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The Lightning Ward

Sorcerer Tank

Updates

• 07/25/15 – VDSA complete with this build!  Also added more thoughts on a dps-tank build in the Final Notes section.
• 08/15/15 – Recorded and posted video tanking vet Crypt of Hearts.
• 11/20/15 – Updated for 2.1/2.2 (IC/Orsinium) with my (vampire!) build and vWGT footage.
• 01/23/16 – Updated with dps-tanking setup.
• 07/02/16 – Updated for DB.

Foreword Notes

• I have a lot of fun with this build and I bet you will too. Yes, sorcs aren’t the default tanking class, but they can do really well once you get good at it. The one thing the Sorcerer class lacks as a whole is a lot of group utility.
• The theme/main skill of this Sorc tank is Hardened Ward. You can definitely tank without it – this build has capped resists, for one – but if you don’t use it, I think you lose a lot of what makes a Sorc tank unique.
• I’ve been tanking as a vampire since Imperial City and it’s been great. There are times when I’d like to try a health regen build (mostly centered around the Permafrost set), and I’d still like to at some point, but for now I’m enjoying the +10% magicka and stamina regen, the Undeath passive, bats, and the sneak speed in PvP. You don’t have to be a vampire – I just like it for both PvE and PvP!
• Since DB I have been off-tanking vMoL and vSO, so this build is a bit more tweaked towards trial bosses. I discuss adjustments you could make for vet dungeons only in the gear and skill sections.

Race

I’m a Breton, for the max magicka, spell cost reduction, and spell resist, but an Altmer would also work, for max magicka, magicka recovery and elemental damage passives. Any of the other tanking races (Imperial, Nord, Orc) would also be fine.

Mundus

The Atronach – can’t beat the magicka recovery.

Champion Points

501 CP setup.

The Warrior

Current allocation:

The Steed

• Spell Shield (10) – 647

The Lady

• Elemental Defender (27) – 10%
• Hardy (27) – 10%
• Thick Skinned (24) –  9%

The Lord

• Bastion (28) – 10%
• Heavy Armor Focus (51) – 2858
• Quick Recovery (1) – 1%

Notes:

The Spell Shield and Heavy Armor Focus points I’ve spent are to get me to armor cap with my current gear setup (see below). If you have all gold gear (ie more armor/spell resist) you will be able to afford to put some of those points elsewhere if you so choose.

Recommended priority while earning CP to cap:

1. Bastion to 10%
2. The trinity in the Lady to 10% each (9% in Thick Skinned for me personally to leave room for Spell Shield)
3. Heavy Armor Focus and/or Spell Shield (do an equal split in these if you don’t have Breton spell resist passives)

The Thief

Current allocation:

The Tower

• Magician (80) – 14%
• Warlord (1) – 1%
• Bashing Focus (10) – 5%

The Lover

• Arcanist (10) – 5%

The Shadow

• Tumbling (13) – 5%
• Shadow Ward (53) – 16%

Recommended Priority while earning CP to cap:

1. Magician to at least 10%
2. Shadow Ward to at least 10%
3. Arcanist to at least 5%
4. Tumbling to 5%
5. Bashing Focus to 5%

If you are just starting out, do 2:1 Magician:Shadow Ward, and once you’ve gotten Shadow Ward to around 14%, get Magician to 14%, then go 1-1-1 into Arcanist/Tumbling/Bashing Focus and finish off Shadow Ward. Tanks do need to dodge roll, break free, and bash.

The Mage

Current allocation:
(not particularly well thought-out at the moment. I suggest checking out other players’ dps builds on TF or elsewhere for a more precise setup.)

The Apprentice

• Elemental Expert (100) – 25%
• Elfborn (29) – 10.5%
• Spell Erosion (11) – 705

The Ritual

• Thaumaturge (27) – 10%

Recommended Priority:

This is really up to you where you focus for damage. If you want to be able to switch to PvE/PvP dps with your sorcerer, you definitely can, and that’s where the blue tree comes in. You’ll just be missing a small amount of reduction/recovery from the green trees, but it’s manageable if you apply Elemental Drain or have a healer do so/apply Force Siphon.

Gear

Notes on set/trait/enchant choices

• Engine Guardian is my personal favourite for this build – the resource return procs often and is almost always useful. Sorcs are pretty lacking in active resource management so this is a must for me. Alternatively, you can go Bloodspawn for the ultimate gain, Malubeth for healing received, etc.
• Tava’s Favor paired with the Sorc ultimate cost reduction means more warhorns more often. Spectre’s Eye is still great, and I used the Imperium set for most of the Thieves’ Guild update – I still like it a lot, but it requires going 7 heavy if you also want to use a monster set with it (you lose way too much armor/spell resist if you have a light shoulder/medium helm for 5/1/1)
• Mark of the Pariah 3-piece for jewelry because of the health and armor set bonuses, but if you’re only doing vet dungeons you really don’t need that much resistance. Trinimac’s Valor is a great option (max magicka, magicka recovery), but like Pariah is mostly dependent on Orsinium world boss daily reward rng. 3 Endurance is a cheap and easy alternative for the big health bonus, and you can buy it in the traits of your choice.
• As for armor enchants, I highly recommend the tri-stat (prismatic) on all big pieces, and Infused traits on at least head/shoulder/legs to squeeze the most resources out of the enchants. The other enchants I have set up to reach at least 18k stamina, and the rest into health.
• Armor and jewelry trait choice is varied: Reinforced on shoulders/boots is to get more armor out of those pieces, Sturdy on arms/belt because they offer the least amount of armor anyway and in order to to avoid spending too many green CP in Shadow Ward, Infused on big armor pieces to take advantage of the prismatic enchants, Reinforced on Shield to get more armor out of the Shield Expert CP passive. My jewelry traits are dependent on drops – if I could get another Robust one I would use that instead. Furthermore, if you have racial bonuses towards health and/or stamina, you can feel free to play around with jewelry traits.
• Jewelry enchants are all block cost reduction right now for tanking trial bosses (longer time spent blocking and more important to be blocking most of the time) – if I was just doing vet dungeons, I would probably put one spell cost reduction instead.

Attributes & Stats

With:

• CP150 Purple Tri-food
• Boundless Storm up (Major Resolve, Major Ward)
• Bound Aegis toggled (Minor Resolve, Minor Ward)
• Gold head/shoulders and shield, purple everything else. Gold tri-enchants, other enchants purple.
• First skill bar (see below), and vampire recovery active

Skills

Trials, Veteran Dungeons & VDSA

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Bosses

• Bound Aegis – More armor, spell resist, and max magicka. Keep it on both bars so it stays toggled.
• Boundless Storm – Keep this up all the time. Armor, spell resist, a small DoT that gives a chance to proc Disintegration, and makes you look cool as hell.
• Defensive Stance – For the extra block cost reduction while you deem it necessary. The other morph is also perfectly acceptable – I just like to reflect in PvP.
  In dungeons/areas where I take a ton of spell damage, I replace it with the Light Armor active skill Harness Magicka.
• Pierce Armor – Your standard taunt and debuff.
• Hardened Ward – Your extra 15k+ (~18k+ with my current build) health that will take anything you can throw at it. Keep this up all the time.
• Replenishing Barrier – Slotted just for the 10% magicka recovery from the Support line Magicka Aid passive. Alternative: Meteor from the Mages Guild line for 2% max magicka and magicka recovery. Don’t use this – switch to back bar and use Warhorn.

AoE/trash/buff

• Bound Aegis – As above.
• Power Surge – With pots that give spell crit, your crit is at 32%, which evens out over time to a crit (mostly from Boundless Storm) every few seconds or so and thus a heal. If you do not plan to ever be a magicka dps using this skill for Major Sorcery, the other morph will heal more. I like to use it as a HoT that will give me back health over a period of time while I have Ward up, so I require less top ups from the healer. You can replace this with something else if you prefer.
• Elude – Essential if you’re using Tava’s Favor (only NB has a class dodge skill). 100% uptime. Costs a not insignificant chunk of stamina, but you can learn to time it so you cast it and then follow up shortly or right after with a Dark Deal to get all that stamina back.
• Inner Fire – Your ranged taunt. Don’t morph this – the Radiate synergy is not that great and covers up other useful synergies.
• Dark Deal – Convert your extra magicka to stamina and health. I choose the stamina-returning morph because that’s most important for bosses – no magicka to cast Ward is less of a problem than no stamina to block a trial boss’s heavy attack. Especially in situations where you might have to dodge more frequently than normal, getting your stamina back is essential. (example: the Twins in vMoL – dodge out of the dark boss’s negate quickly, get stamina back to block the big attack he’s charging up.) Learn when to time this. Do not use it when a boss is about to heavy attack you or you will find yourself flat on your back and/or dead.
• Aggressive Warhorn – Extra dps and resources for everyone, and as a Sorc it costs less than other classes. Use it!

General usage:

Boss Make sure Bound Aegis is toggled, pop Boundless Storm, Power Surge, Elude, and Hardened Ward, run in and taunt boss with Pierce Armor. Aggressive Warhorn once boss is in position. Make sure self-buffs are up all the time. Keep your shield(s) up and Warhorn for your team.

Trash Cast buffs, Inner Fire the biggest threats, make sure they’re under control (you can Pierce Armor to debuff) and your buffs are still up (probably reapply Ward at this point), Inner Fire everything else. Since you don’t have chains to bring ranged mobs to you, learn to bring the melee mobs into the ranged ones.

Don’t be afraid to ask your healer/a Templar for shards and Repentance. Dark Deal (or heavy attack, but returns less stamina) if you see an opening and you have your shields up. For bosses/trash that you have to bash constantly/CC break constantly, extra stamina is much needed. Mystic Orbs on trash doesn’t hurt is welcome, if you can ask the healer to run it. This build is mostly self-sufficient.

What about pets?

Pros:

• Solid, reliable heal for either yourself or the group
• Gives more max health upon being summoned (Daedric Summoning passives)

Cons:

• Expensive (with my setup, the Twilight costs 3k to heal, the Clannfear 5k, which is absurd)
• Needs to be on both bars
• Die too frequently, especially in trials with raid-wide damage going out.

Conclusion – I have used them and will use them again in veteran dungeons, and the Twilight in particular can be easily used to healtank, but they are a liability in trials.

Footage (outdated)

Updated footage of the bosses in vWGT! Bonus me noobing it up at the very end. This is from the Orsinium update, but the general usage is similar if you want to watch anyway.

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Bonus – DPS-Tanking (outdated)

I’ll try and update this soon.

Some notes if you still want to use this as reference – you do need Dark Conversion and not Dark Deal to dps-tank effectively. You don’t need bats slotted anymore for regen so you can replace that with something else.

(what follows is relatively old info)

• I’ll switch gear and skills if I’m speed-running vDSA or most veteran dungeons (vICP still needs the solid tank build from above) with a good group.
• This build basically relies on charging ultimate for overload on bosses – the Sorc is the only class without a class spammable that can be used with 1H&S. DKs have whip, Templars have sweeps/jabs, and NBs have funnel/concealed weapon/surprise attack. Hard-casting frags just isn’t a good option.
• On a boss that doesn’t have much in the way of mechanics I can hit 12k overload dps, otherwise it may hover around 10k.

• 5 Kagrenac’s – yes, Julianos gives more spell damage and crit but I find I run out of magicka too quickly without the magicka recovery bonus on Kag’s.
• My current 1H&S that I use are actually Reinforced/Defending because I’m too lazy to make new pieces that are Infused/Nirnhoned, but those are the ideal traits here.
• The enchants on jewelry are up to you. Find your balance with spell cost reduction and spell damage. The way this build works is that bosses/mobs have to die quickly enough that they don’t eat through all your magicka until the end of a pull, and then you can recover all your magicka with Dark Conversion. Otherwise it’s a dps loss, and a tank without resources isn’t much help to anyone.
• I currently use a lightning staff because it’s the same gold one I use in PvP, but inferno is preferred for PvE.

Bosses (1H&S)

• Inner Light – +5% max magicka and 10% spell crit. You can replace this with Bound Aegis if you’re keeping Spell Power pots up the whole time. Unfortunately there isn’t room for both like a magicka sorc dps.
• Boundless Storm – Keep this up all the time.
• Hardened Ward – Keep this up all the time – this is even more important because you have less armor/spell resist in this setup and much less stamina to block. In this gear it’s a 21k shield for me, more than my 20k health.
• Pierce Armor – Your standard taunt and debuff.
• Endless Fury – Execute – use when boss hits 20% health. I prefer this morph for magicka return in PvP.
• Energy Overload – Save up this ultimate for bosses.

Overload Bar

• Inner Light – As above
• Boundless Storm – Keep this up all the time.
• Hardened Ward – Keep this up all the time, again.
• Inner Fire – Your taunt, keep this up every ~15 seconds.
• Dark Conversion – I don’t use this during a battle – in between pulls I pop into overload to use this and get all my magicka back.
• Energy Overload – As above.

General usage:

Make sure Inner Light is toggled, pop Boundless Storm, Hardened Ward, Power Surge from your back bar, run in and taunt boss with Pierce Armor.  Go into Overload and just start light attacking. Keep up Boundless Storm, your Hardened Ward, and Inner Fire. Block only when the boss is doing a heavy and/or CCing attack. When the boss is at 20% health, switch back to your 1H&S bar, make sure all your buffs are up, Pierce Armor for the debuff, and spam Endless Fury.

I use Spell Power pots for bosses because there is just no room for Power Surge/Structured Entropy on my Overload bar.

AoE/trash (destruction staff)

• Inner Light – As above.
• Power Surge – Boost your spell power with Major Sorcery and gain extra healing as you do damage.
• Liquid Lightning – DoT to drop for dps and initial aggro.
• Inner Fire – Your ranged taunt.
• Pulsar – Spammable AoE dps. I prefer the Pulsar morph to help the group by lowering trash mobs’ health. The other morph is great too.
• Devouring Swarm – Only here for the regen and “oh shit the healer is dead” moments. Save your ultimate for Overload.

General usage:

Make sure Inner Light is toggled, pop Boundless Storm, Hardened Ward, switch to destro bar and pop Power Surge from your back bar. Run in and light-weave with Inner Fire on all the trash mobs, then drop Liquid Lightning. By this point they will probably have eaten through Hardened Ward, so switch to bar one and recast it. Switch back and Pulsar away. Reapply taunts, your buffs, and your DoT as needed. Keep your Ward up because you don’t have the stamina to block cast in this gear.

Get all your magicka back with Dark Conversion in between pulls, because trust me this will eat through it quickly.

• This topic was modified 3 months, 1 week ago by  KaPoTun.