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Alanarre’s Invincible DK ShielDTank

Changelog

5 Dec 2016 – Updated throughout to maximize group shields per second

Overview

Ok, this build isn’t actually invincible (no cheat engine required), but it makes you feel invincible, and it can survive most one-shot mechanics with ease. The core idea here is to get 70-75k Max Health and then use shield abilities that scale off of your health. In particular, Igneous Shields can shield you for 30k per cast and shield the group for 13k, giving insane individual and group survivability. This is a build for No Death runs and extremely hard content.

Strategy

Any build has a ton of trade-offs. To guide our decision in this build we’ll focus on maximizing group damage shielded per second, by increasing Max Health for larger Igneous Shields, and Magicka Recovery / Magicka Cost Reduction for more shields per second.

Race

Best choice for Maximum Health is Imperial with +12% Max Health, honorable mentions for Nord (9% Max Health, 6% Damage Reduction), and Argonian (9% Max Health, 5% Healing Taken). Imperial gives the largest group shields, Nord gives more individual survivability, since the 6% damage reduction applies to your own shields.

Attributes

Everything in Health

Mundus

The Atronach (more magicka recovery)

Vampire / Werewolf

I like to run this as a vampire for extra magicka recovery, damage regeneration, and invigorating drain.

Gear

Maximum Group Shields

5x Plague Doctor (armor / jewelry)

5x Green Pact (weapon /shield / armor / jewelry)

1x Max Health Undaunted Monster Set (shoulder)

1x Max Health Undaunted Monster Set (head)

Weapons should be Infused, Armor pieces should be Divines (more recovery with Atronach). If you can’t get Divines, Infused is second best.

Max Health enchants on the armor, Magicka Recovery on the jewelry, Crusher enchant on the front weapon, Reduce Target’s Damage enchant on the back weapon.

You want the weapons/shield in Green Pact because you lose and regain the set bonus every time you swap weapons and Green Pact has a smaller 5-piece bonus.

I light light/medium for the head/shoulders to get the undaunted bonuses, but heavy works great too.

Maximum Personal Resilience

If instead of maximizing group shields, you want to maximize your personal survival, you can use the same build, just swap the head and shoulders for Pirate Skeleton.

Champion Points

Red Tree

Bastion – 100

Elemental Defender – 52

Hardy – 35

Green Tree

Magician – 87

Arcanist – 100

Blue Tree

Doesn’t matter too much, consider points in Blessed to boost Invigorating Drain, or put 120 in The Ritual to get the Last Stand perk

Food / Potions

Orzorga’s Red Frothgar for Max Health and Magicka Recovery, dropped Magicka and Stamina potions for most content, tri-pots for challenging content.

Stats

With everything optimized, you should have 70-75k Max Health, 10k Max Magicka, 10k Max Stamina, and 2k+ Magicka Recovery

Abilities

Main Bar

Pierce Armor – primary taunt, provides Major Fracture and Major Breach

Heroic Slash – generate ultimate, provides Minor Maim

Shielded Assault – gap closer, gives a 12k shield

Igneous Shield – main spam ability, shield yourself for 30k, shield the group for 13k

Structured Entropy – +8% Max Health

Ferocious Leap or Magma Armor – leap shields you for 100k, Magma Armor shields the group for 125% of their health.

Off-Bar

Inner Rage – range taunt / magicka taunt

Choking Talons – root groups of enemies, provides Minor Maim

Unrelenting Grip (keep enemies close) or Invigorating Drain (heal for 20% of missing health three times).

Spiked Bone Shield – shields you for 30k, returns damage to melee enemies, synergy shields group for 75% of Max Health

Structured Entropy – +8% Max Health

Aggressive Warhorn – boost group DPS, +10% Max Health

Strategy

This build is strange and awesome. You function as a healer without ever healing and you function as a tank but rarely block. Spam Igneous Shields every 3-6 seconds, keep taunts, light attack and use Heroic Slash every 6 seconds for the ult gen, use heavy attack as filler to refill stamina, use dropped magicka potions to refill magicka. Only block knockdown and CC effects, avoid blocking normal effects since it doesn’t reduce damage to shields. Stay close to allies and have them stay close to you, Igneous only has a 15m range. When you are low on magicka and need a shield, swap bars and use Bone Shield. When you are low on stamina and need a taunt, swap bars and use Inner Rage.

Results

With this build, you can easily heal/tank veteran dungeons with pug dps and get no-death runs. I’ve run this through all of the hardest veteran dungeons and veteran DSA with great results, though for the DLC last bosses on hard mode and vDSA you really do need a healer as well. With this build you can stand in the red almost everywhere with no ill effects. Typical one-shot attacks like Selene’s bear barely hurt you if you have a shield up.

Most fights in veteran trials are easy with this build. I have not yet tanked AA/HRC Hard Modes, and I haven’t main-tanked Rakkhat, but it’s worked everywhere else. Tanking the axes in AA is quite difficult and requires careful stamina management with all of the blocks. Off-tanking in Maw was amazing, on Rakkhat my shields absorbed 50% of the total group damage, including for the main tank (after factoring in guard).

The coolest accomplishment with this build has been a 4-man Maw of Lorkhaj clear with no healer. In particular, taking Rakkhat’s barrage with no healer really highlights the power of this build. On normal difficulty, he does about 200k damage in about 3 seconds, so use Ferocious Leap for a 100k shield and spam igneous about 4 times to take the entire barrage with no lost health. I have not seen another tank build that could pull that off by itself, much less while keeping a group alive.

• This topic was modified 3 weeks, 1 day ago by  Alanarre.