Call Me Awesome

Here's my take on it from the perspective of both a top end Invuln/Stone tanker and a young (25 at the moment) SR/MA tanker.

First, in the very low levels the SR/MA absolutely spanks any other tank I've ever played in durability... by level 4 you can be in the mid-30's to melee/range and the soft cap to all is easily obtainable by the mid-teens.

As it matures I'd anticipate it being roughly equivalent to Shield; a nice set and quite durable but considerably below a mature, IO'd Invuln. The reason for this is both SR and Shield can easily hit the 45% soft cap (SR easier than Shield of course) but neither has the resistance, HP or heal that Invuln can bring to the party.

I have a mature 50 Shield tanker and I've run most of the game's content on him. He's good, but my Invuln is simply better. I expect much the same out of my SR/MA once he grows up, a good competent tank but not up to the level of my Invuln.

Now with that said that SR/MA will be considerably less expensive to IO out and if you're comparing pure SO level performance it's probably a lot closer to the Invuln. It's only when you soft cap the Invuln that it gets so much better; on SO's they're probably not far different.

Purples have their place, but they aren't the be all, end all of sets. Some characters get a lot of mileage out of them - Controllers for example, while other characters don't get much out of them - Tankers generally.

Personally my builds will all be IO'd by around 35 focusing on things that benefit the character... sometimes that means a multi billion inf build and sometimes that means under 100 million. That's me personally though, I really don't much care what bonuses (if any) my teammates may have as long as their competent players. Whenever I'm forming anything I take whoever comes along with whatever they want to play and we make it work.

I've played it to 50 twice, once as a BS/Regen and once as a Spines/Regen. Yes, it's squishier than Shield (my other 50 scrapper) but it isn't bad. The Spine/Regen tends to carry LOTS of purple candy for tough spots... the BS/Regen is considerably more survivable.

Both of them were fun to play, but I leveled both up in the pre-IO era, the BS/Regen dinged 50 in issue 5 and the Spine/Regen dinged in issue 8. I've played them a bit recently and with good IO builds I found them quite capable. The BS is soft capped to melee while the Spine reaches roughly 30% to all three.

Well, my Inv is /Stone, not /SS but the sets have similar needs.

For Alpha I went with Cardiac for endred and +resist; I was having some end issues in longer fights so Cardiac solved those for me without requiring me to go Energy Mastery for Conserve Power.

Judgement I went with Pyronic. (although I've somewhat regretted not going Ionic even though it's a longer animation) I've come to the conclusion after trying Ionic on another Incarnate that despite it's longer animation it's a better choice and hits more targets and a wider area.

Destiny I looked over the choices and came to the conclusion that the Rebirth Radial was my best option - another large heal on a 2 minute timer and a minimum of +200% regeneration with considerably more half the time. I'm still of the opinion that Rebirth Radial is the best choice for a lot of characters.

Interface was Reactive Radial for the 75% damage proc; given the low debuff values of the other Interface options I don't see any compelling reason to go with anything else on any character.

Lore I ended up with WarWorks Core; that Vicky is truly nasty and puts out considerable amounts of DPS. Nowadays with all the new Lore pets Cimerorans are another valid choice for raw DPS and I've taken them on my latest Incarnate character.

Agreed, while it will give you some performance boost I doubt you'd notice it unless you're really watching your benchmarks. The biggest performance boost comes in the video card anyway... swapping out your CPU would gain a few percent increase but nothing earthshaking and you'd probably have to look at your FPS before and after to tell anything changed.

What does the rest of your machine look like? There may well be other improvements you could make for your budget that would be noticeable. Still, I would tend to think you're better off putting that money into a savings account and adding a few dollars every paycheck until you've enough to do a major upgrade; tossing a new CPU into your current machine is basically wasting money.

We could suggest combinations all day long and most of us probably have quite valid reasons for our favorite choices... still what you want is a combination that appeals to you and that's a far more subjective thing.

First off, you say you want to lead a team on TF's... well, really any tanker combination can do that although some do it better than others. The first question is do you want an offensive or defensive focused tanker? As the question would suggest an offensive set deals better damage at the expense of durability while a defensive set offers better durability but probably less damage output.

Stone (after level 32) and Invuln are the most durable sets with Stone taking (by a considerable margin) top honors albeit with many drawbacks. Fire and Shield are the most offensive sets with Shield being more durable (on average) and Fire doing more damage. The other sets tend to fall in between.

Shield can be very durable, but it's not going to rival Stone or Invuln in that department... I have all three sets at 50 with fairly optimal builds and the Invuln and Stone survive things that turn the Shield into a grease spot. However the Shield is adequate for anything I've tried and it does kill considerably faster and it probably comes in slightly above average in end game durability.

The new Super Reflexes set is amazingly good in the low levels; quite possibly the most durable tanker set around pre level 20. In the upper levels it'll fade a bit probably ending up on par with Shield in end game durability.

In my opinion a true tanker isn't about powersets; it's about attitude and mindset. The true team shielding tanker that's desired by teams is one with the philosophy that the only way the mobs are getting to your team is over your dead body... and the ability to withstand the punishment required to stay alive in that situation. Depending on the build and the team composition (team buffs can make a huge difference here) there isn't a tanker set that CAN'T fill this role, indeed many scrapper builds can do it as well.

In closing I'd suggest you decide just what you want out of a tank and then ask again in the Tanker forums. I'll say that out of all the sets I've played I've found Invuln to be the best overall set combining top tier durability with no serious drawbacks. Does that mean you should make one? Heck, I've played and enjoyed Invuln, Stone, Shield, Ice, Fire, Dark, Electric and Super Reflexes and all of them have advantages and disadvantages. I had fun and was an effective tank with all of them.

I had a run last month on a full team of 8; we got 8 clones of the team leader and none of the rest of the party. Unfortunately the team lead was Ill/Time so things got interesting with 8 sets of Phantom Army and all the slows and holds flying. I can't remember offhand if they summoned Phantasms or not but it was a real challenge since most of the team were in Posi level range of 11-16. As I recall we loaded up on insps and worked on single pulling them to clear the thing.