Smersh

But you can summon Cenobites with it!

...yeah, it's pretty awful. Some kind of glowing stun-prod would be nice for the tech warmace.

Not really. In many cases, it causes the spines effects to stack.

What do you mean, "Going to be?"

Ice is... okay. It's great at holding aggro, it has a damage aura, it debuffs enemy damage, it can refill its own endurance bar. Its mitigation is almost entirely defense-based, but it does not have high levels of defense debuff resistance - it sits on about 52% DDR on my ice/km/soul tank. I use EA to take me over the softcap to give myself a debuff cushion. It is really nice to be completely immune to slows, though. Running at full speed off a multiple KoA caltrop spawn is nice.

With vulnerabilities to both fire and psi, as well as to-hit buffs, I find that hibernate is a really good option to have. Think of it as an in-combat rest; it's fast enough that you probably won't lose much aggro between going into hibernate and leaving it.

Dark Melee makes any tank more durable, and it should work very well for Ice Armor. The ability to shut down bosses with Touch of Fear is also quite nice.

I'd say go for it. Just make sure you have Hibernate - you'll want it.

Because it's so hard to communicate with your team or to set up a bind saying "Unstoppable crash in 10 seconds." Take five seconds to recover after the crash and get back to it. Most teams can manage without a tank for a few seconds.

The guys at MPS, when I saw them give a presentation back a couple of years ago, pointed out that a walker would be the vehicle of choice for rescue work in flooded areas. You know, like Katrina or a tsunami.

If you get two rings, go play with the adds for a bit. Staying and tanking and getting all of your teammates irresistibly held by the sequestering effect doesn't help anybody.

Chances are there will be another melee who can hold some attention on themselves.

Thee new trials are great, but there are circumstances where you shouldn't just stand and tank them. Marauder's Nova Fist and the sequestration effect will take a tank out of the fight. Fortunately, you're given ample warning to mitigate those effects.

I once managed to get myself killed by Nightstar trying to pull her to the tennis courts - that was my fault for not paying enough attention. (And failing to drop a purple first.) Otherwise, all the new content needs is a new set of tactics and some decent situational awareness.

For the record, I'm playing a softcapped inv/fire in these trials.

I love the smell of anti-intellectualism in the morning.

It was changed...

Its name went from Fiery Embrace to Embrace of Fire.

That was the only change - it kept its old functionality. That was a deliberate decision on Castle's part.

I've been calling that a filibuster.

If your daughter is that keen on tanking, get your Mids' Hero Designer and let her have a crack at it. I bet she'd surprise you with how well she can build one, and it's great for mathematics/problem solving/learning about opportunity costs.

Just make sure she knows that 45% defense will make her tank super-tough and let her go with it.

Gone With The Wind is purest fantasy... but not in the way you mean, and a quick perusal looks as though you're right.

Gary Cooper's also light on the fantasy/sci-fi... he does have one credit that fits the bill much as GWTW does... The Fountainhead is pure fantasy as well.

That's rather missing the point, in my opinion.

Of course having 60% defense won't help you against 95% of the game. Things still have only a 5% base to-hit chance against you.

The idea would not be to compare against the entire game - it would be an apples to apples comparison against enemies that have a 64% to-hit chance.

Your icer would have roughly quadruple the survivability against enemies with a base 64% to hit if you built to 59% defense vs. the usual 45%. That should be a noticeable difference.

I don't think that using a new soft cap tank on most content is a worthwhile endeavor - it's a precision tool that's highly over-engineered for the task. It's like using a laser-guided computer-driven industrial drill press when all you need to do is drill a pilot hole for a screw. Yes, it will work, but it'll take three times as long to do as using a regular power drill, and you won't have noticeably better results.

It's about using the right tool for the job - which is why I'm considering using one of my three builds as an 'Incarnate Tank' build. You don't use it across a wide variety of content, you use it for Incarnate content.

But were you running against Praetorian Clockwork/DE?

We have three builds at our disposal... there is no reason not to consider building for the Praetorian content. I'm not investing in that until I see how often I'll be running the content, but the way the league system works, there's a good chance that a pick-up trial *won't* have the defense buffs you consider necessary. There's also something to be said for being a self-sufficient tanker running those trials.

Those levels of defense are not limited to stone tanks. I've made some Mids builds that I'm still experimenting with, but I've got a Shields/SS build that's got 59% defense to all positions, and an Inv/Fire and Ice/KM that hit 59% to S/L/E/N. I'm not going to post them here yet, because they're still in progress and a bit ugly at the moment - build skeletons as opposed to builds.

Those builds make sacrifices - pushing defenses that high does have significant opportunity costs that I'm generally unwilling to pay.

But, I don't think that a build that softcaps for the new content is uncalled for if you have intentions of running the new content regularly.

As to your contention that JakHammer's stone tank can't move in combat - if you don't see the big glaring power called Teleport that serves just fine for stone tank mobility, that's an oversight on your part, not JakHammer's.