Welcome to another installment of a segment where we dive into one Elder Scrolls Online’s many Sets, and explore what sort of Builds you can make. Not only will we show you how to get the most from these Sets, but we’ll explain where to get them, what requirements there are to obtain them (if any), and everything else you could possibly want to know about them. In this article we take a look at Leeching Plate Set which deals damage and heals at the same time.

Introduction To Leeching Plate Set

This set was added to the game with Imperial City Expansion that launched in September of 2015. It added new dungeons White-Gold Tower and Imperial City Prison, the new PvP zone Imperial Sewers, and introduced new Tel-Var Stones currency. Leeching Plate drops from Normal and Veteran Imperial City Prison Dungeon and each set item is bind on pickup, meaning you will have to run the Dungeon to obtain it. You can acquire Heavy Armor, weapons and jewelry of this Set, and they are in the Xivkyn Motif style. This Style is divided into several motif book chapters and all of them can be found in Trophy Vaults.

Weapon and Armor Traits are random, meaning you are likely to have to farm pieces for different Traits. This is a Heavy Set so enchantments on Armor and Weapon pieces are Max Health and Absorb Health. Jewelry comes with Healthy Traits and Health Recovery Enchantments. Keep in mind that you can use Transmutation to change Traits if you wish, however the Summerset expansion is needed to change the Traits on Jewelry, along with 50 Transmute Crystals.

Leeching Plate adds 1206 Max Health and 8% Healing Taken with 4 pieces equipped. The 5 piece set bonus grants an 8% chance to summon a cloud that does Poison Damage every second and heals for 100% of damage caused. This set is meant for tanks due to the Healing Taken and  a 5 piece bonus that suits every tank out there.

Healing Done, Healing Taken and Healing Received Information

Leeching Plate increases Healing Taken. This is one factor involved in calculating total healing, but there are others such as Healing Received and Healing Done. There isn’t a lot of information out there on how this all works, so I’ll note it here for convenience. The formula to figure out how much healing you will get is as follows: (Note that Healing Done, Healing Taken and Healing Received all affect the healing of Potions as well)

Healing = Skill Value * Healing Done * Healing Taken * Healing Received

This formula allows us to calculate just how much healing a Skill can do based on a number of factors. Since tooltips reflect the changes of Healing Done already, you can take the Tooltip * Healing Taken * Healing Received to get the actual number the Skill will do. You can use this formula to theory craft just exactly how much healing you can get from Skills this way. Let’s do an example:

• Let’s say you want to calculate how much healing Breath of Life would heal you with a tooltip value of 7703. Let’s say your Healing Done is 25%, your Healing Taken is 16% (from Jailer’s Tenacity and Rapid Mending) and your Healing Received is +30%, since you were hit for a quarter of your Health in one attack. You would take 7703 * 1.16 * 1.30 and you would get 11616. You do not need to factor in Healing Done here, as the game already does that for you on the tooltip.

Things That Grant Healing Done

• Blessed – Located in The Apprentice Champion Tree (+1-15%)
• Minor Mending – Skills and Sets grant this (+8%)
• Major Mending – Skills and Sets grant this (+25%)
• Sets – Certain Sets have bonuses to Healing Done (+2%)
• Argonian – Racial passive (+1%/3%/5%)
• Powered Weapon Trait – (+9%)
• Combat Medic – (+10%/20%)
• The Ritual Mundus – (+10-15%)

Things That Grant Healing Taken

• Sets – Many tank Sets have this as a bonus (+4%)

Things That Grant Healing Received

• Rapid Mending – Heavy Armor Passive Skill (+4%/8%)
• Quick Recovery – Located in The Lord Champion Tree (+1-15%)
• Minor Vitality – There are many Skills that provide this bonus, a long with one Set.
• Major Vitality – There are a few Skills that provide this bonus, and this Set.
• Argonian – Racial passive (+1%/3%/5%)
• Orc – Racial passive (+1%/3%/5%)
• Sanctuary Set – (+12%)
• Burning Heart – (+6%/12%)

What You Need To Know About This Set

How this set works is whenever you take Health damage or damage to a Damage Shield, there is an 8% chance a leeching cloud will spawn that does Poison Damage to enemies and heals for 100% of damage caused. The cloud has a 4m radius and inflicts poison damage every second for 5 seconds. The cloud spawns beneath the enemy that proced it and stays at that spot for 5 secs. To receive heals and enemy needs to receive poison damage from that cloud, meaning it must not move away from it. The cloud hits every enemy that is inside the radius and you are healed for every enemy hit. More enemies hit by the cloud equals more heals, but only one cloud can be active at the same time.

Poison tooltip damage can be increased to 1626 by putting 100 points into the Master-at-Arms and Mighty Champion Skills, but Thaumaturge has no effect on damage. Note that, since the damage you deal is coming from a set, it cannot critically strike.

It says healing can heal for 100% damage caused but that is without Healing Taken, Healing Received and Healing Done bonuses calculated into it. That leads to insane healing potential that can make your tank immortal. It depends on the build how far these heals can go but you can increase it through Quick Recovery, Blessed, Minor/Major Mending and Minor/Major Vitality.

All of these stack and this can lead to incredible heals. Note that these heals cannot critically strike either, since they are coming from a set. Due to many things changing quickly, different point distribution and active buffs it is hard to give some exact heal numbers. While doing around 1k poison damage, I’ve managed to get around 3-4k heals per sec without buffs. However, those same heals sometimes went up to 7-10k per sec while poison damage stayed at 1k  due to Vitality and Mending buffs activating.

Notes for PvE Players

Leeching Plate is a set for Tanks only, because it increases survivability by a lot, but doesn’t do much in the way of damage. It is a selfish set so to be proper tank it is best paired with another set that provides the team with some bonuses. Brands of the Imprerium, Ebon Armory, Roar of Alkosh or Aegis of Galenwe are great choices amongst many others. While sets like Mark of the Pariah will make you immortal combined with Leeching Plate, such survivability becomes detrimental to your team since it is often overkill, and you can offer much better bonuses to them. Such sets become less needed the better you become at staying alive, and the more experience you gain as a tank.

If you need more survivability, Scourge Harvester will provide you with more insane self heals that would take you beyond immortality when combined with Leeching Plate. There is no need for such sustain, though. Instead something like Lord Warden to increase the team’s resistance or Blood Spawn to get to Ultimate that would help the team faster are recommended. Thurvokun is also a great Monster Helm Set for putting Minor Maim on nearby enemies.

Using Leeching Plate needs optimization by spreading points across Mighty, Master-at-Arms, Blessed and Quick Recovery. That way heals from the set will be so significant, healers won’t even have to worry about healing you for the most part. Also anytime healers heal you, it will be a significant number due to Quick Recovery, and Healing Taken bonuses from the Set. To maximize effectiveness of these heals, use any ability that provides Vitality and/or Mending buffs. For example, using abilities such as Ritual of Retribution or Igneous Shield to have Mending buff at all times active is highly recommended so that when Leeching Plate procs, it heals for even more. The Mundus Stone: The Ritual is recommended with Leeching Plate to increase healing even further to up to 15%.

Notes for PvP Players

Leeching Plate is not that useful in PvP, because although you will get some heals from it when the cloud spawns beneath the player, they will move rather quickly away from it unless immobilized or stunned. Additionally the Set has only an 8% chance to spawn, so stunning or immobilizing an enemy at the same time would be hard to accomplish. You have to rely on RNG to be on your side which is not comforting. So for the most part you can get a heal from 1 tick until players move away from the cloud.

If however, you insist on using it, you will want to be sure to position yourself somewhere enemy players must stand. This would be places like breaches of Keeps, or the pins inside, where players have no choice but to come there. This makes this more of a defensive set, or one that is best used during Sieges. If that is not your style of play then you will not find this Set effective, and are better off going with something else.

Final Verdict

Leeching Plate is a tanking set that is going to be used only in PvE 99% of the time, and it can make you almost immortal in any content. That is why pairing it with something that provides support to other team members is most beneficial, because it takes care of your survivability needs on its own when optimized. In solo play it can be used with any role due to the fact that you can outlast powerful enemies this way with poison damage and heals at the same time. In PvP the 5 piece set bonus is not overly useful, because you have to be positioned perfectly and have the right supporting cast to make it worth it.

Leeching Plate is an amazing PvE tanking set that can be used in almost every content due to the insane survivability that it provides, even with slight optimization. Highly recommended to new tanks or for those running in PUG groups where you never know what you’re going to get.

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Stay tuned as I’ll be covering the rest of the ESO Sets, and be sure to check out our other ESO Guides!