The Elder Scrolls Online Sorcerer Tank Guide

The Elder Scrolls Online Sorcerer Tank Guide by Ebonheart Pact

I figured I would pop in and give my 2 cents on Sorcerer tanking. I have read many players talking about DK, NB and Temp tanks, and it always makes me wonder… do people really not know how amazing sorcerer tanks can be if they are built accordingly and utilized correctly?

I will mention first, Sorcerers have just about every bit of utility as the classes mentioned above with the exception of temp’s range of heal support, which a sorcerer can (as I have) pick up a resto staff for his/her weapon swap.
But how effective can a resto staff be on a tank?!? wouldn’t it be gimped if… Nope, I’ll stop right there.
Unlike a lot of tanks, Sorcerers can do this quite effectively do this for a few reasons.

Not even taking race into account (I chose Bretton… passives suit my needs beautifully) The sorcerer trees work wonders for magicka/Ulti management, and in this role, a majority of every thing on your bars will be magicka Based.

This is further aided by the fact that Sorcerers are one, if not the only, class I can comfortably say can tank effectively in 5 light/2 heavy, or even 7 light and still be sitting permanently over the soft caps for Spell Resist and Armor through the Bound Aegis toggled ability. Being able to have your light armor passives maxed out on top of your beneficial class passives and restoration staff passives, means you can easily swap from sword and board in a pinch and toss out heals that are nearly as effective as someone who has gone dedicated healer.

Now factor in the fact I keep my health and magicka at soft cap as well, making Thundering Presence easy enough to maintain 100% up time (Which can push you to numbers near double the soft caps of armor/spell resist And generates aoe damage the whole time to boot)

People will argue that it is semi pointless to dump anything excessive into any stats overcharged, but to this I point out, you are really not losing any value because you aren’t wasting attribute points to hit these insane mitigation numbers, they are in fact simply 1 toggled skill and one spell that also provides aoe damage so still a valuable contribution to your team.

I use an addon named skill swap which allows me to make several different loud out set ups and save them, even macro them to keys. So when I am facing multiple packs of mobs, I might have an aoe/cc tank bar set up, facing a boss have a single target set up, or a boss I know that has a big burst phase, a complete turtle tank set up. I highly recommend anyone who has not used this addon to give this feature a try. It is so nice to be able to swap preset abilities on the fly allowing you to adjust your play style according to the task at hand. Second addon I would recomend to keep track of your taunt timers and buffs/debuffs is Srendar Buff timers. Amazing looking, allows customization, and movable positioning.

Abbreviations

Inner Fire ( IF)

Structured Entropy (SE)

Thundering Presence (TP)

Absorb Magic (AM)

Ring of Preservation (RoP)

Bound Aegis (BA)

Shattering Prison (SP)

Daedric Tome (DT)

Liquid Lightning (LL Cool J yo)… ok… just LL

Ok, so some quick examples and reasoning behind some of my bars

The Turtle tank, “in your face” to solo bosses
ok, so this boss hits like a truck or has a big damage spike the group can avoid, but you as a tank don’t want to waste a roll and prefer to spend your stam to just block through the damage and not worry about being incinerated

Bars:

• Ransack (or Inner Fire), Absorb Magic(or Structured Entropy), Ring of preservation, Thundering presence, Bound Aegis.

Ulti:

• If you pvp Sturdy Horn/Replenishing barrier are great. If not use Suppression field/Charged Atronach depending on the situation

This set up will make you a permanent ball of mitigation.

Pull is as follows

• Pop TP (refresh as needed),
• Ransack to ensure the boss is taunted and get a nice armor buff/ or IF, because well, you already have an metric ton of armor and the range and magicka cost is nice (monitor your buff timer and refresh ransack/IF right as its about to fall off),
• pop your ROP and watch your team enjoy minimal disruptions to their l33t d33pz.

Notes: If the boss casts a fireball, ice shard, or something to that effect, you can pop your Absorb Magic and let him become your healer for a while. The fact I pointed out Structured Entropy (SE) as an option is I use it quite a bit as it provides an easy and nice boost to your HP pool passively, as well as doing dot damage, and heal over time, which can be super useful. If you decide to go SE, all you would be monitoring on your buff/debuff bars is Ransack/IF timer, SE, and TP. You got all three of these rolling consistently, your going to have a good time.

Typical boss bar, your milkshake for bosses that like “bringing all the adds to the yard”
This is for your bosses that you punch in the face and 10 adds pop out of their hind-parts. This bar helps me shove them right back in there

Bars:

• ransack/IF, shattering prison, daedric tomb, thundering presence, Bound Aegis

Ulti:

• If you pvp Sturdy Horn/Replenishing barrier are great. If not use Suppression field/Charged Atronach depending on the situation

Pull is as follows;

• Only difference with this is, Daedric Tome last for 30 seconds. Knowing this, I like to have the ranged pick where they wanna stand at the start. Place a DT between me and them. then proceed as usual.
• TP up,
• run in ransack/IF..
• now when the adds pop out.. any that get past me to head towards my ranged get “access denied” and stunned, which gives me the time to position myself quickly
• and toss out a Shattering Prison to lock them down (some times 2 SP’s depending on how many mobs) giving my team the time to toss whatever aoe/synergies they want to bless these poor lost souls with, before we get back to the big bad boss at hand.

Notes: You can indeed swap DT out with liquid lighting or the other morph if you want to just SP the mobs and then throw down some helpful aoe dmg ( the synergy from this hits like Mike Tyson in his prime, if you do use it make sure your party know to use the synergy every time they see it)

Touch all the things bar, when you absolutely need to kill every mother*&^%r in the room
This is pretty much your in between bosses transitional “f$& all these mobs yo” bar.

Bars:

• Ransack/IF, SP, DT/LL, Volcanic Rune, BA

Ulti:

• If you pvp Sturdy Horn/Replenishing barrier are great. If not use Suppression field/Charged Atronach depending on the situation

*The only difference here is I have dropped my usual TP in my 4th slot in favor of throwing in Volcanic Rune for even more control

Pull is as follows

• Volcanic Rune out, watch them display their vertical jump
• DT down as you run in for any that might to sprint past you, or if you chose LL, toss that out there between you and the oncoming mobs so you meet in it
• The Shattering prison to force them to stand in all the ouchies until the die from it.

Note: I didn’t mention it in the pull, and sometimes you can get away with it if you control them enough, but as a tank, always keep your eye out for that mob who “drops the bass” a little harder than all his/her friends and toss a ransack/IF in their face. (Usually a good indicator a mob is going to be a potential pain in your chastity belt, is they have a fair bit more HP than their counterparts)

Well.. I think should stop here before I turn this into a short novel.. to just quickly cover the heal choices I made for the swap to restoration. This is just to aid the healer in the crunch, or keep you or a mate alive when either out of range or healers blue stuff has leaked out of the bar and he’s running dry on hooch.

Resto Swap, for that “I still somehow ended up with a staff in my hand” feels

Bars:

• Mutagen, Healing Springs, Combat Prayer, Healing Ward, Bound Aegis

Ulti:

• If you pvp Sturdy Horn/Replenishing barrier are great. If not use Suppression field/Charged Atronach depending on the situation

Basically you get

• the cheap heal over time with a minor osheet mechanic in mutagen.
• the mana returning sexyness of the nearly spammable Healing Springs.
• More Armor/Spell resist, decent heal, and damage boost from combat prayer
• The osheet button of Healing Ward
• and you get to do all this without turning into future ex-wife of Chris Brown, because if you do get hit, your still capped on armor/spell resist because you still have Bound Aegis up.

Hope this has been helpful for anyone looking for a different yet extremely fun play style. If anything maybe it stirred some ideas in someone out there. Cya in Tamriel

~SpellCzech
Blood for the Pact!