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I'm a Scranker that tanks aggressively through violence. This must be a truly offensive standard to the true tanks.
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What an excellen turn of phrase "Tanks aggressively through violence." I love it. Bravo to you sir.
I personally was a classic meat shield up until ED. Now I am squarely in the Scranker camp. So much so that it seemed to me that it would be a better idea to take flurry instead of RPD. I tried it on test and damn if I wasn't right. (For me anyway)
Speaking of the scranker vs. scrapper - I was on a team last night - me lvl 42 inv/ss : 43 katana/regen scrapper : a bubbler : an ice controller : and a kinetics controller. We were figthing Nemesis - mostly fakes with a pile of jagers around them. Due to buffs my survivability was fine and with hasten combined with the speed bufs I was putting out a pretty respectable DPS - not as good as the scrapper however. BUT on a couple occasions, the scrapper got antsy and ran in before me taking the full brunt of the combined enemy attack. This would usually result is his death an me running in and taking up all the aggro (using a combination of footstomp and taunt and hitting the boss ) before the mob turned on the fragile controllers. Usually it worked, sometimes a troller would go down since Tanks can no longer grab aggro the way they used to.
This is the first team I have played with other than my usual SG mates - and here is what I walked away thinking:
The Tank is no longer responsible for commanding all aggro (which I personally think is unfortunate). The main purpose of the tank seems to be that of "wedge buster", that is to say, go in first as usual, take the alpha strike and absorb all the initial damage, then start swinging. The other members of the team then do their jobs which is lock down and defeat the mob while you pound away at the most fitting target - i.e. Boss/Sapper/illusionist/whatever...
So westill do more than a buffed scrapper, but only in the initial moments at the start of a battle. After that we can just stand around an flex and watch the rest of the team do their thing.
As A side note - I solo very well using a combination of secondary powers (attacks), hasten, conserve power and rage to defeat mobs before they can do too much damage to me.
wow.long post.
