These sets are the most essential sets you should be looking to collect for Tanking in The Elder Scrolls Online.

1. Dungeon Sets – These dungeon sets are obtainable in Normal mode, making them accessible while having good value in all content.
   • Crimson Oath’s Rive (The Dread Cellar): Inflicts a substantial penetration debuff on up to six enemies, significantly boosting group damage output.
   • Turning Tide (Shipwright’s Regret): Offers a dependable and consistent Major Vulnerability debuff, drastically enhancing group DPS. While it’s meta for dungeon content, it’s also a staple for trial main tanks due to its reliability.
2. Trial Sets provide great buffs and benefits but are challenging to obtain due to the 12-player requirement. The perfected versions are even tougher, requiring Veteran difficulty. If you’re new to trials, consider collecting the non-perfected versions and hold off on applying expensive enchants or upgrading to gold.
   • Pearlescent Ward (Dreadsail Reef): Provides a passive group buff with no micromanagement. In case of ally deaths, it grants a defensive buff to remaining members, easing resurrection efforts. Ideal for trial main tanks and useful in dungeons and arenas if uptime management is challenging.
   • Saxhleel Champion (Rockgrove): Although less popular due to the plethora of useful tank sets available, it remains valuable for inexperienced tanks and groups. Combining this with a defensive ultimate like Barrier allows you to supply Major Force to your group while shielding them.
   • Lucent Echoes (Lucent Citadel): New set which is a user-friendly alternative to Elemental Catalyst. When your health is above 50%, it grants a beneficial group buff, and when health dips below, it provides a defensive buff. Although not as strong as EC, it’s still a strong and easy-to-maintain option.
   • Vestment of Olorime (Cloudrest): Critical for buffing group DPS in dungeons and arenas. As you become an experienced Tank, you’ll often be expected to Tank dungeon and arena content without a dedicated healer. Olorime makes providing Major Courage straightforward for Tanks, when you have no healer.
3. Powerful Assault: Obtainable through Guild Stores or by purchasing coffer boxes with Tel Var stones, Powerful Assault can be costly but worth the investment. Although it demands significant micromanagement, it excels in dungeon and arena content, especially when working alongside a healer. It’s a popular choice for off-tanks in trials.

These sets provide a strong mix of offensive, defensive, and utility buffs to help you meet the varied challenges of tanking in The Elder Scrolls Online. By having all of them you should fit into any type of group for any content.

Monster Sets are Helmets that drop from final bosses on Veteran Dungeons and the Shoulders are collected from the Undaunted Enclave NPCs by completing Daily Undaunted Pledges where you do specific dungeons and are rewarded with keys to spend, together they create a 2 piece set called a Monster Set.

• Tremorscale (Volenfell): This is one of the best and first Monster Sets you can get easily. Volenfell even on Veteran is a pretty easy base game dungeon and this monster set is also still a really strong option, quite often used still in Trials by Main Tanks and useful in dungeons too as it gives an easy automatic penetration debuff which you’ll proc just by using Pierce Armor.
• Encratis’s Behemoth (Black Drake Villa): Another set that’s not as good as it used to be but still has some use. It buffs your groups fire damage to enemies stood inside its aura but also reduces the fire damage taken by you and group members in the aura. Can be really helpful in flame based encounters for that damage reduction, or when you’re group are applying fire based damage.
• Nazaray (Shipwright’s Regret): Mostly used in Trial content and it’s not easy to obtain as this can be a tricky dungeon on Vet. This set is a really good one as it helps you and your group to keep higher uptimes on Major and Minor debuffs that are applied to enemies, this usually means the group does more DPS and enemies do less damage.
• Archdruid Devyric (Earthen Root Enclave): One of the best Monster Sets for Tanks but one of the harder ones to obtain and it can be used in all content. This applies Major Vulnerability as an AoE just by Heavy Attacking making it a brilliant 2-piece set. When combined with Turning Tide you can keep a reliable 100% uptime of Major Vulnerability by yourself which is a huge group DPS increase.

Weapon Sets and Mythic items are strong pieces of gear that provide a range of buffs and utility. It’s good to have them available although they won’t always fit into your build or be required by your group.

1. Void Bash: Also known as the Vateshran One Hand and Shield, it’s probably one of the most meta pieces of gear for dungeon content as a Tank. With one button press you pull enemies to you within 12 metres and debuff them, meaning you can crowd control enemies quickly and easily and help your group to kill them faster. Using this is also much better for your sustain than chaining every enemy individually. The worst part about this is you need to do the solo arena Vateshran Hollows.
2. Spaulder of Ruin: Mythic item that will take a little bit of time to gather all of the pieces, but this item just straight up buffs your groups DPS, you lose some of your recovery in doing so however. Often used for Dungeons especially on the add pulls and by Off Tanks in Trials.
3. Puncturing Remedy: Also known as Master’s One Hand and Shield, it comes from Dragonstar Arena which is fairly easy nowadays and it’s part of the base game but it takes forever to complete and it’s quite boring. This set is used whenever you use a piece of gear that only needs to be worn on one bar such as Powerful Assault or Saxhleel Champion which only needs to be active on your back bar. It just help with survival as you will heal each time you use Pierce Armor to taunt and the heal can be quite a large heal too, you also gain resistances but these cannot be relied on.

Starting at Level 50 and Champion Point 160: When you’ve reached Level 50 and CP160, you can access max-level gear. As a beginner tank, follow these tips to quickly and efficiently set up your equipment:

Join Guilds and Find Crafters:

• Guild Benefits: Join five in-game guilds to expand your network and find crafters.
• Request Crafted Gear: Ask guild crafters to make CP150 gear, which will suffice until you find or purchase better gear. Either pay them or provide the materials yourself. The reason for using CP150 gear and not max level at this stage is because CP160 gear requires significantly more materials for a very small benefit. This gear is not intended to be kept long term and you’re supposed to replace it with the above sets so don’t invest heavily into gear you will soon switch out.

Traits to Prioritize in Crafting Research:

• Armor Traits: Learn Divines, Sturdy, and Reinforced for your armor.
• Weapon Traits: Infused for Ice Staves, and Decisive, Infused, and Charged for one-handed weapons.
• Jewellery Traits: Infused and Harmony are critical for jewellery.

Crafted Sets

• Armor of the Seducer: Offers Magicka-based sustain that benefits tanking skills. Provides high Magicka recovery and sustain.
• Druid’s Braid: A 12-piece set that grants cumulative stats for each piece worn. Allows flexible combination with other gear while maximizing overall stats.
• Fortified Brass: Increases armor significantly for defensive strength. Boosts resistances and helps achieve the resistance cap of 33,000 when stacked with Major and Minor Resolve.
• Torug’s Pact: A versatile set that enhances group utility and personal armor. An Infused Crusher Ice Staff boosts group DPS, while an Infused one-handed weapon enhances front-bar enchant effects.

Other Sets

• Ebon Armory (Crypt of Hearts): One of the easiest sets to obtain as you just need the armor pieces but it’s not that useful in todays game. If you didn’t own any DLC content this would be one of the best options from the basegame as its a buff to your and your group.
• The Worm’s Raiment (Vaults of Madness): To pair with that would be another set that wouldn’t be hugely beneficial in todays game but would be at least a group buff that benefits you. You’d need this on the weapons and jewellery.

Easy Monster Sets

• Tremorscale (Volenfell): We already mentioned this set above, but it’s great and very attenable for beginners. Still used by a lot of groups in a lot of different content, reduces the enemies armor based on your resistances which increases your groups damage. Armor reduction also known as Penetration stacks to a maximum of 18,200.
• Bloodspawn (Spindleclutch II): Good set for generating extra Ultimate and easy to get.
• Lord Warden (Imperial City Prison): Gives you and your group increased armor when stood inside its aura, this can help to increase survival for yourself but also your group members when they are within close range to you. While not essentially part of the base game, this DLC is free nowadays.