Sarrate

Ah, but it is a common goal in games. In some form or another, there has been a tendency towards efficiency in every MMO I've played.

Back in DAOC (Albion side at least), there were classes that were frequently left out of groups unless they had to (Infiltrator / Scout). Some specs were shunned (Smite Cleric) because they didn't provide their needed role (healing).

Similarly, WoW players try to make things as efficient as they can by desiring people with the highest "gearscore" possible.

Don't think that CoX is any exception. Why do people bemoan bad PUGs? Slow? Inefficient? Frustrating? Why did people forming STFs require Stone Tanks (even though they weren't necessary)? They wanted to win, not fail.

Etc, etc. Yes, speed and efficiency are common goals in games. That is not debatable. What is debatable is what level of efficiency is desired; and that varies from person to person.


Efficiency and being social aren't mutually exclusive.


(Note: I'm speaking in general here and trying to stay out of the argument at hand.)

Ironically, it would've hit the weaker sets (Elec, Fire, pre FE buff mind you) hardest while leaving the stronger sets (Invuln, etc) unscathed. I also don't agree that a 50% increase in damage admittance is "not a big deal." I always found my (non-IOed) Elec Brute squishy. I still don't know how Scrappers put up with just 75% energy res.

Not so fast:

Unstoppable crashes health and endurance.
Power Surge crashes health, endurance, and recovery.

Yes, Elec Armor has Power Sink, but that means you need a blue before you can even start retoggling. Keep in mind the hold is 1.0 accuracy and a 50% chance to hold a boss. I wouldn't feel any more comfortable crashing in the middle of a mob with PS than I would be with Unstoppable.

Ahahahah!!

It's 40% unslotted. Half of that is enhanceable. With 3 heal SOs, it is roughly a 59% MaxHP boost.

For the player base as a whole, I think you're correct. The question I'd raise from this statement, however, is where people who assemble these bleeding edge builds spend their time when on the characters in question.

I have no answer to that, though.

That's not a fair statement. It's not necessarily the case that they "didn't want to work on it" as opposed to a priority issue: "How much time would it take to fix X? In the time T it would take to fix X, what could we do in the mean time? Is fixing bug X worth not working on feature Y?"

For example, look how long it took to get Power Customization. It wasn't because they didn't want the feature, but because it would cost so much time/effort/money to do.

I don't know exactly how IOs work in the guts of the system, but I strongly suspect it's considerably more complicated than most would assume. It would mean fixing this bug would take more time than you'd expect. If you've never worked on a programming project before (no idea if you have or haven't), a "simple bug" can quite easily be the most insidious thing on the damned planet to fix.

I don't have any idea. I've never played a Storm past lvl20 and I don't follow those ATs nearly as closely as I do melee.

That doesn't sound right to me. As I understand it, the reason taunt sets were removed from taunt auras was because some procs would effect the Tanker as well as their targets. The one that really comes to mind is Triumphant Insult: Chance to Disorient. When it was slotted into (some?) taunt auras, it would proc on the Tanker, effectively reducing their stun protection.

I believe that was why they were removed, not because they allowed taunt auras to (minor) deal damage.

It's a portion of it, but some sets don't IO as well as others. Ice, for example, gets the short end of the stick. Sure, it can be softcapped and hit the hp cap, but it has next to no resistance (outside Cold, which is rare) and it can't "buy" a meaningful amount. What's worse is recharge doesn't help Hibernate due to NoPhase, so it's very susceptible to being burst down.

Shield, another defense heavy set on the other hand, can earn a reasonable amount of resistance (~50%, iirc?) and can cap s/l res and HP while OwtS is active, making it less susceptible to burst damage.


Also keep in mind this thread has a lot of "survivability focused" builds (most notably the Elec ones) make compromises some (most?) may consider unpalatable. It would fit the bill of highly survivable, but whether or not that alone makes the "best" tank is another story, imo.

Dangit Iggy. I used to think I could come up with some decent builds, but yours are downright mean. (Of course, I place a higher emphasis on damage (for solo / threat purposes) and I try to make them exemplar friendly... which is less relavent now with lvl50 content, but it's a hard habit to kick.)

I'll have to review my build to see if I could tweak it a bit.

Romans aren't that scary with SoW up. I've actually waited until ~25% hp, popped SoW, then regenned to full in a full crowd during ITFs. I think at the time I had ~720% regen (w/1 target) and ~3150 hp. My regen took a bit of a hit when they removed the enhancability part of Numina and Regen Tissue.

Assuming that both Tankers have 45% def (ie: not factoring it in at all to these calculations, as they'd inflate numbers equally) and that the Invuln Tanker has the same regen as you w/o Energize (~263%) and has base res numbers to exotics (~31.2%, since I don't know where your higher than slotted res - Cardiac or set bonuses), a quick spreadsheet looks like this:

Unsurprisingly, Elec wins heartily in Energy damage, Invuln takes a very solid win for s/l, and the others are closer for effective health, but Elec has better regen.

The thing that I'd give Invuln a lot of credit for is having def resistance and Invincibility's scaling to provide a buffer against def debuffs (and tohit buffs) in large groups.


[edit: Whoops, I just realized I assumed you were softcapping to f/c, too. If you're not, Invuln will beat Elec Armor for those two, as well. (Assuming pure f/c damage.)]

That's not true. An Electric Tank can take Weave and a Steadfast, too. The only def Elec Armor needs to account for is Invincibility and Tough Hide (~17.16% with 1 target). That's still a significant portion, mind you.

I was about to raise this exact point on Invuln's +MaxHP, but you beat me to it. Of course, it would factor slightly more in Invuln's favor because the Tanker HP cap was raised from ~3212 to ~3534.

[edit: To be more specific, the MaxHP change went live in Issue 18, along with Bruising.]

The nophase timer (unless it has changed) is 2 minutes, not 30 sec. Ironically, that's Hibernate's base recharge. The addition of the nophase debuff really hurt Hibernate.

The problem I have with Ice is that it is the most susceptible primary to burst damage. Shield, the other primarily defensive set, has significant resistance and is able to push 90% s/l with OwtS up. Ice doesn't have that.

Not saying Ice is tissue paper, but it's weaker in the aspect I think Tankers need to be strong at.

Nope. It is a temp power with a limit of 1 total, not one per character. (I don't think they even have the tech to do that, atm.)

Actually, Burn used to provide status protection, but only for a short duration (10-20s?). As I recall, it was set to "not stack from same user", so recasting burn would momentarily drop your protection (and thus your toggles). I have an old demo of me fighting Babbage on my Fire/Stone Tanker where I'd consistently be held for a fraction of a second.

Note: I have nothing personal against anyone who prefers speed runs or shard runs, but the imagry this passage envokes strikes me as... wrong. The first thing that came to mind as a counter point? The Olympics - a lot of those events are about who can do X the fastest.

Speed runs aren't necessarily about ADD "getting the shinies fastest" (albeit a nice side effect), but also about trying to beat prior records (be it personal or other).

I'd agree.

When it comes to the raw ability to survive high burst damage, Invuln is kings (aside from Granite, which was tossed out). It has def, res (capped s/l), a heal, and +maxhp. It also has a lot of debuff resistance (most notably defense / end drain) which makes its survivability harder to strip away.

WP, on the other hand, isn't quite as hearty at surviving high burst damage, but it is much better at surviving damage for long periods of time due to RttC. It also has more rounded protection (ie: no hole to psi, and yes I understand Invuln gets psi mitigation through +def via Weave, Steadfast, etc) as well as stronger status protection (fear, confuse, +perception).

There are times I look enviously at Invuln's toolset on my WP, then I remember its shortcomings when looking at it objectively.

I think this is the rub. It depends on what the performance spread between the coolest and most powerful power was. If the spread was small enough that I could justify the performance hit, I'd go for coolest. If the spread was too large, I'd probably go for power... either that or I'd argue with myself into indecision until later. Honestly, I've done all three of those.

[edit: For example, a lot of people pick up Hasten, even if they hate the visual effect, because the power outweighs their hatred of glowy hands. (I don't mind said glowy hands.)]

[edit: Inverse is true for Flurry.]

Thing is, Gauntlet can fire if you miss. All Tanker single target attacks are aoes with a single target component. Imagine Fireball where the smashing portion only hits the primary target. Just because you miss the primary target doesn't mean Fireball won't still roll against other targets in it's radius. So, if you miss target 1, the streakbreaker would force Gauntlet to hit target 2.

I remember that... having roughly 2/3 my WP Tanker's health evaporate in one attack by a +2 Lieutenant was a nasty surprise.

They made Nullifiers' debuff resistible a while back. I haven't used AE in ages, but at one point, I noticed that Tar Patch was unresistible.

Cytoplasm = def buff (20%) / end / tohit buff
Enzyme = def debuff (33%) / end
Ribosome = res buff / end