BunnyAnomaly

Not really. Damage wise they appear very close but in practice War Mace has a significant edge.

The first few powers are very very similar. However once you get past build up:

Clobber >>> Swoop. More damage, shorter animation. Put together Clobber has about double the DPS that Swoop has. Further, Clobber has 100% chance of a stun, Swoop has only a 70% chance of a knockup.

Whirling Mace = Whirling Axe. Mace does more damage, Axe has slightly higher chance to inflict a CC. I'd call it even.

Shatter > Cleave. Cleave does edge it in total damage but has higher endurance and recharge for very little extra damge. What's worse is that Cleave has a pitiful 10 degree arc vs Shatter with a 45 degree arc. You're going to be hitting a lot more with Shatter hence you'll do more damage with it. Further, Shatter has a 100% chance of applying a knockup, Cleave only an 80% chance of doing the same.

Crowd Control >>> Pendulum. Crowd Control hits 10 targets instead of 5. Crowd Control trumps Pendulum just on his basis alone. But it has a few other things going for it too. It has a shorter recharge, lower endurance cost and 100% chance of appying Knockdown. Pendulum has a meager 50% chance. Pendulum does more damage but the difference is not significant (to me!).

If you look straight down the numbers, the two sets are nearly identical in damage. War Mace however has a greatly superior single target attack in Clobber, better arcs and targets affected in its AOEs, and Crowd Control is like an underappreciated Foot Stomp in the set. It's just *that* good. Great damage, completely spammable, 100% knockdown for mitigation.

I really can't stand this kind of thinking anymore. Not what you propose, that is excellent. But the thinking that a Tank just holds aggro.

Anyway, if you are going in a buff heavy group you should just play a Brute. You'll be nearly as tough as the Tank but do better damage by absorbing the alpha. If you are insistent on playing a Tank then your main benefits over the other melee classes are largely irrelevant, but I would suggest that you go for an AOE heavy secondary. Resistance debuffs are nice but on a good team you can defeat a spawn in 3 seconds anyway so you might as well just jump in and footstomp/fire sword circle because debuffing them for the remaining 10% of their life isn't actually doing anything noteworthy. Consider that it takes time to animate the attack and put the -res debuff on them, then consider the rest of your team attacking them at the same time. If you've already done 90% of the damage to the mobs then your 10% debuff will effectively deal 1% damage (by reducing their 10% health to 9%). Building around that 1% is of questionable value. Especially if that 1% is only on a chance to proc.

It would be nice against AVs however... not that you'll be challenged by them anyway in a group with a lot of support. This argument has a flaw in that in a group with lots of support you can do whatever you want because you're never going to be challenged

Touching back on the first group: A well built tanker with good recharge and the right specs can decimate whole spawns in very very short order. I despair when I hear about taunt bots and it is from these kinds of builds that Tankers get a poor name. Tanks are quite capable of respectable damage.

Sadly I still haven't understood in any way how come there are Void Seekers just hanging around in random mobs of ... anything. Everything. If it does make sense then I haven't stumbled across the storyline that makes this any less ridiculous.

Presumably if he's kicking people he's the team leader so whatever he says is fine.

If you don't like it, leave.

However I presume you are trying to find something wrong in whatever his instructions are.

You're missing a competent group.

Couple of quick things I would look at.

Don't take Jab! It's junk. Between Punch, Haymaker, Burn, Footstomp, PPP AOEs and possibly Air Superiority (mmm!) you have many more attacks than you can ever use. That leads me onto...

Take Mu Lightning in this build! It does a lot more damage than Jab, Punch or Boxing. In fact it does twice the base damage of Jab. So when you get rid of Jab you have opened up more slots for this! It can be given set bonuses with +6.25% recharge quite nicely, which doesn't compete so much with the rest of your 5% recharges. That leads me onto...

You have exceeded the 5% recharge limit. 4x Crushing Impact, Doctored Wounds & Obliteration.

I'd highly recommend Tough and probably Weave too.

You can get away with less slots in your resist shields by not using a full Endurance and instead going for Resist/Recharge. You lose 0.4% resistance and 0.04 end/second but you save a slot by doing so.

Acrobatics isn't really needed so much. I think from memory just even one of those expensive Obliterations is more costly than the knockback IO and this will save you choices and endurance here again.

Ummm that's what I see so far

Pretty sure you just confirmed what I just wrote? Hence why I looked and saw the -40% and wondered why I wasn't resisting it?

I seem to recall that defence debuffs are shown at their reduced amount?

Tested this just then.

Real numbers show full values of 40% debuff however the combat attributes are inconsistent in their displaying.

For instance:
Smashing Resistance: 32.91%
Tough: 16.62%
Fire Shied: 35.46%
Sonic Grenade: -40%

So it displays -40% on both the power icon and the combat attributes but the actual effect is reduced by the resistance. That's how every time I clicked the power I was wondering why it stated the full amount when I should have been resisting it.

I don't believe that resistance actually resists debuffs.

Reason: I get the same debuff amount on my resistance based toons as I do on my defence based toons.

I think it got repeated until it became truth, or that every time I look I just so happen to be facing an unresistable debuff.

They also have an AOE -resist debuff that doesn't require you to be hit by it. It emanated from wherever it lands. It also stacks. Stand amongst 3 or 4 of them and you'll die in a heartbeat.