General_Masters

I tend to take Tough and Weave on all my tanks, although my Fire/Dark only uses Weave as a LotG mule and doesn't actually run it. He probably should, but instead he leans on a pair of self heals that are up constantly.

Normally I wouldn't bother with Fighting on a Stone Tank, however my Stone/DM is being built to tank LR completely unaided and the additional defense from Weave is an essential part of the build. It's also useful for soloing large spawns while not in Granite, as well as the ability to be present when exemplaring to low levels where Granite is not an option to begin with (my spec will be taking this into account for weekly TF purposes).

My DDT skipped ToF and CoF due to power pick constraints, but with Fitness becoming inherent I am considering adding them for stacking purposes.

Currently he is running OG, but as he has nothing to stack with it I cannot readily shut down harder targets, and I am considering dropping it while adding the previously mentioned powers since I want to add Fighting as well and he's L32 which limits options somewhat.

Am thinking of making a DA/EM for stun stacking, although with multiple DM characters I find myself wanting something with a bit more AoE lately. That said, at 14s base recharge Whirling Hands will at least be up fairly often without slotting, unlike SD and DC. I would also be making a lot more use of DR, since I would not have a heal-slotted Siphon Life to abuse.

I'm also thinking that given the efficacy of DR, and assuming a ToE proc slotted therein, might it not be benficial to go for +recharge and rely on DR spamming combined with mitigation from the secondary rather than attempting to build for multiple aspects of +Def despite the paired types?

I can see where some sets, notably Fire Melee, might have problems here as they are light on mitigation, however I would argue that the increased killspeed should make up for at least some of that since harder targets will drop faster thus reducing incoming.

I also acknowledge that this does leave one open to debuff spam, however DA resists the more egregious offenders to a large degree, especially the dreaded END drain, res debuffs are rather rare unless one fights large spawns of Rogue Vanguard or high-level Seers, and to-hit debuffs are mostly/entirely countered due to the ubiquity of +Acc set bonuses, so there's something to be said for not worrying about debuffs hitting.

As I do not have a L50 DA Tank thusly IOed I cannot test how such a build would fare against +4s, although it would probably not be able to go AFK against them unlike a +Def build would unless you set DR to autofire, and even then I'm not sure if it would or not.

I typically leave it at +0/x1 until the 30s, and once I have at least SOs in my powers I add Bosses to the mix since I can stay in the fight long enough.

I generally do not set for large spawn sizes until a fairly high level, as the build is usually not yet ready for it and the time investment tends to not be worth it.

Fitness becoming inherent in i19 will likely change that, since I will be able to get more defenses early on and lean on the damage aura for my tanks that have one.

By the time I hit L50 I'm almost always on +0/x8, since I can kill them quickly and not have to worry about being overwhelmed by adds. Once I IO out a character I often run +2/x8, even those who can run higher, since bosses above +2 tend not to be worth it solo. That does depend on the faction, though, running Carnies or Malta at x8 is generally not a good idea for most armor sets.

Running Unstoppable against LR, with or without slotting it, is a death sentence.

As for going that far over 90% resistance, anything that could debuff it far enough to matter would probably kill you anyway, so there's no real point.

I don't even take Unstoppable, but if I did the only thing I would ever put in it is a Steadfast Res/Def IO, and even then only if that build was not going to exemplar to low levels. OK, I would also put in the PvP +Res IO, but at that point you're getting into 'insanely expensive build' territory and it's not an IO most folks will ever have.

I have a DA/DM Tank at L27 (who I am about to go in-game and play with) who is very tough on just SOs, however he still has END issues since he's not IOed out yet.

He does sometimes feel a bit weak since his attacks are still underslotted (I always build 'defenses first' regardless of the impact on my soloing), but I don't have to worry about fighting opponents that can hit him in his weak spot because he doesn't really have one. Sure, Energy damage will be a pain at higher levels until he's IOed, but with two heals and multiple AoE mitigation auras some of the sting will be drawn.

As far as the wandering of stunned critters is concerned, I plan to make him a Vigilante once he can run the Patron arcs and pick up an AoE Immob to counter that. I do not yet know if I will be taking any additional mitigation from the Patron pools, although I probably will since I always take it from APPs.

My IOed WP Tank will not really change with this, since she doesn't have Fitness anyway and does not exemplar any more. My low-level Tanks are currently on hold so that I do not pick up more powers prior to the change.

My old INV/SS, on the other hand, will be almost totally rebuilt thanks to this, since his build will not be so tight and there are some powers I wanted that I can now fit in. Said character is not really IOed yet, so what stuff he does have slotted will be no real loss.

My L21 Fire/Dark in Praetoria will probably be restarted, as his picks would be vastly different than what they are now and I wouldn't lose anything by doing so. More generally speaking, I will be able to build my Tanks to exemplar more effectively since I will be able to cram in Fighting Pool in the low levels without losing much, if anything.

Also broadly speaking, I will likely be taking Leadership on some of my Tanks since I will have the picks and they don't need much, if any slotting unless I choose to do so. That, or Air Superiority will make a return since I am a big fan of Fly as a travel power but usually take SJ instead given how valuable CJ is.

I will probably still have two builds on most of my tanks: one for top-end solo use and the other for teaming/exemping, with the latter carefully planned to have as many of the bonuses as possible by L30-35 (my SD/DM is already being built this way, so her build will not change much).

One thing I will definitely be doing is taking the damage aura early where applicable. Having tried some experiments with them I definitely want the added early damage, since it allows me to concentrate on a Lt or Boss while the minions melt away and saves a LOT of endurance in the process despite the cost to run the various auras.

What I did on my WP/Fire was capped HP on the team build and high recharge on the solo build, although I ended up with some +rech bonuses on the +HP build anyway.

My team build does not have Buildup, since I am not worried about massive damage output as that is the team's job while mine is to make sure they don't get their heads beaten in.

I also took the Fighting pool, which makes a BIG difference in survivability as the +Def stacks with the already high non-S/L defenses to make it hard for such attacks to hit, and the S/L res makes critters such as Cimerorans with their high attack rate and massive -def stacking a lot easier to deal with.

I don't have Hasten on my team build since it does nothing for my defensive set and I'm not worried about how quickly I can attack as the 4 AoEs are up often enough as it is.

I skipped the Fitness pool to fit in Fighting, but I do have a number of +recovery bonuses as well as the uniques so I don't really miss it. I do not recommend doing so without said uniques though, since Fire's AoEs and Fireball can eat a lot of END.

I was also there for the old days, when my INV tank couldn't move if he wanted to avoid getting mezzed since I didn't have teleport at the time and Unyielding Stance rooted you. Same problem with my Stone Tank, in addition to which his armors didn't stack.

Both tanks have long since hit 50 and seen many changes in how they play, and I have at least one tank of almost every primary (still need to make a Fire tank I want to keep, have yet to find the "right" secondary) who does quite well for him/her self, so I feel fairly confident in saying that no matter what anyone else might think of your set choices and/or power selections therein, as long as YOU enjoy it then you made the right choice.


For those not familiar:

The main problem Ice (and pre-Granite Stone) used to have was that the critter tohit mechanincs were quite different back then so a spawn of +2s could easily be lethal to a +def-oriented set since the sets' defenses did not keep up with critter tohit scaling (I am ignoring effects of secondaries for simplicity, they could have a large impact in this area). Invuln SHOULD have had the same problem (to a lesser degree due to high resists), but Invincibility was badly bugged and giving far more protetion than it should have thus it became the default go-to Tank for most situations (a properly built Fire Tank could give it a run for its money due to very high killspeed reducing incoming fire) since once you herded the first few mobs you became untouchable save for autohit or Psi damage. It did not help things that INV's Tier 9, Unstoppable, could be made permanent back then which meant you had capped resists and defenses at almost all times.

Except that I've found that it's not nearly enough to do that, but then I assume I will be facing foes using non-S/Ls attacks frequently since a fair amount of upper-level content is against Rikti/CoTs/Carnies. Now if you're talking the ITF then S/L is clearly the better choice since that's all they do.

I also assume I will be tanking AVs, and a fair number of those use non-S/L attacks. Gratned that's a fairly small percentage of overall content, but for 40+ it's a much larger percentage so I feel it's worth taking into consideration given that the endgame is usually what such slotting is aimed at.

Then again I believe in slotting to cover as many aspects as I can, so it seems odd to me to only try to cover 2 of 7 Types while going for Positional you can cover all 7 (more or less). I'm sure it will be sufficient for almost all cases, but then I build my Tanks for extreme survivability so I need the additional coverage while most other folks probably don't bother as it's a pain getting everything set within such narrow tolerances.

My DA/DM Tank has that proc in both DR and SL, and since the latter is part of my attack chain it goes off constantly. In fact, I plan to slot that proc into SL on all my /DM Tanks since there's no such thing as 'too much Endurance'

Since Firey Aura has no +def of its own and Weave and CJ are already taken, might it not be better to drop the attempt to slot up the various Typed defenses and instead slot for Positional? With only 3 aspects to slot for instead of 7 it's a lot easier to reach high values in all of them, and you don't need to wrangle slots around trying to eke out a few extra % here and there.

For example: FA/BA has several PBAoEs, so you can get 18.75% +Def (Melee) by slotting 5 sets of Obliteration and will be covered against ALL Melee-class attacks rather than just the S/L ones. While it's true that many melee attacks have a S/L component not all of them do, so when you run into ones that aren't you're still covered. Since some of those same attacks belong to AVs, when they hit they HURT so having defense against them is a good idea.

Since almost all attacks (about the only ones that don't are a few from Mind Control) have a positional component, by slotting accordingly you're also providing protection against Psi attacks without needing to sacrifice half the build or more to get good values against it.

I realize that my slotting example for Melee def is a bit low on End Reduction, however it seems the OP will be slotting the Numina and Miracle Uniques as well as a PS Proc, and I know from experience that that will be sufficient to cover any recovery shortfall.

Actually it DOES apply, where it appears to break the 'Rule of 5' is that it counts separately from 7.5 bonuses from slotting sets. you can have 5 7.5's from sets and 5 LotGs, but more than 5 LotGs will do you no good.

I have a WP/Fire slotted for +HP who is at the HP cap and is now being tweaked to increase the +Def, but based on my testing in RWZ you don't really NEED to softcap any of the +Def to be insanely tough. Said tank can take on 3 spawns of +4s in RWZ, as well as solo the +3/+4 EBs there, and the only defense close to softcap is F/C at 38% (incidental bonus from a +HP slotting).

I do not have the Fitness pool on said Tank, so no Health, but I haven't really missed it since I have other places to slot the Miracle and Numina procs (I really should break down and buy a Regen Tissue +Regen...). No Stamina either, but I do have a PS proc in QR so I never run out of END unless a Sapper hits.

I have not really slotted for +regen, but it tends to come with slotting for HP (many of the sets that give one give the other) so said Tank's regen is fairly high anyway(I'd have to look to get the exact number).

It's a pity that +Res bonuses are so anemic as it would be interesting to try slotting for that as an alternative to the usual +Def/+HP/+Regen schemes.

I have a L50 WP/Fire slotted for +HP who herds +4s in RWZ. I took Fire APP for an additional AoE, but you don't necessarily need to do that. That character DOES have 4 purple sets so has a high +acc bonus, but that's not mandatory either.

I have that character's, non-S/L defense at about 37% which is usually plenty (depends on how many Chief Soldiers are in the pile), but I am tweaking it to reach the softcap. Said character can also herd Rularuu, but I seldom bother due to Wisp bosses using Detention Field on me all the time.

As to a WP/Fire soloing +0 8-man mobs, it can do so easily at zero risk. Hell, even +3s aren't dangerous.

You're not, I always 4-slot my attacks early on, 2 Acc/2 Endred. The other slots go into my defenses.

I also make use of the dual-build feature (it's much easier in my case as I can make L15 basic IOs in bulk with my crafting character) to set up one build for solo and one for teaming. The solo build takes more attacks and delays some toggles (tbh you don't need many of the toggles until rather high levels solo unless you like to push the slider), while the team build takes fewer attacks, Taunt, and all the defenses as soon as they open up.

I also tend to build with survival in mind, so I take an attack set that plays off the primary in order to stack additional mitigation. For example, I decided to take Dark Melee on my Dark Armor tank for two reasons: one, the additional self-heal allows me to use Dark Regen a lot less often, which is a HUGE End savings; two, the end recovery from Dark Consumption means I can run DA's toggles and not pass out from attacking (this tank is not IOed out yet), which means I can run Cloak of Fear and stack Touch of fear with it to keep even Bosses perma-feared and whiffing.

That combo also happens to (at least partially) cover DM's relative lack of AoE damage by running Death Shroud.

Now that tanks have Electric armor, I have an Elec/DM planned that will be VERY hard to kill once I have SO-grade enhancements plugged in.

I skipped Fitness pool on my Wp/Fire (also an AoE-heavy character, so similar situation), but on one build I am considering adding it back in for Health as I use her to tank Hami and the additional regen will give me more time in the jell-o (not much, but any extra I can get helps).

For regular use you will not need it though, as long as you make sure to slot endreds in your attacks, and a couple each in Tough and Weave (assuming you take them, which is a good idea). IOs are a different case, of course.

Just the names, since they better match the anims of the powers they are now on.

At one point I had a Storm/Energy Defender (thinking of rerolling it now) who relied on the KB to solo since damage output was lacking for many levels. That character used Gale liberally solo but on teams it was used only if I had a handy corner to blast them into since as one who mainly plays Tanks I know all too well how a melee character feels when someone gets careless with AoE KB (or AoE Immobs for that matter, but that's a different thread).

I also have a 50 PB, almost all of whose attacks do KB, and when teaming with him I have to be careful to hover over the pile on the Tank while in squid mode so I don't blast them all over the map. Said character has almost never gotten a KB complaint, although that may be at least partially due to the fact he's a tri-former and will swap to Dwarf to pull mobs off the squishies on the team.

Defiance definitely needs attacks to hit, I often take my Blaster up against AVs solo and I notice a decrease in damage whenever I miss. It's not much of a decrease, but when you're watching the damage figures to make sure you're putting out enough firepower you notice when it changes.