EnricoDandolo–03/12/2018
and “don’t run that build”
Thallassa–03/12/2018
but general rule of thumb:
- resist cap is 32k. Most tanks shoot for around 25-29k buffed (remember major ward/resolve increases resists by 5280, you will always run an ability that gives those).
- Block cost reduction is your friend. Run block cost reduction enchants on jewelry (in some cases feat cost reduction or magicka regen might be ok, but block cost reduction is the most broadly available). Put cp in to block cost reduction first (also helps getting sweet sweet loot from treasure hunter). Most tanks run sturdy on all small pieces (shoulders/hands/waist/feet) and many tanks run sturdy on large pieces as well (I personally run infused on large pieces but the math works out either way).
- Eat tristat food.
- Typically you want to shoot for around 32-35k health for most dungeons, vHoF and vBRF require more like 42-45k health for some fights. Within that range more health can help especially on fights you’re not sure about.
- Typically you want to shoot for, at a minimum, 17-18k mag and more stam than mag. I personally stack stam and have it at around 26-30k, but more than 26k is actually not beneficial.
- Your stam doesn’t regen when blocking with a sword and shield and your mag doesnt’ regen when blocking with an ice staff. So don’t stack stam regen, it’s useless. Instead focus on abilities that give stamina back where possible. Magicka regen on the other hand is very useful – as a DK most of your utility and self buffs cost magicka, but your relatively low magicka pool means that you can’t cast that many spells. I think DK tanks run around 1000 magregen and almost all run the mag regen mundus stone.
ifarmpandas–03/12/2018
resist cap is 33k 
Thallassa–03/12/2018
You should always run at least 5 heavy pieces. You want sword and shield on at least one bar, both bars is easiest/most meta build but some people enjoy running staff backbar. If you have undaunted mettle passive running one medium and one light piece (usually in the monster set) can be helpful
Good crafted sets:
- Hist bark, very good survivability
- Torug’s pact, decent tank stats but the 5pc bonus is where it shines. Tanks second job is to buff allies as much as possible, the biggest buff you can bring is decreasing the enemy’s resistences. Crusher enchant decreases resistences by a lot and torug’s buffs that. It actually is a substantial group dps increase even more so in 4-mans and unorganized groups if you are good about keeping the enchant up as much as possible.
Some people also recommend seducer’s for the mag regen. I might even suggest kagrenac’s for… certain groups. Remember you can only run one crafted set (until Summerset and jewelrycrafting)
ifarmpandas–03/12/2018
kagrenac for every pug 
the @GlaciesGlace special
GlaciesGlace–03/12/2018
Its true
Its the best set for pugging
especially on magplar
Thallassa–03/12/2018
Good overland sets (can farm these or buy them on guild store).
- Dragon: Decreases ult cost by 15% (remember your ult, aggressive warhorn, buffs the whole group and also restores a shitton of resources to you as a DK).
- Plague Doctor: shitton of max health. I use this set to get to 40k+ health for fights when that’s needed.
- footman – not actually that good a set but can be had cheaply and is decent survivability for a new tank.
- livewire – same deal, lots of health
- greenpact – pretty meh imo but… very cheap.
- Grace of Gloom (summerset set) this looks like decent survivability
GlaciesGlace–03/12/2018
also Werewolf Hide for PVP
just good to keep if you come across any
Thallassa–03/12/2018
Good dungeon sets (can farm these very easily in 4-man dungeons)
- ebon armory: increases the health of your whole group by 1k. Keeps your puggies alive!
- leeching plate (not so easy to farm, not as good as ebon)
EnricoDandolo–03/12/2018
shout-out to my darling Bahraha’s Curse
Thallassa–03/12/2018
Good trials sets:
- alkosh: when you use a synergy decrease nearby enemies resistences by a fuckton, this is basically required for serious trials but you also gotta do nMoL to get it.
aaand that’s pretty much it. There are many other sets that are good situationally or for totally different builds (like PvP)
but these are the meta sets and they’re pretty much meta for a reason.
I personally run ebon/dragon, dragon/plague, ebon/alkosh, or ebon/plague, depending on what challenge I’m facing that day I have been too lazy to craft torugs but if another tank was running ebon I would probably need it (for trials).
I have been too lazy to craft torugs but if another tank was running ebon I would probably need it (for trials).Thallassa–03/12/2018
Oh, yeah monster sets (definitely don’t try for these until cp160).
- Bloodspawn: tons of ult gen, also increases your resistences (will put you over cap and uptime is shit so don’t worry about it) but ult gen is great
- Lord Warden increases you and your group’s resistences as long a syou stay in a certain (fairly large) area. Great for group surviviability especially on “stack and burn” fights.
- Chudan: pretty terrible but meh it saves you an ability slot.
- earthgore – useful when there’s ground aoes for it to eat.
- Swarm mother – for non-DK Tanks (dks use chains)
- running 2 pieces of different sets that both give magicka recovery or max stam/mag on the 1 pc bonus. (kind of weird but people do it).
- bogdan – more consistent healing than earthgore
- engine guardian – tons of sustain for when there’s no healer support
ABILITIES
Just gonna go by skill line here to keep it organized.
- engulfing flames (firey breath morph) – increasing burning damage can increase group dps quite a bit. Flex ability for certain raid comps.
- unrelenting grip (fiery grip morph) – crucial ability for add management and keeping adds stacked (your #2 priority after “not dying”). Also handy for free deeps when you haave nothing else to do.
- dragonknight standard – decent ot run before you get warhorn.
- hardened armor – gives you that major resolve/major ward, also give syou a neat damage shield and casting it increases healing recieved
- chocking talons: crucial for add management, also makes adds do less damage.
- Green dragon blood: super nice self-healing
- Reflective scale: Not crucial but very useful in some fights (and of course in pvp).
- Deep breath: aoe interrupt, useful in some fights
- igneous weapons: for when your lazy 4-mans don’t want to run spell power/weapon power pots
- igneous shield: shields your whole group, very useful, also procs “helping hands” which restores stamina.
weapons:
- pierce armor: your bread and butter, it is a taunt, it applies major fracture/breach, what more could you want in an ability. You could fill your bars with only this and it would be ok.
- heroic slash: reduces enemy damage done and more importantly gives you ult gen. ult gen = great
- absorb magic: pretty nice shield for certain high-magic-damage fights, but also reduces block cost even more which is helpful (especially if you don’t have all sturdy pieces)
Some builds run resto or destro (ice or lightning) back bar as previously mentioned. In this case you would run wall of elements (very high enchant proc chance as well as debuffing enemies a lot) ice back bar is useful because you can use it to block but this requires a totally different build setup than I recommended. lightning backbar makes enemies take more damage which is super handy (however healers/dps can also provide this debuff, just depends on group comp).
armor abilities: max out heavy armor passives, immovable ability is also helpful in some situations. You can no longer use armor abilities unless you have 5 pieces of that armor slotted, so don’t bother skilling evasion anymore.
fighter’s guild: grab the banish the wicked passive. ULT GEN.
mage’s guild:
- Balance (equilibrium morph) – this is a useful tool for magicka management if you trust yoru healer and also gives major resolve/major ward (alternative to hardened armor).
undaunted:
- Inner rage, this is ranged taunt, it is very useful.
- blood altar/orb some tanks run this for more group healing/resource regen especially if running a 2 tank 1 heals comp (dunno why people do this but they do). Also get all the undaunted passives, they are wonderful.
EnricoDandolo–03/12/2018
can also run Orbs if you can afford them
help out the group a bit more
GlaciesGlace–03/12/2018
also the rune from fighter’s guild has some use on fights where you need to roll a lot as a tank
reduces your roll to almost nothing
Thallassa–03/12/2018
alliance war:
- Aggressive warhorn, this is your bread and butter ult, increases group stats and critical damage done which = more dps
- vigor, this is group healign that scales with stam, very handy
- caltrops, not that useful for dk tanks but can help in very spread out aoe pulls
- purge, some fights require tanks to purge as well as healers (go for efficient morph)
- Guard, gives your squishies minor force = more deeps
Get the alchemy and provisioning increased duration passives as well when you can
ifarmpandas–03/12/2018
play a warden and self purge
Thallassa–03/12/2018
in hof tanks purge gorup
very important if healer eats the floor
pawsss–03/12/2018
^
ifarmpandas–03/12/2018
wouldnt a random magdps make more sense? 
Thallassa–03/12/2018
definitely the difference between “healer dead, lets get them up” and “oh the group wiped”
GlaciesGlace–03/12/2018
purge also gives you some mag regen with passives
ifarmpandas–03/12/2018
or do you not have to spam it
Thallassa–03/12/2018
10%… I guess that’s ok
ifarmpandas–03/12/2018
10% if you can get 10 ranks
GlaciesGlace–03/12/2018
its handy at least, thought I’d mention that
Thallassa–03/12/2018
you don’t have to spam it, it’s more of “uh oh”
but if a magdps is spamming purge that just make the fight take a lot longer
I did that once and got told not to 
(I of course only have purge on my magsorc)
enchants and attributes
do a mix of mag, stam, and health on enchants and attributes to get to the targets. Ideally you run tristat glyphs (which give all 3), it will give you the highest resources in the end, but they are very expensive (15k/slot) so don’t bother until you’re more established.
crusher enchant on weapons of course, and block cost reduction on jewelry
fioskal–03/12/2018
i use a couple tristat the rest health
Thallassa–03/12/2018
I use tristat on large/infused and… yeah, rest are health
but when I was poor I ran health on like 3 pieces and rest a mix of mag and stam
Thallassa's Thoughts 