Dragonknight Tank Build
Dragonknight tank builds are classic. As the easiest tank class to learn, Dragonknights come with many incredibly strong built-in options for survivability and group support, and are still considered by many to be the best tank class around even today. With a Dragonknight tank, you will be able to withstand incredible amounts of punishment and help your group dish the damage back in spades!
Gear Sets
Nazaray: This is a powerful monster set from Shipwright's Regret that boosts the duration of all Major and Minor debuffs against nearby enemies when you use an ultimate ability. Time this carefully with Aggressive Horn and Turning Tide.
Pearlescent Ward: This is a powerful set that you can get from Dreadsail Reef. The more team members are alive, the more you boost their damage, and if folk start dying, then you will boost their damage mitigation. This is an excellent and balanced set that fits well into any trial content.
Turning Tide: Another set from Shipwright's Regret that takes a top tier place amongst tank gear options. Block and bash to apply Major Vulnerability, a relatively hard to get debuff that boosts DPS by a lot.
Puncturing Remedy: This two-piece can be obtained from Dragonstar Arena, and works wonders for boosting your survivability. Every time you use your main taunt, which will be Pierce Armour, increase your resistances by a lot and heal yourself as well.
Skills
Pierce Armor: Your primary stamina-costing melee-range taunt which debuffs enemies with both Major and Minor Breach.
Heroic Slash: This provides a damage debuff, but is primarily used to generate ultimate through Major Heroism.
Igneous Shield: A great way to shrug off damage while also boosting healing power substantially. Best used right before a healing skill.
Coagulating Blood: This is your primary heal, and will save your life in a pinch, increasing in potency based on your missing health and granting Major Fortitude for extra health recovery.
Stone Giant: Where possible, keeping up three stacks of this as much as you can will increase damage output in your group massively, and is a great out-of-the-box way of supporting your group.
Aggressive Horn: Boost the damage output of your group massively by boosting their critical damage and max resources for a substantial amount of time.
Blockade of Frost: Allows you to provide a projectile damage shield to yourself and your group, while also applying Chilled, Minor Brittle, snares and immoblizations to enemies.
Engulfing Flames: FLEX - Increase the damage of fire-based abilities against targets affected by this skill by a large amount. If you don't have much fire damage in your group, switch this to something else.
Hardened Armor or Balance: Your main sources of Major Resolve, increasing your damage mitigation significantly. Keep this up at all times - Hardened Armor is perfectly fine, but should be switched to Balance when possible as this is better for a tank in every way.
Destructive Clench: With a frost staff, this allows you to taunt an enemy at range while applying Major Maim and an immobilization.
Unrelenting Grip: An important skill that allow syou to pull ranged enemies to you, controlling the battlefield, at the cost of magicka which makes it superior to Silver Leash.
Magma Shell: Provide a massive shield to all nearby allies while becoming almost immortal for the duration, making this a great way to get through tough mechanics.
Champion Points
Ironclad: This grants you a nice boost to your damage mitigation against direct damage attacks, which is one of the most common that you will encounter in PvE.
Enduring Resolve: Damage over time mitigation is very useful, since it counts for single target DoTs and area DoTs. This means that, in many cases, this will stack with Unassailable.
Duellist's Rebuff: Often stacking with Ironclad to further boost your resistance against single target attacks, this is a useful one for tanks in particular, helping to mitigate the heavy damage coming from bosses.
Unassailable: Helping you to stand in stupid for longer, Unassailable will reduce your damage taken from area attacks, helping towards taking the pressure off the healer.
Boundless Vitality: Every bit of health makes a difference, especially in some of the tougher content that The Elder Scrolls Online has to offer. This will help you bump yours up a little more, increasing your survivability.
Fortified: Similar to Boundless Vitality, one can never have enough resistances, and this will add a little extra to boost your survivability so that you can focus more on the task at hand.
Sustained by Suffering: Gaining the ability to regenerate resources faster when you have negative effects on you is just perfect for a tank, making this a smart choice.
Bracing Anchor: As a tank, you don't need to move that much, but you certainly need to block as much as possible, making this a great addition to your toolkit.
Mundus Stone
Tanks benefit incredibly well from the Atronach Mundus Stone, boosting their Magicka recovery significantly for their very important Magicka-based skills. Preserving Stamina is important, since this will be expended heavily whilst blocking.
Food Buff
Tanks benefit especially well from Orzorga's Smoked Bear Haunch, boosting all recoveries along with Max Health as well. However, it is expensive, so if you need a cost-effect option, use the Bewitched Sugar Skulls, which are also very effective.
Race
The best race to use for this build is a Nord for its higher resistances and ultimate regeneration, but Argonians, Imperials and Bretons are also excellent options for their superior survivability and sustain.
Potion
Tri-restoration potions are generally the best for any tank to run, allowing you to manage your resources perfectly. However, when you are dealing with trash mobs and the like, you won't want to waste them, so carry some trash potions around for the parts that aren't very intense.
Mortality
The Undeath passive can be tempting for tanks, but running a Vampire on all but highly specialised and rather inefficient builds is a bad idea. The amount of fire damage found in PvE content, and the high increase to standard skill costs, will make running Vampire on a PvE tank a liability.
Notes
Dragonknight Tanks are a tried and true approach to the role that have really shined from the early days of The Elder Scrolls Online. They have amazing survivability and group support tools, and are generally the easiest tank class to play. While any class can create powerful tanks, some shine more than others, and Dragonknights have proven their value time and time again.