Call Me Awesome

Take it for what it's worth as the only WP character I've leveled is a Brute but I'd look for two things... max HP boosts which will effectively increase your regen and defense boosts.

I look at it kind of like a Regen scrapper... you already have a ton of regen out of the box... you'll gain more by adding layers to your protections. Your first layer being Defense... S/L is the most important type since it protects from the most attacks. More HP is always a good thing for a tanker, since it translates into more damage taken before you faceplant and more HP regenerated since your regen is a percentage of your HP... more HP total equals more HP regenerated per second.

I'd list Recharge bonuses as QoL additions rather than necessities since WP has no powers that benefit from recharge. It'll smooth out your attack chain and that's about it. Nice to have, but not at the expense of max HP and defense.

Again, this is based on my experience leveling a Fire/WP brute, not a tanker but the logic should apply equally well to either.

Well, I just finished an STF, the first I've tanked since GR hit and I did find that LR's AI has changed. Now he uses that channelgun end drain attack MUCH more often, and he uses it in melee... something he didn't do before. I went in with my normal insp loadout and got dropped three times; twice to end drain and once to stupidity by letting the purple drop while typing to the team.

I'd recommend tanking him now with a couple of big blues as well as purples and oranges; and some form of heal support is helpful. Once I figured out his new AI we didn't have problems; our Kin had Heal Other from the medicine pool and that plus Dull Pain were plenty. He's definitely more dangerous now than he used to be. I don't know if his AI changed with GR or with the last patch but he's certainly different now.

On the plus side he doesn't seem to summon Banes anymore until the Pet Nuke. I do begin to understand why the OP's tanker was having problems though, if he wasn't soft capped @ 75% while the blue tower was up then I'd bet he was getting end drained and that's why he was dropping.

Bottom line, with the AI change whether it's intentional or not Lord Recluse is considerably more dangerous now.

<edit>

Well, I just checked all my characters and my top (or would that be bottom?) is only 1,866 days offline; a level 2 PB on Freedom. My really old characters are all on Guardian and are either played occasionally or long since deleted.

There's a bunch in the 1000+ range, mostly on servers I don't play. Freedom is the king there with 9 characters all 1000 or more days offline. I've only a couple there that are less than 100 days.

With the exception of Guardian & Pinnacle characters elsewhere don't get played much.

Yep, the way Phanty works now he's downright broken. I've been finding that I don't bother with him some of the time, particularly against nasty foes. He has all the negatives of Fire Imps without the benefits.

I soloed Requiem a few days ago and the entire fight I don't think Phanty lived longer than 20 seconds. After a while I just cast him shortly before PA were ready to cycle as an aggro monkey... lord knows he wasn't worth a damned any other way since he'd get maybe 2-3 attacks off before he'd run in and suicide on the AOE the AV was outputting.

Fortunately I wasn't relying on him that much with perma-PA and Spooky along with the Rad debuffs. It's still very irritating.

I'd say your Inv tanker either had a bad build and his deficiencies were masked by buffs earlier or he just didn't know what he was doing. Yes, on occasion LR can drop an Inv (or for that matter even a Granite) tanker in 2 hits but it's a rare occurrence. Typically I tank LR UNASSISTED with my Inv/Stone tanker... I have an insp tray so I use it.

Going after the tower buffed LR I'll have my tray loaded with 10 medium purples, 5 large oranges and at least two large greens. I take medium instead of large purples because I'm at 45% def with LR in range and one medium is worth 25%, so it soft caps me while the blue tower's up. Since I don't need the extra of a large purple I don't waste them. I handle LR like so:

Once the courtyard is clear and the team's ready I eat two large oranges and one medium purple then jump into melee with LR and start taunting. Trying to hit him is an exercise in futility while the yellow tower's up so all I worry about is Taunt at this point. As soon as I have aggro the team starts in on the red tower and I draw LR back into the corner behind the green tower to keep him out of the way in case the flier respawns while we're killing him. I keep one orange active until the red tower dies and one purple active until the blue tower dies. I use two oranges for his alpha strike because that's the most dangerous time.

If LR gets a lucky hit on me I pop Dull Pain. If he knocks me down into the yellow again I pop a green. Once the red tower dies I can mostly relax and once the blue dies I'm home free.

I've personally tanked LR with a Stone/Fire and my Inv/Stone tanker; I've been on successful runs with every tanker primary except Dark (nothing against Dark, I've just never been on a run with a Dark tank). Now that my Shield/Fire tank's reached 46 I'm considering giving it a try with him.

I've also attempted to tank LR with a perma-PA Ill/Rad... unfortunately you'll have about 1-2 seconds of loose aggro when you respawn PA; this frequently leads to his discussing the matter with you directly, usually not a good thing. It used to be easier since Phanty would usually use his decoy and that could cover the gaps but since he now has this fetish with running into melee he rarely lives long enough to summon his decoy in the first place and NEVER lives long enough for him to recharge.

<edit>

Re-reading the OP I'm somewhat at a loss; was the tanker trying to tank LR right next to the rest of the team for some reason? With the buffs you're describing even a mediocre Inv build should have been up for the task. Did you have difficulty killing the Red tower? I had one run with that problem... we found that we'd KB'd a repairman down UNDERNEATH the tower and the bastage was sitting there happy as a clam healing the tower. A few AOE's finally solved that problem.

Your fastest option is simply to use the market... buy recipes that you can craft and sell for a profit or flip stuff (IE buy stuff cheap and sell high, lots of things tend to fluctuate pretty dramatically over a few hours).

For example, let's say you can buy a recipe for whatever for around a million and it'll cost, including salvage, 3 million to craft. Well, if the crafted IO sells for 10 million plus you've a moneymaker there. Just check what recipes are going for and what the crafted IO is going for. I'd suggest looking for something with a high turnover.

If you do want to farm you're right about a lack of AOE being problematic... set your difficulty to higher level mobs that you can still handle efficiently and leave your team size low. Don't forget that you'll probably make a lot more selling your drops on the market than from straight kills.

What are your intentions with the build? It looks to me like you're all over the place with bonuses and you're ending up with something that really doesn't accomplish a lot more than a straight SO build would do. IO bonuses can do remarkable things, but you need to have a goal in mind and build on that... individually each bonus is very small. It's only when you start to stack bonus on top of bonus that you see the extreme results people talk about with "IO'd" toons.

Your power selection order really needs work and you certainly need work on your slotting. Right now you're much less durable than you could be and your attack slotting is suspect as well. I'd recommend a rethink of what you want to accomplish.

If you're looking for durability without downsides check out my guides... the first is a basic primer for getting your critical powers in place by level 20 and the second is a secondary-neutral guide for increasing your durability. I didn't go into detail on other bonuses in my soft cap guide but I did leave room to incorporate whatever other additions you may want.

<edit>
You could see some significant durability improvement by simply changing your power selection and slotting even on plain SO's; as your build sits it kind of looks like a case of "this set looks cool" and "I like that set" without an overall goal you're building toward. Hey, I understand... if you've been away for a long time all this is a lot to absorb all at once. That's partly why I wrote my guide.