Dechs Kaison

What a coincidence, I just added a whole section to my Tanking guide that deals with this very principle. Here's a snippet:

Signature Story Arc.

There's probably more variables to this that you haven't mentioned. I'm going to assume that you used a value of 75 for Fury. The value I picked was only 70 to be conservative. I also multiply my chain value by .95 to simulate the average miss chance. I tried two chains, and found that the double stack Follow Up chain had lower DPS than a chain of Focus, Slash, Strike. Both of my chains are including Death Shroud.

Likewise, I didn't even bother with the -res proc. The math involved in that scares even me. I use the power once every 4.2 seconds, it lasts for 10 seconds with a 20% chance to proc... Eh, thinking about it it's not too scary. I dunno. I'll come back to it.

I am aware of NoChain, but I feel it doesn't accurately account for things like "using Follow Up every chance you can."

I agree, Johnny, that is spot on for a scenario where a level 22 Scrapper with SOs (Widow) sidekicks a level 1 Tank (Hogan) and plays a Council mission set for -1/x4.

For now, I have four versions of myself, five of my assassin character, and only two of my sand tank.

Apples to steaks, Johnny. Feel free to try again.

Tell me, then, if a Tanker should be doing more damage than scrappers, brutes, and stalkers, what is the incentive for using any of those ATs when the tank also has the survival edge?

So you're saying the highest survivable AT in the game shouldn't have the lowest damage in the game?

I'd call your opinion broken.

You seem to be under the impression that you have brought up valid points.

I can agree 100% with this statement. In order:

Tanks are in a very decent place right now with regards to balance. They survive much better than any other AT. They deal enough damage to solo competently.

I play my Tank because I enjoy his character, his personality. More often than not, though, I don't enjoy his survivability or aggro capabilities. Surviving is often too easy and each of my Brute, Warshade, or hell, even my Bots/Traps can still hold the aggro just fine.

Likewise, my one request is that Tanks get an edge in holding aggro. Right now, Tanks are exactly equivalent to Brutes in threat generation with the exception of damage. If a Tank and a Brute with identical powersets/slotting are trying to gain the threat of one creature, the brute will always win because of his damage. This is the one thing I would seek to change. Tanks need a higher magnitude or better duration of taunt. I'd also like to see the Tank aggro cap increased by at least 50%. I have all this survivability; let it mean something. My role is to protect the team; let me do it better than everyone else.

Yes, but only when compared to things like defenders, controllers, and blasters.

Once brutes and stalkers came along, the tanker was just as devastating as he was before, just with more people that were better than him.

Forgive me, I was in the airport replying from my phone, and I'm still unsure of my new phone's interface. Perhaps I should explain my thought process.

On the surface, it seemed like a great idea. I imagined the ability on my tank. I would have a decent damage buff before aggroing the spawns, allowing me to gain threat more easily and have a larger impact on the outcome of the fight. In the long run, however, I would have very little of this damage buff, meaning that overall balance shouldn't be affected too greatly. Following these thoughts, I posted rather quickly.

Then I went through security and had some time to think about it. I edited in my revised feelings, noting how it rewards tankers for not having aggro and how it could be open to abuse. I gave a few quick examples and a brief explanation before I screwed up posting it from my phone and had to start all over.

None of this is to mention that my edit happened a day before you even mentioned the first two posts that agreed with the idea.

There's a lesson in this somewhere. I'm not sure whether it's one about "think before you speak" or just "don't post from a phone." I'm also not sure who it's for.

This has always been my position. I eventually did post my build, but not without a heavy dose of caveats.

Tanker damage is lower than just about anybody else.

That doesn't mean it sucks.

AoEs (particularly Footstomp and its large radius) will be notorious for hitting their target cap if you can fit more than the caps worth of enemies in range. The way it works is that it starts checking to hit against the nearest enemy until it's checked every enemy in range or you've hit ten things. With even decent accuracy, the streak breaker ensures you'll be hitting your ten in a crowd.

I feel like I've misrepresented myself, so I'm just going to clarify:

There's nothing wrong with doing a build entirely on SOs, especially if you're not comfortable with the market or invention system. SOs are what the game was designed and balanced around.

It's the "set out at 47" that I take issue with. The people that do this know the invention system and likely have mids backing them up. Most of the sets these people use cap at levels 40 or below. There's just no reason to wait until 47 unless you just don't have the power until then.

There's still nothing "wrong" with doing things that way. It's just lazy, inefficient, and costly to maintain. Again, it's not wrong, but when you're comparing different methods of slotting up a character, this one's poor at best.

How's that work in practice for you?

Because in theory, without a taunt magnitude, the brutes beat you for aggro every day of the week and twice on Thursdays.

Taunt is still great for the -75% range debuff.