would a sorcerer in heavy armor be as good at tanking as a templar or a dragonknight at tanking?

Absolutely. You could also mix in a little light armor for spells. I'd recommend that for any class tank though.

Of course. Just pump every level into health and have at it.

I would not pump every level into health because you get diminishing returns.

Yeah you'll still need stamina and magic for damage and active abilities.

That's only if you implement health enchantments as well.

You can pump every level into health and still hit the softcap for Magicka with enchantments.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1490136-49-points-in-hp-all-enchants-in-magic-magicka-overcharged/

Outside of solo play, the job of "tanking" is to absorb hits, both in pvp and pve. Yes, you can dodge, apply CC, whatever, but a high health tank will still be more effective in that role than a low health tank.

I agree with Jesuis here. The magicka/stamina from each level-up will likely be enough to still throw out the needed crystal shard, puncture, whatever. If not, then just apply enchants to cover the gaps.

You can use the summoning skill line (forgot the exact name) to summon things and help tanking adds. They do keep aggro on decent lvl.

Daedric Summoning.
I'd recommend Storm Calling myself but that would work just fine.

In many cases in TES (and for that matter, other recent games), it's less about absorbing the hits and more about misdirecting the hits so that no one takes the damage. (Very often this comes down to the fact that no one CAN withstand the damage, no matter how health-focused they are.)

Since TES doesn't give anyone an artificial means of forcing every creature to attack them all the time (unlike conventional MMO tanks), the would-be tank in TES also has to have enough offense to matter. This is a more complex (but also easier to accommodate) consideration in that non-tanks don't go splat the instant something looks at them funny - everyone can handle some monstrous attention, even from "boss" types, and might well need to do so from time to time - but it makes all-health all-durability "tanking" a much less effective approach.

I would think you'd have to take into account skill lines, also. Are you using the The One-handed and Shield or Destruction Staff skill line? Also, it seems the Templar and Dragonknight have more/better inherent "tanking" skill lines than the Sorcerer. So, I would guess that all things being equal, i.e. heavy armor and one-handed and shield, etc., a Templar or Dragonknight tank build will have the edge over a Sorcerer. The Sorcerer does have a couple of damage reduction type abilities, but it feels like they're meant more for survivability during questing type gameplay rather than full blown dungeon boss tanking. I freely admit I could be wrong, and I would be happy if I am because I like the idea of being able to really be whatever kind of tank I want. But it seems, from just reading the class and weapon skill lines, a Templar or Dragonknight using the One-handed and Shield weapon skill line would make better tanks. Here are some links to skills:

http://tamrielfoundry.com/weapons/

http://tamrielfoundry.com/sorcerer/

http://tamrielfoundry.com/dragonknight/

http://tamrielfoundry.com/templar/

You overestimate the average PvPer's ability to ignore the guy in full plate and attack the squishies. Which isn't very high

Yes, for end-game PvE, I don't know how it will play out. Personally I am not as confident as some of you are, but regardless higher health is still higher health.

Jesuis's point wasn't completely ignoring non-health attributes, it was that even with focusing on only health you will still have plenty of magicka/stamina to pull from.

Another way to word it, true for both PvP and Pve: As long as it is more effective for one player to sacrifice potential dps/heals than all players, the game model will still exist.

They certainly have a fair share tank friendly tricks. A nice defense buff on both the lightning and summon trees. Some nice tricks for disrupting targets and self healing in the Dark Magic tree. If played smart you might even be able to some tanky tricks with the summon.

Actually I'm planning on making my main tank a Sorcerer. They and Dragon Knights look like the best choices for tanks IMO.

Maybe just negligibly lower than a DK tank but it can work very well. One of my friends tried it in beta and did fantastic.

I can see some skills that a very much appropriate for a tank in the sorcerer skill list. Pvp would also be fun, since if people ignore the heavy armor guy with a shield you can bust out a myriad of crowd control skills available to the sorcerer. I'm going to definitely try a Battle-Mage tank build.

Playing any particular role (which are not as clear-cut to start with) is about finding a good synergy among the abilities available to you, and that can be done with any class.

That's what I'm going to play as. They actually combine very well, here's some examples for tanking skills from the sorcerer tree:

Storm Calling:

• [Active] Lightning Form – Wrap yourself in electrical currents, increasing your damage reduction for a short duration while dealing shock damage to all nearby enemies.

Dark Magic:

• [Active] Dark Exchange – Channel dark magic, restoring your own Health and Magicka at the cost of Stamina.
• [Passive] Blood Magic – Hitting an enemy with any Dark Magic skill heals you for a small amount.

Daedric Summoning:

[Active] Summon Winged Twilight – Summon a Winged Twilight to attack nearby enemies; the maximum Magicka of the caster is reduced by a small amount while the Twilight is alive (You can upgrade this so that it heals you in fights too)

[Active] Bound Armor – Summon magical armor. While toggled gain increased Armor at the expense of Magicka regeneration

[Active] Conjured Ward – Create a damage shield on yourself and your summoned creatures, absorbing a percentage of the damage take

[Passive] Daedric Protection – Increases your health regeneration while any summoning ability is slotted

All of these abilities are known to the public and taken from here /2013/09/skill-overview-sorcerer/

NDA was lIfted FYI, no need for publicly released info anymore. Just in case you didn't know.

On topic though: it sounds well on paper, but from when I tested it similar to that build there were still great magic a issues. It will probably be solved at a higher level with enchants and stuff.