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Placeholder for me to receive questions from @Aldric‘s 1.6 tank compendium, which I will lock so that he doesn’t have to keep getting emails when he doesn’t really tank anymore or need to answer tanking questions. Will update with IC and Orsinium gear options.
Lots of credit to my friend for his work in the original compendium. For information about skill choices, rotation and overall strategy, i recommend reading through our discussions on his thread: http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/pve-nb-tanks-for-starters-compendium-of-information-theory-and-insight-2-0/
It would save a lot of redundant responses here 
Seriously, there is a ton of information, experiences and discussion around strategy and technique/rotation that have been detailed out in the compendium, so please new NB tanks, read up before posting questions here! You will learn a ton, I promise. I also encourage you to read the full thread here if it is your first time reading it, as my commentary below in this OP as well as each person’s questions will represent information that could possibly educate you on a topic you didn’t even think of but can use to increase your effectiveness!
Current boss bars:
1h/s:
-pierce armor
-defensive stance or heroic slash
-siphoning attacks
-funnel health/swallow soul
-twisting path
ult: veil of blades
1h/s, DW or resto staff (DW for more damage, resto if you need healing ward/mutagen or magicka sustain boost)
-sap essence
-dark shades or relentless focus (if not running heroic, use shades for maim)
-crippling grasp or healing ward/mutagen or *anti-cavalry caltrops
-mirage
-structured entropy
ult: soul harvest
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i adjust as needed, but generally keep all dots, buffs and debuffs up 100% of the time. Taunt and swallow/funnel rotated with light/medium attack weaving for dps. I have swapped to thief mundus for more dps in my 5H tank gear. 25k health (31k with food) rest of attribute points in magicka for 21k magicka and 14k stamina with food. However you can get to 30k health, do it… Rest into magicka. No need to worry about stamina. Siphoning attacks keeps you full. Sap Essence stays on boss bar for the spell/weapon damage bonus. You can replace Sap with Impale for execute phase or, if you want to run two 1h/s bars, you can move Heroic Slash to offhand in place of shades/relentless and instead put Inner Light on both bars. This will increase your spell crit and magicka significantly, which will raise your DPS and self healing. i’d say make the decision based on your play style and what you need situationally. the bars above represent a comfort level for me that allows me to get through pretty much any content.
Gear choices detailed in my DK magicka PVE tank build: http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/pve-magicka-tank/
Champion points:
Warrior, focus on block and elemental defender/spell resistance/hardy, heavy armor… The steed constellation to 30 first for healing proc on bashes, which is surprisingly frequent and decent. ideally reach the shield armor increase 75 pt passive once you have your Invigorating Bash to increase your base armor while wielding a shield.
Thief, focus on magician (to 30 first) then arcanist to help magicka sustain; I also put 10 points into Tumbler to unlock my harvester passive… not a bad thing to have a cheaper breakfree from boss CC.
Mage, distribute points among Elfborn > Blessed > Spell Erosion (elfborn is best to dump into at lower CP, but refer to @Asayre‘s Sorcerer Arithmagic thread to see the scaling value of Elfborn and other valuable mathematical research that shows best ways to improve your magic DPS). first get Spell Precision 30 point passive to increase your crit rate; then dump into Thaumaturge since it directly translates to damage with your magicka class skills, which in terms of Sap Essence and Swallow/Funnel translates to healing. I also like Staff Expert/Bladed points to 30 so that you obtain the 30-pt passive that reflects damage while blocking; this reflected damage counts as a skill attack and can actually proc Siphoning Attacks!
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Couple of tidbits:
-Funnel Health vs Swallow Soul … your preference; i prefer Swallow Soul myself for the increased healing passive. Funnel will help your group’s healer since it will HOT your melee DPS around you and take the edge off, allowing your healer to throw some DPS, combat prayer or other buffs instead of burst healing constantly. Depends on your group; my static is pretty tight and used to each other, so I run Swallow.
-Heroic Slash vs Dark Shades … I like Dark Shades since it costs magicka, but it does NOT proc Siphoning Attacks (for some reason.) and the shades have to move and attack the target to keep Maim active and their damage going; heroic adds minor Heroism buff, so your ultimate increases steadily as you use it. I use both situationally based on what my needs are. Dark Shades is fine on stationary targets and if you have good magicka sustain… since you have to crank out so many magicka skills for buffs and damage, sometimes using Heroic Slash as a stamina skill takes the edge off of the magicka output. I tend to lean toward Heroic Slash myself since I use a lot of magicka skills; my stamina sustain is so high that it is very easy to just weave a heroic in place of a pierce armor/swallow everytime i need the debuff back up.
-Twisting Path … research shows that currently Refreshing Path is not proc’ing Siphoning Attacks with each tick for some reason… Twisting does. Nothing else to say.
-Caltrops … i don’t PVP much so i’m only rank 5; Caltrops is rank 6, so i need to get my butt moving on it. Caltrops is like twisting path in that every tick has a chance to proc Siphoning Attacks… It is pretty stamina costly, but the return on investment casting it and dumping 1/3 of your stamina will see you full stamina in 2 ticks, so who cares. If you have a DPS in your group running caltrops, you need to work out who will be using it because both will not function simultaneously to deal damage to mobs. I am fine without it at endgame now, so I would gladly let my group member use it if it increases their DPS (after all, i’m a magicka build so my damage with it will not be anything to write home about anyway). With twisting path on my bar, I am fine with sustain. If you have caltrops to use, I’d replace Crippling Grasp on my offbar with Anti-Cavalry morph (lasts longer, which is the key).
-Inner Rage … i have gotten asked why i dont slot both pierce armor AND inner rage… the answer is simple: why do i need to? granted, unlike a DK tank I have no chains to pull mobs in and no talons to root them in place, but that means as a NB tank you need to use your sustain and mobility to your advantage. example trash pull: i aggro the mobs with a ranged swallow soul attack… as they approach, some will start attacking my group members randomly (i never understood trash hate dynamics in ESO, it is so damn random). as a tank, it is your job to understand hate mechanics… so think of it like a scale; there is a list of who is higher and lower on the hate scale for each mob… you move up the scale based on the damage you deal, and you immediately move to the top of the scale when you taunt. so! as a NB tank, you keep hate on distant mobs by hitting them with a swallow/funnel and make sure your group members are not attacking them until the main pack of trash mobs is down. for those within the main pack, once they are pulled you have to hit them with a few quick Sap Essence spams to move yourself up the hate scale, then proceed to taunt with pierce armor on each melee mob to keep them around you. since you have such high sustain as a NB with siphoning attacks up and with Twisting Path on the ground, keeping all the mobs standing on it will allow you to pretty much just hold block, bash those using heavy attacks or skills or casting to interrupt or just spamming Sap… with Caltrops in the mix, you snare all the mobs as well to keep them from running away and generate a lot of hate passively with twisting and caltrops on the ground for DOT. use what you have. there is no need for such a high magicka cost ranged taunt like Inner Rage unless you specifically need it situationally… for instance, the last boss of vFG is a mage who stays at a distance and has a massive AOE damage surrounding her… so you need to taunt from a distance anyway. I don’t use Inner Rage anywhere else.
-Mirage vs Double Take vs Shuffle … i choose mirage for the minor buff; double take gives you the movement speed that you can get from crippling grasp or twisting path, so unless you are doign PVP a lot and need to be able to move quickly without breaking stealth, mirage is the obvious choice here. shuffle costs stamina and does remove some negative effects, i still prefer a blur morph for this build. the ONLY time i’d use shuffle in place of double take or mirage would be if i wanted to run Armor Master 5 piece set. see my DK magicka tank post for the rationalization for that set as part of a tank build… i dont think magicka NB needs to go that route, but it is still an option. mirage is better imo.
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