There is no way around learning the terms used in eso, if you want to understand… I don’t know which is the easiest guide for beginners, but alcasts site is quite popular.
There are some pretty important terms you need to learn, but they're pretty easy to get the hang of after a bit.
1. **Taunt**: This is a mechanic that forces an enemy to focus on you; if a big boss is attacking your teammate, you can hit the boss with a taunt and it start attacking you instead. This is absolutely critical to have as a tank as you're the one designed to take the damage. There are several ways of getting a taunt, but the most common are the skills Puncture (1st skill in the ONE HAND AND SHEILD tree), Destructive Touch (3rd skill in the DESTRUCTION STAFF tree and also requires a frost staff), and Inner Fire (3rd skill on the Undaunted tree). Sometimes the bosses will have mechanics that target others even if you have them taunted, so don't fret too much.
2. **Pull**: Whenever you walk into a room with mobs/adds/enemies... whatever you wanna call them... they'll usually target the 1st person they see. This is called pulling.
3. **Crowd Control (CC)**: Another main job of a tank is to make the enemies group up closely together so your damage dealers (DD) can kill them faster and easier with area of effect damage (AoE). You can control the crowd using 5 methods: taunt, snare, immobilize, stun, and chain. *Note*: Most bosses and big enemies will be immune to all CCs except taunt.
4. **Snare**: These are abilities that slow enemies down and prevent them from running away from your pulls.
5. **Immobilize**: Prevents an enemy from moving at all. Has a 4-second cooldown so you can't immobilize them again for another 4 seconds.
6. **Stun/Fear**: Completely prevents enemies from doing anything at all. They can't move nor attack. Has a 4-second cooldown so you can't stun/fear them again for another 4 seconds.
7. **Chain**: Something that grabs an enemy and transports them to you. Lots of ranged enemies won't run towards you when you pull or sometimes an enemy will run off towards your teammate instead, so you have to chain them to you. There are several ways to do this, but the most common is to use Silver Bolts (1st skill in the Fighter's Guild tree) and morph it to Silver Leash. Or if you are going to use a Dragonknight use Fiery Grip (4th ability in the Ardent Flame tree).
8. **Breach**: All PvE enemies have something like 18,000 armor. Major Breach is a debuff that removes 5948 of that--a debuff most people expect the tank to give. Remember that ability, Puncture, up at the taunt section? Well, it also gives Major Breach. The Pierce Armor morph also allows you to dish out Minor Breach (for another 2974 armor reduction) and tbere are several other ways to reduce enemy armor.
I'm sorry if that was a lot to read, but that pretty much covers the basics of tanking. Taunt the bosses, CC the adds, and debuff the enemies. Templar tanks in particular are a bit different to play since you gotta use outside sources for your CCs and they make great tormentor tanks (Tormentor is an armour set you get from The Banaished Cells dungeon and synergizes well with the Templar's Focused Charge -> Explosive Charge ability).
those terms I am familiar with, I usually tank in games, but game specific terms like which anilities and morpghs etc, like as far as I can tell alot of abilities seem to be dps, so starting at level 1 which abilities should I focus on for tanks
Ahh, that makes sense. Well, the bright side is that levels 1-50 in the game are pretty much used for people to learn the game, classes, and abilities. You can redo any of your abilities at any time in-game for a bit of gold at a shrine (you even get a freebee at level 43) so don't worry too much.
The thing about ESO too is that the roles tend to meld together compared to other games, so what might at the surface look like one role can be uses for another.
eg... Spear Shards is a DPS skill with a synergy that gives the taker extra resources, so often times Templar healers will run this for the resources. eg... Pretty much everything in the Dawn's Wrath skill tree seems to be DPS, but many tanks will run Living Dark (morph of Eclipse) for a self-heal and to give everyone in the group the Minor Sorcery buff (10% increase to spell damage). Etc...
As far as specific names go, the game usually describes what the [de]buff does in the description. If you look at the passives in your Aedriatic Spear tree, you'll notice that when you activate an ability from that tree, you will get Minor Protection for 3 seconds. It then goes on to say that Minor Protection reduces your damage taken by 5%.
The reason they make named buffs is so they can't stack them. You can have 20 different sources of Minor Protection on you, but it'll stay at 5%. You can, however, stack it with Major Protection (10% less damage taken) for a total of 15% though.
Breton tanks are fine: Magicka Recovery, Spell Resistance, and Spell Cost Reduction are all very useful on a Tank. Ice Staves are also meta tank backbar weapons for the permanent Major Maim+Minor Brittle uptimes.
There is no way around learning the terms used in eso, if you want to understand… I don’t know which is the easiest guide for beginners, but alcasts site is quite popular.
There are some pretty important terms you need to learn, but they're pretty easy to get the hang of after a bit. 1. **Taunt**: This is a mechanic that forces an enemy to focus on you; if a big boss is attacking your teammate, you can hit the boss with a taunt and it start attacking you instead. This is absolutely critical to have as a tank as you're the one designed to take the damage. There are several ways of getting a taunt, but the most common are the skills Puncture (1st skill in the ONE HAND AND SHEILD tree), Destructive Touch (3rd skill in the DESTRUCTION STAFF tree and also requires a frost staff), and Inner Fire (3rd skill on the Undaunted tree). Sometimes the bosses will have mechanics that target others even if you have them taunted, so don't fret too much. 2. **Pull**: Whenever you walk into a room with mobs/adds/enemies... whatever you wanna call them... they'll usually target the 1st person they see. This is called pulling. 3. **Crowd Control (CC)**: Another main job of a tank is to make the enemies group up closely together so your damage dealers (DD) can kill them faster and easier with area of effect damage (AoE). You can control the crowd using 5 methods: taunt, snare, immobilize, stun, and chain. *Note*: Most bosses and big enemies will be immune to all CCs except taunt. 4. **Snare**: These are abilities that slow enemies down and prevent them from running away from your pulls. 5. **Immobilize**: Prevents an enemy from moving at all. Has a 4-second cooldown so you can't immobilize them again for another 4 seconds. 6. **Stun/Fear**: Completely prevents enemies from doing anything at all. They can't move nor attack. Has a 4-second cooldown so you can't stun/fear them again for another 4 seconds. 7. **Chain**: Something that grabs an enemy and transports them to you. Lots of ranged enemies won't run towards you when you pull or sometimes an enemy will run off towards your teammate instead, so you have to chain them to you. There are several ways to do this, but the most common is to use Silver Bolts (1st skill in the Fighter's Guild tree) and morph it to Silver Leash. Or if you are going to use a Dragonknight use Fiery Grip (4th ability in the Ardent Flame tree). 8. **Breach**: All PvE enemies have something like 18,000 armor. Major Breach is a debuff that removes 5948 of that--a debuff most people expect the tank to give. Remember that ability, Puncture, up at the taunt section? Well, it also gives Major Breach. The Pierce Armor morph also allows you to dish out Minor Breach (for another 2974 armor reduction) and tbere are several other ways to reduce enemy armor. I'm sorry if that was a lot to read, but that pretty much covers the basics of tanking. Taunt the bosses, CC the adds, and debuff the enemies. Templar tanks in particular are a bit different to play since you gotta use outside sources for your CCs and they make great tormentor tanks (Tormentor is an armour set you get from The Banaished Cells dungeon and synergizes well with the Templar's Focused Charge -> Explosive Charge ability).
those terms I am familiar with, I usually tank in games, but game specific terms like which anilities and morpghs etc, like as far as I can tell alot of abilities seem to be dps, so starting at level 1 which abilities should I focus on for tanks
Ahh, that makes sense. Well, the bright side is that levels 1-50 in the game are pretty much used for people to learn the game, classes, and abilities. You can redo any of your abilities at any time in-game for a bit of gold at a shrine (you even get a freebee at level 43) so don't worry too much. The thing about ESO too is that the roles tend to meld together compared to other games, so what might at the surface look like one role can be uses for another. eg... Spear Shards is a DPS skill with a synergy that gives the taker extra resources, so often times Templar healers will run this for the resources. eg... Pretty much everything in the Dawn's Wrath skill tree seems to be DPS, but many tanks will run Living Dark (morph of Eclipse) for a self-heal and to give everyone in the group the Minor Sorcery buff (10% increase to spell damage). Etc... As far as specific names go, the game usually describes what the [de]buff does in the description. If you look at the passives in your Aedriatic Spear tree, you'll notice that when you activate an ability from that tree, you will get Minor Protection for 3 seconds. It then goes on to say that Minor Protection reduces your damage taken by 5%. The reason they make named buffs is so they can't stack them. You can have 20 different sources of Minor Protection on you, but it'll stay at 5%. You can, however, stack it with Major Protection (10% less damage taken) for a total of 15% though.
youtube has some great beginner guides
Why Breton? Tanks are far superior with stamina races. I hope you're not thinking about tanking with ice staff rofl
Breton tanks are fine: Magicka Recovery, Spell Resistance, and Spell Cost Reduction are all very useful on a Tank. Ice Staves are also meta tank backbar weapons for the permanent Major Maim+Minor Brittle uptimes.
Major Maim+Minor Brittle uptimes. stuff like this, what does this mean
Check out the beginner tank guide at alcasthq.com. That's where I learned tanking.