Planar Essences for Tanking T2s

[Kwahn]

What are some opinions on essences to use for tanking T2 dungeons?

I am using a pretty standard VK/Pally/Reaver build for the most part and currently have my box filled with 6 of the lesser planar essences "Sleeping Giant". They give 7 STR, 11 END, 15 Block and 6 Earth Resist each.

Feedback is welcome Thanks!

[Greggatron]

That is pretty much the best you are going to get without doing expert rifts for 50 blue essences and raid rifts for 50 epic essences.

Start collecting those souls and do the appropriate daily for that. I see many people run the same expert 5 times (such as death) because its easy loot and then have no more souls for the next day, but if your goal is get the stones from expert/raid rifts to buy vendor essences be sure to save them for the specific daily.

[Kruunch]

What are some opinions on essences to use for tanking T2 dungeons?

I am using a pretty standard VK/Pally/Reaver build for the most part and currently have my box filled with 6 of the lesser planar essences "Sleeping Giant". They give 7 STR, 11 END, 15 Block and 6 Earth Resist each.

Feedback is welcome Thanks!

Thats more then adequate.

I prefer the +55 Endurance Greater Essence (acts as a constant heal) in one of my slots but I haven't parsed the numbers to say it's better to use.

[Corebot]

Kruunch,

when you use a + endurance buff, it tends to give you the HP added to your max, but not actually give the hp to your current life total. Does the essence proc act differently?

edit: the blocking faesource is pretty nice I use those, with the upcoming changes you can use 2 (not sure if they'll stack per say, or if they just have 2x the proc chance) or even the HoT faesource with it

[Kruunch]

Kruunch,

when you use a + endurance buff, it tends to give you the HP added to your max, but not actually give the hp to your current life total. Does the essence proc act differently?

edit: the blocking faesource is pretty nice I use those, with the upcoming changes you can use 2 (not sure if they'll stack per say, or if they just have 2x the proc chance) or even the HoT faesource with it

Yes, when your Endurance essence procs you gain the endurance and the associated HPs from that endurance gain (so basically it heals you).

Combined with other healing procs such as the Insanity Sliver (trinket from AP), you mitigate a lot of damage over the course of a fight and in low damage long fights it makes a real difference. For example, our first attempt on Bonehew in DSM turned out to be a 15 minute affair where half our party died and had to run back to rejoin the fight while I was able to tank Bonehew (and the twins) with a single healer (and at one point, with no healer for a few moments) ... but we one shotted him (sort of).

For T2s, I highly recommend it.

As for the upcoming patch and having two of them, unless Trion borks their coding (a distinct possibility) what turns into a fairly relaible ghetto heal with one Endurance proc essence, may turn into just a semi-perm HP buff (which would be less desirable here). If they mess the coding up (and many MMOs have with respect to proccing Endurance mechanics) and they BOTH provide the associated HP gain even if they overwrite eachother, then it would definitely be worth having both in.