Call Me Awesome

And don't forget that the Kismet is mislabeled... it's actually a TOHIT buff, not an accuracy buff which makes it considerably more valuable. It offers the same tohit buff as Focused Accuracy does at zero end cost.

I do think you're correct in pulling that last slot in SM for the Kismet and keeping Hasten 3 slotted.

In general, they're worth having except for Resist Elements but with the exception of Tough Hide they aren't a priority choice.

I recommend getting Resist Phys. Damage in the early/mid 20's, Tough Hide when it becomes available and Resist Energies when you find room... typically this will be very late. CMA doesn't get Res Energies until 49 in his current build; although I may move that up a bit on my next respec.

As far as slotting an Invuln goes I put in 5 sets of 4 Reactive Armor... slotted into TI, Unyielding, RPD, Tough (fighting pool) and Res Energies. That, coupled with a few sets of Smashing Haymaker in single target attacks and a few other bonuses makes for an extremely durable tanker... see my guide on soft capping Invuln in my sig.

If you aren't slotting for set bonuses then you can easily leave RPD & Res Energies at the default slot... I'd still toss a couple of additional defense slots into Tough Hide.

Very well written draft here Hera; one thing that occurs to me is how completely IO bonuses can change the playing field here.

Posi probably doesn't matter since you'll probably be exemp'd below any of your set bonuses so we're looking at base level performance. My only tanking experience here is with Invuln & Stone primaries and of the two Invuln certainly has the upper hand. I agree with your logic on the sets of choice here though... resist tankers have a big advantage.

No argument at all about Synapse either, the vast majority of the damage you'll take here is energy which puts Electric as the front runner.

Psyche is a cakewalk with Invuln and a bit of a challenge with Stone but in general Freaks are easy for most anyone.

By the time you're dealing with the 30+ TF's you may well start having significant IO bonuses which could skew the results considerably. For example, my Invuln soft caps at level 35 by design so his performance in Manti is much higher than a base Invuln. For dealing with Katie though if I can't get a Stone tank I'd just as soon have a team of 'trollers instead to keep the spawns in place... those end drains are absolutely brutal.

On the STF I'd agree with your choices with one caveat... Invuln at base level without IO bonuses will struggle here, particularly against Aeon and the tower buffed LR while Stone will have no difficulty even with SO enhancements barring sheer bad luck with LR. On the other hand we tried it a couple of weeks ago with a Shield tanker and he was fine until the tower phase... OwtS and purple candy handled the Red tower fine but LR got pissed off once we started on the Blue and two shotted the tanker... three times in a row through 75% defense. An outlier of course, but it was frustrating.

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Oh, Invuln and Stone can both solo tank the tower buffed LR with a little preparation... on CMA I carry 6 big oranges, 10 medium/large purples and 4 large greens. Pop a couple of oranges, one or two purples and then grab LR and pull him to a corner. If he gets lucky Dull Pain. If he gets lucky again pop a green. Keep oranges active until the Red tower goes down and purples until the Blue dies. No fuss or need for assistance freeing the team for dealing with the towers.
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All in all good work, I'd just suggest some mention of the enormous difference IO sets can make. And, of course, I'd rather have a really good tank player on a weak set than an idiot playing a granite.

A couple of questions here, first are you ever planning on not running Granite Armor? If you're a perma-Granite tanker then Tough is pointless to you... you can already get beyond the S/L resist cap with Granite + Stone Skin. Granite could also use a bit more resist and defense slotting; you're well short of the ED cap there. If you are planning on running without Granite on occasion I highly recommend Rock Armor.

Secondly, are you really having end issues? Your IO slotting seems excessive for recovery, but you're underslotting Stamina. Adding another endmod to Stamina is a much cheaper option than all those recovery uniques.

By the way, you've slotted the Razzle Dazzle into Fault; I assume you're building for defense? Remember that the Stone set is strong in typed defenses and RD gives melee defense primarily... and Stupefy will give you a recharge bonus for 5 slots.

Oh, here's something to think on... even on pure SO enhancements a Stone tank with Granite, Stone Skin and Rooted is nearly unkillable by almost anything in the game. That being the case you may want to consider slotting to minimize the recharge and runspeed penalties instead of adding more durability to a tanker that's already more than durable enough.

Well I'm hopeful I'll see some benefit also, I just ordered the 80GB Intel SSD from Newegg... when it arrives I'll be installing Win7 and I'll see what if any effect it has.

Currently I've roughly 2.5 terrabytes of hard drives in the case (two 750GB drives and a couple in the 500 range, all 7,200 RPM) so raw storage obviously isn't a factor. And yes, I AM using the majority of that space... roughly 1.8 TB in use on all 4 drives... database, photos, video files and so forth not to mention CoH.

I'm not sure it's doable to soft cap range/AOE for 20 million unless you already have lots of the IO's sitting in storage. The current salvage costs don't help either. My BS/SD also uses Parry to make up the difference in Melee def but at the time I built him it cost roughly $150 million... not including three Membrane HO's in Active Defense and that was two issues ago.

Looking over my build it has two full sets of Mako's Bite, two sets of Blessing of the Zephyr (skipping the proc) and four sets of Scirocco's Dervish. Those bonuses, plus the Steadfast unique, Combat Jumping and Weave just put it at the soft cap for Range/AOE... a single parry without def enhancement caps out Melee. Unfortunately none of those sets are really cheap... I imagine you'd spend your entire budget on a single set of Scirocco's.

What I'd suggest doing is running a few TF's and then taking random merit rolls... you ought to get a "winner" out of 4 rolls or so that will at least double your bankroll. You'll generate considerable inf by running the TF's as well. I've been working up a new blaster lately and out of 10 rolls (200 merits) I've netted about 300 million in recipes... I doubt that was excessive either as roughly half the rolls were vendor junk. I'd suggest Sister Psyche for a really good merit/hour ratio in a fun TF; a good team can knock it out in an hour and a half for 50 merits. Citadel is doable in roughly the same timeframe with a decent team.

Positron is great merits, and a good team can bang it out in a couple of hours but it's so boring it's hard to recommend beyond the one time for the Task Force Commander accolade. Here's hoping that the rumored Posi revamp makes this a fun TF.

Check out Local Man's guide on Ill/Rad, it'll give you a few ideas.

My own experience is that you really want to get two things out of set bonuses... Recharge and Recovery/Bonus Endurance. As recharge gets higher you'll become more and more effective, at the cost of course of higher and higher endurance use.

If you manage to get your recharge to Perma-PA levels (roughly 206%) you'll have a very effective character... unfortunately that level of recharge which is great for bringing your powers back sooner also means you're using them more often, thus burning more endurance. My own Perma-PA Ill/Rad has a total recovery of 4.7 end/second (250% recovery bonus, includes Perma-AM) and a bit over 114 points of total endurance... I can still run him dry in a hard fight. I'd hate to play him if I hadn't also concentrated on recovery.

Obviously I'm not about to dispute that Inv/Stone is a very competent choice. CMA was leveled from 1 - 50 under vastly different game conditions than we have today but I have tanked all 6 of the "numbered" task forces in the last year with him and it's still highly effective even in the low levels.

You will struggle in the teens a bit; first with the lower protections that are endemic to the pre-22 levels of all tankers and secondly with endurance. I highly recommend devoting at least one slot in each attack to end reduction... in these levels prioritize attack slotting to accuracy first... an attack that misses is an attack wasted... then toss an end reduction in to cut down on your endurance use. Only then worry about damage and recharge. Remember too that one endred slotted into Heavy Mallet will save more endurance than slotting ALL of your toggles for endurance... your attacks burn far more end than your armors.

Once you reach 20 and get Stamina (you DID plan your build to get the prerequisite powers by then?) endurance becomes less of an issue, but I still recommend slotting one endred in each attack.

At level 22 with an Inv/Stone you'll want Fault... this will become your main attention-getter all the way to 50. Early on just toss an accuracy and maybe a recharge in there, later on the Stupefy set (all but the knockback proc... say no to it) is a great option for inexpensive bonuses. Level 22 is also when you get SO's and suddenly realize that you're a tank and most of these puny mobs aren't a threat anymore.

Several things leap out at me about your build. First, that's absolutely terrible slotting for Earth's Embrace... there's two things you want to maximize with that power... the heal and the recharge. While you've gotten an acceptable amount of recharge there's no heal at all in it. You do know that the only resist it offers is a minor amount to Toxic... the rarest damage type in the game? Remember that heal slotting not only increases the amount that the power heals but also increases the hit point boost.

I very strongly recommend slotting the Doctored Wounds set instead; that will maximize the important portions of the power. You want ~95% heal and ~90%+ recharge here. Forget about resists in this power.

Another thing I notice is you didn't take Rock Armor... this is your primary defense outside of Granite. Take it in place of Stone Skin and push Stone Skin later in the build. You've also vastly overslotted the power for a small bonus to melee defense on a tanker that has considerable typed defense... not an optimal choice.

I would have taken Heavy Mallet at 4 instead of Stone Mallet but it's not a deal breaker either way.

Rooted needs, at a minimum, three heals slotted. You can always slot another set of 5 Doctored Wounds for more recharge here if you can find slots... it would add another 5% recharge.

Health's slotting is overkill, but if you have the slots after more important powers are taken care of it's not a real problem... just lower priority.

Speaking of slots, Hasten & Stamina both need another slot.

For Fault I wouldn't slot the Beratement set... I'd use the Stupefy instead... all but the KB proc. If you keep 6 slots this is a good place for the Perfect Zinger Psi proc.

The fighting pool is, in my opinion, less useful than other choices on a Stone tanker but if you're spending considerable time outside of Granite I can see the benefits. On the other hand, if you're outside Granite you really need Rock Armor; it mitigates more damage than Stone Skin, Tough & Weave put together. The Aegis unique is mostly a waste... it gives you 3% Psi resistance and a completely worthless 5% status resistance. You've also overslotted Tough to minimal value... I'd stick with 4 Reactive Armor and call it good. Toss a Steadfast Res/3% Def unique into Stone Skin and it's good as well.

Tough is also completely pointless to run while in Granite... Granite and UNSLOTTED Stone Skin already has you at the 90% hard cap for smash/lethal resistance. Tough adds nothing at all to that.

I'm really unsure what you're going for with Granite; you're well short of the ED cap in both resist & defense and aren't getting anything of value by slotting those Titanium Coating IO's... swapping them for a couple more common resist IO's will increase your resistance to ED cap.

You've run out of slots for your epic powers... energy torrent is deserving of at least 4 slots if you're going to take it at all.

Here's a few suggestions for saving slots:
Rock Armor at level 1 only needs 4 slots, and Stone Skin only needs the base slot to cap out your resist in Granite... that saves 2 slots there.

Earth's Embrace can ED cap heal & recharge with only 5 slots of Doctored Wounds... there's another slot

Rooted on the other hand NEEDS another slot so we loose one there.

Health will be just fine with one slot, you really won't need the massive recovery bonuses of both the Numina & Miracle uniques and with Granite & Rooted you'll never notice the effect of the Regen Tissue unique. I'd toss the Miracle in Health and call it good personally if I was tight on slots. Doing that saves another 5 slots, giving us 7 additional to play with at this point.

Hasten & Stamina on the other hand both need another slot taking our total down to 5.

We can shave one slot from Fault by using the Stupefy set and forgoing the Zinger proc.

Tough only needs 4 slots for Reactive Armor, giving us another pair... giving us 8 slots to use later in the build.

By the way, Focused Accuracy was nerfed a few issues ago and it's current numbers make it a dubious power selection... personally I don't think it's worth the endurance it takes to run.

Anyway, take my suggestions or leave them; but your build has tremendous room for improvement. It looks to me like you're worried about mez for some reason based on your set choices... this is completely pointless on any tank, and a stone has access to the highest mez protection (note, PROTECTION, not resistance) in the game with both Rooted & Granite. Mez protection prevents a mez from affecting you unless it stacks high enough to break your protection. Mez resistance only shortens the duration of a mez effect... and you need 100% mez resistance to reduce the duration by half. Because of this mez resistance bonuses are useless to any AT as a practical matter; they'd only shorten a mez by a few tenths of a second on average.

COH has considerably higher hardware requirements than WoW but you've enough machine that you should have better performance than that.

In the game options menu select "advanced" in the graphics options. A few of the more notable performance hogs are in this area.

Bloom and Water Effects are both major offenders, try turning them off. You can also turn down max particles. Anti Aliasing is another offender... tone it down or try deactivating it completely.

You can turn down World Detail and Character Detail some to reduce the workload, and maximum particles is another huge performance drain.

This may be technically an "old game", but the graphics have consistently been upgraded throughout it's lifespan. I'm running a quad core Intel CPU similar to yours, 4 GB RAM and an Nvidia 275GTX video card and I get around 65 FPS @ 1680x1050 with the detail settings at a moderately high level. In combat that can drop into the 40's with a lot of effects going off. I was previously running an 8800GTX in the same box (before the damn thing ate itself) with similar FPS, but the graphics options were set considerably lower. Still, you should be able to get 40fps or better with your system @ 1680x1050... you may have to turn down a few things though.

Unfortunately you're not going to get 60fps out of that video card running 1920x1080, the 8500GT just doesn't have enough juice. COH, and even more so COV are simply much more graphically intense than WOW.

Invuln is certainly a good choice, if you build it right it can rival Stone for durability without any of the penalties a Stone tank has to deal with. For a first tanker I'd actually recommend Invuln over Stone for that reason... the Stoner is tougher but the poor mobility often drives players away from the set.

I don't want to give you the idea that Stone's bad... heck, I have 2 Stone tankers at 50 myself in addition to my Invuln. It's just easier learning the ropes if you don't also have to contend with the mobility/recharge/-damage penalties. To start out with, Invuln is definitely stronger than Stone in the early game... Stone's actually somewhat fragile (for a tank) until level 32 and Granite Armor.

Ok, if you've settled on Invuln for the primary we'll need to figure out the secondary. Super Strength is, of course, the "classic" pairing... and it works pretty well. It's very much single target focused until level 38 though which may be an issue... large AOE's make getting/holding aggro much easier, not to mention aiding in the killing of large groups.

Ice Melee has been suggested and it's not bad; the problem with it is relatively low damage. I understand it's been buffed a bit lately though, maybe someone can jump in about how it stands now.

Fire Melee is an excellent choice for raw damage... and it has two rather nice AOE attacks as well. Relatively quick recharge and relatively low endurance cost makes this an attractive option... be aware that it offers zero mitigation so it won't help your durability.

Stone Melee is the way I went with my Invuln, it offers lots of hard hitting single target damage, great damage mitigation with all the knockdowns in the set (both hammers, Fault & Tremor) and as a capstone Seismic Smash... a very hard hitting attack with a MAG 4 hold... yes, it will hold a boss. The downsides are longer than average recharge and moderately heavy endurance use. If you go this way don't forgo Fault... it's one of the best powers in the set even though it does no damage.

Energy Melee used to be the premiere single target set, unfortunately it's been hit heavily by the nerf bat. I realize some people still like it but personally I can no longer recommend it to anyone starting out. Yes, it still works, but it's overshadowed by most of the other sets in nearly every category nowadays. I have a Stone/EM tank at 50 who I haven't touched since shortly after the nerfs.

That's it for the sets I have personal experience with; for what you've said you want I'd suggest considering something with fair AOE to assist in aggro management. Fire, Elec, Stone, Mace and a few others could be good choices. If you want extra survivability Stone Melee, Ice Melee or Mace could work in there nicely. If you want to add to the team's killpower then Fire Melee or Electric Melee would be good options.

In any event, please check out my guide on the first 20 levels of Invuln... lots of players end up with rather poor builds simply because they don't understand what the important powers in the set are. My guide is linked in my signature and it'll give you a good solid foundation to build your tanker on.

As a rule any "passive" power will always stack with any toggle power... the only exception that comes to mind are Keldians and their Nova/Dwarf forms.

A Stone tanker with Granite slotted to ED cap resist & defense plus Stone Skin with only a single SO slotted is at the 90% hard cap to S/L resist and 78% resist to all else but Psi. Add in Rooted with ED cap heal and you have something nearly unkillable to anything but Psionic damage. The best part is this only takes three powers, 7 slots and SO enhancements... you can have this level of durability at level 34 without slotting a single IO set.

Because of the extreme durability of a Granite tank if you're thinking of IO sets I'd plan on building for recharge and runspeed instead of the more traditional tanker approach of maximizing defense... your durability is high enough to solo tank a tower-buffed Lord Recluse in the STF on pure SO enhancements. Therefore, plan your IO bonuses to minimize your weaknesses, namely the recharge, movement & to some degree damage debuffs you incur in Granite.

It all depends on the skill of the player and the powersets he's playing. I can quite easily main tank the ITF with my BS/Shield scrapper. Admittedly I can do a better job with a true tanker but a shield scrapper built to the soft cap can do a pretty good job of tauntless tanking thanks to a very good aggro aura in AAO and some pretty phenomenal damage output. The only thing that scrapper's lacking is a ranged attention getter... that's occasionally problematic if you get loose aggro.

I suppose I can be probably 90% as effective as a tank with that scrapper as opposed to my tankers.

Another AT that can tank are Kelds... both Peacebringers & Warshades can do a decent job with their Dwarf form. They lack an aura, but they do get an adequate taunt... it does need to hit however. Both of them also have a decent AOE attack to assist in aggro. I can tank probably 70% as well with a Keld as with a tank.

Several controller builds can, well, not tank exactly but serve the same purpose in preventing the team from being attacked. A few well-built 'trollers can easily take the place of a tanker.

For that matter there's a number of defenders who can "tank" via debuffing mobs into the dirt; Dark is a classic example of this. Fearsome Stare can neutralize an entire room by cowering them in terror and hitting them with a huge -tohit debuff.

GOOD tankers are always an asset to a team, but there's many alternatives. In most cases a tank is useful, but not essential. If you lack a tank then adjust your tactics and keep on.

Here's a few basics for you.

First, you're always the first into the mob. This makes sure that your aura gets a chance to establish aggro before someone else tosses a fireball. As a quick & dirty method you can do a fast lap around the group (provided they're clumped decently) then end up at the back of the group... that way all the mobs are facing YOU and AWAY from the team. This keeps AOE cones from affecting your team. If you see a mob turn around hit him with a Taunt to keep him looking at you.

As Hera mentioned play with your camera zoomed out so you can see both the mobs and your teammates. Anytime you see something head toward the team taunt it. Rotate your attacks to spread out the love and maximize your punchvoke. This is easier than you think, punch the guy in front of you, then select someone to your left and punch him, then punch someone on your right. Your AOE attacks are a big help with this, use them as well.

When dealing with spread out mobs it's frequently easiest to clump them up on you; and there's lots of ways to do that. You can do the quick circle around them and then move behind something to break line of sight... this is the easiest method but it's also the slowest and frequently the controller will slap an immobilize on the mobs while they're spread out. You can practice jumping into one group, then jump into another, then back to the first... this usually causes them to clump on you.

Here's something you may want to try out, set your difficulty to 6 man team, even level mobs and get a radio mission of easy mobs. Enter the mission solo and practice gathering groups up and clumping them tight. That's the best way I can think of to get your techniques down, and you'll be able to practice them by yourself.