget to someone else unless they are hit with a taunt ability.

It’s ideal to have one melee taunt and one ranged taunt skill slotted, keep them both on the same skill slot but on alternative bars. The reason this is good is you will often melee taunt and occasionally range taunt, but if you are on the other bar you always have a taunt on the same skill slot no matter which bar you are active on and you will have less chance to lose aggro from bar swapping. It’s also good because if you are low on Stamina you can switch and use the range taunt that is using Magicka instead.

Puncture

This is the first skill in the One Hand and Shield Skill Line. This is a Stamina melee taunt, and you need to be close to an enemy to use it. The taunt duration is 15 second, this means you need to recast Puncture every 15 seconds at the most, ideally every 13-14 seconds to keep the enemy targeted onto you. If you allow the taunt to run out, the enemy can retarget onto someone else, and you will lose “Aggro”. This can be fatal to your damage dealers as the retargeting will usually mean that the enemy will begin to attack the biggest threat in your group, this is the person doing the most damage or most healing. To maintain a good taunt, you should aim to cast your Puncture every 13-14 seconds and allow a small overlap. If you taunt sooner than this, that is also fine, but it just means you will burn through your Stamina resources much quicker which is not advised while blocking and Tanking.

Inner Fire

This is a skill that is unlocked when you reach Undaunted level 3. This skill is a ranged taunt, and it’s usually used because of it costing Magicka rather than Stamina and giving the option to taunt at range. This works exactly the same as Puncture, the taunt has a 15 second duration and you need to try to overlap the taunt, so you don’t lose aggro. You don’t need to be at range to use the range taunt, you can use it at any distance even on a melee enemy it’s just most commonly used for taunting enemies at range. The downside to using this is you don’t inflict any useful debuffs with this taunt, but you do when using Puncture and Frost Clench.

Frost Clench

This skill is unlocked upon reaching Destruction Staff level 14. This is also a ranged taunt and as well as being a Magicka based taunt it also provides a range of strong debuffs making it a much more preferred option compared to Inner Fire. This works exactly the same as Puncture, the taunt has a 15 second duration and you need to try to overlap the taunt, so you don’t lose aggro. The downside to this is that it will immobilise none-Elite enemies which can be a problem during add pulls but for boss fights especially its incredible strong. When you cast this skill, it taunts, and it applies Major Maim which decreases the enemy damage by 10%. It also procs a guaranteed chilled effect which means it also causes Minor Maim on the enemy reducing damage by another 5% but also Minor Brittle which makes the enemy take 10% more critical damage.

It is NOT possible to over-taunt an enemy by yourself. If you were to spam taunt it is impossible for you to lose aggro of the enemy because you’ve taunted it too much/over-taunted and an enemy cannot become taunt immune from just one person.

You CAN over-taunt an enemy between multiple people. If multiple people taunt an enemy within a short space of time the enemy will become taunt immune meaning you cannot taunt that enemy for a small amount of time.

Taunt immunity occurs due to a hidden “taunt counter”.

Taunt counter is a stacking buff on any target that has a taunt debuff active. The buff lasts for 12 seconds, and refreshes every time a new stack is applied. The maximum amount of stacks that can be reached is five. Only one stacks can be applied by a single player which is why you can’t create taunt immunity by yourself – when you include an additional person using a taunt you can have up to 3 stacks be they must be alternated between you and another person using taunt.

All five stacks can come from three separate players. The fifth stack procs taunt immunity, and taunt immunity will then end at the same time that the taunt counter buff with five stacks ends.

The problem with taunt immunity and taunt counter is it’s hard to track because it’s hidden so it requires you to deal with enemies in a certain way to avoid it.

It’s much harder to inflict taunt immunity now unless you have multiple people spamming taunts on a single target.

One of the tricky parts of Tanking is trying to figure out what to taunt as a priority. The way you decide which target is the most important is usually by taunting any melee enemies as they are a direct priority, especially if they try to run past you and then you would taunt any ranged enemies.

The exception here is when you are dealing with different strength enemies. The only way to know if you are dealing with a stronger enemy is by hovering your cursor over them. Elite enemies and Bosses can be defined by their health bar.

Standard enemies have a standard health bar and while you should try to taunt these enemies during combat, they are the weakest and least threatening enemies, so they are the lowest priority. You should first look for stronger enemies before worrying about enemies with this kind of health bar.

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Next you have Elite enemies. These will have extra things on the sides of the heath bars to signal that they are a stronger enemy and these are your main taunt priority as they will likely kill your group members relatively easily. You will often find Elite enemies mixed with standard enemies and can often be found in the middle of a larger add pull so you really have to look for them and make sure you gain aggro as soon as physically possible.

elite

Finally you have the boss health bar, this will usually have both an Elite style health bar plus the compass at the top of your screen also turns into a second health bar to signal that this is a boss. It is the uttermost priority to maintain aggro of bosses as these can cause complete devastation to anyone who is not prepared.boss

There are multiple ways of tracking your taunt on the enemy. The first way is by using the in game Buff & Debuff Tracker:

Options > Combat > Buffs & Debuffs > ALL – Always Show > TARGET DEBUFFS – On > FROM OTHERS – Off

Once you have done this, when you taunt the enemy you need to look at the top of your screen and on whichever enemy you have your middle cursor point at, you will see their health bar and underneath this is where debuffs are displayed. This will now show you any “Debuffs” that you have applied to the enemy plus the time remaining on that debuff. The image below shows the icon you will see when taunt is active on an enemy. You need to watch this and try to retaunt when the timer is on 1-2 seconds for the most optimal taunting.

Screenshot 3

There are also many addons you can use on PC such as PleaseJustDebuff, Untaunted, Tank and Srendarr just to name a few. These can customise and moved around so you can track and monitor your taunt in a variety of ways on multiple targets.

It can be difficult to taunt enemies sometimes if you have multiple different targets stacked in a small area. The best way to focus your target onto them is by tab targeting.

To do this on PC you point your cursor at an enemy and press tab. On console you point your cursor at the enemy and press in the right analogue stick (R3). When you tab target an enemy they get a white highlight around them, it makes them much easier to see but it will also focus most of your skills towards them.

It’s a good idea to tab target priority enemies in add pulls especially so you can gain taunt more easily and don’t miss the taunt by having conflicting enemies blocking your view. Tab targeting helps but it’s not 100% reliable and you can sometime hit other stuff even while having a tab on an enemy so it will increase your accuracy but it’s not a 100% guarantee it’s just a much higher increased chance.

The positioning of bosses really depends on each individual fight. Generally the safest way to position enemies is to simply taunt and turn, face them away from your group and this will prevent a lot of fatalities on most occasions. Not every boss in the game has mechanics that require you to turn them away from group members but most do so it’s safer to just do this for any fight where you are not experienced and know exactly how to position the enemies.

Surviving

Tank survival is extremely important in every aspect of the game. A Tank that is not alive creates huge problems for any group.

Surviving can be a hard task when starting out as a Tank but there are a few things you can do to try and help with staying alive.

Once you have fought a boss or group of enemies a few times you will begin to notice patterns in their movement, abilities, damage and mechanics. Experience is the absolute key to Tanking.

When learning a fight for the first time having high resistances, high health and using gear you are comfortable in is advised because surviving is the main priority. Once you gain the experience and understand exactly what to do you can start working towards a more useful group orientated setup.

It’s always a good idea to read any guides, watch clips or ask for advice in The Tank Club Discord when approaching a new encounter and there are thousands of people who can give you tips and techniques on how to deal with specific mechanics and fights.

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This might sound stupid but blocking is absolutely critical for survival.

Blocking instantly mitigates 50% of the incoming damage. When using certain Classes, Skills, Passives and Champion Points this might increase up to 75-90%. The hard cap of Block Mitigation is 90% so if you have more than 90% it is not doing anything else.

If you are following the sustain method of “Heavy after a Heavy” then sustaining your block should be no problem, and you shouldn’t get caught out being hit by something that can kill you while Heavy Attacking.

If you ever run out of Stamina or you are crowd controlled by the enemy, it’s always a good idea to drop block and then re-block because sometimes it might look like you are blocking when you are not. These things in fact drop your block and won’t reactivate block until you stop holding block and repress to block again.

When you become experienced in fights you should learn to block less and just block high damage and mechanics, but this is only expected from Tanks who know fights and mechanics extremely well.

This is something that is possible with almost every ability you will use as a Tank.

You cast your abilities while holding Block, your character will do an animation where it looks like they are not blocking but this is not the case, you actually are blocking. This is really something you must do especially when you get into Veteran content. Block casting is the ultra safe option and you’ll take much less damage by doing this.

There are very few abilities that force you to drop block, these abilities are anything with a “Channel” or “Cast” time such as Stone Giant and Dark Deal.

Things such as all taunts, heals, crowd control abilities are all safe to block cast.

Timing your potions especially health potions will give you a quick burst of Health if you get hit by something unexpected.

You have to decide if you want your potion available as an emergency resource/heal tool or if you want to benefit from the recovery which you only get by actively using potions.

Saving potions for safety to activate when needed is especially a good idea when learning new content, you should always be carrying and using potions as it is a detrimental effect by not ever using them.

Buffing yourself will help you to deal with damage and stay alive.

Number one thing is, you need to try and always maintain your Major Resolve armor buff, this gives you a lot of resistances and reduces your incoming damage.

You can also gain Minor Protection by slotting Temporal Guard from the Psijic Order skill line which reduces your incoming damage by 5%. You can also slot Revealing Flare which gives Major Protection for another 10% incoming damage reduction.

Anything that gives you a personal boost in resistances, damage reduction, damage mitigation, incoming healing, or extra resources are all great tools to perform your Tank duties.

Read more on resistances on the Tank Resistance page.

The Resistance cap in PvE is 33k. If your resistances are any higher than this then its a waste and they are not doing anything.

You want to aim for 25-30k buffed resistances – having capped resistances is fine but not essential and you should avoid speccing just for resistances as they are in fact one of the less important things to worry about. You want to hit that base of 25k but not worry too much about them beyond that as the impact it has is very minimal and not worth sacrificing other areas of your build to reach that 33k.

If you are really struggling in certain content then you could maximise your resistances to as close to 33k as you can and see if that helps.

Self healing may often be needed, especially if you are in dungeon groups with no healer.

There are 3 ways to heal yourself, you have

  • Burst Healing
  • Healing over Time (HoT)
  • Health Recovery.

Healing can be quite a difficult thing to do depending on how well you can sustain. Generally you want to have high Magicka Recovery, and when learning new content you can use self healing gear sets or sustain sets that will help you to self heal more effectively.

Burst healing is when you need to do a big heal to recover from taking a big hit. Something such as the Dragonknight’s Coagulating Blood is a burst heal, and is vital to use when on low health. It’s expensive to recast this every time you lose a little bit of health, so it needs to be saved for those moments where your incoming damage was really high and use a heal over time for those smaller damage situations.

You can boost the effectiveness of Dragon Blood by casting Igneous Shield before as that increases your healing via Major Mending and then the Dragon Blood heal is even larger than it would have been usually. Most classes have a burst heal suitable for Tanks and these burst heals can also critical heal meaning they will have a huge amount of extra healing added on top of the initial heal.

Healing over time is when you use a heal that has a long duration and it will heal you occasionally for a small amount. This sort of healing is great for topping up your health when taking small amounts of damage, a skill such as the DK Cinder Storm would do this kind of heal and it also works well for your sustain and this only needs to be recast every 15 seconds. There are a number of healing gear sets which give you healing over time and these are useful if you struggle healing yourself and you need the extra healing. You could use something like the Engine Guardian Monster Set for extra healing over time if you need it.

Health Recovery is a character stat that you have, which recovers health every 2 seconds. You gain Health Recovery from some class passives and Heavy Armor passives. You also gain other sources of Health Recovery such as using potions for Major Fortitude and eating Bewitched Sugar Skulls food, and with the Strategic Reserve Champion Points.

Heath recovery is a pretty reliable amount of small, consistent healing and you will always gain the heath back every 2 seconds from it. A regular Tank setup you will gain around 1k Health Recovery, but it can be built higher by using special potions and Monster Sets such as Troll King.

Roll dodge is one of the most underused things among new players.

When you roll dodge you will evade damage for the next 2 seconds from any damage that isn’t a locked in channelled attack. Channelled attacks are things such as Dark Barrage from Rakkhat in Maw of Lorkhaj or the Nocturnal’s Favour from Z’Maja in Cloudrest, they are fixed onto you and are impossible to avoid.

The majority of attacks in the game are not locked onto you however and you can simply roll dodge to avoid damage. Roll dodging is a good tactic to use in a critical situation where you have taken a big hit or you are overwhelmed. It’s good to get into the habit of instantly reacting and roll dodging to evade damage for a few seconds so you can survive and then get a heal or whatever you need to get out of the situation.

Sustaining

Sustain on a Tank is one of the hardest parts of Tanking.

If you are unable to sustain, you are unable to block or do any of your Tank duties.

The golden rule to sustaining is “HEAVY AFTER A HEAVY” – You do a Heavy Attack immediately after receiving a Heavy Attack or dealing with a Heavy Mechanic from the enemy.

Sustain is the main thing that causes Tanks to die. It often goes unnoticed and might seem like more healing is needed or a mistake was made with a mechanic or heavy attack, however the majority of the time a Tank will die simply because they are not blocking because they ran out of Stamina or were unable to heal after taking a big hit due to burning out on Magicka resources.

For a very detailed breakdown of sustain please refer to my Sustain Presentation here ⇨

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Heavy After A Heavy

  • Heavy Attacking is a MUST for sustain.
  • The rule to timing your Heavy Attacks is Heavy After a Heavy.
  • Always time your own Heavy Attack immediately after a Boss has Heavy Attacked you as they are extremely unlikely to do back-to-back Heavy Attacks.
  • You should practice doing this for entire fights not just when you are out of resources.
  • When Heavy Attacking you regain 2293 Stamina back as a base value with a One Hand and Shield
  • Heavy Attacking with an Ice Staff restores 2425 Magicka.
  • This is amplified by 4% per piece of Heavy Armor worn thanks to the Revitalize passive meaning you could restore 2935 Stamina in 7 Heavy Armor from a Heavy Attack.

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Basic Sustaining Overview

Heavy After a Heavy is the primary method for sustain but you can also try other things such as:

  • Block LESS – The reason you struggle with Stamina sustain is due to blocking, so block less. It’s not quite as easy as this, you need to learn fights and know when it’s safe to not block but it also helps if you have a decent healer who is using some Area Healing Over Time on you. When you combine this with high resistances and damage mitigation it’s probably the most helpful way aside from Heavy Attacking.
  • Use Potions – Use them as often as possible, even looted potions to give you both resources and recovery. Just make sure you are using some kind of potion.
  • Use synergies – You NEED to have the Undaunted Command passive which means you will gain resources from every synergy used. At the very least you need to make sure you are always using Orb and Shard synergies as often as you can as they will give you a large boost of resources, but using any synergy will give you resources with the passive.
  • Lower your Block Cost – Using Sturdy Gear, Bracing Enchants, slotting Defensive Stance, using Tireless Guardian CP and wearing some Medium Armor to reduce your Block Cost so you will use less Stamina for Blocking which overall makes it easier to sustain.
  • Skills and Passives – There are many skills and passives that help with sustain, make sure to use these where possible. A comprehensive list of skills can be found on the Tank Skills pages.
  • Don’t overcast abilities, let them run the majority of the duration before recasting.
  • Increase Magicka Recovery – By doing this you will be able to sustain the majority of your abilities since Tanks cast mostly Magicka based skills. If you are a DK then you will be able to spam Igneous Shield or Cinder Storm to gain back Stamina which is crucial for sustain.
  • Using your Ultimate (Dragonknight)
  • Use sustain gear while you are learning so you can perform everything you need with lower risk of dying. Ideally opt for a sustain Monster Set rather than a full 5 piece of gear, that is the last resort option. Engine Guardian is the best sustain set in the game.

It’s important to remember that you need to time everything for optimal resource sustain. You should be heavy attacking throughout a fight not only when you are low on resources, get into the habit of heavy attacking every time there is an opportunity. Make sure you are timing synergies, it’s no good using an Orb resource synergy if you are full on resources and the same with Potions, wait at least until you have a little resource missing before using one so you can maximise the gains from them.

If you are on a DK you should never allow your Magicka to be full. You should always cast an Igneous Shield if you notice you Magicka is full and this will give you back Stamina via the Helping Hands passive. You do not want to be sitting on your Ultimate either, you should be using a Warhorn in group content and it’s important you cast this as often as you physically can as it will increase your groups DPS and it will give you all your resources back.

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Buffs and Debuffs

Buffing and Debuffing is one of the last but most vital and important responsibilities you’ll have as a Tank. Before you reach this stage, you need to be comfortable with the other aspects of Tanking such as maintaining Aggro, Positioning, Sustaining and Surviving.

If you are in a specific fight that you are comfortable with then you will start to find you have a lot more available time. With any “spare” time you have during a battle you should consider beginning to work some Buffs and Debuffs and this will be great for giving some useful boosts to your group and making you more and more valuable as a Tank.

  • Major/Minor Breach:
    There are ways to begin practicing buffing and debuffing early on in your Tanking development. As a very first priority you should be holding aggro of enemies and to do this you use Pierce Armor – one of the morphs of Puncture, this is your first Debuff as you will inflict Major and Minor Breach on the enemy causing them to lose 5948 + 2974 resistances.
    By making the enemy lose those resistances they are now easier to kill. This skill needs to be recast every 15 seconds so that you can maintain both a taunt on the enemy to hold aggro on them, so they do not attack other group members and debuff them. It’s a good idea to cast 1-2 seconds early to make sure your taunt doesn’t run out so casting every 13-14 seconds is ideal. This is the very first debuff you need to focus on maintaining.
  • Major Resolve:
    Your first buff is going to be a self armor buff. For the DK it will be Hardened Armor (preferably you should use Balance) this is going to give you 5948 more resistances which means you will take less damage from any enemies attacking you. This is only useful up until 33,000 resistances – at that point you are at the cap and any extra resistances are useless.     Once you are comfortably maintaining those 2 things you can start to factor in your next debuffs.
  • Minor Maim and Minor Heroism:
    This is applied by using Heroic Slash. Any enemy you hit with this gets Minor Maim applied to them which reduces their damage by 5% and using this skill also gives you Minor Heroism which gives you Ultimate gain. A very strong skill since it will reduce the damage you are taking, and it’s a double effect skill with the Ultimate gain.

At this point we have 4 things we need to consider: Puncture every 15 seconds, Heroic Slash every 12 seconds, Hardened Armor/Major Resolve every 20 seconds. These are your 3 main early buffs/debuffs that you want to keep active as often as possible and you should practice doing, and try to sustain doing them as they are all very valuable buffs/debuffs.

  • Crusher:
    This is your first really proactive enemy debuff and it is a weapon enchantment.
    You must put this enchant on an Ice Staff that is Infused to increase its strength and you should try to use a gold weapon and gold glyph on this as soon as you can.
    The way you activate Crusher is by doing a weapon skill, light attack or heavy attack. Crusher lasts on an enemy for 4 seconds but, by using a Staff we can maintain placing Crusher on the enemy without it running out every 4 seconds. To do this we have to keep recasting Elemental Blockade every 15 seconds, you want to have this levelled up fully because that will increase the length of time the ability stays active.

All you need to do is recast your Blockade every 15 seconds directly pointing at the enemy you are focussing. You can only apply weapon enchants to 1 enemy at a time so you need to try to position yourself so that when you place a blockade that the enemy you want it to hit is standing at the very start of the blockade where your staff hits the ground, even if you move the debuff will apply to the enemy that is stood at the initial starting point of the Blockade. With a gold Infused/Crusher weapon you will remove another 2108 resistances from the enemy, and this will stack on top of the Major and Minor Breach that you’ve already removed with your taunt. This is a total of 11,030 resistances removed from the enemy and they have a total of 18,200.

As a general rule it’s a good idea to basically track your Taunt as mentioned in the taunt section. Each time you refresh the taunt also refresh your other buffs in a similar order every time and this will help you get into a routine of reapplying your buffs and debuffs

Taunt > Heroic Slash > Major Resolve > Blockade > Heavy after a Heavy (When Applicable)

There are many other things you may be required to maintain especially when you begin moving into group content and trials.

Buffs

Debuffs

  • Major Breach – Reduces Physical and Spell Resistance by 5948.
  • Minor Breach – Reduces Physical and Spell Resistance by 2974.
  • Minor Brittle – Increases Critical Damage taken by 10%.
  • Major Cowardice – Reduces Weapon Damage and Spell Damage by 430.
  • Minor Cowardice – Reduces Weapon Damage and Spell Damage by 215.
  • Major Maim – Reduces damage done by 10%.
  • Minor Maim – Reduces damage done by 5%.
  • Minor Mangle – Reduces Maximum Health by 10%.
  • Major Vulnerability – Increases Damage Taken by 10%.
  • Minor Vulnerability – Increases Damage Taken by 5%.
  • Stagger – Increases damage taken by 65 per stack for 5 seconds.
  • Infused Crusher – Reduces the target’s Physical and Spell Resistance by 2108.
  • Engulfing Flames – Affected enemies take more damage from all Flame Damage attacks based on your Weapon and Spell Damage, with a maximum of 6% bonus damage taken.
  • Alkosh Armor Shred – Reduces the Physical and Spell Resistance of any enemy hit by the amount of your Weapon Damage for the duration, up to a maximum of 6000.
  • Crimson Oath Armor Shred – Reduces the Armor of nearby enemies within 12 meters by 3541 for 15 seconds.
  • Tremorscale Armor Shred – Dealing Physical damage to all enemies within 4 meters and reducing their Armor for 15 seconds.

There are many more buff and debuffs available, but these are the most commonly seen or used by a Tank.

You should always consider the duration of the buff/debuff and the ability used to apply them and try to work them either into a general “rotation” where you cast them at a similar time every time or if you are on PC you can use an addons to track various buffs and debuffs to maintain a good uptime.

Class Specific Buffs / Debuffs

Every class has their own specific buff / debuff that can be required for optimal group performance depending on your composition:

Mountain’s Blessing – When you cast a Earthen Heart ability you increase your group’s Weapon Damage by 10% for 20 seconds. This is an important buff if you are in a group with Stamina Damage Dealers. This is an easy buff to maintain by just casting Igneous Shields.

Engulfing Flames – A unique group buff provided by Dragonknights. It’s especially useful for Magicka groups and you can provide your group with up to 5% more Fire Damage against any enemy you have this applied to.

Stone Giant – Stagger is another unique DK group buff for advanced Tanks. It is hard to maintain since it costs Stamina, and you have to initially cast this 3 times on the enemy and then every 5 seconds to keep the Stagger stacks applied to the enemy. When you apply this to an enemy they will take approximately 2-4k more DPS from each Damage Dealer. If you find yourself with great sustain and very little to do during a fight you should start practicing keeping this applied to bosses.

Frozen Colossus – Unleash a frostbitten Flesh Colossus to pulverize enemies in the area. The Colossus smashes the ground three times over 3 seconds, dealing 2787 Frost Damage with each smash. Dealing damage applies Major Vulnerability to any enemy hit for 12 seconds, increasing their damage taken by 10%.

This is a huge buff for any group, it means that the damage dealers can do 10% more damage this has recently been replaced by a range of different Tank Sets.

Empowering Grasp – Summon three patches of skeletal claws from the ground in front of you. Enemies in the first area are snared by 30% for 5 seconds, immobilized in the second area for 4 seconds, and stunned in the final area for 3 seconds. Each area applies Minor Maim to enemies, Empower to your allies, and enhances the damage and healing of your summons by 1000. Each effect lasts 10 seconds.

This skill provides empower to the group and was previously a lot more useful.

Hemorrhage – Increases your Critical Damage by 10%. Dealing Critical Damage grants you and your group Minor Savagery, increasing your Weapon Critical rating by 1314 for 20 seconds.

This is a Medium Armor Damage Dealer buff, it is applied by doing any Critical Damage which is generally quite simple when Tanking and maintaining your Blockade and Taunt on the enemy.

Exploitation – When you cast a Dark Magic ability you grant Minor Prophecy to you and your group, increasing your Spell Critical rating by 1314 for 20 seconds.

This is about a 2k DPS increase for Light Armor Damage Dealers. A good buff needed if there are Magicka Damage Dealers in the group, it is applied by casting Dark Deal which is a nice Tank skill as it uses Magicka and returns Health and Stamina. You can also use other Dark Magic abilities, but Dark Deal is the most common. You need to recast this every 20 seconds and be in combat range of your Damage Dealers for them to get the buff.

Crystal Weapon – Encase your weapon in dark crystals for 6 seconds, causing your next two Light or Heavy Attacks to deal additional damage and reduce the target’s Armor by 1000 for 5 seconds. The first hit deals 2091 Physical Damage and the second deals 836 Physical Damage. After casting, your next non-Ultimate ability used within 3 seconds costs 10% less.

Reduces the enemy’s armor by 1000 but it’s quite difficult to maintain this as a Tank.

Illuminate – Casting a Dawn’s Wrath ability grands Minor Sorcery to you and your group for 20 seconds increasing your Spell Damage by 10%.

This is applied by using any Dawns Wrath ability, usually Power of the Light. Minor Sorcery is only useful in groups with Magicka Damage Dealers, and provides somewhere in the region of 2k DPS to a group.

Maturation – When you Heal yourself or an Ally you apply Major Toughness to them for 20 seconds increasing their Health by 10%.

This buff requires you to heal you group members at least once every 20 seconds to give them the Health buff.

Pre-Buffing

When you are about to begin combat, you should always pre buff up with any abilities that will give you any benefit with the upcoming fight. The main pre-buff is Major Resolve, you cast this before initiating combat since without it any enemy will hit you once you start the fight and the hit will be a lot harder than it should be.

You can also precast Blood Altar if you use it, the range is huge, and it doesn’t need to be immediately next to a boss as long as it’s in the nearby area. Some fights have bosses that “spawn” into the area, when you get this type of boss you can place your Elemental Blockade ready for when the boss can be targeted or appears along with any other Area of Effect abilities you may be using.

Tanking Bosses

When it comes to Boss fights, it’s hard to provide a single effect way to Tank every boss because they all vary. Bosses are where you’ll discover most of the mechanics within each piece of content. You can adopt some general rules to bosses, but you need to quickly figure out the mechanics of each particular boss or read one of our content guides to find out more specific information on how to successfully Tank each boss.

The main focus for this is taunting the boss and re-taunting every 14~ seconds to hold aggro.

Positioning of bosses does vary depending on which dungeon or trial you are doing and what mechanics are involved. Generally, you should try to turn bosses away from your group and don’t move a boss that doesn’t need to be moved because your group lose damage when you unnecessarily move a boss.

An important part of Tanking bosses is to make sure you are able to sustain a prolonged blocking period. Heavy After a Heavy and following the sustain information in this guide is vital during boss encounters.

Always keep your eyes on a boss because they will often have interruptible attacks that you need to bash to prevent them from doing.

If you take a big hit or see the signal for a heavy attack you are always able to roll dodge and avoid taking any damage. It can also be a good idea to get into a habit of instantly roll dodging when you realise you have made a mistake or taking a huge hit and it prevent any follow up hits or attacks kill you while you make sure you are, or your healer are healing you back up to full.

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Tanking Add Pulls

There is a great method for doing virtually any add pull in The Elder Scrolls Online and it can be done with any Class of Tank too.

Using this method not only crowd controls enemies but it applies a huge amount of Area of Effect debuffs meaning your group do a lot of damage to the adds also.

Instigate combat at range so the enemies begin moving towards you.

Cast Razor Caltrops just in front of the enemies so they walk onto it and to snare them which slows down their movement speed.

Once the range enemies have stepped in closer Cast Power Slam to proc Void Bash which chains everything onto your Caltrops

Next cast Frost Blockade as this will cause an immobilisation if it is on the ground and an enemy stood inside the AoE becomes Chilled.

Finally cast Frost Pulsar x2 which has an increased chance to cause the Chilled effect which means the enemies become immobilised thanks to your Frost Blockade.

Why bother doing this method?

You can do it on every class of Tank.

Not only that but you provide a huge number of buffs and debuffs by doing it.

Razor Caltrops is a Snare reducing movement speed by 50% and causes AoE Major Breach. It can also proc Powerful Assault.

Frost Blockade procs your weapon enchant, provides a projectile damage shield to you and your group and immobilises Chilled enemies.

Power Slam procs Void Bash that not only chains, but it also applies Major Maim reducing the enemies damage by 10%. You can also proc any other “bash to proc” gearsets at the same time upon using this such as Turning Tide.

Frost Pulsar causes the Chilled effect with a triple chance as an AoE. The chilled effect applies AoE Minor Maim reducing enemies damage by 5% and AoE Minor Brittle increasing the amount of Critical Damage an enemy takes by 10% It also inflicts Minor Mangle reducing none-Elite enemies health by 10%. It provides you and nearby group members with Minor Protection giving you 5% reduced damage.

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Tank Testing

There are a few ways to test your Tanking capabilities.

A good way to practice keeping up your buffs is by travelling into the Asylum Sanctorum trial, Normal is fine but Veteran will give you more damage if you are trying to practice in a vet environment. Go all the way to the main boss Saint Olms and press the two buttons on the left and right to activate the AS+2. Make sure you bring along a friend who needs to stand behind you to kite the lightning pools that are spat in the air by Olms, if you don’t bring someone else, they will land on top of you. This method will allow you to deal with the boss and boss mechanics while also giving you the ability to try out maintaining your buffs and debuffs in an aggressive and realistic environment.

Testing your ability to sustain and survive can be achieved by running into any trial entrance that has a lot of adds and enemies, or something such as Blackrose Prison. Blackrose Prison overall is a good way to practice Tanking and it requires so many different aspects of Tanking and is a good challenge for Tanks.

In general, the only way to become truly good at Tanking is to understand the fundamentals of the role, learn content mechanics and just learn from your deaths and mistakes. Doing the content multiple times and gaining experience and understanding is how you become a good Tank.

Levelling

The very first thing you should do is try to find a few guilds to join. You are looking for social / PvE based guilds with 300+ members so that you can find some help with getting some crafted gear, have a good number of people you can press on to fast travel to them to unlock new zones and so you can use the chat to ask for any assistance with things in the game. You might also be lucky and find a guild that has a Trader that you can make use of.

There are basically 2 main ways for levelling up:

  1. Overland solo levelling and questing
  2. Dungeon levelling

Levelling Checklist

  • Try to use some Training Gear as it will level you up much faster. Ask for help in a guild, zone chat or The Tank Club Discord.
  • Pick up Mages Guild Skill Line
  • Pick up Fighters Guild Skill Line
    • Once you complete the Tutorial, to join the Fighters Guild and Mages Guild you must travel to a large city. You’ll find both Guild in each of these places:
      • Vulkhel Guard (Auridon)
      • Daggerfall (Glenumbra)
      • Davon’s Watch (Stonefalls)
      • Vivec City (Vvardenfell)
      • Alinor (Summerset)
      • Rimmen (Northern Elsweyr)
      • Solitude (Western Skyrim)
      • Leyawiin (Blackwood)
  • Pick up Undaunted Skill Line
    • Once you complete the Tutorial, to join the Undaunted you need to find the tavern in either Stonefalls, Glenumbra or Auridon and speak to the Undaunted representative.
  • Pick up Psijic Order Skill Line (Summerset DLC or ESO+ Only)
    • Complete the Summerset main story until you reach Artaeum where you will be able to speak with Loremaster Celarus to join the guild.
  • Level up Mount daily at the Stables (250 gold per day)
  • Complete Cyrodiil Introduction at level 10 for Support and Assault Skill Lines (Level 10+)
  • Complete your Group Finder: Random Daily Battleground (Level 10+)
  • Complete your Group Finder: Random Daily Dungeon (Level 10+)

If you are Overland solo levelling it is a good idea to set up with 5 Light Armor, 1 Medium, 1 Heavy using a Destruction Staff – this is because levelling as a Tank is incredibly slow as you have low damage and high defence. Levelling this way includes doing Delves, Public Dungeons, Dolmens, Quests/Psijic Quests and more.

If you are levelling by doing Dungeons (Random Normal Dungeons) then you should set up with 5 Heavy Armor, 1 Medium, 1 Light using a One hand and Shield and at level 15 using a Destruction Staff on your second bar. Levelling this way is great for learning how to Tank on your class and you should use the group finder and search for Random Dungeons as you get bonus experience for doing this.

The best way to level up overall is to combine all of the above, completing your random daily dungeons and battleground, collecting skyshards and lorebooks and completing your Psijic Order quests. Before you even start levelling up you should collect all of your important skill lines which you will need later in the game and it’s much easier to level them up immediately rather than waiting until later. You need to travel to your Alliance Major city and go to the Mages Guild, the Fighters Guild and the local Tavern to meet the Undaunted, pick up the 3 skill lines by talking to the NPCs.

If you have the Summerset DLC or ESO+ you then want to go to Summerset and the town called Shimmerene, pick up and complete the first Main Story quest for this area until you can travel to Artaeum. Once you can get to Artaeum you can stop doing the main quest line and just pick up the Psijic Order to unlock the Psijic Order Skill Line. Once you have this you can start travelling around Tamriel doing the Psijic Order quests. When you are sent to a zone to close Psijic Portals, also pick up all Lorebooks in that zone, while you are doing that collect all of the Skyshards including the ones inside Delves and make sure you do any Dolmens that are active as they are a good exp boost. Levelling your skill lines at this point has a huge benefit and will help you to have a lot of options available for useful skills in the future.

Once you are level 10 it’s a good idea to travel into Cyrodiil and complete the introduction quest, this will unlock the Support and Assault skill lines and also unlock the Continuous Attack passive which is worth putting 1 point into so you can to travel around Tamriel on your mount much faster. There are some very useful PvP skills especially War Horn and Purge, and if you reach Support 9 you can use Barrier and Magicka Aid passive so you should try to do your random daily battlegrounds which are extremely easy at a lower level and just use them for farming some easy AP for those skill lines. You can also just go into Cyrodiil and try to join a group then follow them around the map to collect some reasonably easy AP but PvP can be difficult at lower levels and is not really advised.

You need to get Skill Lines levelled up so first of all kill something with a Destruction Staff to unlock the first Destruction Staff skill, you will need this later in the game. Equip a One Hand and Shield and kill something to unlock the first One Hand and Shield Skill this is the main skill line for Tanking. You then have 3 class skill lines; you need to get the first skill from each of those and put those on your active ability bar.

As a DK your 1st ability bar would look something like this:

ESO-Hub Skill iconESO-Hub Skill iconESO-Hub Skill iconESO-Hub Skill iconESO-Hub Skill icon

You must level up with skills from each of these skill lines on your bar as it will also level the skill lines. When you reach a more useful skill for a Tank, switch to that instead. For a comprehensive list of useful Tank skills please check out the respective pages for each class:

Levelling Gear

While levelling you should always use 5/1/1 as mentioned earlier. Use crafted Training gear for levelling.

  • Levelling as a Damage Dealer (5 Light & Destruction Staff): Armor of the Seducer & Magnus Gift
  • Levelling as a Tank (5 Heavy & One Hand & Shield): Armor of the Seducer & Druid’s Braid

The levelling process continues up until Champion Point 160 and you should not try to buy, farm or upgrade gear too much until you reach CP160 since you will out level your gear, the gear cap is CP160 so you should wait until then to begin working on collecting the useful Tanking sets you’ll need.

Normal Dungeons

Normal Dungeons can be done any time after level 10. You should always try and do a random normal dungeon once daily (20-hour cooldown) while levelling as it gives you a nice boost to your experience gain, click on the Group Finder to do this. Dungeons are a great place to begin Tanking, they show you some basic mechanics and if you have reached Level 50 CP160 some of the dungeons will be very valuable for you to obtain Tank gear sets that you will need for future Tanking scenarios.

Normal dungeons are generally not very difficult at all. Some of the DLC Normal Dungeons can be a little more challenging as you may have to play some mechanics in those, but for the base game Dungeons you can virtually ignore all mechanics as even the things that are designed to 1 shot kill you don’t do so in normal non-DLC dungeons.

Doing back-to-back random Normal Dungeons is quite a good way to level up as a new Tank while also starting to gather the basic knowledge of Tanking, Taunting, Positioning and Sustaining.

When you reach level 45 you will receive mail from the Undaunted inviting you to the Undaunted Enclave, you should do this as soon as possible and complete the associated quest. Once you have done this, each day you will be able to go back to this area and pick up 3 daily pledge dungeon quests. These are extremely important as you get Undaunted XP from completing them which will level up the important Undaunted skill line and you will also earn Undaunted keys for completing pledges. These keys need to be saved until you reach 160 Champion Points, at which point you can then use the keys to buy Shoulder Monster Set pieces that will pair up with Helmets that can be earned from Veteran Dungeons to give you some really strong boost and buffs.

You should always try to use the group finder when doing dungeons even if it’s with a guild or organised group. The reason for this is that you get a good finder buff when you go into a dungeon using this and it will make your group stronger.

How to do Dungeons

Dungeons often have around 5 Bosses in total with a range of add packs in between.

As a Tank you often want to set up in a way where you will be able to deal with all of the challenges of a dungeon within your one build.

The most important thing firstly is crowd control. Dungeons have many add packs with multiple enemies and to begin with it can be a little overwhelming. The priority in this situation is you must taunt any melee enemies; these are the ones that usually run straight towards you holding melee weapons. Using an Ice Staff is a great way to initiate combat when you are dealing with an add pull in a dungeon, and the reason for this is you can initiate combat by using Frost Blockade, you can then run towards the enemies which are now running towards you and cast Frost Pulsar which will immobilise the enemies in place. This is a great method because the enemies become slower, it’s much easier for you to get taunt on them before they run off to attack your group. Once you have placed your Elemental Blockade you can then begin to think about your next move. For more control you can use a snare which reduces the enemy’s movement speed, do this by using abilities such as the DKs Cinder Storm and the PvP Assault skill Caltrops.

Next you should chain in any ranged enemies such as mages and archers who are shooting at you and/or your group at distance. You can use Unrelenting Grip as a Dragonknight and other classes have Silver Leash from the Fighters Guild available. You need to face your cursor in the middle of the screen directly at the ranged enemy until you see the enemy “glow” red around the edges, when this happens it means you have a proper target on them, then you use your Unrelenting Grip to pull them in. Later down the line you can do Vateshran Hollows Arena for the Void Bash set which can chain multiple enemies at the same time and pull them into you with 1 button.

The reason you want adds to be stacked is it makes it easier for damage dealers to kill enemies that are stacked together, it’s possible for them to use a wide range of Area of Effect damage abilities and can hit multiple enemies at the same time. Once you have all the enemies chained in you should try to keep the Frost Blockade on the ground and occasionally cast Pulsar to keep the enemies immobilised and stuck in place. Certain crowd control abilities sometimes won’t work on an enemy that has recently been chained/pulled in as they have CC (Crowd Control) Immunity.

For the majority of Boss fights, they are more or less just a turn and burn. Keep them taunted, turn them away so they have their back to the group and then it’s down to the damage dealers to just kill them. For the DLC dungeons, they will have mechanics that you may need to play. Individual Dungeon Guides are available in the Dungeon Guides section of the site.

If you need additional healing in dungeons, you can enter the fight with Blockade as we suggested above, then cast a heal over time, for the DK it would be Cinder Storm which will give you healing every 1 second, but this also snares enemies by 70% which is great. Only use Dragon Blood when your Health is below 50%, the healing you receive from casting this is inflated based on how much Health you have missing. On other classes you do the same since you’ll waste too many resources.

When it comes to Boss fights, the priority changes a little. The main focus for this is taunting the boss and retaunting every 14~ seconds to hold aggro. Positioning of bosses does vary depending on which dungeon you are doing and what mechanics are involved. An important part of Tanking bosses is to make sure you are able to sustain a prolonged blocking period. As a DK you have a few options, you cast a lot of Igneous Shield which will return Stamina if you have the Helping Hands passive. You use your Ultimate as much as possible, ideally this needs to be Aggressive Horn from the Assault skill line. This Ultimate will boost the damage of your group which in turn will end the fight faster. By using this Ultimate you also regain almost all of your resources due to the Battle Roar passive. Other ways to sustain Boss fights includes using any synergies you see and using the tried and trusted tactic of Heavy Attacking the Boss immediately after you have blocked a Heavy Attack/Mechanic from the Boss.

Dungeons to look out for

If you come across any of the following particular dungeons then you should be mindful of the useful Tank gear you can find in them if you are over CP160. The following dungeons contain some useful Tank sets that you should collect if possible;

Crypt of Hearts – Ebon Armory

Vaults of Madness – The Worm’s Raiment

Black Drake Villa (DLC) – Drake’s Rush

The Dread Cellar (DLC) – Crimson Oath’s Rive

Shipwright’s Regret (DLC) – Turning Tide

Graven Deep (DLC) – Pangrit Denmother

Lair of Maarselok (DLC) – Dragon’s Defilement

Dungeon Tanking Gear

There are a variety of options you can use for Normal Dungeons Tanking. Generally, you want to be using a 5-1-1 setup with 5 Heavy Armor. You need a 1 Hand and Shield, Decisive / Absorb Stamina is good and an Ice Staff with Infused / Crusher. For Jewelry use whatever trait the Jewelry is looted initially or if using crafted then use Infused/1 Bracing 2 Magicka Recovery.

This is just a few gear options but for normal dungeons the gear really isn’t super important, you can Tank these at more or less any level, in any combination of gear. These gear setups will mostly just help with your sustain so you can practice the Chains/Talons/Positioning/Healing.

Crafted

7x Druid’s Braid

5x Torug’s Pact

Beginner

2x Engine Guardian

5x The Worm’s Raiment

5x Torug’s Pact

Progressive

2x Engine Guardian

5xPearlescent Ward / Claw of Yolnahkriin

5x Saxhleel Champion + 2x Puncturing Remedy (Masters)

When you are looking to build a great dungeon, Tank build you should follow the guide for this over at the Dungeon Tank Build page.

PvP and Battlegrounds

You really want to be levelling up your PvP skill lines when you can by doing a little bit of PvP or just your random daily battleground. Getting to Support 9 so you can use Barrier as a passive skill on your front bar with the Magicka Aid passive to give yourself 10% more Magicka Recovery is a very useful thing to have especially when you move into trials later.

PvP is also good for the End of Campaign rewards. Every 30 days the PvP campaigns reset, if you reach at least tier 1 rewards by gaining 25,000 Alliance Points you will get rewarded. One of those rewards is a gold Transmutation Geode and these are incredibly useful so that you can change the traits on your gear. You need to be able to change the traits on your gear because you could spend weeks grinding dungeons for gear in the correct trait or you can just get the gear and then use 50 Transmute Stones to switch the trait on it. Grinding gear is usually not as bad as trying to get the correct Monster Sets in the correct traits so most people save transmuting for Monster Sets, or for jewellery since jewellery can only be looted in 1 trait and if you want to optimise your jewellery then you need to transmute it.

Dragonstar Arena

At CP160 you could attempt to do Normal Dragonstar Arena which is located in the top left corner of Craglorn. This arena drops unique weapons/shields which work as a 2 pieces set that can give you a nice boost. Everything you have practiced so far with chaining, rooting and snaring enemies will be perfect for this arena, and it is a 4 person arena that is fairly simple to do even with minimal mechanics knowledge.

The main benefit to doing this is you would have the possibility of looting the Puncturing Remedy set which might be nice to have as you move into your first Veteran content as it will give you a heal every time you Taunt with Puncture and at this stage you won’t have a Monster Set so this would fill that gap in your gear set up.

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Vateshran Hollows Arena

If you want to complete dungeons with ridiculous ease, then you’ll want to attempt normal Vateshran Hollows for the Void Bash (Vateshran 1H & Shield) set. It’s simply the best thing to use for dungeon Tanking especially when you start getting into harder Veteran dungeons and need to be able to control a lot of enemies quickly. I would advise 600CP to complete this easily and you will also need to level up a few damage based skills.

This isn’t the easiest thing to do – it’s a solo arena and to complete it on Normal you’ll want about 10k DPS. This can easily be achieved even as a Tank by using some crafted gear and damage dealer skills. If you follow a build similar to my Accolade Dragonknight Tank Build which is a damage dealing Tank build you should easily be able to complete Normal, it will come down simply to the mechanics of the boss fights.

If you need any help understanding any of the boss fights don’t forget to ask in  The Tank Club Discord.

The benefit of doing this arena is you’ll have the best in slot method of stacking adds with 1 single button and it’s useable on every Tank class. It’s also great for your sustain since you just use 1 skill to pull everything rather than recasting multiple chains to pull multiple enemies.

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When to progress

Once you have some experience inside dungeons on normal mode and you have practiced the above methods of controlling adds and dealing with bosses you can start thinking about Veteran progression. You must get some Champion Point level 160 gear and enchants at this stage before you progress so you can Tank at the most effective level.

Collecting your first buff set is a great idea by getting the Ebon Armory set from Crypt of Hearts on Normal. This set will give you a nice Health boost but also everyone in your group, it’s an easy set to gather. You should aim to get the body pieces Chest, Legs, Waist, Hands, Feet but keeping hold of any other pieces is worth saving for later.

If you are doing dungeons with Magicka damage dealers often then you could also get the Worm Raiment set from Vaults of Madness. This set needs to be used on the Weapons and Jewellery since it’s a Light Armor set. You could pick up the Hands and Waist also so you can mix the set into a 5 Heavy 2 Light setup. The Worm set is useful for Magicka damage dealers as it gives them more Magicka recovery which is also extremely useful as a Tank for sustaining resources for chaining, rooting and healing.

Take a look at the gear set reviews for Tanks on Best ESO Tank Sets 2022 – The Tank Club.

Veteran Dungeons

The main reason why you don’t want to do Veteran Dungeons pre 160CP is that you will be looting gear that is not max level gear and will be essentially useless once you reach 160CP. You also cannot use max level gear under 160CP so you will be dealing with much lower stats which just makes completing these dungeons much harder.

The difference between Normal Dungeons and Veteran Dungeons is that mechanics are more predominant in Veteran Mode. Veteran enemies have more health and also do more damage. You also have Veteran Hardmodes which are activated on the last boss of Veteran Dungeons and by completing these you will earn more Undaunted Keys if you are doing the daily Undaunted Pledges.

Veteran Hardmodes will require you to either do an extra task such as keep some enemies alive, or they will just increase the health and damage of the final boss. One of the main reasons for doing Veteran Dungeons is that they drop special Monster Helmets depending on which dungeon you do, and they are part of a 2-piece Monster Set which includes Shoulder Pieces that you need to buy with Undaunted Keys from the Undaunted Pledge givers.

It is a good idea to have possibly worked on getting some useful Tank gear via Normal Dungeons or Crafting before moving onto Veteran Dungeons. Gear does become a bigger priority moving into Veteran Dungeons and is a high priority in DLC Dungeons.

Base game dungeons are fairly simple and easy to do. Any dungeon that has two versions, the I version is usually a very good place to start. The II dungeons are usually a bit more difficult, especially the hardmodes. A dungeon that only has one version is generally pretty tricky to do and it’s a good idea to save those until you’ve completed some of the other Vet Dungeons first.

You cannot use the group finder to do DLC dungeons before 300CP and the reason for this is having lower CP usually causes considerable problems in these instances. These dungeons are more difficult and have a variety of mechanics in each one. If you are in an organised group, you can still do the DLC Vet dungeons, but you will have to travel in or walk through the door manually as the group finder won’t allow you to use it and you also won’t get the group finder buff meaning you’ll be even weaker than normal.

These dungeons can be completed fairly easily from CP160+

Fungal Grotto I (FG1) | Fungal Grotto II (FG2) | Spindleclutch I (SC1) | Spindleclutch II (SC2) | The Banished Cells I (BC1) | The Banished Cells II (BC2) | Darkshade Caverns I (DC1) | Darkshade Caverns II (DC2) | Elden Hollow I (EH1) | Elden Hollow II (EH2) | Wayrest Sewers I (WS1) | Wayrest Sewers II (WS2) | Arx Corinium (Arx) | City of Ash I (CoA1) | City of Ash II (CoA2) | Crypt of Hearts I (CoH1) | Crypt of Hearts II (CoH2) | Direfrost Keep | Tempest Island | Volenfell | Blackheart Haven (BH) | Blessed Crucible (BC) | Selene’s Web | Vaults of Madness (VoM)

Imperial City Prison (ICP) | White-Gold Tower (WGT) | Cradle of Shadows (CoS) | Ruins of Mazzatun (RoM) | Falkreath Hold (FH) | The Cauldron | Black Drake Villa

Depths of Malatar (DoM) | Fang Lair (FL) | Frostvault (FV) | Bloodroot Forge (BF) | Lair of Maarselok (LoM) | March of Sacrifices (MoS) | Moon Hunter Keep (MHK) | Moongrave Fane (MF) | Scalecaller Peak (SP) | Icereach (IR) | Unhallowed Grave (UG |  Castle Thorn (CT) | Stone Garden (SG) | The Dread Cellar | Red Petal Bastion | The Coral Aerie | Shipwright’s Regret | Graven Deep | Earthern Root Enclave

Dungeons to look out for

If you come across any of the following particular veteran dungeons then you should be mindful of the useful Tank monster sets you can find in them if you are over CP160. The following dungeons contain some useful Tank sets that you should collect if possible;

Spindleclutch II – Bloodspawn

Darkshade Caverns I – Sentinel of Rkugamz

Darkshade Caverns II – Engine Guardian

Volenfell – Tremorscale

Blessed Crucible – The Troll King

Depths of Malatar – The Troll King

Black Drake Villa (DLC) – Encratis’s Behemoth

Shipwright’s Regret (DLC) – Nazaray

Earthern Root Enclave (DLC) – Archdruid Devyric

Vet Dungeon Tanking Gear

If you are doing dungeons using the group finder, use any gear you are comfortable with. It’s likely you won’t get a healer sometimes so you should be prepared for that. I would advise you join 5 guilds at this point and try to find groups for dungeons in the guild chats, discords or wherever people communicate as you’ll have a much better success rate of clean and clear dungeons with a chance to really practice your role and not worry as much about what everyone else is doing and also doing wrong more often than not.

Here are some gear options you could use:

ESO Dungeon Tank Build

When to progress

Moving onto trials is a completely different ballgame. Trials are 12-person content, generally requiring organisation and specific gear and skills to achieve a group target. You can consider progressing onto normal Trials as early as 160CP. Dying and losing aggro of bosses inside a trial as the Tank will usually mean your whole group will die, so it’s a good idea to make sure you’ve got the fundamentals of Tanking and had some practice Tanking dungeons, dealing with multiple enemies, sustaining and surviving.

You should have a decent collection of both important Tank gear; monster sets and any optional Tank sets you like to use. Ensure you have at least Ebon Armory, The Worm’s Raiment, Crimson Oath’s Rive and one other set between Torug’s Pact/Turning Tide/Powerful Assault. For monster sets Engine Guardian, Bloodspawn, and Tremorscale. At this stage you should have no problems working on Normal Trials with the prospect of Veteran Trials in the future.

Most trials usually have two Tanks, this is a great way to begin understanding how trials work. At first you might go as the Off Tank. This is where your main objective is to support the Main Tank. You will need to communicate with the Main Tank before you start so you can understand what is expected from you, which enemies you will taunt and with enemies you won’t. As an Off Tank you are responsible for assisting your group and you will generally spend less time Tanking than the Main Tank. As an Off Tank, even in a new environment it is a good idea to try to use some helpful gear options that support your group because you won’t be doing as much tanking so it’s vital to provide as many buffs and debuffs as you can to help your group.

Normal Trials

Normal Trials are the extremely basic versions of the much more difficult Veteran Trials. The general idea is that these will give you an idea of the environment so you know what to expect, you will get to see some new and unique mechanics and you can begin to learn how to perform as part of a large 12-person group.

1. Aetherian Archive (AA)

2. Hel Ra Citadel (HRC)

3. Sunspire (SS)

4. Cloudrest (CR)

5. Asylum Sanctorium (AS)

6. Sanctum Ophidia (SO)

7. Kynes Aegis (KA)

8. Maw of Lorkhaj (MoL)

9. Halls of Fabrications (HoF)

10. Dreadsail Reef (DSR)

11. Rockgrove (RG)

Your priority at this stage is to use the fundamentals you have learned already, apply those inside the trials. Going into normal trials blind with no knowledge would generally be fine apart from some of the later ones on the tier list getting a little more difficult due to mechanics that need to be understood and applied.This is your only real learning option other than reading trial guides or watching trial clips, so you should try to pick up as much information as you can while doing these trials.

The best route is to join guild runs rather than finding random runs as this way you’ll have the option to ask questions and gather feedback without a potential toxic environment. If you decide to do random trial runs you can do this usually by travelling to Craglorn and picking up runs by looking in the text chat. Random runs have the potential to be much more volatile and if you make a mistake you’ll be criticised more than helped since there is no real structure or leader in these kinds of runs, they are predominantly made purely for the reason to obtain gear. If you have gathered some trial experience with a guild and you know what you are doing then random runs would work fine.

Not all Trials require two Tanks but you should try to join one that does so you can get the general idea of how you split the workload of a trial with another Tank. If you make a mistake in a group with two Tanks there is less risk to the group.

Trials to look out for

If you come across any of the following particular trials then you should be mindful of the useful Tank gear sets you can find in them if you are over CP160. The following trials contain some vital Tank sets that you should collect as soon as possible;

Sunspire – Claw of Yolnahkriin

Maw of Lorkhaj – Roar of Alkosh

Dreadsail Reef – Pearlescent Ward

Rockgrove – Saxhleel Champion

Cloudrest – Vestment of Olorime

All of these sets are crucial for Tanking Veteran content aside from Olorime which is only typically used for Dungeon Tanking without a Healer. Alkosh is worth collecting but shouldn’t typically be used by Tanks nowadays but worth having. You will need these crucial sets if you want to eventually work on Veteran Trials, especially if you plan on getting into any sort of Trials team.

Normal Trials Tanking Gear

When you go into a Trial for the first time, use whatever gear you want. Play it safe, make sure you can sustain, make sure you have some healing and just learn the fights. Using safety sets is fine for your first few trials, you want something that will help you sustain and survive.

Off Tank

2x Bloodspawn

5x Crimson Oath’s Rive

5x Torug’s Pact

Main Tank

2x Engine Guardian

5x Ebon Armory / Bani’s Torment

5x The Worm’s Raiment

When to progress

There is a huge difference moving from Normal to Veteran when it comes to Trials. You should not try to progress onto Veteran Trials too quickly, you should have a lot of experience in Normal Dungeons and Trials, and you should have some good awareness and performances in Veteran DLC Dungeons. You might also at this stage have tried and completed Dragonstar Arena Veteran.

Having done all of these things you will have stress tested your ability to Tank. You really should not move into Veteran Trials if you don’t have some control over your resource management and the ability to survive even in difficult encounters and situations. You need to make sure you are able to taunt multiple targets quickly, hold aggro, control fights and as a minimum be able to maintain your own buffs. You should be somewhat capable of debuffing enemies and providing some group buffs.

Veteran Trial bosses hit extremely hard and you will spend a lot of time holding block and block casting abilities. You will have to know about mechanics before you go into Veteran Trials or you will be a complete hindrance to any group because you are in the most predominant role as a Tank. If you are dead, everyone dies. If you don’t have some idea of mechanics or what to expect it will be impossible for your group to complete anything.

ESO is supposed to be fun, so you really should look for guilds that offer trials to newcomers, help, advice and a relaxed environment where you can learn. There are many guilds like this that offer introduction runs and open trials for people to attend and learn from an experienced raid leader.

You also have the option of The Tank Club Discord which will provide you with any answers or support you need.

Veteran Trials

Veteran Trials are drastically different from Normal Trials. The bosses and layouts are exactly the same as on Normal, the biggest thing is that Normal Trial mechanics can be skipped and ignored but in Veteran this is not the case. In Veteran all the enemies have more health, hit considerably harder and there is very little room for error. Learning mechanics takes time and it is something you will need to work towards over a number of clears of the same Veteran Trial.

It is important to do your research before heading into a Veteran Trial. I would advise you to try and join some runs as the Off Tank initially so you can start to learn mechanics and it gives you a chance to monitor what the Main Tank is doing so you can attempt to apply that yourself when you switch roles. As the Off Tank you should focus on you Buffs and Debuff to assist your group, deal with whatever targets you are supposed to which should be discussed with the Main Tank before you start.

1. Aetherian Archive (vAA)

2. Hel Ra Citadel (vHRC)

3. Sunspire (vSS)

4. Sanctum Ophidia (vSO)

5. Asylum Sanctorium (vAS)

1. Maw of Lorkhaj (vMoL)

2. Halls of Fabrications (vHoF)

3. Kynes Aegis (vKA)

4. Cloudrest (vCR)

5. Rockgrove (vRG)

6. Dreadsail Reef (vDSR)

1. Sanctum Ophidia (vSO HM)

2. Aetherian Archive (vAA HM)

3. Halls of Fabrications (vHoF HM)

4. Hel Ra Citadel (vHRC HM)

5. Maw of Lorkhaj (vMoL HM)

6. Kynes Aegis (vKA HM)

7. Asylum Sanctorium (vAS+2)

8. Sunspire (vSS HM)

9. Cloudrest (vCR+3)

10. Rockgrove (vRG HM)

11. Dreadsail Reef (vDSR HM)

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The absolute starting point for a Tank is the Craglorn Trials vAA, vHRC and vSO. These trials are very easy compared to some of the others, but they also give you a decent challenge as a Beginner Tank and you learn some valuable lessons. vAA is a sustain trial, vHRC is a high damage trial and then vSO is about adds and teamwork with the other Tank.

For Veteran trials it is recommended that you use either all Sturdy gear to begin with as you’ll likely be blocking the majority of the time until you are completely comfortable with all boss fights and mechanics.

For your Weapons it’s essential to have an Ice Staff Infused/Crusher. You one hander is up to you.

Jewellery use whatever set it drops in, if you are crafting then use Infused.

If you are a Main Tank or solo Tank in some cases for some trials you should absolutely prioritise going into Trials with a gear setup that you have tried and tested, for any first encounter you should use selfish gear sets. “Selfish” gear sets mean things like The Worm’s Raiment, Engine Guardian and Puncturing Remedy (Masters 1H & Shield) which are all incredible Tank sets for anyone entering new content.

You need to be comfortable with your gear options and need to be able to sustain and survive, this is the major priority for your very first Main Tanking Vet Trial encounters in every trial. Just really pay attention to what sets you are using however, something like Leeching Plate is absolutely useless in a single boss fight and literally any other set would work better since you have only one enemy this isn’t going to give you any healing or sustain from Leeching, even Crest of Cyrodiil would be a superior set for this situation.

At this phase you really need to be looking at your gear and picking out anything that you can rely on to give you the support you need. You will be asked to use specific gear in pretty much every group, try to gain experience in your selfish sets if you need to, it would be logically better to use the buff sets from the very beginning so you can learn to Tank in those sets safely and not rely on the gear that you’ll eventually have to drop anyway. This really is up to you, just do whatever makes you most comfortable.

You cannot sustainably do trials like this for very long. When you are in a group you are attempting to work together as a unit to kill the bosses and clear the trials. As a minimum you should be trying to use Claw of Yolnahkriin as one of your sets. This is a very Tank orientated set, and it will give your group a damage buff just by taunting. You should try and work other vital Tank Sets such as Crimson Oath’s Rive, Turning Tide or Pearlescent Ward into your setup as soon as possible for Veteran Trials, you are on the front line and the only person who is always in a suitable range to maintain gear, buffs and debuffs on the enemy.

It is possible to do every single trial as the Main Tank in those sets. It may take some practice but you should be switching to this gear after 5 runs at the absolute most, you shouldn’t prolong the switch to the proper trials gear as you become reliant on it and unfortunately it’s not in the groups best interest for you to use selfish gear for a prolonged period of time and it’s likely you would be replaced for someone who is more open to assisting the group. The faster the group kill a boss, the less time you need to Tank, play mechanics, self-sustain and keep yourself alive so it makes a huge difference to you also to help your group.

If you have a problem with healing inside of a Veteran Trial, you need to consider a few factors. In a Trial you will always have 1-2 Healers. The Healers main job and function is to heal you and the group. You are NOT expected to burn out your resources healing yourself, that is not the function of a team. Your own self-healing is something that should generally be used when you’ve made a mistake and you have to react-heal yourself to fix a problem that you’ve caused.

If you are dying in general combat from normal damage, it’s could simply be a problem that the healer isn’t doing their job. You should be assisting your healers where physically possible, it’s not their job to babysit you and you just do whatever you like and they keep you alive, as a DK using regular Igneous Shields helps you and your group, casting Dragon Blood when you take a big hit, roll dodging big mechanics, putting down a Blood Altar or heal over time like Cinder Storm for some extra small but frequent heals.

Your other main option is to consider using Puncturing Remedy (Masters 1H & Shield) for the additional healing or Engine Guardian as both of these provide large amounts of healing and Engine Guardian will give you sustain also so you can heal yourself more.

For Veteran Trials you have a number of ways to help yourself. You need to eventually use whatever gear you are told to use but this doesn’t mean you are giving up everything. You can adjust any Champion Points, Gear Traits and Glyphs, Attributes, Mundus and things like this to assist you with your sustain and survival.

For dealing with high damage hits you need to look at your damage mitigation, you can increase your resistances and mitigation with various Champion Points such as Bulwark, Ironclad, Duelist’s Rebuff, Enduring Resolve, Unassailable, Fortified, Fortification, Bracing Anchor and Ward Master. You can slot skills to buff your mitigation such as Temporal Guard, Revealing Flare, Defensive Stance and Frost Clench.

One other thing to consider is your Monster Set. If you need sustain, you’re lacking healing or require more mitigation then use a 2-piece Monster Set to try and achieve the things you need first before you begin switching anything else. Monster Sets provide the lease group benefit so it’s an option to switch if needed rather than dropping a useful 5-piece gear set.

Another thing you can consider for Vet Trials is your Jewellery. Jewellery is a very strong equipment that you can adjust for each situation. If you lack stats you can use Triune Jewellery. If you need more sustain you can use Infused Jewellery and Potion Cooldown, Magicka Recovery or Prismatic Cost Reduction which will allow you to use potions more often, give you more recovery or reduce the cost of abilities.

Using an Infused/Bracing enchant will help reduce your block cost. It’s wise to collect as much jewellery as you can of sets such as Alkosh where you need to use this set most of the time, and you need different traits and enchants if you really want to make things easier for different trials.

In Veteran Trials, once you have gained experience and are able to manage mechanics you need to be providing as many buffs and debuffs as you can. It can be difficult to begin with to manage them but the main things you need to consider as a Main Tank DK is a specific set of things that are important and all other buffs/debuffs you can worry about once you have perfected the main ones.

  1. Taunt – Major/Minor Breach – Pierce Armor
  2. Major Resolve – Balance
  3. Minor Main/Minor Heroism – Heroic Slash
  4. Infused Crusher – Elemental Blockade
  5. Major Maim – Frost Clench
  6. Major Force – Aggressive Horn

These are the main things you need to focus on as a Tank in a Trial situation. Maintaining good uptime on these buffs and debuffs is part of the package of being a Tank.

Optimal Gear

Once you have cleared the trial a few times and have begun to understand the mechanics then you need to switch to group buffing sets, these are vital for your group.

Gear and skills will vary from Trial to Trial. Make sure to check out the trial pages for more information.

Off Tank

2x Archdruid Devyric, Nazaray, Encratis’s Behemoth or the Spaulder of Ruin

5x Powerful Assault, Crimson Oath’s Rive, Pearlescent Ward or Saxhleel Champion

Main Tank

2x Tremorscale, Nazaray, Encratis’s Behemoth or Archdruid Devyric

5x Claw of Yolnahkriin, Crimson Oath’s Rive, Pearlescent Ward or Turning Tide

The End

Thank you for taking the time to read through this ESO Beginner Tank Guide.

Just remember that the Tank role is a difficult and pressured role to play. We all progress at a different speed, and you need to just develop as you gain experience and try your best. Play the game, play your class, learn the role and gain as much experience as you can.

Learning fights and mechanics will make things so much easier and you can only do this by getting many hours of experience and talking and playing alongside other Tanks.

Enjoy the game, as stressful as Tanking can be you need to have fun and Tanking can become very fun and enjoyable!

~ TC Lee

DD – Damage Dealer – The guys in your team who do the damage!
DPS – Damage Per Second – The amount of damage caused each second by an individual or group.
Aggro – When you have an active taunt on an enemy target and they are focussed on you.
CC – Crowd Control – When you chain, pull, root, immobilise, snare, fear
Snare – This is when you slow down the enemies movement.
Pulling – When you use Unrelenting Grip, Silver Leash or Frozen Device to pull a target to you.
Stacking – When you taunt, line of sight, crowd control a group of enemies so they are stacked up.
LoS – Line of Sight – When you stand in a certain place to force enemies to move so they can see you.
DoT – Damage over Time – Abilities that damage an enemy over a duration of time.
HoT – Heal over Time – A heal that will healer smaller amounts consistently but over a duration of time.
AoE – Area of Effect – A heal or damage skill that you place on the ground that hits multiple targets.
Cleave – Usually caused by AoE skills, where you focus on one target but also hit others at the same time.
Proc – An event that is triggered by meeting a certain requirement. Using Yolnahkriin and taunting an enemy “procs” Minor Courage.
Range Tanking – When you maintain aggro of a ranged target and you Tank them at range rather than melee distance. Usually requires a specific setup to deal with ranged tanking.
Face Tanking – When you are melee tanking targets and just blocking through and taking any damage.
Kite – Kiting an enemy would mean running away from it with aggro so it can’t hit you, some mechanics also require you to “kite” them as they will follow you or aim for you and you need to move away from them.
Rez – Resurrecting/Resurrection – Just an abbreviation for resurrecting allies when they die.
PotL – Power of the Light – Templar skill
GDB – Green Dragon Blood – Dragonknight healing skill.
Orb – Mystic Orb/
Shard – Templar skill that provides you a synergy that you must press and you gain resources.
Altar – Blood Altar – Undaunted skill
PA – Powerful Assault – a gear set used sometimes by Tanks.
S&B – Abbreviation for Sword and Board also known as One Hand and Shield.