Credits: [Build] Shadows Preserve Us - The Nightblade Leech Tank by Aerieth
Background of the build
When ESO was first announced, I knew I wanted to make my character into the image of my Skyrim one. Sneaky Vampire in Heavy Daedric Armor. Character that could survive pretty much anything and still be able to "go with the shadows", as the Nightingales say. Race selection was easy. Nord seemed like the toughest race out there and that's the same race I had in Skyrim. I always loved playing a Vampire, so I wanted to make it work no matter what. In the end, it became an integral part of the build. Nightblade was also a very easy choice as my class. Even though in Skyrim, I was relaying on healing spells to keep myself alive, I've always loved sneaky, rogue-ish and life stealing playstyles in games and when I saw the Siphoning Skill Line, I was sold. Instead of self healing, I went for Life Leeching.
Overview
The Leech Tank - in my opinion - is a tanking build that's very fun to play as well as effective. It has mobility, self healing, lots of damage mitigation and resource management.
To justify a build, I think it needs to do everything - the role requires - well and at least one thing extremely well. What I think the Leech Tank does extremely well is resource management and surviving long times without the healers attention. With the usage of Siphoning Attacks you can "siphon" your Magicka into Stamina and vice versa. This allows you to build around both resource pools which allows for a lot more flexibility in combat.
Here's my current stats with Tri-Food, Shadow Barrier (Passive from Shadow skill line, explained later on) and only Purple gear to show that even with mediocre stats, you'll be very efficient at end-game. These stats have tanked (as a vamp) up until Round 9 in Vet DSA. Haven't tried Round 10 yet:
My gear is far from "Best In Slot" at the moment and my stats reflect that. Regardless of the fact, the build does very well in a multitude of situations. If you got the skills, the build will have your back.
The idea behind the build is to get your effective health pool or eHP as high as possible to make your self healing more valuable. The less damage you take, the more you get out from each health point restored. Even though your maximum Magicka or Spell Power will not be that high, you'll get very high value out of your healing. Every HP regained is one point of damage mitigated. Upside with self healing being that you keep "mitigating" damage even when not taking any, as long as you're not at full HP.
The Skills
I wanted to keep myself as tanky as possible while having all the utility I'd need in any given fight. Here's what I ended up with:
Bar 1 - 1H & Shield:
This is the bar you'll probably be using most of the time. It handles tanking of groups of all sizes pretty nicely as well as has all the basic skills you need during conventional boss fights.
Pierce Armor (Puncture) is your bread and butter taunt. Costs close to nothing, debuffs your targets armor, spell resist and keeps those nasty monsters off of your group members backs. This is the main taunt you want to keep on all targets at all times, within reason of course. Also saves time and possible skill slots on your damage dealers as you'll be providing both resistance debuffs.
Siphoning Attacks is what makes this build so good. The resource management it provides is absolutely invaluable. With this specific morph you lose on the 2% of your max health on light/heavy attack, but you gain the ability to proc that 15% of your max Stamina and Magicka on any hit. It turns your other abilities from resource spenders to possible resource generators. Probably my favorite skill in the whole build. Use it. Keep it enabled at all times.
Once the laughing stock among the classes skills. This skill has come a long way since launch. With update 6, it has become one of the most efficient skills the class has. It deals AoE damage, heals you and your group members as well as procs "Shadow Barrier" awarding you 5.1k armor for 11 seconds (with 7/7 Heavy). Keep it on all the time. In addition, it also works as a movement speed buff when needed. Need to run out of red stuff? Use Refreshing Path. Doing Vet DSA and need to run away from Dwemer Centurions? Use Refreshing Path. Got loads of mobs near you and need stamina? Use Refreshing Path on them. The initial tick has a chance on each enemy hit to proc Siphoning Attacks.
Sap Essence is incredibly useful and versatile. It negates the damage reduction you get from Siphoning Attacks, deals reasonable AoE damage and heals you, your allies and buffs up your other healing spells on top of everything else. It's a bit cheaper than Refreshing Path, so when I'm out of Stamina and I need more fast, I usually use Sap Essence a time or two to proc Siphoning Attacks.
Amazing skill for a tank. Debuffs targets hit with Minor Maim (15% less damage done), which basically means that you just increased your eHP by 15%. Getting extra 15% eHP is huge for a tank. I still haven't seen evidence if the debuff works on bosses though. Some say it doesn't, while some say it does. Need to test this myself. Even if it doesn't work on bosses, the skill is a must have, based on it's other merits. It works as a Stamina Dump in fights where you have too much and also helps you siphon some of your Stamina into Magicka if needed. My advice is to keep the Ultimate Buff on at all times, as Nightblade has two amazing Ulimates to use for tanking and you want to be using them as often as possible.
By the eight! Zenimax really went serious buff mode on this Ulti in 1.6. It's basically a more powerful version of Bat Swarm. Sure it has a little less range, but that usually isn't an issue as you'll be in the middle of everything anyway. It's perfect for fights where you have more than one target. It's simply perfect for trash mobs. Go in, drop Soul Tether, stun everything, get life back, deal a huge chunk of damage in the process and give yourself time to taunt all those enemies. What's not to like? The fact that it only costs 150 Ultimate is simply perfect.
Bar 2 - 1H & Shield
This bar is mainly meant to be used as an extension to your first one as well as work as a ranged bar of sorts. Here you have your Spell Reflect, Ranged Taunt, more healing, gap closer / stun and your ultimate tanking Ultimate (pun intended).
Your other taunt. Use it if your target is far away or if you're out of Stamina. The skill isn't very efficient on your resources, but it's still a good one to have for those moments where you really need a ranged taunt.
Wait... Aerieth, why do you want the same skill on your both bars? What's the point?
Siphoning Attacks is just so good. You want it enabled at all times. As it's a toggle skill, you'll retain the effects when switching bars, if you have it on both. You don't want to be wondering in the middle of a battle if you have it on or not. This way, once you put it on, it stays on.
This is a skill I'd love to have on my main bar, but simply didn't have room for it. Quite often I switch to bar 2 just to cast this and then switch back. Great value for the cost. Deals a little damage and heals quite a lot over time.
Even though I don't use Invasion a lot, it's one of those skills you really wish you had when you don't have it. It's your only way of stunning opponents outside your Ultimate. Also great for getting out of a sticky situation. Being swarmed by mobs? Getting nuked from range? Just charge to the enemy caster stunning them and giving you a few moments to get your health and resources back again.
I really like this skill. I'd love to have it on my main bar, but yet again we run into the problem that we only have five slots per bar. Great against anything that shoots you from range, even stuns normal monsters in addition to reflecting their own spells back at them. Use it. Love it.
P.S. The sound effect you hear when reflecting a spell is hilarious.
What!? Let's just stop for a moment. 60% mitigation? Six and a Zero. Percent. For how long? 13.8 seconds. This skill is insane. It's the ultimate Ultimate for tanking. It's power is legen... wait for it... dary. Legendary. You put this down and you don't die, simple as that. It's your get out of jail free card.
Gameplay
To understand the build, you need to understand how tanking works. Your job as a tank is to make as many targets as possible to hit you instead of your group mates, so that they can focus on their own roles. On top of taking the attention of all those enemies, you need to survive. The better you survive, the more time the healer has to either deal damage or to concentrate on keeping your damage dealers alive, who in turn make sure your enemies die in a timely fashion.
What I've noticed from observing other tanking builds on all other classes is that they tend to run out of resources which in turn hinders their performance as a tank. They become unable to keep their taunts up on the enemies, unable to block and unable to dodge roll when needed.
With this particular build, you take advantage of the mixed nature of it. You use both Magicka and Stamina to their fullest, which gives you flexibility in combat. Instead of flat out not being able to do anything meaningful once you run out of Stamina, you are still able to do your job as a tank by spending Magicka instead, or in this builds case, turning Magicka into the Stamina.
So, how do I handle normal tank gameplay? Big part of every dungeon is the trash. By trash, I mean those big groups of normal monsters you need to defeat in order to reach the bosses. The trash mobs can often be as much of a pain as the bosses themselves. Here's where the Nightblade comes up on top. I get in the thick of it as my first act. I cast Refreshing Path on the enemy group, followed by a taunt on the biggest and meanest monsters. Next up is either using my Soul Tether if it's up to stun the lot of them, or Sap Essence or two, just to gain a bit more aggro on the monsters I haven't yet taunted. Then I proceed to taunt all of the remaining monsters. Also remember to keep your Heroic Slash buff running as well as light attack every time you have the chance to ensure constant generation of Ultimate. Then I start over. Refreshing Path to keep my Shadow Barrier Passive up, using Sap Essence to deal damage and heal myself and my allies, all that while refreshing taunts on everything that moves. Most of the time you want to keep your block up at all times. To mitigate as much damage as possible
Boss fights are a bit different as the mechanics of the fight dictate what you can and will be doing. Most of the time you want to keep the boss attacking you. Here's where your second ability bar comes in. If you are unable to reach the boss, you can use Inner Beast to taunt the boss from range. If the boss uses spells on you, keep refreshing Defensive Stance to reflect them back. Even in fights where I'm only facing one target, I tend to keep Swallow Souls heal up at all times. Switch bar, hit Swallow Soul and switch back to keep your Refreshing Path, Heroic Slash, Light Attack and taunt on the boss at all times. If the boss has a skill that I know is coming soon and it will deal a lot of damage to me, I save up my Ultimate before hand and drop Bolstering Darkness to breeze through it.
Aaiiee! I'm getting low on health, the healer is in trouble and the damage dealer is dead! What do I do?! Chill out, take a deep breath and focus! If you're on low health yourself, keep your block up, use Sap Essence or two, drink a potion and make sure you get all the monsters off of the Healer and the other damage dealer. If you need to, pop either Ultimate you think is better. If you need to move a lot, use Soul Tether on as many monsters as possible, as they will stay tethered to you if they stay near you. This will keep you healed for the duration as well as relieve some of the pressure by stunning the enemies. If you can be stationary, use Bolstering Darkness. You're pretty much invulnerable for the duration of the Ultimate. Even just a little healing will get and keep your health up while it's active. If you're being swarmed by normal monsters and your healer is down, make sure you get all the monsters off of your damage dealers, pop a potion and an ultimate and wait for your damage dealers to resurrect your healer.
Even though there's no AoE taunt in the game, Sap Essence will in most cases generate enough aggro to keep the monsters off your friends backs. Still, I prefer to run around taunting everything just to be safe.
P.S. Please Zenimax! Give us AoE taunt! The tanks game really needs one.
Been backtracking the ESO Lives I've missed during my few months of absence and AoE taunt was brought up in episode 21. Eric Wrobel, the lead combat designer confirmed that AoE taunts will not be coming to the game. He proceeded to explain what the idea of a tank in ESO is, so if a DPS starts whining about you not tanking all the monsters, you can link them to this:
- What a tank is supposed to do: Eric Wrobel - ESO Live 21
Gear
As I've said before, my current gear is not that good. I'm still missing one major part of the build, which is The Scourge Harvester Set. This set looks like the perfect fit for the build. It gives you more HP, increases your healing taken by 30% (includes your own heals) as well as steals health from your target. I highly recommend getting this set. Shoulders come from Undaunted Gold Chest and the Helmet drops from the last boss in Wayrest Sewers in Veteran Mode.
As for the rest of my gear:
Hist Bark is great. It's easily obtainable and gives you lots of damage mitigation. The 18% dodge is great. Don't underestimate it. Also saves you a skill slot for not having to use Blur (Hist Bark and Blur don't stack). I've gone with Hist Bark on my Chest, Boots, Pants, Sword and Shield.
Footman's Fortune is a bit tougher to get, but not hard. If you can't get this right away, I'd go for Whitestake's set instead until you have Footman's. Provides yet more mitigation and works incredibly well with Hist Bark. Since you'll be generating resources by using your skills, you can in most situations, keep your block up for the whole duration of the fight and take barely any damage. I went with Footman's Rings, Necklace, Belt and Gloves.
Champion Points
Most of the Champion Points are up to you. Go with what you feel like getting, but here's what I recommend investing in to maximize your effectiveness:
Elemental Defender can make or break your ability to tank fire heavy encounters in some of the harder places. Being a vampire has it's perks, but it can be a real pain in the *bleep* in places like Veteran City of Ash or Elden Hollow. While 10% fire damage reduction doesn't sound like much, it makes a huge difference over the course of a boss fight. Getting the 10 point passive from the constellation is also very powerful. While you won't be taking hits big enough to proc it most of the time, you can definitely use all the Magicka you can get if you do get hit hard.
Mooncalf from The Lover constellation is very good for this build. Increased Stamina regen? Yes please! While you do recover resources really well just because of the nature of the build, any extra regeneration will help in those more hectic fights. There's no such thing as having too much Stamina while tanking. But the main reason you want to invest in The Lover is the 30 point passive Synergizer. Getting two Ultimate for each Synergy you activate is great. Remember what we talked about Bolstering Darkness? You want to keep that thing up as often as possible.
There isn't really anything of great value for the build in The Mage constellations, so I'd recommend getting any passives your off-specs might need. For example, if you have a Stamina Based Damage Dealing Build as your backup build, go with The Ritual. The 30 point passive is very effective on Stamina builds (+12% Crit).
To Vamp or not to Vamp
I'm one of those people who just love the idea and lore behind Vampires in the Elder Scrolls universe. I'm fairly happy how they turned out in ESO as well. Received my "blessing" on the second day of early-access and I've never looked back, even though one could argue, that in the current patch it's useless to be one, if you're a Nightblade, as you basically have stronger versions of Vampire Skills as your Class Skills (looking at you Bat Swarm and Soul Tether).
While the increased Fire Damage taken can be a deal breaker for some, it isn't that big of a deal for a tank. You have so many ways of reducing incoming damage and huge passive damage mitigation, that most of the time the extra 40% doesn't really matter. You won't be getting killed by one hit either way.
What I absolutely love about being a Vampire - game mechanic wise - are the passives. Increased Sneak Speed from Dark Stalker doesn't help you while tanking, but it's brilliant in PvP and while leveling up or when running around questing or farming for materials. Undeath is what makes being a Vampire worth it for tanking. Extra 33% mitigation is incredibly strong for a tank. Can't tell you how many times I've just gotten "stuck" at around 30-40% HP and just couldn't die, even when I was sure that I was going to. Combine insane damage mitigation with decent self heals and a Tri-Potion and you've got something very sturdy.
Misc. Tips
Tri-Pots or Tripple Effect Potions are incredibly useful for this build as you can use all three stats to your advantage. They can be a pain to make, but I can't recommend them enough.
Tri-Food is another thing. Getting a huge boost to all of your resources is great. Always have a food buff on you when tanking
While Leveling Up / PvP
This build is excellent for solo players and group players alike. While my build was vastly different while leveling up than it is in end-game tanking, the main idea remains the same. Heal more damage than you take. The build has also evolved on the way quite a lot, I went through all skills available to Nightblade to see what worked and what didn't.
Though you won't be nuking stuff down as fast as you would with light armor and a destruction staff, you'll be nigh unkillable. There's practically no leveling content that you can't solo if you know what you're doing. Delves, Public Dungeons, you name it, you can solo it.
I recommend going through the game with five pieces of heavy armor, one light and one medium. To get the maximum effectiveness from the armor rating, go with Light Belt and Medium Gloves. This way you get to level up all three armor types while making your way to Veteran Rank 14.
Bar 1 - Sword & Board
Slot 1 - Pierce Armor (Puncture)
Slot 2 - Siphoning Attacks (Siphoning Strikes)
Slot 3 - Refreshing Path (Path of Darkness) / Sap Essence (Drain Power) - Sap Essence for a spammable self heal and AoE damage. Path for better sustain and armor buff.
Slot 4 - Swallow Soul (Strife)
Slot 5 - Degeneration (Entropy)
Ultimate - Consuming Darkness (Which ever Morph you think you need more, Bolstering for survivability and Veil for less survivability but more damage)
This is your setup for staying alive. Keep your block up when needed and Leech your way to victory! Pierce Armor makes all of your attacks hit your target harder. Siphoning Attacks make sure you don't run out of resources anytime soon. Refreshing Path procs Shadow Barrier while dealing damage and healing you. Swallow Soul increases all of your healing just by being slotted, heals you for nearly no cost. Degeneration heals you, buffs your spells and deals reasonable damage. Consuming Darkness is your backup plan. If everything goes south, just hit your Ultimate to buy yourself some time to think and to recover health and resources.
Bar 2 - Bow
Slot 1 - Dark Cloak (Shadow Cloak)
Slot 2 - Mage Light (Either Morph)
Slot 3 - Concealed Blade (Veiled Strike)
Slot 4 - Venom Arrow (Poison Arrow) / Crippling Grasp (Cripple) - Venom Arrow if you need a ranged interrupt and Crippling Grasp if you want to kite.
Slot 5 - Focused Aim (Snipe)
Ultimate - Any. Test them all out and see what works for you!
With your mixed resource investment, you can take full advantage of both sides of the spectrum. This is the bar I used while leveling as my primary bar when out of combat or when engaging enemies. With your Dark Stalker Vampire passive and Concealed Blade, you'll be practically flying around in Sneak. With the help of Dark Cloak and your inhuman Sneaking speed, you can skip almost endless groups of monsters and get out of a sticky situation when needed.
Mage Light is mainly for PvP to prevent getting enemies getting the jump on you from Sneak, but it does also increase the crit chance of your Concealed Blade, which is pretty nice as you can use Dark Cloak followed by Concealed Blade, even in combat to reapply the Stun and deal lots of damage. Sniping targets from Sneak even with your Heavy Armor really hurts. It does indeed hit like a truck.
I like this setup in PvP especially because you have your sneak, your survivability, utility and very decent burst damage to start the fight with.
Epilogue
What we have in the game of Elder Scrolls Online is something unique. The game is full of potentially fun and effective builds, just waiting to be discovered and tested. I've played a handful of MMORPG's in my time and none has come even close to the flexibility of ESO when it comes to character development.
My advice to you is as follows: Go out there. Don't be afraid to test out weird or unconventional setups. There's nothing better than figuring out a build that you love playing with and making it into something that you can use in serious gameplay. That's what ESO has been to me so far and I'm enjoying the game more and more with each coming update. Can't wait what Zenimax has in store for us in the future. Spellcrafting alone will blow the game wide open, opening previously unknown doors for all theorycrafters out there.
Source: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/162475/build-shadows-preserve-us-the-nightblade-leech-tank
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