G_Tanker

Hey scrappers,

I'm trying to decide which of the following toons to build and really sink inf into. Here's the background: I am looking for a melee toon I can really enjoy playing all the time. This means a good mix of sturdiness (defense + resistance), endurance (recovery + healing), and most importantly, damage - with a big leaning to AoE, not single target. I like big teams, farms and general chaos, and I enjoy tanking (albeit I usually don't need a tanker to tank). I love task forces and I prefer to play at 50.

To illustrate some thoughts, I've had a capped fire/invuln/body scrapper for a while and he is fantastic - but a little low in the self healing department and the damage is very good, but not amazing, and of course there's trouble around non-SL. I have a fire/sr scrapper with aid self that is terrific - but a little squishy when the RNG goes the wrong way, and a little light with only one ae attack in FSC, plus no taunt aura beyond FSC.

I'm looking at the following:

Dark/Fire/Pyre tanker with 45.5% S/L and 28.6% ranged def

Spines/Fire/Body scrapper with ~40% S/L and ~30% ranged
Spines/Fire scrapper with ~40% melee and ~30% ranged

Fire/Shield or Shield/Fire/Pyre scrapper/tanker with... no heal?

Thoughts? Pretty much anything I build will need to be near softcap... I'm intrigued by the possibility of playing a spines / fire that's near the softcap for smashing and can actually stand in melee without drawing agro and evaporating, but I worry it's just too squishy. By the same token, my dark/fire/pyre just doesn't quite have the damage I like... a shield/fire/pyre tanker has been suggested, but I have concerns about lack of heal.

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Problem is, I wasn't able to stop myself from going “look, you don't know what you're doing”. Which means I'll probably be ignored, and will have to leave the thread rather than get stuck in a flame war that I contributed to. I suck.

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You're terrible! Terrible!

The tanker forums are a guilty pleasure for me, I must admit. I've been there since launch, but the players there over the years continue to fit less-than-appealing attributes of the archtype rather well... hard headed, defensive, egotistical...

Anyhoo. I apologize for contributing to the flame war. I just about fell out of my chair laughing when I saw 3 long posts responding to you and Sarrate's critiques essentially saying, "noo! tankers are different! You're wrong! These numbers don't 'matter'"!

Still, I'm interested in the results. I will never solo an AV, on any character, it's just not my cup of tea, but I like knowing things.

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Survivability is an important concern, but obviously so is grabbing and retaining aggro. While the Invuln set is quite good it seems at survivability (especially with respect to S/L), I don't see a damage aura as part of it. If Invuln has no way to generate aggro, then all the aggro management has to come from elsewhere - such as the secondary.

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Invincibility is the second best agro generating aura in the game. (Arguably the best, but ice is better imo). It is the reason I can wander around 54 boss farms from 28 onward on my invuln scrappers as a "tank" - I can lock down mob agro without issue due to the taunt aura.

Edit: Took a brand new (no vet badge, just hit 50) tanker into a pug 54 farm last night... I asked him if he had a taunt aura, he said "no but I have taunt" ... invited him figuring "what the heck, a half competent agro holder is better than none" and then found out he was INV/SS. Proceeded to explain to him that he had an amazing taunt aura and how to use our two taunt auras to hold maximum mob attention in a kill zone. He was pretty good by the end, too. Invuln's great for taunt.

You're attacked with a 'fire blast' from a behemoth 30yds away that does 100 smashing, 100 fire damage and is typed as 'range, smashing, fire'. The following occurs:

Your defense checks to see whether your ranged, smashing, or fire defense is highest. Lets say you were 10% ranged, 30% smashing, 15% fire - it would use 30% as your defense number.

If you are hit, lets say you have 90% smashing and 10% fire resistance.
100 smashing damage becomes 10.
100 fire damage becomes 90.

You take 100 total damage from the 200 damage "Fire Blast" that is a ranged, smashing and fire attack.

This is my understanding, although I haven't done a ton of research around it. Keep in mind there exist untyped attacks.

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From the post I'm responding to: I give credit where credit is due (no matter the source). Sarrate is often correct and has an impressive store of detailed information regarding CoH. However, he also has a tendency to lose the forest for the trees on occasion (as many number crunchers are prone to).

From another post: I only point out all the other factors that I'm skipping to ensure that the reader understands that what we're talking about is a gross approximation.

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Yes Krunch, these behaviors differentiate a back of napkin dilettante from someone who's actually an expert . I can do napkin calculations on my own. When I want accuracy, I ask an expert.

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In this particular case his conclusions abouts certain Tanker secondaries based on his calculations revolving around DPA is flat wrong. Not that his calculations are wrong ... he can use a calculator with the best of them. His criteria for his calculations are wrong. Wrong as in they don't stand up when you actually play the game.

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I'm curious as to your logic behind this. The question is "what tanker solo's an AV best" and the DPS chain of the secondary is absolutely paramount to answering that question if you're going to ignore insps and temp powers (since, with those, most tankers should do fine on most AV's with a decent chain). Perhaps you could take a shot at articulating the gap for me why his expertise in damage chain calculations don't meet your criteria. Were you planning to use shivans, nukes, amy's and insps? Do you view that as a challenge? I have invuln scrappers that tank CWK without external buffs with no problem because I bring insps and the team kills him before they wear off. Does that make invuln a good set to kill the CWK with? ... I'm not following your logic on the criteria. If anything, it seems that with more resilience from your primary and lower dps from your secondary you would want to lean on their expertise *more* not suggest that, because 'these are tankers', the number crunchers are out of depth in calculating attack chains.

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P.S. - I've been playing Tankers for longer then Sarrate and Werner .... combined. Quid pro quo buddy.

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Um. Were you under the impression that playing a tanker is hard, in the general sense? While Werner is a soloist, Sarrate tanks on her scrappers as well as her tankers. Furthermore, where exactly does your experience in tankers factor into being an expert on attack chain calculations (which you've already been pointed out as having gaps in your methodology) beyond firsthand knowledge of the secondaries - most of which are shared with scrappers?

Given tanker's much higher survivability, it is much more important to be able to find a solid attack chain, since survivability is less of a concern. You even iterate this yourself while simultaneously crying that it is the reason that you know better than the experts;

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This is the difference between Scrappers and Tankers. Scrappers have enough DPS out of the box that they can afford to (and often need to) use powers that will knowingly lower their DPS (e.g. Broadsword using Parry). Tankers don't have quite as much wiggle room as our DPS tends to be close to the threshold (and that's on the fairly enhanced level I've been approximating with) and our utility attacks tend to come with no damage at all (e.g. Fault, Stun, Handclap, etc ...). As a result, most times (if not all), a Tanker's attack chain is constrained to those powers that will yield the highest DPS the attack chain, and that pool of powers is often lower then can be made a full chain of. For instance, Shadow Punch on a DM Scrapper while not the highest DPS in your lineup still comes in at above an enhanced 94 DPS (especially when including possible criticals) whereas the Tanker's version never will. So our attack chains may have fillers, and except for the rare exception, will have less powers available to the Tanker then make up the chain itself.

What this boils down to is that a Tanker will often have less powers to fill an attack chain then the longest recharging power that the Tanker is using (iow my formula works for Tankers ... it wouldn't work for Scrappers, but it's not meant to be universal either).

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... so perhaps getting exceedingly defensive and evasive when the experts poke holes in your attack chain calculations because "tankers are different and you have played more of them" is ... silly.

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And completing formulas often does not make you an expert. It makes you practiced.

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Sure, and they have a lot more practice than you do. Werner's also tested his theories with a high degree of accuracy, something you haven't done. In professional circles, being able to recognize expertise is a very good skill to have. I'm not trying to drive you further into uber-defensive mode - I'm genuinely glad the topic got brought up because I *have* been curious about single target tanker DPS for quite a while after all the scrapper work. That said, might want to give Werner and Sarrate a tad more credit - they've been doing this a lot longer than you have.

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I'm interested in seeing the result purely from an academic POV. I see no point in soloing AV's as I enjoy large teams and chaos, but the scrapper boards have had this down to a science for years. It would be interesting to see how tanker secondaries rank.

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See, I'm the opposite. I don't care much about the academics of it ....

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I got that from your posts above. Werner and Sarrate have been at chain-calculations for a long time. It's not something I'm interested in, but I respect them as experts.

Primaries: Ice Bkast, Dark Blast, Sonic Blast, Fire Blast
Secondaries: Cold Dom, Rad, Dark, Storm

Suggestions:
Ice/Cold
Dark/Rad
Sonic/Dark
Fire/Storm

... just because that screams awesome to me. Toss everyone assault & manuevers & drool from 3 targeted aoe -res debuffs and 4 toggle pullers. Each go grab a spawn, stack mobs, softcap defense, melt 3-4 spawns at a time. There are better combos, frankly, but I drool thinking about 4 competent players at the helm of those!

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I would argue Fire/Kins still are at the top of the heap (as far as controllers are concerned) for farming no matter what you're trying to kill. I personally farm 54 bosses with ease as long as I have a tank that's able to keep aggro to some extent.

52 bosses I can farm w/o a tank.

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The discussion is stackability of fire-kins. Having one on your team is always good.

I think I found a build I like. However, my end/sec drops to 3.0 and my global recharge drops to 32.5% ... but solid defense?

Oh, and it means getting 4 oblits and a TOD set... blerg.

It procs pretty often in torrent, haven't tried it in ripper.

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And here's where I think the more educated defender community can really help things. I always make a special point on teams to appreciate the bubbles, sonic shields, dark debuffs, TA debuffs, etc. in team chat. Having someone mention it on a team, will often make other people go..."oh, you're right, look at that!"

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Oh, I had quite a lot of fun showing the tank who was really leading the team a few runs back. I'd been pulling to a kill zone on my dark/arch on a 54 boss farm, and the fire/ss tank decided (on a completely defense buffless team - TA, dark, dark defs and kin troller) that he was tired of letting the defender lead after a bunch of spawns, so he jumped in. And the team followed. It was a little messy, I hung back (covered them with debuffs) and chatted with the other dark defender about not encouraging bad tank behavior by following him. After that spawn gave the warning "I'm pulling to the tar patch." aka "sit here quietly". He ran into the next group, and this time only the 2 scrappers and kinetic followed. They died in about 4 seconds. I gave them a few seconds to think about it, then debuffed the spawn, dropped fluffy to help lower tohit, tar patched, HT'd them all back to life.

He sat back politely after that and held down base while I pulled. I think he got 3-4 levels out of the run regardless (37ish to 41ish).

Background: I have a 50 spines/fire that I'm mid-reworking and am debating just creating a fire/shield instead.

Target: No higher than +2's, large groups solo, and solid ae damage on teams. Not single target damage.

Thoughts: Need higher defense on my spines/fire (I could hit ~40% melee without gimping the build badly, but sooo expensive) and debating just swapping to a fire/shield.

range def, then recov and recharge

I'm interested in seeing the result purely from an academic POV. I see no point in soloing AV's as I enjoy large teams and chaos, but the scrapper boards have had this down to a science for years. It would be interesting to see how tanker secondaries rank.

One more point I want to make about +4 boss farms;

I've seen more kins FS & die in a heartbeat than any other debuffer. The reason is they want to get near the mobs to use FS, they last 1-2 hits, and often there's more than the agro cap floating around (or they're not controlled) so the mobs take umbrage at the debuff and pop 'em like balloons. (Ed: I personally enjoy killing 2+ spawns at a time, without a tanker - which is quite doable on a good team - but getting near them as a squishy just isn't wise)

Everything else can debuff from a pretty safe distance, and trollers have immobs. Fire/storms who know how to use hurricane to push immobed mobs back into the killzone are by far my favorite conceptual troller for farms. Pity I never see them

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FS isn't that much on recharge. I know pretty much any controller with hasten, not to mention siphon speed and speed boosted by another kin or more, can double stack it at a minimum. But like you said mmmv.

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Yep, even at 60 base recharge I wouldn't be surprised to see people with it up every 15-20s or so. Still, I heavily prefer enduring debuffs or location debuffs - I want kin for the damage buff of FS, which has a decent duration and stacks well, but it's also very easy to nigh-constantly cap a blue side team for +damage with just *one* kin.

For res debuffs? Rather go with other powersets.

Typically my darks are ranged, I don't even look at the dark epic PP anymore on dark defs... usually psi (if any at all - def power pools really aren't that useful for dark).

Interesting work Krunch, but why do your #'s and Sarrate's #'s disagree on Ice Melee if I read the earlier portion of the thread correctly?

Also, could you try a hand at optimizing the ones with *'s with APPs- interesting to see where they would end up. SS is quite a bit of a surprise, I must admit, but I haven't played the set since launch and it was pretty mediocre then.

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I prefer the Titan wiki

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Ticket_Vendor

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IIRC paragon wiki actually points to this now!

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Paragon Wiki ftw.

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He meant to be helpful and actually provide a link


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No one uses google anymore =(

Paragon Wiki ftw.

Storm's more solo friendly of the two, especially with dark covering its one hole (self heal).

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You may be at the damage cap, but the multiple fulcrums will still debuff the bosses even more.

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I'd still prefer no more than 2 kins. Maybe 3 if they all were good players. Give me rads, storms and TA's instead of more kins. And defenders with those powersets, and dark on top.

Side analogue: Like an earlier thread where someone postulated Rad is clearly superior to dark (defender versions) because of having AM and the toggle nature of its powers (this was the focus of the argument): Tar patch is not up often enough to use spawn to spawn and is therefore inferior to EF. I completely disagree. If anything, I prefer tar patch vastly to EF and I have plenty of characters with each powerset. There's a big advantage to not having to retoggle as things die off, and if you establish a 'kill zone' and pull many spawns to it, it frees you up to do more damage.

How is this related to the kin argument? Well, fulcrum shift is a great power, but it's pretty limited in that you only get one shot & 10 max targets and it's got a hefty recharge. Rad can retoggle in 2-3s if an anchor dies and get full potency of debuff on any 16 targets in the area while the toggle is up. Storm and dark don't care if you move in and out of range, once you're tagged you're debuffed, even better.

FS is a great power, but I wouldn't build a team with only FS.

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I'd vote fire/rad. Plenty of kins out there already.

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one can never have too many kins

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I heartily disagree, but YMMV