[ARCHIVED] The Wall – Warden Tank PvE Build

[ARCHIVED]: This build has been archived, which means it is no longer being updated. However, this web-page will be left up for those who still would like to refer to it.

Build Written By: Pelle412 – PC NA

Role: Tank

Patch: Elsweyr

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Setup
   1. Gear
   2. Attributes
   3. Skills
   4. Alternative Gear & Skill Setups
   5. Vampire vs. Mortal
   6. Champion Points
   7. Other Important Info (Food, Mundus, Race, Potions, Passives)
3. Tips & Misc
4. Contact Info
5. Update Log

Introduction

Welcome to DottzGaming.com’s Warden Tank PvE Build, the Wall, for the Elder Scrolls Online! This build is intended for all levels of PvE: trials, dungeons, and general PvE.  The warden tank is often scoffed at when compared to its dragon knight counterpart. Little do many people know, the warden is a fantastic tank and does just about everything the dragon knight does. The only things we do not bring that the dragon knight does is Engulfing Flames which boosts the group’s fire damage by 10%. To mitigate the loss of this useful effect, have a Magicka DK DPS in your group as they provide this ability. The DK also provides minor brutality to the group via their use of the Earthen Heart passive Mountain’s Blessing and that can also be provided by the addition of a Magicka DK DPS. The Warden tank can provide another very valuable buff, namely Minor Toughness by simply providing a little bit of healing. The guide documented here includes several versions of tank setups from the beginner to the more advanced.

NOTE: The most important piece of advice playing a tank is to learn your class and understand the situations you are going to be in while tanking. Following a build is not a recipe for being a good tank, it’s just one of a large number of possible paths to follow. The best build for you is the one that works for you.

Setup

NOTE:  The advanced setup for main tanking trials assume you know your class very well by now. Normal trials are trivial in difficulty, so this guide is oriented towards veteran trials. As a main tank in a 2-tank configuration, it’s your job to ensure the bosses are debuffed as much as possible and your group receives helpful group buffs. The Claw of Yolnakhriin set boosts group DPS as does Alkosh. If you are not able to farm perfected claw of yolnakhriin, the non-perfected version will also work well.

NOTE:  In the intermediate setup, we’re upgrading to the Lord Warden’s Dusk helm set. This offers a bit more group utility. This helm set is pretty much up all the time so the resistance bonuses are active for most of the fight as long as you take damage.

NOTE:  Prismatic Defense glyphs can be very expensive to buy. If gold is an issue, use Health, Stamina, or Magicka glyphs in the interim to balance your stats to a comfortable level.

In the Wrathstone DLC Update 21 to ESO, one-handed enchantments only receive half the value they used to. Crusher is the priority enchantment for tanks, so we put that on our staff back bar to receive the full value. Crusher reduces the target’s resistances for a short period of time. As a tank, you cast elemental blockade on your target to proc the crusher and it will refresh automatically on cooldown, but ensure your blockade doesn’t expire, i.e. cast it again as it is about to expire. Why do we use decisive absorb stamina? Since one-handed enchantments are now half the value, going with the standard infused is not very valuable anymore. Decisive lets you gain ultimate a little faster. Most one handed enchantments are not very good so we use absorb stamina to gain the little stamina back that we can.

If you are still learning to tank, an ice staff is a bit of a safer choice. The ice staff provides the same blocking effects that a shield does, but a shock staff does not. The value of the shock staff is in its ability to proc off-balance. If you have to pick one, go with ice, but you are encouraged to experiment with shock as well, so you can swap between the two as the group composition may benefit from it. A group consisting of stamina DPS players will benefit more from you using a shock staff.

Why do we use infused on the head, chest, and legs pieces and sturdy on the rest? Infused on those three pieces provide increased value to the armor enchantment. You can go full sturdy if you want but it’s really not necessary. As a tank, you are not supposed to just stand in one place perma-blocking so you don’t need very high block cost reduction. See section further below on the topic of Sustain.

Attributes

Magicka: 0
Health: 60
Stamina: 4
NOTE: This attribute setup isn’t a magic solution. Adjust them as you see fit to give you the health, stamina, and magicka pools that work well for you.

Skills

Skills (Advanced Main Tank, Advanced Dungeons & Intermediate Dungeons Setup)

NOTE:  The advanced dungeon setup is the same as the Intermediate Setup since Leeching Vines will proc Nightflame for us on an ally. The Advanced setup is intended for veteran hardmode DLC dungeons and Nightflame combined with your healing abilities provides plenty of healing for yourself and your group members. The intermediate setup skill bar only introduces one skill from the beginner setup, Balance. In a coordinated group, this skill pretty much offers you unlimited magicka sustain. It does have a drawback though, in that it costs health to use and limits your own self-heals and shields for 4 seconds. It does not however limit any healing you receive from a healer. As long as you are standing in heals over time effects, you will top off your health quickly after casting Balance. Balance also provides the same resistance bonuses that Ice Fortress did (except the minor protection, which is not really necessary 99% of the time).

Skills (Beginner Setup)

Skill	Skill Tree	Notes
Heroic Slash	One Handed & Shield	This skill applies the minor maim debuff on the target and grants you minor heroism which increases your ultimate generation (for 9 seconds). Keep this up as your stamina pool can sustain it.
Pierce Armor	One Handed & Shield	This is our primary taunt (15 seconds) for enemies in front of us. It also debuffs with major fracture and breach (for 12 seconds).
Polar Wind	Winter’s Embrace	This is your primary self-heal. It provides a reasonably good self-heal which can be boosted by CP points into Blessed and Elfborn.
Deceptive Predator	Animal Companions	Having this skill slotted on the front bar reduces your damage taken from AoE effects by 10%. You can also use this to grant yourself a short burst of speed.
Bull Netch	Animal Companions	The bull netch provides you with stamina over time. Keep this companion active at all times.
Elemental Blockade	Destruction Staff	This applies an 8-second ground AoE in front of you. This AoE will hit one target with your crusher enchantment and continue to re-proc it for as long as you maintain your blockade.
Inner Rage	Undaunted	This is your ranged taunt.
Ice Fortress / Expanding Frost Cloak	Winter’s Embrace	This skill provides you and your nearby group members with a large resistance boost. Very useful as it helps keep the group alive. The alternative morph Expansive Frost Cloak is better if you want a wider range to cover allies further away.
Frozen Device	Winter’s Embrace	This skill lets you pull enemies to you and apply major maim to them.
Leeching Vines	Green Balance	Grow vines around yourself or a lower health ally that heals each time you get hit. It also grants a small life steal healing to nearby allies.
Aggressive War Horn	Alliance War Assault	Provides your group with 9.5 seconds of major force and 30 seconds of increased max resources. Without doubt the best ultimate for a tank.
Northern Storm	Winter’s Embrace	This ultimate is primarily slotted for its passive resist bonuses. Don’t use it really unless you have to while fighting very dangerous trash packs as it grants major protection to nearby allies.

Flex Options
Shielded Assault	One Handed & Shield	Use when you need a fast gap closer such as Assembly General or Refabrication Committee in vHoF.
Efficient Purge	Alliance War Support	Cleanse yourself and your group to remove some negative effects. A must-have for Halls of Fabrication and Asylum Sanctorium.
Crushing Shock	Destruction Staff	Longer range interrupt ability.
Energy Orb	Undaunted	Provides healing and synergies for your group.
Deep Thoughts	Psijic Order	Slot this skill if you need a way to recover resources fast. Keep in mind to only use it if you are not in danger of getting one-shot to death so learn first which situations are safe. You will not be blocking while channeling but you will have major protection via skill line passives.
Invigorating Drain	Vampire	A channeled healing ability that also gives you up to 5 ultimate per second.
Shimmering Shield	Winter’s Embrace	Slot and use this skill if you expect to be hit with magic projectiles. It’s also a fun way to absorb Zmaja’s heavy attack unscathed in Cloudrest (even on veteran).
Echoing Vigor	Alliance War Assault	A stamina based heal over time for you and group members.
Absorb Magic	One Hand and Shield	Use this skill if you know you’re going to be hit with a lot of high damage spell projectile’s such as Rakkhat’s dark barrage.
Bone Surge	Undaunted	This is a stamina based shield that is extremely useful for other players in your group. If someone casts this, other’s can synergize on it and receive really strong damage shields and the major vitality buff. Perfect in vCR during Z’maja’s baneful barb.
Overflowing Altar	Undaunted	Pop a blood altar that heals your group every second and offers a synergy for a big burst heal.

Vampire vs. Mortal

For this build we recommend playing as a vampire. You receive increased magicka recovery and being undead you take less damage if you are low health. Maintain stage 3 vampire for best benefit.

Champion Points

CHAMPION POINT 810 SETUP

THE MAGE (BLUE)

• Blessed – 100
• Elfborn – 100
• Thaumaturge – 40
• Physical Weapons Expert – 30

THE THIEF (GREEN)

• Shadow Ward – 81
• Tumbling – 56 (tanks roll dodge often)
• Arcanist – 75
• Warlord – 44
• Bashing Focus – 14 (tanks bash often)

THE WARRIOR (RED)

• Hardy – 56
• Elemental Defender – 56
• Thick Skinned – 56
• Ironclad – 81
• Quick Recovery – 21

CHAMPION POINT 300 SETUP

THE MAGE (BLUE)

• Blessed – 100

THE THIEF (GREEN)

• Warlord –18
• Arcanist –27
• Tumbling – 15
• Shadow Ward – 40

THE WARRIOR (RED)

• Ironclad –  34
• Hardy – 23
• Elemental Defender – 23
• Thick Skinned – 20

Other Important Info

Buff Food

Longfin Pasty with Melon Sauce: Increased max health, stamina and magicka

Mundus

Atronach – Increased Magicka Recovery
If you use Balance for magicka sustain, you can consider using The Lord mundus.

Race

Nord (Recommended)
Imperial
Argonian

In this patch the Nord race is recommended due to its tankiness, extra stamina and ultimate generation. Imperial is another strong race with solid sustain and Argonian is also well suited with extra sustain from potions and healing.

Potions/Poisons

Potions:

• Tri-Stat (Bugloss, Columbine and Mountain Flower) (Recommended)
• Regular Stamina or Magicka restoration potions
• Health + Lingering Health (Butterfly Wing, Scrib Jelly, Water Hyacinth)

There are many more potentially useful combinations. The above are just some examples.

Passives

Class (all), Heavy Armor (all), Medium Armor (all except the ones that require you to wear 5 pieces), Light Armor (all except the ones that require you to wear 5 pieces), 1h & Shield (all), Fighter’s Guild (Banish the Wicked), Vampire (all except Blood Ritual and Savage Feeding), Undaunted (all), Racial (all), Alchemy (Medicinal Use), Destruction Staff (all), Psijic Order (all)

Tips & Misc.

Keep your bull netch active at all times for stamina resources. Keep your leeching vines up always. Heavy attack when safe to do so for stamina return on your sword/shield bar. Watch your elemental blockade timer and reapply it as needed so your target doesn’t stand there without the crusher debuff. Apply heroic slash for minor maim and ultimate generation.

Useful Addons: Untaunted, RaidBuffs, RaidNotifier, Action Duration Reminder, Srendarr

Contact

If you have any questions about the build, join our discord server and ask @pelle412 about the build!

Update Log

12/7/2017 – Build created.
2/21/2018 – CP updated, gear and skills changed
5/23/2018 – Build writer changed and the entire build was overhauled for summerset.
8/21/2018 – Build updated for Wolfhunter (CP/jewelry traits changed)
10/31/2018 – Weapons, Skills and CP updated for Murkmire
11/7/2018 – Removed DW for Destro staff after enchant changes in incremental
3/15/2019 – Build overhauled for wrathstone
5/22/2019 – Front bar enchants changed and torugs change to claw of yol