Call Me Awesome

I'm going to take a step back here a moment on the discussion of a team tanker. In my opinion in order to be a good team tank you should control the pace of the team from group to group, attract and hold at least most of the aggro, have enough durability to survive and enough damage output to contribute to the team's kill speed.

That's a pretty simple template in theory; the practice is a good bit tougher as I'm sure any of my fellow experienced tankers can attest. In my experience where most tankers fall short is in pacing, or keeping the team moving efficiently from group to group and in aggro control. There isn't a tanker combination out there that if built well doesn't have enough durability and damage. Yes, some are tougher than others but the biggest problem I see, regardless of powerset, is setting the pace and controlling aggro.

Being a good team tank really isn't about powers, it's about tactics. With that said yes, there are primaries that are easier to tank with than others. Ice is probably the easiest to manage aggro with it's half second tic rate on it's aura, it snags attention instantly and holds it like glue. Durability wise it's probably about average or below on SO enhancements and a bit above average when soft capped. Shield is arguably the highest damage primary with it's damage boosting aura and Shield Charge; it's also highly durable on minimal enhancement. Invuln is my favorite all around primary; on SO enhancements it's competent; built to the soft cap it's second only to Stone in durability with no drawbacks. WP has impressive durability but is the hardest primary to manage aggro with due to it's nearly nonexistent aggro aura (1.5 second duration vs a MINIMUM of 14 seconds for all other tankers).

Your easiest choices to tank and hold aggro with are Invuln and Shield in my opinion, both offer very good durability with very good aggro management.

I do have an old Fire/Fire tanker in the mid-30's but I haven't played him to any extent in years. I do remember finding him fairly squishy, but I hadn't put anything into an IO build. I know Severe has a Fire/Fire that works well but I also have some idea of just how much inf he's sunk into it to get to that point.

On the secondary front your first question is "Does this primary need any additional mitigation?". If so then Stone Melee, Mace, Ice Melee and Dark Melee would be good choices since all of them offer mitigation in knockdown, stun and healing. If not then your next question would be single target or AOE damage. For ST good choices would be Dark, Stone, Mace and Super Strength. For AOE the top choices are Fire Melee and Electric Melee.

In any case what teams are really looking for in a tanker is the player, not the powerset. Learn how to really tank and it won't matter a lot what sets you try.

I've had dual monitors on my desktop machine for around 10 years now; I feel cramped when I'm on my laptop or another machine with only one. I don't run COH on both monitors though, I have it running on the left screen while I have Herostats, Ventrilo and sometimes a web browser on the other. If I'm working a respec then Mid's is on the right side monitor while COH is on the left.

Once you get used to dual monitors you REALLY miss them when you don't have them available.

Well, from issue 6 until issue 13 I had Aid Self on CMA, my Inv/Stone tanker in place of the res energies & res elements passives; slotted up it provided considerably greater mitigation. I dropped it with my respec into a soft capped build with issue 13 and didn't really miss it. With the inherent fitness of issue 19 I added it back into my build and it's useful for really tough content like unassisted tanking Lord Recluse on the STF... I don't need to carry many greens anymore.

With some slotting it provides ~40% of healing available every 10 seconds or so. Slot an interrupt reducer or two and once you get your timing down you can fire it off between tics of DOT from caltrops. That's rather a lot of mitigation available to you.

On CMA I only found a couple of extra slots so I frankenslotted Heal/Recharge IO's and didn't add any interrupt. It does get interrupted on occasion but with a soft capped build it's fairly reliable, and if you CAN'T get it to fire that's what the insp tray is for.

I went with Inv/Stone way back in issue 3 and it's still one of my favorite characters. Good ST damage, two AOE knockdown attention-getters one of which does damage and a ton of mitigation. /SS is of course the classic pairing; and there's a reason for that. /Fire will offer good damage at the expense of mitigation... but a mature Inv isn't in real need of mitigation. /Dark works well and arguably provides the most durability yet it's highly ST focused. Really Inv should pair well with any secondary so pick one that appeals to you.

If you want sheer damage output it's always hard to go wrong with /Fire.
If you want AOE damage output the best choices are probably /Elec or /Fire.
If you want ST damage output /SS, /Stone, /Dark are all good choices.
If you want mitigation then /Stone, /Dark, /Ice should be prime candidates.
If you want to be the classic and probably most common pairing then go /SS.

It would be hard to go really badly wrong with Inv, you could just toss all the secondaries into a hat and draw one by sheer random chance and end up with a capable tanker. Personally I'm not a fan of /DB due to it's reliance on combos; I think a tanker has more important things to worry about than "ok, first this attack, then that attack followed by this other attack for my bonus". KM is really shiny new but I'm hearing mixed reviews on it's effectiveness... I know my buddy who played a KM scrapper to 50 thinks the set needs badly to have animation times reduced.

Well, I just finished the STF with my SD/Fire tanker; it was a pretty smooth run with a few speedbumps when one team member went off on his own and found the floor several times.

For LR I ate a purple to cap my def at 75%, popped One with the Shield and jumped in. By the time the team had the red tower down I'd used Aid Self once and eaten a second purple. By the time the blue tower dropped I'd used Aid Self a couple more times, eaten a total of 4 purples and a medium green when he nailed me while Aid Self was recharging. The rest of the towers went down like dominoes and I used Aid Self a few times, ate two blues thanks to the end drain and ate one more green.

All in all it wasn't appreciably more difficult than with CMA; yes I needed to hit Aid Self more often since Call Me Frank had ~38% lower S/L resist than CMA but it wasn't insurmountable. The emp tossed a couple heals my way when LR got lucky twice in a row and did keep Fort on me which let me get by with only a small purple to cap against the blue tower buff. I didn't need a dedicated support character so everyone else worried about the towers instead. I wouldn't worry about running a MoSTF with that SD tanker if I had a good team behind me that I could count on not doing something stupid.

I ended up the night with Frank tanking a MoKahn in 43 minutes. We had a different team composition for that one and it ran like a top, everything was perfectly smooth. The only close call was when the Ill/Cold controller caught a bit of aggro and dropped to 40%... he immediately went Hibernate while I snagged the loose aggro. Other than that I don't think anyone got below 75% HP anytime in the TF.

I'll be making a run tonight with my Shield/Fire tanker; I think pretty much the same tactics I use with CMA should work fine for LR. One with the Shield will certainly be needed for the alpha and while the red tower's up; the occasional insp and Aid Self should handle things once OwtS drops.

I'm not planning a Mo on this tanker's very first time tanking LR just in case something unforeseen happens.

Yep, kill off a bunch of Nemesis LT's and watch the fun as the vengeance stacks up to "vaporize" on all surviving nearby mobs. Massive +defense and +tohit on them makes it much harder to kill the remainder and MUCH easier for them to take you apart.

For Nemesis I suggest killing all minions followed by bosses and take the LT's out last. One Vengeance isn't so bad, but 3+ of them will do Bad Things for your chances to hit them and Worse Things for your defenses.

Fun little trick, team with a Keld and run a full team against Nemesis. Find a group of Nemies clustered around a Cyst Crystal and kill all the LT's, then enjoy the fun as the crystal and all it's veng'd up puffballs proceed to say "We are Fluffy. Defense is futile."

You'll need to get another game license; you could snag one on NCSoft's store or you may be able to find an old copy of COH sitting in a bargain bin somewhere. Remember you'll get a free month with another game so that's $15 in value right there.

I've been maintaining two accounts for about 4 years now; frankly I forgot the second account was even there for a year or so, then I didn't want to give up the vet badges. I don't dual box very often... usually only to PL a lowbie on the other account. I have enough problems running ONE character well; I'd just be able to screw up two characters much faster.

Just finished up an accidental MoSTF run... we didn't set for it but we got through with no deaths and I think the only temp anyone used was the Raptor Pack.

Cold shields, 2 Kins and 8 good players... life was good. 1 hour, 15 minutes without trying for speed. I'll try it another time with my SD tanker, 75% def with insps or buffs and jumping in with One with the Shield active should be enough as long as the rest of the team can kill the towers fairly quickly. Fortunately OwtS crash is pretty mild.

If you maintain soft capped defense (which, while the blue tower's up is 75%) and decent resistance the biggest problem with LR becomes his end drain. I ended up munching 2 medium blues when he managed to connect with that attack a couple times.

I can understand why you didn't like Stone, I agree that the set isn't for everyone. It has unmatched durability at the cost of mobility, recharge and damage. I've played it to 50 twice and enjoyed it but I have to admit it isn't my first choice when I'm grabbing a tanker to play.

Invuln is good now even on SO's and becomes outstanding with moderate IO investment... second only to Stone in my experience. It has three strong layers of protection, first defense followed by resistance and finally the massive heal/HP buff of Dull Pain. Most of the time I'll only need Dull Pain once or maybe twice in a TF and I only need Aid Self for highly limited situations like tanking the tower buffed Lord Recluse. The so called "Psi hole" is way more hype than reality; I've tanked all four of the AV's plus Reichsman on the Kahn TF simultaneously and never had an issue, even with the two Psi AV's.

Shield can be a very good set, my Shield/Fire tank is only a bit less durable than my Inv/Stone and it has considerably greater damage output. It's dirt cheap to softcap if you take Tough/Weave and can be done fairly easily without the fighting pool. I've tanked the ITF, LGTF and Kahn on my Shield without any issues. The only STF I've taken him on so far we had a Stone tank also on the team so I let him handle LR. I know I can do it with that tank; I've run STF's with Shield tankers before.

I don't have a lot of experience with the other sets; I've an old Fire/Fire tanker in the mid-30's I haven't played in years as well as Dark/Elec and Ice/Elec tankers in the 20's. I'm cautiously optimistic about the Ice/Elec tank based on his performance so far; I hate to admit it but the Dark/Elec is a monkey baby so I haven't really gotten a feel for him yet. I've played that Ice/Elec out the last 6 levels (yeah, I monkey'd him up to 22, bad tanker, no banana) and I'm impressed with him given that he's still young and on SO's.

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I have to say that CMA, my Inv/Stone tanker is certainly my favorite of the bunch. Granite Flame, my Stone/Fire, can best his durability although that's largely academic since very little bothers CMA. Call Me Frank, my Shield/Fire, easily out damages all my other tanks... his damage output actually approaches scrapper levels. On the last ITF I ran with him I never saw my def drop below around 42% and I only needed Aid Self twice, both times while tanking Romy before the first nictus dropped.

I'd assume that most of those MMO's that went from a monthly fee to free to play were in fairly severe trouble and desperate to attract players. I doubt that very many of them manage to survive for long after making that change.

The only game that I've played that went from subscription to free to play was Champions; and they nickel and dime you to death in their store for upgrades, zones and so forth. Yeah, you can play free, as long as you only want to use X powersets and have Y limitations. Frankly I haven't read all the changes since I let my sub there lapse some time ago.

I would take CoH going free to play as a very bad sign that we were entering the ICU and on life support. I'd expect updates to stop or at least severely slow down and the servers to shut down inside of a year. So based on this I have to say I hope we don't see that happen here.

You CAN get another AV to decide to join the party late, but that only happens in my experience if you're fighting right at the top of the ramp. Pull back at least a bit down the corridor and you shouldn't get late ads. You may well still have ads but they should come within 30-45 seconds.

Depending on your powersets it sounds like the team should have done well in the TF, always assuming competent players behind the keyboards. I wouldn't have hesitated to make a run with that mix of AT's.

The secret to a clean pull seems to be to hit the AV from beyond it's own attack range, that way they don't holler at their buddies. I've made a half dozen runs with a friend with a Kin/Psi defender and that Psi snipe has so much range that we've had a perfect single pull every time. Personally I like to get GW out of the way first since she's the most dangerous.

The last couple of runs I've just snagged GW & Scirocco with Taunt; usually we end up with all 4 and I simply tank the group while we kill GW, Scirocco, Mako and finally Scorpion. Any melee of GW needs high negative energy defense, or the tanker needs to stay back out of melee of her. That heal of hers has to hit to work after all, and if the tank's out of melee she won't use it.

There's just so much misinformation I've seen over the years that it's hard to narrow down. For instance I was on a team with a new player running an Invuln tanker and someone was trying to tell him that Invuln sucked at tanking and he should reroll as, of all things, a Fire tank if he wanted to be durable. Nothing against Fire, but there's no question that it's far less durable than Invuln. That one really had me shaking my head, and I told the new tanker that he was just fine; he just needed to change his build a little... he was 15 and hadn't taken Unyielding yet because he thought it rooted you in place like the game manual said it did (that was actually changed way back in issue 2 or 3). That was actually what got me to write my first 20 levels guide... which needs an update now with inherent fitness.

Of course the "don't get the glowies" in the TV respec is certainly a mighty hard rumor to squash (for the record they do nothing at all), I first heard this one when I was running my first respec back in issue 3 and it's STILL out there. It may be the all time most impervious to removal rumor in the game.

Hmm, there's the "Nobody can make any inf in this game" and the "Everyone's fixing prices so they make tons of money" bits, and usually they're stated by the very same person without realizing the logical fallacy of that statement. In today's game the inf creation power of a high level character is so high that there's simply massive amounts of influence constantly being generated and added to the game. Most of the time I list things on the market at fairly low prices; it's not the marketeers doing that people are willing to pay so much. Excluding the market totally any level 50 can make at least 3 million inf per hour simply by running missions and killing mobs. That's why things cost so much; there's simply so much money floating around and so much more being made every second. The inf supply is increasing much faster than the supply of the more desirable items therefore those items rise in price.

I haven't had a character in several years who hasn't made enough on his own simply by playing to afford a modest IO build by level 35; all of them have had over 200 million by level 50 even after buying IO's.

I saw SerialBeggar mentioning that he didn't get Scrappers and that's perfectly ok; but the point that a Scrapper is the most straightforward character to play is a valid one, they simply run up and smack the bad guy upside the head and have enough durability to forgive many mistakes while having enough damage to kill things quickly. That makes them a good choice for a player still learning his way around; his character will survive many mistakes he'll make and it'll take out mobs fast.

The Taunt/no Taunt argument has been ongoing in the Tanker forum for as long as I've been playing. Yes, some tanker sets have great aggro management tools and can get & hold aggro without it, but it's still another tool in your toolbox. I very definitely believe that a good tanker can do the job without Taunt, but I also believe equally strongly that any tanker can do the job better if he has Taunt available, and there are times where it's invaluable. I have it on every one of my tanks and while I don't use it every group I find it useful several times per mission. Yes, it's situational but that situation pops up very frequently.

I've seen lots of names get the Generic hammer in the game, some deserved it like the Inv/SS tanker, huge model with green skin and purple pants named "Hulk Smash" and some were borderline. I've even seen a bunch that you'd think wouldn't fly that have survived several years.

I have a buddy who loves puns in his character names; he has things like "Sultan Battery" for a Kin/Elec defender with the egyptian headdress; "Ohm Depot" on an Elec/Shield scrapper and many others I'm not thinking of right offhand.

One thing that really helps a lot of us to enjoy a character is a good name; if the name is really good and the character's fun to play then you'll really enjoy it. My BS/Shield scrapper, Sword of Damocleve, is an example of that for me anyway with the play on the fable of the Sword of Damocles. Another of my favorites is my Ill/Rad controller Nameless Phantom, he's an homage to the western drifter who never settles in anywhere long enough for anyone to remember his name. My Archery/EM blaster Sagitarii hearkens back to the ancient Roman archery formations of the same name. My namesake Invuln/Stone tanker Call Me Awesome was named in response to the civillian comments whenever I'd rescue them from a purse snatching... they always told my character "You're Awesome!" so when I got tired of dying all the time with my Fire/EM blaster (hey, I was a newbie at the time and didn't know how to play the character then) I rolled a tanker.

Then there was my repeat last year of my long deleted blaster reborn as a joke in Delta Farce; strangely enough I didn't have any problems with him this time around... you don't suppose a few years of experience had anything to do with it? Hmm, I also have a Fire/Fire blaster sitting in the teens named "The Amazing Redshirt" in a red, ripped shirt, black pants and black boots. Someday I need to level that character, something about the name and costume just makes me smile.

I've also had lots of fun with my old Conan homage named Gortak, a BS/Regen scrapper in the rough leather pants, sword belt, rough leather boots, bare chest and a skull cap helmet with horns on it. The look and name just say "Barbarian" to me.

I find that the character's name is one of the most important things in my enjoyment of a character. A case in point is my Stone/EM tanker BarneyStone... I loved the name so much I stuck with it and got her to 50 despite the poor performance of the Energy Melee set for tanks. On the other hand I've abandoned promising characters many times simply because the name didn't work for me... those are usually names I come up with in a hurry because I've decided to roll up a X/X (insert AT) and have to come up with some name when I've finished the costume.

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Oh, in case you aren't aware of this you CAN change your global name ONCE; it defaults to your first character created but you can pick another name. Under the menu there's an option to "Change Global Chat Handle". Make sure you know what you want because you'll only be able to change this ONCE; whatever you change it to you're stuck with.