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The Tank Role in ESO - What does a Tank do?

How do I build a Tank in ESO?

Now that you know what a tank's primary job is, the next logical step is to figure out how to go about making one. This section of the guide will not be a precise build guide but will instead explain which stats are important for tanks, why they are important and how you can go about increasing (or decreasing) these stats. This section is quite lengthy and there's a lot of information to digest here, so you may want to bookmark the page and use it for reference if you forget about something.

There are also some weapon types, traits and enchantments that are almost always highly advisable to use on a tank, and we will explain those here too.

Maximum Health, Magicka and Stamina

The most basic aspect of any build is how your three primary attributes are allocated. On a tank, it generally makes sense to invest many of your points into max health. Increasing your max health gives you more room for error and makes you more resistant to heavy hitting attacks. Aiming for at least 40,000 HP is a safe bet.

It's also important to make sure that your Stamina is higher than your Magicka, even if only slightly. This is because healer synergies like the one from will restore whichever one of these attributes has a higher maximum, and we want them to restore stamina because we are using that resource to block attacks.

Remember that you can further augment these stats with enchantments and buff food.

Health, Magicka and Stamina Recovery

One of these stats is important, the others are not.

On a tank it is generally advisable to have at least a decent amount of magicka recovery (aim for at least 1,000 base). Our magicka bar basically acts as our utility bar on a tank, we can use it to cast buffs, pull smaller enemies to us, taunt from range, heal or shield ourselves when needed, and we can also convert magicka to stamina using skills like , which allows us to sustain permablock.

Stamina recovery on the other hand is not worth focusing on - it is disabled when we are blocking anyway, and you are going to spend a lot of time blocking when you are tanking.

Health recovery is also not very important for PvE tanks. A tank is a group role, and in a group you will normally have a healer with you, making passive health regeneration pretty obsolete in most cases. Tanks should focus on mitigating or avoiding incoming damage rather than healing themselves after the fact.

Physical and Spell Resistance

On a tank we need to have a high level of physical and spell resistance to reduce the amount of damage we take from incoming attacks. This value is hard capped at around 33,000. When at the cap, you will take 50% less damage from the associated damage type.

You don't necessarily have to be at the cap to survive, but being at or close to it will make things easier especially when you are new. Luckily it's not too hard to take care of this. Wearing five pieces of heavy armor and using a skill that gives us the Major Ward buff (like ) gets us most of the way there. Upgrading your armor's quality helps further, but this can be expensive. There are also some set bonuses that increase it.

Block Cost Reduction

Since we spend a lot of our time blocking, it is generally a good idea to reduce our block cost. There are two main ways to do this: making use of the Sturdy trait on armor, or using Block Cost Reduction enchantments on jewellery. Personally I find that having 4 armor pieces with the Sturdy trait, 3 with Divines (with the Atronach Mundus stone for Magicka Recovery), 2 Jewelry enchanted with Reduce Block Cost and 1 jewelry with Magicka Recovery provides a great package for resource management on tanks. However this depends on your playstyle and on your class, so do not be afraid to tinker until you find a combination that works for you.

Unbuffed Tank Stats ExampleBuffed Tank Stats Example

Which Weapons should I use on a Tank?

The best weapons for tanks in ESO are a sword and shield for your front bar (the sword can also be a one handed axe, mace or dagger, which one of these you have makes no difference) and an Ice Staff on your back bar.

The One hand & Shield skill line gives us great passives for mitigating incoming damage and unlocks useful tanking skills like (this is your primary taunt ability and without a doubt the single most important skill for a tank to use).

But why is an Ice Staff good? Technically any Destruction Staff can be used on your back bar, but an Ice Staff is preferable because it gives more defensive buffs than the other staff types, and it morphs to give group members a shield that defends against projectiles, and turns into a ranged taunt.

If using an Ice staff, I do not recommend unlocking the passive. This passive makes you block with magicka instead of stamina, which will disable your magicka regeneration while doing this and significantly undermine your ability to sustain and manage resources. Perhaps you can make a very niche playstyle work with this passive if you really want to, but generally speaking you are making things harder for yourself if you use this.

The other reason that the staff is good is that it allows us to easily apply the Crusher Enchantment to enemies. This will be explained below:

The Importance of the Crusher Enchantment

The Crusher enchantment is very important to have on tanks. It reduces the armor of enemies, allowing your damage dealers to defeat them more quickly.

But why does this need to be on a backbar staff? The reason this is the most optimal is because a staff is a two handed weapon, meaning the enchantment has double the potency that it would have if we put it on our frontbar sword, for example.

If possible, you should also make sure that the staff has the Infused trait, which will make the crusher enchantment even more potent and really make a noticeable difference to group DPS.

In combat, try to remember to switch to your back bar to recast your skill whenever it is about to run out. This will automatically apply the enchantment to enemies, even when we are on the other bar. When you are learning you may sometimes forget about this or feel that you are under too much damage pressure from enemies to worry about bar swapping and casting that skill, and that's fine. Your first priority should always be to stay alive and maintain aggro.

Your frotn bar enchantment is less important. There is no point in putting Crusher here, because it will be weaker than the backbar version. The Weakening and Absorb Stamina enchantments are good picks for the front bar.

Class and Race

You can really make any class and race work with tanking. Try looking up builds if you're unsure how to make a particular class work as a tank.

That said however, the Dragonknight and Warden classes are generally considered to be the easiest classes to tank with, and Dragonknight in particular has a set of skills and passives that make it very naturally suited to the role.

As for races, again you can make anything work, but some races do have passives that augment tanks by a little bit:

Argonian - Gets back extra resources when you drink a potion. Makes a viable if expensive combination with Potion Speed Glyphs on your jewelry to generate tons of magicka and stamina. Also increases your max health.
Nord - Extra Resistances and Health. Generates up to 5 extra Ultimate every 10 seconds when you take damage, which is useful to cast more defensive ultimates like Magma Shell, or more group-supporting ultimates like Aggressive Horn or Frozen Colossus. This also boosts your sustain if playing as a Dragonknight, due to the Battle Roar passive.
Redguard - Allows you to regenerate up to 1005 Stamina every 5 seconds, making block sustain significantly easier.
Imperial - Increased Health and Stamina. Reduces the cost of all abilities by 6%.

ESO Warden Class

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