Gear Review
Magma Incarnate is your two piece monster set to use due to the surprisingly decent uptime of Minor Courage and Minor Resolve allowing you to forgo the Yolnahkriin set while replacing Combat Prayer (if a healer is using it or if you don't have a healer) for the group.
Livewire is your primary five piece set to use as it not only offers beneficial healing received passives and a solid stat line of Max Health but gives you the ability to apply Concussion to any hostile target within 8 meters of you every 6 seconds which not only applies 4 seconds of Minor Vulnerability to trash pulls or bosses but allows you to set them Off Balance guaranteed with a Blockade of Storms for you and your group members to take advantage of by heavy attacking for even more resources if need be.
Livewire also heals for for a flat 1000 Health for every target hit by the Concussion effect so this can translate into a lot of fights healing you instead of damaging you as much.
Imperium adds even more on top of Livewire's stats with its own Healing Received and Health stats while also providing you and anyone else within 8 meters of you a damage shield that has a huge absorption value of 11,260 for a total of 6 seconds which essentially has a cooldown of 6 seconds assuming the shield isn't immediately taken away.
Imperium is quite a helpful safety net for the entire group while also letting you forgo using Barrier if you want to use a different Ultimate instead.
The lack of Bloodlord's Embrace is more than made up for by the Infused Magicka Recovery enchantments on the jewelry.
Skills Review
Bound Aegis is going to be your primary skill to cast in the event you need to block a Heavy Attack or a special ability from a boss or add that you're tanking as it adds a tremendous amount of Block mitigation. This skill has seen quite a lot of use in veteran Trials content such as Z'Maja's encounter in Cloudrest where her heavy attack was effortlessly blocked by Sorcerer tanks.
Pierce Armor is your main melee taunt to use that provides Major and Minor Breach to provide additional damage for the group.
Restraining Prison is your main CC ability to cast on adds that can be crowd controlled as this skill roots them in place while giving you Major Vitality that gives you 16% more Healing Received which does stack with your Healing Done and other Healing Received modifiers from sources such as item sets which we've talked about already.
Dark Deal is your skill to cast if you need to convert your Magicka into both Health and Stamina. It is the Sorcerer tank's primary method of gaining resources during sustain-intensive fights. It is a channeled ability so one must be careful when casting it during a flurry of attacks.
Twilight Matriarch is going to be one of several ways you can heal not just yourself but also other group members. We're going to go with this over a Clannfear due to the fact that the Matriarch can heal up to two targets and not just one.
Shield Discipline is our Ultimate to use on the sword and board bar as we can't use it on a non-one hander and shield bar and provides us an additional method of sustain by not letting us hold Block to gain Stamina back in resource intensive fights.
On the backbar, typically you will have either Hurricane or Boundless Storm. This is preference as Boundless Storm gives Major Expedition and Hurricane gives Minor Expedition with a bit more damage over time while also costing Magicka and Stamina respectively. I personally chose Hurricane due to its further range of damage which can be nice for pulling soft aggro or hitting things that may not be in my immediate vicinity unlike Boundless Storm which has a more immediate range.
This will work in favor especially with Critical Surge that heals you based on Critical Damage strikes. More hits = more chances of Critical Damage happening = more healing.
Silver Leash or Inner Fire can be your ranged Pull or Taunt for a wide variety of fights.
Blockade of Storms is primarily there to guarantee the Off Balance on Concussed targets from your Livewire.
Aggressive Horn can be exchanged with whatever other form of Ultimate but this is the Ultimate one would typically use to buff the group's damage.
Craft
Warfare
Fitness
Champion Points Review
The Warfare Slottables are quite typical for maximum mitigation as a tank with Ironclad, Unassailable, Duelist's Rebuff and Enduring Resolve.
Boundless Vitality, Fortified and Sustained by Suffering are typical Fitness slottables as well but Bracing Anchor is noteworthy here due to its 20% additional Block mitigation that stacks with your Bound Aegis activation and Block that lets you get away unscathed from some of the hardest hitting attacks in the game.
Introduction (Update 32, Deadlands)
The Thunderstruck Sorcerer tank build has been brought back fully updated for Update 32 and onwards to be incredibly simple to use not just for the tank but also helpful for the group the build is tanking for in terms of the safety and buffs it provides.
This build is NOT recommended to take to Veteran Trials.
For a beginner's guide to tanking in The Elder Scrolls Online, you can refer to this guide.
Recommended Races for this build are Imperial, Nord, Breton and Argonian. For race recommendations you can refer to this video. Note that the Attribute allocation may differ depending on your race. For the purpose of the build showcase, we used Imperial.
Recommended potion for this build is an Essence of Health (tri-stat).
Recommended food for this build is Witchmother's Potent Brew.
Recommended Mundus Stone is The Atronach.
For gameplay and the video showcasing this build, refer to the video.