Innigo

Hacken Slash

WP/DB tank (currently lvl27)

DB might not be the best of the secondaries but it's a concept thing, all my toons are about a concept

Herding still has its place, but it's very situational - which situations I'm not going into. In general, a good tank will be moving onto the next mob whilst the rest of the team are finishing off the previous and have gathered up all the agro by the time the rest of the team follows.

I took fault early on and love it dearly. It's my opening move; tp into the middle of the mob and hit them with fault. Just as they're getting back up from that I give them a dose of tremor and they're back down again. If you're like me and like your mob to be tightly packed around you then you'll find there's nothing more satisfying than knocking 15+ mobs all onto their backs at once. Brings a big old smile to my face

Herding mob after mob is a dull way to play. I go charging into the middle of the next mob whilst the team if mopping up the remainder of the last. After loosing off the pbaoes I taunt the stragglers and by then the rest of the team is arriving.
I reserve herding for multiple mobs or when a blaster has a nuke ready.

Since the DPS of a stone tank is so pathetic you can stand in the middle of a spawns and do nothing by fire off taunt regularly and by 90% as useful as you would be if you were attacking.

That all said, the scrapper was being rude even if I can sympathise with his position.

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Hasten will noticably increase your attack rate and regen clickies.
Resilience isn't really worth it unless you're willing to pony up two power choices to get Tough. The stun resist is handy but is more of a luxury than a necessity.

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Dunno if I agree with that. Get stunned and integration goes down and depending on the mobs that could leave you in a world of hurt. Hasten imho is the luxury, and one I didn't have until I respecced for PvP at lvl50.

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I would never take any travel power except TP. the reason is that in Granite armour and other armours with rooted on you can't jump or go up steps

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You can climb stairs whilst in granite or with rooted on, but that notwithstanding tp is by far the most useful travel power for a stone tank. You can tp right into the middle of a mob and loose off your AoE and gather up all that agro.

You can get by without hasten and I prefer to as it means I don't have any end issues, although it does mean that even at 44th lvl, brawl is still part of my attack chain

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't regens impervious to web grenades thanks to integration?

If you're SR fighting regen take lots and lots of blues and if he has FA and tactics then run like the wind coz he's going to punch right through your shields.

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I'm thinking of going back to CoH and rolling a new scrapper with my GF. Tahts another thing. I wanted to be a scrapper and my GF a controller so we can due. Now, my GF is a dominator that CAN NOT heal and I'm a scrapper that CAN NOT tank. All my plans were ruined.

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yes, you are missing something very fundamental and it is; Stalkers are NOT Scrappers AND Scrappers are NOT tanks. That should clear up any confusion.

Forget fighting stalkers in Siren's. It's stalkers paradise and iirc only SR scrappers can see stalkers pre-lvl 41 and FA.
My kat/regen scrapper doesn't venture into Siren's, in fact he doesn't PvP below 50th lvl anymore (that's what he's tuned for). In base raids and RV stalkers are little more than a minor annoyance, but don't represent any real threat and most of the time the real challenge is catching them after I interrupt their AS

Different ATs blossom at different lvls and it just so happens that 30th lvl is a very good lvl for *most* stalkers.

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Taunt for me is not ness and is a waste of a power slot for a Fire Tanker.

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It might not be "necessary" but that's a long way from being a waste. Regardless of how good a tank you think you are, taunt can only make you better.

HERO WORK

It’s a thankless task, at least in Paragon City. Hell, we don’t even get paid for doing it. Sure, we get influence and prestige; Hero currency they call it, but you try to buy anything that’s not directly hero related and it’s cashy-money they want. All the spandex and flashy colours count for nothing at the supermarket checkout.

So what do you do? Take on a day job. When I’m not risking my neck to bring down some cartel of super-powered villains, I’m delivering pizzas just to keep a roof over my head and pay my enormous dry cleaning bill. That’s right, pizza delivery! Because of course I’m not skilled in anything other than hero work I’m stuck doing some minimum wage job to make ends meet. It’s pretty common in the hero community. I knew a guy who made his living cleaning the windows of skyscrapers and made good money at it as well. He got paid per window and of course, being bale to fly meant he could clean a lot of windows over the course of a day.

So anyway, I’ve been working in Paragon a few months now and worked my way up to Security level 36. I’m doing fine, settling into the rhythm of things, working mostly out of Founder Falls, but my Super Group asks if I can swing by Atlas Park and pay the rent on the base. Stupidly, I say yes. Despite it being a trek and two trains from Founders I go anyway. Atlas was where I started out and I didn’t mind seeing my old haunt again.

I pay the rent and am struck by the sudden impulse to go see the Hollows. I’m betting it looks different now I’ve got a travel power. I remember some of the hellish treks across the Hollows to missions and I think it’ll be a giggle to explore it properly now I can outrun most motor vehicles.

As I’m running towards the Hollows gate I pass a woman being accosted by a couple of Hellions. I realise I should stop to help and even slow down a little, but this is Atlas Park, I’m hugely over-powered for the thugs that hang about here and firmly believe one of the heroes operating in the area will swing by to help her soon enough. So I kick back into high gear and go on my merry, giving the poor woman not another thought.

At least not until the subpoena arrives.

Apparently no other hero had come along in time and the Hellions had roughed her up pretty good and as she’d been lying in hospital when some ambulance chaser had gotten to her and implanted the idea of suing the city, but I’ll bet he thought all his Christmases had come at once when she told him a hero at passed by and hadn’t stopped to help.

The talking heads on TV have been complaining about this for months, possibly even years. Of heroes not stopping to help every victim they come across and how awful this is and how ashamed of ourselves we should be. Our heroic deeds against arch villains count for nothing because they happen in some underground fortress that no one sees or really cares about, well, not until he unleashes his death-beam and vaporises part of the city and THEN the talking heads start on about where were the heroes, why didn’t they stop this blah, blah, blah, because there’s really no keeping them happy, because happy talking heads have lower viewing figures.

Anyway, I’m getting off the point. Slowing down as I passed gave the woman enough time to recognise me and a target for the lawsuit. Fifteen million they wanted out of me!! Can you believe it? That’s an awful lot of pizza to deliver.

The woman’s lawyer was obviously banking on the city’s coffers backing me up but of course it doesn’t work that way. The city viewed the lawsuit as a serious complaint and suspended my license pending an investigation, which is standard operating procedure. So I call up the lawyer and arrange a meeting to discuss settling out of court. On my salary I can’t even afford a lawyer and wanted to avoid court altogether and thought maybe a face-to-face meeting would sort it out. Maybe if I apologised.

How stupid am I?

The woman’s at the meeting wearing one of those bandage collars and sporting a crutch but I think she was just hamming it up, probably under the instructions of her lawyer. Anyway, I explain right away that the city isn’t going to back me up financially and that I didn’t have an eight figure nest egg tucked away in my mattress, so he could forget a multi-million dollar payout. It was never going to happen. The look of disappointment on his face was almost enough to make me laugh, but I resisted. This was, after all, pretty serious.

So then he starts talking numbers, much reduced from the initial fifteen million, but still awfully big numbers from a pizza delivery boy’s point of view. Two-hundred thousand, payable over ten years would be an amicable settlement, he says. It was then that I did laugh in his face. That was pretty much every cent I would make over the next ten years. So I make a counter offer of free pizza every week for a year and he accuses me of not taking the matter seriously, which was true, but how could I? The whole thing was preposterous.

The woman starts crying and I apologise again and I do sympathise with her, what she went through must have been pretty bad, but I point out that it wasn’t me that robbed her or beat her up and that I’m not under any official obligation to save any individual person and that just makes matters worse and that maybe she’s just lashing out at me because she can’t lash out at the people who did this.

She starts crying harder, making me feel worse and the lawyer’s still banging on about numbers. He’s down to seventy-five grand over ten years, but I can tell he’s just trying to make himself a little cash. To salvage something out of the ashes of what he thought was going to be his career making case. He doesn’t care about his client. I’m trying to comfort the woman and he’s shouting at me and then I’m shouting at him. Then he’s poking he me in the chest and then I’m pushing him and then he hits me with the woman’s crutch and then…

Well, it was an accident. I didn’t mean to do it. It just sort of happened. A nova in a confined space isn’t something you want to see up close, but the lawyer and the woman got ringside seats. Fortunately they both survived, although their injuries were pretty severe, although I’m told they’ll both make full recoveries. The people upstairs got away with a few broken bones, sustained when the floor collapsed out from under them and the building had to be demolished as the explosion had rendered it structurally unsafe.

At that point the city did intervene. They paid off everyone injured in the blast, made them sign non-disclosure agreements on pain of heavy legal action. They told the media that it was a ruptured gas main that wrecked the building and put a gag order on any speculation that deviated from the official line and lastly they revoked my license and told me I’d never be a hero in this town again.

And to be honest I’m kind of glad. I could use a break from hero work. It was all becoming a big a chore and one I’d never get thanked for. So now I deliver pizzas full time and you’d do well to remember that, because next time to decide to stiff the delivery boy for a tip he may well take it upon himself to flatten your whole house.

Meh, you learn by doing. However, imho, you've taken the most important step to being a great player in any AT; you've come to the forums.

80% of what I know I learned here.
The other 20% I just make up

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You're looking way too far ahead, the kind of decline you're talking about would have to take place over quite a long stretch of time, you're easily looking at a year minimum for an SG of 75 members. In that time the entire rent system is planned to be evaluated by development, and anyone with a little faith in the development team would likely agree it'll be dealt with.

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No he's not, because it's happening now. The Echelon (my SG) is running into rent problems. A few of our regulars dinged 50 and have started new toons and we're seeing a general decline in earned prestige; to the point where rent is becomming a serious issue. Effectively we're at the glass ceiling and a slight reduction in prestige is forcing us to consider visiting the pawn shop.

A far better system, if they're intent on keeping rent is to make all the plots free and base the rent solely on the plot size; you know, the way rent works in the real world. And not have it dependent on what stuff you have or how much prestige you have in the bank (or whatever).

With the new telepad functionality we'd like to get telepads to every zone but that's not looking possible despite being one of the biggest (prestige rich) SGs on Defiant. I can only imagine the problems smaller SGs will face.

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But for me being in one place and keeping as many enemies as possible close around me is a large part of the point of Tanking them. A tool that helps me do that is better than a workaround that requires constantly moving around IMO.

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And of course, the former situation is perferable as AoEs become much more effective.

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So thats a bit misleading. A tank with taunt has far from ZERO offensive capability. It is simply slightly less than the tank with taunt.

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And even then it all comes out in the wash. I have taunt and ALL the attacks in the set. I seriously doubt there's a tank out there who's noticeably more offensively able than me simply because they didn't take taunt.

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The reason I said that is that many tankers I team with who have taunt do not use it. But the very act of having taunt seems on average to mean they are better tanks from my squishy experiences on pick up teams. I put this down to something like the mindset thing mentioned early in the thread.

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I picked the example specifically to eliminate player skill from the equation which is BY FAR the biggest factor. If said player didn't use taunt, despite picking and despite its usefulness the odd are he'd be a 2nd rate player and his tauntless tank could only be worse.

I'd be a fool not to acknowledge that a tauntless tank can be better than a tank with taunt, based solely on relative skill of the two players.

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Taunt used at range helps aggro control. Taunt used on the enemy you are attacking ( which is how I used it in I3/I4 ) only makes a small difference unless that enemy is an AV as you hit the taunt AoE cap very quickly so end up taunting those who are already punckvoked and auraed.

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In general this is true unless fighting foes with accuracy debuffs. I'd have an awful time tanking CoT without taunt. Afterall, punchvoke only works if you can actually hit your target.

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In most PUGs my squishies are in, a tank with taunt normally doesn't seem to use it at range, but throws it the person in melee. If I see taunt used on enemies outside the group I am pleasantly suprised. I rarely see a tanker who is situationally aware. Most don't seem to look at the team's health bars.

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Must admit, I don't look at the team health either. Ultimately, another player staying alive isn't my responsibility. No, that's not true, I'm aware once someone runs into trouble, but 95 times out of 100 that's because they've agroed another spawn. Even in an 8 man team I'm controlling over 80% of the agro and that will include the boss if there is one, even if it's 2 spawns. The stragglers are really down to the scrappers to take care of.
I will use taunt at range and do quite frequently but ultimately I'm of the mindset that staying alive is your own responsibility.
How many times have I seen a squishy fire on a straggler. What are they thinking. When I was playing my blaster I almost always targetted through the tank and almost always never pulled any agro because I was hitting mobs standing in the tank's taunt aura.
If a mob did lock on to me I didn't run away I positioned myself so the tank was between me and the mob and got hit by the taunt aura. Not very difficult to work out.
So, in my mind, they'll either learn or collect debt badges.

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However, the real question is, does Tank B hold aggro well enough?

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I think you've done a fine job of explaining that you can tank well enough without it.

It would seem to me the issue being discussed comes down to people's perception of what a tank is. I'm of the agro management crowd; a tank's first job is to hold agro and one of the keystone tools in doing that job is taunt.

Therefor if a tank *doesn't* take taunt the automatic assumption that they've not made agro management their primary concern and hence the scorn for being a scranker.

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Unless the taunting one never uses taunt.

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Fogging the issue?

Assume he does.

I love this thread. 17 pages and still no conclusion in sight [img]/uk/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

So, with that in mind. Here's a hypothetical situation;

Player X rolls two tanks. He builds them identically, same powersets, same slots, everything EXCEPT one has taunt (Tank A), and one doesn't (Tank B).

So, we've eliminated player skill from the equation, along with powerset differences. The question is simply this; which out of the two tanks would be better at holding agro?

I think we reached the bottom line in this issue weeks ago. Which was; no matter how good a tanker you are without taunt, you'll always be better with it, irrespective of what kind of tanker you are.

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See, another tank can just move next to those foes in a second or two, while stone needs taunt to get them.

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Really? And almost immediately lose agro of the group he was standing in the middle of and the rest of his team is firing into? They'd really thank you for that.

Sometimes 2 tanks can be a problem as both try to establish dominance and end up getting in each other's way or pulling the team apart. I'm a big believer in moving onto the next spawn when the current one is still kicking, but only just. It gives me a few second to gather up the agro before the rest of the team comes in.
Usually a team will fall into line quite readily with this, but if there's another tank and he works the same way then occassionally the two tanks head off to different spawns and the team gets divided, which can be a problem.

I work to the rule that the tank who can take the most abuse/can gather agro the best gets to lead, but sometimes its not always readily apparent. I don't mind playing 2nd fiddle to a more powerful tank, but I adamantly refuse to scrank. Just not going to happen, but if the tanks fight shoulder to shoulder it rarely seems to be a problem.

Best twin tank experience I ever had. Was on a fairly incompetent PuG, there was a couple of good people, but the restwere largely a waste of space (worst empath ever on the team) and they managed to agro Nemesis spawns. Me and this Ice tank found yourselves surrounded by 8 +3 Nem bosses; 4 Warhulks, 4 fakes and associated minions and despite our best efforts the rest of the team wiped.
I kept shouting for them to run, but no one went, so it came down to me and the Ice and the most herculean battle ensued that just went on and on whilst the rest of the team went to hospital, got rezzed, came back and found the pair of us both still standing.

A nice moment.

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I wasn't talking about taking damage, I was talking about holding aggro, because that's what the person I was replying to had problems with.

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I know and I don't agree. A tank can't hold ANY agro if he'd dead therefor damage mitigation is a factor, but that's a side issue.
Personally I think the claim is unfounded and would be interested to know what it's based on since I've seen mudpots pull agro off an inv tank.

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Stone is not better than Invun until it gets Granite, where it outpowers everything. But with a -need to hit- taunt aura, severely impaired mobility, and taunt recharging at 1/3 normal speed, I never feel as safe with a granite tank in the team as I do with an invun or ice- personally.

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You've not been teaming with the right stone tanks [img]/uk/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] From early on in my stone tank's build I specialised in defence and agro management - to the point where my attacks badly suffered. I'll hold ALL the agro from certainly one spawn and 90% of the agro from 2 with relative ease.

Mobility if not a factor as most tanks are relatively static anyway - you can't go off and chase down stragglers as you'll lose agro of the mobs around you [img]/uk/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Perhaps an inv tanker *could* outperform me if they went for a team build but these days inv seems the build of choice for the scranker.

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Until granite, Invun does actually outshine Stone (Invunerability gives extra defence for a start! - then there is unyeilding for extra resistance).

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True, but even by 32, you've still got more than half way to go to 50, and that outshining only happens after 18th lvl. So it's only for 14lvls out of the 50 inv can take more abuse than a stone tank.

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I'd say that basing your conclusion on stone armor is kinda ignorant, since stone is the worst aggro holder.

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That may be true according to the numbers, but tactically it's certainly not. A stone tank can, if given a few seconds without anyone interfering, gather up all the agro in a room and take the punishment without any backup.

A fire tank wouldn't dare and I've never seen an inv tank pull it off. Ice could manage it as well.

Anyway, the point being that the primary is not the only factor at work here. The secondary counts. EM for example only has one AoE attack, stone has 2, the 1st of which, fault, is available at 20th lvl