BEGINNER TANK GUIDE

Concept of a tank

The Tank role in ESO is a bit different when compared to other MMOs. While keeping the aggro away from your teammates is still your main job, you’re also expected to buff your teammates and debuff enemies and there’s tons of different buffs and debuffs at your disposal so you’ll be making a huge difference in the overall DPS of your group. Rather than managing cooldowns, your survival will depend on how well you can deal with core combat mechanics - blocking and dodging attacks, heavy attacking to restore resources - et cetera. You need to block the attacks to survive but you can’t block everything because you’ll run out of stamina - this is what it boils down to in a very big shortcut.

Taunting and Aggro Overtaunting Chaining Blocking Dodge Rolling Heavy Attacking Recovery Mitigation

Your main job as a tank is preventing enemies from attacking your teammates by making them attack you instead. ESO doesn’t have a threat system so you can’t make enemies attack you by simply dealing damage to them, you have to use Taunt abilities such as Pierce Armor or Destructive Clench. This means that quickly getting aggro of a big group of enemies is impossible, but that’s by design, because it simply isn’t needed. Trash packs tend to have very few elite enemies that actually need to be taunted, most of them are just cannon fodder that you don’t need to taunt at all, because they won’t kill your Damage Dealers or Healers even if they aggro to them.

Multiple people taunting the same enemy in a short period of time will trigger an overtaunt. When an enemy is overtaunted it is immune to any further taunts for 7 seconds. It takes 5 taunts within 7 seconds to overtaunt an enemy. You can not overtaunt an enemy on your own. It's not something you normally have to worry about but if you have someone clueless in your group who is using a taunt as their spammable they will trigger it.

It’s also your job to stack enemies up, so that they can die inside of your allies’ ground DoTs. You can do this by pulling them closer to you with abilities like Unrelenting Grip (Dragonknights only), Frozen Gate (Wardens only), Silver Leash (any class) or Leashing Soul (requires access to Scribing). All of these (except for Frozen Gate) will also taunt the enemy you’re chaining if they haven’t already been taunted.

You can also use the Void Bash weapon set to pull enemies in, but it has a way lower range so it’s just an opener after which you still need to use chain abilities to pull in ranged adds.

Holding right mouse button (or LT/L2 on a gamepad) allows you to block incoming attacks, reducing their damage by 50% at base, but as a tank you’ll end up with various bonuses to your block mitigation so you’ll end up closer to 75% block mitigation. That’s just for an average build though, because if you really spec into block mitigation bonuses you can reach the cap of 90% block mitigation, meaning you’ll only be taking 10% damage from blocked attacks. Blocking enemies’ heavy attacks will also in most cases prevent you from getting stunned or pushed back. Holding block will also stop your Stamina Recovery. Stamina Recovery restores your Stamina every 2 seconds and if you’re holding block at the moment Stamina Recovery would tick it will not restore any Stamina. Blocking is very simple in theory but in practice it has a really high skill ceiling. You don’t have enough Stamina to hold block all the time and your Stamina Recovery is stopped so eventually you will run out of it. That’s why you should try to only block when it’s necessary, but it will take some practice to learn when that is.

Blocking costs 1750 stamina at base but in a tank build you should end up with something around 1000 stamina block cost. Blocking can only consume your stamina once every 0.25 second, so if you’re blocking lots of attacks at the same time some of the attacks won’t consume your stamina.

Destruction Staff skill line has a passive called Tri Focus which causes your block to cost Magicka instead of Stamina while wielding an ice staff. It will also cause blocking to halt your Magicka Recovery instead of Stamina Recovery. DO NOT PUT ANY SKILL POINTS INTO THIS PASSIVE.

Dodge Rolling spends 4040 Stamina to roll in the direction you’re moving (or backwards if you don’t move in any direction) while completely negating most direct damage attacks. The cost increases by 33% of base value with each consecutive dodge roll within 4 seconds so you can’t spam it. Dodge rolling allows you to take no damage from heavy attacks (with a few exceptions, such as Z’Maja’s heavy attack in the Cloudrest trial, which will hit you in dodge roll). In newer content, a common mechanic is that enemies will enrage if you dodge roll their heavy attacks, which means most of the time you’ll want to block them instead, and dodge rolling is only a last resort option if blocking would've killed you. By default the way to Dodge Roll on keyboard is to double tap a direction key, which is something you should turn off as soon as possible and instead set a normal keybind for it (I’m using side mouse button). On gamepad you dodge roll by pressing block and jump.

Holding your left mouse button (or RT/R2 on a gamepad) allows you to heavy attack with your weapon, which takes either 0.8 or 1 second depending on your weapon type. Heavy attacking with a one handed and shield takes 0.8 seconds and restores 2293 stamina, while heavy attacking with an ice staff takes 1 second and restores 2425 magicka. Attacking enemies who are debuffed with Off Balance restores double the amount of resources.

Heavy attacking is crucial for sustaining resources but it also leaves you vulnerable - you cannot block while heavy attacking. You need to learn patterns of specific fights to be able to squeeze in more heavy attacks during windows during which you’re not taking that much damage. You should also cast damage shields right before a heavy attack so you can take more unblocked damage while channelling the heavy attack. Warding Contingency and Runeguard of Still Waters are especially good for that, due to their delayed nature.

Every 2 seconds you regenerate health, stamina and magicka equal to your health, stamina and magicka recovery stats. This regeneration is doubled out of combat. If you were sprinting, blocking or dodge rolling at the moment this recovery ticks, you will not regenerate any stamina. If you were blocking with an Ice Staff while having the Tri Focus passive you won’t regenerate any magicka, but you’re not supposed to use this passive anyway.

Don’t fall into the trap of trying to build anything around Health Recovery. Health Recovery is completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things and it gets completely trampled by any Heal over Time ability when it comes to Healing Per Second.

Reducing the damage you take is crucial and the main way to do it is getting more armor. In your stat sheet you’ll find Physical and Spell Resistances. These are mostly a leftover from an old system and right now various buffs will be giving you the “armor” stat which stands for both Physical and Spell Resistance. Armor has a cap of 33,000 at which point armor will be providing you 50% damage mitigation. The maximum amount of armor you can benefit from however is 33,100 because PvE enemies have 100 armor penetration. Reaching the armor cap is absolutely crucial to be able to survive the hardest content. In easier content you can get away without reaching the armor cap, but it's still worth getting because it will make this content much easier. Armor has increasing returns so each next point of armor is more effective than the previous one. For example, gaining 660 armor while you’re at 0 armor will grant you 1% damage mitigation, but gaining 660 armor while you’re already at 32,340 armor will grant you 1.95% damage mitigation.

Classes

There are 7 classes in ESO and all of them can be used for tanking. The balance between them is rather good, as there are only 2 classes that are clearly below others - Templar and Nightblade, and they’re not even that bad survivability wise, you will survive fine with them but you won’t be providing as much group support, they simply don’t bring as many important buffs and debuffs as other classes.

Sorted from best to worst for beginners

Class	Rating for Beginners	Rating Overall	Explanation
Dragonknight	S	S	Dragonknight is the most versatile tank class with access to both block mitigation for dealing with direct damage, and damage shields for dealing with DoTs. On top of that, the Helping Hands passive makes it much easier to sustain blocking, and if you really screw up you can use Magma Shell to give yourself time to recover.
Arcanist	S	S	Tons of raw stats from passives, such as armor and recoveries, combined with the massive Impervious Runeward damage shield and the delayed heal from Runeguard make survival extremely easy.
Sorcerer	S	S	Hardened Ward being both a massive damage shield and a decent heal makes this class really easy to play.
Warden	A	A	Wardens' lack of damage shields makes them bad at dealing with DoTs.
Necromancer	A	S	While Necromancers have the tools to deal with any type of damage, they’re not reactive, you need to already have all your buffs and heals over time running by the time the damage happens, which is why it won’t be as easy to play for beginners as for example Dragonknight, Arcanist or Sorcerer.
Templar	B	B	Templar's instant self-heal, Honor the Dead, is unreliable because of its targeting. The last thing a beginner needs is an ability that straight up doesn’t work if your teammates are taking unnecessary damage.
Nightblade	B	B	Nightblade has the same issue with instant self-heal’s targeting, and on top of that it has straight up worse survivability than Templar, but what made me put it in B tier is the Siphoning Strikes ability. It makes sustain absolutely trivial, and sustaining block is the number 1 thing new players usually struggle with.

You can find more detailed information about how each class performs in each specific type of content in my CLASS TIER LIST

Weapons

As a tank, you’re only going to use 2 weapon types - One Handed and Shield, and Ice Staves. These are the weapons intended for tanking, they provide bonuses to block mitigation, block cost reductions and their skill lines contain taunting skills, such as Pierce Armor and Destructive Clench. Your frontbar weapon could be either One Handed and Shield or Ice Staff. One Handed and Shield is the default option, it’s much easier to play as it allows you to restore Stamina with heavy attacks. Ice Staff can sometimes be used on frontbar, but it’s a more difficult playstyle that provides more support for the group. The type of the one handed weapon doesn’t matter - there is no difference between a sword, axe, mace or a dagger.

Your backbar weapon however is always going to be an Ice Staff. That’s because it has a to be a two-handed weapon as two-handed weapons apply stronger enchants, and you’ll be using this weapon to apply the Crusher enchant which reduces enemies armor by 2108 which is roughly a 5% damage increase for your Damage Dealers.

Very rarely you can also use a Lightning Staff on your backbar, as the Lightning Elemental Blockade can provide Off Balance which procs the Exploiter Champion Point, but that’s only a thing in short bursty fights.

Sets

Equipment pieces in ESO form sets, usually 5-piece sets. Most of the time you’ll be wearing 2 5-piece sets of gear and a Monster Set on your head and shoulder slots. If one of your 5-piece sets is one-barrable you can also fit in a weapon set.

What’s a one-barrable set? It’s a set that can work properly even if you use only 3 pieces of it on your body armor pieces or jewelry, and get the last 2 pieces from one of your weapons. Since you can bring 2 sets of weapons into combat and swap between them dynamically you can have a set that’s only active on one of the bars. Take Powerful Assault for example. This set grants your teammates a buff after you cast an Assault ability. You can have Powerful Assault set active only on your backbar, have Resolving Vigor on that skill bar and it will work just as fine as if you had it active on both bars. This allows you to put a weapon set like for example Puncturing Remedy on your frontbar. Now look at Pearlescent Ward - this is an example of a set that isn’t one-barrable and has to be active at all times. If you tried to put Pearlescent Ward on your backbar your team would be losing the Pearlescent buff every time you’re on your frontbar.

Monster Sets are very specific 2-piece Head and Shoulder sets. Head pieces drop from dungeons in Veteran difficulty and Shoulder can be obtained from Undaunted Coffers which you can buy for Undaunted Keys which you get from doing daily dungeon quests at Undauned Enclaves. There are also Mythic gear pieces. You can only wear one Mythic gear piece at a time. The most useful Mythic is Spaulder of Ruin, but since it’s a shoulder piece it’s more logical to view it as if it was a Monster Set, since it occupies its spot. The rest of the Mythics are going to come in useful extremely rarely.

Example 1 Example 2 Example 3

In this example you're wearing two sets that have to be double-barred.

Gear Slot	Set	Weight/Type
Head	Archdruid Devyric	Medium
Shoulders	Archdruid Devyric	Light
Chest	Lucent Echoes	Heavy
Hands	Lucent Echoes	Heavy
Belt	Lucent Echoes	Heavy
Legs	Lucent Echoes	Heavy
Boots	Lucent Echoes	Heavy
Necklace	Pearlescent Ward	Jewelry
Ring	Pearlescent Ward	Jewelry
Ring	Pearlescent Ward	Jewelry
Frontbar Main Hand	Pearlescent Ward	Any 1-handed weapon
Frontbar Off Hand	Pearlescent Ward	Shield
Backbar Main Hand	Pearlescent Ward	Ice Staff

In this example you're wearing one set that has to be double-barred and one set that can be one-barred. This allows you to fit in a weapon set.

Gear Slot	Set	Weight/Type
Head	Archdruid Devyric	Medium
Shoulders	Archdruid Devyric	Light
Chest	Lucent Echoes	Heavy
Hands	Lucent Echoes	Heavy
Belt	Lucent Echoes	Heavy
Legs	Lucent Echoes	Heavy
Boots	Lucent Echoes	Heavy
Necklace	Powerful Assault	Jewelry
Ring	Powerful Assault	Jewelry
Ring	Powerful Assault	Jewelry
Frontbar Main Hand	Puncturing Remedy	Any 1-handed weapon
Frontbar Off Hand	Puncturing Remedy	Shield
Backbar Main Hand	Powerful Assault	Ice Staff

In this example you're wearing two sets that can be one-barred. This allows you to fit in a Mythic item and one piece of the Armor of the Trainee set.

Gear Slot	Set	Weight/Type
Head	Archdruid Devyric	Heavy
Shoulders	Archdruid Devyric	Heavy
Chest	Saxhleel's Champion	Heavy
Hands	Powerful Assault	Medium
Belt	Armor of the Trainee	Light
Legs	Saxhleel's Champion	Heavy
Boots	Saxhleel's Champion	Heavy
Necklace	Powerful Assault	Jewelry
Ring	Death Dealer's Fete	Jewelry
Ring	Powerful Assault	Jewelry
Frontbar Main Hand	Saxhleel's Champion	Any 1-handed weapon
Frontbar Off Hand	Saxhleel's Champion	Shield
Backbar Main Hand	Powerful Assault	Ice Staff

You can find the list of useful tanking sets here HERE

The armor in ESO comes in 3 weights - Light, Medium and Heavy. Most of the times the best combination is 5 Heavy pieces, 1 Medium piece and 1 Light piece as this way you can trigger the Undaunted Mettle passive, which grants you 2% of all maximum resources for each unique armor weight type. Of course this won’t be the best setup for every single fight, but it’s the best for the majority of them. Going with more Heavy pieces than 5 can be useful in fights where you want more block mitigation, if you need more armor or if the damage taken is primarily Martial (Physical, Bleed, Poison, Disease damage types). Going with more Medium pieces can be useful if you’ll need to dodge roll a lot in a certain fight, and Light pieces are very good in fights where the damage taken is primarily Magical (Magic, Flame, Shock, Frost).

Traits

Armor Weapons Jewelry

Armor pieces can come with these traits (values are for Golden quality gear):

Trait	Material	Tooltip	Description
Reinforced	Sardonyx	Increases this item's armor value by 16%	Use this trait to reach armor cap (which is 33000). It is more effective than Nirnhoned on pieces with more than 1581 base armor
Nirnhoned	Fortified Nirncrux	Increases this item's armor value by 253	Use this trait to reach armor cap (which is 33000). It is more effective than Reinforced on pieces with less than 1581 base armor
Divines	Sapphire	Increases Mundus Stone effects by 9.1%	One of the best default traits if you don't know what you're going up against. If you're using the Atronach Mundus it will provide 28 Magicka Recovery
Sturdy	Quartz	Reduce block cost by 4%	One of the best default traits if you don't know what you're going up against. It's extremely good for beginners who block excessively. Situationally best for encounters where you need to block a lot
Well-Fitted	Almandine	Reduces the cost of sprinting and Roll Dodging by 6%	Situationally best for encounters where you need to roll dodge a lot
Invigorating	Garnet	Increase Health Recovery, Magicka Recovery, and Stamina Recovery by 16	A decent default trait, it's not far off from Divines and Sturdy and it is the only way of getting recovery through your traits if you're not using a recovery Mundus Stone like the Atronach
Infused	Bloodstone	Increase armor enchantment effect by 25%	Increases your maximum resources by boosting your armor enchants. Outclassed by other traits and it can be a detriment due to mechanics that scale damage with your Maximum Health
Training	Emerald	Increase experience gained from kills by 11%	Not combat related
Impenetrable	Diamond	Increase your Critical Resistance by 132 and this item takes 50% less durability damage.	Useless, because PvE enemies cannot critically strike

ADDITIONAL INFO:

• The first step is getting enough Reinforced or Nirnhoned pieces to reach the armor cap. Reinforced becomes better than Nirnhoned on pieces which have base armor value higher than 1581. There’s also a lot of other variables that will have an impact on our armor, such as race, item set bonuses, champion points or weapon type.
• After you’ve hit the armor cap, Divines and Sturdy are the best default traits to put on the remaining pieces.
• Divines will simply increase your magicka recovery by boosting your Atronach mundus and it’s the best all-around trait.
• Sturdy is very good for beginners who hold block way more than they need to or if you’re playing with a very high ping. Once you’re more experienced at the game, Sturdy becomes more of a situational trait for fights with long channeled abilities that you have to block, such as the Valinna and Lamikhai boss in Scrivener’s Hall dungeon, Ryelaz and Zilyesset in Lucent Citadel or Roksa in Bal Sunnar. In the end the difference between Sturdy and Divines isn’t that big once you’ve covered your armor needs with Reinforced on bigger pieces. Since you’re reading this guide you’re most likely a beginner so Sturdy is going to be better than Divines for you at the moment, but as you learn the game Sturdy will become less useful, outside of some specific encounters.
• Well-Fitted can be situationally best for some specific encounters where you’re forced to dodge roll a lot, such as for example the Reef Guardian boss in Dreadsail Reef Trial.
• Invigorating is not far behind Divines in terms of magicka recovery and also gives you some stamina recovery, it’s also the only way to get more recovery from armor traits if you’re not using the Atronach mundus.
• Infused can be a decent trait, especially at the beginning, but in later dungeons and trials ZOS started putting tons of damage that scales with your Maximum Health, which makes Infused not that good, and sometimes even a detriment.

Weapons can come with these traits (values are for Golden quality gear):

Trait	Material	Tooltip	Description
Charged	Amethyst	Increase your chance to apply status effects by 117.5%/235%	Boosts your chance to apply status effects which can apply some useful buff, such for example Sundered proccing Minor Breach, Concussion proccing Minor Vulnerability or Chilled proccing Minor Brittle. If you're a Dragonknight it can boost your sustain by allowing you to proc Combustion more often.
Decisive	Citrine	When you gain Ultimate you have a 27.5%/55% chance to gain 1 additional ultimate	Boosts your ultimate generation allowing you to support your group with more Aggressive Horns for more Major Force uptime
Infused	Jade	Increase weapon enchantment effect by 30% and reduces enchantment cooldown by 50%	Boosting your Crusher enchant with this trait on your backbar weapon is crucial for providing enough armor penetration for your team
Defending	Turquoise	Increases Armor by 1638/3276	1638 armor will provide 2.47-4.72% damage reduction. It's a decent amount of armor but it’s going to create an imbalance between your front and backbar. Keep in mind there is already an imbalance because on your frontbar you’re also gaining bonus armor from your equipped shield. It can be decent temporary option while you’re sorting out the rest of your gear, but in the end you should be hitting the armor cap without it.
Powered	Chysolite	Increase healing done by 4.5%/9%	Powered increases your healing done and it’s a decent overall option. It’s also the ideal option in some encounters which have lots of Oblivion damage. Oblivion damage bypasses mitigation and damage shields so healing becomes your only way of defending yourself
Nirnhoned	Potent Nirncrux	Increases Damage of this weapon by 15%	Nirnhoned serves similar purpose as Powered. It’s simply a stronger Powered on some classes such as Dragonknight. Dragonknight’s heals scale with Weapon and Spell Damage and the bonus Weapon Damage from Nirnhoned provides more healing than the 4.5% healing increase from Powered. This obviously won’t be the case on classes like Necromancer or Warden whose main self-heals scale with Maximum Health rather than Weapon Damage
Precise	Ruby	Increases Critical Chance by 3.6%/7.2%	It can increase your healing but it gets outclassed by Powered or Nirnhoned
Sharpened	Fire Opal	Increase Armor Penetration by 1638/3276	Purely a DPS trait, not relevant for tanking.
Training	Carnelian	Increase experience gained from kills by 4.5%/9%	Not combat related

ADDITIONAL INFO:

For backbar weapon

• Your backbar weapon is always going to be a 2-handed weapon and a huge majority of the times it’s going to be Infused, in order to boost the Crusher enchant.
• In trash packs, if you’re a PC player using gear-swap addons you can change this Infused staff to a Charged one in order to make Minor Brittle provided by your Pulsar much more reliable.

For frontbar weapon

• Decisive is a very good default trait as it will slightly boost your ultimate generation allowing you to support your group better by casting more ultimates such as Aggressive Horn.
• Charged is a very good option for Dragonknights as it can boost their sustain through the Combustion passive. But it can also be a decent option for any class. A Charged weapon combined with the Shock enchant can provide some uptime of the Minor Vulnerability debuff. If your frontbar weapon is an Ice Staff then Charged trait can help with keeping up Minor Brittle. There are better ways of keeping up these debuffs (such as for example Rune of the Colorless Pool) but in an unoptimized environment providing some uptimes with your enchants is better than nothing.
• Infused can be a decent option when combined with the Weakening enchant, which reduces enemies damage done. Weakening is usually being applied by a healer and it’s stronger this way because a healer can put it on their 2-handed backbar weapon the same way we tanks apply Crusher, but applying a less effective Weakening with your frontbar weapon can be an option when doing dungeons without a Healer, in a 1 Tank 3 Damage Dealers comp.
• Defending provides a big amount of armor but it’s going to create an imbalance between your front and backbar. And keep in mind there was already an imbalance because on your frontbar you’re also gaining bonus armor from your equipped shield. It can be decent temporary option while you’re sorting out the rest of your gear, but in the end you should be hitting the armor cap without it.

Jewelry pieces can come with these traits (values are for Golden quality gear):

Trait	Material	Tooltip	Description
Healthy	Antimony	Increase Maximum Health by 965	Very bad trait, completely outclassed by Harmony/Infused and can be a detriment in some fights due to enemies' damage scaling with Maximum Health
Robust	Zinc	Increase Maximum Stamina by 877	Very bad trait, completely outclassed by Harmony/Infused
Arcane	Cobalt	Increase Maximum Magicka by 877	Very bad trait, completely outclassed by Harmony/Infused
Triune	Dawn-Prism	Increase Maximum Health by 482 and Maximum Magicka and Maximum Stamina by 439	Very bad trait, completely outclassed by Harmony/Infused and can be a detriment in some fights due to enemies' damage scaling with Maximum Health
Harmony	Dibellium	Activating a Synergy restores 880 Health, Magicka, and Stamina.	The best trait as long as your teammates aren't bad. Outperforms Infused as long as you're constantly getting 2 different synergies
Infused	Aurbic Amber	Increase the effect of the enchantment by 60%	A very good trait. Worse than Harmony in ideal scenario but isn't dependant on your teammates
Swift	Gilding Wax	Increase Movement Speed by 7%	The best trait for trash fights, also situationally best for some boss fights that require a lot of movement
Protective	Titanium	Increases Armor by 1190	Last resort option towards reaching the armor cap, you'll be sacrificing a lot of sustain but it's still better than not reaching the armor cap
Bloodthirsty	Slaughterstone	Increase Weapon and Spell Damage against enemies under 90% health by up to 350	Purely a DPS trait, not relevant for tanking

ADDITIONAL INFO:

• Jewelry can only drop with Healthy, Robust or Arcane trait but it can be transmuted or crafted with all these other traits. Healthy, Robust, Arcane and Triune are extremely bad traits, they provide very little compared to other traits and can sometimes even be a detriment.
• The best traits are Infused and Harmony. Harmony is stronger whenever you have at least 2 different synergies available to you, which means that Harmony will be better in the vast majority of situations, but Infused can be better when playing with randoms or if the specific encounter makes it really difficult for your teammates to provide you synergies.
• If you’re a PC player using gear-swap addons then in trash fights the best trait is Swift, the movement speed is really useful there and trash is usually easy to deal with so you don’t need the additional sustain from Harmony or Infused. Keep in mind that the case is different in Infinite Archive, as the trash there isn’t trivial so you should treat it basically like boss fights and use Harmony or Infused.
• Protective is a last resort for reaching the armor cap. Using it will hurt your sustain by quite a bit but it’s better than going against a very difficult boss without being armor capped.

Enchants

Each piece of gear can also be enchanted and once again, armor pieces, weapons and jewelry pieces can be enchanted with different things.

Armor Weapons Jewelry

Armor pieces can have these enchants (values are for Golden quality enchants made with Kuta rune):

Enchant	Potency Rune	Essence Rune	Tooltip
Glyph of Health	Repora	Oko	Increase Maximum Health by 954
Glyph of Stamina	Repora	Deni	Increase Maximum Stamina by 868
Glyph of Magicka	Repora	Makko	Increase Maximum Magicka by 868
Glyph of Prismatic Defence	Repora	Hakeijo	Increase Maximum Health by 477 and Maximum Magicka and Maximum Stamina by 434

ADDITIONAL INFO:

• Ideally you’ll want Prismatic Defense enchants on every single armor piece, but they are expensive so until you get there you should use a mix of Health, Stamina and Magicka enchants.

Weapons can have these enchants (values are for Golden quality enchants made with Kuta rune):

Keep in mind that these values will be halved when put on a one-handed weapon

Enchant	Potency Rune	Essence Rune	Tooltip	Description
Glyph of Crushing	Itade	Deteri	Reduce the target's Armor by 1622 for 5 seconds	When placed on an Infused weapon this Glyph will provide 2108 armor penetration which translates to roughly 5% damage increase. The Infused weapon trait will also reduce its cooldown from 10 seconds down to 5, allowing you to keep it up with a 100% uptime. The Elemental Blockade skill ticks every 1 second so it will proc this enchant on cooldown.
Glyph of Shock	Repora	Deni	Deals 2534 Shock Damage	Dealing Shock damage with a weapon enchant has a high chance to proc the Concussion status effect which applies Minor Vulnerability for 4 seconds, which increases enemies' damage taken by 5%
Glyph of Frost	Repora	Dekeipa	Deals 2534 Frost Damage	Dealing Frost damage with a weapon enchant has a high chance to proc the Chilled status effect which applies Minor Brittle for 4 seconds if you're wielding an Ice Staff, which increases enemies' critical damage taken by 10%
Glyph of Weakening	Itade	Okori	Reduce the target's Weapon and Spell Damage by 348 for 5 seconds	348 Weapon Damage reduction will reduce enemies' damage done by 6-10% (each boss has a different amount of base Weapon Damage). This enchant has a 10 second cooldown so you can only keep up 100% uptime if your weapon has the Infused trait.
Glyph of Hardening	Repora	Deteri	Grants a 3290 point Damage Shield for 5 seconds	Decent defensive enchant for some passive damage shields
Glyph of Absorb Stamina	Itade	Deni	Deals 1900 Physical Damage and restores 354 Stamina	Provides 354 Stamina on a 4 second cooldown. Dealing Physical damage with a weapon enchant has a high chance to proc the Sundered status effect which applies Minor Breach for 4 seconds, which reduces enemies' armor by 2974
Glyph of Absorb Magicka	Itade	Makko	Deals 1900 Magic Damage and restores 354 Magicka	Provides 354 Magicka on a 4 second cooldown. Dealing Magic damage with a weapon enchant has a high chance to proc the Overcharged status effect which applies Minor Magickasteal for 4 seconds, which causes attacks agaisnt this enemy to restore 168 Magicka every second
Glyph of Prismatic Onslaught	Itade	Hakeijo	Deals 1900 Magic Damage and restores 430 Health and 177 Magicka and Stamina	Provides 430 Health and 177 Stamina and Magicka on a 4 second cooldown. Dealing Magic damage with a weapon enchant has a high chance to proc the Overcharged status effect which applies Minor Magickasteal for 4 seconds, which causes attacks agaisnt this enemy to restore 168 Magicka every second
Glyph of Poison	Repora	Kuoko	Deals 2534 Poison Damage	Very good sustain enchant for Dragonknights. Dealing Poison damage with a weapon enchant has a high chance to proc the Poisoned status effect which procs the Combustion passive which restores 1000 Stamina and Magicka

ADDITIONAL INFO:

• On your backbar you’ll always want to use the Crusher enchant
• On your frontbar, you’ll want to use Weakening if you don’t have a healer with you or Shock if nobody else is providing Minor Vulnerability. If you have a healer and have Minor Vulnerability covered you can use some defensive enchant of your choice, Hardening for damage shields or one of the sustain enchants
• In very organized groups against very difficult bosses you can use a Hardening enchant on your backbar and it will increase your survivability by a decent amount, but you have to make sure other supports will cover Crusher instead

Jewelry pieces can have these enchants (values are for Golden quality enchants made with Kuta rune):

Enchant	Potency Rune	Essence Rune	Tooltip
Glyph of Reduce Magicka Cost	Itade	Makkoma	Reduce Magicka cost of spells by 203
Glyph of Reduce Skill Cost	Itade	Indeko	Reduce Health, Magicka and Stamina cost of abilities by 133
Glyph of Bracing	Itade	Kaderi	Reduce the cost of Block by 203

ADDITIONAL INFO:

• Reduce Skill Cost is the best enchant if you’re going to frequently use stamina skills, such as for example if you’re a Dragonknight using the Stone Giant. Otherwise, Reduce Spell Cost is the best one
• Bracing enchant is extremely good while you’re still learning the game. It’s also situationally best in some encounters where you’re forced to hold block a lot

Race Choice

Sadly, racial bonuses in ESO are pretty significant when it comes to PvE tanking, and you’ll be putting yourself at a disadvantage by not choosing Nord. You can complete any content on any race, but you’ll have to put in more effort and adjust your build. Nords have a racial that grants them 2600 armor which translates to a 7.28% damage reduction when close to armor cap. Of course you’re not supposed to just take it and accept taking this much more damage, what you should do instead as a non-Nord is adjust your build and get more armor from somewhere else, such as for example using an armor Mundus stone (The Lady) or using armor jewelry traits (Protective). But that’s sacrificing a lot just to hit the armor cap, which is why Nord tanks always end up with better sustain even though they don’t have sustain racials, because they can devote their Mundus choice and jewelry trait choices towards sustain.

You should play how you want, you can complete any content using any race, there are people completing hardest content even as Argonians, but at the same time anyone telling you race choice is insignificant is clueless about the game.

Arcanists are an exception to that, as due to huge amount of armor they're getting from their class passives and abilities choosing Nord isn't as crucial. They're still technically the best race, but the gap between them and other races is insignificant.

Attributes

Champion Points

After you reach level 50 you’ll start earning Champion Points, which can provide useful perks. Some champion point perks are active all the time, while others can be slotted in and out. As you accumulate more champion points, you’ll be able to activate more stars.

Food

The best food is Orzorga's Smoked Bear Haunch, however it's extremely expensive so you should use Jewels of Misrule instead, it provides only slightly lower stats than Orzorga's Smoked Bear Haunch while being significantly cheaper.

Other decent foods:

• Orzorga's Red Frothgar - provides more Max Health and Magicka Recovery at the cost of providing no Stamina Recovery at all. Stamina Recovery doesn't work while blocking so it can be a decent option if you're permablocking
• Bewitched Sugar Skulls - provides maximum resources instead of recoveries, can be decent for fights where you need to block for a very long time during a very specific period but the pressure is non-existent outside of that specific period so you can recuperate stamina by heavy attacking freely, for example Roksa the Warped boss in Bal Sunnar dungeon. The increased maximum resources will also increase the scaling of some of your healing abilities, such as Resolving Vigor
• Candied Jester's Coin - provides only Max Stamina and Magicka Recovery, can be decent when you want to reduce your Max Health during a specific phase of a fight. For example, in Cloudrest you can eat it right as the execute phase starts, because Maximum Health becomes a detriment due to the Baneful Mark mechanic

Potions

Tri-Stat Heroism

Most of the time you should use Tri-Stat potions (Restore Health, Restore Stamina, Restore Magicka). They'll greatly improve your sustain. You can craft them by combining Columbine, Bugloss and Mountain's Flower.

There are better potions but they're extremely expensive so they're only worth using when you're tryharding for the most difficult achievements, such as trial trifectas. Heroism potions (Heroism, Restore Stamina, Restore Magicka) can provide a 100% uptime on Minor Heroism buff which generates ultimate, but they're extremely expensive because they're crafted by combining Dragon Rheum, Dragon's Blood and Columbine.

Mundus

Levelling up or doing any non-group content (such as questing) in a tank build is horrible so you should use the Armory system so you can switch between a Tank build and a DPS build. There is no point in bringing a Tank build unless you’re doing group content.

You can get your Armory Station for free from the Crown Store menu.

This is the crafted gear setup you can start with. You do not need to start with a crafted setup and you can move on straight to the setup from dungeons, because Normal difficulty dungeons are easy enough to clear while wearing random gear pieces you pick up from questing. This crafted setup is for people who are anxious about tanking and need a "stepping stone" setup even though it isn't really needed.

Gear Slot	Set	Weight/Type	Trait	Enchantment
Head	Druid's Braid	Medium	Reinforced	Magicka
Shoulders	Druid's Braid	Light	Sturdy /Divines	Health
Chest	Wretched Vitality	Heavy	Reinforced	Health
Hands	Wretched Vitality	Heavy	Sturdy /Divines	Stamina
Belt	Wretched Vitality	Heavy	Sturdy /Divines	Magicka
Legs	Wretched Vitality	Heavy	Reinforced	Stamina
Boots	Wretched Vitality	Heavy	Reinforced	Health
Necklace	Druid's Braid	Jewelry	Harmony /Infused	Reduce Magicka Cost/Reduce Block Cost
Ring	Druid's Braid	Jewelry	Harmony /Infused	Reduce Magicka Cost
Ring	Druid's Braid	Jewelry	Harmony /Infused	Reduce Magicka Cost
Frontbar Main Hand	Druid's Braid	Any 1-handed weapon	Decisive	Hardening
Frontbar Off Hand	Druid's Braid	Shield	Sturdy /Divines	Stamina/Tri-Stat
Backbar Main Hand	Druid's Braid	Ice Staff	Infused	Crusher

ADDITIONAL INFO:

• Sets like Fortified Brass or Senchal Defender (this one is from Overland, not crafted) can be better than Druid's Braid, but Druid's Braid has the benefit of not becoming mostly useless when you stop wearing 5 pieces of it, and it's important because I can't know what content you're going to farm first. Are you going to get a Monster Set first and replace head and shoulder slots? Or are you replacing weapons and jewelry first? With Druid's Braid it doesn't matter, because it's slowly losing effectiveness piece by piece. The Druid's Braid shield will also stay relevant for you even past your beginner phase.

Gear Slot	Set	Weight/Type	Trait	Enchantment
Head	Tremorscale	Medium	Reinforced	Magicka/Tri-Stat
Shoulders	Tremorscale	Light	Divines /Sturdy	Health/Tri-Stat
Chest	Turning Tide	Heavy	Reinforced	Health/Tri-Stat
Hands	Turning Tide	Heavy	Divines /Sturdy	Stamina/Tri-Stat
Belt	Turning Tide	Heavy	Divines /Sturdy	Magicka/Tri-Stat
Legs	Turning Tide	Heavy	Reinforced	Stamina/Tri-Stat
Boots	Turning Tide	Heavy	Reinforced	Health/Tri-Stat
Necklace	Crimson Oath's Rive	Jewelry	Harmony /Infused	Reduce Magicka Cost/Reduce Block Cost
Ring	Crimson Oath's Rive	Jewelry	Harmony /Infused	Reduce Magicka Cost
Ring	Crimson Oath's Rive	Jewelry	Harmony /Infused	Reduce Magicka Cost
Frontbar Main Hand	Armor of the Trainee	Any 1-handed weapon	Decisive	Hardening
Frontbar Off Hand	Druid's Braid	Shield	Divines /Sturdy	Stamina/Tri-Stat
Backbar Main Hand	Crimson Oath's Rive	Ice Staff	Infused	Crusher

ADDITIONAL INFO:

• Replace 1 piece of Armor of the Trainee and 1 piece of Druid's Braid with Puncturing Remedy if you don't have access to Scribing and are using Pierce Armor instead of Shield Throw
• Turning Tide drops from Normal or Veteran Shipwright’s Regret
• Crimson Oath's Rive drops from Normal or Veteran The Dread Cellar
• Puncturing Remedy drops from Normal or Veteran Dragonstar Arena
• Tremorscale drops from Veteran Volenfell
• These are the best sets you can get from easy content, only the Tremorscale requires you to finish the content on Veteran difficulty but Volenfell is a base game dungeon so it’s extremely easy even in the Veteran difficulty
• Tri-Stat enchants are better than single stat ones, but they're extremely expensive. The reason I listed them here but not in the Crafted setup is because Tremorscale and Turning Tide will stay relevant past your beginner phase, so if you can afford Tri-Stat enchants you should go for it.

The dungeons in ESO are content for 4 people so the intended team comp for them is 1 Tank, 1 Healer and 2 Damage Dealers. However because of dungeons only allowing groups as small as 4, you can gain a massive DPS boost by ditching that Healer and getting a 3rd DPS, and that’s what quite a lot of people are doing, especially because many of the dungeons, especially the old ones, simply do not have any healer mechanics, you either take no damage or get one-shot as a punishment for failing a mechanic, so the healer wouldn’t have anything to do anyway.

Trash packs in dungeons are trivial compared to bosses. Your job is to first taunt the elite adds, then chain in the smaller adds and then keep up buffs and debuffs until the enemies die.

Against bosses it’s impossible to give any rough outline of what to do because they vary so much. The only thing that’ll be consistent is that you’re supposed to taunt it at the beginning and not die.

The trials in ESO are content for 12 people so the usual team comp for them is 2 Tanks, 2 Healers and 8 Damage Dealers. They tend to be harder than dungeons. Common terms used to describe the duties of each tank in a trial are “Main Tank” and “Off Tank”. Main Tank usually taunts the main boss while Off Tank takes the secondary boss or adds, though it isn’t always as simple. Because of that, Off Tank tends to have more freedom of movement so they’ll use sets such as Powerful Assault, because Main Tank might not be able to reach the entire group with it.

Some abilities provide synergies to your allies which allow them to press X (Y+B on Xbox, Triangle + Circle on PlayStation) to cause some additional effect. When you activate a synergy you can't use that same synergy again for 20 seconds. Using synergies provided by your allies will be crucial for your own sustain. The most important synergy for sustain is Combustion, from Necrotic Orb or either of its morphs. It gives you 3960 of either Stamina or Magicka, whichever is your higher Maximum Resource. The Blessed Shards synergy from Spear Shards and Holy Shards synergy from Luminous Shards have the same effect and also share the cooldown with Combustion, although Holy Shards restores both resources. For each Harmony trait on your jewelry every synergy you activate will restore 880 of Health, Magicka and Stamina. With the Undaunted Command passive synergies also restore 4% of your Health, Magicka and Stamina.

Here are the most common buffs and debuffs you are expected to keep up as a tank:

Buff/Debuff	Tooltip	Description	Common Sources
Major Breach and Minor Breach	Decreases target's armor by 5948 and 2974	Together these 2 debuffs will apply 8922 armor penetration which is roughly a 19.5% damage increase. You will be applying both of them with the Pierce Armor skill or with Elemental Susceptibility combined with Ice Elemental Blockade.	Pierce Armor, Elemental Susceptibility, Elemental Blockade
Major Resolve	Increases armor by 5948	This buff increases your armor by 5948 which provides between 9% to 15% damage mitigation depending on your current armor. It’s absolutely crucial for your survival and every class has some skill that provides Major Resolve. If you’re a Warden it’s also your duty to keep this buff up on your teammates because you have access to Expansive Frost Cloak	Balance, Expansive Frost Cloak, Hardened Armor, Cruxweaver Armor, Summoner's Armor, Boundless Storm, Restoring Focus, Shadow Barrier
Minor Resolve	Increases armor by 2974	This buff increases your armor by 2974 which provides between 4.5% to 8.2% damage mitigation depending on your current armor. Any class can easily keep it up with the Resolving Vigor skill which also an extremely strong Heal over Time	Resolving Vigor, Runeguard of Still Waters, Summoner's Armor
Major Force	Increases critical damage done by 20%	This buff increases Critical Damage by 20% which is roughly a 7.8% damage increase. You can provide 10 seconds of this buff with the Aggressive Horn ultimate. In organized groups you’ll be able to coordinate your ultimate casts with other supports (with one of you wearing the Saxhleel's Champion set) to provide a much better uptime on this buff	Aggressive Horn, Saxhleel's Champion
Minor Brittle	Increases target's critical damage taken by 10%	This buff increases Critical Damage by 10% which is roughly a 3.9% damage increase. Minor Brittle can be applied for 4 seconds when you proc the Chilled status effect while wielding an Ice Staff, so you’ll be proccing it with Destructive Clench (as long as you don’t swap off of the Ice Staff bar while the projectile is travelling), but a way more reliable way of keeping this debuff up is a skill like Rune of the Colorless Pool, which applies it for 20 seconds	proccing Chill while wielding an Ice Staff, Rune of the Colorless Pool
Minor Vulnerability	Increase target's damage taken by 5%	This buff increases enemies’ damage taken by 5%. It can be applied for 4 seconds when you proc the Concussed status effect, so you could proc it with for example a Shock enchantment on your frontbar weapon, but a way more reliable way of keeping this debuff up is a skill like Rune of the Colorless Pool, which applies it for 20 seconds	proccing Concussion, Rune of the Colorless Pool, Fetcher Infection, Lotus Fan, Unnerving Boneyard

The Scribing system is extremely useful for tanking. Here's a guide for getting through the questline and obtaining the scripts and here’s a video on how to put the Scripts together