_Tundra_

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e.g im gonna calculate what the chance is that ALL toggles drop (due to obsidian falling) with a 100-75-50 attack.

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I make it approx. 27.6%

And yes, I am bored. Since you ask...

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Only a third of the aggro, an empath healing him and he still needs dull pain a few times - oh wait, the healer was probably too busy healing the rest of the team for the damage done by the bosses he wasn't taunting.

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If I was an Empath on an 8-man Carnie mission with a Tank who only taunted Strongmen, I'd probably have better things to do than heal him. Like the tough choice between a polite lesson in the fine art of Tanking or kicking the chicken-<censored> son of a <censored>.

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The idea of reducing res magnitude is perfectly in fitting with the way the game has been heading - higher risk, more co-dependence. Of all the nerfs, this one seems least influenced by PvP (even if it is, in part), and more influenced by making the PvE game less predictable and more engaging.

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However, it did at least merit a release note. It's a big change for Scrappers and arguably a bigger change for Tanks than either the I5 defence reductions or ED, since one succesful Mez drops all defensive toggles.

I'm afraid patience with excuses about how busy everyone is has worn rather thin by this point.

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Wait until you fight some Malta with the mezzes that last for days. You will notice it then.

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Quite. One standard spawn of minions in a Heroic mission (for Malta, anyway) will be able to break mez resistances at this level - it's a bigger hit to scrapper gameplay than the I5 defence 'adjustments' or ED, to my mind.

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I use to run EE/Rooted/Rock Armor quite a bit before ED. As you said with Fault and Tremor you can keep them flipping quite nicely.


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I always forget to mention it when talking about armour-less soloing, but of course I have Ice Patch available so keeping enemies on their backs is a large part of my defensive strategy too.

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Oh it's nowhere near enough, it just takes some of the edge off. Guess we stone tanks have the advantage of 200% extra regen from rooted which is a big help (tho not as nice as the 300% we used to have). But even with that I need to be hitting Fault, Tremor and encasing people in stone constantly.

I did pop to the car park in PI when testing my new build and went against 3 LTs, a death mage and a possesed scientist - all level 50. I just stood there. Before I5 and ED, I would barely have noticed them. Took about 30 seconds or less to drop me to the red this time.

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I think this is the thing. In lots of ways I'd rather have kept the non-GA armours (although I'd always planned Tundra to be a GA tank), but a bit of testing showed that just about anything I could handle out of GA I could also handle without using my other armours - and anything my Regen + EE couldn't cope with the armours weren't sufficient for. It's a great shame, but did free up some power choices for other things. I've kept Minerals, but to be honest that's as much for sentimental reasons as anything else since it's not enough for Psi-AV tanking anymore and there's precious little reason to use it otherwise.

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Went against some Malta for the first time with Graham since I6 tonight, now as far as I recall rooted used to give a huge res to end drain? Sappers were barely noticeable… 4 shots tonight and I was out of end and perma held...

Just me or another nerf?

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Four or so shots would have done it before ED as well. It seems to be threshold based resistance - you get no End drained at all for the first few attacks, but too many close together and you get hit full force. It's happened like that ever since the End drain resistance was introduced in I4 - quite a shock the first time your End plummets.

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Has anyone gone through the free respec yet? I'm only at level 13 so I don't have the experience of some of you guys, but there seem to be a few unhappy tankers out there around the 25 and up level.

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At level 13 you almost certainly don't need to use this respec yet as you're way below the range where it would effect you. I'd suggest playing on into the 20's and only using the respec when your experience from playing suggests that you'd do better with an altered build.

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Slightly clearer (level adjusted) screen of the five/six (Darkshift and Night Helm both the same player) 50's at Blue Steel Here.

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And Blue Steel isn't looking quite so lonely for once

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Sorry I wasn't criticising your guide because it's very good but I still think it might be worth mentioning because as this change is not included in the patch notes (which is utterly unacceptable) many people will not know about it.

Of course, it's entirely up to you but a little caveat at the beginning would make an already great guide even better

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It's past its edit time limit, I'm afraid, and thanks to the patch note ommission I didn't know about the new limit when I reposted it. But like I said, thanks for mentioning it here as it's good that it gets a mention in the same thread.

Leaving it out of the patch notes is really poor, yes.

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On a full-size team it's reasonable to expect others to share aggro-control duties though

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_This_ is "simply incorrect" as it doesn't work in game. You can spout all you want about getting other tankers and whatnot but basically if there isn't one around, you're [censored]. FTR I actually really enjoyed being the tank for 8 man teams. Now that little tiny sliver of fun has been removed too.

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I didn't say find another Tank - I said someone has to share aggro control. You wouldn't expect an 8-man team to work with only one damage dealer - why should it automatically work with only one person attempting to control aggro? I agree that the cap is too low - 2 full-size spawns would make more sense - but a cap of some sort is perfectly reasonable, and a more sane response to power-herding than many of the changes to eg. Burn have been.

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You need to add something to your guide to reflect the discovery of the most recent stealth nerf to tankers - the aggro limit of 17.

Basically, aggro from a second spawn in an 8 man team is completely out of your control because you will be totally unable to taunt more than 17 enemies at a time.

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It's worth mentioning in the thread - so thanks for mentioning it. It doesn't change the tactics involved in controlling a spawn at all, though.

As above, thanks to recent changes it's worth having a second source of aggro/mob control on an 8-man team. You'll find, though, that alternating between the two spawns will still give you quite a lot of control, just nowhere near as much as you had before.

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It's all totally useless anyway because we now don't get to even make the decision to take the aggro off our teammates because of the damned aggro cap.

Tankers = pwnt by I6. Finally. They were trying hard in I5, but this just about freaking does it.

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This is simply incorrect. You will still be able to hold the aggro of an entire single spawn, and unless you're on a 7-8 man team you should be able to hold the vast majority of 2 spawns. On a full-size team it's reasonable to expect others to share aggro-control duties though, yes. Any Controller, a second Tank or several varieties of Defendr will be able to help a lot with this.

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Drop Fly. Get Leaping, because you NEED Acrobatics.

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Surely Flight pool offers the only real alternative, as Hover is also nice cheap Knockback protection? Works nicely for my flyimg DA scrapper.

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useful guide. would recommend anyone of thinkin of rollin a tank read it. i got so fed up with the amount of low damage scrankers out there i decided to roll my own tank a couple of weeks ago. plannin it a few times i only ended up with about 3 attacks

on a similiar note is it worth a tank gettin and slottin tough from the fightin pool?

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Thanks. Tough is likely to help if you can fit it in, but I have to admit I was trying to avoid making this a build guide

I'm re-posting this following the board wipe as I think it should still be useful in I6 and the Tanker forum seemed a good place for it:

Aggro and you... Tanking Suggestions for I5/I6

There have been quite a lot of posts recently about adapting builds to the changes introduced with I5 - this is not one of those, it's about the other half of being a Tank once you've taken care of your defenses. Although I'll have to refer to individual powers from time to time, this aims to be a guide to the tactical side of tanking rather than simply optimising defensess. Almost everything here was already true in I4 and now with the I5 changes to taunting it's all become a bit more important.

I should also point out that not everything in here is down to me - I've picked up a number of tips from some extremely good Tanks I've teamed with.

As ever with this sort of thing, this is all purely IMO and is a description of how I go about keeping my team alive by tanking. I'm sure there are alternative or better ways of doing things, but hopefully some of these tips will be of help to some Tanks at least. Any suggestions and improvements are very welcome.

So, a quick breakdown of tanking as I see it...

It's All About Taunting
Note: This does not mean that it's all about Taunt. Taunting is how you keep the enemy attacking you instead of the rest of your team - which is how you keep them alive. It doesn't matter how indestructible you are if the enemies are still beating up on the Blasters instead. So pretty much every other point here is about making sure that your enemies are taunted and standing in the right place.

Use Your Aura
More than ever, your PBAoE aura power - Invincibility, MudPots, Blazing Aura, Chilling Embrace (and/or Icicles) - is your best means of grabbing and holding aggro. The constant ticks of taunting from this aura will keep the attention of everything within range (normally only slightly over melee range) under most circumstances. If you're playing on higher difficulty levels, you'll want a lot of Taunt enhancers slotted here (I favour 4 in MudPots) otherwise the taunt duration will dribble away to nothing. This means that for maximum taunting you want to be surrounded. Which leads us on to...

Pick Your Spot
For any number of reasons, you want not only to attract the attention of your enemies, but to pick the spot where your team fights them as well. You'll want them to be surrounding you so that as many as possible are in your aura. You'll want them a good distance from any other groups of enemies so any knockbacks or AoEs aren't too likely to aggro another spawn. Many enemies are reluctant to close with you so once you have their attention you are likely to have to find a bit of scenery to hide behind - pillars, corners, rocks and trees are all useful - to break their line-of-sight and make them come to you. Try not to make it the corner your group are hiding behind unless you want them all to get flattened by stray AoE.

None Shall Pass!
Once you've picked the ideal spot for the fight and drawn your enemies there - keep them there! Naturally this is where controllers really come into their own, but for your part this is where you can best make use of Taunt (or Provoke). As I was saying above, you want to be surrounded and stay surrounded to Taunt as many enemies as possible - so if you see an enemy chasing off from your group to beat on a squishy, Taunt it! If a patrol turns up, Taunt it! A few minions get knocked back out of your Aura, don't chase after them - throw a Taunt after them instead. Which takes me on to...

Look At The Big Picture
Because the enemies around you are very unlikely to take you out quickly, a Tank is in a uniquely good situation to look at the whole of a fight rather than concentrating on the enemy in front of them. A huge help is learning to use your camera zoom (mouse wheel by default) and zooming a long way out so that you can see the whole fight. This way you can see any stray enemies moving around away from your main group and taunt them back in. All of this is, I guess, rather implying my next point...

Defeating Enemies Is Not Your Job
Oh, there's certainly no harm in hitting them - and some of your attacks will do very good damage. But every action you make concentrating on defeating an individual enemy is one where you aren't concentrating on aggro management. Unlike any other AT, you're much better off spreading out your attacks between as many enemies as possible rather than concentrating on finishing one off at a time. This way you taunt as many enemies as possible rather than constantly re-taunting the same one. The rest of your team are more than capable of dealing the damage to finish the enemies off - and in most cases far faster than you will. It's your job to keep them alive while they do it.

Know Your Enemy (or All Cones and AoEs Are Evil)
This one became particularly obvious when fighting Nemesis, but it's equally true for any other cone attacking enemy. Having the enemy aggroed on you doesn't help your team one bit if they're still in the range of the cone attacks being shot at you, so try to put yourself on the opposite side of the enemies from the rest of your group, at least for the alpha strike. AoEs are more difficult to deal with. If you're dealing with a whole mob of minions using AoEs constanly (I'm looking at you, Siege and Nightstar maps...) it's probably best for the squishier AT's to keep their distance. But if it's a big ol' Monster or AV it may well be better for you to keep you distance and taunt at range. They won't fire off their PBAoE attacks if you're out of range - a life saver against all the Footstompers - and and ranged AoEs that hit you shouldn't hit the rest of your team. Some AV's may well have scripted Novas which fire when they reach a given percentage of max. health

Two Tanks > Two Times The Tanking
Everything up to this point assumes there's just one Tank in the team, but what if there are two or more of you? The only thing which can normally overpower a Taunt for aggro control is another Taunt... which means that multiple Tanks can result in chaos unless you coordinate things somewhat. However, with a little communication two Tanks work better than one. The preferred method on the teams I've been on has been to have one Tank playing the immovable object role described so far, and the other acting as a secondary tank mopping up stray aggro, surrounding groups, patrols, knockback victims etc. and leading them back to the main group. It helps if the more stationary Tank is higher level - that will allow his Taunt to overpower that of the more mobile Tank and ensure that any enemies led back to the main group stay there. In addition, Stone and Inv Tanks are better suited to the stationary role - Stone because of their relatively low mobility and Inv because their defenses are a great deal stronger when surrounded by enemies (this is probably true for Ice as well, but I don't know the set as well). Anyone but Stone fulfills the mobile role well - your auras will do a lot of your work for you, but of course throwing in surgical Taunts as well will always help.

Well, there we have it so far. Hope it's of help to some and additions/suggestions will be greatly welcomed.

Thanks a lot to Chaplain for setting this up - very helpful even if just listening in.

Figured out my mic problems minutes after logging out - apparantly I talk too quietly for the default voice activation settings