The finer details of advanced tanking are mostly outside the scope of this guide, however we will summarize some of what more advanced tanks do in their groups so that you have some idea of what to expect.
Advanced Stacking Techniques
In most dungeons, you can get by just using your pull ability to stack enemies. However in trials, you will encounter many larger trash enemies who are immune to all forms of Crowd Control. In these cases, tanks wishing to stack the enemies will need to rely on other methods. Melee enemies are easy to stack, because they will come to you when you taunt them, however the ranged ones can be more troublesome. There are two main solutions here:- Enemy Attack Range: If you are too far away from a ranged enemy for it to hit you with its attacks, it will move towards you. You can use this behavior to your advantage, by taunting all of the ranged enemies and then running away from them. They should then start to clump together as they chase you, and they generally all have the same range, so they should come to a stop at the same point. This allows you to stack them.
- Enemy Line of Sight: In tighter spaces, you might not have the opportunity to use the previous method. However there is another thing you can do. If a ranged enemy cannot see you, then it will move to a position where its line of sight will be reestablished. You can again use this to your advantage, by taunting all of the ranged enemies and then moving somewhere that they can't see you, such as around a corner or behind an environmental object. This should cause them all to move into the same area to regain line of sight on you, which is a good way of stacking enemies in tighter spaces.
Line of Sight Stacking for ESO TanksAdvanced Tank Builds
The transition into more “advanced” tank builds can be summarized as placing less emphasis on building in a “selfish” manner to maximize survivability, and instead packing more buffs and debuffs into your build, and using these effectively, while still also carrying out the basic duties as a tank such as managing aggro and stacking enemies.
Some of the buffs or debuffs that tanks apply are sourced from skills, for example the Dragonknight's
Stone Giant ability, which grants your allies a damage bonus when applied to a target, while being quite expensive for a tank to keep the buff up since it needs to be reactivated at least every 5 seconds to get a perfect uptime.
Other examples come from item sets such as
Powerful Assault,
Elemental Catalyst and
Way of Martial Knowledge. These aren't really things that you will need to worry about unless you join an organized trial group though, you definitely don't need this level of optimization in the vast majority of the game's content.
It's a good idea not to push your luck too much with buffs and debuffs when you are still learning to tank in general, or learning a particular dungeon or trial. It's always better to stay alive and keep in control of the basics of tanking, like taunting and positioning, than to overdo the more advanced stuff and get yourself killed.
We hope you found this guide about the tank role in ESO useful. If you want to find ideas for tank builds, why not check out our community builds page!
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